Why are the Illiad, Odyssey, and other epic poems considered poems?
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In addition to the other answers, thought I would add – one of the reasons, maybe the reason, that ancient writers used various kinds of poetry is that they weren’t writing, everything was transmitted orally. And it’s much easier to remember a massive text if it’s got some sort of pattern, be that rhyming, meter, etc.
Poems don’t have to rhyme, but they follow some other type of strict structure that makes them words sound more in synch, almost like you can sing them.
I’m am not very familiar with the exact composition of ancient poetry, but they followed things called metres and feet. In short, words had to have certain amounts of consonants and different emphasis. For example:
>TA-ta, Tu-TU-tu, te-te-TE-te.
These are words have different poetic values, but don’t rhyme. Greek and Roman poems required certain words of different consonants and emphasis in different places. When you would read these poems aloud—which was the main way of transmission—it would sound like it flowed better; it was pleasing to the ear.
The opposite of poetry is prose, where you don’t really follow any rules and just write as you please.
The Iliad and The Odyssey are in Epic Meter, also called dactylic hexameter.
A dactyl is a “foot” of poetry of a long/strong syllable and two short/weak syllables. Hexameter means there are 6 “feet” in a line, or at least 12 syllables.
A long syllable can be replaced by two shorts in dactylic meter.
In English, a classic example of “shave and a haircut, two bits”. L L L SS LL
In Ancient Greek and Latin, vowel length/strength was important because it changed what a word meant. Word order was also less important in those languages.
In English, our vowels/syllables work differently and we also use a strict word order. So poetry evolved to include rhyming as a way of making it sound more interesting and different from normal speech.
Rule 2.
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