“Bondwomen, see them yonder, Gorgon-like,
In dusky raiment, twined about with coils
Of swarming snakes! I cannot stay here more.”
Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers (c. 485 B.C.)*
I fear the erudite classicists of the War Department may have overestimated America’s ear for classical allusion. Fury is to most of us the blinding rage we feel when our favorite fullback fumbles a football, or that our wife feels when, frenzied by fury over such a fumble, we stain her new carpet by fumbling our fifth pizza slice. Epic is to us just a two-syllable ejaculation that signifies awesome, stunning, bodacious, or supersized.
I suspect the erudite classicists in the War Department named their latest adventure Epic Fury to suggest heroic vengeance, but that the title just makes us rubes in the bleachers clutch our popcorn all the tighter in anticipation of a grudge match.
When Chronos castrated Uranus, the Furies (or Eumenides) are said to have sprung from drops of his blood. Some say the blood drops and furies were innumerable, others limit the number to three. They were sisters named Tistiphone (vengeful destruction), Alecto (endless anger), and Magæra (jealous rage), and they together embody the spirit of revenge for crime, or comeuppance.
The original crime was of course committed by Chronos when, with a swift stroke of his sickle, he unmanned his father and tossed the severed paternal organ into the sea. The three furies were born to torment vile villains who do dastardly deeds such as that. Virgil and Dante dressed the Furies in blood-stained garments and set them atop the adamantine gates of Hell, the junior tormenters within having studied under the three grim gals.
The task of a fury is to torment evildoers with grave misfortunes, hideous screeching, and the ghastly sight of her face framed by snaky or snake-twined hair. In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Tisiphone (vengeful destruction) drives Athamas mad, and since that time furies have been blamed for the torments of a guilty conscience, most especially when those torments lead to suicide.
By naming their latest adventure Epic Fury, the erudite classicists in the War Department no doubt hope to indicate that Iran had it coming.
* * * * *
An epic is properly a long narrative poem that covers a great span of time and space, and in which the characters and actions are all “larger than life.” An epic poem can be contrasted with a lyric poem, which is short and relates a quotidian emotion such as the pleasure of an effortless bowel movement. When used as an adjective or adverb, epic means deeply impressive or exceedingly large. The expression “epic fail” was, for instance, popular a few years back, and I believe it was meant to indicate a spectacular blunder.
When it promises that its fury will be epic, I suppose the Department of War means to indicate that it will knock off your socks. And not only your socks if you are on the other side.
That a true epic takes a long time to finish may have slipped their mind.
*) Aeschylus, The Oresteia of Aeschylus, trans. R. C. Trevelyan (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1922), p. 115.
The Orthosphere 
The epic stupidity of the naming committee took a long time to get there, I’m sure.
My impression is that military operations used to have code name and now have advertising slogans. The point is to manage minds on the home front, and not to deceive the enemy.