The Cypria: Reconstructing the Lost Prequel to Homer's Iliad

by D M Smith

  RECONSTRUCTING THE LOST PREQUEL TO HOMER’S ILIAD:

  the cypria

  edited & WITH INTRODUCTION by

  d. m. smith

  First Edition

  Copyright D. M. Smith 2017

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed by the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN-13: 978-1534643109

  ISBN-10: 1534643109

  Cover illustration: Helena und Menelaos (1816)

  by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein.

  To Ingri & Edgar Parin d’Aulaire,

  for capturing a young imagination

  TABLE OF Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  CHRONOLOGY

  I. Peleus & Thetis, The Judgement of Paris

  II. The Rape of Helen, Castor & Pollux

  III. Menelaus in Crete, Oedipus & Theseus

  IV. The Mustering of the Greeks

  V. The Healing of Telephus

  VI. Iphigenia at Aulis

  VII. Philoctetes, Achilles & Cycnus

  VIII. The Greek Embassy, Briseis & Chryseis

  IX. Palamedes, Catalogue of the Trojan Allies

  APPENDIX

  Bibliography

  INTRODUCTION

  It is generally known that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey did not always exist in isolation. The Iliad begins with the Trojan War already in its tenth year, and ends with walls of Ilium still standing and the doomed Achilles still very much alive. By the time the Odyssey picks up the tale the war has ended, with only its titular hero yet to return home. In Classical times there were no such gaps in the narrative, the enclosing and intervening episodes of the war having been taken up by other poets, forming a cycle of epic poems of which only Homer’s contributions survive to the present day.

  These eight poems are collectively known as the Epic Cycle, although that term more commonly refers to the six epics not authored by Homer—even in antiquity ‘Cyclic’ was distinct from ‘Homeric’. The Cypria described the early years of the war, from the very seeds of the conflict in the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, to the rape of Helen, the marshalling of the Greek armies, and the initial invasion of the Troad. Homer’s Iliad is centred around the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles, and the latter’s slaying of Hector, while the Aethiopis continued the story with the introduction of the Trojans’ Amazonian and Aethiopian allies, and the death of Achilles. The Little Iliad told the story of the contest for Achilles’ arms and the arrival of his son Neoptolemus, the death of Paris, and the building of the wooden horse. Iliou Persis focused on the sack of Troy, and Nostoi the various misadventures of the departing Greeks—excluding Odysseus of course, whose homecoming was afforded an epic of its own. The Odyssey was followed by the Telegony, which concluded the cycle with the death of Odysseus at the hands of Telegonus, his estranged son by the goddess Circe.[1]

  The non-Homeric epics are believed to date from the 7th century BC, roughly a century after the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey, although it is not strictly correct to view them as later works. A distinction must be made between the creation of these myths and their transition from an oral tradition to a written text. The narrative as a whole undoubtedly existed long before the various episodes were first written down, and the Homeric poems clearly assume a certain knowledge of the wider story. If considered as a semi-mythical history of the Greek Bronze Age (the fall of Troy, supposing the legend does indeed have an historical precedent, is tentatively placed at around 1200 BC), this collection of tales may well have developed over a period of several centuries—even as they have continued to evolve in the three millennia since.

  This idea of the Epic Cycle developing organically through oral transmission challenges the traditional view of these poems as representing the work of individual authors; perhaps rendering moot an argument almost as old as the epics themselves. The so-called ‘Oral Theory’ gained mainstream acceptance in the 20th century through the work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, although its roots go back three hundred years earlier, when the existence of Homer—once sacrosanct—first began to be questioned. It may be that those historically named as authors earned this distinction by virtue of being the first to commit these epics to papyrus. In any case it is impossible to definitively link any one poem to a particular author; today even the Iliad and Odyssey are commonly accepted as being the work of two different poets.

  Jonathan S. Burgess traces their evolution at length in The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle,[2] even suggesting that the cycle itself was ‘manufactured’ during the Hellenistic period (323 to 31 BC) by stitching together several ancient and completely independent epics in chronological order, omitting entire books where the narratives overlapped. These truncated epics then assumed a canonical status which they would not have enjoyed at the time of their composition, when there may have been any number of competing poetical histories of the Trojan War.

  Exactly when these poems were lost is not known. The non-Homeric epics were universally considered to be inferior to the Iliad and Odyssey, and thus may have been less widely circulated, although they remained extant almost a thousand years after their composition. Athenaeus of Naucratis read them in the 3rd century AD, and it is probable that Quintus Smyrnaeus was at the very least familiar with the Aethiopis, Little Iliad and Iliou Persis when he composed his Posthomerica a century later. It is likely that copies survived in the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire well into the early medieval period, but they seem to have disappeared by the 1st millennium. Photius I (c. 810 to 893 AD), Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and Eastern Orthodox saint—who presumably had access to the entire Imperial Library of Constantinople when compiling his Myriobiblos (‘many books’)—knew them only from references in other works.

  Fortunately, the literary record of the Trojan War does not begin and end with the Epic Cycle, and it remained a popular topic for poets, writers, tragedians, artists and mythographers throughout antiquity. Some years ago I set myself the task of reading all (or as much as I could then obtain) of the available material, beginning with the Iliad, then Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica, Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes, Aeschylus’ Oresteia, then the Odyssey, and finishing with Virgil’s Aeneid. In the midst of this mammoth undertaking it occurred to me that it would—theoretically—be possible to reconstruct the lost Cyclic epics from later writings, fusing Archaic and Classical Greek, Latin, and Byzantine texts into a veritable ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’ of a document, arranged and edited in such a manner as to approximate the lost originals. A kind of literary back-breeding, carefully selecting passages for their desirable traits, and combining them to emulate an extinct progenitor. The Cypria seemed an appropriate starting point.

  My goal was to assemble a coherent, easy-to-follow narrative with the bare minimum of editorial intervention, in as great a detail as possible while relying only on Classical sources; that is, works composed while the stories told in the Cypria were still a part of the public consciousness. The result, limited as it is by the fragmentary nature of the source material, may only superficially resemble the original epic, but will at least allow a reader to enjoy this lost story as a single, (mostly) uninterrupted text for the first time in over a thousand years.

  With its primary function bei
ng a narrative one, this volume may be of limited interest to the seasoned Classical scholar, who will already be familiar with much—if not all—of the material presented here. Some in academia may indeed balk at the thought of these excerpts removed from their proper context and reduced to mere building blocks! This said, there is surely some value in having all of the ‘pre-Iliad’ documents gathered together in one convenient volume, if only to provide the necessary back-story for anyone preparing to embark on a study of the Homeric epics.

  The Cypria was an epic poem in eleven books, variously attributed to Homer, Hegesias of Salamis, Cyprias of Halicarnassus, or most commonly, Stasinus of Cyprus. The latter two at least provide some explanation for the title, which otherwise bears no relation to the poem’s content. According to the Byzantine poet John Tzetzes, writing in the 12th century, Stasinus was the son-in-law of Homer, gifted the Cypria as a dowry at his wedding. This story probably arose as a convenient means of giving the epic an Homeric pedigree, whilst at the same time acknowledging it as a lesser work (similarly, Arctinus of Miletus, reputed author of the Aethiopis and Iliou Persis, was said to have been Homer’s pupil).

  The Cypria essentially recounted the early history of the Trojan War, from its origins at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis to the capture of Chryseis and Briseis, leading into the events of the Iliad. It was criticised by Aristotle for covering too much ground; its broad scope and frenetic pace resulting in a work resembling a chronicle rather than a unified story. The eleven books spanned two decades; compare with the twenty-four books of the Iliad, which takes place over a matter of weeks.

  Many of the myths originally found within the Cypria will be familiar to modern readers; the contest between the goddesses, Paris’ abduction of Helen, and the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia. Others have all but disappeared from common knowledge. Palamedes, who rivalled Odysseus in cunning, Telephus the son of Heracles, and Protesilaus, first man to die at Troy, were as celebrated in antiquity as Achilles and Hector, but are virtually unknown today. Perhaps it is time these forgotten heroes were given their due.

  A Note on the Sources

  The great tragedy of Greek and Roman literature is that so little of it remains—in the case of many lost works all we have is a title. Others survive in fragments; a few lines on a degraded parchment, or as a quotation preserved in a later work. Many details, including entire lines from the lost Cyclic epics are known from references in later writings, or as annotations on ancient manuscripts; scholiasts’ explanatory notes, relating the documents at hand to the Cyclic tradition. Of the Cypria almost fifty lines survive in this way, although many are out of context, and their original place within the poem unknowable.

  Our understanding of the Epic Cycle is largely dependent on a Chrestomathy (literary summary) written by a certain Proclus, who has been cautiously identified as the 5th century Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus Lycaeus, or the 2nd century grammarian Eutychius Proclus, tutor to Marcus Aurelius—probably incorrectly in both cases. No complete text of the Chrestomathy survives, and its original scope is unknown, but a damaged excerpt describing the Trojan Cycle is preserved in a 10th century manuscript of the Iliad known as ‘Venetus A’. The Cypria section is missing, but appears by itself in a number of other manuscripts. These excerpts would have provided readers with a ‘backdrop’ for the Iliad, with the non-Homeric epics presumably lost at the time of their transcription.

  The accuracy of Proclus’ Chrestomathy is questionable, with the poems all seeming to fit together a little too snugly. We know from surviving fragments that there were in fact considerable overlaps between the Cyclic epics; the Aethiopis is known to have described the suicide of Telamonian Ajax, whereas Proclus places it in the Little Iliad. There is also evidence that both the Little Iliad and Iliou Persis covered the sack of Troy. These omissions may have been deliberate, so as not to confuse the readership; alternately, as Jonathan S. Burgess suggests, Proclus may be summarising an ‘edited’ version of the Cycle, with the beginnings and endings of some of the poems lopped off wherever content was duplicated. In any case, the Chrestomathy provides a useful framework upon which to build this reconstruction.

  The story of the Trojan War has not remained static over the centuries, with variances ranging from the subtle to the significant accumulating with every retelling. The Roman version of a myth cannot be expected to agree with an Attic tragedy of the 5th century BC, and yet, one cannot assume every variation from the Cyclic tradition to be a later corruption. Even when the poems of the Epic Cycle were composed there were very likely competing versions of the same myths, and there are numerous inconsistencies within the Cycle itself. The murder of Astyanax, for example, was said to have been committed by Neoptolemus in the Little Iliad, and Odysseus in the Iliou Persis. In reconstructing the Cypria I have endeavoured to select passages which agree with the summary by Proclus, but with the written record so patchy this was not always possible. Any known or suspected divergences have been indicated via endnotes, as well as any points where sources disagree. These sources are as follows.

  Pindar (c. 522 to c. 443 BC) was a Greek lyric poet; that is, a composer of short, occasional (in contrast to epic) poetry, the performance of which was often accompanied with a lyre. His Nemean Ode X celebrated the victory of Theaius of Argos in a wrestling match at the Nemean Games circa 450 BC, and tells the story of “two mighty athletes”, Castor and Pollux; an episode once found in the Cypria.

  Euripides (c. 480 to 406 BC) was an Athenian tragedian, and author of up to 95 plays of which 18 or 19 survive (the authorship of Rhesus is contested). The Trojan War was an enormously popular subject among Greek dramatists, but Iphigenia at Aulis is the only extant tragedy set during the events of the Cypria. Had the complete works of Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles survived, it might have been possible to reconstruct the entire Epic Cycle from their plays alone. The text is printed here in its entirety, and forms the centrepiece of this volume.

  The Bibliotheca or ‘Library’ by Apollodorus is an anthology of Greek myths, believed to date from the 1st or 2nd century AD. Early scholars erroneously identified the author with Apollodorus of Athens (b. 180 BC); the author of the Bibliotheca is sometimes known as Pseudo-Apollodorus in order to distinguish him from the Athenian. Frustratingly, the surviving manuscripts are incomplete, breaking off before the story of the Trojan War. These later sections are known only from two manuscript summaries, combined into an epitome by the Scottish anthropologist and mythographer Sir James George Fraser in the late 19th century. Still, even in its sadly reduced form the Bibliotheca contains a wealth of invaluable material—not least due to Apollodorus helpfully naming many of his sources, most of which are now lost.

  Publius Ovidius Naso, better known as Ovid (43 BC to AD 17 or 18), was a Roman poet during the reign of Augustus. The Metamorphoses, arguably his most famous work, is a collection of Greek and Roman myths bound by the common theme of physical transformation. It was immensely popular in the medieval period and Renaissance, and remains an important source for a number of myths not found elsewhere.

  Gaius Julius Hyginus (64 BC to 17 AD), was a Latin author, roughly contemporary with Ovid. Peculiarly, the work for which he is chiefly known, the Fabulae—a collection of fables similar in scope to Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca—does not even survive in the author’s own words. It is preserved in a crudely written summary, referred to by scholar and essayist Arthur L. Keith in a review of H. J. Rose’s 1934 edition as a ‘school-boy’s exercise’, and it may well be exactly that. Nevertheless, the Fabulae—or its primitive reduction—stands alongside the Bibliotheca as a pillar of our modern understanding of Greek and Roman mythology.

  Parthenius of Nicaea (d. 14 AD) was a Greek poet and grammarian, and a tutor of the poet Virgil. His only surviving work is the Erotica Pathemata; a collection of mythological and semi-historical love stories.

  Colluthus was a Greek epic poet of the Byzantine city of Lycopolis (modern Asyut, Egypt), active during the re
ign of Anastasius I (491 to 518 AD). His only extant poem is The Rape of Helen, which, although its literary merit has often been called into question, does nonetheless contain the most detailed accounts of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the Apple of Discord, and Paris’ abduction of Helen to have survived from antiquity.

  Dictys Cretensis Ephemeris belli Trojani is an interesting document, purporting to be a first-hand ‘Chronicle of the Trojan War’ by one Dictys of Crete, a follower of King Idomeneus. It was published in Latin in the 4th century AD by a Lucius Septimius, with a foreword describing its discovery in Dictys’ earthquake-damaged tomb at Cnossos during the reign of the Emperor Nero (54 to 68 AD). The text, in Phoenician letters, was reportedly inscribed on a number of wooden tablets preserved in a tin box; this was subsequently translated into Greek and presented as a gift to Nero. Three centuries later it came into the possession of Septimius, who translated it into Latin.

  The work, along with the rather fanciful account of its rediscovery, was accepted as genuine by the Romans and Byzantines, but later scholars assumed it to be the invention of Septimius or an anonymous Latin author. The discovery of a fragment in the original Greek among the Oxyrhyncus papyri in 1900 suggested that its true origins lay somewhere in between.

  In terms of its actual content the work is problematic, often being in direct conflict with other sources. Many of these contradictions are probably deliberate; that the document may assert itself as a ‘genuine’ historical account—in contrast to the fictional retellings by the likes of Homer and his successors. The gods are largely absent, with the divine and/or supernatural elements heavily downplayed. Unfortunately, this has meant that the sections I quote from Dictys must rely on copious amounts of endnotes in order to explain these irregularities. For convenience’s sake I refer to the author as ‘Dictys’ throughout, although the actual author is unknown.