Having recently re-read both the Iliad and the Odyssey, I already find myself reading them yet again to more closely study various aspects of Homeric style. One of the things I've always enjoyed about the Homeric epics is the extended similes that liken events in the story to everyday experiences (indeed, I recall writing a paper about such similes for my Homer class with Laura Slatkin back in college). Here is an example from Book II of the Iliad as translated by Alexander Pope about 300 years ago:
As from some rocky cleft the shepherd sees
Clustering in heaps on heaps the driving bees,
Rolling and blackening, swarms succeeding swarms,
With deeper murmurs and more hoarse alarms;
Dusky they spread, a close embodied crowd,
And o'er the vale descends the living cloud.
So, from the tents and ships, a lengthen'd train
Spreads all the beach, and wide o'ershades the plain:
Along the region runs a deafening sound;
Beneath their footsteps groans the trembling ground.
This is a feature I hope to emulate in my budding epic poem about Pyrrho and Alexander, of which I've drafted 250 lines so far. Here's one I came up with to describe the mental turmoil that Pyrrho experiences after a conversation with Phaedo, the last surviving companion of Socrates:
As ocean waters swell when western winds
Contend against the shore in sudden squalls;
The winds whack wave on wave to wicked whitecaps,
The breakers rage and roar with foam untold:
So thought on thought came crashing in his mind
And roiled the glassy surface of his soul.
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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