ith the modern novel, inefficient. The epic author
exhibits little sympathy for any individual who struggles against
the cause that is to be established. AEneas' dallying with Dido and
subsequent desertion of her is of little interest to Virgil on the
ground of individual personality: what interests him mainly is that
so long as AEneas lingers with the Carthaginian queen, the founding
of Rome is being retarded, and that when at last AEneas leaves her,
he does so to advance the epic cause. Therefore Virgil regards the
desertion of Dido as an act of heroic virtue on the part of the man
who sails away to found a nation. A modern novelist, however (and this
is the main point to be considered in this connection), would conceive
the whole matter more personally. He would be far less interested at
the moment in the ultimate founding of Rome than he would be in the
misery of the deserted woman; and instead of considering AEneas as a
model of heroic virtue, would adjudge him as personally base. From
this we see that the novelistic attitude toward character is much more
intimate than the epic attitude. The wrath of Achilles is significant
to Homer, not so much because it is an exhibition of individual
personality as because it is a factor in jeopardizing the victory
of the Greeks. Considered as types of individual character, most of
Homer's heroes are mere boys. It is the cause for which they fight
that gives them dignity: embattled Greece must repossess the beauty
which a lesser race has reft away from it. Even Helen herself is
merely an idea to be fought for; she is not, as a woman, interesting
humanly. It is only in infrequent passages, such as the scene of
parting between Andromache and Hector, that the ancient epics
reveal the intimate attitude toward character to which we have grown
accustomed in the modern novel.

Because the epic authors have been interested always in communal
conflict rather than in individual personality, they have seldom made
any use of the element of love,--the most intimate and personal of all
emotions. There is no love in Homer, and scarcely any love in Virgil
and in Milton. Tasso, to be sure, uses a love motive as the basis for
each of the three leading strands of his story; but because of this,
his epic, though gaining in modernity and charm, loses something of
the communal immensity--the impersonal dignity--of the "Iliad" and the
"AEneid." On the other hand, novelistic authors, since they have be