[Footnote 6: [Greek: Homêros de alla te polla axios epaineisthai kai dê kai hoti monos tôn poiêtôn ouk agnoei ho dei poiein auton. auton gar dei ton poiêtên elachista legein: ou gar esti kata tauta mimêtês. hoi men oun alloi autoi men di' holou agônizontai, mimountai de oliga kai oligakis: ho de oliga phroimiasamenos euthys eisagei andra ê gynaika ê allo ti êthos kai ouden' aêthê all' echonta êthê.]--ARIST. _Poet._ 1460 a 5.] Aristotle wrote with very little consideration for the people who were to come after him, and gives little countenance to such theories of epic as have at various times been prevalent among the critics, in which the dignity of the subject is insisted on. He does not imagine it the chief duty of an epic poet to choose a lofty argument for historical rhetoric. He does not say a word about the national or the ecumenical importance of the themes of the epic poet. His analysis of the plot of the _Odyssey_, but for the reference to Poseidon, might have been the description of a modern realistic story. "A man is abroad for many years, persecuted by Poseidon and alone; meantime the suitors of his wife are wasting his estate and plotting against his son; after many perils by sea he returns to his own country and discovers himself to his friends. He falls on his enemies and destroys them, and so comes to his own again." The _Iliad_ has more likeness than the _Odyssey_ to the common pattern of later sophisticated epics. But the war of Troy is not the subject of the _Iliad_ in the same way as the siege of Jerusalem is the subject of Tasso's poem. The story of the _Aeneid_ can hardly be told in the simplest form without some reference to the destiny of Rome, or the story of _Paradise Lost_ without the feud of heaven and hell. But in the _Iliad_, the assistance of the Olympians, or even the presence of the whole of Greece, is not in the same degree essential to the plot of the story of Achilles. In the form of Aristotle's summary of the _Odyssey_, reduced to "the cool element of prose," the _Iliad_ may be proved to be something quite different from the common fashion of literary epics. It might go in something like this way:-- "A certain man taking part in a siege is slighted by the general, and in his resentment withdraws from the war, though his own side is in great need of his help. His dearest friend having been killed by the enemy, he comes back into the action and takes vengeance for his friend, and allows himself to be reconciled."