Epic and Verse on War: Homer, Virgil and Horace

Written to be felt, not to inform

You have judged three kinds of evidence on this option, and every one of them raised the same question. Sparta: who wrote this, and were they Spartan? Athens: who made this, and were they the winners? Rome: who commissioned this, and who was made to look at it? All three ask who made a thing and for whom, and all three are asking about slant. This module asks something different, and the difference is the point of it. None of the four poems on your list was trying to tell you what happened. They were composed to be performed, and their job was to move the people hearing them. A poet urging men to stand firm is not filing a report. A poem about leaving your wife and child before a battle is not a record of a conversation. ⚠️ That does not make them useless, and dismissing them as invention is the fastest way to lose marks on this half of the option. It changes what they are evidence FOR. A poem made to move an audience is evidence of what that audience could be moved by - and that is something no monument, no inscription and no historian will ever tell you.

Words for reading war poetry

Six terms. The last two are the ones the examiners actually build questions around.

Two things the same poetry does

Your specification names horror and glorification as themes together, and the reason becomes obvious once the sources are set out side by side.

How to use a poem as evidence

Two questions, in this order, and then one phrase to reach for. What was this poem for, and who was listening to it? What effect is it going for? Then say what it is evidence of, and the phrase that earns the mark is evidence of what an audience could be moved by. ⚠️ Do not ask whether it is accurate. It was not trying to be, and testing it for accuracy is answering a question nobody set. ⚠️ And do not dismiss it for that either, which is the commoner error and looks like rigour while establishing nothing. A poem that genuinely moved people tells you something no report can: what those people found moving. A weak answer retells the story. A strong answer names the effect the poem is reaching for, and then says what wanting that effect reveals about the people it was written for.

Match each poem to what it is doing

What a poem is evidence of

A student asks whether the poems on this option are reliable about the wars they describe. What is the better way to put the question?

• Ask what each poem is evidence OF, since a poem composed to move an audience is evidence of what that audience could be moved by
• Ask which poet was writing closest in time to the fighting
• Treat them as unreliable, because poetry is invention
• Treat epic as reliable and shorter verse as unreliable

True about the prescribed poetry

Select the TWO statements that are true of the poems on this option.

• The same body of poetry both urges men to fight and shows what war costs those around them
• A poem can be strong evidence for what an audience found persuasive
• Poetry composed to be performed is a reliable record of particular battles
• The Iliad passages prescribed here were chosen as showcases of fighting

Complete the war poetry paragraph

Long narrative poetry composed to be performed and telling of heroes is called _____. Verse whose purpose is to urge an audience to act is _____. Someone caught up in a war without fighting in it is a _____. Your specification names two things war poetry can do, and this set of sources does both of them: glorification and _____.

Build the answer in order

Put these five moves into the order they belong in a written answer about a poem.

• Say what kind of poem it is and how it was meant to reach an audience
• Say what effect it is reaching for
• Say what wanting that effect tells you about the people it was made for
• Say what the poem therefore cannot settle
• Set it alongside evidence of a different kind before concluding

Poets, poems and purposes

The authors and works your specification names for this half of the option. Answer from memory.

Two poems, opposite jobs

Put the exhortation beside the leave-taking and read them together. A weak answer: "They contradict each other, so one of them must be closer to how Greeks really felt." Another weak answer: "Both glorify war." ⚠️ A strong answer: "The exhortation exists to make standing firm seem worth it. That it needed writing at all is the evidence - nobody writes verse urging men to do what they were always going to do easily. So it tells us standing firm was hard, and that this is what an audience could be moved by. The leave-taking does something else entirely: it puts in front of the same kind of audience exactly what a fighter stands to lose, and it sits inside the poem that also celebrates his courage. So the two are not in competition. Together they show a culture that could be moved in both directions, sometimes by the same poem, and that is a stronger claim about attitudes to war than either source alone." ⚠️ The move worth carrying out of this module: when two sources of the same kind pull in opposite directions, that is not a problem to resolve. It is the range of what the audience would accept, and the range is the finding. ⚠️ And handle these passages as the poems do. A father asking for his son back is treated by the Iliad as a person, and an answer that turns him into an illustration has read it less carefully than the poem asks.

Spot the true war poetry facts

Four statements about the poetry on this option. Select the TWO that are true.

• A poem composed to be performed is evidence of what its audience could be moved by
• The prescribed Iliad passages put non-combatants and an enemy's grief at the centre
• Poetry written to persuade is worthless as historical evidence
• The Odes prescribed here are a factual report of a campaign

Say what a poem can settle

Assemble a sentence stating what this body of poetry can and cannot be used for.

Closing the option

Four judgements. The last one asks what the whole option adds up to.

• A student writes that Tyrtaeus proves the men he wrote for were fearless. What is wrong with that?
• A question asks what the prescribed Iliad passages contribute to the war theme. What do you say?
• A classmate says the poems and the Roman monuments are the same kind of evidence, since both were made to affect people. What difference is worth stating?
• You have now worked through Sparta, Athens, Rome and the poetry. What can you say about Greek and Roman attitudes to war?

Close the case on war and its sources

This is the last piece of the option. A classmate has written that the poetry is the weakest evidence on it, because poets make things up. Write the answer that puts them right and then draws the option together.

• Explain what kind of poem each prescribed source is, and how each was meant to reach an audience
• Explain what exhortation verse is evidence of, and why that is not the same as proving anyone was fearless
• Explain what the prescribed Iliad passages put at the centre, and why that matters for the war theme
• Explain why poetry pulling in two directions is a finding rather than a problem to resolve
• Finish by saying what the whole option lets you claim about attitudes to war, using more than one kind of evidence