Homeric Simile
also called
Epic Simile
Review: What is a simile?
How did homer make his audience
“see’ the scenes he recited? Figures of
speech! 
• .
• A figure of speech compares one thing to
something else that is unlike it except for a few
important features.
• For example, Homer uses the phrase “like
squirming puppies” (line 279) to describe two of
Odysseus’s men seized by the Cyclops. The simile
(a directly stated comparison suing words like or
as) helps the audience—then and now—picture
how helpless and unwilling the men are.
The Homeric / Epic Simile:
• Homer uses extended similes so masterfully
that such comparisons now bear his name.
• A Homeric simile is an elaborate comparison,
developed over several lines, between
something strange or unfamiliar to the
audience and something more familiar to
them.
• For example: in lines 281-283 of The Cyclops
myth: Homer compares the Cyclops eating the
men to a mountain lion devouring its prey,
bones and all.
Homeric / Epic Simile:
• Extended comparisons
(usually more than 1 sentence!)
that compare hero or epic events to
simple and easily understandable
everyday events that the audience
would relate to.
• epic event <-------> everyday event
Example:
• During the Trojan War, the goddess Athena protects
King Menelaus from being struck by an arrow.
Homer describes it with these words:
(copy this in your notes exactly!)
She brushed it away from his skin as
lightly as when a mother brushes a fly
away from her child who is lying in
sleep.
• Underline the 2 events being compared.
• Label the epic event and the everyday event.
Do you get it? Practice!
• See Lit textbook page 652, lines 33-47
• Read the text passage and find the epic simile.
• Write and label each event in your notes.
No words were lost on Hermes the Wayfinder
who bent to tie his beautiful sandals on,
35 ambrosial,° golden, that carry him over water
or over endless land in a swish of the wind,
and took the wand with which he charms asleep—
or when he wills, awake—the eyes of men.
So wand in hand he paced into the air,
40 shot from Pieria° down, down to sea level,
and veered to skim the swell. A gull patrolling
between the wave crests of the desolate sea
will dip to catch a fish, and douse his wings;
no higher above the whitecaps Hermes flew
45 until the distant island lay ahead,
then rising shoreward from the violet ocean
he stepped up to the cave.
• Find the epic simile.
• Write it in your notes
• Label the EPIC event and the everyday event
No words were lost on Hermes the Wayfinder
who bent to tie his beautiful sandals on,
35 ambrosial,° golden, that carry him over water
or over endless land in a swish of the wind,
and took the wand with which he charms asleep—
or when he wills, awake—the eyes of men.
So wand in hand he paced into the air,
40 shot from Pieria° down, down to sea level,
and veered to skim the swell. A gull patrolling
between the wave crests of the desolate sea
will dip to catch a fish, and douse his wings;
no higher above the whitecaps Hermes flew
45 until the distant island lay ahead,
then rising shoreward from the violet ocean
he stepped up to the cave.