Pride, Beowulf's Most Cherished Possession and His Greatest Enemy Beowulf is an epic poem created by the the ancient Anglo-Saxons of Britain. For a poem to be an epic, it has six requirements: long and narrative, involves a long journey for the hero, the hero must overcome obstacles, long prideful speeches, the poem takes place over a long period of time, and the hero reflects the culture from which he comes. The poem was recited as early as the sixth century when stories were passed along orally by scops who were traveling storytellers. Since stories were passed on orally, the authors of many Anglo-Saxon poems are unknown. Beowulf was passed on orally for centuries until the eleventh century, it was finally written down by scholars. Since then the story about the mighty Beowulf has become a polyglot epic poem translated by hundreds of people such as Burton Raffel who translated the poem into modern day English. The poem grew from past traditions such as the monsters, loyalty to the chief, and the decent to unknown regions of the earth were familiar element of Celtic and Scandinavian folk tales. By combining different traditions and later adding Christian ideas into one story, scops created a cultural reference point for Anglo-Saxons to learn from. Since there are various traditions blended into Beowulf, there are underlying themes such as heritage, pride, respect, gifting, good versus evil, strength, and customs. A major theme of the poem is pride. One can believe that the pride of Beowulf led him to his own downfall. Pride can either be a high sense of one's personal status or ego or more commonly known as the positive emotion that is a product of praise or independent self-reflection. Throughout the poem, the hero, Beowulf, showed so much pride that it may at times be considered hubris. Hubris is a common theme in ancient stories especially Greek mythology. It