The "Epic Cycle"

• First, a quick summary review of the backstory of the Trojan War:
• Prophecy to Zeus said that Zeus would be overthrown by a son, and also that Thetis' son would be greater than his father. So Zeus couldn't have Thetis, and it was decided that Thetis had to marry a mortal.
  
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• By Douris - Jastrow (2007). Image renamed from Image:Thetis Peleus CdM.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2180616
  
• Peleus, a mortal, was the one to whom Thetis got married. Their son is Achilles, whose mother did various things according to various stories, one of which was to dip him in the Styx while holding him by the heel (hence he remained vulnerable in the heel, but was invulnerable everywhere else).
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• Marriage of Peleus and Thetis By Bartolomeo di Giovanni (1458-1501)- louvre, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25191211
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• By upload by muesse - www.focus.de, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8328492
• The Education of Achilles by Chiron, fresco from Herculaneum, 1st century AD (Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples).
• Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera were guests at the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, but Eris (Strife) was not invited. So she threw an apple labelled "for the fairest" into the mix, and the three goddesses all claimed it. They decided that the shepherd Paris/Alexander should decide who was fairest. He chose Aphrodite, b/c she promised him the most beautiful mortal woman (Helen). NOTE: that puts Hera and Athena, the two goddesses who were spurned by Paris, prince of Troy, against Troy!
• Wtwael's copperplate in the National Gallery of Art
  
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• Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Helen of Troy: late 19th c.: wikimedia commons
  
• Meanwhile, Helen was born from Zeus (in the form of a swan) and Leda. She had many marital suitors: Odysseus suggested that they all swear an oath that they would defend her marriage no matter who got her. Menelaus married her.
  
• Paris/Alexander went across the sea to visit Menelaus and, sure enough, he and Helen left together and went back to Troy.
• And all the former suitors were required to defend the marriage, because they had sworn an oath to do so, so they joined suit and went off to Troy.
• Enough of that: the story is told in bits and pieces in many different places in many centuries, and has many versions, some contradictory. It is a thicket of convenient plot devices (the prohecies, the apple, the choice of the fairest, the oath, etc. all constrain and propel the story forward).
  
• Now, on to the Epic Cycle.

• There was a group of poems/songs that existed in antiquity called the epic cycle, none of which survived entire
• They were songs in dactylic hexameter, just like the Iliad and Odyssey were dactylic hexameter songs.
• They were much shorter than Iliad or Odyssey.
• They are lost.
• First question: why should I care about them?
• Each one told part of the Trojan War cycle, by which is meant the entire story of the Trojan War, from the way-back backstory to the long-after aftermath.
• They offer:
• Backstory
• Parallel stories, each of which is a huge set of stories
• Theban Epic cycle--think Oedipus, Seven against Thebes;
  
• Argos and Argonautica;
  
• Hercules stories: Hercules even sacked Troy once
• They report stories which reappear in tragedy and other poetry and later Roman poets such as Ovid and many others.
  
• OK, then, when are they from?
  
• The stories themselves, the plot lines, are clearly part of the fabric from which Iliad and Odyssey came: the stories are not fan-fiction made up after the fact.
• The stories recounted there occurred in the same timeframe as the Homeric Epics.
• They don't always follow the Homeric version: fan fiction usually follows what it is based on, the canon: so they are not likely to be dependent on and derived from Iliad and Odyssey
  
• So it is clear that they arose from the same oral/mythological stories that the Homeric epics did.
  
• In addition to the versions that were written down by particular people in particular written forms, there were probably songs that existed in many forms in many singers' and audiences' minds.
  
• They overlap with each other and Homer, but they also have inconsistencies (of many sorts: think of the Catalog of Ships in Iliad 2, which is somewhat mismatched to the army we find elsewhere in Iliad).
• One good theory is that the version of the cycle of which we have summaries was created much later than Homer, in the Hellenistic Period (322BC onward).
• "Evidence" for that theory is the fact that overall, in spite of discrepancies, they seem to fit so neatly around the Iliad and the Odyssey, and by Hellenistic times those two were THE major epics.
  
• Yes, this seems a bit at odds with, or at least in tension with, what was said above about the cycle not being fan fiction.
• But in spite of the tension, they contain so much that is so different from Homeric Epic that it is clear that there were songs and poems that told the epic cycle parallel to what is in the Iliad and Odyssey.

• What is included in the "Epic Cycle"?
• There are two cycles:
• the larger cycle, and the more narrow cycle that centers on the Trojan War
• The more narrow Trojan War "Epic Cycle" concerns us most: what we have left are titles of works, summaries, and in some cases, fragments.
  
• Cypria: early years of war
• Aithiopis: last year of war
• Little Iliad: and Sack of Ilium: fall of Troy.
• Nostoi (also called Returns): some Greek heroes' returns home.
• Telegony: Odysseus' life after he returned home to Ithaka.
  
• The LARGER Cycle also includes:
  
• Material that is prequel to the Cypria, such as
  
• Titanomachy: divine strife of Titans with their offspring, the Olympians, origin of the divine order that we are familiar with.
• Possibly there was a work that explains earlier divine origins: a Theogony
• Not to be confused with the surviving work by Hesiod, called Theogony, which does contain an explanation of early origins of the gods and the strife.
• We see bits of, allusions to, references to part of the Titanomachy in Homer: in Iliad, when Hera tells Zeus she is going off to reconcile Okeanos and Tethys, who are their separated parents, those are Titans. Zeus confined them somewhere where they can't do any damage or interfere with his world any more.
  
• The "Theban Cycle"
• Oidipodeia: Oedipus defeats Sphinx, marries Theban queen
• Thebais: Eteokles and Polyneikes fight over Thebes, Argos attacks Thebes.
• Epigoni: another attack on Thebes, successful this time, by the sons of those involved in earlier attack (compare the fact that Troy was twice attacked: once earlier by a force that included Heracles and then again at the time of our Trojan War).
  
• Alkmeonis: sketchy and uncertain, but perhaps tells further part of Theban Cycle.
• The stories in this cycle are found in many tragedies, including some that we still have.
  

• If they are lost, how do we know about them?
• The most complete account:
  
• Proclus (circa 5th c. AD/CE, probably not the same as the philosopher Proclus: 1200 years or more after Homeric Epics were written down) wrote a summary of the war, including the epic cycle: Proclus' summary is found in its entirety in only one manuscript (Venetus A: although the Cypria is found in others)
• Gregory Nagy and Eugenia Lao's translation of Proclus' summaries
  
• Photius tells us in his work called Library (aka Bibliotheke) that the summary by Proclus is actually excerpts from a larger work of Proclus, the Grammatical Chrestomathy.
  
• We also have bits and pieces from elsewhere:
• Herodotus (5th c. BCE: much closer to the Homeric epics) tells us that the Cypria says that Paris got home easily (but Proclus' summary of the Cypria says he was blown off course).
• Herodotus is MUCH earlier than Proclus, by roughly 1000 years! and so may be more reliable, or may just offer a report of a different traditional telling.
• To put it briefly, we have fragments of the epic cycle poems, summaries of them, reports about them, but we don't have them.
  
• This is the typical situation for fragmentary works and authors: maybe a vase inscription has a line of poetry, a few papyri have a bit, other authors quote a bit, etc.
• Fragmentary works and authors are VERY COMMON, but usually require Greek to read and really do any thinking about it.
• Another reason to learn Ancient Greek!
  
• And we have reports about the works' authors and dates of composition
• These are often vague, unreliable, and inconsistent.
• In some cases, the same poem is attributed to several authors, including Homer.
• In no case do we have much more than a name and a place of origin.

• Just a couple instances of the many tantalizing facts about the cycle include:
  
• Telegony is attributed to Eugammon, a Cyrenean (i.e. from the now- Libyan coast of North Africa).
• and a character in it is named Arkesilaus
• and there are historically attested kings named Arkesilaus who ruled over Cyrene during the "Battiads'" reign.
• Maybe it is a local Cyrenean epic? local tradition?
  
• Aithiopis locates Achilles in "Leuke" in his afterlife
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• By Damon Painter - User:Bibi Saint-Pol Own work, 21 July 2007, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2440966
  
• Miletus was the major mother-city for Black Sea colonies
• and there is an island calle 'Leuke' in the Black Sea, which Stephanus of Byzantium (6th c. CE) calls "the island of Achilles" or "the racecourse of Achilles": there was cult worship of Achilles there, reports Arrian: and Proclus' summary of the work of Arctinus of Miletus (8th c. BCE) reports that Achilles and Patroclus were buried there.
• So we have several snippets tying Achilles to this part of the Black Sea. There are ruins of a temple, but the Russians built a lighthouse right on top of them in the 19th c.
  
• Is this a Milesian epic? Maybe just a shoutout to Leuke?
  
• Overall, the epic cycle seems to have had a much swifter pace than Homer, to have had more divine elements and involvement (lots more prophecy, heroes made immortal after death, etc.)
  

• What was the ancients' attitude toward the Epic Cycle?
• few papyri fragments (by way of contrast, there are LOTS of them for Homer)
• so it was not reproduced anywhere near as much as Homer
  
• the fact that a summary was needed may indicate that they were not valued too much as well
  
• some ancients exhibit outright disdain for them (Callimachus and Aristotle)
• So overall, it was valued less than Homer.

• Recently, ML West, a renowned philological scholar, published a commentary on the bits and pieces we have of the Epic Cycle
• You can read what is left of the various parts of the Epic Cycle in ML West's Loeb volume:
  
• It is a "major event" in Homeric studies: a seismic event in that area.
  
• It provides very basic information and opinions about matters that have long been hard to access, because they require a truly extraordinary scholar to untangle.
• One must know Greek to understand the issues fully, and after learning Greek, it still remains a very complex tangle.
• But the long and short of it is that West's work may open doors for further studies. 50 years from now, we may think we know a lot more.