Nevertheless most of our epic poets, one may say, ignore the
distinction.
Herein, then, to repeat what we have said before, we have a further
proof of Homer's marvellous superiority to the rest. He did not
attempt to deal even with the Trojan war in its entirety, though it
was a whole with a definite beginning and end--through a feeling
apparently that it was too long a story to be taken in in one view, or
if not that, too complicated from the variety of incident in it. As it
is, he has singled out one section of the whole; many of the other
incidents, however, he brings in as episodes, using the Catalogue of
the Ships, for instance, and other episodes to relieve the uniformity
of his narrative. As for the other epic poets, they treat of one man,
or one period; or else of an action which, although one, has a
multiplicity of parts in it. This last is what the authors of the
_Cypria_ and _Little_ _Iliad_ have done. And the result is that,
whereas the _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_ supplies materials for only one, or
at most two tragedies, the _Cypria_ does that for several, and the
_Little_ _Iliad_ for more than eight: for an _Adjudgment of Arms_, a
_Philoctetes_, a _Neoptolemus_, a _Eurypylus_, a _Ulysses as Beggar_,
a _Laconian Women_, a _Fall of Ilium_, and a _Departure of the Fleet_;
as also a _Sinon_, and _Women of Troy_.
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