This has brought us to another question—more interesting to many than the mere question of date. Are we to suppose
any direct connection between the classical and the Old English epic?
As nations pass through their "Heroic Age," similar social conditions will necessarily be reflected by many similarities in their poetry. In heroic lays like Finnsburg or Hildebrand or the Norse poems, phrases and situations may occur which remind us of phrases and situations in the Iliad, without affording any ground for supposing classical influence direct or indirect.
But there is much more in Beowulf than mere accidental coincidence of phrase or situation.
A simple-minded romancer would have made the Æneid a biography of Æneas from the cradle to the grave. Not so Virgil. The story begins with mention of Carthage. Æneas then comes on the scene. At a banquet he tells to Dido his earlier adventures. Just so Beowulf begins, not with the birth of Beowulf and his boyhood, but with Heorot. Beowulf arrives. At the banquet, in reply to Unferth, he narrates his earlier adventures. The Beowulf-poet is not content merely to tell us that there was minstrelsy at the feast, but like Virgil or Homer, he must give an account of what was sung. The epic style leads often to almost verbal similarities. Jupiter consoling Hercules for the loss of the son of his host says:
stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis
hoc virtutis opus[[651]].
In the same spirit and almost in the same words does Beowulf console Hrothgar for the loss of his friend:
Ūre ǣghwylc sceal ende gebīdan