Draft:Epic Cycle

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The Epic Cycle is a collection of Greek mythological epic poems that tell the story of the Trojan War between the Greeks (referred to in the story as Achaeans) and the city of Troy (or (W)Ilion). The two most famous and only poems that survive in full of this collection are the Iliad and the Odyssey. The other, less famous and now lost poems that comprise the epic cycle are Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Ilou Persis, Nostoi, and Telegony. The Iliad and Odyssey were allegedly written by Homer, the others by people no-one has heard of. Very little of them survives, and we only know about what happened in them because of synopses by an unidentified Proclus in his Chrestomanthy.

Historicity[edit]

The question of whether anything in the Epic Cycle, particularly the Iliad and Odyssey, is historical is a notoriously difficult and complicated question.

Date of the war[edit]

Hittite records[edit]

In Hittite records, there exist mentions of a city called "Wilusa" with a king named "Alaxandru",^[1]^:107 which sounds awfully similar to the Greek name "Alexandros" (modern Alexander). Hittite records also contain the term "Ahhiyawa", which seems to refer to the Myceneans ^[2]^:57-60 and also sounds suspiciously like "Achaean".

Troy[edit]

Troy is suspected to be a site located in the Hisarlik region in Turkey. It was first discovered by Heinrich Schlieman in 1871

Composition[edit]

The Epic Cycle is broken up into several poems, each comprised of many "books". These aren't books in the conventional sense, rather they are more akin to scrolls. They are divided as follows, with the traditional author listed:^[3]^:26

Cypria, written by Stasinus of Cyprus with 11 books,
Iliad, written by Homer with 24 books
Aethiopis, written by Arctinus of Miletus with 5 books
Little Iliad, written by Lesches of Mytilene with 4 books
Ilou Persis, written Arctinus of Miletus with 2 books
Nostoi, written by Agias of Trozen 5 books
Odyssey, written by Homer with 24 books
Telegony, written by Eugammon of Cyrene with 2 books

For a total of 78 books.

According to M. L. West, the Iliad and Odyssey were written by different people, neither of whom were named Homer.^[4]^:7-10

Date of composition[edit]

The Iliad was likely composed between 680 and 640 BCE.^[4]^:18

Catalogue of ships[edit]

In book 2 of the Iliad, there is a lengthy list of ships, where they are from, and the names of the people leading the ships. These names appear to correlate with Greek names known in later times. This list bears a resemblance with Mycenean bureaucratic records.^[5]^:231 It was likely composed before the bulk of the Iliad was.

Was Achilles gay?[edit]

The sexuality of the main character of the Iliad, Achilles has been a topic of debate, even in Antiquity, as some ancient sources portray him and his companion Patroclus as having been lovers, while others do not.^[6] This is further complicated by the fact that in Ancient Greece, there was no division of sexuality into the uniform categories of “straight”, “gay” or “bisexual” as there is today,^[7] making the question of whether Achilles and Patroclus were anything more than friends even harder to pin down. Some historians argue that this theory is unfalsifiable, as there is no evidence for such a relationship between the two.^[8]

External links[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

↑ Bryce, Trevor R. (2006). The Trojans and their neighbours. Taylor and Francis. ISBN 9780199279081.
↑ Bryce, Trevor R. (2005). The Kingdom of the Hittites (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199279081.
↑ West, M. L. (2013-03-28). The Epic Cycle. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-966225-8.
↑ ^4.0 ^4.1 West, M. L. (2011-01-27). The Making of the Iliad. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-959007-0.
↑ Windle, Joachim Latacz (2004). Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-926308-0. Retrieved 2 April 2016.
↑ Were Achilles and Patroklos Lovers? Tales of times forgotten.
↑ LGBTQ+ in the ancient world. WorldHistory.org.
↑ Fox, Robin (2011). The tribal imagination: civilization and the savage mind. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. pp. 223. ISBN 978-0-674-05901-6. "There is certainly no evidence in the text of the lliad that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers. [...] Those contemporary critics who see all literary instances of male affection for males as proof of "repressed homosexuality" have the same problem as other conspiracy theorists: their hypothesis is invulnerable to disproof; we have no way of knowing if they are wrong."

Sources[edit]

https://web.archive.org/web/20091009120320/http://www.stoa.org/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Stoa:text:2003.01.0004

https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL497/2003/volume.xml

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134%3Abook%3D1%3Acard%3D1

https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/document/doi/10.1515/9783110963120/html

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-quarterly/article/abs/invention-of-homer/810BD142FFAD036F5BE6D5786470D945

https://archive.org/details/trojanstheirneig0000bryc

Foley, John M. (1985). Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography. Garland.
Finley, Moses I. (1978). The World of Odysseus. ISBN 9780140205701.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781444350302
Haslam, M. W. (1976). "Homeric Words and Homeric Metre: Two Doublets Examined (λείβω/εϊβω, γαΐα/αία)". Glotta 54 (3/4): 201–211. ISSN 0017-1298. JSTOR 40266365.

[1] Bryce, Trevor R. (2006). The Trojans and their neighbours. Taylor and Francis. ISBN 9780199279081.

[2] Bryce, Trevor R. (2005). The Kingdom of the Hittites (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199279081.

[west2-3] West, M. L. (2013-03-28). The Epic Cycle. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-966225-8.

[west1-4] 4.0 ^4.1 West, M. L. (2011-01-27). The Making of the Iliad. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-959007-0.

[windle-5] Windle, Joachim Latacz (2004). Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-926308-0. Retrieved 2 April 2016.

[6] Were Achilles and Patroklos Lovers? Tales of times forgotten.

[7] LGBTQ+ in the ancient world. WorldHistory.org.

[8] Fox, Robin (2011). The tribal imagination: civilization and the savage mind. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. pp. 223. ISBN 978-0-674-05901-6. "There is certainly no evidence in the text of the lliad that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers. [...] Those contemporary critics who see all literary instances of male affection for males as proof of "repressed homosexuality" have the same problem as other conspiracy theorists: their hypothesis is invulnerable to disproof; we have no way of knowing if they are wrong."

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