Epic poetry, then, was invented to supply the artistic demands of society in a certain definite and recognizable state. Or rather, it was the epic material which supplied that; the first epic poets gave their age, as genius always does, something which the age had never thought of asking for; which, nevertheless, when it was given, the age took good hold of, and found that, after all, this, too, it had wanted without knowing it. But as society went on towards civilization, the need for epic grew less and less; and its preservation, if not accidental, was an act of conscious aesthetic admiration rather than of unconscious necessity. It was preserved somehow, however; and after other kinds of literature had arisen as inevitably and naturally as epic, and had become, in their turn, things of less instant necessity than they were, it was found that, in the manner and purpose of epic poetry, something was given which was not given elsewhere; something of extraordinary value. Epic poetry would therefore be undertaken again; but now, of course, deliberately. With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem. The result, good or bad, of such a determination is called "literary" epic. The poems of Apollonius Rhodius, Virgil, Lucan, Camoens, Tasso and Milton are "literary" epics. But such poetry as the _Odyssey_, the _Iliad,_ _Beowulf_, the _Song of Roland_, and the _Nibelungenlied_, poetry which seems an immediate response to some general and instant need in its surrounding community--such poetry is "authentic" epic.