Trojan War cycle

The Trojan War cycle, also widely known as the Epic Cycle or Cyclic Epics, was a collection of Ancient Greek epic poems that related the story of the Trojan War, which includes the Kypria, the Aithiopis, the Little Iliad, the Iliou persis ("The Sack of Troy"), the Nostoi ("Returns"), and the Telegony. Scholars sometimes include the two Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, among the poems of the Epic Cycle, but the term is more often applied only to the non-Homeric poems that narrate the Trojan War. The phrase "Epic Cycle" is occasionally used to refer to a larger group of poems that included the Titanomachy, the Theban Cycle, and the Trojan cycle.

Aside from the Odyssey and the Iliad, the Cyclic Epics only survive in fragments. A summary of their contents, written by Proclus, survives. The epics were composed in dactylic hexameter verse. In modern scholarship the study of the historical and literary relationship between the Homeric epics and the rest of the cycle is called Neoanalysis.

The eleven books of the Kypria recount the events leading up to the Trojan War and the first nine years of the conflict, especially the judgement of Paris.
The twenty-four books of the Iliad, accredited to Homer, pick up after the Kypria and focus on Achilles and his rage against first king Agamemnon and then the Trojan prince Hector. It ends with the death of Hector, who is killed by Achilles in revenge for the death of his dear friend Patroclus.
The five books of the Aithiopis are said to have been written by Arctinus of Miletus. It covers the arrival of the Trojan allies Penthesilea the Amazon and Memnon, their deaths at Achilles' hands, and Achilles' own death.
The four books of the Little Iliad, believed to have been written by Lesches, cover the events after Achilles' death including the building of the Trojan Horse.
The two books of the Iliou persis cover the sack of Troy by the Greeks.
The five books of the Nostoi ("returns") cover the return home of the main Greek force and the events contingent upon their arrival. The final section was devoted especially to Agamemnon and Menelaus.
The twenty-four books of the Odyssey, also accredited to Homer, cover the end of Odysseus' voyage home and his vengeance on his wife Penelope's suitors, who have devoured his property in his absence.
The two books of the Telegony cover the life of Odysseus after his return home and his death at the hands of an illegitimate son, Telegonus.

Only the Iliad and the Odyssey survive intact, although fragments of the other epics are quoted in later authors. Most of our knowledge of the Cyclic epics comes from a summary included in Proclus' Chrestomathy. It is unknown whether this Proclus is the Neoplatonic philosopher, in which case the summary dates to the 5th century AD, or whether he is the lesser-known grammarian of the 2nd century AD. A longer Epic Cycle included the Titanomachy and the Theban cycle, which in turn comprised the Oedipodea, the Thebaid, the Epigoni and the Alcmeonidae, as well as the Trojan War cycle.

Reception and influence

The non-Homeric epics in the cycle have always been regarded as later than the Iliad and Odyssey, though there is no reliable evidence for this. In antiquity the Homeric epics were considered to be the greatest works in the cycle. For Hellenistic scholars the authors of the other poems were the neoteroi, "the later poets", and kyklikos ("cyclic") was synonymous with "formulaic": then, and in much modern scholarship, there has been an equation between poetry that is later and poetry that is inferior.

In more recent times it has been argued that the fantastic and magical content of the non-Homeric epics mark them as inferior (Griffin 1977); but it must be remembered that the Iliad and especially the Odyssey could sound just as fantastic if only brief summaries of them survived. It is certain that the poets of the Iliad and Odyssey knew the stories in the rest of the cycle and drew upon them extensively, and it is likely that the Aethiopis in particular was of relatively high quality. Overall it is impossible to tell how good the lost epics were; though some parts, especially the end of the Telegony, sound frankly bizarre in summary.

The tales told in the cycle are recounted by other ancient sources, notably Virgil's Aeneid (book 2) which recounts the sack of Troy from a Trojan perspective; Ovid's Metamorphoses (books 13-14), which describes the Greeks' landing at Troy (from the Cypria) and the judgment of Achilles' arms (Little Iliad); Quintus of Smyrna's Posthomerica, which narrates all the events after Achilles' death up until the end of the war; and the death of Agamemnon and the vengeance taken by his son Orestes (the Nostoi) are the subject of later Greek tragedy, especially Aeschylus's Oresteian trilogy.

Bibliography

Editions

Online editions (English translation):
- Online Medieval and Classical Library text (translated by H.G. Evelyn-White, 1914; public domain)
- Project Gutenberg text (translated by H.G. Evelyn-White, 1914)
- Proklos' summary of the Epic Cycle (translated by Gregory Nagy; omits Telegony)
Print editions (Greek):
- Bernabé, A. 1987, Poetarum epicorum Graecorum testimonia et fragmenta pt. 1 (Leipzig: Teubner). ISBN 3322003523
- Davies, M. 1988, Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht). ISBN 3525257473
Print editions (Greek with English translation):
- West, M.L. 2003, Greek Epic Fragments (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press). ISBN 0674996054

References

Griffin, Jasper 1977, "The epic cycle and the uniqueness of Homer", Journal of Hellenic Studies 97: 39-53

Contents

Reception and influence

Bibliography

Editions

References

Further reading

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Contents

Reception and influence

Bibliography

Editions

References

Further reading