The silent movie, the Viennese symphony and the epic poem all had their heydays in the past.

FORBES: Fifth Anniversary

But the epic poem book-length fiction, and its audio and video adaptations is dominating our lives in a way unseen since Homer.

FORBES: Homer's Revenge: Epic Poetry Is Back. It's Viral. And It's Worth Billions

Eliot, famed for epic poem The Waste Land as well as writing the inspiration for Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats, had written to his friend Jacob Isaacs.

BBC: TS Eliot

Documents deciphered using it include an epic poem from the 7th century BC by Archilochos and parts of a lost tragedy by Sophocles that dates to the 5th century BC.

ECONOMIST: Monitor

Next, pause for free-form reverie in the designated Poet's Chair upstairs at City Lights, the bookstore owned by Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who won a landmark 1957 free-speech case over the publication of Allen Ginsberg's incendiary epic poem Howl.

BBC: A perfect day in San Francisco

The 60-year-old writer equalled the record of his friend and rival, the late Ted Hughes, after his translation of Anglo Saxon epic poem Beowulf was named the best book of 1999 at a ceremony in The Brewery, near London's Barbican.

BBC: Heaney wins Whitbread book prize

Read Richmond Lattimore's translation for the epic scale and narrative of Homer's poem.

ECONOMIST: Homer��s ��Iliad��