An epic is a poem including history.

Pound’s remark compresses a modernist theory of epic: the epic poem is not merely a long narrative or a heroic tale, but a form capacious enough to carry the record of a civilization—its politics, economics, myths, and documentary traces—within poetic structure. Read this way, “including history” suggests both subject matter and method: the epic absorbs historical materials (chronicle, quotation, testimony, names, dates) and reworks them into a patterned, meaning-making composition. The idea aligns with Pound’s own practice in *The Cantos*, which juxtaposes historical episodes and documents to argue that poetry can function as an alternative historiography—selective, interpretive, and ethically charged rather than neutral reportage.