Six epics with the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ made up the Trojan
Cycle—The _Cyprian Lays_, the _Iliad_, the _Aethiopis_, the _Little
Iliad_, the _Sack of Troy_, the _Returns_, the _Odyssey_, and the
_Telegony_.
It has been assumed in the foregoing pages that the poems of the Trojan
Cycle are later than the Homeric poems; but, as the opposite view has
been held, the reasons for this assumption must now be given. (1)
Tradition puts Homer and the Homeric poems proper back in the ages
before chronological history began, and at the same time assigns the
purely Cyclic poems to definite authors who are dated from the first
Olympiad (776 B.C.) downwards. This tradition cannot be purely
arbitrary. (2) The Cyclic poets (as we can see from the abstract of
Proclus) were careful not to trespass upon ground already occupied by
Homer. Thus, when we find that in the _Returns_ all the prominent Greek
heroes except Odysseus are accounted for, we are forced to believe that
the author of this poem knew the _Odyssey_ and judged it unnecessary to
deal in full with that hero’s adventures. 1112 In a word, the Cyclic
poems are “written round” the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. (3) The
general structure of these epics is clearly imitative. As M.M. Croiset
remark, the abusive Thersites in the _Aethiopis_ is clearly copied from
the Thersites of the _Iliad_; in the same poem Antilochus, slain by
Memnon and avenged by Achilles, is obviously modelled on Patroclus. (4)
The geographical knowledge of a poem like the _Returns_ is far wider
and more precise than that of the _Odyssey_. (5) Moreover, in the
Cyclic poems epic is clearly degenerating morally—if the expression may
be used. The chief greatness of the _Iliad_ is in the character of the
heroes Achilles and Hector rather than in the actual events which take
place: in the Cyclic writers facts rather than character are the
objects of interest, and events are so packed together as to leave no
space for any exhibition of the play of moral forces. All these reasons
justify the view that the poems with which we now have to deal were
later than the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, and if we must recognize the
possibility of some conventionality in the received dating, we may feel
confident that it is at least approximately just.
The earliest of the post-Homeric epics of Troy are apparently the
_Aethiopis_ and the _Sack of Ilium_, both ascribed to Arctinus of
Miletus who is said to have flourished in the first Olympiad (776
B.C.). He set himself to finish the tale of Troy, which, so far as
events were concerned, had been left half-told by Homer, by tracing the
course of events after the close of the _Iliad_. The _Aethiopis_ thus
included the coming of the Amazon Penthesilea to help the Trojans after
the fall of Hector and her death, the similar arrival and fall of the
Aethiopian Memnon, the death of Achilles under the arrow of Paris, and
the dispute between Odysseus and Aias for the arms of Achilles. The
_Sack of Ilium_ 1113 as analysed by Proclus was very similar to
Vergil’s version in _Aeneid_ ii, comprising the episodes of the wooden
horse, of Laocoon, of Sinon, the return of the Achaeans from Tenedos,
the actual Sack of Troy, the division of spoils and the burning of the
city.
Lesches or Lescheos (as Pausanias calls him) of Pyrrha or Mitylene is
dated at about 660 B.C. In his _Little Iliad_ he undertook to elaborate
the _Sack_ as related by Arctinus. His work included the adjudgment of
the arms of Achilles to Odysseus, the madness of Aias, the bringing of
Philoctetes from Lemnos and his cure, the coming to the war of
Neoptolemus who slays Eurypylus, son of Telephus, the making of the
wooden horse, the spying of Odysseus and his theft, along with
Diomedes, of the Palladium: the analysis concludes with the admission
of the wooden horse into Troy by the Trojans. It is known, however
(Aristotle, _Poetics_, xxiii; Pausanias, x, 25-27), that the _Little
Iliad_ also contained a description of the _Sack of Troy_. It is
probable that this and other superfluous incidents disappeared after
the Alexandrian arrangement of the poems in the Cycle, either as the
result of some later recension, or merely through disuse. Or Proclus
may have thought it unnecessary to give the accounts by Lesches and
Arctinus of the same incident.
The _Cyprian Lays_, ascribed to Stasinus of Cyprus 1114 (but also to
Hegesinus of Salamis) was designed to do for the events preceding the
action of the _Iliad_ what Arctinus had done for the later phases of
the Trojan War. The _Cypria_ begins with the first causes of the war,
the purpose of Zeus to relieve the overburdened earth, the apple of
discord, the rape of Helen. Then follow the incidents connected with
the gathering of the Achaeans and their ultimate landing in Troy; and
the story of the war is detailed up to the quarrel between Achilles and
Agamemnon with which the _Iliad_ begins.
These four poems rounded off the story of the _Iliad_, and it only
remained to connect this enlarged version with the _Odyssey_. This was
done by means of the _Returns_, a poem in five books ascribed to Agias
or Hegias of Troezen, which begins where the _Sack of Troy_ ends. It
told of the dispute between Agamemnon and Menelaus, the departure from
Troy of Menelaus, the fortunes of the lesser heroes, the return and
tragic death of Agamemnon, and the vengeance of Orestes on Aegisthus.
The story ends with the return home of Menelaus, which brings the
general narrative up to the beginning of the _Odyssey_.
But the _Odyssey_ itself left much untold: what, for example, happened
in Ithaca after the slaying of the suitors, and what was the ultimate
fate of Odysseus? The answer to these questions was supplied by the
_Telegony_, a poem in two books by Eugammon of Cyrene (_fl_. 568 B.C.).
It told of the adventures of Odysseus in Thesprotis after the killing
of the Suitors, of his return to Ithaca, and his death at the hands of
Telegonus, his son by Circe. The epic ended by disposing of the
surviving personages in a double marriage, Telemachus wedding Circe,
and Telegonus Penelope.
The end of the Cycle marks also the end of the Heroic Age.