eous consciousness of life, but the duty of "literary"
epic has been to develop this function, answerably to the development of
life itself, into symbolism of some conscious _idea_ of life--something
at once more formalized and more subtilized than the primary virtue of
courage. The Greeks, however, were too much overshadowed by the
greatness of Homer to do much towards this. The _Argonautica_, the
half-hearted epic of Apollonius Rhodius, is the only attempt that need
concern us. It is not a poem that can be read straight through; it is
only enjoyable in moments--moments of charming, minute observation, like
the description of a sunbeam thrown quivering on the wall from a basin
of water "which has just been poured out," lines not only charming in
themselves, but finely used as a simile for Medea's agitated heart; or
moments of romantic fantasy, as when the Argonauts see the eagle flying
towards Prometheus, and then hear the Titan's agonized cry. But it is
not in such passages that what Apollonius did for epic abides. A great
deal of his third book is a real contribution to the main process, to
epic content as well as to epic manner. To the manner of epic he added
analytic psychology. No one will ever imagine character more deeply or
more firmly than Homer did in, say, Achilles; but Apollonius was the man
who showed how epic as well as drama may use the nice minutiae of
psychological imagination. Through Virgil, this contribution to epic
manner has pervaded subsequent literature. Apollonius, too, in his
fumbling way, as though he did not quite know what he was doing, has yet
done something very important for the development of epic significance.
Love has been nothing but a subordinate incident, almost one might say
an ornament, in the early epics; in Apollonius, though working through a
deal of gross and lumbering mythological machinery, love becomes for the
first time one of the primary values of life. The love of Jason and
Medea is the vital symbolism of the _Argonautica_.

But it is Virgil who really begins the development of epic art. He took
over from Apollonius love as part of the epic symbolism of life, and
delicate psychology as part of the epic method. And, like Apollonius, he
used these novelties chiefly in the person of a heroine. But in Virgil
they belong to an incomparably greater art; and it is through Virgil
that they have become necessities of the epic tradition. More than this,
however, was required of hi