The Trojan Cycle

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 flour