Unity, concentration, "with beginning, middle, and end," is as necessary, Aristotle holds, to epic as to dramatic poetry. The Trojan war, to be sure, has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but the whole could not be treated in an Epic under poetic conditions of space. One _motif_ is therefore selected by Homer, with diversifying episodes. The author of the _Cypria_ did not adopt the true method of epic: in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are subjects but for one or two tragedies; whereas the _Cypria_, extending over many years and dealing with many regions, yields subjects for many, and the _Little Iliad_ for eight or more plays, which are enumerated.[9] We would not now state the case precisely in the terms of Aristotle: and the Attic tragedians possibly chose so many topics from the Cyclics, so few from the _Iliad_, partly because the Athenians, as chiefs of the Ionian name, preferred Ionian versions of the legends; while, as Republicans, they used the Ionian term for Agamemnon and Menelaus as "tyrants"; and kept up the singular Ionian feud against Odysseus, preferring to him Aias, a neighbour of Athens; Philoctetes, oppressed by the "tyrants"; and Palamedes, the victim of the tyrants and of their minion Odysseus. Such were the tastes of the Athenians; but we see that Aristotle observes the essential difference in poetic _quality_ between the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, which are Epics, while some of the Cyclic poems are mere metrical chronicles. The difference between epic and versified chronicle is, I think, that which divides Barbour's _The Brus_ and the _Wallace_ of Blind Harry (poetical chronicles like the _Heracleis_, the late poem on the history of Heracles), from epics like the _Chanson de Roland_ with its one motive, "The Wrath of Ganelon," its origins and consequences. Our _Iliad_, in Aristotle's opinion, then, is an epic; the _Cypria_, the _Heracleis_, and so on, are _not_ epics, but rather are versified chronicles. In Mr. Murray's opinion, too, the _Iliad_ is an epic, the _Cypria_ is "an old chronicle poem." But this only proves, to his mind, that the _Iliad_ is the further developed.[10] "They grew together side by side" or centuries; but the _Iliad_, as we have it, is, he thinks, of later and more accomplished art. Mr. Murray writes: "In its actual working up, however, our _Iliad_ has reached a further stage of development than the ordinary run of poetic chronicles, if I may use the term."[11] Now, as far as analogy serves our turn, the "poetic chronicle" is in a _later_ stage of development than the epic. Thus Barbour's _The Brus_, or the Argonautic poem of the very late Apollonius, is in a much later stage of development than the old Germanic epics, or _Beowulf_, which selects two main events from the career of the hero. Again, versified chronicles in France are much later in development than the epic, the _Chanson de Roland_, "The Wrath of Ganelon."