What comment does the author make through the analogy at the end of this paragraph? great geniuses have the shortest biographies. their cousins can tell you nothing about them. they lived in their writings, and so their house and street life was trivial and commonplace. if you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them. plato, especially, has no external biography. if he had lover, wife, or children, we hear nothing of them. he ground them all into paint. as a good chimney burns its smoke, so a philosopher converts the value of all his fortunes into his intellectual performances. (from representative men by ralph waldo emerson) plato did not want to have a family or a significant role in society. plato's obsession with philosophy was a major impediment to his social life. the ideas that philosophers expound are the most notable aspects of their lives. philosophers essentially think alike despite the differences in their fortunes.

gilgamesh is an epic hero from birth, as he's brought to the world by the hand of several gods who shaped him with the goal of saving humanity. there's a passage from the text that reads "the glorious sun shamash bestowed upon him glory; adad the terrible god of storms bestowed upon him courage. the great gods perfected his magnificence beyond all others, terrible like the great wild bull". this is a great example that show some of the super-human qualities that the gods gave gilgamesh upon his birth.

as gilgamesh grows he has to face many challenges that put his heroism to task. the courage he displays along the way, prove that he's ready to live up to the godly qualities brought upon him. at one point he has to overcome a wild beast by the name of hubamba "whose roar is a flood, whose mouth is fire, whose breath is death", as the text reads. the actions taken by gilgamesh, beating the beast with the use of his super-human force, examplify why he shoud be thought of as an epic hero.

hope this !