The epic is a long poem about the actions of one or more characters from legend or history. These events are something akin to a war involving so many characters along with gods and spirits. The following are the conventions of poetry:
1. Summon:
A prayer or invocation comes at the beginning of the poem where the poet asks the god or the muse to help him carry out his great work. Milton uses this convention in his epic poem. lost paradise as noted below:
… you, oh Spirit, who prefer
Before all the temples the straight and pure heart
Instruct me, because even if you know: you from the beginning
It was present…
2. Homeric simile:
Normally an ordinary simile might describe a youth as ‘tall, dark and straight, like a young cypress’, by contrast a Homeric simile stretches the comparison to such an extent that it becomes a little poem within a poem. For example:
Like a young cypress, tall, dark and straight,
That in the secluded garden of a queen throws
Her light dark shadow on the moonlit lawn
At midnight, with the sound of a bubbling fountain –
So slender seemed Sohrab, so sweetly reared.
(Matthew Arnold Sohrab and Rustum (1822-88))
3. Contest or Athletic Games:
Homer used this convention and described how Achilles prepared in advance an athletic contest in honor of his friend Patroclus. Then Virgil followed, and after this, it became an inescapable convention without which the epic would be incomplete. Paradise Lost Book-2 describes the fallen angels organizing an athletic meet.
4. Long and adventurous trip:
The hero makes such a journey. For example, Aeneas’ journey to search for the spirits of Anchises. Milton describes Satan’s journey through space in his lost paradise.
5. in half beef:
According to this convention, the story should begin in the middle of the action, in medium resolution, as Horace called it. For example, him Aeneid It begins with the arrival of Aeneas in Carthage. This is followed by the long story of the fall of Troy, their flight from him, and their journey to the Carthaginian coast. Now most novels and movies make use of this convention.