Written, or secondary, epics made up for the lack of the bardic setting through heightened style and formal structures. These epics were always serious, involving important events, crucial to the culture of the author and his audience. Similarly, the poem dealt with public, even national, concerns rather than the private world of the artist. In terms of style, the epic was written in elevated, soaring language. For the Greeks and Romans, part of the elevated language was the use of hexameters. Moreover, the epic could contain a variety of forms such as narrative, lyric, elegy, satire, debate, and many others. The length of the poem allowed the author enormous leeway to present different types of poetry within the overall framework of the epic. The epic also was typified stylistically by beginning in medias res (in the middle of things) and using extended similes and metaphors, sometimes called epic similes. Generally, epics, before Milton, glorified warfare and heroism in warfare, focusing on heroes who distinguish themselves in battle.
Milton came to the epic form with these ideas, but he also had his own epic in mind. Originally, Milton's notion seems to have been to follow the pattern of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid closely. His impulse to write on King Arthur, to create the Arthuriad, lends itself readily to the epic pattern. Over time though, Milton changed his mind about this epic. In the Reason for Church Government, he wonders "what king or knight before the conquest might be chosen in whom to lay the pattern of the Christian hero." The first answer to this query is obviously Arthur, but the second answer, upon reflection, is no one. By the Restoration, Milton's ideas of Christian hero and British epic were in flux.
