IV.

Epic Style

Both epics are written in impersonal, elevated, formal verse, employing language that was never used for ordinary discourse; the metrical form is dactylic hexameter (see Versification). Stylistically no real distinction can be made between the two works. It is easy, however, to see why, since antiquity, many readers have believed that they come from different hands. The Iliad deals with passions, with insoluble dilemmas. It has no real villains; Achilles, Agamemnon, Priam, and the rest are caught up, as actors and victims, in a cruel and ultimately tragic universe. In the Odyssey, on the other hand, the wicked are destroyed, right prevails, and the family is reunited—with rational intellect, Odysseus in particular, acting as the guiding force throughout the story.