Vol. 2 No. II (2021)

If Epic is, by definition, the genre to which civilizations entrusted the consecration of their founding myths, it is clear that these myths were embodied by figures, the Heroes, whose primary task was to establish a dialectical relationship with Death, in order to overcome it. Indeed, the deep bond between Hero and Death does not depend merely on the fact that Death represents an inevitable outcome of war (the privileged ground of epic narration and heroic action), but rather on the fact that Death represents the supreme moment of self-affirmation in the Hero’s life: the Hero’s fame, his kleos, and his immortality depend, first of all, on his contempt for Death and, in the second place, on the consummation of his life ahead of time, before the corruption of body and spirit. As much as heroic patterns changed in space and time, this paradigm of the dialectical relationship between Hero and Death is somehow inherent to any heroic and epic narrative.