West-Commentary Epic Cycle

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Oxford Scholarship Online
The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics

M. L. West
Print publication date: 2013

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2013
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
Title Pages
The Epic Cycle The Epic Cycle
(p.iv)
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Page 2 of 2
Preface

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
(p.v) Preface
The importance of the Epic Cycle in relation to the Iliad and Odyssey on the one hand, and
on the other to lyric poetry, tragedy, and mythography, can hardly be overstated. Yet it
has never been the object of a thorough commentary, and not often of a comprehensive
study. Despite the fact that it is mostly lost, there is plenty to be said.
My aim is not only to provide commentary on individual fragments and testimonia but to
reconstruct the connections between them, so far as may be possible, and to build up a
picture of the plan and course of each poem, its disposition of material, and its overall
character. The Prolegomena (given this grand name to avoid confusion in cross-reference
with the introductions to the individual epics) address general issues, including the
nature and formation of the Epic Cycle, the status of the summaries of the Troy epics
preserved under the name of Proclus, the validity of the ascriptions to particular poets,
the reflexes of the Cycle in early art and literature, and its fortunes in and after the
Hellenistic period. I hope to bring some clarification into the big picture as well as on
matters of detail.
It has become increasingly common in works of classical scholarship to provide

translations of passages quoted in the ancient languages. I have done this where it could
Page 1 of 2
Preface
be done conveniently, especially in the Prolegomena, but it is not practicable in a work

such as a commentary to translate every piece of Greek or Latin that may appear. For
the actual epic fragments and testimonia the reader who wants translations may turn to
my Loeb edition of 2003. But it is a fact of life that in order to follow serious philological
discussion, in any field, acquaintance with the relevant language or languages is a sine qua
non.
In the preface to his Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta of 1988 Malcolm Davies announced
his imminent publication of a commentary: ‘fragmenta epica iam illustravi commentariis
ditissimis quae mox publici iuris facere me posse spero’. I am grateful to Dr Davies for
confirming that this work never in fact got very far and that while he is now working on
the Theban epics, he would not be (p.vi) inconvenienced by my proceeding with my
own commentary on the Trojan ones.
I should also like to thank the staff of Oxford University Press for the cheerful efficiency
and helpfulness that they have (as usual) shown throughout the book’s production
process. It is a pleasure to work with them.
M.L.W.
Oxford
2012
Page 2 of 2
Abbreviations

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
(p.viii) Abbreviations
Ant. Cl.
L’Antiquité classique
BSA
Annual of the British School at Athens
CEG
P. A. Hansen, Carmina Epigraphica Graeca
DK
H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker
FGrHist
F. Jacoby and others (edd.), Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker
GDI
H. Collitz et al., Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften
Gött.Nachr.
Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen , Philologisch-
historische Klasse
GRBS
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies
HE
Page 1 of 3
Abbreviations
A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, Hellenistic Epigrams

HSCP
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
ICS
O. Masson, Les inscriptions chypriotes syllabiques
IEG
M. L. West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci , ed. altera
JDAI
Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts
KG
R. Kühner, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache , 2. Teil
besorgt von B. Gerth
Kl. Schr.
Kleine Schriften
LIMC
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae
MDAI
Mitteilungen des deutschen archäologischen Instituts
Mnem.
Mnemosyne
NJb.
Neue Jahrbücher für das Klassische Altertum
PCG
R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci
PEG
A. Bernabé, Poetae Epici Graeci , Pars I
Phil.
Philologus
PMG
D. L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci
PMGF
M. Davies, Poetarum Melicorum Graecorum Fragmenta
RE
Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft
Rh. Mus.
Rheinisches Museum
Riv. Fil.
Rivista di Filologia e d’Istruzione Classica
(p.ix) RPh
Revue de philologie
Roscher
Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie
Schwyzer
E. Schwyzer, Griechische Grammatik; Schwyzer–Debrunner = Bd. 2 (Syntax
und syntaktische Stilistik) von A. Debrunner
Page 2 of 3
Abbreviations
SEG
Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum
SH
H. Lloyd-Jones and P. J. Parsons, Supplementum Hellenisticum
SIFC
Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica
SLG
D. L. Page, Supplementum Lyricis Graecis
TrGF
B. Snell, R. Kannicht, S. Radt, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta
VM
Valenzuela Montenegro, see Bibliography
ZA
Zeitschrift für die Altertumswissenschaft
ZPE
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
Page 3 of 3
Prolegomena

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
Prolegomena
M. L. West
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter discusses the following: the definition of the Epic Cycle; Proclus'
Chrestomatheias Eklogai and Apollodorus' Bibliotheke; the formation of the Cycle; the
validity of the attested ascriptions to particular poets; the reflexes of the Cycle in archaic
and classical art and literature; and the fortunes of the Cycle in the early Hellenistic and
early Roman period.
Keywords: Epic Cycle, Greek epic, epic poetry, epic poems, Proclus, Chrestomatheias Eklogai, Apollodorus,
Bibliotheke
1. What was the Epic Cycle?

The Epic Cycle was a corpus of archaic Greek epics considered as an ensemble that, if
read in the due sequence, provided a more or less continuous account of mythical
history from the beginning of the world to the end of the Heroic Age.
Page 1 of 45
Prolegomena
The term ἐπικὸς κύκλος is not attested before the second century CE (nor the adjective
ἐπικός before the first century BCE). But there are allusions in Aristotle to a Homeric or
epic κύκλος that may well be identical with the Epic Cycle as understood later (see
below, §3), and there are Hellenistic references to ‘cyclic’ poems or poets.1 An analogous
use of the word κύκλος is found on a Cretan inscription of the mid second century BCE.
It records a visit by one Menekles, a citharode from Teos, who drew from many poets
and historians to make up a ‘cycle’ of narrative song on Cretan legend and tradition for
Cretan audiences.2 Dionysius of Samos, a Hellenistic writer, produced a mythographical
work in seven books entitled Κύκλος ἱστορικός, which earned him the sobriquet of
Dionysius ὁ κυκλογράϕος (FGrHist 15); the title was presumably modelled on Κύκλος
ἐπικός
The only detailed information about the scope of the Epic Cycle is derived from a lost
treatise by one Proclus, who probably wrote in the second century CE (see below, §2).
Photius, excerpting Proclus’ work, tells us:
διαλαµβάνει δὲ καὶ περὶ τοῦ λεγοµένου ἐπικοῦ κύκλου, ὃς ἄρχεται µὲν ἐκ τῆς
Οὐρανοῦ καὶ Γῆς µυθολογουµένης µίξεως, ἐξ ἧς αὐτῶι καὶ τρεῖς παῖδας
Ἑκατόγχειρας καὶ τρεῖς γεννῶσι Κύκλωπας.
(p.2) διαπορεύεται δὲ τά τε ἄλλως περὶ θεῶν τοῖς ῞Ελλησι µυθολογούµενα καὶ

εἴ πού τι καὶ πρὸς ἱστορίαν ἐξαληθίζεται. καὶ περατοῦται ὁ ἐπικὸς κύκλος ἐκ
διαϕόρων ποιητῶν συµπληρούµενος µέχρι τῆς ἀποβάσεως Ὀδυσσέως τῆς εἰς
Ἰθάκην,ἐν ἧι καὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ παιδὸς Τηλεγόνου ἀγνοοῦντος κτείνεται.
(Proclus) also handles the so-called Epic Cycle, which begins from the fabled union
of Ouranos and Ge, from which they say he fathered three hundred-handed sons
and three Cyclopes; and it goes on through the other pagan myths about the gods,
as well as anything in them of a historical nature. The Epic Cycle is made up from
various poets, and it concludes with Odysseus’ landing on Ithaca, when he was
killed by his son Telegonos who did not recognize him.
Proclus provided fairly detailed plot summaries of all the epics in the Cycle, adding in
each case the poet’s name and homeland and the length of the poem. He did not compile
this material himself but copied it from an older source. We are so fortunate as to find
preserved in certain manuscripts of the Iliad his summaries for the six epics which,
together with the Iliad and Odyssey, covered the Trojan War and associated events: the
Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Iliou Persis, Nostoi, and Telegony. This Trojan sequence
made up the concluding portion of the whole Cycle, which ended, as Photius has told us,
with the Telegonos story.
We cannot say how many other poems were included in the Cycle between the initial
theogony and the Cypria.3 It can be inferred from Athenaeus 277c–e that the
Titanomachy ascribed to Eumelos or Arktinos was reckoned as part of the Cycle,4 and I
have mentioned the citations of ‘the Cyclic Thebaid’. A story that Photius says came from
the Epic Cycle is conjecturally assigned to the Epigonoi (fr. 3⋆). So we may assume that
Page 2 of 45
Prolegomena
the Cycle included the series of Theban epics, Oidipodeia, Thebaid, Epigonoi, and
perhaps Alcmeonis. What else might Proclus’ Cycle have had in it? Poems on the
Calydonian boar-hunt, the voyage of the Argo, the stories of Io and Perseus? Peisandros’
Heracles epic? A Theseis?
The other document that may be relevant to the question is the so-called Tabula Borgia
(10K).5 It is one of a number of miniature (p.3) plaques from the Rome area, dating
from the time of Augustus or Tiberius, carrying mythological scenes in relief with various
captions and texts and in some cases references to poetic sources such as Cyclic poems
or Stesichorus. They are collectively known as the Tabulae Iliacae.6 The Borgia plaque,
which is incomplete, was mainly devoted to Theban myths, but there is also a section of
text relating the birth of Erichthonios, perhaps after the epic Danais. Lower down (verso
9–15) there is a passage containing some kind of list of epics with authors’ names and line-
tallies and a probable reference to ‘the Cycle’. With some conjectural restoration it reads
as follows:
τῆς Εὐµήλου Τιτανο]µαχίας, οὐχ ἣν Τέλεσις ὁ Μηθυµναῖος ὑ-
]ἔπεσιν· καὶ ∆αναΐδας ˎ Ϝϕˎ ἐπῶν, καὶ τὸν
ἐπῶν ὄντα ˎ xxˎ· καὶ τ]ὴν Οἰδιπόδειαν τὴν ὑπὸ Κιναίθωνος τοῦ
Λακεδαιµονίου πεποιηµένην προαναγνόν]τες ἐπῶν οὖσαν ˎ Ϝχˎ ὑποθήσοµεν

Θηβαΐδα
ἐπῶν ˎ ζˎ,καὶ Ναυπάκτια ἃ ποιῆσαι ……‥]ν̣ τὸν̣ Μιλήσιον λέγουσιν, ἐπῶν ὄντα ˎ
θϕˎ,
καὶ τὴν ]……ˎ Μ∆δυˎ· ταύτηι δὲ
ὑποθήσοµεν καὶ συµπληρώσοµεν οὕτω] τὸν κ̣ ύκλον̣.
… of Eumelos’(?) Titano]machy, not the one that Telesis of Methymna [placed here(?) …
in n] verses; and Danaides, of 6,500 verses; and the [ …, of n verses; and after first
read]ing the Oidipodeia [composed] by Kinaithon the [Lacedaemonian], of 6,600 verses,
we shall subjoin the Thebaid, of 7,000 verses, and the Naupaktia(?),7 which] they say [X]
the Milesian composed, being of 9,500 verses; [and the … composed by …, being of]
14,400 [verses]; 8 and to this [we shall subjoin … And so we shall complete] the Cycle.
It does not seem to be the canonical Epic Cycle that is in question here, as the Oidipodeia
and Thebaid are not followed by the Epigonoi, and the Trojan epics are not touched on at
all. It is rather a more narrowly drawn, personal cycle offered as supporting bibliography
for the particular areas of myth illustrated on the plaque. If all the (p.4) poems named
were included in the fuller Cycle, we are able to add the Danaides (elsewhere cited as
the Danais) to the contents list, and perhaps the Naupaktia. But beyond that we remain in
the dark.
Page 3 of 45
Prolegomena
The six epics for which we have Proclus’ summaries may for convenience be referred to
as the Trojan cycle, though we do not know that anyone in antiquity used the term.9 It is
with these poems that the present volume is concerned. The coherence of theme and the
relative abundance of evidence (thanks to Proclus) justify treating them together and
apart from the rest of the Cycle.
2. Proclus’ Chrestomatheias Eklogai and Apollodorus’ Bibliotheke

The set of summaries copied from Proclus is the most important source of our
knowledge regarding the poems’ contents. They are transmitted in certain manuscripts,
together with a Life of Homer, as prolegomena to the Iliad. The Life and the Cypria
summary are found in about a dozen manuscripts, several of which have the headings
Πρόκλου περὶ ῾Οµήρου and then τοῦ αὐτοῦ περὶ τῶν Κυπρίων ποιηµάτων. The
remaining summaries appear only in Venetus A, where the Life is present but the Cypria
summary has disappeared owing to the loss of a folio. Here the Life is headed Πρόκλου
Χρηστοµαθίας γραµµατικῆς τῶν εἰς δˎ διηιρηµένων τὸ αˎ. ῾Οµήρου χρόνοι, βίος,
χαρακτήρ, ἀναγραϕὴ ποιηµάτων, and the Aethiopis is headed Πρόκλου Χρηστοµαθίας
γραµµατικῆς τὸ δεύτερον. Αἰθιόπιδος εέ Ἀρκτίνου.
The work specified in Venetus A, Proclus’ Χρηστοµαθία γραµµατική, is one that we know
something about from Photius. It was in what must have been a wagon-load of books that
he took with him on a diplomatic mission from Byzantium to Baghdad in 855–6 and that he
partly read and summarized in his Bibliotheke. Proclus’ work is Codex 239 in that
collection, pp. 318b–22a Bekker. Photius gives its title as Χρηστοµαθείας γραµµατικῆς
ἐκλογαί, which might (p.5) be loosely rendered as ‘Readings in Literary Scholarship’.10
It was divided into four books, but Photius’ summary, which occupies eleven pages in R.
Henry’s Budé edition, covers only the first two books. From it we see that it was a
systematic anatomy of Greek literature, laid out on a clear plan as follows:
Categories
Opposition of poetry and prose. Their virtues.
The varieties of style and what they are suited for: ἁδρόν, ἰσχνόν, µέσον. ἀνθηρόν.
Judging poetry. ἦθος, πάθος.
Distinction between διηγηµατικόν (epic, iambic, elegiac, melic) and µιµητικόν (tragedy,
satyric drama, comedy).
Epic
Its invention and original use; why called ἔπος.
The best practitioners: Homer, Hesiod, Peisandros, Panyassis, Antimachus.
Their lives and achievements.
Page 4 of 45
Prolegomena
The Epic Cycle. Its scope and subject matter, with authors’ names.Excursus on the title
Cypria.
Elegy
Definition, original use; why called ἐλεγεία.
The best practitioners: Callinus, Mimnermus, Philitas, Callimachus. 〈Their lives and
achievements.〉
Iambus
Origins, original use.
The best practitioners: Archilochus, Semonides, Hipponax. Their dates.
Melic poetry
The varieties of melic poetry:
for gods (hymn, prosodion, paean, dithyramb, nome, Adonidia,Iobacchos,

hyporchema);
for men (encomia, epinician, skolia, erotica, epithalamia, hymenaea, silloi, threnoi,
epikedeia);
for men and gods (parthenia, daphnephorika, tripodephorika, oschophorika,

euktika);
(p.6) occasional poems (pragmatika, emporika, apostolika, gnomologika, georgika,

epistaltika).
Systematic discussion of each genre in turn: its character and why itis so named, with (at
least in some cases) notice of who invented itor how it has changed. In some cases
detailed information on cults(Boeotian Daphnephoria and Tripodephoria, Attic
Oschophoria).
Books 3–4 must have dealt with drama, and then probably the prose genres.
It is clear that this work was indeed the source of the Life of Homer and the Cyclic
summaries found in the Homeric manuscripts. We can see from Photius just where they
stood. The statement that prefaces the Life, ἐπῶν ποιηταὶ γεγόνασι πολλοί, τούτων δ᾿
εἰσὶ κράτιστοι ῞Οµηρος ῾Ησίοδος Πείσανδρος Πανύασις Ἀντίµαχος,11 corresponds
exactly to the Chrestomathy, γεγόνασι δὲ τοῦ ἔπους ποιηταὶ κράτιστοι µὲν ῞Οµηρος
῾Ησίοδος Πείσανδρος Πανύασις Ἀντίµαχος. The sentence at the beginning of the Cypria
summary, ἐπιβάλλει τούτοις τὰ λεγόµενα Κύπρια ἐν βιβλίοις ϕερόµενα ἕνδεκα, ὧν
περὶ τῆς γραϕῆς ὕστερον ἐροῦµεν, ἵνα µὴ τὸν ἑξῆς λόγον νῦν ἐµποδίζωµεν,12 finds its
explanation in Photius, who reports at the end of the section on the Epic Cycle an
Page 5 of 45
Prolegomena
excursus on the authorship and title of the Cypria, where Proclus appears to have opined
that its heading ought not to be written Κύπρια proparoxytone, ‘Cyprian epic’, but
Κυπρία paroxytone, ‘by (the poet) Kyprias’.13 This correspondence not only confirms the
provenance of the summaries from the Chrestomathy but provides welcome proof that
they were transcribed from it quite mechanically, without even eliminating a cross-
reference to a discussion that was not going to be included in the excerpt. Similarly, the
words ἐπιβάλλει τούτοις, ‘there follows on this’, are a senseless back-reference to a
preceding summary, probably of one of the Theban epics, which was not copied because
the excerptor was concerned only with the Trojan War. Photius tells us that Proclus’
Cycle began from the marriage of Heaven and Earth (p.7) and their children, and he
must have written summaries similar to the surviving ones for each of the epics that
preceded the Cypria in the series.
Venetus A is not the exemplar from which the other manuscripts derived the Proclus
excerpts, and the adoption of these excerpts as prefatory material to the Iliad must go
back to an older archetype, perhaps of the ninth century (the time of Photius), or perhaps
from late antiquity. Severyns was probably right to assume that originally they were
labelled simply ‘Proclus on Homer’, etc., and that the more elaborate headings in A, with
their references to the Chrestomathy and its book divisions, were due to someone—he
believes it was Arethas—who had found these details in Photius’ Bibliotheke. The
attribution of the Life and the Cypria summary to book 1 of the Chrestomathy and the
Aethiopis summary to book 2 is suspect: Photius does not indicate where the division
came between the two books that he summarizes, but it seems very unlikely that it fell at
such an early point, with so much material on the varieties of non-epic poetry still to be
covered. That division, however, does approximately bisect the Life+Cycle excerpts, and
it looks as if it has been made with that in view.14
When we consider the orderly plan of Proclus’ work as it appears from Photius, it is
difficult to avoid the feeling that the section on the Epic Cycle stands out as something of
an erratic block. It was logical, after reviewing the canon of five best epic poets, to take
note of the mass of lesser epic in which so much of traditional mythology was embodied.
But the series of detailed summaries of all the poems seems out of keeping with the
manner of treatment followed in the work as a whole, insofar as we can judge it from
Photius’ description. It looks very much as if Proclus imported it from a different source
from those that supplied the main framework of his discussion. It is after all generally
assumed (and with reason, as we shall see) that the epic summaries were not his original
work, made from direct study of the poems, but already existed in similar form in an
earlier source.
Who was Proclus?

We must now address the question of who this Proclus was. It has often been assumed
that he was the famous fifth-century Neoplatonist, (p.8) Proclus of Lycia. The
identification is already made in the Suda entry on this philosopher, π 2473, which goes
back to the sixth-century biographer Hesychius of Miletus, for in the list of his works,
after his commentaries on Homer and on Hesiod’s Works and Days, there appears the
Page 6 of 45
Prolegomena
item Περὶ χρηστοµαθίας βιβλία γˎ: the number of books disagrees with Photius’
statement, but presumably the same work is meant. A scholiast on Gregory of Nazianzus
writes ϕασὶ δὲ καὶ ἰδικῶς ἐγκύκλιον τὴν ποιητικήν, περὶ ἧς καὶ Πρόκλος ὁ
Πλατωνικὸς ἐν µονοβίβλωι περὶ κύκλου ἐπικοῦ γράψας τῶν ποιητῶν διέξεισι τὴν
ἀρετὴν καὶ τὰ ἴδια.15 In one fifteenth-century Homer manuscript the Life is headed
Πρόκλου Πλατωνίκου [sic] ∆ιαδόχου περὶ ῾Οµήρου. However, Proclus was not an
uncommon name in the Roman period, and many scholars, beginning with H. Valesius
(Henri de Valois, 1603–76), have suspected that the Chrestomathy was the work of some
considerably earlier scholar, perhaps of the second century CE.16 There are good
reasons for this view, and I have come to the conclusion that it is right.
Firstly the Chrestomathy, so far as we can judge it from the documents available, shows
no similarity to the known works of the Neoplatonist.17 Nothing in them would lead us to
expect him to have engaged in pure literary history for its own sake, distinguishing
categories, styles, and genres and listing names. His interest in Homer and other poets
was essentially philosophical. We see this from his commentary on the Works and Days,18
where he shows little wider knowledge of literature; his range of citation is almost limited
to Homer, Orphic poetry, the Chaldaean Oracles, Plato, and Plutarch. Similar
observations can be made in regard to his Plato commentaries.19
(p.9) But at least his work is his own, whereas the Chrestomathy appears to have been
made up largely of material reproduced from earlier writers. When we come to consider
its close relationship with Apollodorus’ Bibliotheke we shall conclude that neither can be
the source of the other but that both must depend on an older source text. Proclus’
sections on elegy, hymn, and prosodion, as reported by Photius, correspond practically
ad verbum to fragments of Didymus’ work περὶ λυρικῶν ποιητῶν quoted in lexica, and it
looks as if almost the entire account of lyric genres may have been drawn from that
source.20 Other material can be traced back to Peripatetic writers and
Atthidographers,21 no doubt mediated through later Hellenistic sources. The aptness of
Ἐκλογαί) in the title becomes clear.
In several places Proclus made statements about the actual currency of texts or cult
practices that can hardly have been valid in the fifth century CE.22 Of the Epic Cycle he
said that ‘the poems are preserved and studied by most people not so much on account
of their quality as of the continuity of the matter in it’.23 In fact it is extremely doubtful
whether copies of the poems were anywhere to be found after about 200 (cf. below, §6).
Of the paean he said that it was ‘a type of song that is nowadays written for all gods,
whereas anciently it was assigned specially to Apollo and Artemis and sung for the
termination of plagues and diseases’ (320a21). A little later (320b5) he outlined the
history of the nome: Terpander was the first to perfect it, Arion and Phrynis developed it
further, and after them ‘Timotheos brought it to its present form’. The world in which
choruses sang paeans to the pagan gods and citharodes performed nomes in the
Timothean manner was long past when the philosopher Proclus was alive. Even a second-
century Proclus most likely reproduced these statements mechanically from his older
(p.10) sources without troubling himself about their validity in his own time. Many of
Page 7 of 45
Prolegomena
the melic types that he speaks of as if they were living genres were probably defunct; he
has taken them over wholesale from Didymus, and even Didymus may have known many
of them from earlier literary references and not from his contemporary world. Some of
them are described in the past tense, in a spirit of antiquarianism.
This is all rather reminiscent of the pseudo-Plutarchean dialogue De musica, a work of

perhaps the late second century. Here too we have lengthy extracts from older writers,
in particular Glaucus of Rhegium, Aristoxenus, Heraclides Ponticus, and Alexander
Polyhistor, taken over and worked in together to make a new synthesis. Again and again
there are references to ‘now’ or ‘the present time’ that were clearly copied from the
source authors and probably inappropriate to pseudo-Plutarch’s epoch.24
Another pseudo-Plutarchean work of the same period, De Homero ii, has more specific
points of contact with the Chrestomathy. It contains a paragraph on the dating of Homer
(3) which reappears almost word for word in Proclus’ Life. A later section on the literary
styles (ἁδρόν, ἰσχνόν, µέσον, ἀνθηρόν 72–3) shows a significant relationship with the
exposition that Photius reports from Proclus. Michael Hillgruber has argued that it is
actually dependent on Proclus, which would be the conclusive proof of Proclus’ early
date.25 The alternative that they derive from a common model cannot be ruled out.
Nevertheless the similarity reinforces our sense that the Chrestomathy was a product of
the second century, the great age of magpie scholarship, when men with pretensions to
erudition ransacked their predecessors’ works for material, reproduced their learned
references to yet older and obscurer texts, most of which were probably no longer
available to anyone, or appropriated whole chapters from them with or without
acknowledgment.
Can our Proclus be identified with any known bearer of the name in this period? Valesius
lit on the Proclus cited by (pseudo-) Alexander of Aphrodisias on Arist. Soph. Elench. p. 9.
1 Wallies as the author of an ἑορτῶν ἀπαρίθµησις. This would suit the interest (p.11) in
festivals that manifests itself in the Chrestomathy in connection with certain of the lyric
genres; but it is not enough to build on.26 Welcker (i. 7) thought that a better candidate
was Eutychius Proculus, a teacher of Marcus Aurelius (Hist. Aug. Marc. 2. 3, cf. Fronto p.
198 N.), perhaps the same as Proculus grammaticus, doctissimus sui temporis uir (Hist.
Aug. Tyranni 22. 14).27 Eutychius, however, is said to have been one of Marcus’ Latini
grammatici, and he had others for Greek. So even if we can trust the author of the
Historia Augusta, his information does not much suggest a specialist in Greek literary
history and theory.28
Apollodorus29
The fragmentary Vatican and Sabbaitic epitomes of the lost portion of Apollodorus’
Bibliotheke were both, coincidentally, published in 1891. It was at once observed that
the Apollodoran narrative of the extra-Homeric parts of the Trojan War closely
resembled Proclus’ summaries of the Cyclic epics.30 The similarity is too great to be
accidental. The two texts must be intimately related.
There are formal differences. Each section of Proclus’ narrative is assigned to a specific
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poem, which is named with its author and the number of books into which it was divided.
This information is absent in Apollodorus, though he does at one point (epit. 5. 14) name
‘the author of the Little Iliad’ as the authority for one of two (p.12) alternative accounts.
There are a few other places where he notes variant versions without specifying an
author. So even if he is mainly following one account, he is not doing so exclusively. And
whereas Proclus regularly (with very few exceptions) uses the present tense, as is
normal in relating what happens in a literary work, Apollodorus fluctuates between
present and past tenses, as he is not reporting the contents of a book or a series of books
but the events supposed to have happened in the mythical age.
Bethe, who believed that Proclus was the Neoplatonist and therefore much later than
Apollodorus, argued in a thoroughly wrong-headed article that he was dependent on
Apollodorus, or more likely on ‘one of his brethren’,31 and that he supplied the headings
with the information about the Cyclic poets on his own initiative, dividing up the text as he
thought fit. This is unbelievable. The form of the text in which the contents of the Cyclic
poems are given separately and labelled with their provenance must be older than the
form in which they are run together into a continuous story with variants noted from
other sources. So Proclus cannot derive from Apollodorus or from any mythographic
work of similar form.
The ambit of the Bibliotheke as a whole exactly matches that of Proclus’ Epic Cycle.32 The
Cycle, as Photius tells us, began from the mythical union of Ouranos and Ge, from which
were born three hundred-armed sons and three Cyclopes, and it continued to
Odysseus’ landing in Ithaca, where he was killed unwittingly by his son Telegonos.
Apollodorus’ work begins likewise:
Οὐρανὸς πρῶτος τοῦ παντὸς ἐδυνάστευε κόσµου· γήµας δὲ Γῆν ἐτέκνωσε

πρώτους τοὺς ῾Εκατόγχειρας προσαγορευθέντας, Βριάρεων Κόττον Γύγην …
µετὰ τούτους δὲ αὐτῶι τεκνοῖ Γῆ Κύκλωπας, ῎Αργην Στερόπην Βρόντην.
Ouranos was the first ruler of the world. He married Ge and fathered firstly the
ones called Hundred-armers, Briareos, Kottos, and Gyges … and after them Ge
bore him the Cyclopes, Arges, Steropes, and Brontes.
(p.13) It ends with Odysseus’ death at the hands of Telegonos, who then conveys the
corpse and Penelope to Circe, who sends them to the Isles of the Blest. This is followed
only by three variant versions of what happened to Odysseus and Penelope.
Since Proclus’ account of the Epic Cycle cannot have been modelled on Apollodorus, the
converse is necessarily true: Apollodorus took the Epic Cycle as his mythological
framework. For the story of Troy it is evident that his main source is a series of prose
summaries of Cyclic poems very similar to Proclus’.33 If we had Proclus’ summaries for
the entire Cycle from the initial theogony on, it would surely appear that Apollodorus
made equal use of the other poems too, or rather of prose summaries like those of
Proclus. Of course he made extensive use of other sources besides: his human
genealogies are principally based, directly or indirectly, on the pseudo-Hesiodic
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Catalogue of Women, his account of Heracles’ labours owes much to Pherecydes, the
section on the Argonauts’ voyage to Apollonius Rhodius, and so on.34
Did Apollodorus use Proclus? That would not be a very satisfactory hypothesis, seeing
that he often has details in his Trojan narrative that are absent from Proclus. They would
have to be explained by saying either that he added them from other sources (and in
some cases this may be so), or that they were originally in Proclus but later disappeared
through abridgment. In principle, however, the Cycle summaries seem to be as Proclus
wrote them, not abridgments.35
But Proclus’ Chrestomathy cannot have been the only place where this material was to be
found. Digests of the Cyclic poems had been made long before the second century ce.
Everyone accepts that the makers of the Macedonian relief bowls known as the ‘Homeric
cups’, which date from around 200 BCE, and of the Tabulae Iliacae from around the turn
of our era, in representing scenes from the Epic Cycle, were already using such prose
digests and not the original poems. The captions that they provided, where they go
beyond simply naming the persons depicted, show similar phrasing to that of Proclus and
Apollodorus, especially in the series of five scenes from the Aethiopis shown on the
Tabula Veronensis II (9D): (p.14)
Tabula Veronensis Procl./Apollod.
Πενθεσίληα Ἀµαζὼν Ἀµαζὼν Πενθεσίλεια παραγίνεται Τρωσὶ

παραγίνεται. συµµαχήσουσα. Procl.
Ἀχιλλεὺς Πενθεσίληαν καὶ κτείνει αὐτὴν ἀριστεύουσαν Ἀχιλλεύς. Procl.
ἀποκτείνει
Μέµνων Ἀντίλοχον Ἀντίλοχος ὑπὸ Μέµνονος ἀναιρεῖται. Procl.
Ἀχιλλεὺς Μέµνονα Ἀχιλλεὺς Μέµνονα κτείνει. Procl.
ἐν ταῖς Σκαιαῖς πύλαις πρὸς ταῖς Σκαιαῖς πύλαις τοξεύεται ὑπὸ Ἀλεξάνδρου
Ἀχιλλεὺς ὑπο[ καὶ ἈπόλλωνοςApollod.36
A series of Homeric cups (MB 27–9: Sinn 94–6) show the killing of Priam κατὰ ποιητὴν
Λέσχην ἐκ τῆς Μικρα̃ς Ἰλιάδος. Here we cannot compare Proclus’ summary, where the
Little Iliad’s account of the sack of Troy has been omitted in favour of that of the Iliou
Persis, but we can use Pausanias’ testimony instead:
Homeric cups Paus 10. 27. 2
καταϕυγόντος τοῦ Πριάµου ἐπὶ Πρίαµον δὲ οὐκ ἀποθανεῖν ἔϕη Λέσχεως ἐπὶ
τὸν βωµὸν τοῦ Ἑρκείου ∆ιὸς τῆι ἐσχάραι τοῦ Ἑρκείου, ἀλλὰ ἀποσπασθέντα
ἀποσπάσας ὁ Νεοπτόλεµος ἀπὸ ἀπὸ τοῦ βωµοῦ πάρεργον τῶι Νεοπτολέµωι
τοῦ βωµοῦ πρὸς τῆι οἰκίαι πρὸς ταῖς τῆς οἰκίας γενέσθαι θύραις.
κατέσϕαξεν.
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The inference is that both Proclus and Apollodorus derive their accounts from a
compendium of digests of the Cyclic poems current no later than the Hellenistic period.37
We cannot tell how many intermediate stages there may have been in the transmission,
or how much abridgment or variation of wording may have occurred when another
author took over the material. Wagner, NJb. 145 (1892), (p.15) 256 n. 24, noted that the
Cypria summary, the first in the series, seems to have suffered less abridgment than the
others; but was that imbalance there from the beginning, or did it develop over time?
The fact that Proclus has preserved the original headings with the information about the
source poems is encouraging. But there is one important respect in which his periochai,
as we have them in the Iliad manuscripts, represent a degraded stage of the tradition in
comparison with those current in the Hellenistic age. Certain of the Cyclic poems
overlapped in content. The madness and suicide of the Telamonian Ajax were related in
both the Aethiopis and the Little Iliad, while the sack of Troy was described in both the
Little Iliad and the Iliou Persis. In our Proclus the overlaps have been eliminated in the
interests of making a continuous narrative without repetition of events: the Aethiopis
summary ends with mention of the quarrel between Ajax and Odysseus, without
indicating its outcome, and the Little Iliad summary ends with the Trojans taking the
Wooden Horse into the city and rejoicing in the belief that the war was over.38 But the
Homeric cups, as we have seen above, portray the killing of Priam ‘according to Lesches
in the Little Iliad’, so that their designer must have been using a perioche that was not
truncated at the end. On the Tabula Capitolina the series of Aethiopis scenes includes a
portrayal of Ajax’s madness, with a clear presage of his suicide. Its Little Iliad sequence,
to be sure, stops where our Proclus does, omitting scenes of the sack, but that is fully
accounted for by the circumstance that the artist has devoted the whole central portion
of the plaque to the sack following a different source, labelling it Ἰλίου πέρσις κατὰ
Στησίχορον, ‘Sack of Ilion according to Stesichorus’. We cannot infer that his perioche for
the Little Iliad lacked the sack. There were different accounts of the sack to choose from,
and like Proclus (or whoever first eliminated the overlaps in the Cycle), he preferred one
of the others to that in the Little Iliad.
A further argument for the original wholeness of the periochai was adduced by
Hartmann. It is that the man who made them in the first place, stating the titles of the
poems and following them with ‘containing the following’, surely meant to give a complete
summary (p.16) of what was in them.39 Hartmann also explains why the overlaps were
dealt with by cropping the ends and not the beginnings of periochai. The beginnings were
protected by the headings and the formula περιέχοντα τάδε, ‘with the following
contents’, whereas to omit a piece at the end would have seemed a relatively slight
matter.40
The elimination of the overlaps presupposes a shift of interest from literary history to
myth, from the poems as individual documents to the story that they told collectively.
Proclus’ interest in his Chrestomathy was decidedly literary-historical, and he chose to
incorporate an account of the Cyclic poems in which their individuality and bibliographical
details were preserved. There was no reason for him to streamline them into a non-
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repetitive narrative, if this had not yet happened. A more favourable moment for it may
seem to be when the Trojan section was excerpted from Proclus’ Cyclic summaries to
make part of an introduction to the Iliad (Davies (1986), 103f.). On the other hand, as we
have seen, there are indications that this excerption was done in a very mechanical
manner, by someone who did not have the wit to alter references to parts of the text that
were not being copied (above, p. 6). Was such a blinkered transcriber capable of
intelligent editing of the periochai? I am more inclined to suppose that this had happened
at an earlier stage.
We have traced the existence of the periochai back as far as the third century BCE. In
the next section I shall come to further conclusions about their origin.
3. The Formation of the Cycle

The epics that were gathered together in the Cycle were products of a tradition with
ancient roots. Poems about a Trojan war perhaps began to be composed in the twelfth
century. The legend of the Argo’s voyage may have been the subject of song at the same
period or not much later.41 There must have been many other strands of (p.17) heroic
poetry embodying and embellishing local memories of past events. After the middle of the
eighth century, when Ionian epic evidently enjoyed a great flowering, we begin to have a
clearer sense of some of the themes that were then current among epic singers. For
example, from a series of allusions in Hesiod’s Theogony it can be inferred that there
were various songs about the deeds of Heracles, though perhaps no comprehensive
Herakleia covering his whole career.42 Each of these Einzellieder had an independent
existence. They did not have to be recited or heard together or in a particular order. But
they could be said to have constituted a Heracles cycle, in the loose sense in which
scholars sometimes speak of a Sumerian Bilgames cycle or a Hurrian–Hittite Kumarbi
cycle: that is, a set of poems attached to a particular figure, but not (so far as we know)
intended to be taken in a particular order or perceived as forming a larger whole.
In the same way there must have been a set of poems relating to Thebes, and another
relating to Troy. So long as epic remained purely oral their contents were fluid, but each
established theme had an identity that persisted through the changing performances. In
the course of the seventh century some poets took to writing their compositions down
and in the process, in certain cases, allowed them to grow to a prodigious length. Two
have come down to us: the Iliad and the Odyssey. Neither of them is cyclic in conception;
that is, neither is designed to form a segment of a vaster narrative continuum. Each is a
free-standing poem, complete in itself. But each presupposes familiarity with the larger
story of the Trojan War, and each contains numerous allusions to episodes that belong to
the time before the action of the Iliad or between that of the Iliad and Odysseus’ return
to Ithaca, episodes that we know were treated in their proper places in the poems of the
Cycle.43 This does not mean that the Cyclic epics as current in the classical period, the
Cypria, the Aethiopis, and the rest, existed before the Iliad and Odyssey. But it means
that poems existed containing much of the same material, not necessarily in written form
and not necessarily corresponding to the later ones in coverage.
As the Iliad and Odyssey are not cyclic (in the sense defined above) but free-standing,
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the same will have been true of other poems existing at the time: each will have told a self-
contained story forming (p.18) part of the larger tale of the Trojan War and not
necessarily leading straight on from or to one of the others. The structure of the material
itself, as it appears in the later tradition, betrays its origin in a set of unconnected poems.
There had probably been one dealing with the Judgment of Paris and the abduction of
Helen, ending with the wedding at Troy, and another telling of the gathering of the
Achaeans at Aulis, perhaps continuing to their arrival in the Troad and the initial battle that
they fought there. Another poem, or more than one, told how the war was brought to an
end after Philoctetes was fetched from Lemnos and Odysseus conceived the stratagem
of the Wooden Horse. But there was nothing of any substance to bridge the gap between
the first year and the tenth.
The emergence of the cyclic approach

Aristotle, Poet. 1459a37, picks out the Cypria and the Little Iliad as examples of epics that
unlike the Iliad and Odyssey are πολυµερῆ, ‘formed of many parts’, containing material
for many tragedies. He has lit upon a feature of the two poems that is plain to us from
Proclus’ summaries. They lacked structural unity, and the reason is that they were
composed to cover particular sections of the whole story of Troy that were not already
covered by other epics.
It is sometimes supposed that all the Cyclic epics were constructed on this principle, and
that consequently they were all episodic in structure and lacking in organic unity.44 But it
is a mistake to treat them as a homogeneous group. As we saw in the last section, some of
them overlapped in content: this at once refutes the notion that each poem was designed
to cover an allotted span of events so as to create one continuous story.
The Aethiopis was composed as a continuation of the Iliad—not a sequel, but an actual
continuation, meant to complete the story of Achilles by telling of his death and the events
integrally linked to his death: the funeral games in his honour, the awarding of his arms to
Odysseus, and the suicide of Ajax.45 Arktinos (if that was the poet’s name) drew on an
existing, pre-Iliadic account of the death of Achilles (which had followed shortly after his
killing of Hector and did not involve Memnon), and he also incorporated an independent
Einzellied about an encounter between Achilles and the Amazon (p.19) Penthesileia.
(See the introduction to the Aethiopis.) He is an epigone, building on the Iliad and other
existing poetry. But his aim was only to make an Ilias aucta, completing the story of
Achilles, not to carry the tale on towards the sack of Troy or to link up with some other
epic that did so.
The same poet is credited with the Iliou Persis, a shorter epic that covered the end of the
war. It did not begin where the Aethiopis ended but with the Trojans’ discovery of the
Wooden Horse. The Horse stratagem was integral to the story of the sack, and a poem
about the sack had to begin, if not with the building of the Horse, with the Trojans’ finding
it. Demodokos’ song as summarized in Od. 8. 499–520 had a very similar scope to the
Iliou Persis. Stesichorus’ Iliou Persis began similarly with praise of Epeios who built the
Horse.46 The Iliou Persis, then, was composed as a free-standing epic with thematic
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unity. It could be characterized as an Einzellied.
The same could not be said of the Little Iliad, which was, as Aristotle saw, a concatenation
of at least six potential Einzellieder, worked together in a sequence that is only partly
determined by organic logic. (See the introduction to the poem.) The poet’s aim was
simply to tell the rest of the Troy story after the death of Achilles. He must have drawn
on a number of antecedent poems, whether oral or written, stitching them together to
make a continuous narrative. This was a truly cyclic enterprise in the sense defined
earlier. If he did not stop at the point where the Iliou Persis started, it was presumably
because he did not know the latter poem (which is not to say that it did not yet exist).
The Cypria, Aristotle’s other prime example of a non-unitary, episodic epic, is an even
more blatant product of cyclic endeavour. Its eleven books took in everything from Zeus’
first design for the war to the point where the Iliad begins. The poet had the Iliad in view
from the start. Of course he had other sources too, including poetic accounts of the
wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the Judgment of Paris and the abduction of Helen, the
gathering of the Achaeans at Aulis, the mistaken invasion of Teuthrania and the ensuing
debacle, and so on.47 It is clear that Stasinos, if that was his name, conceived (p.20) his
work not as something forming a complete whole in itself but as the first part of a tale that
continued in the Iliad, and beyond the Iliad to the end of the war. His introduction (F 1)
was an introduction to the war as a whole, explaining why Zeus brought it about and what
was the point of all the death and devastation that it involved. It was in effect an
introduction to the whole Trojan cycle.
The story of the war might have been considered complete with the sack of Troy. But
there were legends about the fortunes of certain major heroes in the immediate
aftermath of the war: the drowning of the Locrian Ajax in consequence of his sacrilegious
conduct at the sack; the tale of Odysseus’ homecoming, as related in the Odyssey; the
murder of Agamemnon and his avenging by Orestes. These provided the basis for a
more comprehensive epic on the Achaeans’ returns from Troy, the Nostoi. It did not
include the return of Odysseus (though he was mentioned in passing), evidently because
a separate Odyssey was already current. So this again was a cyclic undertaking, filling in
areas not covered by existing poems. However, the Nostoi was not just a loose sequence
of separate stories but was artfully structured within a frame formed by the return of
the two Atreidai. It began with the dispute that separated them, and it ended with
Menelaus’ belated arrival home following Orestes’ killing of Clytaemestra and Aegisthus.
When Odysseus finally reached home, the last of the heroes to do so, it might again seem
that the story of the Trojan War was complete. Yet the Odyssey itself, through Teiresias’
prophecy in 11. 118–37 (~23. 248–87), presages further episodes in Odysseus’ life,
including some tale about his death. A later poet, Eugammon of Cyrene, developed these
hints, together with elements of local Epirotic saga, folktale, and romantic invention, into a
sequel to the Odyssey. This was the Telegony. It covered the rest of Odysseus’ life after
his return from Troy, his death, and what became of Penelope and his sons. It was clearly
an episodic poem, with only the unity conferred by the person of the protagonist. It
belongs unequivocally in the cyclic category.
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(p.21) From Trojan cycle to Proclus’ Cycle

There are grounds for dating Eugammon to the 560s, and it is a reasonable assumption
that by about 550, or at any rate by 520, the complete Trojan cycle was current. This is
not to say that anyone at that time thought of these poems as forming a set. But they
existed as stable texts, providing collectively a complete account of every stage of the
Trojan War, from its first conception in heaven to the final destinies of the heroes.
This Trojan cycle was to form a major part of the universal Epic Cycle that Proclus knew.
Yet it did not situate itself within a wider mythological canvas. The introduction to the
Cypria entirely shuts out earlier events of the Heroic Age. It makes no allusion to the
Theban Wars. The narrative begins with a vague ἦν ὅτε, ‘once upon a time’, a time when
the earth was burdened by overpopulation, and everything that follows is directed solely
towards instigating the Trojan War. It is as if there were no historical context, no other
mythology.
Proclus’ Cycle had a more comprehensive scope. As noted earlier, our knowledge of
what poems it included is sadly incomplete. We can at least say that it seems to have been
confined to archaic epics and did not include Panyassis, Antimachus, or anything later.
Nor, so far as we can see, did it contain any of the Hesiodic poems. Otherwise we cannot
tell whether anything was excluded or whether it took in the whole available corpus of
pre-classical epic, organized in sequence.
This organization did not occur spontaneously. Something of the kind had happened with
the Troy epics because the natural coherence of the subject matter invited it: the
sequence of poems determined itself, and it was obvious where there were gaps in the
story to be filled.48 With the Theban epics too the sequence followed necessarily from the
subject matter. The first line of the Epigonoi, Epigonoi, νῦν αὖθ᾿ ὁπλοτέρων ἀνδρῶν
ἀρχώµεθα, Μοῦσαι, ‘But now, Muses, let us begin on the younger men’, shows that it
was conceived from the start as a sequel to a Thebaid, to be recited or read after it.49
Among the whole mass of epics available to the organizer of the Cycle there may have
been other small aggregations or mini-cycles. But for the most part he had to do the
arranging and create a single sequence.
(p.22) What was his purpose, and what did he actually have to do to achieve it? Did he
make an edition of the entire set of poems? That seems unlikely; there is no good
evidence that the Cycle was ever edited as a whole.50 It has sometimes been thought
that traces of such an edition are to be seen in the alternative incipit of the Iliad known to
Aristoxenus, which began as if a continuation, ἔσπετε νῦν µοι, Μοῦσαι, ‘Tell me now,
Muses’,51 or in the alternative ending that led into the Aethiopis.52 But the alternative
opening was more likely designed to follow a prefatory hymn, while the alternative ending
is actually the original opening of the Aethiopis, which as I have said was composed from
the start as a continuation of the Iliad.53 The scholia to the Odyssey twice cite variant
readings from ἡ κυκλική, ‘the cyclic edition’, but it is not clear whether the copy so
designated had anything to do with the Epic Cycle or was just a ‘run of the mill’ one, this
being another possible meaning of the adjective. If the former, it might simply have been
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a text found shelved with the other Cyclic poems; it would not be surprising if Hellenistic
collectors or librarians sometimes put sets together.
But the original arranger of the Cycle need not have done so. What he needed to do—and
it was really all he needed to do—was publish a protocol containing his list of poems and
explaining that this was the Epic Cycle, made up of poems which, if read in the prescribed
sequence, would provide a comprehensive account of the mythical age as represented
by the oldest poets.54 Each title was furnished with basic bibliographical details: the
author’s name and the length of the work. Philoponus records:55
(p.23) γεγράϕασι γοῦν τινες περὶ τοῦ Κύκλου ἀναγράϕοντες πόσοι τε ποιηταὶ
γεγόνασι, καὶ τί ἕκαστος ἔγραψε, καὶ πόσοι στίχοι ἑκάστου ποιήµατος, καὶ τὴν
τούτων τάξιν, τίνα τε πρῶτα δεῖ µανθάνειν καὶ δεύτερα καὶ ἐϕεξῆς.
Some have written about the Cycle registering how many poets there have been,
and what each one wrote, and how many lines each poem had, and their order,
which ones are to be read first and second and so on.
He doubtless has Proclus in view,56 but the specifications he says were supplied surely
went back to the original organizer of the Cycle. The effect of the enterprise was to bring
the disparate mass of early epic poems into order and to provide a guide to help readers
find their way among them.
At what period is the codification of the Cycle likely to have been made? Such an operation
is hardly conceivable before the fourth century BCE. But it is very well conceivable in the
second half of that century, when the systematization of knowledge in many spheres was
in full swing, especially in the school of Aristotle. In the field of literature we may think of
Lycurgus’ ordinance establishing an official archive of the plays of the three great
tragedians (Plut. Oratorum vitae 841f), and of Aristotle’s own redaction of the dramatic
and dithyrambic Didaskaliai. Clearchus collected proverbs and riddles. Demetrius of
Phalerum made the first corpus of Aesopic fables (Diog. Laert. 5. 80). The synoptic
approach to mythology implicit in the aggregate Cycle may be seen as paralleling the rise
of the genre of universal history pioneered by Ephorus.
It is in Aristotle that we find the first probable allusions to an epic cycle, or to the Epic
Cycle. In two of his logical works he refers to the false syllogism ‘a kyklos (circle) is a
shape; epic poetry is a kyklos; therefore epic poetry is a shape’.57 In his Rhetoric
(1417a12), giving examples of how the orator in relating the facts of a case should pass
summarily over those parts that have no emotive power, he refers to Odysseus’ succinct
rehearsal of his adventures to Penelope (Od. 23. 310–41) and then adds καὶ ὡς Φάϋλλος
τὸν Κύκλον· καὶ ὁ ἐν τῶι Οἰνεῖ πρόλογος, ‘and as Phayllos (does with) the Kyklos; and
(as is) (p.24) the prologue in (Euripides’) Oineus’. We know nothing of who this Phayllos
was—it is not a rare name—but he was apparently known at the time for having reduced
something called the Kyklos to a concise factual summary. In view of the other
Aristotelian passages we can hardly doubt that it was an epic Kyklos; and if Aristotle uses
the definite article with it, the inference is that he knew only one such Cycle. Why should
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we doubt that it was the Epic Cycle acknowledged by later writers?58 The exact phrase
ἐπικὸς κύκλος had probably not yet been coined, as noted at the outset, but people
might have used some such expression as ὁ κύκλος τῶν ἐπῶν. However that may be,
the Cycle appears to have been established as a literary quantity by the third quarter of
the fourth century, even if it was more a bibliographic construct than an editorial reality.
The educated inquirer could then, if all the epics were available to him, find his epic
mythology presented in the poets’ words and laid out in a logical order. But most would
have had difficulty in assembling all the texts, and even if they were to hand, it was a
daunting amount of verse to read through. Since (as we find noted in Proclus) it was the
substance rather than the poetry that interested people, it was a natural step to cater for
this interest by making a prose epitome of the whole Cycle, a set of periochai, retaining
the bibliographical details about the individual poets and works but reducing the
narrative to the essentials. The dozens of volumes could thus be replaced for most
purposes by a single one, easy to acquire and easy to handle and consult. The need for
such a compendium would have been apparent from the start, and as we saw in the
previous section, there must have been one current at any rate by the Hellenistic period.
Now, it appears from Aristotle that such an epitome already existed in his time, and he
names its author: Phayllos. The labour is not likely to have been undertaken twice, and
there is no reason why Phayllos’ digest of the Cycle should not have been the primary
text from which Proclus and Apollodorus ultimately depended.
Indeed, there is some likelihood that the Cycle and the epitome were created together
and that Phayllos was responsible for both. Launching the Cycle as an ensemble meant, as
I have said, promulgating a document that set out the details of the constituent epics.
That would have taken up perhaps a couple of columns of writing, too brief a text to be
issued as a book on its own. It must (p.25) surely have been embodied in a larger
publication: perhaps a treatise on literary history, but more probably, I submit, a work
devoted to the Epic Cycle and consisting mainly of the periochai, each headed by the
information about the poem’s author and length.59
Perhaps we may go a step further. I cited earlier the remark that Photius reports from
Proclus, that ‘the poems of the Epic Cycle are preserved and studied by most people not
so much for their quality as for the consecution of the matters it contains’, διὰ τὴν
ἀκολουθίαν τῶν ἐν αὐτῶι πραγµάτων, in other words for a continuous account of all
that was supposed to have happened. I mentioned that this might not have been an
original observation by Proclus but taken over, like the periochai, from an older source.
In fact it looks like nothing so much as a justification for making the periochai in the first
place. Phayllos might well have written: ‘Since the poems of the Cycle are preserved and
studied by most people not so much for their quality as for the consecution of the
matters it contains, I have thought it worth while to provide epitomes of each of them, so
that the reader may have an overview of the entire corpus and easily see what matters
are related in each poem.’
The stages of development postulated on the basis of the foregoing arguments may be
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summed up as follows.
750– Emergence/perpetuation of oral poems on multifarious heroic themes, some of

600 them sharing a common focus such as the Trojan War, Heracles, etc
660– Fixing of some large-scale and lesser epics in writing, including the Iliad,
600 Aethiopis, Iliou Persis, Odyssey
620– Creation or remodelling of other poems to bridge gaps in the sequence:
560 Nostoi, Little Iliad, Cypria Or to extend it: Telegony This completed an
unofficial Trojan cycle
560– Epics transmitted individually by recitation and increasingly as books
350
350– Phayllos organizes a substantial number of epics into a formal, comprehensive
320 Cycle, writes a Protocol defining it, and provides a prose digest consisting of
periochai for each poem
320– The digest widely used by mythographers and others; the original poems
200 (apart from the Iliad and Odyssey) increasingly neglected, though at least
CE someof them continue to be obtainable in places
200– The poems no longer current; their contents known only from the epitome and
550 derivative texts New epics composed on Posthomerica (Triphiodorus, Quintus)
and Antehomerica (Colluthus)
(p.26) 4. Ascriptions
In the Protocol a single author was named for each of the Cyclic epics: Stasinos of Cyprus
for the Cypria, Homer for the Iliad and Odyssey, Arktinos of Miletus for the Aethiopis
and Iliou Persis, Lesches of Pyrrha (or Mytilene) for the Little Iliad, Agias of Troizen for
the Nostoi, Eugammon of Cyrene for the Telegony, and we can probably add Kinaithon of
Lacedaemon for the Oídipodeia and Antimachus of Teos for the Epigonoi. These
unequivocal attributions are reproduced in derivative sources. Three of the Homeric
cups have scenes in relief with captions beginning κατὰ ποιητὴν Λέσχην ἐκ τῆς Μικρα̃ ς
Ἰλιάδος, and another has one beginning [κατὰ τὸν ποιητὴν] Ἀ[γίαν] ἐκ τῶν [Νό]στων.60
The most elaborate of the Roman Tabulae Iliacae, the Tabula Capitolina, has a series of
scenes labelled Αἰθιοπὶς κατὰ Ἀρκτῖνον τὸν Μιλήσιον and another series labelled Ἰλιὰς
ἡ Μικρὰ λεγοµένη κατὰ Λέσχην Πυρραῖον. The same ascriptions appear in Proclus’
summaries of the Troy epics, except that he knew from a different source a discussion of
alternative attributions for the Cypria, and this led him to withhold Stasinos’ name from
the Cypria summary and insert the scholarly discussion in a later passage of his
Chrestomathy. (See below on the Cypria.) Some of them appeared too in Eusebius’
Chronicle: under Ol. 4 (Jerome) we read Arctinus qui Aethiopidem composuit et Ilii
Persin; under Ol. 30 (Syncellus) Λέσχης Λέσβιος ὁ τὴν Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα ποιήσας; under
Ol. 53 (Syncellus) Εὐγάµµων Κυρηναῖος ὁ τὴν Τηλεγονίαν ποιήσας.
(p.27) Older scholars such as Nitzsch and Welcker were content to use these names in
referring to the authors of the Cyclic epics. Wilamowitz, however, emphasized in a
powerful chapter of his Homerische Untersuchungen what an insecure place they had in
tradition before the fourth century, and he rejected them as wholly lacking in
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credentials.61 Most of them are unattested before 350 BCE, and up to that time the
Cyclic poems were often attributed wholesale to Homer, albeit not without some
controversy. After 350, while Arktinos and the others are the authors commonly named
when an ascription is made without variant, some scholarly sources mention discussion of
rival names, and many writers prefer to use non-committal expressions such as ‘the man
who composed the Cypria’. As Wilamowitz somewhat over-pointedly put it, ‘in 500 all the
poems are by Homer; in 350 it is essentially only the Iliad and Odyssey that are by
Homer, all the rest are taken from him and attached by hypothesis now to one author,
now to another (or in one or two cases still to Homer); by 150 all these hypotheses are
cleared away, and the poems are all anonymous’.62
It is clear that the adoption of the names Stasinos, Arktinos, and so on by Phayllos (if he
was the man responsible) was not based on any established consensus or firm tradition.
Whatever the sources he took them from, they cannot have been unanimous or decisive.
Unsophisticated people accepted them as official on his authority. But the bluff
assertiveness with which he stated that ‘this man did this, and this man did this’ recalls
the bold constructionism of certain Peripatetic writers on literary history, such as
Heraclides Ponticus in his account of early Greek music, or Theophrastus’ comrade
Phaenias of Eresus, who set his fellow Lesbians Lesches and Terpander in a chronological
relationship with each other and with the Milesian Arktinos (fr. 33 Wehrli=FGrHist 1012 F
10, quoted below).
(p.28) The evidence for Cyclic poems being associated with Homer is as follows:63
Pausanias (9. 9. 5), after mentioning the Thebaid, writes that Callinus (the name is
emended from Καλαῖνος) came to speak of this epic and said it was by Homer. Callinus
cannot have mentioned the Thebaid by name, but he perhaps referred to an episode of
the Theban War, or to a famous saying associated with it, and mentioned ‘Homer’ as the
authority.64
Simonides, PMG 564=fr. 273 Poltera, cites Homer and Stesichorus as authorities for a
victory of Meleager at the funeral games for Pelias. We cannot identify the epic for which
‘Homer’ stands. In his Plataea elegy (fr. eleg. 11 W.2), after referring to the death of
Achilles at Apollo’s hands and the sack of Troy, Simonides goes on to speak of a man—only
Homer can be meant—who conferred undying fame on the Danaoi and on the ἡµιθέων
ὠκύµορος γενεή in general, having received the truth from the Muses.
Pindar, Nem. 7. 20–8 (cf. Isth. 4. 35–42), says that it was through Homer’s art that
Odysseus was made to seem the worthier claimant to the arms of Achilles in the dispute
that resulted in the suicide of Ajax. Homer here is the poet of the Aethiopis or the Little
Iliad. Pindar is also cited (fr. 265) as having endorsed the story that Homer, wanting to
marry off his daughter, gave the bridegroom the Cypria in lieu of a dowry. The point of
the tale was that he was the real author of an epic often thought to belong to someone
else (identified as Stasinos in later versions of the story).
Aeschylus is said to have characterized his tragedies as ‘slices from Homer’s big
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dinners’, τεµάχη τῶν Ὁµήρου µεγάλων δείπνων (Ath. 347e, surely derived from Ion of
Chios’ Epidemiai; cf. BICS 32 (1985), 75 with n. 25). ‘Homer’ here must stand for heroic
epic as a whole.65
Herodotus (2. 117) finds reason to believe that the Cypria is not by Homer ‘but by
someone else’, the implication being that Homer is the author commonly assumed. In 4.
32 he cites ‘Homer in the Epigonoi’, but adds the caveat ‘if Homer really composed this
epic’. It seems that while Cyclic poems still generally went under Homer’s name, there
was scepticism in the air as regards those other than the (p.29) Iliad and Odyssey. In 5.
67. 1 Herodotus relates that Cleisthenes of Sicyon, from hostility towards Argos, stopped
the rhapsodes from performing in Sicyon τῶν Ὁµηρείων ἐπέων ἕνεκα, ὅτι Ἀργεῖοί τε καὶ
῎Αργος τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ὑµνέαται. The designation Ἀργεῖοι is often used for the
Achaeans in the Iliad, but in the context Herodotus may well have been thinking of the
Thebaid and Epigonoi, in which the city of Argos was featured. When in 2. 53. 2 he says of
Hesiod and Homer that ‘these are the ones who created a divine narrative (θεογονίην)
for the Greeks, gave the gods their titles, allocated their privileges and capabilities, and
indicated their forms’, he is either making them stand for the whole hexameter tradition
or assuming that Homer was the earliest of the epic poets.66
The author of the Hippocratic work περὶ ἄρθρων ἐµβολῆς (8) quotes a verse of ‘Homer’
that does not occur in the Iliad and Odyssey and presumably came somewhere in the
Cycle (Epic. adesp. 3,=Nostoi F 12a⋆ in the present volume). Aristotle too quotes
unidentified fragments as ‘Homer’ (Epic. adesp. 4–5; 6=Aethiopis F 3a⋆ here). This is not
a phenomenon that ceases in the fourth century; see Epic. adesp. 9–11, 13–16, 18–19.
The author of the pseudo-Demosthenic Epitaphios (60. 29) writes that the Akamantidai
‘recalled the verses in which Homer says that Akamas went to Troy on account of their
mother Aithra’ (he should have said their grandmother). The passage he had in mind
probably belonged either to the Little Iliad (F 17n.) or to the Iliou Persis (F 6), though
Hiller noted that the Cypria is also a possibility.67
In the earlier of Aristotle’s two references to the false kyklos syllogism, in Soph. elench.
171a10, it takes the form ὅτι ἡ Ὁµήρου ποίησις σχῆµα, ‘that Homer’s poetry is a shape’
(because a κύκλος is a shape). If by ‘Homer’s poetry’ he means only the Iliad and
Odyssey, the premise that it is a kyklos is unintelligible. It is to be presumed that he
means the whole Cycle as later understood. In his later writings he probably came to
distinguish with greater awareness between Homer and the poets of the Cypria, the
Little Iliad, etc.
In the following century Simias of Rhodes composed a dedication in the name of Epeios,
the builder of the Wooden Horse, in which he thanks Athena for having enabled him to
walk ‘on Homer’s (p.30) pathway’, ἐς Ὁµήρειον κέλευθον (Pelekys 7). Epeios is
mentioned in the Odyssey (8. 493) as the builder of the Horse, but Simias will be thinking
rather of the Little Iliad, where the story was told in full.
Antigonus of Carystus, Mirabilia 25, quotes part of some advice that Amphiaraos gave to
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his son Amphilochos, probably in the Thebaid (fr. 8⋆), introducing it with ὁ ποιητὴς
ἔγραψεν; ‘the poet’, used absolutely, usually means Homer, and Antigonus has used it in
this sense in the section immediately preceding.
In the later biographical tradition Homer continues to be credited with several of the
Cyclic poems. The Certamen (15) relates that after his defeat by Hesiod Homer went
about reciting his poems, the Thebaid and then the Epigonoi, ‘for some say that this too is
Homer’s work’. In the pseudo-Herodotean Life he composes an Amphiaraos’ Expedition
to Thebes (part of the Thebaid?) (9), the Little Iliad (16), and a Phokais (16), besides the
Batrachomyomachia and other παίγνια (24). Proclus, after saying in his Life (9) that
Homer wrote two poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey (the latter denied him by Xenon and
Hellanicus), adds, ‘the ancients, however, also ascribe the Cycle to him’.68 In the Suda
Life, which derives from Hesychius of Miletus, there is a longer list of poems said to be
attributed to Homer, confusedly compiled from more than one source; it includes the
Amazonia, Little Iliad, Nostoi, Amphiaraos’ Expedition, Capture of Oichalia, Cycle(!), and
Cypria.
These late texts do not reflect any genuine persistence of the tendency to think of Homer
as the author of Cyclic poems. The Certamen in the passage cited draws from a Life
similar in character to that of pseudo-Herodotus, whose account of Homer’s travels from
town to town and his productions of different epics at different places seems to go back to
a base narrative composed in the classical period. Proclus’ statement that the ancients
ascribed the whole Cycle to Homer perhaps goes back to Phayllos or whoever put out
the original Protocol. That first inventor of the Cycle as an ensemble may have written
something like, ‘the ancients credited Homer with all these poems; in fact he wrote only
the Iliad and Odyssey, and these other epics were the work of various other poets,
whom I shall name one by one’.
When poets other than Homer are named as the authors of Cyclic epics, there is often
more than one per poem. The Titanomachy was (p.31) ascribed to Eumelos or Arktinos,
the Cypria to Stasinos, Hegesias, or Kyprias, the Little Iliad to Lesches, Thestorides of
Phocaea, Kinaithon of Lacedaemon, or Diodoros of Erythrae, the Nostoi to Agias or
Eumelos (unless there were two different poems), the Telegony to Eugammon or
Kinaithon. It is clear that it was not a simple question of Homer versus the names in
Proclus. The authorship of these poems, or most of them, was a matter of considerable
uncertainty. In the case of the Telegony, which must have been one of the latest of them,
there is no particular reason to question, and some reason to accept, the ascription to a
Cyrenaean poet Eugammon. (See below.) But in earlier generations the authorship of epic
poems (whatever that meant in oral conditions) had evidently been a matter of
indifference, with singers generally seeing themselves not as creators but as performers
and embellishers of inherited material.69
On what basis, then, were ascriptions made? The prevalence of Homer as a default
author is the consequence of his origin as the fictitious ancestor of the Homeridai and
supposed source of the traditional poetry that they performed. Their efforts to claim for
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him poems for which other authors’ names were current can be seen not only in the tale
about his giving the Cypria to Stasinos but in others too: he gave the Capture of Oichalia
to Kreophylos of Samos in return for hospitality (Call. Epigr. 6 Pf., Strabo 14. 1. 18, etc.);
he had the Phokais, the Little Iliad, and other poems stolen from him by Thestorides (ps.-
Hdt. 16). The story in most of the Lives that his original name was Melesigenes may have
been devised for a similar purpose, to appropriate for Homer a poem or poems—the
Iliad? The Odyssey?—that went under the other name.70
Where names other than Homer’s appear, there is at least a chance that they are the
names of real persons whom there was some reason to associate with particular poems.
But some of them might have been rhapsodes known for reciting certain epics rather
than the poets who had actually composed them.71 Certain names may (p.32) have had
special potency to attract unattached poems. For example, Eumelos, who was
remembered as a member of the dominant Bacchiad family at Corinth and as the author
of a Prosodion that the Messenians performed for Apollo on Delos, was credited with
several poems that may have been esteemed at Corinth but that cannot be dated as
early as his lifetime (West (2002)). The Lacedaemonian Kinaithon is credited with an odd
assortment of poems: the Oidipodeia, the Little Iliad, the Telegony (error? see below),
Genealogiai, and a Herakleia (sch. Ap. Rhod. 1. 1355/7c, error for Konon?). It has been
suspected that he was a man to whom everything was attributed at Sparta (Nitzsch
(1852), 24, cf. 59).
With these grounds for caution in mind, let us review the candidates (other than Homer)
for authorship of the Troy epics and assess the possible merits of their claims.
Cypria
The title τὰ Κύπρια (ἔπη), ‘the Cyprian epic’, implies an anonymous poem, one identified
by its currency in a particular area, not by its author. This is, however, how it would have
been known outside Cyprus rather than in it; within Cyprus there might have been
better knowledge of who it belonged to. Athenaeus (682d) knows of three claimants:
ὁ µὲν τὰ Κύπρια ἔπη πεποιηκὼς Ἡγησίας ἢ Στασῖνος 〈ἢ καὶ Κυπρίας〉·

∆ηµοδάµας γὰρ ὁ Ἁλικαρνασσεὺς ἢ Μιλήσιος ἐν τῶι περὶ Ἁλικαρνασσοῦ
(FGrHist 428 F 1) Κυπρία Ἁλικαρνασσέως αὐτὰ εἶναί ϕησι ποιήµατα.
The man who composed the Cypria, Hegesias or Stasinos, 〈or again Kyprias〉, since
Demodamas of Halicarnassus or Miletus in his History of Halicarnassus says it is
the work of Kyprias of Halicarnassus.
Proclus drew from the same source in the passage of his Chrestomathy where he
discussed the title of the poem:
Phot. Bibl. 319a34 λέγει δὲ καὶ περί τινων Κυπρίων ποιηµάτων, καὶ ὡς οἳ µὲν
ταῦτα εἰς Στασῖνον ἀναϕέρουσι Κύπριον, οἳ δὲ Ἡγησῖνον τὸν Σαλαµίνιον αὐτοῖς
ἐπιγράϕουσιν, οἳ δὲ Ὅµηρον γράψαι, δοῦναι δὲ ὑπὲρ τῆς θυγατρὸς Στασίνωι, καὶ
διὰ τὴν αὐτοῦ πατρίδα Κύπρια τὸν πόνον ἐπικληθῆναι. ἀλλ᾿ οὐ 〈προσ〉τίθεται
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ταύτηι τῆι αἰτίαι, µηδὲ γὰρ Κύπρια προπαροξυτόνως ἐπιγράϕεσθαι τὰ ποιήµατα.
(p.33) (Proclus) also speaks of some poetry called Cypria, and of how some
attribute it to Stasinos of Cyprus, while some give the author’s name as Hegesinos
of Salamis, and others say that Homer wrote it and gave it to Stasinos in
consideration of his daughter, and that because of where he came from the work
was called Cypria. But he does not favour this explanation, as he says the poem’s
title is not Κύπρια with proparoxytone accent.
‘Hegesinos’ corresponds to Athenaeus’ Hegesias and is doubtless a corruption caused

by assimilation to the preceding Stasinos. Proclus evidently accepted Demodamas’
assertion reported by Athenaeus, that the poem was by a Halicarnassian named Kyprias,
so that the title should be read as τὰ Κυπρία ἔπη. This impudent claim is also reflected in
a Halicarnassian verse inscription of the second century BCE celebrating the city’s
achievements:
ἔσπειρεν Πανύασσιν ἐπῶν ἀρίσηµον ἄνακτα,
Ἰλιακῶν Κυπρίαν τίκτεν ἀοιδοθέτην.72
We can reject this Kyprias as a fiction. Of Hegesias of Salamis we know nothing; we should
guess that it was the Cyprian Salamis, though his name does not show Cypriot vocalism
(⋆Hagesias) as that of Stasinos does.
Stasinos is the author commonly named. This is mainly due to the influence of the Cycle
Protocol. However, if we assume that he was from the beginning the bridegroom in the
dowry story, and accept that this was known to Pindar, his attestation reaches back into
the early or mid fifth century. The story also appears in Ael. VH 9. 15, in the Suda Life of
Homer (Vita 6. 5) (where Stasinos is called ὁ ὕπατος Κυπρίων, the chief magistrate of
Cyprus), and in Tz. Hist. 13. 631–4. It is suppressed, however, in most of the biographical
tradition about Homer, which mentions no visit to Cyprus by the poet.73
Two historical bearers of the name Stasinos are attested in inscriptions; one is from
Cyprus (ICS 371, fifth/fourth century), the other is presupposed by a patronymic
Stasinios from Thespiai (SEG 3. 333. 70, c.280–265).74 This makes it probable that there
was a real Cypriot (p.34) poet or rhapsode of this name in the archaic period, and as he
was remembered exclusively in connection with the Cypria, it is reasonable to accept that
he was either its author or a performer associated with it.75
Aethiopis, Iliou Persis

The only author named for these two poems is Arktinos of Miletus. He is also credited
(alternatively to Eumelos) with the Titanomachy. There are scraps of biographical material
about him. The chief one is Suda α 3960 (from Hesychius of Miletus):
Ἀρκτῖνος Τήλεω τοῦ Ναύτεω ἀπόγονος, Μιλήσιος, Μιλήσιος, ἐποποιός, µαθητὴς

Ὁµήρου, ὡς λέγει ὁ Κλαζοµένιος Ἀρτέµων ἐν τῶι περὶ Ὁµήρου (FGrHist 443 F 2),
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γεγονὼς κατὰ τὴν θˎ Ὀλυµπιάδα, µετὰ υιˎ ἔτη τῶν Τρωϊκῶν.
Arktinos son of Te¯le¯s and descendant of Nautes, Milesian, epic poet; a pupil of
Homer, as Artemon of Clazomenae says in his work on Homer; born in the ninth
Olympiad (744/1), 410 years after the Trojan War.
The statement that Arktinos was a pupil of Homer should warn us against looking for any
hard historical information in the testimony of this Artemon, whom Jacoby regards as a
pre-Hellenistic writer. He may be the source for the poet’s father Teles and ancestor
Nautes, who both appear with the Ionian genitive in -εω. Nautes, otherwise unknown,
may be supposed to have been an early Milesian king or colonist.
Phaenias or Phanias of Eresos also recognized Arktinos as a significant epic poet, bringing
him into a discussion of the achievements and relative chronology of certain Lesbian
poets. Clem. Strom. 1. 131. 6:
Φανίας δὲ (fr. 33 Wehrli, FGrHist 1012 F 10) πρὸ Τερπάνδρου τιθεὶς Λέσχην τὸν
Λέσβιον Ἀρχιλόχου νεώτερον ϕέρει τὸν Τέρπανδρον· διηµιλλῆσθαι δὲ τὸν Λέσχην
Ἀρκτίνωι καὶ νενικηκέναι.
Phanias, placing Lesches of Lesbos before Terpander, makes Terpander younger

than Archilochus; and he says Lesches fought it out with Arktinos in a contest and
was victorious.
(p.35) The suggestion is that Lesches was a younger poet than Arktinos (Eusebius in
fact dated him a century later) but overlapped with him and defeated him in a
competition, so succeeding him as the leading epic poet of the time. In coupling the two,
Phaenias presumably thought of Arktinos as the poet of the Aethiopis and/or Iliou Persis
and Lesches as the poet of the Little Iliad.
Datings of Arktinos and other Cyclic poets in the chronographic tradition were artificial
constructions without historical basis. On those for Arktinos see Mosshammer 198–203.
Arktinos is unlikely to be an invention of fourth-century writers, even if we cannot trace

him any earlier. He may have been named in manuscripts of the poems, though that
would not account for Artemon’s knowledge of his family details (if they had a
documentary basis). Wilamowitz (1884), 370, imagined researchers into local chronicles
and victor-lists finding names of old poets and rhapsodes to whom poems could be
attributed, perhaps even a record of a contest in which a Lesches defeated an Arktinos:
‘Wol möglich, daß eine chronik oder irgend sonst eine verlegene notiz zwei rhapsoden
Lesches und Arktinos in einem agon aufführte, Lesches als sieger.’ But it is not credible
that any genuine victor-lists for rhapsodic contests existed for the period before
Terpander. The contest involving Arktinos and Lesches may have been a fiction on the
model of that between Homer and Hesiod.76
The account in the Aethiopis of Achilles’ posthumous translation to the White Island in the
Black Sea has been seen as an indication that the poem did indeed originate in Miletus,
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the city that pioneered the exploration of the Pontus in the seventh century.77 There is
no internal evidence to suggest that the Aethiopis and Iliou Persis were by the same
poet, but nothing to disprove it.
Little Iliad
This poem is ascribed to no less than four poets other than Homer. The one usually
named is Lesches of Mytilene or Pyrrha. The other three are rounded up in sch. Eur.
Tro. 822,
(p.36) τῶι τὴν Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα πεποιηκότι, ὃν οἳ µὲν Θεστορίδην Φωκ 〈αι〉έα
ϕασίν, οἳ δὲ Κιναίθωνα Λακεδαιµόνιον, ὡς Ἑλλάνικος (202c Fowler), οἳ δὲ
∆ιόδωρον Ἐρυθραῖον.
The author of the Little Iliad, whom some say was Thestorides of Phocaea, others
Kinaithon of Lacedaemon, as Hellanicus has it, and others Diodoros of Erythrae.
Hellanicus’ name was restored by Hermann, Opusc. v. 185, for the manuscript’s
µελάνικοσ. The reference is certainly to the fifth-century logographer, who is cited in
eight other places in the Euripides scholia, and not the obscure Hellenistic grammarian
Hellanicus who disputed Homer’s authorship of the Odyssey. Now, it is odd that the
scholium makes no mention of Lesches, the poet most regularly connected with the Little
Iliad, and we should have expected the Lesbian Hellanicus, if anyone, to have
championed Lesches’ claim.78 So we should perhaps supply 〈οἳ δὲ Λέσχην Πυρραῖον,〉 ὡς
Ἑλλάνικος.79 It might then have been Hellanicus’ authority that gave Lesches the lead
over rivals among later writers. As he wrote in Ionic, he might have been (via Phayllos)
the source for the Ionic genitive Λέσχεω used by Proclus, from which Pausanias derived
the false nominative Λέσχεως (see on Little Iliad F 15–27).80
The next (and first guaranteed) mention of Lesches’ name is that by Phaenias discussed
above. Pausanias (10. 25. 5=Little Iliad F 15) gives Lesches a father, Aischylinos, who
must go back to an older source. Lesches was not known for anything other than the
authorship of the Little Iliad, and he was presumably associated with it on Lesbos from at
least as early as the fifth century. On the ancient datings for him see Mosshammer 226–
33.
(p.37) The ascription to Thestorides of Phocaea is presupposed in pseudo-Herodotus’

Life of Homer (16), where the Little Iliad is specified as one of the poems that
Thestorides wrote down from Homer’s recitations and then appropriated. Another was a
Phokais, which is otherwise unheard of: its title indicates a thematic connection with, or
currency in, Phocaea (not Phocis), so its association with a Phocaean poet is natural. If the
tale of Homer’s travels in the pseudo-Herodotean Life goes back to a fifth-century
original, as it may, the Thestorides story is of similar antiquity to the one about Stasinos,
and here too we may suppose that it preserves a memory of a real poet or rhapsode.
Wilamowitz (1916), 425, supposes that he must have been somehow involved with the
Little Iliad. It looks as if it was attributed to him at least as early as it was to Lesches.
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Kinaithon, as we saw above, was credited with a strangely heterogeneous assortment of

poems, and he seems the weakest of the candidates for authorship of the Little Iliad.
Nitzsch (1852), 59–61, supposes that he and Diodoros were rhapsodes who became
associated in their own localities with an epic that they recited. Diodoros is not mentioned
anywhere else, but Wilamowitz (1916), 425, notes that Erythrae is one of the places that
Homer passes through in pseudo-Herodotus 17f., and infers that in an earlier version of
the story he must have encountered Diodoros there. If so, Diodoros might have been
represented as having got the Little Iliad from him; pseudo-Herodotus then, in
eliminating Diodoros from his narrative, would have transferred the appropriation of the
Little Iliad to Thestorides, whom he had already named as appropriator of the Phokais.
My hypothesis that the Little Iliad had its name, like the Iliad, from its currency in the
region of Ilion (see Little Iliad, intro. 1) would favour a poet from nearby, such as the
Lesbian Lesches, over one from Sparta such as Kinaithon. The other two claimants are
from north Ionian towns, Phocaea and Erythrae. In each case it was probably in his own
region that the man was known for the Little Iliad. When the matter is put like this, there
appears to be some likelihood that these were singers or rhapsodes who made their
reputations by performing the poem, or a version of it. The poet who actually composed it
may have been one of them, or someone else whose name was not remembered.
(p.38) Nostoi
Proclus names Agias of Troizen, and this must be the name to be supplemented on the
Homeric cup MB 36 (Sinn 101; F 10) and to be restored for Clement’s Αὐγ⟦ε⟧ίας in F 7.
The Hegias of Troizen cited by Pausanias 1. 2. 1 may be the same person (see on Nostoi
F 14). No early attestation of him survives.
A Νόστος τῶν Ἑλλήνων is attributed to Eumelos by sch. Pind. Ol. 13. 31a.81 This is
presumably the Cyclic Nostoi, and the ascription to Eumelos an isolated error.
Eustathius, in a review of traditions about Odysseus’ descendants (Od. 1796. 37ff.), cites
‘the Cyrenaean author of the Telegony’ (Telegony F 4), and a few lines later ‘the
Colophonian poet of the Nostoi’ for information that must also come from the Telegony (F
6). There is a confusion here that will have to be addressed elsewhere, but the
interesting point for the moment is the ascription of the Nostoi to a Colophonian poet. We
cannot say who might have been meant, but the account of Teiresias’ or Calchas’ death
and burial at Colophon (Nostoi arg. 2) implies an interest in the region.82
Telegony
Proclus’ attribution to a Cyrenaean poet named Eugammon is more or less
uncontentious, for the following reasons.
(i) The only alternative ascription seems to be an error. Jerome in his version of
Eusebius’ Chronicle has an entry under Ol. 4. 1, Cinaethon Lacedaemonius poeta
qui Telegoniam scripsit agnoscitur, as well as a later one under Ol. 53. 2,
Eugammon Cyrenaeus qui Telegoniam fecit agnoscitur (similarly Syncellus in
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Greek). But qui Telegoniam scripsit is an unlikely way to identify Kinaithon, who
was better known for other works, and Scaliger plausibly conjectured
Genealogias.
(ii) According to Eustathius in F 4 the second son that Penelope bore to
Odysseus in the poem had the name Arkesilaos. Arkesilaos, or in Doric Arkesilas,
was the name of three kings of the Battiad (p.39) dynasty at Cyrene in the sixth
century and a fourth in the time of Pindar. It is hard to resist the inference (Bergk
53) that the poet of the Telegony lived at Cyrene and sought to honour the
Battiads by tracing their descent back to a son of Odysseus.
(iii) The Eusebian date for Eugammon, Ol. 53. 2=567/6 BCE, is much more
plausible for a Cyclic poet than those offered for Arktinos, Lesches, and Kinaithon.
It would fall within the reign of Arkesilas II. This fits so well that it raises a real
possibility that the dating had some basis in a documentary record.
(iv) Whether or not the Eusebian date is accurate, a considerable part of the
content of the Telegony is post-Odyssean invention, and the poem must be one of
the latest in the Trojan cycle, composed surely well into the sixth century, at a
time when a fair number of epics had been fixed in writing. A poet who then
added to the series a new one of such original content had a good chance of
attracting attention to himself as a creative spirit, and if a name was remembered
in connection with the poem it was more likely to be his, the author’s, than that of
some rhapsode who merely performed it. How widely was the Telegony ever
performed anyway?
Conclusions
Despite the common tendency in the classical period to treat all epic poetry as being by
Homer, we have seen that several other names were known in connection with Cyclic
poems as early as the fifth century: Stasinos, Thestorides, Lesches, perhaps Diodoros.
There is no reason to suspect any of the poets we hear of, except Kyprias of
Halicarnassus, of being a later invention. If we cannot follow any of them back into the
sixth century, it is surely only because of the lack of potential source texts for that period.
To the general public in the sixth century these names may well have been unfamiliar. It
was most likely the rhapsodes, the people who took the closest interest in what poems
existed or what hexameter texts anyone had a copy of, who knew names of poets
associated with them. Some names were preserved in a Homerid tradition that was bent
on denying their authorship of certain poems and asserting that they were in fact by
Homer. There seem to have been other Homeridai, however, who acknowledged only
the Iliad and Odyssey as the work of Homer. These were ‘the poems of Homer’ as
performed at the Great Panathenaea at (p.40) Athens from c.522,83 and the guild of
rhapsodes with whom Hipparchos contracted to mount the performances probably
insisted that these were the only true works of Homer and that other poems said to be
his were in fact by others. It may have been the same guild that denied the Homeric
authorship of the Hymn to Apollo and declared that it was the work of Kynaithos of Chios
(sch. Pind. Nem. 2. 1). In the same way they may have had names for the poets of the
Cypria, the Aethiopis, and the other epics.
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We cannot check the accuracy of any given ascription. There is a good case for accepting
Eugammon as the author of the Telegony. Arktinos is equally unchallenged as author of
the Aethiopis and Iliou Persis. There are no such strong supporting arguments in his
case as there are for Eugammon, but no grounds for rejecting the attribution other than
generalized scepticism towards any identifications of authors for the Cyclic poems.
The ancient ascriptions of the Cypria to Stasinos and of the Nostoi to Agias are not quite
so unanimous; and once unanimity breaks down we are helpless unless we can find a
reason why one or the other claim may be unsound. We are worst off in the case of the
Little Iliad, for which there are four claimants. At least some of them, I have suggested,
may have been rhapsodes associated with the poem in different areas. But that leaves us
unable to identify its actual author.
5. Reflexes in Archaic and Classical Art and Literature

The epics enjoyed their greatest currency in the two and a half centuries between about
580 and 330. As we have seen, several authors in this period refer to them directly.
Herodotus and Aristotle mention the Cypria by name, Pindar apparently alluded to it in
recognizable terms, and Plato quotes a couple of lines (F 29). Hellanicus and Aristotle
spoke of the Little Iliad. Various unidentified fragments quoted as ‘Homer’ by a
Hippocratic writer, two orators, and Aristotle (p.41) may be from Cyclic poems
(Aethiopis F 3a⋆, Little Iliad F 32⋆, Iliou Persis F 6, Nostoi F 12a⋆).
Scenes related to the Trojan War begin to appear in art from the end of the eighth
century and become numerous in the sixth and fifth.84 However, they cannot all reflect
the Homeric and Cyclic poems. Initially the poems we know about may not yet have been
in existence or not authoritative. Early seventh-century representations of the Wooden
Horse, for instance, prove that the legend was established, but not that the Little Iliad or
Iliou Persis was already current: the story had no doubt been familiar for some time
before those particular epics took shape. When we come to the fifth or fourth century we
can take the poems of the Cycle to have been the canonical epic sources, but there were
by then many non-epic sources in concurrence with them, such as the cantatas of
Stesichorus and the works of the tragedians and logographers, and an artist touching on
the events of the Trojan War did not necessarily have the epic in mind. Some images are
of things that may not have been related in the Cyclic poems at all, such as Peleus’
wrestling with Thetis, Achilles’ education by Cheiron, and his concealment among the
daughters of Lykomedes.
Similar caveats apply to literary evidence. Where a writer does not refer to a particular
epic or quote verses, it is in principle difficult to pin down his source. General references
to the abduction of Helen or the sack of Troy need not mean that he has the Cypria or the
Little Iliad or the Iliou Persis specifically in mind.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of cases where literary or pictorial treatments can
plausibly be related to epic models and might be capable, if used with discretion, of
yielding additional information about them. Two criteria may be stated that are applicable
here.
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Firstly, if we believe a particular person or motif to have been invented for one of the
Cyclic poems, then his or its occurrence elsewhere will be inferred to derive from the
poem, whether directly or indirectly. For example, I hold Memnon to be an untraditional
figure, unknown to the poet of the Iliad and created for the Memnonis that formed the
main part of the Aethiopis.85 So where he (p.42) appears in the Odyssey (4. 188, 11.
522), Alcman (PMGF 68), Stesichorus (P. Oxy. 3876 fr. 56. 5?), the additions to Hesiod’s
Theogony (984), Pindar (half a dozen times), and two plays of Aeschylus (Memnon and
Psychostasia), I think it is safe to say that these are all reflexes of the Memnonis or
Aethiopis. Similarly, Telegonos was invented for the Telegony, and it may be taken as the
sole source for Sophocles’ Odysseus Akanthoplex, in which he appeared in the same role
as in the epic.
Secondly, if we find brought together on one artefact two or more scenes that have no
organic connection with one another but were notable features of the same epic, this is a
strong indication that the artist had that epic in mind. I adduce three examples for
consideration.
(i) A bronze tripod leg from Olympia, dated to the last quarter of the seventh
century, shows in successive panels: (a) a man and a woman facing one another,
both grasping the same headband or garland; the man holds a lyre; (b) two
bearded men, one of them wearing a pilos, following a herald; (c) an armed man
strides purposefully after a naked boy who is running up the steps of an altar.86
These scenes are plausibly interpreted as (a) Paris seducing Helen, (b) the
embassy of Menelaos and Odysseus into Troy to demand Helen’s return, and (c)
Achilles catching and killing Troilos at the altar of Thymbraean Apollo. These would
all be episodes connected with the Trojan War, but it may be more pertinent that
they all came in the Cypria.
(ii) Three black-figure vases show Memnon on one side and Penthesileia on the
other.87 Memnon and Penthesileia never met; they coexisted only in the
Aethiopis. It does not follow that each of the three painters was separately
inspired by the epic, but this must have been the case with the one who first
established the pattern.
(iii) The Kadmos Painter, around 420, painted the Judgment of Paris and above it,
in the celestial register, Eris and Themis in conversation (LIMC Eris 7=Paridis
Iudicium 48). There could not be a clearer pointer to the Cypria, in which it was
Themis’ plan and Eris’ intervention at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis that led to
the (p.43) contest of the three goddesses. Themis and Eris have nothing to do
with one another otherwise.
It is important to keep hold of the provision ‘no organic connection’. Depictions of the
Wooden Horse may be accompanied by scenes from the sack of Troy, the capture of
women, the murder of children, and so on, but the Horse was an integral feature of the
sack narrative, and those elements all went together in the popular consciousness with no
necessary reference to a particular poem. There are many vases illustrating the sack with
a selection of the best-known episodes: Neoptolemos killing Priam, Astyanax being held
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up by the foot before being dashed to the ground, the Locrian Ajax seizing Cassandra
from Athena’s shrine, Aeneas escaping from Troy with Anchises, Menelaos regaining
Helen, Theseus’ sons recovering Aithra, the sacrifice of Polyxena.88 All these were
related in the Iliou Persis, and most of them in the Little Iliad too; no doubt some or all
were also touched on in Stesichorus’ Iliou Persis. Sometimes we can say that the artists
agree with the Iliou Persis version against the Little Iliad. But it is difficult to prove that
they had one particular text in mind. Probably they drew upon a general familiarity with
the salient events associated with the fall of Troy.
In view of the difficulties indicated I do not propose to list all the works of art that may
have been based on the Cyclic poems. I shall refer to particular ones in the commentary
where they appear significant or potentially so.
Literary reflexes of the Cycle are sometimes clearer. I have mentioned the allusions to
Memnon that begin as early as the Odyssey and Alcman. The Odyssey also contains an
account of events following Achilles’ death (24. 37–92) that is based either on the
Aethiopis or on some closely related poem. The Little Iliad and Nostoi too stand in near
relationships with the Odyssey, though not so as to imply their prior currency; see the
introductions to those poems.
Stesichorus’ use of epic models is plainly documented in PMGF 209, where we find
Telemachos in the house of Menelaos and Helen in a scene inspired by the Odyssey.
Stesichorus’ Iliou Persis no doubt owed much to the homonymous Cyclic epic, and his
Oresteia to the (p.44) Cyclic Nostoi.89 In another poem he may have told of the death
and funeral of Achilles.90 On the other hand his Helen palinode is evidence of his
propensity for drastic innovation, and it warns us not to argue back to the epics from the
fragments of his poems.
With Ibycus too we may assume knowledge of at least some of the Cyclic poems. He did
not himself, like Stesichorus, compose poems on epic themes, but he often alluded to the
legend of Troy: Deiphobos’ love of Helen (PMGF 297); the sack of the city (S151);
Cassandra (S151. 12; 303); Troilos (S151. 41; 224); the sacrifice of Polyxena (307);
Menelaos sparing Helen’s life, disarmed by her beauty (296).
It is in Pindar that we find the most striking response to the Cycle. His interest in the
Aeacid Achilles prompts him in several poems to take a panoramic sweep across the
Cypria, Iliad, and Aethiopis, as in the Eighth Isthmian (26–58) he passes from the
marriage of Thetis (where Themis’ role derives from the Cypria) to Achilles’ wounding of
Telephos in Mysia, his decisive contribution to the defeat of Troy, his killing of Hector and
Memnon, and his funeral at which the Muses sang laments. Parts of the sequence appear
in the Second Olympian (79–83: Achilles as slayer of Hector, Kyknos, Memnon); the Third
Pythian (86–103: the wedding of Peleus and Thetis attended by the gods, Achilles felled
by an arrow and lamented on his pyre); the Third Nemean (56–63: Peleus and Thetis,
Achilles and Memnon); and the Fifth Isthmian (39–42: Telephos, Kyknos, Hector,
Memnon). Memnon’s victory over Antilochos, who sacrificed himself to save his father
Nestor, is related in Pyth. 6. 29–42, and his defeat by Achilles in Nem. 6. 49–54, where
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Pindar cites older poets who had found out the highway that he is studiously following.91
There are further references to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis in Nem. 4. 65–8 and 5.
22–39. Achilles’ posthumous translation to the shining island in the Black Sea is mentioned
at Nem. 4. 49–51.
Pindar uses other Cyclic stories too. In the Tenth Nemean he retells, after the Cypria, the
tale of the battle of the Dioskouroi with the sons of Aphares, which led to their curious
condition of (p.45) immortality on alternate days (cf. Pyth. 11. 61–4). Elsewhere he
adverts to the dispute over Achilles’ arms that drove Ajax to suicide (Nem. 7. 20–30; 8.
23–34; Isth. 4. 34–9); the fetching of Philoctetes from Lemnos to win the war (Pyth. 1. 50–
5); Clytaemestra’s murder of Agamemnon and Cassandra (with a look back at the
sacrifice of Iphigeneia), and the killing of her and Aegisthus by Orestes with Pylades (Pyth.
11. 15–37). In the Sixth Paean (73–120) he skims through the whole saga from the
Judgment of Paris to the war, the death of Achilles, the fetching of Neoptolemos from
Skyros, his sack of the city and the slaughter of Priam at his house altar, and his nostos.
As elsewhere (Nem. 4. 51–3, 7. 34–47), Pindar uses a more developed version of
Neoptolemos’ fate than can be ascribed to the Cyclic Nostoi, but for the rest he follows
the Cycle.
Bacchylides’ attitude to the Cycle stands in notable contrast to Pindar’s. Although his
Antenoridai dithyramb (Poem 15) is based on an episode from the Cypria, and there are
other occasional references to Cyclic material,92 in the major celebration of Aeacid
Achilles in 13. 100–67 he confines himself to the events of the Iliad, where Pindar would
have opened up a much wider perspective.
The tragedians found the Cycle a rich fund of material to dramatize. I have mentioned
Aeschylus’ reported characterization of his tragedies as ‘slices from Homer’s big
dinners’; he used other sources such as Stesichorus too, but the epics were
undoubtedly important to him. The themes he treated included, from the Cypria, the
story of Telephos and the sacrifice of Iphigeneia; from the Aethiopis, the story of
Memnon, the adjudication of arms, and the suicide of Ajax; from the Little Iliad, the
fetching of Philoctetes; from the Nostoi, the killing of Agamemnon and Orestes’ revenge.
Sophocles, according to Athenaeus (277e), positively ‘delighted in the Epic Cycle, to the
extent of composing entire dramas in line with the mythology in it’—meaning perhaps that
he sometimes followed the story as the epic source gave it without much modification.
The list of Sophoclean plays on Cyclic themes is a long one,93 and it includes the only
known drama to be based on the Telegony, the Odysseus Akanthoplex.
(p.46) It is unnecessary to go into the use of the Cycle by Euripides94 and the minor
tragedians. It is worth noting that certain subjects such as Telephos and Philoctetes were
taken up by several dramatists, who were on the whole reacting to each other rather
than all being focused on the Cypria or Little Iliad.
Sicilian and Attic comedy too could draw on this material. Epicharmus wrote a Philoktetas.
Cratinus’ Nemesis was based on the story of Helen’s birth as told in the Cypria, and his
Dionysalexandros on the Judgment of Paris. Aristophanes parodied some verses from the
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Little Iliad (Eq. 1056f.=F 2. 4f.) and must have counted on their being familiar to a
proportion of his audience. He also quotes the first line of the Epigonoi as something that
a boy might learn to recite (Pax 1270).
This raises the question whether and to what extent the Cyclic poems may have been
used in education. Certainly they played a much smaller role than the Iliad and Odyssey.
They do not seem to have figured in the education of Xenophon’s Nikeratos, who says
that his father, concerned that he should turn into a good man, made him learn πάντα τὰ
Ὁµήρου ἔπη, ‘and even now I could recite the whole Iliad and Odyssey by heart’ (Symp.
3. 5). The two opening lines of the Little Iliad, however, are found on two late fifth-
century sherds from Olbia and Chersonesos.95 Another sherd from Olbia (SEG 30. 933)
has Od. 9. 39, Ἰλιόθεν µε ϕέρων ἄνεµος Κικόνεσσι πέλασσεν, the first line of Odysseus’
narrative of his wanderings. It looks as if these were school texts, the Little Iliad being
taken as a standard account of the final phase of the Trojan War.
The sophists turned readily to Cyclic subject matter for their jeux d’esprit, though the
epics were clearly not the only sources present to their consciousness. Prodicus’ myth of
Heracles at the crossroads, where the two goddesses Virtue and Vice invited him to
choose between them, was based, like Cratinus’ play mentioned above, on the Judgment
of Paris.96 Gorgias in his Helen set out to defend the heroine against the unanimously
unfavourable opinion held by those who listened to ‘the poets’ (DK 82 B 11. 2). The focus
is on her elopement with Paris, and among the poets in question the author of (p.47) the
Cypria held prime place. In another essay (B 11a) Gorgias made Palamedes defend
himself against Odysseus’ accusations of treachery, while Alcidamas wrote a speech for
Odysseus against Palamedes; these writers, however, are following the tragedians’
version of the Palamedes affair and not that of the Cypria. Alcidamas’ piece contains a
wider range of reference to events of the Trojan War, some of it innovative. But his
account of the abduction of Helen (18) clearly owes something to the Cyclic account; see
on Cypria arg. 2b. Antisthenes wrote a pair of speeches for Ajax and Odysseus in their
dispute over the arms of Achilles. The adjudication is being made by the Greeks (Od. 1),
so Antisthenes is apparently thinking of fifth-century versions of the story rather than the
Cyclic ones; see on Little Iliad F 2.
6. The Cycle in the Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods

The fortunes of the Cycle in the early Hellenistic period are poorly documented. The
prose epitomes were by now almost certainly current, and probably coming to be more
widely consulted than the original poems.97 While the Iliad and Odyssey continued to
enjoy high esteem, interest in other archaic epics was fading and they were less
frequently copied. It is striking that not a single papyrus fragment of any of the Cyclic
poems has yet been identified. Still, quotations and citations show that they remained
available for another half-millennium, at least in places, and that some authors made direct
use of them. In the late fourth or early third century Clearchus cited Cyclic sources in his
work on proverbs (Thebaid F 8⋆, Little Iliad F 11). Later in the third century Chrysippus
quoted a fragment thought to come from the Cypria (F 21 ⋆). In the early second(?)
Lycophron, who generally avoids the standard versions of myths found in the Cyclic
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poems, seems in at least one passage to base himself on the Cypria: see on F 12⋆.
Aristarchus paid some attention to the Cyclic poems, if only as post-Homeric compositions
to be excluded from consideration in (p.48) interpreting Homer, or adduced only to
identify un-Homeric elements. Thus on Od. 4. 248 he claimed dismissively that ‘the Cyclic
poet’ misunderstood ∆ΕΚΤΗΙ as a proper name; ten lines later he noted that οἱ
νεώτεροι—no doubt again meaning a Cyclic poet—interpreted Homer’s ϕρόνιν as
‘booty’; and a little later he athetized five lines (285-9) on the ground that ‘Antiklos comes
from the Cycle’. He does not deign to specify the Little Iliad, it is just ‘the Cycle’ or οἱ
νεώτεροι, but he has evidently studied the passages in question.
Aristarchus never, so far as we know, quoted verses from the Cycle, but other
Alexandrian commentators did: many of our fragments come from non-Aristarchean
scholia to Homer or to other poets (Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes,
Lycophron). These reflect scholarly activity of the late Hellenistic and early imperial
periods.
In the first century BCE Philodemus has several citations of the Cypria and one of the
Nostoi (besides others from the Alcmeonis, Titanomachy, and Naupaktia), which he
probably took over from earlier writers. At Rome a poet Naevius produced a Cypria
Ilias, which seems to have been a rendering of the Cyclic Cypria. Dionysius of
Halicarnassus cites Arktinos, i.e. the Iliou Persis (F 4), on the question of what became of
the true Palladion, but he may have had this from an older source. Strabo quotes from
several early epics, though as it happens none of the Trojan ones.
Virgil’s incomparably vivid account of the fall of Troy in Aeneid 2 shows a detailed
knowledge of Greek sources, and we should certainly expect him to have prepared
himself for the task by reading the Little Iliad and/or the Iliou Persis. He could not have
managed with the epitomes alone. The artist or artists of the only slightly later Tabulae
Iliacae do seem to have used the epitomes, as we saw in §2, but they knew more of the
detail of the stories than those alone could have supplied: for example, that Penthesileia
rode a horse, and that Odysseus and Diomedes used the city sewer to smuggle the
Palladion out of Troy. There is no reason to deny them some use of the poetic texts. For
the central scene on the Tabula Capitolina, where the source is named as Stesichorus,
dependence on an epitome must be very doubtful, there being no evidence that such an
epitome of the Stesichorean poem ever existed.
Apollodorus’ narrative of the war, as we have seen, runs parallel to that of Proclus and
must in the main be based on the periochai. But (p.49) occasionally (at Little Iliad F 12,
Nostoi F 11; cf. Cypria F 11) he cites the poems by title for divergent details that are too
specific to have been given by the epitomes, even if we assume that they have suffered
some abridgment. These must come from direct study of the poems, whether by
Apollodorus or an earlier mythographer.
Herodian, working in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, has a verse quotation from the Cypria
(F 30) that he may well have found for himself. His contemporary Pausanias had a special
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antiquarian interest in early epics and often cites them; he had evidently built up a private
collection of rare texts of this sort. He has five citations from the Cypria, fourteen from
the Little Iliad, three from the Nostoi, and one from the Telegony. At Cypria F 27 he says
he has personally read the poem, and he makes similar declarations in regard to the
Hesiodic Ehoiai, the Naupaktia, and the genealogical poetry of Asios and Kinaithon.
Wilamowitz, who always thought ill of Pausanias after trying to use him as a guide-book in
Greece, argued that these were mendacious claims and that the poems in question had
long ceased to be current.98 Actually, of all the authors who quote fragments from the
Epic Cyclic and other early epics, Pausanias is the only one who says explicitly that he
read them. He cites them for much valuable information that is not attested elsewhere
and is in no way suspect. The only ground for denying that he used primary sources is
the dogmatic and question-begging premise that they were no longer extant in his time.
Certainly they would no longer have been available everywhere, and few of Pausanias’
contemporaries ever looked at them; that is no doubt why he makes a point of mentioning
that he has. His statements must be treated as valuable evidence for the book situation in
his time.
In the next generation Clement of Alexandria and Athenaeus give us a further series of
fragments, mostly verbatim ones. Clement’s learning is in principle derivative: he owes his
quotations of Epigonoi F 2, Cypria F 31, and Nostoi F 7, like his statement that
Eugammon stole his Thesprotian book from Musaeus, to an older collection of pagan
plagiarisms that goes back to the Hellenistic writer Aristobulus, and there is little chance
that his other quotations from Cyclic (p.50) poems (Cypria F 9, Little Iliad F 14) were
drawn from personal reading of the epics.
With Athenaeus the question is more open. He read widely in poetry and prose, and from
the historical and antiquarian works that he perused he often picked up quotations from
older writers of which he had no direct knowledge. On the other hand his extended
quotations from the Cypria (F 5, 6, 10, 18) have the appearance of passages that he has
found for himself. He more than once adverts to the controversy over this poem’s
authorship, as if the Cypria is more to him than a title of a lost work. He cites F 5 as
standing ἐν τῶι α′, and Nostoi F 12 as from the third book of the Ἀτρειδῶν κάθοδος;
these are the only instances of Cyclic epics being cited by book number. The fact that he
uses the same idiosyncratic title Ἀτρειδῶν κάθοδος in another place (Nostoi F 2) makes it
unlikely that he took both citations from secondary sources. Nor do I see any reason to
assume this for Little Iliad F 31—who, pray, had previously collected literary references
to cucumbers?—or Telegony F 1 ⋆.
After 200 ce direct knowledge of the Cyclic poems seems really to fade out, unless we
allow for the preservation of Eugammon’s Telegony in his native Cyrene for a couple of
centuries more (see on Telegony F 2⋆). It is natural to assume that authors such as
Porphyry (Little Iliad F 3) and later Latin grammarians (Iliou Persis F 1, Aethiopis F 5)
are dependent on older sources. Quintus of Smyrna writes a new epic covering the same
ground as the Aethiopis, Little Iliad, and Iliou Persis, not to compete with old epics that
are still current but to fill a gap that their disappearance has created. I find no indication
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that he had direct knowledge of the Cyclic epics, and the same goes for Triphiodorus and
the considerably later Colluthus. A more comprehensive epic, embracing the whole of
mythology and history probably down to the time of Alexander the Great, was composed
c.230 by Pisander of Laranda, his sixty-book Theogamiai.99 We have practically nothing of
it, but his account of the sack of Troy seems to have been based on Virgil’s. Again it
seems unlikely that the Cyclic poems were still available for him to draw on. Philoponus in
the sixth century associates the appearance of Pisander’s permagnum opus with the
obsolescence of the old epics:100
(p.51) Πεισάνδρου δὲ τὴν αὐτὴν πραγµατείαν ποιησαµένου, λέγω δὴ πλείστην

ἱστορίαν κατὰ τάξιν συναγαγόντος, ἀντιποιησαµένου δὲ καὶ εὐεπείας,
καταϕρονηθῆναί ϕασι τὰ τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ ποιητῶν συγγράµµατα· διὸ µηδὲ
εὑρίσκεσθαι τὰ ποιήµατα τὰ ἐν τοῖς Κύκλοις ἀναγεγραµµένα.
But after Pisander covered the same area, I mean brought together a great
abundance of story in ordered sequence, while aspiring to fine diction too, they say
that the writings of the poets who preceded him fell into disesteem, which is why
the poems listed in the Cycles are not even to be found any more.
This probably overstates the effect produced by Pisander’s poem, but the chronology
appears to be about right.
7. Reconstructing the Poems

My aims in the commentary go beyond discussion of the individual fragments and
testimonia. Proclus’ summaries give us at least a partial framework in which to
reconstruct each poem’s narrative structure and content. I accordingly take the
fragments in alternation with small segments from Proclus, asking always what kind of epic
action lies behind the very abbreviated prose account and how one thing was made to
lead to another. As Wagner wrote, ‘In any attempt at reconstruction we must seek above
all to attain a lively conception of how the available dry data about the content may have
looked in the broad treatment of the poem itself’.101 We must be guided in this by our
knowledge of epic compositional technique as we see it in the Homeric poems, while
recognizing that the Cyclic epics were less expansive and may have been in some
respects less accomplished.
In the Iliad and Odyssey there is much preparation by means of debates at the divine or
human level and much prompting of action by the intervention of individual deities. A
prose epitomator eliminates this sort of thing: he is concerned to describe the action itself
and how the story moved on from one decisive event to the next. We have to supply the
preparatory mechanism where it seems (p.52) required, for example in the Nostoi to
trigger Orestes’ return from exile. Occasionally I have sketched out hypothetical
dialogues to illustrate how the poet may have managed things.
Where the action extends over many days, the epic poet punctuates his narrative by
marking nightfall and the return of dawn at suitable intervals. The epitomator disregards
this and produces a continuous account without measurement of time. We should
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restore it where we think we can. For the Aethiopis and Little Iliad I have worked out
timetables that, if not certain in every detail, will I think give a not wholly misleading idea
of how the narratives were structured.
In the Nostoi it is apparent from other sources that a major episode involving a
description of the underworld has been completely excluded from Proclus’ summary. We
are left to guess where it fitted in. It was a diversion from the main storyline, it did not
advance the plot, and we can well understand why it was passed over. But we are bound
to wonder what other inorganic episodes may have disappeared from the record.
On the other hand it is encouraging to observe that some digressions of no structural

importance have maintained their place in Proclus. In the Cypria he records that Helenos
and Cassandra uttered prophecies before Paris set out for Sparta. When Helen
absconds, he tells us that Iris was sent to take the news to Menelaos. When Menelaos
goes to consult Nestor, he lists four tales from the past that Nestor related to him ‘in a
digression’, ἐν παρεκβάσει. In the Aethiopis he mentions that Thetis warned Achilles that
his fate with linked with Memnon’s, and in the Little Iliad he notes that it was through an
initiative of Athena’s that Epeios built the Wooden Horse. In the Nostoi likewise we read
that ‘Athena set Agamemnon and Menelaos in dispute about the voyage away’, and in the
Telegony we are told about a fine mixing-bowl that Odysseus received as a gift from
Polyxenos and even about the decoration on it. None of this has survived in the
Apollodorus epitome. Proclus was reproducing summaries of what was in particular
poems, while Apollodorus was extracting a quasi-factual narrative from such summaries
and other sources.102
Apollodorus often gives details that are lacking in Proclus, and many of these extra details
may derive from a fuller version of the (p.53) Cyclic epitomes. There is a standing
temptation to assume so. But we know he was using other sources besides, and
sometimes the fuller information may come from these and not correspond to anything in
the epics. So caution is necessary. Davies (1986), 105–7, gives examples of additional
details in Apollodorus that suit the epic manner and may reasonably be attributed to the
Cyclic poems, and of others that cannot, having been brought in from later and better-
known versions of the myths. I shall cite Apollodorus where relevant and consider on its
merits each case where he offers something more than Proclus.
Vase paintings are another potential but tricky source for subsidiary details of Cyclic
episodes. To begin with, as I have emphasized in §5 above, there is the difficulty of
determining whether the artist has a particular literary source in mind. Even when he
does, experts on vases are all agreed that the images cannot be treated as illustrations of
a text and that it was not a painter’s aim to achieve an exact representation of what was in
a poem. Where the scene depicted is recognizable and we are inclined to connect it with a
particular epic, there is a temptation to attribute features of the picture to the poem
without there being independent testimony for them, and in particular to suppose that
any named figures must have played a part in the episode. But as Luckenbach warned,
Divergences from poetic sources often occur, especially in the naming of persons;
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they are partly due to inexact knowledge of poetry, partly arbitrary. Amplifications
of a scene are very common. Above all there is a tendency to put in persons who
have some connection with the scene in question. In the archaic period persons of
no significance at all are sometimes added.103
Robert noted the tendency in the iconographic tradition to add more and more figures to
mythological scenes over time, and he warned against putting much weight on them:
Of course these additions, which spread like a lush carpet of moss over an old
rocky core, are precisely the ones that may only be used with very great (p.54)
circumspection in drawing conclusions about the literary source. Here the artist is
even less dependent than otherwise on the poetic text, here much more than
usually he is creating out of the popular concept of the saga, determined by the
poetry as this itself was.104
Where we are in a position to control the details, they sometimes turn out to be anything
but reliable. Kleitias, the painter of the François Vase, included in its elaborate decoration
a depiction of the chariot race at the games for Patroklos. As in the Iliad, which must have
been the poetic source he had in mind, there are five chariots competing. He labels all the
drivers. But only one of the names he supplies, Diomedes, is that of a man who took part
in the Homeric race, and he shows him in third place instead of in the lead.105 So when on
the same vase he shows a grand procession of divinities arriving for the wedding of
Peleus and Thetis it will hardly be prudent to infer that he is faithfully reproducing the
guest-list from the Cypria (or some other epic that described the event).106 Another
Athenian painter of the same period, Sophilos, had also represented the chariot race at
the games for Patroklos (but the participants’ names do not survive), and Peleus’
wedding with almost the same set of deities being received. (For the details see on
Cypria F 2.) The agreement of the two artists adds nothing to the strength of the case, as
they were clearly not working independently of each other. The best we can do in the
circumstances is note the existence of the paintings, recognize the possibility that they
reflect the epic, but leave the question open.
For the rest, solvitur ambulando (if at all).
Notes:
(1 ) Call. Epigr. 28. 1 Pf.=2. 1 Gow–Page (HE 1041) ἐχθαίρω τὸ ποίηµα τὸ κυκλικόν (on
which see Alan Cameron, Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton 1995), 393–402); Hor.
Ars poet. 136 nec sic incipies ut scriptor cyclicus olim; sch. Eur. Andr. 10 τὸν τὴν
Περσίδα συντεταχότα κυκλικὸν ποιητήν. The Homeric scholia sometimes refer to οἱ
κυκλικοί), while scholiasts on Pindar and Sophocles refer to ‘the Cyclic Thebaid’ (to
distinguish it from the Thebaid of Antimachus); so too Ath. 465e.
(2) Inscr. Cret. i. 280 (Priansos), κύκλον ἱστορηµέναν ὑπὲρ Κρήτης καὶ τῶν ἐν Κρήται
γεγονότων θεῶν τε καὶ ἡρώων, ποιησάµενος τὰν συναγωγὰν ἐκ πολλῶν ποιητα̃ ν καὶ
ἱστοριογράϕων.
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(3) Cf. Welcker i. 31–8; Davies (1986), 96–8.
(4) Cf. also Philo of Byblos, FGrHist 790 F 2 ap. Eus. PE 1. 10. 40= Titanomachia test. 1
Bernabé.
(5) Valenzuela Montenegro 264–7, 377–80, and pl. 37–8; PEG 1. See W. McLeod, TAPA
115 (1985), 153–65.
(6) On them see Sadurska; Valenzuela Montenegro; Michael Squire, The Iliad in a
Nutshell: Visualizing Epic on the Tabulae Iliacae (Oxford 2011).
(7) Suggested by Valenzuela Montenegro 379. The participle ὄντα shows that the title
was a masculine singular or a neuter plural. Welcker supposed that the Milesian poet was
Arktinos, but none of the poems known to have been ascribed to him will fit here. The
Naupaktia were ascribed by most people to a Milesian, according to Paus. 10. 38. 11, but
he does not supply the name.
(8) The numeral is so elucidated by D. Petrain, ZPE 166 (2008), 83; it had previously
been read as 4,400. But it is a mystery what this epic longer than the Odyssey could have
been. Was 14,400 lines a total for a group of two or three poems taken together?
(9) The central title ΤΡΩΙΚΟΣ on the Tabula Capitolina (Valenzuela Montenegro 32) has
sometimes (as by Heyne 312; Wilamowitz (1884), 333, 360) been taken to stand for
Τρωϊκὸς κύκλος, but the noun to be supplied is more probably πίναξ, ‘tablet’ (as
Wüllner 4).
(10) See the discussion of Severyns (1938–63), ii. 65–9, who renders ‘Manuel abrégé de
littérature’.
(11 ) ‘There have been many epic poets; the best of them are Homer, Hesiod,
Peisandros, Panyassis, and Antimachos.’
(12) ‘There follows on this the so-called Cypria, transmitted in eleven books; we will
discuss its [the title’s] spelling later, so as not to obstruct the flow of the present account.’
(13) See below, §4.
(14) On all this cf. Severyns (1938–63), iii. 246–50, 290.
(15) Sch. Greg. Laud. Basil. Magn. 12=Cyclus epicus test. 17 Bernabé, ‘They also speak
of “encyclical” poetry in a special sense; Proclus the Platonist writes about it in a
monograph on the Epic Cycle and goes through the poets’ virtues and particularities.’
(16) H. Valesius, Emendationum libri quinque et de Critica libri duo (Amsterdam 1740),
168f.; others cited by Welcker ii. 500; Monro 341; R. Beutler, RE xxiii. 207 f.; M.
Hillgruber, Rh. Mus. 133 (1990), 397.
(17) Cf. Welcker i. 3–7, ii. 499–504.
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(18) Now ably edited by Patrizia Marzillo, Der Kommentar des Proklos zu Hesiods
Â„,,Werken und Tagen“ (Tübingen 2010).
(19) A. J. Friedl, Die Homer-Interpretation des Neuplatonikers Proklos (Diss. Würzburg

1936), 55, ‘Mag auch die Verschiedenheit der Interessensphären an sich weniger ins
Gewicht fallen, so müßten wir doch, die Abfassung der Chrestomathie durch den
Neuplatoniker Proklos vorausgesetzt, jedes eingehendere literarhistorische Interesse in
den Abschnitten des Politeiakommentars, die oft genug Anreiz und Gelegenheit zur
Verwertung desselben boten, vermissen’. On p. 53 Friedl had noted that in that
commentary (i. 173ff.) Proclus accepts the story that Homer was blinded because of
Helen, whereas in the Life of Homer the author of the Chrestomathy denies that Homer
could have been blind.
(20) M. Schmidt, Didymi Chalcenteri Fragmenta (Leipzig 1854), 386–96; Severyns (1938–
63), ii. 98–102, 117–25. On the epikedeion Proclus followed Tryphon: Severyns ii. 209f.
(21 ) Severyns (1938–63), ii. 233–43.
(22) N. G. Wilson, Scholars of Byzantium (London 1983), 39f.
(23) Phot. 319a30 λέγει δὲ ὡς τοῦ ἐπικοῦ κύκλου τὰ ποιήµατα διασώιζεται καὶ
σπουδάζεται τοῖς πολλοῖς οὐχ οὕτω διὰ τὴν ἀρετὴν ὡς διὰ τὴν ἀκολουθίαν τῶν ἐν
αὐτῶι πραγµάτων.
(24) De musica 1133e (the elder Olympos) τοὺς νόµους τοὺς ἁρµονικοὺς ἐξήνεγκεν εἰς
τὴν ῾Ελλάδα οἷς νῦν χρῶνται οἱ ῞Ελληνες ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς τῶν θεῶν, 1135d, 1136b,
1137e–38b, 1140c–e, 1141b, 1145a.
(25) Rh. Mus. 133 (1990), 397-404; cf. id., Die pseudoplutarchische Schrift De Homero
(Stuttgart–Leipzig 1994), i. 69.
(26) Valesius writes as if ps.-Alexander had specified the Chrestomathy: ‘Sunt enim hi libri
[sc. those of the Chrestomathy] alterius Procli longe antiquioris, ut didici ex commentariis
Alexandri Aphrodisiensis in Aristotelis Elenchos. Hic enim … utitur testimonio Athenaei
Grammatici & Procli in Chrestomathia.’ The text in fact reads ὥσπερ Ἀθήναιος ἐν τοῖς
∆ειπνοσοϕισταῖς καὶ Πρόκλος ἐν τῆι τῶν ἑορτῶν ἀπαριθµήσει εἰρήκασι. It looks as if
ps.-Alexander found a passage of the Deipnosophistai no longer extant, where Athenaeus
had cited this Proclus. A. Tresp, Die Fragmente der griechischen Kultschriftsteller
(Giessen 1914), 108 f., accepts the identity of the author of the Chrestomathy with the
Neoplatonist, and is inclined to think that he was also the Heortologist.
(27) Welcker i. 7; cf. A. Kappelmacher, RE vi. 1534f.
(28) Cf. M. Schmidt, Didymi Chalcenteri Fragmenta, 391.
(29) Or pseudo-Apollodorus if you prefer. He was not of course the celebrated
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Apollodorus of Athens, the friend of Aristarchus, but there is no reason why he should
not have been called Apollodorus; it is a common name. I follow the usual assumption that
he wrote in the first or second century CE.
(30) R. Wagner, Rh. Mus. 41 (1886), 147f. He had already found and was working on the
Vatican epitome.
(31 ) E. Bethe, Hermes 26 (1891), 612, 625; confuted by Wagner, NJb. 145 (1892), 241–
56.
(32) Already noted by Salmasius, 594F, ‘Apollodorus … cujus Bibliotheca nihil aliud fuit
quam epicus cyclus pedestri sermone compositus. Inde incepit unde κύκλος ἐπικὸς; ibi
desinebat, ubi ille finem fabulandi fecit. … (595B) Ex his perspicue cognosci potest
Apollodori Bibliothecam nihil aliud fuisse quam σύνοψιν & ἐπιτοµὴν cycli epici.’ This goes
much too far, as Wüllner 3 observed.
(33) Wagner, Rh. Mus. 41 (1886), 149; cf. Davies (1986), 104–6.
(34) Cf. West (1983), 124f.; (1985), 44–6.
(35) Severyns (1938–63), iii. 122, 281f.
(36) There is a similar relationship, at least in parts, between the Iliad epitome on the
Tabula Capitolina and that in Apollodorus: see Mancuso 694 n. 1; Valenzuela Montenegro
370f., 374–6.
(37) Wilamowitz (1884), 332–6; Wagner, Rh. Mus. 41 (1886), 147–9; Hartmann 9;
Wilamowitz, Kl. Schr. v(2) (Berlin 1937), 74f.; Bethe 207–10.
(38) ‘The compiler did not break off his Little Iliad at the exact point where it was taken up
by the Iliupersis of Arctinus, but (probably) at the first convenient stopping-place after
that point’ (D. B. Monro, JHS 4 (1883), 320).
(39) Hartmann 28, ‘Es ist nicht wahrscheinlich, daß derjenige die Auszüge so
verstümmelte, der sie zuvor selbst angefertigt hatte. Wer ausdrücklich die Titel
voranstellte und dann mit περιέχοντα τάδε fortfuhr, hat gewiß die ganzen Inhalte
bringen wollen.’
(40) Hartmann, ibid.
(41 ) West (2011b), 120–2.
(42) West (2011a), 30f.
(43) Kullmann 5–11; West (2011a), 32–5.
(44) So e.g. Heubeck 93.
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(45) West (2011a), 428–30.
(46) Schade 122f., 151.
(47) Most of these are already alluded to in the Iliad. The Teuthrania episode is not, but
we now know from P. Oxy. 4708 that it was current as early as Archilochus.
(48) Cf. Nitzsch (1852), 389.
(49) Ibid. 41f.
(50) Cf. Wilamowitz (1884), 368.
(51 ) Appendix Romana B 1 (West (2003c), 454); Aristoxenus fr. 91a Wehrli; taken by
Bethe 384 as a continuation from the Cypria.
(52) C. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus (Königsberg 1829), 417n.
(53) See West (2011a), 81 and 428–30.
(54) This was clearly seen by Heyne 297: ‘Neque umquam tale corpus plurium poetarum
aliter confectum [esse constat], quam ut grammaticus aliquis eorum recensum seu
indicem faceret, et singulari forte libello aut in opere grammatico ederet; nec facile
omnes, quorum magnus fuit numerus, qui Genealogias deorum, Titanomachias,
Gigantomachias, Argonautica, Thebaica, Heracleas, et sic porro, tum in rebus Iliacis, qui
Νόστους scripserunt, tali indice enumerati fuerunt.’ (So grammarians differed in their
views of the Cycle’s compass.)
(55) Philoponus on Arist. Anal. post. 77b32, p. 157. 11 Wallies=Cyclus epicus, test. 28
Bernabé (PEG 7).
(56) A few lines earlier he has written of a poem entitled Kyklos that some people ascribed
to Homer; he has got this from Proclus’ Life of Homer, 9 οἱ µέντοι γε ἀρχαῖοι καὶ τὸν
Κύκλον ἀναϕέρουσιν εἰς αὐτόν.
(57) Soph. elench. 171a10, where it is ‘the poetry of Homer’; Anal. post. 77b32. Cf.
Schwartz 154–5; id., Hermes 75 (1940), 5–6; R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship
from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford 1968), 73.
(58) So Wüllner 5.
(59) On the Borgia plaque the length of the epics mentioned is given in lines, and this
corresponds to what Philoponus says in the passage quoted above. Proclus, however,
gives the lengths of the Troy epics in books. This may represent a later replacement for
the stichometrical data; it is uncertain how early the book divisions were made.
(60) Sinn 94, 97, 101.
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(61 ) Wilamowitz (1884), 328–80. His arguments were criticized by C. Rothe, Die Ilias als
Dichtung (Paderborn 1910), 117f.; Merkelbach 138-41, who notes that in his later
Homer books, Die Ilias und Homer and Die Heimkehr des Odysseus, Wilamowitz
modified his scepticism considerably.
(62) Wilamowitz (1884), 353, ‘um 500 sind alle gedichte von Homer; um 350 sind von
Homer im wesentlichen nur noch Ilias und Odyssee, alle andern sind ihm abgesprochen
und werden nun durch hypothesen bald dem bald jenem beigelegt, einzeln auch noch
dem Homer; um 150 sind alle diese hypothesen wieder beseitigt, die gedichte alle
anonym.’
(63) Cf. Wilamowitz (1884), 351–3; E. Hiller, Rh. Mus. 42 (1887), 321–61.
(64) Welcker i. 186; Hiller, Rh. Mus. 42 (1887), 324–6.
(65) F. G. Welcker, Die Aeschylische Trilogie Prometheus (Darmstadt 1824), 484f.
(66) He adds that ‘the poets who are said to be earlier than these men were in my opinion
later’; he is thinking here of such figures as Orpheus and Musaeus rather than of any
authors of Cyclic poems.
(67) Rh. Mus. 42 (1887), 338.
(68) This is the source of Philoponus’ idea that there was a poem entitled Kyklos that
some attributed and some denied to Homer; cf. above, n. 56.
(69) Cf. F. Jacoby, Hermes 68 (1933), 5=Kl. phil. Schr. i. 6; West (1999), 365=(2011b),
410; (2011a), 8, 9. Genealogical poems, by contrast, seem to have agreed authors:
Hesiod, Kinaithon, Asius, Hegesinoos, Chersias.
(70) West (2011a), 9f.
(71 ) O. Müller, ZA 1835, 1174; Nitzsch (1852), 59–61; E. Hiller, Rh. Mus. 42 (1887), 358;
cf. Wilamowitz (1916), 405 n. 1. Hiller 357f. emphasizes that so long as written copies of
poems were almost exclusively owned by rhapsodes, people depended for information
about authorship on these rhapsodes, many of whom may have had little interest in
preserving the correct names.
(72) R. Merkelbach–J. Stauber, Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten, i

(Stuttgart–Leipzig 1998), 40, no. 01/12/02, lines 45f.
(73) Cf. Wilamowitz (1916), 435. For the Cyprian claim to Homer cf. Alcaeus of Messene,
Epigr. 22 G.–P. (HE 144), Paus. 10. 24. 3, Certamen 3, Vitae 4. 2, 6. 2, 7. 2 (Callicles
FGrHist 758 F 13).
(74) Names in Στασι are quite common in Cyprus, as noted by Welcker (i. 287) and
others.
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(75) Cf. Wilamowitz (1916), 428 n. 2.
(76) I can make nothing of the appearance of Lesches’ name in a reference to the contest
of Homer and Hesiod in Plut. Sept. sap. conv. 153f–4a. See my discussion in CQ 17
(1967), 438–40.
(77) G. Bernhardy, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur (Halle 1836–45), ii. 153, ‘Die
Apotheose des Helden auf Leuke verräth den Milesischen Dichter’.
(78) Even if Wilamowitz (1916), 405, were right in seeing Lesches as a discovery of
Phaenias’, it would remain strange that he is passed over in a survey of those to whom
the poem was attributed. Robert (1881), 227, argued that Hellanicus either did not know
the Lesches tradition or had very strong reason to reject it. Bergk 31 guessed that
Hellanicus’ reference (to Kinaithon) came in his Karneonikai.
(79) Similarly H. Weil, RPh 11 (1887), 2, but with Λέσβιον, not Πυρραῖον. Cf. Tz. Exeg. Il.
p. 45. 10 Hermann (PEG 115), who includes the sequence Λέσχης Πυρραῖος Κιναίθων τέ
τις Λακεδαιµόνιος καὶ ὁ Ἐρυθραῖος ∆ιόδωρος in a list of those who have written Iliads.
This Diodoros is not mentioned anywhere else, so Tzetzes is certainly drawing on the
Euripides scholium or a related text.
(80) W. Schmid, Rh. Mus. 48 (1893), 626–8, thought that Hellanicus must have spoken of
Lesches (and established the -εω genitive) but denied his claim to authorship.
(81 ) The manuscripts give εὔµολπον, but as a Corinthian poet is in question Gyraldus’
Εὔµηλον must be right.
(82) Cf. Welcker ii. 288.
(83) τὰ Ὁµήρου ἔπη, [Pl.] Hipparch. 228b, cf. Lycurg. In Leocr. 103; τὰ Ὁµήρου, Diog.
Laert. 1. 57. For (πάντα) τὰ Ὁµήρου ἔπη=Iliad and Odyssey, cf. Xen. Symp. 3. 5 (below, p.
46).
(84) One may refer to Luckenbach, esp. 575–637; K. Schefold, Frühgriechische

Sagenbilder (Munich 1966); Fittschen; Ahlberg-Cornell; R. Olmos’s Appendix
Iconographica in PEG 209–19; Anderson 179–277; Burgess 35–44, 181–7.
(85) See Aethiopis, intro. 3.
(86) Olympia Mus. B 3600; LIMC Achilleus 437; Ahlberg-Cornell 306 fig. 80; Burgess 39,
40.
(87) For the details see Aethiopis, intro. 2.
(88) See the catalogue in Anderson, 274–7, and for the sack of Troy in vase painting also
Robert (1881), 59–79.
(89) Of Stesichorus’ own Nostoi, cited by Pausanias 10. 26. 1 (PMGF 208), we can say
Page 43 of 45
Prolegomena
nothing, but it can hardly have been entirely independent of the Cyclic Nostoi.
(90) P. Oxy. 3876 frr. 37–77 as interpreted by R. Garner, ZPE 96 (1993), 153–65; Schade
40–4.
(91 ) 53f. καὶ ταῦτα µὲν παλαιότεροι || ὁδὸν ἀµαξιτὸν εὗρον· ἕποµαι δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς ἔχων
µελέταν.
(92) Telephos, 27. 41, fr. 49; Philoctetes, fr. 7; Laocoon, fr. 9.
(93) Cf. F. Jouan, ‘Sophocle et les “Chants Cypriens”’, in J. A. López Férez (ed.), La épica
griega y su influencia en la literatura española (Madrid 1994), 189–212. Welcker (1839–
41), iii. 1485–90, drew up a pioneering (but no longer reliable) list of all tragedies on
subjects derived from the Cycle.
(94) Cf. Jouan (1966).
(95) L. Dubois, Inscriptions grecques dialectales d’Olbia du Pont (Geneva 1996), 83–5 no.
42; Bull. Épigr. 1974. 376=SEG 40. 612 no. 26; J. G. Vinogradov, Pontische Studien
(Mainz 1997), 385–96 with pl. 15. 2–3.
(96) Xen. Mem. 2. 1. 21–34=DK 82 B 2.
(97) Plutarch, De aud. poet. 14e, speaks of ποιητικαὶ ὑποθέσεις being used in education.
(98) Wilamowitz (1884), 338–44. On his attitude towards Pausanias see A. Henrichs in W.
M. Calder III et al. (edd.), Wilamowitz nach 50 Jahren (Darmstadt 1985), 270. For an
eloquent rebuttal of Wilamowitz’s position and a list of all the passages where Pausanias
says that he has or has not personally read various authors, see T. W. Allen, CQ 2 (1908),
69f.
(99) Cf. R. Keydell, RE xix. 145f.; testimonia and fragments in E. Heitsch, Die griechischen
Dichterfragmente der römischen Kaiserzeit ii (Göttingen 1964), 44–7.
(100) Philoponus on Arist. Anal. post. 77b32, p. 157. 16 W., following on from the passage
about the Epic Cycle quoted on p. 23 above.
(101 ) R. Wagner, NJb. 145 (1892), 252 n. 22, ‘Bei jedem reconstructionsversuche müssen
wir vor allem zu einer lebendigen vorstellung zu gelangen suchen, wie sich die etwa
vorhandenen trockenen angaben über den inhalt in der breiten ausführung des
gedichtes selbst ausgenommen haben mögen’.
(102) Cf. R. Wagner, NJb. 145 (1892), 254–6.
(103) Luckenbach 636, ‘Häufig finden sich Abweichungen von der Poesie, besonders in
der Benennung von Personen, die theils aus ungenauer Kenntniss der Dichtung, theils
aus Willkür entstanden sind. Erweiterungen der Scene sind sehr häufig. Vor allem
werden gern Personen, die im Zusammenhange mit der betreffenden Scene stehen,
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Prolegomena
beigefügt. In der archaischen Periode werden manchmal Personen ohne jegliche

Bedeutung hinzugefügt.’
(104) Robert (1881), 52f., ‘Es versteht sich, daß gerade diese Zuthaten, die sich wie eine
üppige Moosschicht über einen alten felsigen Kern ausbreiten, nur mit sehr großer
Vorsicht zu Rückschlüssen auf die litterarische Quelle benutzt werden dürfen; noch viel
weniger als sonst ist hier der Künstler von dem Wortlaut der Dichtung abhängig, noch
viel mehr als gewöhnlich schafft er hierbei aus der im Volke lebendigen Sagenvorstellung
heraus, mag dieselbe auch selbst durch die Dichtung bestimmt sein.’
(105) Snodgrass 119f.
(106) Luckenbach 591.

Page 45 of 45
Cypria

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
Cypria
M. L. West
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.003.0002
This chapter presents a commentary on the poem Cypria. It first discusses the poem's
title; sources of information about the poem; the scope and relation to the Iliad;
antecedent poems; the economy of the poem; characterization of the poem; and dating of
the poem. It then reviews individual fragments and testimonia.
Keywords: Greek epic, epic poetry, epic poems, Iliad, fragments, testomonia
Introduction
1. Title
Herodotus 2. 117 cites the poem as τὰ Κύπρια ἔπεα, following this with ἐν (µὲν γὰρ)
τοῖσι Κυπρίοισι. The fuller title also appears in certain later authors: τὰ Κύπρια ἔπη Ath.
334b and 682d, Paus. 10. 26. 4; τὰ ἔπη τὰ Κύπρια Paus. 3. 16. 1, 4. 2. 7, Ael. VH 9. 15;
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ἔπη τὰ Κύπρια Paus. 10. 26. 1, 31. 2. More usually we find just τὰ Κύπρια, as in Proclus.
In Arist. Poet. 1459a38 τὰ Κυπρικὰ is usually emended to τὰ Κύπρια.
Other late variants are τὰ Κυπριακὰ ποιήµατα (Clem. Protr. 2. 30. 5); τὰ Κύπρια
συγγράµµατα (Tz. Hist. 13. 632); τὰ Κυπριακά (sch. Dion. Thr. i. 472. 1 H., Eust. 1623.
44).1
The poem had its title not because Cyprus or the Cyprian goddess played any significant
role in the narrative but because it was of Cypriot origin, or believed to be; it was after
all usually ascribed to a Cypriot poet, either Stasinos or Hegesias (see Prolegomena, §4).
Müller 81f. and Welcker i. 283 noted the parallel with the epic titles Φωκαΐς and
Ναυπάκτια ἔπη.2 The sixth and tenth Homeric Hymns testify to rhapsodic activity in
Cyprus (Welcker i. 282).
As observed in the Prolegomena, the poem would have been known as the Cypria not in
Cyprus but elsewhere, probably in the first instance in Ionia. Those who encountered it
there must have known, or heard it said, that someone had brought it from Cyprus,
where it had previously been current.
(p.56) 2. Attestation
The earliest evidence for a poem resembling the Cypria in scope is the late seventh-
century tripod leg from Olympia discussed in the Prolegomena, §5, if the scenes
represented on it are rightly interpreted. There are many archaic and fifth-century vase
paintings showing scenes such as the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the Judgment of
Paris, the embassy to Troy to demand the restitution of Helen, and Achilles’ ambushing of
Troilos, that may well reflect the poem. We may be sure of it in the case of the vase by the
Kadmos Painter mentioned in the same section of the Prolegomena (pp. 42f.).
The poem was well known to writers of the classical period. It was used by Pindar (who
also knew the story that Homer gave it to Stasinos) and by Sophocles, Euripides, and
Cratinus. Herodotus and Aristotle cite it by title. Plato quotes from it without attribution.
In Hellenistic times knowledge of it became restricted to the scholarly and those with
antiquarian tastes. No papyrus fragments have been identified, for this or for any of the
Cyclic poems. A Latin Cypria Ilias by one Naevius (not the famous Naevius) attracted
little attention. But the Greek epic continued to be available in places until around 200 ce.
Pausanias (10. 31. 2) says explicitly that he has read it, and I see no reason to disbelieve
him; see Prolegomena, p. 49. Athenaeus too may have consulted it directly. Citations in
later authors, however, are almost certainly derivative from earlier ones.
Proclus’ summary provides us with an outline of the whole structure. Some of the details
can be amplified from the parallel sections in Apollod. epit. 3. 1–35. Citations in various
authors supply over fifty of the original verses—as many as for the rest of the Cyclic
poems put together—as well as other information that supplements what Proclus gives
us.
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3. Scope. Relation to the Iliad

The Cypria was concerned with the origin of the Trojan War and its course up to the
tenth year. Like many epics, it began from a critical situation that needed resolving; cf.
West (1997), 173f. In this case it was a cosmic crisis, Earth’s distress at the excessive
weight of humankind. The first part of the narrative moved largely at the divine level, with
mortals playing merely supporting roles: Peleus as bridegroom of Thetis, Paris as
adjudicator of goddesses. Then, (p.57) instructed by Aphrodite, Paris set off on his
fateful voyage to Sparta and the events were set in train that were to lead to war.
The Iliad was a given for the poet, and he did not want to take the story of the war so far
as to overlap with it. In fact he tailored his poem exactly to cover everything that
happened up to the point where the Iliad begins, and he took pains to fit in as many as he
could of the events that were referred back to or presupposed in the Iliad.3 The task he
set himself, then, was not to compose an organically unified epic on a self-contained story
but to complement the Iliad by gathering together and setting in order everything that
belonged in the preceding span of time. This was a truly Cyclic undertaking.
In several cases he appears to borrow motifs from the Iliad.4 The two clearest examples
are the quarrel between Achilles and Agam-emnon at Tenedos (arg. 9c) and an episode in
which the Achaeans at Troy were weary of the war and wanted to go home, but were
restrained by Achilles (arg. 11b). We may add the occasions where Thetis came to advise
her son or carry out his requests (arg. 9a with Apollod. epit. 3. 23; arg. 11b). Nestor’s
lengthy recital of stories from the past when Menelaos visited him (arg. 4b) may likewise
be modelled on the Nestor of the Iliad, unless we suppose a wider tradition in which he
was typically so presented.5 The concept of the ∆ιὸς βουλή must certainly have been the
common property of epic poets; yet F 1. 7 ∆ιὸς δ᾿ ἐτελείετο βουλή, coming as it does in
the proem, looks very much like an imitation of Il. 1. 5.
Minor discrepancies of detail between the Cypria and the Iliad were not altogether
wanting. It looks as if the later poet gave Hekabe a different father from the one implied in
Il. 16. 718 (F 29a). He had Paris and Helen make love before taking ship, not waiting till
they reached an offshore island as in Il. 3. 445. He had Briseis captured at Pedasos
instead of Lyrnessos (F 23), though the two towns are so (p.58) closely associated in
the tale of Achilles’ exploits that few modern students of Homer would be able to
remember which of them was Briseis’ home.
4. Antecedent poems
The Cypria aimed to account for the first nine years of the war as well as the events that
had led up to it. But the epic tradition provided little material to fill those years. Before the
development of the Cyclic approach in which the effort was made to cover the entire
story of the Trojan War, leaving no gaps between one poem and another, there existed
independent poems about particular phases of the war, with no notion of putting them
together to make a continuous narrative. Such was the state of epic poetry when the Iliad
was composed. It is reflected in the profile of the Cypria. The tradition supplied one
cluster of stories about the beginning of the war, another about its end. The poems in
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Cypria
which these stories were told each had their own unity, and they were not conceived as
constituent parts of a larger unity.
Much of the material in the Cypria was current in poetic form by the mid part of the
seventh century. The Teuthrania episode was known to Archilochus. Many of the others
were known to the Iliad poet. He mentions the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, which all the
gods attended and at which Peleus was given the great ash spear, the armour, and the
horses Xanthos and Balios that Achilles was to use in the Iliad; the Judgment of Paris, who
chose Aphrodite’s gifts in preference to those of Hera and Athena; the building of ships
by Phereklos, in which Paris sailed to Sparta and captured Helen’s heart. He mentions
how the two lovers sailed away, taking much of Menelaos’ property with them, not going
direct to Troy but first sailing to the eastern Mediterranean and visiting the Phoenician
port of Sidon; he mentions that the Dioskouroi departed from earthly life sometime after
Helen’s elopement; that Nestor and Odysseus went round Greece recruiting heroes for
the war on Troy; that they all assembled in their ships at Aulis, where there appeared a
portent, a serpent that devoured a sparrow and her chicks, and the seer Calchas
interpreted it; that Philoctetes was bitten by a water snake and abandoned on Lemnos;
that the first man to leap ashore on Trojan soil, Protesilaos, was the first to be killed,
leaving a grief-stricken widow; that the Achaeans sent Menelaos and Odysseus in to
(p.59) speak to the Trojan assembly and demand the return of Helen and the stolen
property; that certain of the Trojans wanted to kill them, but Antenor protected them;
that the Trojans thereafter stayed within their walls, while Achilles led raids on
surrounding areas, seizing the cattle of Aeneas on Mt Ida, capturing Lykaon, whom
Patroklos sold into slavery on Lemnos, and sacking Lyrnessos and Pedasos and
Hypoplakian Thebes and many other settlements in the region.
There may at that period have been (as suggested in the Prolegomena, §3) a separate
poem dealing with the Judgment of Paris and the abduction of Helen, and ending with the
wedding at Troy, and another poem telling of the gathering of the Achaeans at Aulis and
how they sailed to Troy and fought an initial battle there. The Iliad poet himself evidently
had such a poem as the latter in his repertoire; he has adapted his Catalogue of Ships
from it.6 Those two poems might have been set down in writing, and so given a degree of
fixity, sometime before the conception of a longer epic that would cover the whole earlier
part of the war. Possibly it was the Cypriot Stasinos who first constructed the more
comprehensive poem.
It is quite possible that the poet of the Cypria incorporated the older poems in his own
work without recomposing them. In this case his epic will have contained sections fixed at
different dates. His own contributions will have included the introductory verses about
Zeus’ plan to relieve the overpopulated earth, which show some linguistic signs of
relative lateness; as noted above, they seem conceived as an introduction to the whole
war, in other words to a cycle of epics rather than to one alone. To the final redactor we
must also assign those details which have been put into the narrative specifically to link up
with the Iliad, such as the picking out of Chryseis and Briseis from among the captive
women taken at Hypoplakian Thebes or Pedasos.
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5. Economy of the poem

The action of the poem may be divided into five main sections (Welcker ii. 158):
1. The wedding of Peleus and Thetis following Zeus’ consultationwith Themis, with
the goddesses’ quarrel and the Judgment of Paris.
(p.60) 2. Paris’ journey to Sparta and abduction of Helen, to Menelaos’return
from Crete.
3. The recruitment of an army, the first gathering at Aulis, and themistaken
invasion of Teuthrania.
4. The second gathering at Aulis and the taking of Tenedos.
5. The landing in the Troad and all that happened there.
Proclus tells us that the work was divided into eleven books. As to how the material was
distributed among them, we have little to go on. The Judgment of Paris came in Book 1 (F
5). The two fragments from books 1 and 2 of Naevius’ Cypria Ilias (F 7 and 13) are
consistent with reference to the Judgment of Paris and the seduction of Helen
respectively. The division between books 1 and 2 may have been made at Paris’ arrival in
Sparta. After that it is a matter of complete guesswork where the book-divisions fell. But it
looks as if about half of the poem must have been taken up with preparatory action and
divagations before the Achaeans reached Troy.
6. Characterization of the poem

Aristotle in his Poetics (1459a37) picks out the Cypria together with the Little Iliad as
examples of epics that unlike the Iliad and Odyssey are πολυµερῆ, episodic, containing
material for many tragedies. He has lit upon a feature of the poem that is very obvious
from Proclus’ summary. It lacks structural unity and was bound to, given its aims.
This is the one defect of the poem that we can identify. In other respects there is no
reason to think that it was a poor composition. The poetic quality of the surviving verses is
high. The poet shows a fluent command of the epic language: the parallels are sometimes
with the Hesiodic corpus or the Homeric Hymns rather than with the Iliad and Odyssey,
and there are some neologisms, but there is nothing wrong with that. The metaphor by
which Zeus is said to have ‘fanned’ the Trojan War into life (F 1. 5) is original in epic (so
far as we know), apt, and striking.
The divine perspective provided an order of grandeur appropriate to such a momentous

theme as the Trojan War. First the vista of a crisis affecting the whole world and troubling
Earth herself; then the top-level consultation of Zeus and Themis and the formation of a
grand design; the gathering of the gods, not on Olympus but on Pelion at the magnificent
wedding of Peleus and Thetis; the three (p.61) goddesses’ extraordinary beauty
contest on Ida, after which Aphrodite mobilized Paris to action, while Hera and Athena
established themselves as his enemies and Troy’s. The miraculous birth of Helen from
divine parents marked her as a woman with a special destiny. Nemesis, installed as her
mother in place of Leda, was the third goddess representing an abstract force to appear
in the poem, after Themis and Eris.
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Iris was deployed to bring the news of Helen’s flight to Menelaos in Crete. At Aulis
Agamemnon offended Artemis, and she had to be propitiated by the sacrifice of
Iphigeneia, whom she elevated to divine status. Apollo gave an oracle to Telephos about
how to find healing for his wound, and the same god came into view again at Tenedos and
Thymbra, where Achilles slew his sons Tennes and Troilos. At Troy Thetis attended
Achilles and arranged with Aphrodite to let him meet Helen. At the end of the poem
another great plan of Zeus was in prospect, the one that was to govern the events of the
Iliad.
That meeting between Achilles and Helen, inessential as it is to the plot, is the most
conspicuous outcrop of a vein of romanticism that ran through the epic. The catastrophic
passion of Helen and Paris was an intrinsically romantic motif. But Paris does not measure
up to the transcendent quality of Helen. It is Achilles who is her true counterpart in
glamour (cf. on arg. 11b). Bringing them together for one brief encounter that could
never be repeated was an expression of the same sentiment that in later centuries united
them as lovers in the afterlife (Ptol. Heph. p. 27. 10 Chatzis; Paus. 3. 19. 13; Philostr. Her.
19. 16). It is possible that Achilles was moved by love at another point in the Cypria, on
seeing Polyxena at the shrine of Thymbraean Apollo when he ambushed and killed her
brother Troilos: see on arg. 11e / F 25.
The poet has a wide knowledge of myth and sometimes brings in stories not organically
connected with his main narrative. After Paris had passed through Sparta, attention was
diverted to the Dioskouroi’s dispute with the Apharetidai that ended the earthly lives of
both pairs of brothers. When Menelaos came to Pylos to consult Nestor, the old man
related (ἐν παρεκβάσει, as Proclus remarks) a series of unconnected stories. The
strange myth of the Oinotropoi, the three Delian maidens who had the power to make
grain, vines, and olives grow in unlimited abundance, was grafted on to the story of the
Achaeans’ sojourn at Troy, though it cannot have (p.62) been a traditional part of it and
sits oddly in that context. Like Lynkeus with his extraordinary eyesight, Kyknos with his
impenetrable white skin, and Achilles’ healing of Telephos, they represent miraculous
elements of the kind that the Iliad poet avoided (cf. Griffin 1977). ‘The notion of magical
efficacy residing in certain persons or objects is one which in Homer is confined to the
“outer geography” of the Odyssey’ (Monro 354).
The poet made generous use of speeches. Zeus’ initial consultation with Themis must
have involved them, as must the goddesses’ quarrel at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis,
the Judgment of Paris, and the organization of Paris’ journey to Sparta. Helenos and
Cassandra uttered prophecies at that juncture. Then came Paris’ stays with the
Dioskouroi and with Menelaos, during which there must have been conversations, not to
mention the process of seducing Helen. In the next phase we know that Menelaos’ visit to
Nestor contained extensive dialogue. Calchas interpreted an omen at the first gathering
at Aulis and declared Artemis’ will at the second. Between the two came the episode
where Telephos went to Argos to beg Achilles for healing and promised to show the
Achaeans the way to Troy. At Tenedos the decision of what to do about Philoctetes cannot
have been reached without debate, and then there was the quarrel between Achilles and
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Agamemnon. At Troy Achilles had visits from his mother, who warned him not to be the
first ashore and later dealt with his expressed wish to see Helen. His meeting with Helen
will not have been a matter of wordless ogling. Meanwhile there had been the embassy of
Menelaos and Odysseus and the debate in the city about their demand.
The treatment of chronology in the Cypria does not entirely obey the conventions of
Homeric epic, which avoids the appearance of ever going backwards in time (Zieliński’s
Law). It is more like what we find in Hesiodic genealogical poetry, where there is some
backward and forward movement in passing from one branch of the narrative to another.
Thus the account of Paris’ and Helen’s travels in the eastern Mediterranean is brought
to its completion with their arrival at Troy and marriage there (arg. 2) before Menelaos
even learns that Helen has gone (arg. 4a). The story of Helen’s birth cannot, I think, have
appeared in its chronologically correct place; I suggest in the commentary that it was
accommodated after the Judgment of Paris, when she first came into the story. The
retrogression might have been palliated, however, by having Aphrodite tell (p.63) the
tale to Paris. In telling of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis the poet seems to have told in
retrospect the story of Zeus’ previous pursuit of Thetis for his own purposes (F 2).
The poet has not in any case worked out a chronology of events that stands up to critical
scrutiny. The wedding of Peleus and Thetis appears to lead straight on to the Judgment of
Paris; the Judgment to the voyage to Sparta and seduction of Helen; the seduction to the
Achaean mobilization for war and a sailing from Aulis that takes the Achaeans to
Teuthrania, where their principal hero is Achilles—the son of Peleus and Thetis.
7. Dating
On the hypothesis sketched above about an antecedent written poem or poems, the
composition would not be all of one date. I would assign the older, pre-Cyclic poem(s) to
the second half of the seventh century in accord with my general perception that that was
the time when written epics were starting to be produced in quantity. We have no other
means of dating them. But what was the date of the developed Cyclic Cypria to which our
testimonia relate?
If the Olympia tripod leg is rightly perceived as combining in one series of panels the
seduction of Helen, the embassy into Troy seeking her restitution, and the killing of
Troilos, it is a pointer to the existence, by the last quarter of the seventh century, of a
connected narrative—an epic, we should imagine—that covered more or less as much of
the story as the Cypria did. It would attest the emergence of the Cyclic approach.
However, the poem in question was not necessarily identical with the Cypria as later
current. There are some grounds for hesitating to date the Cypria quite so early.
Wackernagel (1916), 182f., found a number of linguistic features in F 1 that in his
judgment indicated Attic origin and a date that could not be long before 500. His
observations were for a long time taken as decisive, but more recently it has been
questioned whether they impose so late a dating; cf. M. Davies, Glotta 67 (1989), 93f.;
Schmitt (1990); Parlato (2007). Wackernagel’s argument rests on one suffix (-ιακός) and
two neuter nouns (πλάτος, βάρος) that are not otherwise attested before the fifth
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century, though he admits that other neuters of the same type (εὖρος, τάχος, πάχος) are
Homeric. Not much weight can be put on such data considering how little sixth-century
literature has (p.64) survived. It may be allowed that Ἰλιακός is a post-Homeric form,
but we cannot infer that it was coined late rather than early in the sixth century. Cf.
Schmitt 18f., Parlato 8–10. As for Atticism, the form κενώσειεν, with short scansion of
κεν-〈⋆ κενϜ- as against Homeric κεινός or κενε(Ϝ)ός, is certainly Attic or Aeolic; yet
analogous forms occur here and there in both Hesiod (κăλόν, ι˘σον) and Homer (ἐνάτη,
α˘νοιτο, ξενίη, ξενίων, µονωθείς).7 There are a couple of examples of ‘Attic correption’,
that is, of a syllable remaining short before a plosive + liquid combination in the same
word or tonal unit: F 1. 6 ἐνὶ Τροίηι (in Homer the phrase is always scanned ∪ − − −); F
9. 1 πε˘πρωται. This is a departure from what may be called Severe Ionian practice, in
which such correption is virtually confined to words such as Ἀϕροδίτη and Ἡρακλέης
that could not otherwise be accommodated in the verse. But instances can be found in
Hesiod, Th. 599 ἀλλο˘τριον, 632 Ὄθρυος, Op. 655 προπε˘ϕραδµένα; Theognis, 1200
α˘γρούς; Solon, 4. 14 θέµε˘θλα, 4c. 3 µε˘τρίοισι; perhaps in Hipponax, 104. 49
ἔγκυ˘θρον (ἔγχυτον codd., ἔγχυτρον M. Schmidt). So the examples in the Cypria may be
evidence of non-Ionian composition, but they do not necessarily prove extreme lateness.
The stories related by Nestor to Menelaos (arg. 4b) include two that may be relevant to
the problem of dating. His first concerns the Sicyonian hero Epopeus, whose other known
appearance in early literature was in the Korinthiaka attributed to Eumelos, a work that I
have argued was no earlier than the mid sixth century.8 Sicyonian saga came to
prominence only in the time of Kleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon c.600–570. Nestor’s fourth
tale is that of Theseus and Ariadne. It is also mentioned in the Odyssey (11. 321–5), but
Theseus is again a hero who emerged comparatively late; see Little Iliad, intro. 7. His
abduction of the juvenile Helen may also have been related in the Cypria, but it is not
certain: see on F 12⋆.
These pointers favour a dating of the Cypria to the sixth century rather than the seventh.
We shall not be inclined to make it any later than the Telegony, which there is reason to
date in the second quarter of the century and which we naturally see as the last addition
to the (p.65) Trojan Cycle. If we put the Cypria somewhere between 580 and 550 we
shall not, I think, be wildly wrong. It belongs with other hexameter compositions of an all-
inclusive character such as ps.-Eumelos’ Korinthiaka and the Hesiodic Catalogue of
Women.
The FragmentsThe Incipit. Zeus’ Plan

F 1 (below) must have been the beginning of the narrative. It was presumably preceded
by some lines in which the poet asked the Muse(s) to sing, or announced that he was
going to sing, of how the Trojan War began, that war in which so many heroes perished
(Bethe 155, 228). Welcker i. 282 suggested that the brief tenth Homeric Hymn,
addressed to Aphrodite as Κυπρογένεια and as Σαλαµῖνος ἐϋκτιµένης µεδέουσα, was in
fact the proem of the Cypria, but it is unlikely that an organic hymn-proem (like those of
Hes. Th. 1–115 and Op. 1–10) would have been transmitted separately.
F 1 Sch. (D) Il. 1. 5, “∆ιὸς δ᾿ ἐτελείετο βουλή”
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F 1 Sch. (D) Il. 1. 5, “∆ιὸς δ᾿ ἐτελείετο βουλή”

ἄλλοι δὲ ἀπὸ ἱστορίας τινὸς εἶπον εἰρηκέναι τὸν Ὅµηρον. ϕασὶ γὰρ τὴν Γῆν
βαρουµένην ὑπὸ ἀνθρώπων πολυπληθίας, µηδεµια̃ς ἀνθρώπων οὔσης εὐσεβείας,
αἰτῆσαι τὸν ∆ία κουϕισθῆναι τοῦ ἄχθους· τὸν δὲ ∆ία πρῶτον µὲν εὐθὺς ποιῆσαι τὸν
Θηβαϊκὸν πόλεµον δι᾿ οὗ πολλοὺς πάνυ ἀπώλεσεν, ὕστερον δὲ πάλιν τὸν Ἰλιακόν,
συµβούλωι τῶι Μώµωι χρησάµενος, ἣν ∆ιὸς βουλὴν Ὅµηρός ϕησιν, ἐπειδὴ οἷός τε ἦν
κεραυνοῖς ἢ κατακλυσµοῖς ἅπαντας διαϕθείρειν· ὅπερ τοῦ Μώµου κωλύσαντος,
ὑποθεµένου δὲ αὐτῶι γνώµας δύο, τὴν Θέτιδος θνητογαµίαν καὶ θυγατρὸς καλῆς
γένναν, ἐξ ὧν ἀµϕοτέρων πόλεµος Ἕλλησί τε καὶ βαρβάροις ἐγένετο, ἀϕ᾿ οὗ συνέβη
κουϕισθῆναι τὴν γῆν πολλῶν ἀναιρεθέντων. ἡ δὲ ἱστορία παρὰ Στασίνωι τῶι τὰ
Κύπρια πεποιηκότι, εἰπόντι οὕτως·
ἦν ὅτε µυρία ϕῦλα κατὰ χθόνα πλαζόµενα 〈αἰεί ἀνθρώπων ἐ〉βάρυ〈νε

βαθυ〉στέρνου πλάτος Αἴης.
Ζεὺς δὲ ἰδὼν ἐλέησε, καὶ ἐν πυκιναῖς πραπίδεσσιν κουϕίσαι ἀνθρώπων

παµβώτορα σύνθετο γαῖαν ῥιπίσσας πολέµου µεγάλην ἔριν Ἰλιακοῖο,
(p.66) ὄϕρα κενώσειεν θανάτωι βάρος. οἳ δ᾿ ἐνὶ Τροίηι ἥρωες κτείνοντο, ∆ιὸς
δ᾿ ἐτελείετο βουλή.
1 suppl. Ebert, 2 Peppmüller (βαθυστέρνου iam Lascaris) 4 σύνθετο

κουϕίσαι παµβώτορα γαῖαν (γαίης) ἀνθρώπων codd.: corr. Ribbeck 5 ῥιπίσσας
Wolf: ῥιπίσαι codd. 6 θανάτωι Lascaris: -του codd.
The war came about through a plan of Zeus to reduce the world’s population, as he saw
that Earth was suffering from the excessive weight she was forced to support. No further
motive appears in the verses, but the scholiast who quotes them mentions an additional
factor, the failure of human εὐσέβεια. This is an alien motif from some myth of a more
comprehensive destruction of mankind. Other details too of the scholiast’s account are
foreign to the Cypria: Earth’s plea to Zeus for relief, the inclusion of the Theban War with
the Trojan (cf. sch. Eur. Or. 1641), the presence of Momos as counsellor instead of
Themis (see below), and the consideration of other options for population reduction such
as mass destructions by thunderbolts or deluges (Henrichsen 37f.). The version in the
Cypria is almost as summary as the echoes of it in Euripides’ Helen (36–41) and Orestes
(1639–42; cf. El. 1282, fr. 1082); a fuller narrative must have been current.
The myth is paralleled in the Mahābhārata: the earth once complained to Brahmā of the
ever-increasing weight of mankind, and he created death to alleviate the problem. A
similar myth is already attested before 1600 bce in the Babylonian epic Atraḫasīs both
the Greek and the Indian versions probably derive from Mesopotamia. See further West
(1997), 481f.; (2007), 23.
Hesiod (Op. 161–73) already has the concept that the Theban and Trojan Wars marked
the end of an era, when the race of heroes was cleared off the earth, some to Hades,
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others to the Isles of the Blest, but he does not make Zeus responsible or assign a
purpose. In [Hes.] fr. 204. 95–104 the Trojan War appears as an initiative of Zeus’, who
aimed to visit extensive destruction on the human race (ἤδη δὲ γένος µερόπων
ἀνθρώπων | πολλὸν ἀϊστῶσαι σπεῦδε), while apparently separating off the heroes
(ἡµίθεοι) to dwell apart. Cf. Apollod. epit. 3. 1 αὖθις δὲ Ἑλένην Ἀλέξανδρος ἁρπάζει, ὥς
τινες λέγουσι κατὰ βούλησιν ∆ιὸς ἵνα Εὐρώπης καὶ Ἀσίας εἰς πόλεµον ἐλθούσης ἡ
θυγάτηρ αὐτοῦ ἔνδοξος γένηται, ἢ καθάπερ εἶπον ἄλλοι ὅπως τὸ τῶν ἡµιθέων γένος
ἀρθῆι.
The language of the fragment contains several novelties.
(p.67)
1. ἦν ὅτε: first paralleled in Pind. fr. 83, Cratin. fr. 269; Hdt. 1. 160. 5 has ἦν
χρόνος οὗτος ὅτε. It is noteworthy that in the poet’s picture there is no Theban
War behind the Trojan, no earlier Heroic Age with identifiable persons in it, just a
vague ‘time’ of overpopulation.
κατὰ χθόνα: this phrase not in the Iliad or Odyssey, but twice in the Hymns.
2. ἐ〉βάρυ〈νε βαθυ〉στέρνου is Peppmüller’s probable restoration of the
transmitted βαρυστέρνου. Cf. Hes. Th. 117 Γαῖ᾿ εὐρύστερνος and Pind. Nem. 9.
25 βαθύστερνον χθόνα with Bras-well ad loc.
πλάτος: first here. But the root has an ancient association with the Earth-goddess:
Schmitt 17f.; Parlato 10–12; West (2007), 174f., 178.
3. ἐν πυκιναῖς πραπίδεσσιν: an untraditional phrase formed from epic vocables.
On the short dative in -αις (also in 5. 5 and 7) cf. Parlato 27–9.
4. Ribbeck’s transposition restores good rhythm. The word order was disturbed
by bringing σύνθετο forward to make it adjacent to ἐν πυκιναῖς πραπίδεσσιν.
κουϕίσαι: first here in a transitive use.
παµβώτορα: only here; cf. Soph. Ph. 391 παµβῶτι Γα̃. The idea is ancient, cf. West
(2007), 179.
σύνθετο: the verb is not otherwise found with an infinitive before the fifth
century.
5. This makes it look as if Zeus immediately resolved on the Trojan War as his
means of lightening the earth. But it will be in discussion with Themis that he
decides how to set about achieving his aim. In his hasty proem the poet
compresses things.
ῥιπίσσας, ‘fanning’: first here; cf. Ar. Ran. 360 (στάσιν) ἀνεγείρει καὶ ῥιπίζει.
πολέµου … Ἰλιακοῖο: the earliest reference to ‘the Trojan War’. Forms in -ιακός
are not otherwise attested before Herodotus and Thucydides (Wackernagel
(1916), 182), but see intro. 7. The accusative form ἔριν occurs in the Odyssey,
while the Iliad has only ἔριδα.
6. κενώσειεν: first here; on the short first syllable cf. intro. 7. The division κεν
ὤσειεν proposed by K. E. Hatzistephanou in T. Papadopoullos (ed.), Πρακτικά
τοῦ Βˎ διεθνοῦς Κυπρολογικοῦ συνεδρίου, Τόµος Αˎ (Nicosia 1985), 490f.,
cannot entirely be ruled out, but ‘push out, banish’ gives less good sense than
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‘empty out, evacuate’.

(p.68) θανάτωι (Lascaris; or -τοις, Wassenbergh) seems a necessary
correction, as βάρος must be the weight of humanity and cannot be connected
with θανάτου. βάρος is another new word (Wackernagel).
6–7. οἳ δ᾿ ἐνὶ Τροίηι | ἥρωες κτείνοντο: this is an anticipation, as the origins of the
war have yet to be related. On the scansion of ἐνὶ Τροίηι see again intro. 7.
∆ιὸς δ᾿ ἐτελείετο βουλή, borrowed from Il. 1. 5, must mark the end of the proem
and the transition to systematic narrative. In the Iliad the phrase refers to the
plan that Zeus is to agree with Thetis in 1. 517–30, though some interpreters took
it as an allusion to the story in the Cypria. Cf. also Hes. Th. [1002], Hymn. Herm.
10.
Arg. 1a
Ζεὺς βουλεύεται µετὰ τῆς Θέµιδος περὶ τοῦ Τρωϊκοῦ πολέµου.
Θέµιδος Heyne: θέτιδος codd.
Cf. P. Oxy. 3829 ii 7 τῆς Ὁµήρου Ἰλιάδος ἡ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὑπόθεσις· ὁ Ζεὺς ἀσέβειαν
καταγνοὺς τοῦ ἡρωϊκοῦ γένους βουλεύεται µετὰ Θέµιδος ἄρδην αὐτοὺς ἀπολέσαι.
Having conceived the aim of reducing the earth’s population, Zeus consulted with Themis
on how to set about it. This was evidently the opening scene after the proem, of sufficient
substance for Proclus to mention it. The papyrus, which is a catechism and hypothesis to
Iliad 1, dated to the later second century CE, confirms Heyne’s correction to the text of
Proclus. The motif of the heroic race’s wickedness, which as I have said is foreign to the
Cypria, appears here as in the Iliad scholium.
Themis is a senior goddess, a Titan and a consort of Zeus (Hes. Th. 135, 901; Pind. fr. 30).
In Il. 20. 4 she acts as his minister to summon the other gods to assembly, and in 15. 87
she presides over their gathering in the absence of Zeus and Hera. Her involvement in
the planning of the Trojan War implies that it was a just enterprise or at any rate had a
just outcome, in that a wrong was redressed (Bethe 228).
In the account given by sch. Il. 1. 5, where Momos is the adviser and Zeus talks of
thunderbolts and floods before being persuaded to settle on a war, the plan involves a
double initiative: arranging Thetis’ marriage to a mortal, and fathering a beautiful
daughter, Helen. Both (p.69) of these were dealt with in the Cypria (F 2–4 and 10–11).
Helen ought to have been born well before Thetis’ wedding, as it led directly to the
Judgment of Paris, at which Helen was the prize offered by Aphrodite. But both Proclus
and the papyrus go straight from the deliberation with Themis to the wedding of Peleus
and Thetis. So the circumstances of Helen’s birth were probably related at a later point,
in retrospect, when she came into the story following the Judgment of Paris; see on F 9.
Horace, Ars poet. 147 nec gemino bellum Troianum orditur ab ouo, cannot be taken as
evidence that the birth of Helen came at the beginning of the Cypria.
The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis
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The wedding of Peleus and Thetis, to which the gods came and brought presents, was an
event celebrated in poetry before the Iliad: Il. 17. 195f., 18. 84f., 24. 62f., Alc. 42. 5–11,
Pind. Pyth. 3. 89–93, Nem. 4. 65–8, 5. 22–5, Aesch. fr. 350, Eur. IA 1036–79. Cf. Jouan 68–
87. It has a double importance for the Trojan War. It is the occasion for the outbreak of
the quarrel among three goddesses which leads to the Judgment of Paris. And it results
in the birth of Achilles, the greatest and most splendid of the Achaean heroes.9
Zeus had himself previously desired and pursued Thetis, and F 2 shows that the episode
was related in the Cypria. She successfully rebuffed him, and he in a huff declared that if
he could not have her, no other god would: she must marry a mortal. In Pindar’s version
(Isth. 8. 27ff.) Zeus and Poseidon both wanted her, until Themis cooled their ardour by
announcing that Thetis was destined to bear a son stronger than his father (a motif
transferred from Metis, Hes. Th. 886–900); let her therefore be given to a mortal
husband and bear a supreme hero. Zeus and Poseidon agree, the wedding to Peleus
takes place, Achilles is born, and the high points of his warrior career are recalled, the
blood he shed at Teuthrania and his breaking Troy’s resistance by killing Hector and
Memnon. So Pindar has the whole sequence of Cypria, Iliad, and Aethiopis in mind, and
the role he assigns to Themis is surely adapted from her role in the Cypria as (p.70)
conceiver of the war.10 In the epic it was without her intervention that Zeus abandoned
his designs on Thetis. The story of his pursuit of her will have been dealt with in a
parenthesis giving the background to her union with Peleus. Following the scene
between Zeus and Themis the poet may have continued, ‘The gods were at that time
about to go to Mt Pelion to attend the wedding of Peleus and Thetis in the house of
Cheiron the centaur. It was by Zeus’ will that she, a goddess, was marrying a mortal.
For…’
F 2 Philod. De pietate B 7241 Obbink

ἔτι δὲ ὁ τ]ὰ Κύπ[ρια γράψας τῆι Ἥ]ραι χαρ[ιζοµένη]ν ϕεύγειν αὐ[τὴν τὸ]ν γάµον ∆[ιός·
τὸν δ᾿ ὀ]µόσαι χολω[θέντ]α διότι θ̣ νη[τῶι συ]νοικίσει. κα[ὶ παρ᾿ Ἡ]σιόδωι δὲ (fr. 210)
κε[ῖται τ]ὸ παραπλήσ[ιον.
Cf. Apollod. 3. 13. 5 τινὲς δὲ λέγουσι Θέτιν µὴ βουληθῆναι ∆ιὶ συνελθεῖν ὡς ὑπὸ Ἥρας
τραϕεῖσαν, ∆ία δὲ ὀργισθέντα θνητῶι θέλειν αὐτὴν συνοικίσαι.
Ap. Rhod. 4. 790–8 (Hera to Thetis)
ἀλλὰ σὲ γὰρ δή
ἐξέτι νηπυτίης αὐτὴ τρέϕον ἠδ᾿ ἀγάπησα
ἔξοχον ἀλλάων αἵ τ᾿ εἰν ἁλὶ ναιετάουσιν·
οὕνεκεν11 οὐκ ἔτλης εὐνῆι ∆ιὸς ἱεµένοιο
λέξασθαι…
ἀλλ᾿ ἐµέ τ᾿ αἰδοµένη καὶ ἐνὶ ϕρεσὶ δειµαίνουσα
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ἠλεύω· ὃ δ᾿ ἔπειτα πελώριον ὅρκον ὄµοσσεν,
µή ποτέ σ᾿ ἀθανάτοιο θεοῦ καλέεσθαι ἄκοιτιν.
In 805–9 Hera says that she provided Thetis with the finest of mortal men for her
husband (so already Il. 24. 60f.), invited the gods to the wedding feast, and herself held
up the bridal torch, in gratitude for the honour Thetis had done her. We cannot assume
with Bethe 229 that all these details come from the Cypria, but the celebration must have
been described in some detail. According to Pindar (Nem. 4. 67) it was attended by both
celestial and marine deities, (p.71) οὐρανοῦ βασιλῆες πόντου τε. Apollo played the
cithara and the Muses sang (Il. 24. 62f., Pind. Pyth. 3. 88–93, Nem. 5. 22–5, Aesch. fr. 350).
Two Attic vases painted around 570 by Sophilos and Kleitias (LIMC Peleus 211, 212=the
François Vase) show Peleus before his house receiving the grand procession of
divinities, who are carefully labelled. The list is nearly the same for both vases, though the
sequence differs: there are Zeus and Hera, Poseidon and Amphitrite, Apollo (212 also
Leto), Hermes (211 also Maia), Ares and Aphrodite, Artemis and Athena (all these in
chariots); Demeter and Hestia, Hephaestus (on a mule), Dionysus, Oceanus (212 also
Tethys), Iris, Themis, on 211 also Eileithyia and Hebe, on 212 Nereus and Doris; three
Moirai, three Horai, three Charites, on 211 also three Nymphs; eight (211) or nine (212)
Muses; Cheiron and his wife Chariklo. On 212 the individual Muses are named, and the
names are as in Hes. Th. 77–9 except that Stesichore appears in place of Hesiod’s
Terpsichore. The names are grouped as in Hesiod’s verses, and the painter must have
had the verses in mind:
Κλειώ τ᾿ Εὐτέρπη τε Θάλειά τε Μελποµένη τε
Στησιχόρη τ᾿ Ἐρατώ τε Πολύµνιά τ᾿ Οὐρανίη τε
Καλλιόπη τε.
But was he recalling them from Hesiod, with the variant Στησιχόρη, or from the Cypria,
or a separate epic account of the wedding? Did the painters have epic authority for the
roster of gods and goddesses who attended the wedding? Luckenbach 589–91 points
out that Eris is not included, and that the gifts the gods were supposed to have brought
for Peleus (below on F 4) are not shown; and more seriously, that on the François Vase
the details of the chariot race at the funeral games for Patroklos diverge markedly from
the Iliad (cf. Prolegomena, §7). It is clearly unsafe to infer anything from these paintings
for the Cypria.
(F 3⋆) Sch. (T) Il. 18. 434a,“καὶ ἔτλην ἀνέρος εὐνὴν πολλὰ µάλ᾿ οὐκ ἐθέλουσα”
ἐντεῦθεν οἱ νεώτεροι τὰς µεταµορϕώσεις αὐτῆς ϕασιν.
Cf. Apollod. 3. 13. 5 (continuing from the passage quoted on F 2) Χείρωνος οὖν
ὑποθεµένου Πηλεῖ συλλαβεῖν καὶ κατασχεῖν αὐτὴν µεταµορϕουµένην, ἐπιτηρήσας
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συναρπάζει γινοµένην (p.72) δὲ ὁτὲ µὲν πῦρ, ὁτὲ δὲ ὕδωρ, ὁτὲ δὲ θηρίον, οὐ πρότερον
ἀνῆκε πρὶν ἢ τὴν ἀρχαίαν µορϕὴν εἶδεν ἀπολαβοῦσαν.
The story of Peleus’ wrestling with Thetis while she went through a series of
metamorphoses is alluded to by Pind. Nem. 3. 35f., 4. 62–5, Soph. fr. 618; cf. Ov. Met. 11.
235–65; Frazer ii. 67 n. 6. It is depicted in art from the mid seventh century. But there
are reasons for hesitating to attribute it to the Cypria.12 The poet uses the motif in
connection with Zeus’ pursuit of Nemesis in F 10, and two such passages in the same
poem would seem excessive.13 We have seen that in Apollonius’ version, which partly
follows the Iliad and may correspond to the Cypria, Hera provides Thetis with a
thoroughly desirable husband and a high society wedding; this does not go very well
with the Nereid’s reluctance to accept Peleus and the physical struggle that he has to
undertake (Bethe 230). In Apollodorus’ version it is Cheiron who prompts him to go after
her, and a role for Hera seems to be excluded.
F 4 Sch. (D) Il. 16. 140

κατὰ γὰρ τὸν Πηλέως καὶ Θέτιδος γάµον οἱ θεοὶ συναχθέντες εἰς τὸ Πήλιον ἐπ᾿
εὐωχίαι ἐκόµιζον Πηλεῖ δῶρα, Χείρων δὲ µελίαν εὐθαλῆ τεµὼν εἰς δόρυ παρέσχεν.
ϕασὶ δὲ Ἀθηνα̃ ν µὲν ξέσαι αὐτό, Ἥϕαιστον δὲ κατασκευάσαι. τούτωι δὲ τῶι δόρατι καὶ
Πηλεὺς ἐν ταῖς µάχαις ἠρίστευσεν καὶ µετὰ ταῦτα Ἀχιλλεύς. ἡ ἱστορία παρὰ τῶι τὰ
Κύπρια ποιήσαντι.
Cf. Apollod. 3. 13. 5 (continuing from the passage quoted on F 3⋆) γαµεῖ δὲ ἐν τῶι
Πηλίωι, κἀκεῖ θεοὶ τὸν γάµον εὐωχούµενοι καθύµνησαν. καὶ δίδωσι Χείρων Πηλεῖ
δόρυ µείλινον, Ποσειδῶν δὲ ἵππους Βαλίον καὶ Ξάνθον· ἀθάνατοι δὲ ἦσαν οὗτοι.
The gods’ gifts of armour and Cheiron’s of the ash spear are alluded to in Il. 16. 143, 17.
194–6, 18. 82–5, and Poseidon’s gift of the (p.73) immortal horses in 16. 867, 23. 277f.
(They are named as Xanthos and Balios in 16. 149, 19. 400.)
The Goddesses’ Quarrel
Arg. 1b
παραγενοµένη δὲ Ἔρις εὐωχουµένων τῶν θεῶν ἐν τοῖς Πηλέως γάµοις νεῖκος περὶ
κάλλους ἐνίστησιν Ἀθηνα̃ ι, Ἥραι καὶ Ἀϕροδίτηι· αἳ πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ἐν ῎Ιδηι κατὰ
∆ιὸς προσταγὴν ὑϕ᾿ Ἑρµοῦ πρὸς τὴν κρίσιν ἄγονται.
Apollod. epit. 3. 2 ὅτι †µῆλον περὶ κάλλους Ἔρις ἐµβάλλει Ἥραι καὶ Ἀθηνα̃ ι καὶ
Ἀϕροδίτηι· καὶ κελεύει Ζεὺς Ἑρµῆν εἰς ῎Ιδην πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ἄγειν ἵνα ὑπ᾿ ἐκείνου
διακριθῶσιν.
‘An apple about beauty’ is an impossible expression, and it has been persuasively argued
that µῆλον in the Apollodorus epitome has intruded from the familiar version of the myth,
displacing νεῖκος: cf. Proclus’ νεῖκος περὶ κάλλους ἐνίστησιν, and for the wording Il. 4.
444 (Eris) ἥ σϕιν καὶ τότε νεῖκος… ἔµβαλε µέσσωι; Ant. Lib. 11. 3 καὶ Ἥρα µεµψαµένη
τὸν λόγον Ἔριν αὐτοῖς ἔπεµψεν, ἣ δὲ νεῖκος ἐνέβαλεν εἰς τὰ ἔργα.14
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A fuller account appears in P. Oxy. 3829 ii 12 (continuing from the passage quoted on arg.
1a),
θύων δὲ ἐν τῶι Πηλίωι ὄρει παρὰ Χείρωνι τῶι Κενταύρωι τοὺς Θέτιδος καὶ Πηλέως
γάµους τοὺς µὲν ἄλλους θεοὺς ἐπὶ τὴν ἑστία̣ σι ν παρεκάλει, µόνην δὲ τὴν Ἔριν
εἰσιοῦσαν Ἑρµῆς κωλύει ∆ιὸς κελεύσαντος· ἣ δὲ ὀργισθεῖσα χρυσοῦν µῆλον
προ[σ]έρριψεν τῶι συµποσίωι, ὑπὲρ οὗ ϕιλονικίας γενοµένης Ἥρας καὶ Ἀθηνα̃ ς καὶ
Ἀϕροδίτης ὁ Ζεὺς ἔπαθλον προύθηκεν τῆι καλλίστηι,
and in Hyg. Fab. 92. 1–2,
Iouis, cum Thetis Peleo nuberet, ad epulum dicitur omnis deos conuocasse excepta
Eride, id est Discordia. quae cum postea superuenisset nec admitteretur ad epulum, ab
ianua misit in medium malum, dicit〈que〉, quae esset formosissima, attolleret. Iuno Venus
Minerua formam sibi uindicare coeperunt; inter quas (p.74) magna discordia orta Iouis
imperat Mercurio ut deducat eas in Ida monte ad Alexandrum Paridem eumque iubeat
iudicare.
Here Zeus deliberately excludes Eris from the feast, which might seem a wise precaution
to ensure a happy occasion. On the other hand the goddesses’ quarrel has to be part of
his great plan. Perhaps in the Cypria, so far from excluding Eris, he instructed her to
cause mischief, as in Il. 11. 3 he sends her forth to the Achaeans’ ships to arouse battle-
fury. The later version shows the influence of the folktale motif of the uninvited or
excluded deity who causes trouble.
The apple with which Eris provokes the quarrel is not attested in literature or art before
the imperial period. Luckenbach 592 thought this ruled out attributing it to the Cypria,
and clearly one should think twice before doing so. Nevertheless, it may be doubted
whether the poet had an alternative to this simple and effective mechanism for provoking
the quarrel.15 If Eris threw an apple into the company, she will have done as in Hyginus,
calling for the most beautiful goddess to pick it up. The version found in some late
sources16 that it was inscribed ‘for the fairest’ was probably influenced by Callimachus’
story of Acontius and Cydippe. The episode may be imagined as follows:
Eris came to the door, µῆλον µετὰ χερσὶν ἔχουσα | καλὸν χρύσειον, and she
threw it in among the gods and said, ‘Whoever of the goddesses here claims to be
the fairest of form, let her have this prize’. At once the daughter of Zeus, pale-eyed
Athena, picked it up; but white-armed Hera upbraided her, saying, ‘You shameless
bitch, do you reckon you are the fairest among us? I am superior to you, being
sister and wife to great Zeus himself.’ So she spoke, but golden Aphrodite broke in
and said, ‘Hera, you are indeed the greatest among us, and we all honour you, but
when it comes to beauty, that is my province; everyone knows that. Do you not
come and borrow my κεστὸς ἱµάς when you want to make yourself especially
attractive? I should have the apple.’
(p.75) So the three goddesses quarrelled, and they would have come to blows, had not
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Zeus intervened, saying, ‘Stop it, all of you. You are spoiling this happy occasion with your
dispute. Come, let us continue our feasting in good cheer for the rest of the day, and
tomorrow Hermes will take you to Ida, where you can show yourselves to a young
mortal who has never seen a goddess in his life: let him decide which of you is the fairest
and which is to get the prize.’ So he spoke, and good humour was restored among the
gods. They feasted all day till the sun went down; Apollo played his lyre, and the Muses
sang.
The Judgment of Paris
F 5 Ath. 682d–f
ἀνθῶν δὲ στεϕανωτικῶν µέµνηται ὁ µὲν τὰ Κύπρια ἔπη πεποιηκὼς Ἡγησίας ἢ
Στασῖνος 〈ἢ καὶ Κυπρίας〉· ∆ηµοδάµας γὰρ ὁ Ἁλικαρνασσεὺς ἢ Μιλήσιος ἐν τῶι περὶ
Ἁλικαρνασσοῦ (FGrHist 428 F 1) Κυπρία Ἁλικαρνασσέως αὐτὰ εἶναί ϕησι ποιήµατα.
λέγει δ᾿ οὖν ὅστις ἐστὶν ὁ ποιήσας αὐτὰ ἐν τῶι αˎ οὑτωσί·
εἵµατα µὲν χροῒ ἕστο τά οἱ Χάριτές τε καὶ Ὧραι
ποίησαν καὶ ἔβαψαν ἐν ἄνθεσιν εἰαρινοῖσιν
ὅσσα ϕέρουσ᾿ ὧραι, ἔν τε κρόκωι ἔν θ᾿ ὑακίνθωι
ἔν τε ἴωι θαλέθοντι ῥόδου τ᾿ ἐνὶ ἄνθεϊ καλῶι
ἡδέϊ νεκταρέωι ἔν τ᾿ ἀµβροσίαις καλύκεσσιν
†ἄνθεσι ναρκίσσου καλλιρρόου δ᾿ οια† Ἀϕροδίτη
ὥραις παντοίαις τεθυωµένα εἵµατα ἕστο.
1 χροῒ ἕστο τά Meineke: χροια̃ ς τότε cod. 3 ὅσσα ϕέρουσ᾿ Hecker: οἷα
ϕοροῦσ᾿ cod. 6 καὶ λειρίου Meineke: καλλίχροα Kaibel δῖ᾿ Casaubon: τοῖ᾿
Meineke
Although line 6 is hopelessly corrupt, it seems that Aphrodite, being the subject of the
pluperfect ἕστο, must be the subject of the whole fragment. It must describe how she
prepared herself for the beauty contest (Welcker ii. 88). As she was to win it, the
emphasis was on her appearance, and it need not be supposed that the dressing of Hera
and Athena was described in equal detail (Welcker ii. 89). There is a similar account of the
Horai dressing Aphrodite in Hymn. Hom. 6. 6–13. The Charites bathe and dress her in
Od. 8. 364 ~ Hymn. Aphr. 61–4, and Charites and Horai collaborate in adorning Pandora
in Hes. Op. 73–5. For the typical theme of a goddess dressing and (p.76) adorning
herself to meet her lover or seduce or impress someone see West (1997), 203–5.
The diction of the fragment is largely conventional:
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1. εἵµατα µὲν χροῒ ἕστο: cf. Il. 23. 67, Od. 17. 203, 23. 115, etc.
2. ἐν ἄνθεσιν εἰαρινοῖσιν: cf. Hes. Th. 279, Op. 75, Il. 2. 89.
3. ὅσσα ϕέρουσ᾿ ὧραι: the manuscript’s ϕοροῦσ᾿ is defended by G. Parlato,
Lexis 28 (2010), 291f., comparing Call. Hymn. 2. 81, where ϕορέουσι refers to
Apollo’s altars ‘wearing’ all the flowers that the Horai bring in springtime. She
takes this to be an echo of the Cypria passage. But ϕορέω is less appropriate to
the Horai’s relationship to the flowers than ϕέρω, which is regularly used in such
phrases. Cf. Xen. Cyn. 5. 34 ἀπέχεσθαι ὧν ὧραι ϕέρουσι; Lycurg. fr. xiv 2a
ἁπάντων ὧν κατ᾿ ἐκείνους τοὺς χρόνους αἱ ὧραι ϕέρουσιν; Plut. Cimon 10. 7
καρπῶν ἑτοίµων ἀπαρχὰς καὶ ὅσα ὧραι καλὰ ϕέρουσι; id. Gracch. 39. 3, Def.
orac. 416a; Longus 2. 3. 3 ὅσα ὧραι ϕέρουσι πάντα… ἦρος ῥόδα καὶ κρίνα καὶ
ὑάκινθοι καὶ ἴα; Synes. Ep. 80 ὅσα ϕέρουσιν ὧραι τοῖς γεωργοῖς; 106 ὅσα
ϕέρουσιν ὧραι. These parallels also support ὅσσα in place of οἷα.
3–4. κρόκωι, ὑακίνθωι, ἴωι, ῥόδου: cf. Hymn. Dem. 6f., Il. 14. 348, Hymn. Pan. 25.
6. Meineke’s καὶ λειρίου is attractive; cf. Hymn. Dem. 427f. λείρια… νάρκισσόν
τε. But the syntax of the line is unclear, and δ᾿ οια remains an obstacle to sense
and metre. Kaibel’s καλλίχροα· with Meineke’s τοῖ᾿ is a possible solution.
7. τεθυωµένα εἵµατα: cf. Il. 14. 172, Hymn. Ap. 184, Aphr. 63.
F 6 Ath. 682f (continuing from F 5)

οὗτος ὁ ποιητὴς καὶ τὴν τῶν στεϕάνων χρῆσιν εἰδὼς ϕαίνεται δι᾿ ὧν λέγει·
ἣ δὲ σὺν ἀµϕιπόλοισι ϕιλοµµειδὴς Ἀϕροδίτη
πλεξάµεναι στεϕάνους εὐώδεας, ἄνθεα γαίης,
ἀν κεϕαλῆισιν ἔθεντο θεαὶ λιπαροκρήδεµνοι,
Νύµϕαι καὶ Χάριτες, ἅµα δὲ χρυσῆ Ἀϕροδίτη,
καλὸν ἀείδουσαι κατ᾿ ὄρος πολυπιδάκου ῎Ιδης..
2 ἄνθεα ποίης Hecker 3 κεϕαλῆισιν Meineke: -αῖσιν cod.
Here again the setting is Ida (Salmasius 599b, Wüllner 78). Athenaeus has quoted two
passages that stood not far apart.
(p.77)
1–2. Meineke, who thought that the reading transmitted in 2 was πλεξαµένη,
posited a lacuna after 2; Kaibel, who had the correct reading, posited one after 1.
B. K. Braswell, Glotta 60 (1982), 221–5, has shown that no lacuna is necessary,
‘Aphrodite with her attendants’ being treated as a plural subject. There are good
parallels in Thuc. 3. 109. 2 and Xen. Hell. 1. 1. 10, and perhaps Diphilus fr. 42. 39f.
K.-A. Cf. KG i. 86; Schwyzer-Debrunner 608f.
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2. στεϕάνους εὐώδεας, ἄνθεα γαίης: cf. Hes. Th. 576 στεϕάνους νεοθηλέας,
ἄνθεα ποίης. The parallel favours Hecker’s ἄνθεα ποίης, a phrase found also at
Od. 9. 449 and elsewhere; cf. my note on Hes. l.c. But ἄνθεα γαίης occurs at Dion.
Per. 754.
3. Cf. Il. 18. 382 Χάρις λιπαροκρήδεµνος. The transmitted -αῖσι in κεϕαλαῖσι is
paralleled only at Hymn. Dem. 368 cod.; Parlato 29f. is willing to give it credence as
an Aeolic archaism.
5. καλὸν ἀείδουσαι: cf. Il. 1. 473, Od. 19. 519.
ὄρος πολυπιδάκου ῎Ιδης: cf. Hymn. Aphr. 54. In Il. 14. 157, 307, 20. 59, 218, 23.
117, πολυπιδάκου ῎Ιδης is a regular and ancient variant for πολυπίδακος ῎Ιδης,
which should perhaps be read everywhere; cf. F. Sommer, Zur Geschichte der
griech. Nominal-komposita (Munich 1948), 69f.
F 7⋆ Naevius, Cypria Ilias fr. 1 Courtney (ex libro I)collum marmoreum torques gemmata
coronat.
This is one of two fragments from Naevius’ Cypria Ilias, which is assumed to have been a
version of the Cyclic Cypria; cf. Edward Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford
1993), 108. Its book-divisions may have corresponded to those of the Greek epic.
Welcker ii. 520, following Wüllner 71, saw that this first fragment probably referred to
Aphrodite’s self-adornment before the beauty contest. So too W. Morel ap. Bethe iii. 191
and in his Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum (Leipzig 1927), 51. For the sense cf. Hymn.
Aphr. 88 ὅρµοι δ᾿ ἀµϕ᾿ ἁπαλῆι δειρῆι περικαλλέες ἦσαν | καλοὶ χρύσειοι παµποίκιλοι.
Arg. 1c
καὶ προκρίνει τὴν Ἀϕροδίτην ἐπαρθεὶς τοῖς Ἑλένης γάµοις Ἀλέξανδρος.
(p.78) Apollod. epit. 3. 2 αἳ δὲ ἐπαγγέλλονται δῶρα δώσειν Ἀλεξάνδρωι· Ἥρα µὲν οὖν
ἔϕη προκριθεῖσα δώσειν βασιλείαν πάντων, Ἀθηνα̃ δὲ πολέµου νίκην, Ἀϕροδίτη δὲ
γάµον Ἑλένης.
Hyg. Fab. 92. 3 cui Iuno, si secundum se iudicasset, pollicita est in omnibus terris eum
regnaturum, diuitem praeter ceteros praestaturum; Minerua, si inde uictrix discederet,
fortissimum inter mortales futurum et omni artificio scium; Venus autem Helenam
Tyndarei filiam formosissimam omnium mulierum se in coniugium dare promisit.
Hermes and the three goddesses perhaps found Paris diverting himself with a lyre, as
Aphrodite finds Anchises in Hymn. Aphr. 80; so he is shown on some vases, and his
κίθαρις is mentioned by Hector in Il. 3. 54.17 From c.570 on he is sometimes depicted
fleeing or turning away in fright from the divine apparition, and this too may reflect the
Cypria.18 Cf. Anchises’ alarm on the appearance of Aphrodite in Hymn. Aphr. 181–3 and
other passages cited by N. J. Richardson on Hymn. Dem. 188–90 (to which add [Hes.] fr.
165. 4; Call. Hymn. 6. 59; Naev. Trag. 43). In Ov. Her. 16. 67f. Paris recalls that obstipui,
gelidusque comas erexerat horror, | cum mihi ‘pone metum’ nuntius ales ait; this could
be a direct echo of the Cypria, as the god telling the mortal not to be afraid (θάρσει) is
typical of early epic, cf. Il. 24. 171, Hymn. Aphr. 193, Hymn. 7. 55. For the hair standing on
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end cf. Il. 24. 359 (Priam on sighting Hermes) ὀρθαὶ δὲ τρίχες ἔσταν ἐνὶ γναµπτοῖσι
µέλεσσιν. In Colluthus 123 Paris just jumps up and turns away: δειµαίνων δ᾿ ἀνόρουσε,
θεῶν δ᾿ ἀλέεινεν ὀπωπήν.
Each of the goddesses made a speech, offering Paris a bribe: Hera, if he chose her,
would give him kingship over all, Athena victory in war, and Aphrodite the world’s
loveliest woman. So what is supposed to be a beauty contest becomes in effect a choice
between three alternative life ideals for a man. A genuine hero such as Achilles would
have gone for success in battle and the lasting fame that follows from it; he would have
awarded the victory to Athena. But Paris was not such a hero. The poet of Il. 24. [29–30]
brands him as the man
ὃς νείκεσσε θεάς, ὅτε οἱ µέσσαυλον ἵκοντο τὴν δ᾿ ἤνησ᾿, ἥ οἱ πόρε µαχλοσύνην

ἀλεγεινήν.
(p.79) In the version known to him, then, Paris not only rejected the claims of Hera and
Athena but explicitly disparaged them.
The Judgment was often depicted in art, the earliest representations being a Proto-
Corinthian Olpe dated c.630 and an ivory comb from Sparta of c.620 (LIMC Paridis
Iudicium 26 and 22). Hermes is regularly shown conducting the goddesses. When they
are differentiated, they are usually lined up in the order Hera, Athena, Aphrodite: LIMC
Paridis Iudicium 1, 2, 14, 15, 20, 22, 26, 42. They are named in the same sequence in the
epigram that accompanied the scene on the Chest of Cypselus (Paus. 5. 19. 5). It is also
the order in which they made their offer speeches in Cratinus’ Diony-salexandros
(Hypothesis, PCG iv. 140) and in which they appear in Isocrates (10. 41f.) and
Apollodorus (above). It is very probably the order in which they addressed Paris in the
Cypria.19
Proclus, Apollodorus, and Hyginus all suggest that Aphrodite identified the woman on
offer as Helen. But it is possible that she spoke initially only of ‘the most beautiful woman
on earth’ and explained who this was after Paris had awarded her the victory. This seems
the best place to locate the account of the birth of the Dioskouroi and Helen from which F
10 comes; see just below on F 9.
The Birth Story of the Dioskouroi and Helen
F 9 Clem. Protr. 2. 30. 5

προσίτω δὲ καὶ ὁ τὰ Κυπριακὰ ποιήµατα γράψας·
Κάστωρ µὲν θνητός, θανάτου δέ οἱ αἶσα πέπρωται,
αὐτὰρ ὅ γ᾿ ἀθάνατος Πολυδεύκης, ὄζος Ἄρηος.
The lines most likely belonged with the account of the Dioskouroi’s birth implied by F 10.
1 τοὺς δὲ µέτα (Henrichsen 38). They may have stood immediately before F 10. Leda
was impregnated by Zeus and by her husband Tyndareos at about the same time, and
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Castor came from Tyndareos’ seed, Polydeukes from Zeus’:20 hence only Polydeukes
was immortal. But both were known as the Dioskouroi, and there is no serious
contradiction with F 10. 1 where Zeus has (p.80) evidently been said to father both of
them. Pindar is guilty of the same inconsistency in Nem. 10. 56 and 80.
The tense of πέπρωται (in which we note the Attic correption, cf. intro. 7) implies that the
lines come from a speech, presumably by a god or a seer. This suggests that the account
of the brothers’ birth and Helen’s may have been related by Aphrodite to Paris as she
explained who the people were that he was to encounter in Sparta.21
F 10 Ath. 334b
ὁ τὰ Κύπρια ποιήσας ἔπη, εἴτε Κυπρίας τίς ἐστιν ἢ Στασῖνος ἢ ὅστις δή ποτε χαίρει
ὀνοµαζόµενος, τὴν Νέµεσιν ποιεῖ διωκοµένην ὑπὸ ∆ιὸς καὶ εἰς ἰχθὺν µεταµορϕουµένην
διὰ τούτων·
τοὺς δὲ µέτα τριτάτην Ἑλένην τέκε, θαῦµα βροτοῖσιν·
. . . . . . . .
τήν ποτε καλλίκοµος Νέµεσις ϕιλότητι µιγεῖσα
Ζηνὶ θεῶν βασιλῆϊ τέκε κρατερῆς ὑπ᾿ ἀνάγκης.
ϕεῦγε γάρ, οὐδ᾿ ἔθελεν µιχθήµεναι ἐν ϕιλότητι
πατρὶ ∆ιὶ Κρονίωνι· ἐτείρετο γὰρ ϕρένας αἰδοῖ
καὶ νεµέσει· κατὰ γῆν δὲ καὶ ἀτρύγετον µέλαν ὕδωρ
ϕεῦγε, Ζεὺς δ᾿ ἐδίωκε, λαβεῖν δ᾿ ἐλιλαίετο θυµῶι,
ἄλλοτε µὲν κατὰ κῦµα πολυϕλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης
ἰχθυῖ εἰδοµένην, πόντον πολὺν ἐξοροθύνων,
10
ἄλλοτ᾿ ἀν᾿ Ὠκεανὸν ποταµὸν καὶ πείρατα γαίης,
ἄλλοτ᾿ ἀν᾿ ἤπειρον πολυβώλακα· γίνετο δ᾿ αἰεί
θηρί᾿, ὅσ᾿ ἤπειρος αἰνὰ τρέϕει, ὄϕρα ϕύγοι µιν.
(Ath.) Κυπρίας Severyns: Κύπριος cod. (fr.) 1 τοὺς Wüllner: τοῖς cod. post h.v. lac.
stat. Welcker 9 ἐξοροθύνων Wakefield: ἐξορόθυνεν cod. 12 δεινὰ Welcker νιν cod.
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As third after the Dioskouroi he begot Helen.22 She is not, as usual, the daughter of Leda
(who becomes her foster-mother: Apollodorus, below) but of the goddess Nemesis, the
personification of public (p.81) disapproval. Helen’s elopement was eminently a matter
for dis-approval; the man who took her away was turning his back on νέµεσις and αἰδώς
([Hes.] fr. 204. 82). The senior citizens of Troy, however, when they saw her beauty, had
to admit that there was no νέµεσις attached to fighting a war over it (Il. 3. 156). She is
made the daughter of Nemesis in the same spirit as when Euripides makes her the
daughter of Alastor, Phthonos, Phonos, and Thanatos (Tro. 768f.). This originally had
nothing to do with the cult of Nemesis at Rhamnous in Attica. Cratinus brought them
together in his Nemesis (PCG iv. 179–85), and this is the source of the association found
in later writers, as in Call. H. 3. 232 Ἑλένηι Ῥαµνουσίδι.
In the attempt to elude Zeus Nemesis transforms herself into a succession of different
creatures. The motif is transferred from Thetis (cf. above on F 3) (Lesky, RE xix. 298;
Davies (1989), 39). But in addition to that she flees before him across land and sea, even
to the ends of the earth.
The language of the fragment has a distinctly Hesiodic cast:
1. τοὺς δὲ µέτα: so in genealogical contexts Hes. Th. 137, 381, [Hes.] fr. 26. 31,
35. 13, cf. Carm. Naup. 1. 1.
τριτάτην: for the explicit ‘as third’ cf. Il. 14. 117, 15. 188, with West (2007), 118.
The whole line has a similar pattern to Od. 11. 287 τοῖσι δ᾿ ἔπ᾿ ἰϕθίµην Πηρὼ
τέκε, θαῦµα βροτοῖσιν. After it there probably came an explanation of θαῦµα
βροτοῖσιν in terms of Helen’s extra-ordinary beauty; ποτε in 3 then signals the
return to the birth story.23
3. Ζηνὶ θεῶν βασιλῆϊ: cf. Hes. Th. 886 Ζεὺς δὲ θεῶν βασιλεύς with my note;
Parlato 13f. Zeus is never called βασιλεύς in Homer (nor ἄναξ of the gods).
κρατερῆς ὑπ᾿ ἀνάγκης: Hes. Th. 517.
4. µιχθήµεναι ἐν ϕιλότητι: cf. Hes. Th. 306 µιγήµεναι ἐν ϕιλότητι.
5. πατρὶ ∆ιὶ Κρονίωνι: cf. Hes. Op. 259 ∆ιὶ πατρὶ … Κρονίωνι.
5–6. αἰδοῖ | καὶ νεµέσει: for this pairing cf. Il. 13. 122, Hes. Op. 200 with my note,
[Hes.] fr. 204. 82. For αἰδοῖ so placed (where (p.82) it cannot be read as αἰδόϊ)
cf. [Hes.] Sc. 354, and Hes. Op. 324 αἰδῶ, Od. 20. 171 αἰδοῦς; Schmitt 15; Parlato
6f.
κατὰ γῆν δὲ καὶ ἀτρύγετον µέλαν ὕδωρ: new phrasing, adapted from formulae
such as Hes. Th. 413 γαίης τε καὶ ἀτρυγέτοιο θαλάσσης, cf. 728, Il. 14. 204. Cf.
Curti 41; Parlato 14–16.
7. ϕεῦγε, Ζεὺς δ᾿ ἐδίωκε: cf. Il. 22. 158 πρόσθε µὲν ἐσθλὸς ἔϕευγε, δίωκε δέ µιν
µέγ᾿ ἀµείνων.
λαβεῖν δ᾿ ἐλιλαίετο θυµῶι: cf. Hes. Th. 665 πολέµου δ᾿ ἐλιλαίετο θυµός.
8. κατὰ κῦµα πολυϕλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης: Hymn. Hom. 6. 4, Archil. 13. 3.
9. ἰχθυῖ: editors have always printed ἰχθύϊ, but Schmitt 16 points out that dative
-υι is regularly contracted in Homer except in monosyllabic roots such as δρυΐ. Cf.
Il. 16. 526, 22. 458, etc.
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πόντον πολὺν: cf. Hes. Op. 635 πολὺν … πόντον.

ἐξοροθύνων: cf. Parlato 17f.
10. Cf. Od. 11. 639 κατ᾿ Ὠκεανὸν ποταµόν; Il. 14. 200f. πείρατα γαίης, |
Ὠκεανόν τε κτλ. The line awkwardly disrupts the antithesis ‘in the sea… on land’
(Griffin 50).
11. ἤπειρον πολυβώλακα: cf. Od. 13. 235 ἐριβώλακος ἠπείροιο.
12. Cf. Hes. Th. 582 κνώδαλ᾿ ὅσ᾿ ἤπειρος δεινὰ (v.l. πολλὰ) τρέϕει, Hymn. Aphr.
4f. θηρία πάντα, | ἠµὲν ὅσ᾿ ἤπειρος πολλὰ τρέϕει. The limitation to land
creatures is somewhat inept in the present context.
µιν: the transmitted νιν can be defended by citing Hymn. Aphr. 280 codd. and CEG 455
(Amorgos, c.550–500?) (Schmitt 21, Parlato 34f.), but the usual epic µιν is an easy
correction.

Νέµε] σίν τ᾿ ὁ τὰ Κύ[πρια γ]ράψας ὁµοιωθέ[ντ]α χηνὶ κα̣ὶ̣ αὐτ[ὸν] δ̣ ιώκειν, καὶ
µιγέ̣ ν[το]ς ὠ̣ ι̣ὸν τεκεῖν, [ἐξ] ο̣ ὗ γ̣ενέσθαι τὴν [Ἑλ]ένην.
Apollod. 3. 10. 7
λέγουσι δὲ ἔνιοι Νεµέσεως Ἑλένην εἶναι καὶ ∆ιός· ταύτην γὰρ τὴν ∆ιὸς ϕεύγουσαν
συνουσίαν εἰς χῆνα τὴν µορϕὴν µεταβαλεῖν, ὁµοιωθέντα δὲ καὶ ∆ία †τῶι κύκνωι† (del.
Luppe) συνελθεῖν· τὴν δὲ ὠιὸν ἐκ τῆς συνουσίας ἀποτεκεῖν.
(p.83) τοῦτο δὲ ἐν τοῖς ἄλσεσιν εὑρόντα τινὰ ποιµένα Λήδαι κοµίσαντα δοῦναι, τὴν
δὲ καταθεµένην εἰς λάρνακα ϕυλάσσειν· καὶ χρόνωι γεννηθεῖσαν Ἑλένην ὡς ἐξ αὑτῆς
θυγατέρα τρέϕειν.
Zeus has apparently been matching Nemesis’ metamorphoses. When she turns into a
goose, he becomes a gander, and in that form he catches her. The point of this fowl play is
that Helen is to be born from a large egg, which a shepherd will find and bring to Leda.
Sappho fr. 166 seems to allude to this version (but has Leda herself find the egg).
Cratinus in his Nemesis (see above) made Zeus turn into a swan instead of a goose;
hence the confusion in some later sources, including the collocation of goose and swan in
Apollodorus (where the swan is excised by W. Luppe, Phil. 118 (1974), 195). Cf. sch. Call.
H. 3. 232; sch. Lyc. 88; [Eratosth.] Catast. 25; Paus. 1. 33. 7. We have Philodemus’ explicit
testimony that in the Cypria he became a gander.
Preparations for the Voyage to Sparta
Arg. 1d
ἔπειτα δὲ Ἀϕροδίτης ὑποθεµένης ναυπηγεῖται. καὶ Ἕλενος περὶ τῶν µελλόντων αὐτοῖς
προθεσπίζει. καὶ ἡ Ἀϕροδίτη Αἰνείαν συµπλεῖν αὐτῶι κελεύει. καὶ Κασσάνδρα περὶ
τῶν µελλόντων προδηλοῖ.
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Apollod. epit. 3. 2 ὃ δὲ Ἀϕροδίτην προκρίνει, καὶ πηξαµένου Φερέκλου νῆας εἰς Σπάρτην
ἐκπλέει.
F 8 Sch. (D) Il. 3. 443

Ἀλέξανδρος υἱὸς Πριάµου Τροίας βασιλέως, ὁ καὶ Πάρις ἐπικαλούµενος, Ἀϕροδίτης
ἐπιταγῆι ναυπηγήσαντος αὐτῶι ναῦς Ἁρµονίδου ἢ κατά τινας τῶν νεωτέρων Φερέκλου
τοῦ τέκτονος, µετὰ Ἀϕροδίτης (Αἰνείου?) ἦλθεν εἰς Λακεδαίµονα τὴν Μενελάου πόλιν.
Phereklos, son of Tekton, son of Harmon—carpentry evidently ran in the family—is

already known to the Iliad poet as the builder of the fatal ships: 5. 59–64, (p.84)
Μηριόνης δὲ Φέρεκλον ἐνήρατο Τέκτονος υἱόν
Ἁρµονίδεω, ὃς χερσὶν ἐπίστατο δαίδαλα πάντα
τεύχειν· ἔξοχα γάρ µιν ἐϕίλατο Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη·
ὃς καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρωι τεκτήνατο νῆας ἐΐσας
ἀρχεκάκους, αἳ πα̃ σι κακὸν Τρώεσσι γένοντο
οἷ τ᾿ αὐτῶι, ἐπεὶ οὔ τι θεῶν ἒκ θέσϕατα εἴδη.
Aristarchus wilfully misinterpreted the passage so that he could claim that the Cypria was
derivative from it. He took τέκτονος as the common noun and Harmonides as the
antecedent of the relative clause; if Phereklos was identified as the shipwright in the
Cypria, so Aristarchus maintained, it was through a misconstruction of the Iliad passage.
Hence the wording in the D scholium, ‘Harmonides, or according to some of the later
poets Phereklos’.
It is not self-evident why new ships had to be built for the adventure. Were the Trojans
supposed not to have had ships before that time? And why was more than one ship
needed?24 Was it because Aeneas was to go too? But his role is obscure. He is
Aphrodite’s son, so she may readily call on him to accompany Paris if he needs to be
accompanied, but it is not clear why he does. We hear of nothing that Aeneas said or did
at Sparta, and we cannot see what was to be gained by his presence.25 For a hypothesis
that may contribute something to the question see below on arg. 2d.
The shipbuilding may have been the occasion for a woodcutting scene on Ida, like that in
Il. 23. 110–26; cf. on Little Iliad arg. 4a. Euripides refers to the felling of the trees for
Paris’ ship in Hec. 631–4 and Hel. 229–35, but he does likewise for the Argo in Med. 3f.,
so this does not necessarily reflect the Cypria. Cf. also Lyc. 24; Ov. Her. 16. 105–12;
Colluth. 195f.; Jouan 179.
The preparations for the voyage were punctuated by prophetic warnings from both
Helenos and Cassandra. Two prophecies seem excessive, but there were two people in
Troy with prophetic powers and the poet saw fit to put them both to work. Helenos’
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warnings seem to have been addressed to Paris (who, however, in Il. 5. 64 is said to have
been ignorant of prophecies) together with his (p.85) shipwright. Welcker inferred that
Cassandra’s warnings were addressed to the Trojans at large.26
The fact that Proclus takes note of these prophecy scenes indicates that they were of
some substance. A fragment from one of them may perhaps be recognized in:
F 29 Plat. Euthyphro 12a

λέγω γὰρ δὴ τὸ ἐναντίον ἢ ὁ ποιητὴς ἐποίησεν ὁ ποιήσας·
Ζῆνα δὲ τόν τ᾿ ἔρξαντα καὶ ὃς τάδε πάντ᾿ ἐϕύτευσεν
οὐκ ἐθέλει νεικεῖν· ἵνα γὰρ δέος, ἔνθα καὶ αἰδώς.
1 τ᾿ ἔρξαντα Merkelbach: θ᾿ ἕρξ-, στέρξ- codd. Plat.: ῥέξ- Stob.: ἔρξ- Nauck 379 2
ἐθέλει νεικεῖν Burnet, ἐθέλειν εἴκειν fere schol.: ἐθέλειν vel -εις εἰπεῖν codd.
Plat., Stob., Mantissa
The scholiast identifies the source: εἴρηται δὲ ἐκ τῶν Στασίνου Κυπρίων; likewise Stob.
3. 31. 12 Στασίνου ἐκ τῶν Κυπρίων· Ζῆνα – αἰδώς; Mantissa proverb. 1. 71. 2 (Corp.
Paroem. ii. 755. 10, from sch. Plat.).
The lines come from a speech in which it is reported that a certain god or goddess is
inhibited by fear from openly railing at Zeus, the agent responsible who planted the
seeds of ‘all this’. I conjecture that the speaker was Helenos, who in Il. 7. 44–53 proves
able to listen in on gods’ conversations, and that the context was his warning speech
before Paris’ embarkation. The deity who is not railing at Zeus will be the one who often
does, Hera. Although she is not speaking out openly against his scheming (the ulterior
purpose of which she does not comprehend), she is going to cause trouble for Paris and
for Troy.
The second sentence ἵνα – αἰδώς is quoted on its own by Plutarch, Agis et Cleom. 30. 6
and De cohibenda ira 459d, and appears in the paroemiographers (Diogenian. 5. 30;
Apostol. 9. 6). It is already echoed by Epicharmus fr. 228 K.–A., ἔνθα δέος, ἐνταῦθα
καἰδώς, and the idea is given a political application in Aesch. Eum. 517–25, Soph. Aj. 1073–
6. For the association of δέος and αἰδώς cf. Il. 15. 657f. and Hymn. Dem. 190 with
Richardson.
(p.86) F 29a (new) Anon., P. Oxy. 5094 fr. 1. 4–9

∆η̣[µήτ]ριος δ᾿ ὁ Σκ[ήψιος] | κ[αὶ ϲτί]χον ϕηϲὶµ̣[ετὰ] | τοῦτ[ο]ν ϕέρεσθα[ι· “ἰϕθί]|µ̣η,
µ[ού]νη θυγάτ̣[ηρ] | κλειτοῖο ∆ύµαν[τος”.] | ὡς δ᾿ ὁ τὰ Κύπρια, A[
In ZPE 183 (2012) I have presented a new restoration of the fragment and shown that
the ‘daughter of famed Dymas’ is almost certainily to be understood as Hekabe, who in
Homer is the daughter of a Phrygian Dymas (Il. 16. 718). The citation of Demetrius of
Scepsis a few lines before also points to a Trojan context. The verse fragment may come
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from one of the other Cyclic poems in which Hekabe appeared (the Iliou Persis?). The
Cypria was then cited for some additional or variant detail, presumably relating to
Hekabe’s parentage. The scholia on Il. 16. 718 cite Euripides and others for her father
being Kisseus. In the Cypria it was perhaps someone with a name beginning A[. The
brachylogical expression ὁ τὰ Κύπρια (without ποιήσας or the like) has many parallels,
see Nauck 377f.
Hekabe’s father was most likely to be named when she was first introduced. That must
have been in an episode set inside Troy. The only such episodes we know of in the Cypria
were when Paris was preparing for his voyage to Sparta, when he returned to Troy with
Helen and celebrated their marriage, and when Menelaos and Odysseus went into the
city to demand her return. The first of these, in which Helenos and Cassandra made their
prophecies, seems the most favourable for an appearance of Hekabe.
There is no evidence that the Cypria contained the story of Hekabe’s dream of giving
birth to a firebrand and of the resulting exposure of the infant Paris on Ida. So rightly
(pace Jouan 135–7) Wilamowitz, Griech. Tragödien iii (3rd edn, Berlin 1910), 260 n. 1;
Bethe 232 n. 7.
The Stay with the Dioskouroi
Arg. 2a
ἐπιβὰς δὲ τῆι Λακεδαιµονίαι Ἀλέξανδρος ξενίζεται παρὰ τοῖς Τυνδαρίδαις, καὶ µετὰ
ταῦτα ἐν τῆι Σπάρτηι παρὰ Μενελάωι.
After docking at Gythion Paris made his way up towards Sparta, naturally passing through
Amyklai, the home of the Dioskouroi. His preliminary stay with them, passed over by
Apollodorus, was no (p.87) doubt made on Aphrodite’s instructions. It cannot have
been crucial for Paris’ mission, but it provided the opportunity to introduce these
important figures and account for their absence from the Trojan War.
F 15 Paus. 3. 16. 1
πλησίον δὲ Ἱλαείρας καὶ Φοίβης ἐστὶν ἱερόν· ὁ δὲ ποιήσας τὰ ἔπη τὰ Κύπρια
θυγατέρας αὐτὰς Ἀπόλλωνός ϕησιν εἶναι.
These are the Leukippides, their mortal father being Leukippos, brother of Aphareus.
They are mentioned together with Apollo in a commentary on Alcman, PMGF 8. They
were perhaps introduced in the Cypria as the wives of the Dioskouroi (Welcker ii. 92). On
their cult see R. Kannicht on Eur. Hel. 1465–7.
In later sources (first in fourth-century art; then Theoc. 22. 137–211) they are the cause
of the dispute between the Apharetidai, to whom they had been promised, and the
Dioskouroi, who abducted them. In the Cypria, however, the dispute was differently
motivated (below, arg. 3).
The stay with the Dioskouroi might also have been the occasion for recounting the earlier
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abduction of Helen, if the following testimony relates to the Cypria:
F 12⋆ Sch. (D) Il. 3. 242

Ἑλένη … πρότερον ὑπὸ Θησέως ἡρπάσθη, καθὼς προείρηται (sch. 3. 144,=Hellanicus fr.
168c Fowler). διὰ γὰρ τὴν τότε γενοµένην ἁρπαγὴν ῎Αϕιδνα πόλις Ἀττικῆς πορθεῖται,
καὶ τιτρώσκεται Κάστωρ ὑπὸ Ἀϕίδνου τοῦ τότε βασιλέως κατὰ τὸν δεξιὸν µηρόν. οἱ δὲ
∆ιόσκουροι Θησέως µὴ τυχόντες λαϕυραγωγοῦσιν τὰς Ἀθήνας. ἡ ἱστορία παρὰ †τοῖς
πολεµωνίοις† (παρὰ Πολέµωνι Fabricius) ἢ τοῖς κυκλικοῖς, καὶ ἀπὸ µέρους παρὰ
Ἀλκµα̃ νι τῶι λυρικῶι (PMGF 21).
Apollod. 3. 10. 7 (immediately after the passage quoted under F 11) tells the story of
Helen’s capture by Theseus and the seizure of Aphidna by the Dioskouroi. They
recovered Helen and took Theseus’ mother Aithra captive. She became Helen’s servant,
eventually to be recovered from Troy by her grandsons in the Little Iliad and Iliou
Persis. When the Homeric scholiast cites οἱ κυκλικοί he could be referring to one of
those epics. So there is no certainty that the Aphidna episode appeared in the Cypria. If it
did, the Dioskouroi (p.88) themselves may have related it to Paris and Aeneas during
their brief stay (Anderson 98f.). A prudent guest might have taken the hint that any
abduction of Helen was liable to have bad consequences for the abductor’s city.
The poet was later to tell of the fatal dispute between the Dioskouroi and the Apharetidai
(arg. 3, F 9, 16, 17). Lycophron 538–49 says that the trouble, instigated by Zeus, began
with angry words at a feast at the time when the Dioskouroi were playing the host to
Paris. This must somehow be based on the Cypria, for it was only there that Paris and the
Dioskouroi crossed paths. In Proclus, however, his stay with them is separated from the
account of their battle with the Apharetidai by his stay with Menelaos, abduction of Helen,
and roundabout return voyage to Troy. But there is some unclarity about the exact
sequence of events. We read that Paris was entertained by the Tyndaridai, and after that
(µετὰ ταῦτα) by Menelaos—here the story of the seduction follows, with the voyage to
Sidon and return to Troy—and meanwhile (ἐν τούτωι δέ) Castor and Polydeukes had
been caught stealing cattle, which led to the fatal battle. We cannot be certain that this is a
faithful reflection of the order of presentation in the poem. There seem to be other
instances where Proclus may have taken things out of sequence in order to follow a story
through and keep connected events together: see on Aethiopis arg. 1d, Iliou Persis arg.
2d, 4b, 3, Nostoi F 9.
F. Staehlin, Phil. 62 (1903), 186f., argued that for Paris to succeed in abducting Helen it
was necessary for the Dioskouroi as well as Menelaos to be removed from the scene,
and that this was the poet’s motive in making the quarrel break out just when Paris was
there. It is not clear that the Dioskouroi in Amyklai had to be incapacitated before the
abduction from Sparta could be completed, but still, it had to be explained why they failed
to go in pursuit of the abductor (cf. Gruppe 667) and why they took no part in the
expedition against Troy. The Iliad refers to their death, or at least their disappearance
from earthly life, sometime after Helen left Sparta (3. 236–44).
Paris’ departure from their house must have led directly to his reception at Menelaos’.
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The account of the battle with the Apharetidai, if it was not deferred till after Paris
completed his return home (where it appears in Proclus), will have been put in at some
point where the story of Paris and Helen could conveniently be interrupted: perhaps
during the uneventful nine days before (p.89) Menelaos left for Crete, or after they
had been blown out into eastern waters.
The Stay with Menelaos. the Seduction and Flight
Arg. 2b
καὶ Ἑλένηι παρὰ τὴν εὐωχίαν δίδωσι δῶρα ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος. καὶ µετὰ ταῦτα Μενέλαος
εἰς Κρήτην ἐκπλεῖ, κελεύσας τὴν Ἑλένην τοῖς ξένοις τὰ ἐπιτήδεια παρέχειν ἕως ἂν
ἀπαλλαγῶσιν. ἐν τούτωι δὲ Ἀϕροδίτη συνάγει τὴν Ἑλένην τῶι Ἀλεξάνδρωι.
Apollod. epit. 3. 3 ἐϕ᾿ ἡµέρας δὲ ἐννέα ξενισθεὶς παρὰ Μενελάωι, τῆι δεκάτηι,
πορευθέντος εἰς Κρήτην ἐκείνου κηδεῦσαι τὸν µητροπάτορα Κατρέα, πείθει τὴν
Ἑλένην ἀπαγαγεῖν σὺν ἑαυτῶι.
The nine-day hospitality is an epic motif and must have come in the Cypria, perhaps with
the same verse as Il. 6. 174, ἐννῆµαρ ξείνισσε καὶ ἐννέα βοῦς ἱέρευσεν; cf. also Apollod.
1. 8. 2 (Oineus at Calydon).27 During this time Paris was plying Helen with gifts, perhaps
secretly. Normally a guest is a receiver of gifts, not a giver. When the tenth day came a
messenger arrived with the news that the Cretan Katreus, the father of Menelaos’
mother Aërope, had died; or perhaps Menelaos just announced that he had to go to
Crete for his grandfather’s funeral, without giving details of how the news had come.
Some such special circumstance was necessary to motivate his departure from home
while guests were there. (For travelling abroad for a funeral cf. Il. 23. 679f.) He left the
house in Helen’s care, enjoining her to look after the guests well for the remainder of
their stay. (Ha.) Once he was out of the way, Aphrodite came to Helen and persuaded
her to meet Paris in private.
Alcidamas, Od. 18, substitutes a different motive for Menelaos’ departure to Crete, but
then describes things more or less in line with the Cypria: πλεῖν αὐτῶι ἔδοξε, καὶ
ἐπιστείλας τῆι γυναικὶ καὶ τοῖς ἀδελϕοῖς 〈αὐτῆς〉 ἐπιµελεῖσθαι τῶν ξένων, ἵνα µηδενὸς
ἔσοιντο ἐνδεεῖς ἕως ἂν αὐτὸς ἔλθηι ἐκ Κρήτης, ὃ µὲν ὤιχετο· Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ αὐτοῦ τὴν
γυναῖκα ἐξαπατήσας,ἐκ τῶν οἴκων λαβὼν ὅσα πλεῖστα ἐδύνατο, ἀποπλέων ὤιχετο.
(p.90) The differences are that here the Dioskouroi seem to be part of the household
and that Helen is somehow tricked.
F 13⋆ Naevius, Cypria Ilias fr. 2 Courtney (ex libro II) penetrat penitus thalamoque potitur.
On this Naevius cf. above on F 7 ⋆. Wüllner 73 and Welcker ii. 520 conjectured that the
fragment referred to Paris in Menelaos’ house; so too W. Morel ap. Bethe iii. 191, and it
is hard to think of an alternative. It looks as if Paris has received encouragement from
Helen and makes his way to her chamber, probably after nightfall.
Arg. 2c
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καὶ µετὰ τὴν µίξιν τὰ πλεῖστα κτήµατα ἐνθέµενοι νυκτὸς ἀποπλέουσι.
Apollod. epit. 3. 3 ἣ δὲ ἐνναέτη Ἑρµιόνην καταλιποῦσα, ἐνθεµένη τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν

χρηµάτων, ἀνάγεται τῆς νυκτὸς σὺν αὐτῶι.
Proclus indicates that the pair made love before embarking. Il. 3. 443–5 has a different
version, according to which Paris ‘seized’ Helen from Sparta (ἔπλεον ἁρπάξας) and then
made love to her on an offshore island. The amount of valuable property that the couple
took away with them, however, is a recurrent theme in the Iliad: 3. 70–2, 285, 7. 350,
363, 389, 13. 626, 22. 14–16. Helen’s abandonment of her young daughter is also firmly
established in the tradition, cf. Il. 3. 175, Od. 4. 263, Sappho 16. 10.
Diversion to the Eastern Mediterranean
Arg. 2d
χειµῶνα δὲ αὐτοῖς ἐϕίστησιν Ἥρα, καὶ προσενεχθεὶς Σιδῶνι ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος αἱρεῖ τὴν
πόλιν.
Apollod. epit. 3. 4 Ἥρα δὲ αὐτοῖς ἐπιπέµπει χειµῶνα πολύν, ὑϕ᾿ οὗ βιασθέντες

προσίσχουσι Σιδῶνι. εὐλαβούµενος δὲ Ἀλέξανδρος µὴ διωχθῆι πολὺν διέτριψε χρόνον
ἐν Φοινίκηι καὶ Κύπρωι.
Sch. (D) Il. 6. 291, “ἤγαγε Σιδονίηθεν”: κλέψας γὰρ τὴν Ἑλένην ἀπὸ Λακεδαίµονος οὐχ
ἣν ἦλθεν ὁδὸν οὐδὲ τὸν κατ᾿ εὐθεῖαν πλοῦν ἐπορεύθη, ἵνα µὴ διωχθεὶς καταληϕθῆι,
ἀλλ᾿ ἔπλευσε διὰ τῆς Αἰγύπτου καὶ Φοινίκης. παριὼν οὖν διὰ τῆς Σιδῶνος κἀκεῖθεν
γυναῖκας ἔξω τοῦ ἄστεως εὑρὼν ἔλαβε τρόπωι ληιστρικῶι. Cf. sch. A b T.
(p.91) Hera, being the goddess of marriage and at the same time one of the two whom
Paris has affronted by preferring Aphrodite, obstructs the lovers’ return to Troy by
sending a storm.28 Their ship is blown eastwards towards Cyprus and Phoenicia, where
Paris takes Sidon, just as if he were a normal warrior hero. It is mentioned in Il. 6. 289–92
that he brought Helen to Troy by way of Sidon and that he acquired some skilled women
weavers there. The Homeric scholiast gives an account of how he got the women that
does not involve a sack of the city and is more suited to a small company of men. But he
does not claim, as Proclus does, to be citing the Cypria.
In Il. 11. 20 the legendary priest-king Cinyras is mentioned as having been ruler of
Cyprus when Agamemnon was assembling forces for the war.29 It seems very likely that
the poet of the Cypria brought him into the story of Paris’ and Helen’s visit to Cyprus,
perhaps as their host. It appears not to have been an eventful stay, as Proclus passes
over it without a word.
It is hard to believe that Aeneas, who had accompanied Paris to Sparta, was involved in
any of this. We may guess that he sailed in a different ship and that Hera targeted only
that of Paris and Helen with her storm. Aeneas then presumably returned straight to
Troy and reported what had happened, so that the Trojans could prepare for Paris’
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return.
There is a notorious problem raised by a passage in Herodotus. In 2. 113–15 he claims to

have heard from the priests at Memphis a story of how Paris and Helen were blown to
Egypt. He tries to reconcile this with the Iliad passage on the grounds that Sidon is not
far from the borders of Egypt:
F 14 Herod. 2. 116. 6–117

ἐν τούτοισι τοῖσι ἔπεσι δηλοῖ (Ὅµηρος) ὅτι ἠπίστατο τὴν ἐς Αἴγυπτον Ἀλεξάνδρου
πλάνην· ὁµουρεῖ γὰρ ἡ Συρίη Αἰγύπτωι, (p.92) οἱ δὲ Φοίνικες, τῶν ἐστι ἡ Σιδών, ἐν
τῆι Συρίηι οἰκέουσι. κατὰ ταῦτα δὲ τὰ ἔπεα καὶ τόδε τὸ χωρίον οὐκ ἥκιστα ἀλλὰ
µάλιστα δηλοῖ ὅτι οὐκ Ὁµήρου τὰ Κύπρια ἔπεά ἐστι ἀλλ᾿ ἄλλου τινός· ἐν µὲν γὰρ τοῖσι
Κυπρίοισι εἴρηται ὡς τριταῖος ἐκ Σπάρτης Ἀλέξανδρος ἀπίκετο ἐς τὸ ῎Ιλιον ἄγων
Ἑλένην,εὐαέϊ τε πνεύµατι χρησάµενος καὶ θαλάσσηι λείηι· ἐν δὲ Ἰλιάδι λέγει ὡς
ἐπλάζετο ἄγων αὐτήν.
Two of the verses that Herodotus is paraphrasing may be reconstructed as
ἔπλεον εὐαεῖ τ᾿ ἀνέµωι λείηι τε θαλάσσηι.
ἤµατι δὲ τριτάτωι Τροίην ἐρίβωλον ἵκοντο.
For the first line cf. Od. 14. 253, for the second Il. 9. 363, 18. 67, 23. 215.
Apparently Herodotus knew a shorter version of the Cypria in which the oriental
diversion was eliminated. The native Cypriot version, we may assume, did not omit the
episode which brought Paris and Helen to Cyprus itself.30 In this version the verses that
Herodotus cites might have been used for Aeneas’ straightforward voyage back to Troy.
Paris was evidently represented as tarrying longer in eastern waters than the diversion
by a storm would warrant; hence the motivation given by Apollodorus and the Homer
scholiast, his fear of being followed from Sparta, perhaps by the Dioskouroi, who had
pursued their sister’s earlier abductor, Theseus. The scholiast adds Egypt to the
countries that Paris visited; this would make his wanderings more like those of Menelaos
(Od. 4. 83 Κύπρον Φοινίκην τε καὶ Αἰγυπτίους ἐπαληθείς), and it would have given
Herodotus’ priests a firmer handle for their fiction. Stesichorus’ story of the substitution
of a phantom for Helen, who stayed in Egypt with Proteus during the war, may
presuppose her arrival there with Paris (Jouan 192); this is what sch. Aristid. Or. 1. 212
and Tz. in Lyc. 113 (PMGF pp. 178f.) ascribe to Stesichorus, though the verbatim (p.93)
fragment PMGF 192 suggests that she not only never reached Troy but never even took
ship from Sparta.
There is another fragment of legend about Paris’ travels with Helen in the eastern
Mediterranean that might derive indirectly from the Cypria:
St. Byz. s.v. Σαµυλία· πόλις Καρίας, Μοτύλου κτίσµα τοῦ τὴν Ἑλένην καὶ Πάριν
ὑποδεξαµένου.
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Stephanus’ immediate source was almost certainly his usual one for Carian toponyms, the
Καρικά of Apollonius of Aphrodisias (FGrHist 740). This author made many connections
with mythical history. It looks as if he knew some older tradition of a Motylos who gave
hospitality to Paris and Helen, and this might go back to the Cypria; 31 Motylos would be
on a par with Phaidimos, the king of Sidon who entertained Menelaos (Od. 4. 617–19), or
his Egyptian hosts Polybos (4. 126–9) and Thon (4. 228).32
Tzetzes, Antehom. 140, says that Paris and Helen returned to Troy after a whole year.
Arg. 2e
καὶ ἀποπλεύσας εἰς ῎Ιλιον γάµους τῆς Ἑλένης ἐπετέλεσεν.
Apollod. epit. 3. 4 ὡς δὲ ἀπήλπισε τὴν δίωξιν, ἧκεν εἰς Τροίαν µετὰ Ἑλένης.
γάµους ἐπετέλεσεν signifies not the consummation of the union, which had taken place
long before, but a public ceremony. If my hypothesis about Aeneas is right, the city was
well prepared for Paris’ return with Helen.
Stesichorus may have described the wedding in his Helen (PMGF 187; cf. Ibycus PMGF
315?). It is also represented on a Corinthian column krater of c.580 (LIMC Alexandros
67). Paris and Helen stand (p.94) in a chariot drawn by horses named Xanthos and
Polypentha. Other named figures are Hector and Daiphon (=Deiphobos?), each
accompanied by a woman, and a warrior Hippolytos. It is doubtful whether any of these
details are to be attributed to the Cypria; cf. Prolegomena §7 on the tendency of vase
painters to add subsidiary figures.
What Became of the Dioskouroi
Arg. 3
ἐν τούτωι δὲ Κάστωρ µετὰ Πολυδεύκους τὰς ῎Ιδα καὶ Λυγκέως βοῦς ὑϕαιρούµενοι
ἐϕωράθησαν. καὶ Κάστωρ µὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ ῎Ιδα ἀναιρεῖται, Λυγκεὺς δὲ καὶ ῎Ιδας ὑπὸ
Πολυδεύκους. καὶ Ζεὺς αὐτοῖς ἑτερήµερον νέµει τὴν ἀθανασίαν.
As explained above (on F 12⋆), I suspect that the Dioskouroi’s fate may have been
related sometime before the arrival of Paris and Helen at Troy.
Idas and Lynkeus, the sons of the Messenian Aphareus or Aphares, were the traditional
rivals of the Dioskouroi. In the older sources their dispute is over cattle. Pindar more or
less follows the Cypria version in an extended re-telling of the story, Nem. 10. 55–91, but
he tones down elements unfavourable to the Dioskouroi.33 He avoids saying that they
stole the cattle; he just says that Idas was ἀµϕὶ βουσίν πως χολωθείς (60; cf. Paus. 4. 3. 1
µάχη περὶ τῶν βοῶν). In sch. Lyc. 547 the cattle-stealing is combined with the argument
over the Leukippides: the Apharetidai criticized the Dioskouroi for having provided no
bride-price (cf. Lyc. 549), so they drove off Aphareus’ cattle and gave them to Leukippos.
Apollodorus 3. 11. 2 has a longer story, perhaps from Pherecydes, in which the cattle-
raid is a reprisal after the Apharetidai cheat the Dioskouroi of some cattle that they have
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jointly plundered in Arcadia.
The reconstruction of Wilamowitz, Die Textgeschichte der griechischen Bukoliker (Berlin

1906), 189f., goes too far beyond the evidence.
(p.95) F 16 Sch. Pind. Nem. 10. 114a, “ἀπὸ Ταϋγέτου πεδαυγάζων ἴδεν Λυγκεὺς δρυὸς
ἐν στελέχει ἥµενος”
ὁ µὲν Ἀρίσταρχος ἀξιοῖ γράϕειν “ἥµενον”, ἀκολούθως τῆι ἐν τοῖς Κυπρίοις λεγοµένηι
ἱστορίαι· ὁ γὰρ τὰ Κύπρια συγγράψας ϕησὶ τὸν Κάστορα ἐν τῆι δρυῒ κρυϕθέντα
ὀϕθῆναι ὑπὸ Λυγκέως. τῆι δὲ αὐτῆι γραϕῆι καὶ Ἀπολλόδωρος κατηκολούθησε (FGrHist
244 F 148). πρὸς οὕς ϕησι ∆ίδυµος … παρατίθεται δὲ καὶ τὸν τὰ Κύπρια γράψαντα
οὕτω λέγοντα·
αἶψα δὲ Λυγκεύς
Τηΰγετον προσέβαινε ποσὶν ταχέεσσι πεποιθώς,
ἀκρότατον δ᾿ ἀναβὰς διεδέρκετο νῆσον ἅπασαν
Τανταλίδεω Πέλοπος· τάχα δ᾿ εἴσιδε κύδιµος ἥρως
δεινοῖς ὀϕθαλµοῖσιν ἔσω κοίλης δρυὸς ἄµϕω
Κάστορά θ᾿ ἱππόδαµον καὶ ἀεθλοϕόρον Πολυδεύκεα.
. . . . . . . .
νύξε δ᾿ ἄρ᾿ ἄγχι στὰ〈ς〉 µεγάλην δρῦν,
καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς.
1–6 exscripsit Tz. Hist. 2. 714–19 et in Lyc. 511 4 Τανταλίδεω Ribbeck:-δου

codd. κύδιµος: ὄβριµος Tz. Hist. 5 δρυὸς ἄµϕω κοίλης codd.: corr.
Gerhardpost 6 lac. stat. Ribbeck
Lynkeus had the keenest sight of anyone in the world (Pindar 62f. κείνου γὰρ
ἐπιχθονίων πάντων γένετ᾿ ὀξύτατον ὄµµα). He ran up to the summit of Taygetos, the
highest point in the Peloponnese, from where he was able to survey the whole peninsula
and locate the Dioskouroi despite their being concealed in a hollow tree-trunk, where
they were waiting in ambush (Apollod.). He told Idas, who went and drove his spear into
the trunk. Didymus probably omitted some lines after 6; Pindar 63f. mentions that the
Apharetidai hastened to the tree.
2. ποσὶν ταχέεσσι πεποιθώς: cf. Il. 6. 505, 8. 339 (v.l.).

3–4. διεδέρκετο: cf. Parlato 18f.
νῆσον … Τανταλίδεω Πέλοπος: cf. Tyrt. 2. 15, 12. 7; Alc. 34. 1; Simon. eleg. 11.
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36; Bacch. 1. 13f., 12. 38f. The phrase νῆσος Πέλοπος may also have occurred in a
ps.-Hesiodic poem (fr. 189).
τάχα δ᾿ εἴσιδε: Il. 14. 13.
4. κύδιµος: otherwise in epic only in the formula κύδιµος Ἑρµῆς, Hes. Th. 938 and
Hymn. Herm. ten times. Tzetzes in his Historiai, but not in his commentary on
Lycophron, gives ὄβριµος.
(p.96) This is found ten times in the Iliad at this place in the verse, but always
followed by a name (῎Αρης or Ἕκτωρ); cf. on 7.
5. Proper rhythm was restored by E. Gerhard, Lectiones Apollonianae (Leipzig
1816), 146.
6. Cf. [Hes.] fr. 198. 8, 199. 1; with πὺξ ἀγαθὸν Πολυδεύκεα Il. 3. 237=Od. 11.
300.
7. νύξε δ᾿ ἄρ᾿ ἄγχι στὰς: cf. Il. 16. 404 ἔγχει νύξε παραστάς; 24. 477 ἄγχι δ᾿
ἄρα στάς. νύξε(ν) or νύξ᾿ often stands at the beginning of the line in the Iliad. It
was Idas who drove his spear into the tree (F 17). The line may have ended with
ὄβριµος ῎Ιδας (Ribbeck). Tzetzes does not quote this verse, but I wonder if his
ὄβριµος in 4 in one of his two quotations somehow derives from a fuller copy of
the Pindaric scholium. T. Mommsen, Parerga Pindarica (Progr. Frankfurt 1877),
36, suggested ἄλκιµος ῎Ιδας or ἔγχεϊ µακρῶι or ὀξέϊ δουρί.

Κάστο[ρα δ] ὲ ὑπὸ ῎Ιδα τοῦ [Ἀϕα]ρ̣έως κατη[κοντ]ίσ
̣ θαι γέγραϕεν ὁ [τὰ Κύπρια]
ποήσα[ς καὶ Φερεκύ]δης ὁ Ἀ[θηναῖος (fr. 127A Fowler).
Idas’ spear-thrust inflicts a mortal wound on Castor. According to Pindar Polydeukes

then chased the Apharetidai to their father’s tomb, where they pulled up the gravestone
and hurled it at his chest, without effect. He charged at Lynkeus and killed him, while
Zeus dispatched Idas by hurling a thunderbolt, ψολόεντα κεραυνόν; the epic phrase
may have stood in the Cypria, though Proclus says nothing of a thunderbolt and
represents Polydeukes as having killed Idas as well as Lynkeus. Apollodorus (3. 11. 2)
has a shocking variant: Idas throws the stone after Lynkeus is killed (so Lyc. 556–9), and
it hits Polydeukes on the head and knocks him unconscious. This must be the older
version, as it explains why Zeus has to intervene to kill Idas, and the blow that fells
Polydeukes is surely more original than the one that does not hurt him and leaves his
dignity intact. This then will be the version of the Cypria:34 Pindar has modified it out of
respect for Polydeukes.
(p.97) Pindar continues with Polydeukes returning to Castor; he finds him breathing his
last, ἄσθµατι ϕρίσσοντα πνοάς, which may correspond to an epic ἀσθµαίνοντα (as Il. 21.
182). In his distress he prays to Zeus to let him die too. Zeus appears before him and
explains that while Polydeukes was his own son, Castor was fathered by Tyndareos and
so mortal. We know that the distinction was made in the Cypria (F 9 above). He offers
Polydeukes the choice of either going to Olympus and living among the gods as an
immortal or sharing Castor’s lot and spending half the time in heaven and half below the
earth. Polydeukes does not hesitate but takes the latter option. The result is the daily
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alternation that Pindar described at the beginning of his story, 55–7 µεταµειβόµενοι δ᾿
ἐναλλὰξ ἀµερα̃ ν τὰν µὲν παρὰ πατρὶ ϕίλωι | ∆ὶ νέµονται, τὰν δ᾿ ὑπὸ κεύθεσι γαίας ἐν
γυάλοις Θεράπνας, | πότµον ἀµπιπλάντες ὁµοῖον. (Cf. Pyth. 11. 63f.) This is the
ἑτερήµερος ἀθανασία that Proclus attests for the Cypria. It is also referred to in Od. 11.
301–4:
τοὺς ἄµϕω ζωοὺς κατέχει ϕυσίζοος αἶα·
οἳ καὶ νέρθεν γῆς τιµὴν πρὸς Ζηνὸς ἔχοντες
ἄλλοτε µὲν ζώουσ᾿ ἑτερήµεροι, ἄλλοτε δ᾿ αὖτε
τεθνα̃ σιν· τιµὴν δὲ λελόγχασιν ἶσα θεοῖσιν.
Here they seem to be confined below the earth even on their days of life. But that cannot
be seriously intended. The point is that they have a tomb at Therapnai but they are not
really dead; they have quasi-divine status. Cf. Alcman (PMGF 7 test.) ap. sch. Eur. Tro.
210, ὑπὸ τὴν γῆν τῆς Θεράπνης εἶναι λέγονται ζῶντες, ὡς Ἀλκµάν ϕησι.
Menelaos’ Reaction to Helen’s Defection
Arg. 4a
καὶ µετὰ ταῦτα Ἶρις ἀγγέλλει τῶι Μενελάωι τὰ γεγονότα κατὰ τὸν οἶκον· ὃ δὲ
παραγενόµενος περὶ τῆς ἐπ᾿ ῎Ιλιον στρατείας βουλεύεται µετὰ τοῦ ἀδελϕοῦ.
Apollod. epit. 3. 6
Μενέλαος δὲ αἰσθόµενος τὴν ἁρπαγὴν ἧκεν εἰς Μυκήνας πρὸς Ἀγαµέµνονα, καὶ δεῖται
στρατείαν ἐπὶ Τροίαν ἀθροίζειν καὶ στρατολογεῖν τὴν Ἑλλάδα.
Iris, no doubt acting on Zeus’ instructions, brings the news of Helen’s defection to
Menelaos in Crete. She may have come to him in (p.98) the guise of a mortal, as she
does to Priam in Il. 2. 791, or in her own form, as in Il. 24. 160ff. (Welcker ii. 151). He
goes to Mycenae to consult with Agamemnon his brother, who agrees that an army must
be raised for a war against Troy.
In Il. 5. 715f. Hera refers to a promise that she and Athena made to Menelaos that he
would sack Troy and return safe home after-wards. The poet may have known a poem in
which these two losers in the Judgment of Paris appeared to Menelaos (possibly in a
dream) and gave him this guarantee, and this might have come in the Cypria. Cf. Robert
(1901), 566; Wilamowitz (1916), 300; Kullmann 240.
In Od. 8. 75–82 we find an allusion to a consultation of the Delphic oracle by Agamemnon

at the beginning of the war. Apollo had apparently prophesied that when the best of the
Achaeans quarrelled, victory over Troy would follow not long after. In Demodokos’ song
Agamemnon rejoices when at a sacrificial feast a quarrel breaks out between Odysseus
and Achilles. But the oracle must have been invented with a view to the quarrel of
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Agamemnon and Achilles in the Iliad. It is possible that this oracle came in the Cypria. The
Odyssey poet substitutes Odysseus for Agamemnon because Odysseus is in
Demodokos’ audience.
Arg. 4b
καὶ πρὸς Νέστορα παραγίνεται Μενέλαος· Νέστωρ δὲ ἐν παρεκβάσει διηγεῖται αὐτῶι
ὡς Ἐπωπεὺς ϕθείρας τὴν Λυκούργου (Λύκου Heyne) θυγατέρα ἐξεπορθήθη, καὶ τὰ περὶ
Οἰδίπουν, καὶ τὴν Ἡρακλέους µανίαν, καὶ τὰ περὶ Θησέα καὶ Ἀριάδνην.
Menelaos also goes to see Nestor in Pylos, no doubt to draw on his wisdom and
experience. Nestor, true to his usual character as portrayed in epic, speaks at length,
recalling episodes from the past, though in this case they are not events that he himself
was involved in. Cf. intro. 3. It is remarkable that something of the content of his speech
has survived into Proclus, though there is a parallel in Telegony arg. 1b with its reference
to the digression on Trophonios and Agamedes.
At least the first of Nestor’s stories, that of Epopeus, has a clear relevance to the
situation. That encourages us to seek for some similar pertinence in the others.
Wilamowitz (1884), 149, made the (p.99) striking observation that the heroines of the
stories, Antiope, Epikaste/Iokaste, Megara, and Ariadne, all appear, in nearly the same
order and the first three more or less together, among the heroines that Odysseus sees
in Hades, Od. 11. 260, 271, 269, 321. But it is hard to see what is to be made of this. I
suspect that the poet put the four stories in Nestor’s mouth less because they added up
to a coherent and telling argument than because he himself found them interesting and
worthy of notice.
1. Epopeus. In an account given by Hyg. Fab. 8, Apollod. 3. 5. 5, and sch. Ap. Rhod.
4. 1090, drawn apparently from the back history related in the prologue of
Euripides’ Antiope, Antiope, having become pregnant by Zeus, ran away to
Sicyon and married Epopeus, or (Hyg.) encountered him somewhere else and
was taken to Sicyon by him. Her uncle Lykos mounted an expedition, took Sicyon,
killed Epopeus, and brought Antiope back to Boeotia, where she gave birth to
Zethos and Amphion. (Cf. Paus. 2. 6. 1–4, where Epopeus abducts her.) The story
related by Nestor was evidently an older version of this. Antiope is not elsewhere
the daughter of a Lykourgos or a Lykos, but after the death of her father
Nykteus his brother Lykos takes over his role. This lends plausibility to Heyne’s
emendation of Λυκούργου in Proclus’ text. The lesson that could be drawn from
the story was that a woman’s abduction might be followed up by a successful
attack on her abductor’s city and by her recovery.
2. Oedipus. Oedipus certainly made an unfortunate marriage, but it is hard to see
any relevance to Menelaos in that story. Did Nestor go on to refer to the quarrel
between Oedipus’ sons? (Cf. Severyns (1928), 211.) Polyneikes’ marriage to the
daughter of Adrastos was the precondition for the Argive war on Thebes. But
again, a connection with Menelaos’ case is difficult to find.
3. Heracles’ madness. The phrase should refer to the insanity that caused
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Heracles to kill his children by Megara. According to Apollodorus (2. 6. 1), when
the hero won the archery contest for the hand of Iole at Oichalia, her father
Eurytos refused to let him have her in case he should kill his future children by
her in the same way as he had killed Megara’s. In a subsequent episode Heracles
killed Eurytos’ son Iphitos in a second fit of madness (2. 6. 2, cf. Herodorus fr. 32
Fowler), and later (2. 7. 7) he killed Eurytos, sacked Oichalia, and took Iole. Some
version of these events was related in the Οἰχαλίας ἅλωσις attributed to
Creophylus; cf. [Hes.] fr. 26. 31–3, (p.100) and Sophocles’ Trachiniai. Love and
the sack of a city seem to be the elements in the story that offer potential
relevance to the Helen affair, but as before it is difficult to see what use Nestor
could have made of it.
4. Theseus and Ariadne. Ariadne fell in love with Theseus and went off with him.
The story is mentioned in Od. 11. 321–5, where she dies before reaching Athens.
According to the ps.-Hesiodic Aigimios (fr. 147/298) Theseus left her for Aigle.
The point of Nestor’s story may have been that when a woman runs away with a
lover it may turn out disastrously for her. And for the lover and his city?
Theseus’ return from Crete is associated with the death of his father Aigeus, the
king of Athens, and a conflict with his cousins the Pallantidai (Gantz 276f.), though
no one links these political troubles with Ariadne.
What advice did Nestor give on the basis of these exempla? It is hard to see that they
point to a particular practical conclusion. But he cannot have discouraged Menelaos from
mobilizing for war, as that is what followed.
F 17a⋆ (= Epic. adesp. 7) Clearchus fr. 90 W. (– ὄχλον); Philod. De pietate A 1679 Obbink (–
σκεδάσεις); Diog. Laert. 2. 117
οὐκ ἀπ᾿ ἐµοῦ σκεδάσεις ὄχλον, ταλαπείριε πρέσβυ;
The sources report various wits and philosophers (Charmus, Socrates, Bion) as having
used this verse for their own purposes. Welcker ii. 516 conjectured that Menelaos spoke
it to Nestor in the Cypria, and Bernabé includes it in his edition as fr. 16. Cf. A. Bernabé,
Emerita 50 (1982), 81–92; Dirk Obbink, Philodemus On Piety, Part 1 (Oxford 1996), 544–
8. Obbink takes ὄχλον as ‘trouble, grief’ and the line as a statement, ‘you will not dispel
my grief’, with ἀποσκεδάσαι as in F 18. 2. But ὄχλος in its abstract meaning is rather
‘bother, nuisance, tiresomeness’. I prefer to imagine that Menelaos finds Nestor feasting,
surrounded by cheerful people who are eager to welcome the visitor, and that he asks
Nestor to send them away so that they can talk in private.
ἐµοῦ should in epic dialect be ἐµέο, in the later transmission written ἐµεῦ. But perhaps
the original was ἀπό µοι.
(p.101) F 18 Ath. 35c
οἶνόν τοι, Μενέλαε, θεοὶ ποίησαν ἄριστον
θνητοῖς ἀνθρώποισιν ἀποσκεδάσαι µελεδώνας·
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ὁ τῶν Κυπρίων τοῦτό ϕησι ποιητής, ὅστις ἂν εἴη.
The lines are plausibly assigned to Nestor (Heyne; Henrichsen 54; Welcker ii. 99, 516).
Menelaos may initially have declined on grounds of misery to join in the drinking that was
in progress, until Nestor persuaded him.
Some have supposed that Nestor’s great drinking-cup featured in the scene: Kullmann
257 n. 2; P. A. Hansen, Glotta 54 (1976), 43; G. Danek, Wien. St. 107/8 (1994/5), 32–5.
There is no reason to think it did, any more than it does in the Pylian scenes in the
Odyssey.
1. θεοὶ ποίησαν in this place in the verse: Od. 17. 271, 23. 258.
2. Cf. Theogn. (anon.) 883 on wine from Taygetus, τοῦ πίνων ἀπὸ µὲν χαλεπὰς
σκεδάσεις µελεδώνας.
Recruitment for War
Arg. 5a
ἔπειτα τοὺς ἡγεµόνας ἀθροίζουσιν ἐπελθόντες τὴν Ἑλλάδα.
Apollod. epit. 3. 6 ὃ δὲ πέµπων κήρυκα πρὸς ἕκαστον τῶν βασιλέων τῶν ὅρκων
ὑπεµίµνησκεν ὧν ὤµοσαν, καὶ περὶ τῆς ἰδίας γυναικὸς ἕκαστον ἀσϕαλίζεσθαι
παρήινει, ἴσην λέγων γεγενῆσθαι τὴν τῆς Ἑλλάδος καταϕρόνησιν καὶ κοινήν. Cf. Eur.
IA 77–9 ὃ δὲ (Menelaos) καθ᾿ Ἑλλάδ᾿ οἰστρήσας δρόµωι | ὅρκους παλαιοὺς Τυνδάρεω
µαρτύρεται, | ὡς χρὴ βοηθεῖν τοῖσιν ἠδικηµένοις.
The oaths that Euripides and Apollodorus refer to are those sworn by the suitors of
Helen, which Apollodorus had included in his earlier narrative (3. 10. 8–9) and which are
attested in several earlier authors.35 There is no clear allusion to them in the Iliad (West
(2011a), 109), and it is not certain that they appeared in the Cypria, as argued e.g. by
Bethe 233–5. If they did, it will have been in passing, in the context of the recruitment, as
the epic did not contain a (p.102) full-scale account of Helen’s wedding: Proclus could
not have passed it over. If they did not, the leaders who agreed to join the expedition
must have been moved simply by outrage and concern for the security of their own
marriages if Helen’s behaviour went unpunished.
Arg. 5b
καὶ µαίνεσθαι προσποιησάµενον Ὀδυσσέα ἐπὶ τῶι µὴ θέλειν συστρατεύεσθαι
ἐϕώρασαν, Παλαµήδους ὑποθεµένου τὸν υἱὸν Τηλέµαχον ἐπὶ κόλασιν ἐξαρπάσαντες.
Apollod. epit. 3. 7 ὄντων δὲ πολλῶν προθύµων στρατεύεσθαι, παραγίνονται καὶ πρὸς

Ὀδυσσέα εἰς Ἰθάκην. ὃ δὲ οὐ βουλόµενος στρατεύεσθαι προσποιεῖται µανίαν.
Παλαµήδης δὲ ὁ Ναυπλίου ἤλεγξε τὴν µανίαν ψευδῆ, καὶ προσποιησαµένωι µεµηνέναι
παρηκολούθει· ἁρπάσας δὲ Τηλέµαχον ἐκ τοῦ Πηνελόπης κόλπου ὡς κτενῶν
ἐξιϕούλκει. Ὀδυσσεὺς δὲ περὶ τοῦ παιδὸς εὐλαβηθεὶς ὡµολόγησε τὴν προσποίητον
µανίαν καὶ στρατεύεται.
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Who are the recruiters in this episode? From Proclus’ words we would infer that they
were Menelaos and Nestor, and Nestor is plausible in the role, as he appears in it
together with Odysseus in Il. 11. 767–70. (In 4. 377 similarly it is a pair of heroes who
recruit for the Theban war.) But Palamedes is also present. In Od. 24. 115–19
Agamemnon and Menelaos recruit together; there is an allusion to Odysseus’ reluctance
to join up.36
Palamedes, not mentioned in the Iliad or Odyssey, was a son of Nauplios, noted for his
inventiveness (see Gantz 604). Here he outwits the wily Odysseus himself. Odysseus and
Diomedes compassed his death near the end of the poem (arg. 12, F 27).
To simulate madness, according to later sources, Odysseus yoked an ox and a horse (or
an ass, Lyc. 816f.) together before a cart or a plough. Then in one version Palamedes lays
the baby Telemachos down in the path of the plough (Hyg. Fab. 95, sch. Lyc. 815), in the
other he himself pretends to be mad with rage, seizes the child, and makes as if to kill him
with his sword (painting of Euphranor at Ephesus described by Pliny HN 35. 129; Luc. De
domo 30). The latter (p.103) corresponds to what seems to have been in the Cypria
(Wagner 176f.).
In my Loeb edition I included in the recruiting phase two episodes for which there is
insufficient warrant:
(i) Apollod. epit. 3. 9 (12 Papathom.) ὅτι Μενέλαος σὺν Ὀδυσσεῖ καὶ Ταλθυβίωι
πρὸς 〈Κινύραν εἰς〉 Κύπρον ἐλθόντες συµµαχεῖν ἔπειθον. ὃ δὲ Ἀγαµέµνονι µὲν
οὐ παρόντι θώρακα{ς} ἐδωρήσατο· ὀµόσας δὲ πέµψειν πεντήκοντα ναῦς,µίαν
πέµψας ἧς ἦρχεν 〈〉 ὁ Πυγµαλίωνος (my conjecture for Μυγδαλίωνος), καὶ τὰς
λοιπὰς ἐκ γῆς πλάσας µεθῆκεν εἰς τὸ πέλαγος. Here Odysseus is one of the two
recruiters, which does not harmonize well with arg. 5b above. In Apollodorus the
episode is added after the gathering at Aulis, as if from a different source, and it is
followed by a story about how Odysseus engineered Palamedes’ death that
differs from the one attested for the Cypria in F 27. So the Cinyras episode
should probably be excluded from the poem (against Wagner 181f.). It ought to
have interested a Cypriot poet, and I have suggested that he brought Cinyras
into the narrative of Paris’ eastern wanderings; on the other hand his treatment
of Agamemnon reflected no credit on Cyprus.
(ii) (F 19) Sch. (D) Il. 19. 326 Ἀλεξάνδρου Ἑλένην ἁρπάσαντος Ἀγαµέµνων καὶ
Μενέλαος τοὺς Ἕλληνας κατὰ Τρώων ἐστρατολόγησαν. Πηλεὺς δὲ
προγινώσκων ὅτι µοιρίδιον ἦν ἐν Τροίαι θανεῖν Ἀχιλλέα, παραγενόµενος εἰς
Σκῦρον πρὸς Λυκοµήδην τὸν βασιλέα παρέθετο τὸν Ἀχιλλέα, καὶ γυναικείαν
ἐσθῆτα ἀµϕιέσας ὡς κόρην µετὰ τῶν θυγατέρων ἀνέτρεϕεν. χρησµοῦ δὲ
δοθέντος µὴ ἁλώσεσθαι τὴν ῎Ιλιον χωρὶς Ἀχιλλέως, πεµϕθέντες ὑϕ᾿ Ἑλλήνων
Ὀδυσσεύς τε καὶ Φοίνιξ καὶ Νέστωρ, Πηλέως ἀρνουµένου παρ᾿ αὐτῶι τὸν
παῖδα τυγχάνειν, πορευθέντες εἰς Σκῦρον καὶ ὑπονοήσαντες µετὰ τῶν
παρθένων τὸν Ἀχιλλέα τρέϕεσθαι, ταῖς Ὀδυσσέως ὑποθήκαις ὅπλα καὶ
ταλάρους ἔρριψαν σὺν ἱστουργικοῖς ἐργαλείοις ἔµπροσθεν τοῦ παρθενῶνος. αἱ
µὲν οὖν κόραι ἐπὶ τοὺς ταλάρους ὥρµησαν καὶ τὰ λοιπά, Ἀχιλλεὺς δὲ
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ἀνελόµενος τὰ ὅπλα κατάϕωρος ἐγένετο· καὶ συνεστρατεύσατο. πρότερον δὲ

ταῖς παρθένοις συνδιατρίβων ἔϕθειρε ∆ηϊδάµειαν τὴν Λυκοµήδους, ἥτις ἐξ
αὐτοῦ ἐγέννησε Πύρρον τὸν ὕστερον Νεοπτόλεµον κληθέντα· ὅστις τοῖς
Ἕλλησι νέος ὢν συνεστρατεύσατο µετὰ θάνατον τοῦ πατρός. ἡ ἱστορία παρὰ
τοῖς κυκλικοῖς. Cf. sch. (T) Il. 9. 668b.
(p.104) The story of Peleus’ concealment of Achilles on Skyros is not to be attributed to

the Cypria (Henrichsen 55f.; contra, Severyns (1928), 285–91). It comes from Euripides’
Skyrioi and is incompatible with arg. 7c; cf. on Little Iliad F 4. It is first attested in a
painting by Polygnotos in a gallery by the Propylaea, Paus. 1. 22. 6. Cf. Gantz 581. The
reference to οἱ κυκλικοί is valid only for the last part of the passage, the birth of
Pyrrhos-Neoptolemos to Deidameia and his participation in the war after Achilles’ death.
In the Cypria Achilles was presumably recruited in the regular way, as in Il. 9. 252–9, 11.
765–91. This was probably the poet’s first opportunity to bring him into his narrative,
since he had passed straight on from the wedding of Peleus and Thetis to the Judgment
of Paris. He no doubt introduced him with a back-reference to the wedding episode.
Here, if anywhere, he might have referred to the boy’s education by Cheiron (Severyns
(1928), 261). Here too, or later when Thetis came to give Achilles counsel, he might have
told a story that we find in later sources, that she left Peleus when the baby was twelve
days old (Severyns (1928), 256–9). But there is no evidence that this came in the Cypria.
First Gathering at Aulis. The Teuthrania Debacle
Arg. 6
καὶ µετὰ ταῦτα συνελθόντες εἰς Αὐλίδα θύουσι. καὶ τὰ περὶ τὸν δράκοντα καὶ τοὺς
στρουθοὺς γενόµενα δείκνυται, καὶ Κάλχας περὶ τῶν ἀποβησοµένων προλέγει αὐτοῖς.
Apollod. epit. 3. 15 θυσίας δὲ γενοµένης ἐν Αὐλίδι τῶι Ἀπόλλωνι … ὁρµήσας δράκων ἐκ

τοῦ βωµοῦ παρὰ τὴν πλησίον πλάτανον, οὔσης ἐν αὐτῆι νεοττια̃ ς, τοὺς ἐν αὐτῆι
καταναλώσας στρουθοὺς ὀκτὼ σὺν τῆι µητρὶ ἐνάτηι λίθος ἐγένετο. Κάλχας δὲ εἰπὼν
κατὰ ∆ιὸς βούλησιν γεγονέναι αὐτοῖς τὸ σηµεῖον τοῦτο, τεκµηράµενος ἐκ τῶν
γεγονότων ἔϕη δεκαετεῖ χρόνωι δεῖν Τροίαν ἁλῶναι.
The gathering at Aulis would have been an appropriate occasion for a catalogue of forces,
but Proclus does not mention one. The Cypria, at least in its final form, was designed to
lead on to the Iliad, and the poet might have had the sense not to anticipate (p.105) the
Catalogue of Ships, though he did at the end of the poem anticipate the catalogue of the
Trojan allies. The Iliad poet knew and had sung a poem about the gathering at Aulis that
did feature a catalogue: West (2011a), 112.
The omen of the snake and sparrows is the one recalled in Il. 2. 308–29, where it is not
said that the sacrifice was to Apollo and Zeus is the god who sends the portent. (In Ov.
Met. 12. 11 the sacrifice is to him.) Calchas interprets the omen as signifying that the
Achaeans must fight for nine years on the site (Il. 2. 328 πτολεµίξοµεν αὖθι) before
achieving victory. He very likely used a similar formulation in the Cypria. Note that the
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extra time that passes in the Cyclic poem before the fleet reaches Troy is not included in
the reckoning (wrongly Huxley 136).
In Il. 1. 69–72 Calchas is introduced as the best of augurs, who knew past, present, and
future, and who by his power of divination led the Achaeans’ ships to Ilios. In the Cypria,
however, he was not up to showing them their way (cf. below on arg. 7d). None of them
had an accurate idea of where Troy was; they had no maps and no ships like those of the
Phaeacians in the Odyssey, which knew all the cities of men and steered themselves to the
required destination. Consequently the great Achaean force, after crossing the Aegean,
landed in quite the wrong place.
Arg. 7a
ἔπειτα ἀναχθέντες Τευθρανίαι προσίσχουσι, καὶ ταύτην ὡς ῎Ιλιον ἐπόρθουν. Τήλεϕος
δὲ ἐκβοηθεῖ, Θέρσανδρόν τε τὸν Πολυνείκους κτείνει καὶ αὐτὸς ὑπὸ Ἀχιλλέως
τιτρώσκεται.
Apollod. epit. 3. 17 37 ἀγνοοῦντες δὲ τὸν ἐπὶ Τροίαν πλοῦν Μυσίαι προσίσχουσι καὶ
ταύτην ἐπόρθουν, Τροίαν νοµίζοντες εἶναι. βασιλεύων δὲ Τήλεϕος Μυσῶν Ἡρακλέους
παῖς ˻καὶ Αὔγης τῆς Ἀλέου˼, ἰδὼν τὴν χώραν λεηλατουµένην, τοὺς Μυσοὺς καθοπλίσας
ἐπὶ τὰς ναῦς συνεδίωκε τοὺς Ἕλληνας καὶ πολλοὺς ἀπέκτεινεν, ἐν οἷς καὶ
Θέρσανδρον τὸν Πολυνείκους ὑποστάντα. ὁρµήσαντος δὲ Ἀχιλλέως ἐπ᾿ αὐτὸν οὐ
µείνας ἐδιώκετο· καὶ διωκόµενος ἐµπλακεὶς εἰς ἀµπέλου κλῆµα τὸν µηρὸν
τιτρώσκεται δόρατι, ˻νεµεσήσαντος αὐτῶι ∆ιονύσου ὅτι ἄρα ὑπὸ τούτου τιµῶν
ἀϕήιρητο˼.
(p.106) Paus. 9. 5. 14 ὡς δὲ τοῖς σὺν Ἀγαµέµνονι ἐς Τροίαν στρατεύουσιν ἡ διαµαρτία

τοῦ πλοῦ γίνεται καὶ ἡ πληγὴ ἡ περὶ Μυσίαν, ἐνταῦθα καὶ τὸν Θέρσανδρον κατέλαβεν
〈ἀποθανεῖν〉 ὑπὸ Τηλέϕου, µάλιστα Ἑλλήνων ἀγαθὸν γενόµενον ἐν τῆι µάχηι.
Teuthrania lay far from Troy, in Mysia, several miles inland up the Caicus valley. This
episode, of which Achilles and Telephos are the protagonists, originally had nothing to do
with the Trojan War. It was one of a number of exploits of Achilles located in an area
extending to Tenedos in the north and Skyros in the west and centred on Lesbos; see
West (2011a), 43f. When he became integrated in the Trojan tradition they were attached
to it too, being treated as things done on the way to Troy or during the years spent
there. The Teuthrania raid could not be treated as part of the Troy campaign, as the place
was too far away. It could only be attached by means of the silly story that the Achaeans
arrived there by mistake and invaded under the misapprehension that it was Troy.
The episode was alluded to in the Little Iliad (F 4), and it was known to Archilochus, who
used it as an exemplum in an elegy (P. Oxy. 4708). In his version Heracles himself may
have helped to rout the Achaeans, calling upon his son Telephos to put them to flight.
According to Pindar, who is likely to be following the Cypria, Achilles and Patroklos alone
made a stand against Telephos when the rest of the Achaeans fled (Ol. 9. 70–5; cf. Isth. 5.
41, 8. 50). Patroklos may have been given this role to prepare for his status as Achilles’
closest friend and ally in the Iliad (Welcker ii. 150). The episode may have been the
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source for a vase painting that shows him wounded in the upper arm and being
bandaged by Achilles.38
Thersandros was one of the Epigoni who had taken Thebes with Diomedes, Sthenelos,
and Euryalos, who appear as Argive leaders in Il. 2. 563–6. If the Iliad poet had known of
the Teuthrania raid and Thersandros’ part in it, he might have named him in that (p.107)
passage and explained why he was no longer around, as he does with Philoctetes and
Protesilaos (2. 699, 721). He is mentioned by Pindar, Ol. 2. 43–5. According to Pausanias
(l.c. above) he had a hero cult at Elaia, the harbour town near the mouth of the Caicus.
A fragment of a calyx crater of c.510 (LIMC Diomedes (I) 7) shows Patroklos beside
Diomedes, who is bending over what was probably a fallen warrior. The presence of
Dionysus in the field indicates the Mysian context, and the casualty is conjectured to have
been Thersandros. According to Dictys 2. 2 Thersandros fell after slaughtering many of
the enemy and it was Diomedes who carried his bloody body out of the battle.
Arg. 7b
ἀποπλέουσι δὲ αὐτοῖς ἐκ τῆς Μυσίας χειµὼν ἐπιπίπτει καὶ διασκεδάννυνται.
Apollod. epit. 3. 18 τῆς δὲ Μυσίας ἐξελθόντες Ἕλληνες ἀνάγονται, καὶ χειµῶνος

ἐπιγενοµένου σϕοδροῦ διαζευχθέντες ἀλλήλων εἰς τὰς πατρίδας καταντῶσιν.
Instead of now taking the Achaeans on to Troy, the poet (or one of his predecessors)
decided to abort this first expedition and make a fresh start with a second gathering at
Aulis. This created an interval in which Achilles could firstly call at Skyros and impregnate
Deidameia with Neoptolemos and secondly complete the Telephos story by healing his
wound. The storm was a convenient device for dispersing the armada and bringing
Achilles to Skyros. It may have been modelled on the storm that scattered the Achaean
ships in the Nostoi.
Arg. 7c
Ἀχιλλεὺς δὲ Σκύρωι προ〈σ〉σχὼν γαµεῖ τὴν Λυκοµήδους θυγατέρα ∆ηϊδάµειαν.
The Little Iliad, in introducing Neoptolemos to the narrative, gave the same account of
his birth (F 4): withdrawing from the encounter with Telephos, Achilles had been blown to
Skyros by a tempest. He seems not to have stayed there long (cf. arg. 7d), and γαµεῖ
may mean no more than ‘had intercourse with’.
(p.108) F 19 Paus. 10. 26. 4

τὰ δὲ Κύπρια ἔπη ϕησὶν ὑπὸ Λυκοµήδους µὲν Πύρρον, Νεοπτόλεµον δὲ ὄνοµα ὑπὸ
Φοίνικος αὐτῶι τεθῆναι, ὅτι Ἀχιλλεὺς ἡλικίαι ἔτι νέος πολεµεῖν ἤρξατο.
Cf. sch. (D) Il. 19. 326 Πύρρον τὸν ὕστερον Νεοπτόλεµον κληθέντα. Archilochus fr. 304
called him Pyrrhos; in epic he is regularly Neoptolemos. Phoenix perhaps gave him this
second name at Troy when he was brought there after Achilles’ death. In the Nostoi (arg.
4c) he and Phoenix travelled homeward together. Phoenix died on the way and
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Neoptolemos buried him.
Arg. 7d
ἔπειτα Τήλεϕον κατὰ µαντείαν παραγενόµενον εἰς Ἄργος ἰα̃ ται Ἀχιλλεὺς ὡς ἡγεµόνα
γενησόµενον τοῦ ἐπ᾿ ῎Ιλιον πλοῦ.
Apollod. epit. 3. 20 Τήλεϕος δὲ ἐκ τῆς Μυσίας, ἀνίατον τὸ τραῦµα ἔχων, εἰπόντος αὐτῶι
τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος τότε τεύξεσθαι θεραπείας ὅταν ὁ τρώσας ἰατρὸς γένηται, τρύχεσιν
ἠµϕιεσµένος εἰς ῎Αργος ἀϕίκετο, καὶ δεηθεὶς Ἀχιλλέως καὶ ὑπεσχηµένος τὸν εἰς
Τροίαν πλοῦν δεῖξαι θεραπεύεται ἀποξύσαντος Ἀχιλλέως τῆς Πηλιάδος µελίας τὸν ἰόν.
θεραπευθεὶς οὖν ἔδειξε τὸν πλοῦν, τὸ τῆς δείξεως ἀσϕαλὲς πιστουµένου τοῦ
Κάλχαντος διὰ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ µαντικῆς.
Apollodorus’ account is probably coloured by Euripides’ Telephos, notorious for the

hero’s being clothed in rags.39 The play was set in Argos (frr. 697 test., 713), where the
Atreidai were disputing over whether to renew the war. Achilles and Odysseus were
present. In the Cypria too, according to Proclus, it was in Argos that Telephos found
Achilles. There must be a suspicion that the Euripidean venue has intruded. But consider
the poet’s problem. He had to get the Achaeans reassembled at Aulis. He could not,
without inconvenience, let them all disperse to their homes after the failure of the first
expedition and have Menelaos recruit them all over again.40 So perhaps when they
withdrew from Mysia Agamemnon instructed them to reconvene in ῎Αργος Ἀχαιικόν
(=the Argolid) to consider how to proceed. The storm scattered them temporarily (taking
(p.109) Achilles to Skyros), but then they all made their way to Mycenae for the council
of war. It was necessary because, as they were now aware, they did not know how to
find the way to Troy. Telephos’ arrival solved their problem as well as his own.
It was from Apollo, according to Apollodorus and Hyg. Fab. 101, that Telephos learned
that his wound would be healed by the one who had caused it. Euripides and others
(Eur. fr. 700 with Kannicht) make it Apollo Λύκιος, which may point to the oracle at Patara.
Telephos must have given his navigational guidance by sailing with the Achaeans to Troy;
Euripides has him sitting by the steersman (fr. 727c. 27). Then presumably he made his
way home overland to Mysia, but we hear nothing of it. At the end of the war his son
Eurypylos came to fight for the Trojans and was killed by Achilles’ son (Little Iliad arg. 3,
F 6–7).
Calchas, who himself failed to show the Achaeans the way to Troy, is nevertheless able to
certify the reliability of Telephos’ advice. This reconciles the Telephos story with the
version in which Calchas led the way (Il. 1. 71f.). In Apollodorus’ narrative this is all done
before the second gathering at Aulis.
Second Gathering at Aulis. Sacrifice of Iphigeneia
Arg. 8
καὶ τὸ δεύτερον ἠθροισµένου τοῦ στόλου ἐν Αὐλίδι Ἀγαµέµνων ἐπὶ θήρας βαλὼν
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ἔλαϕον ὑπερβάλλειν ἔϕησε καὶ τὴν ῎Αρτεµιν· µηνίσασα δὲ ἡ θεὸς ἐπέσχεν αὐτοὺς τοῦ
πλοῦ χειµῶνας ἐπιπέµπουσα. Κάλχαντος δὲ εἰπόντος τὴν τῆς θεοῦ µῆνιν καὶ
Ἰϕιγένειαν κελεύσαντος θύειν τῆι Ἀρτέµιδι, ὡς ἐπὶ γάµον αὐτὴν Ἀχιλλεῖ
µεταπεµψάµενοι θύειν ἐπιχειροῦσιν. ῎Αρτεµις δὲ αὐτὴν ἐξαρπάσασα εἰς Ταύρους
µετακοµίζει καὶ ἀθάνατον ποιεῖ, ἔλαϕον δὲ ἀντὶ τῆς κόρης παρίστησι τῶι βωµῶι.
Apollod. epit. 3. 21–2 ἀναχθέντων δὲ αὐτῶν ἀπ᾿ Ἄργους καὶ παραγενοµένων τὸ

δεύτερον εἰς Αὐλίδα, τὸν στόλον ἄπλοια κατεῖχε. Κάλχας δὲ ἔϕη οὐκ ἄλλως δύνασθαι
πλεῖν αὐτοὺς εἰ µὴ τῶν Ἀγαµέµνονος θυγατέρων ἡ κρατιστεύουσα κάλλει σϕάγιον
Ἀρτέµιδος παραστῆι· ἔλεγε γὰρ µηνῖσαι Ἀγαµέµνονι τὴν θεόν, κατὰ µέν τινας ἐπεὶ
κατὰ θήραν ἐν καιρίωι βαλὼν ἔλαϕον εἶπεν οὐ δύνασθαι σωτηρίας αὐτὴν τυχεῖν οὐδ᾿
Ἀρτέµιδος θελούσης, κατὰ δέ τινας ὅτι τὴν χρυσῆν ἄρνα οὐκ ἔθυσεν αὐτῆι Ἀτρεύς. τοῦ
δὲ χρησµοῦ τούτου γενοµένου, πέµψας Ἀγαµέµνων πρὸς Κλυταιµήστραν Ὀδυσσέα καὶ
Ταλθύβιον Ἰϕιγένειαν ἤιτει, λέγων ὑπεσχῆσθαι δώσειν αὐτὴν Ἀχιλλεῖ γυναῖκα µισθὸν
τῆς στρατείας. πεµψάσης δὲ ἐκείνης Ἀγαµέµνων τῶι βωµῶι παραστήσας ἔµελλε
σϕάζειν, ῎Αρτεµις δὲ αὐτὴν ἁρπάσασα εἰς Ταύρους ἱέρειαν αὑτῆς κατέστησεν, ἔλαϕον
ἀντ᾿ αὐτῆς παραστήσασα τῶι βωµῶι, ὡς δὲ ἔνιοι λέγουσιν, ἀθάνατον αὐτὴν ἐποίησεν.
(p.110) The events associated with the Aulis gathering in older tradition, the sparrow
omen and the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, were in the Cypria distributed between the two
gatherings. Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter is related in [Hes.] fr. 23a. 17–26,
where she is named Iphimede. It is probably alluded to in Il. 1. 106–8, where
Agamemnon accuses Calchas of always making evil prophecies (Kullmann 198). An Attic
vase fragment from the third quarter of the seventh century (LIMC Iphigeneia 2) shows
a group of men carrying a supine woman, probably towards an altar for sacrifice, but we
cannot tell if she was meant to be Iphigeneia, Polyxena, or some other unfortunate.
F 20 Sch. Soph. El. 157, “οἵα Χρυσόθεµις ζώει καὶ Ἰϕιάνασσα”

ἢ Ὁµήρωι ἀκολουθεῖ εἰρηκότι τὰς τρεῖς θυγατέρας τοῦ Ἀγαµέµνονος (Il. 9. 144) ἤ, ὡς ὁ
τὰ Κύπρια, δˎ ϕησιν, Ἰϕιγένειαν καὶ Ἰϕιάνασσαν.
?ϕιανασσαν.
In the Iliad passage Agamemnon says he has three daughters at home, Chrysothemis,
Laodike, and Iphianassa. (If one was sacrificed at Aulis he would formerly have had four.)
In [Hes.] fr. 23a. 15f. he has only two, Iphimede (the sacrificed one) and Electra. Xanthos
PMG 700 said that Laodike and Electra were the same, the latter name arising because
she remained ἄλεκτρος. Given this equation, Sophocles could be said to have the same
three as Homer. Euripides in his Orestes (23; cf. IA 1164, 1447) adapts Sophocles’ three
to Chrysothemis, Electra, and Iphigeneia; but the Homeric-Sophoclean Iphianassa was
alive, so not identical with the one sacrificed.41 In the (p.111) Sophocles scholium
something is evidently missing (pace Xenis). It seems to indicate that Iphigeneia and
Iphianassa were both named in the Cypria, besides two others, presumably
Chrysothemis and either Laodike or Electra.
Tenedos. Philoctetes
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Arg. 9a
ἔπειτα καταπλέουσιν εἰς Τένεδον.
Apollod. epit. 3. 23 οἳ δὲ ἀναχθέντες ἐξ Αὐλίδος προσέσχον Τενέδωι. ταύτης ἐβασίλευε

Τένης ὁ Κύκνου καὶ Προκλείας, ὡς δέ τινες Ἀπόλλωνος … 26 προσπλέοντας οὖν
Τενέδωι τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὁρῶν Τένης ἀπεῖργε βάλλων πέτρους· καὶ ὑπὸ Ἀχιλλέως ξίϕει
πληγεὶς κατὰ τὸ στῆθος θνήισκει, καίτοι Θέτιδος προειπούσης Ἀχιλλεῖ µὴ κτεῖναι
Τένην, τεθνήξεσθαι γὰρ ὑπὸ Ἀπόλλωνος αὐτὸν ἐὰν κτείνηι Τένην.
‘The absence of any reference to the killing of Tennes in Proklos’ summary could indicate
that it was not a part of the Kypria, but we really have very little means of controlling how
complete that summary is’ (Gantz 592). Certainly the story of how Tennes came to the
island after being falsely accused by his stepmother and cast out to sea by his father 42
has no place in the epic; it may have originated in the Tennes ascribed to Euripides or
Critias (TrGF 43 F 20). His killing by Achilles has nothing to do with that. Achilles’ sacking
of Tenedos is mentioned in Il. 11. 625, and it must have involved the killing of a named
ruler, sc. Tennes. Cf. Diod. 5. 83. 5 Ἀχιλλέως τὸν Τέννην ἀνελόντος καθ᾿ ὃν καιρὸν
ἐπόρθησαν οἱ Ἕλληνες τὴν Τένεδον; Paus. 10. 14. 4 Τέννην µὲν ὑπὸ Ἀχιλλέως
ἀποθανεῖν ἀµύνοντα τῆι οἰκείαι ϕασὶν οἱ Ἕλληνες. We should expect this to have come
in the Cypria, but it remains odd that Proclus says nothing of fighting on Tenedos.
Tennes was the eponymous founder-hero of Tenedos and had a shrine there (Diod. 5. 83.
3; Plut. Qu. Graec. 297d–f). He had a special relationship with Apollo, whose dominion
over Tenedos is mentioned in Il. 1. 38. The story of his defeat by Achilles may have
originated as a Lesbian colonial legend. Cf. M. L. Napolitano in Mele (p.112) et al., 233–
47. His defence of his island by throwing stones is a motif paralleled in the myth of Talos,
the bronze giant of Crete (ibid. 242).
Thetis’ warning to Achilles not to kill Tennes (or according to other sources any son of
Apollo) is in the spirit of early epic; cf. below on arg. 10a and on Aethiopis arg. 2b. If the
Tennes episode was included in the Cypria, the warning was probably part of it. Some
sources give a more elaborated, less epic-looking version in which Thetis charged a
servant to keep reminding her son of the warning, but he forgot to (Lyc. 240–2 with sch.,
Plut. Qu. Graec. 297e–f).
There may once have been a version in which Thetis warned Achilles when he first went
to war, ‘Avoid killing any son of Apollo, for if you kill one, you will die soon after’, and in
which the only son of Apollo that he killed was Hector (who was a son of Apollo in Stes.
PMGF 224 and Ibycus PMGF 295, though not in Homer); cf. Il. 18. 96 αὐτίκα γάρ τοι
ἔπειτα µεθ᾿ Ἕκτορα πότµος ἑτοῖµος.
Arg. 9b
καὶ εὐωχουµένων αὐτῶν Φιλοκτήτης ὑϕ᾿ ὕδρου πληγεὶς διὰ τὴν δυσοσµίαν ἐν Λήµνωι
κατελείϕθη.
Apollod. epit. 3. 27 τελούντων δὲ αὐτῶν Ἀπόλλωνι θυσίαν, ἐκ τοῦ βωµοῦ προσελθὼν
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ὕδρος δάκνει Φιλοκτήτην· ἀθεραπεύτου δὲ τοῦ ἕλκους καὶ δυσώδους γενοµένου τῆς τε
ὀδµῆς οὐκ ἀνεχοµένου τοῦ στρατοῦ, Ὀδυσσεὺς αὐτὸν εἰς Λῆµνον µεθ᾿ ὧν εἶχε τόξων
Ἡρακλείων ἐκτίθησι, κελεύσαντος Ἀγαµέµνονος.
Apollo, the true father of Tennes, was the god of Tenedos (Il. 1. 38), and this is a sufficient
reason why the Achaeans sacrificed to him there. For the motif of the snake appearing
from below his altar cf. the Aulis omen (above, arg. 6). The serpents who devoured
Laokoon’s sons disappeared beneath the statue of Athena at Troy (Virg. Aen. 2. 226f.).
Philoctetes’ abandonment on Lemnos is mentioned in Il. 2. 721–5. But in 8. 228–34

Agamemnon recalls Lemnos as the scene of cheer-ful and confident feasting, which would
seem to correspond to the feasting on Tenedos in the Cypria. The older version was
evidently that the feast took place on Lemnos and that Philoctetes was bitten by the snake
there, which is why it was on Lemnos that he remained. His sojourn there was too fixed
in the tradition to be changed, but the Cypria poet transferred the feast and the snake to
Tenedos (p.113) (Welcker ii. 144; Bethe 242), because in his account that was the first
place at which the Achaeans stopped after leaving Aulis. It would be interesting to know
how he motivated the sending of Philoctetes from there to Lemnos.
It was an essential part of Philoctetes’ story that the Achaeans eventually found that they
could not take Troy without him, because he had the bow of Heracles, and they had to go
and fetch him to Troy, as was narrated in the Little Iliad. It is likely that his possession of
the bow was mentioned in the Cypria, perhaps in connection with his use of it to shoot
game on Lemnos (Wagner 196).
Arg. 9c
καὶ Ἀχιλλεὺς ὕστερος κληθεὶς διαϕέρεται πρὸς Ἀγαµέµνονα.
It was Agamemnon’s role to invite the chief leaders to sacrificial feasts, cf. Il. 2. 402–7.
Achilles took offence at his belated invitation and, as may be gathered from Sophocles’
treatment in his Syndeipnoi (fr. 566), declared that he would not fight the Trojans. Cf.
Arist. Rhet. 1401b16 ἢ εἴ τις ϕαίη τὸ ἐπὶ δεῖπνον κληθῆναι τιµιώτατον· διὰ γὰρ τὸ µὴ
κληθῆναι ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἐµήνισε τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς ἐν Τενέδωι. It was a µῆνις duplicating the one
in the Iliad (where there is no allusion to an earlier quarrel) and evidently an innovation
(Welcker ii. 145; Bergk 47). See below on arg. 10a.
F 21⋆ Chrysippus, SVF ii. 57. 11

εἰ Ἀγαµέµνων οὕτως ἀπέϕασκεν·
οὐκ ἐϕάµην Ἀχιλῆϊ χολωσέµεν ἄλκιµον ἦτορ
ὧδε µάλ᾿ ἐκπάγλως, ἐπεὶ ἦ µάλα µοι ϕίλος ἤην,
ἀξίωµά ἐστιν κτλ.
1 χολωσέµεν Nauck, Homeri Odyssea I (Berlin 1874), xiii n. 5: χολωσειν pap.
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These unattributed verses must refer to one of Agamemnon’s quarrels with Achilles.
After the reconciliation of the major one in Il. 19 it is unlikely that he had occasion to
return to the subject in one of the later epics of the Cycle. More probably the reference
is to the first quarrel and the fragment is from the Cypria (J. A. Letronne, Journal des
Savants (1838), 322).
2. ἐπεὶ ἦ µάλα µοι ϕίλος ἤην: cf. Il. 1. 381. Welcker ii. 150 finds a psychological
insight here: the greater the previous affection, the sharper the disaffection after
a quarrel.
(p.114) The Landing in the Troad. Protesilaos. Kyknos
Arg. 10a
ἔπειτα ἀποβαίνοντας αὐτοὺς εἰς ῎Ιλιον εἴργουσιν οἱ Τρῶες, καὶ θνήισκει Πρωτεσίλαος
ὑϕ᾿ Ἕκτορος.
Apollod. epit. 3. 29–30 Ἀχιλλεῖ δὲ ἐπιστέλλει Θέτις, πρώτωι µὴ ἀποβῆναι τῶν νεῶν· τὸν
γὰρ ἀποβάντα πρῶτον, πρῶτον µέλλειν καὶ τελευτα̃ ν. πυθόµενοι δὲ οἱ βάρβαροι τὸν
στόλον ἐπιπλεῖν, σὺν ὅπλοις ἐπὶ τὴν θάλασσαν ὥρµησαν καὶ βάλλοντες πέτροις
ἀποβῆναι ἐκώλυον. τῶν δὲ Ἑλλήνων πρῶτος ἀπέβη τῆς νηὸς Πρωτεσίλαος, καὶ
κτείνας οὐκ ὀλίγους ὑϕ᾿ Ἕκτορος θνήισκει.
Achilles as the bravest and most furious hero might have been expected to be the first
ashore (Wagner 198). The poet may have used Thetis’ warning to explain why he held
back; cf. above on arg. 9a.43 Alternatively it may have been accounted for by the quarrel
with Agamemnon (arg. 9c). In this case it was the fall of Protesilaos, his Thessalian
neighbour, that made him abandon his recalcitrance and lead his Myrmidons out to
battle; cf. Apollod. epit. 3. 31 quoted below.44 According to Lyc. 279 (cf. 246?) he was
actually the last ashore.
Protesilaos was established in tradition as the first Achaean to fall on Trojan soil: Il. 2. 698–
702.45 According to that passage he was killed not by Hector but by a Dardanian, whose
name is not given; cf. West (2011a), 120. Sophocles (fr. 497) followed the Cypria in making
it Hector. This is Hector’s only detectable appearance in the Cypria. It may be that the
Trojans were never again represented as coming out of the city to fight. But the existence
of a hero so central to the Iliad needed to be established.
The detail in Apollodorus that Protesilaos slew many of the enemy before being slain
himself corresponds to a typical epic pattern and (p.115) may be assumed for the
Cypria. According to the Iliad passage, however, he was killed as he leapt from his ship.
Apollodorus says the barbarians came down to the shore σὺν ὅπλοις, so it was to be a
regular battle. He then has them trying to repel the invaders βάλλοντες πέτροις, which is
perhaps an erroneous repetition from the preceding passage about Tennes, epit. 3. 26
βάλλων πέτρους. Achilles’ use of a stone against Kyknos (below, arg. 10b) ought to stand
out as something new.
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F 22 Paus. 4. 2. 7
ὁ δὲ τὰ ἔπη ποιήσας τὰ Κύπρια Πρωτεσιλάου ϕησίν, ὃς ὅτε κατὰ τὴν Τρωιάδα ἔσχον
Ἕλληνες ἀποβῆναι πρῶτος ἐτόλµησε, Πρωτεσιλάου τούτου τὴν γυναῖκα Πολυδώραν
µὲν τὸ ὄνοµα, θυγατέρα δὲ Μελεάγρου ϕησὶν εἶναι τοῦ Οἰνέως.
Protesilaos’ grief-stricken wife is mentioned, but not named, at Il. 2. 700, where he is also
said to have left a δόµος ἡµιτελής. This implies that he was newly married when he left
home for Troy, and so it was in Euripides’ Protesilaos. Cf. Catull. 68. 74–6, Protesilaëam…
domum | inceptam frustra, nondum cum sanguine sacro | hostia caelestis paci ficasset
eros. The Cypria poet perhaps told of Polydora’s suicide (Severyns (1928), 302).
Arg. 10b
ἔπειτα Ἀχιλλεὺς αὐτοὺς τρέπεται ἀνελὼν Κύκνον τὸν Ποσειδῶνος. καὶ τοὺς νεκροὺς
ἀναιροῦνται.
Apollod. epit. 3. 31 Πρωτεσιλάου δὲ τελευτήσαντος ἐκβαίνει µετὰ Μυρµιδόνων

Ἀχιλλεὺς καὶ λίθον βαλὼν εἰς τὴν κεϕαλὴν Κύκνου κτείνει. ὡς δὲ τοῦτον νεκρὸν εἶδον
οἱ βάρβαροι, ϕεύγουσιν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, οἱ δὲ Ἕλληνες ἐκπηδήσαντες τῶν νεῶν
ἐνέπλησαν σωµάτων τὸ πεδίον· καὶ κατακλείσαντες τοὺς Τρῶας ἐπολιόρκουν·
ἀνέλκουσι δὲ τὰς ναῦς.
Pindar speaks of Kyknos as one of three great heroes that Achilles killed, the other two
being Hector and Memnon (Ol. 2. 81–3, Isth. 5. 39–41). In the Cypria he had a divine
father and must have been presented as a formidable warrior. But in origin he seems to
have been a folktale figure (Welcker ii. 146). His skin was abnormally white ([Hes.] fr. 237;
Hellanicus fr. 148; ‘singers of ancient battles’ (p.116) ap. Theoc. 16. 49f.), but also
impenetrable (Soph. fr. 500; Arist. Rhet. 1396b18 ὃς ἐκώλυεν ἅπαντας ἀποβαίνειν
ἄτρωτος ὤν). This is why Achilles kills him not with spear or sword but by crushing his
head in with a rock.46
According to later sources47 Kyknos was the ruler of Kolonai, which was situated at
BeÂ¸ik Tepe, 5 km south of the later Alexandria Troas. He was the human father of
Tennes (whose real father was Apollo). He was supposed to be named for his whiteness,
but it is an intriguing possibility that his name actually preserves a dim memory of
Kukkunnis, the predecessor of Alaksandus as king of Wilusa around 1300 bce.48
At the death of their champion his followers turned to flight, a typical epic motif, for which
see on Aethiopis arg. 3a. The rest of the Achaeans were now able to disembark. They
chased the Trojans away, killing large numbers of them as they fled into their city. The
Achaeans were left free to recover their dead, haul their ships ashore, and establish their
camp. Thucydides 1. 11. 1 refers to their having built a defensive enclosure, but this is
his commonsense assumption, not evidence that a work of fortification was described in
the Cypria.49
The Embassy to Troy
Arg. 10c
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Arg. 10c
καὶ διαπρεσβεύονται πρὸς τοὺς Τρῶας, τὴν Ἑλένην καὶ τὰ κτήµατα ἀπαιτοῦντες· ὡς
δὲ οὐχ ὑπήκουσαν ἐκεῖνοι, ἐνταῦθα δὴ τειχοµαχοῦσιν.
(p.117) Apollod. epit. 3. 28 καὶ πέµπουσιν Ὀδυσσέα καὶ Μενέλαον τὴν Ἑλένην καὶ τὰ
χρήµατα αἰτοῦντες. συναθροισθείσης δὲ παρὰ τοῖς Τρωσὶν ἐκκλησίας οὐ µόνον τὴν
Ἑλένην οὐκ ἀπεδίδουν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτους κτείνειν ἤθελον. τούτους µὲν οὖν ἔσωσεν
Ἀντήνωρ.
According to Ovid, Met. 12. 146f., the death of Kyknos brought a pause of many days. But
the embassy must have followed not too long after the landing.50 It is recalled in the Iliad,
3. 205–24 and 11. 123–5, 138–41. Antenor had entertained Odysseus and Menelaos in
his house before the assembly meeting, at which both envoys spoke. Antimachos, bribed
by Paris, spoke against giving Helen up, and moreover called for the envoys to be
lynched. Antenor must have repudiated Antimachos’ arguments and saved the two men.
Because of this the Achaeans took pains to spare Antenor’s family when they sacked the
city; see on Little Iliad F 22, Iliou Persis arg. 2c.
The embassy appears to be depicted on a bronze tripod leg at Olympia from the last
quarter of the seventh century (see Pro-legomena §5). Odysseus and Menelaos are
accompanied by a herald. On a Corinthian column crater of c.560 (LIMC Harmatidas 1) he
is named as Talthybios, and the envoys are greeted by Antenor’s wife Theano, whom we
know from the Iliad (5. 70, 6. 298–300, 11. 224). She also played a prominent role in the
embassy in Bacchylides 15, and we may suppose that this goes back to the Cypria
(Kullmann 276). Three of the Trojan men have name-labels: Harmatidas (unknown), Olpos
(unknown), and E〈u〉rymachos (a son of Antenor). Theano appears again in this context on
an Attic red-figure kantharos of c.425, LIMC Theano (I) 2.
(p.118) Achilles’ Raids in the Troad. his Meeting with Helen
Arg. 11a
ἔπειτα τὴν χώραν ἐπεξελθόντες πορθοῦσι καὶ τὰς περιοίκους πόλεις.
Between the unsuccessful embassy at the outset of the war and the events of the Iliad
towards its end, the tradition offered nothing that belonged at any particular time, just an
unstructured interval of nine years. The events of these years occupy only fifteen out of
the ninety lines of Proclus’ summary of the Cypria in Severyns’s edition. So long as the
Trojans remained within the protection of their city walls, no battles were possible. All that
the Achaeans could do was ravage the countryside and surrounding settlements.51
Achilles remained the focus, as he had been since Tenedos. In Il. 9. 328f. he claims to have
taken eleven towns on land in the Troad and twelve from the sea. They included Skyros
(9. 668), Lesbos (9. 129/271, 664), Tenedos (11. 625), Lyrnessos (2. 691, 19. 60, 20. 94,
191), Pedasos (20. 92), and Hypoplakian Thebe (1. 366, 2. 691, 6. 415, 16. 153). Ovid,
Met. 13. 174, adds Chryse and Killa. Nestor in Od. 3. 105f. recalls Achilles leading the
Achaeans on plundering expeditions by sea.
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Such exploits as are assigned to this nine-year period are in fact almost exclusively
Achilles’. It is unlikely that the poet distinguished one year from another until it came to
the tenth.
A Boeotian relief amphora of c.625 (LIMC Achilleus 389; Burgess 26) shows a cattle raid
by a warrior argued to be Achilles; cf. Fittschen 171.
Arg. 11b
καὶ µετὰ ταῦτα Ἀχιλλεὺς Ἑλένην ἐπιθυµεῖ θεάσασθαι, καὶ συνήγαγεν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸ
αὐτὸ Ἀϕροδίτη καὶ Θέτις. εἶτα ἀπονοστεῖν ὡρµηµένους τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς Ἀχιλλεὺς κατέχει.
Helen and Achilles are the two most glamorous figures in the Troy saga. She, the flower
of womanhood, provokes the great war; he, the (p.119) flower of manhood, invests it
with the highest heroic splendour. These are the two that especially fascinate Sappho and
Alcaeus. The Cypria poet has given accounts of the extraordinary circumstances of their
births.52 Now he brings them together for a brief, secret meeting. It cannot lead to a
romantic attachment, and certainly Proclus’ wording does not favour the notion of Davies
(1989), 48, that they made love. But it does let Achilles see what the war is all about and
why it is worth fighting. In the account of Helen’s wedding in the Catalogue of Women he
was the one hero who was not a suitor (he was still a boy, otherwise he would have had
Helen for himself: [Hes.] fr. 204. 87–92) and who accordingly came to Troy without ever
having set eyes on her.
Thetis and Aphrodite are needed to bring the meeting about. Presumably Achilles in a
conversation with his mother told her that he wanted to see Helen’s beauty for himself.53
Thetis then contacted Aphrodite and between them they arranged the rendezvous.54 His
place or hers? It seems easier to imagine that Aphrodite smuggled Helen through to
Achilles’ hut, as Hermes does with Priam in Iliad 24, than that Achilles was smuggled into
Troy. She may have concealed her in mist and carried her through the air, as she does
Paris in Il. 3. 380–2.55
Later there was a scene, no doubt modelled on Iliad 2, showing the Achaeans
despondent and wanting to go home. (Some time must have elapsed since their initial
victory.) Its purpose was to show how Achilles had been affected by his encounter with
Helen. He was able to persuade them to continue the war. For the possibility that the
Iliad poet knew an early version of this episode in which Thersites barracked Achilles (and
Odysseus) see on Aethiopis arg. 1d.
(p.120) Arg. 11c

κἄπειτα ἀπελαύνει τὰς Αἰνείου βοῦς.
Apollod. epit. 3. 32 καὶ παραγίνεται εἰς ῎Ιδην ἐπὶ τὰς Αἰνείου {τοῦ Πριάµου} βόας.
ϕυγόντος δὲ αὐτοῦ, τοὺς βουκόλους κτείνας καὶ Μήστορα τὸν Πριάµου τὰς βόας
ἐλαύνει.
Achilles’ forays in the pastures of Ida are mentioned more than once in the Iliad. In 11.
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104–6 he is said to have caught and ransomed two sons of Priam who were looking after
sheep. The raid on Aeneas’ cattle is recalled in 20. 90f., 188–94. Aeneas fled, and Achilles
chased him all the way to Lyrnessos. Mestor is not mentioned in that context but named
in 24. 257 as one of the fine sons that Priam has lost.
Arg. 11d
καὶ Λυρνησσὸν καὶ Πήδασον πορθεῖ καὶ συχνὰς τῶν περιοικίδων πόλεων.
In Il. 20. 90–2 the pursuit of Aeneas leads directly to the sack of Lyrnessos and Pedasos,
so they may have been similarly linked in the Cypria. Elsewhere in the Iliad the taking of
Lyrnessos is mentioned separately: 2. 691, 16. 57, 19. 60, 296.
F 23 Sch. (T) Il. 16. 57b, “πόλιν εὐτείχεα πέρσας”

τὴν Πήδασον οἱ τῶν Κυπρίων ποιηταί, αὐτὸς δὲ Λυρνησσόν.
The question is where Achilles captured Briseis, the girl whom Agamemnon takes from
him in the Iliad. In that poem (2. 690, 19. 60, 296) it was said to be at Lyrnessos, but in
the Cypria at Pedasos.
F 24 Sch. (bT) Il. 1. 366c

εἰς Θήβας δὲ ἥκουσα ἡ Χρυσηῒς πρὸς Ἰϕινόην τὴν Ἠετίωνος ἀδελϕήν, ῎Ακτορος δὲ
θυγατέρα, θύουσαν Ἀρτέµιδι, ἥλω ὑπὸ Ἀχιλλέως.
Eust. Il. 119. 4
ἱστοροῦσι δέ τινες ὅτι ἐκ τῶν Ὑποπλακίων Θηβῶν ἡ Χρυσηῒς ἐλήϕθη, οὔτε

καταϕυγοῦσα ἐκεῖ οὔτ᾿ ἐπὶ θυσίαν Ἀρτέµιδος ἐλθοῦσα, ὡς ὁ τὰ Κύπρια γράψας ἔϕη,
ἀλλὰ πολῖτις ἤτοι συµπολῖτις Ἀνδροµάχης οὖσα.
(p.121) Chryseis, the girl that Agamemnon is forced to surrender at the beginning of
the Iliad, was taken from Hypoplakian Thebe (1. 366–9) but seems to be a native of
Chryse, where she is given back to her father. One of the explanations of her presence in
Thebe was given in the Cypria: that she had gone there to take part in a sacrifice to
Artemis with King Eetion’s sister.
The attention paid to Briseis and Chryseis in the Cypria shows the poet’s sense of the
need to prepare for the events of the Iliad; cf. below, arg. 12a. In relating the sack of
Thebe he may have referred to the slaughter of Eetion and his seven sons and the
ransoming of his wife (Il. 6. 415–28), and to his daughter Andromache’s marriage to
Hector.
Troilos. Lykaon
Arg. 11e
καὶ Τρωΐλον ϕονεύει.
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Apollod. epit. 3. 32 Ἀχιλλεὺς ἐνεδρεύσας Τρωΐλον ἐν τῶι τοῦ Θυµβραίου Ἀπόλλωνος

ἱερῶι ϕονεύει.
F 25⋆ Sch. (A) Il. 24. 257b (Aristonicus)

ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ εἰρῆσθαι ἱππιοχάρµην τὸν Τρωΐλον οἱ νεώτεροι ἐϕ᾿ ἵππου διωκόµενον
αὐτὸν ἐποίησαν. καὶ οἳ µὲν παῖδα αὐτὸν ὑποτίθενται, Ὅµηρος δὲ διὰ τοῦ ἐπιθέτου
τέλειον ἄνδρα ἐµϕαίνει· οὐ γὰρ ἄλλος ἱππόµαχος λέγεται.
Troilos is a son of Priam, mentioned in the Iliad in the same context as Mestor (above,
arg. 11c). He is famed for his beauty: Ibyc. PMGF S151. 41, S224; Phrynichus TrGF 3 F
13. Ibycus too referred to his death in the shrine at Thymbra, S224. 7 παίδα] θεοῖς
ἴκ[ελον, τὸ]ν περγάµων ἔκτοσθεν Ἰλίο[υ κτάνε], with the commentary (P. Oxy. 2637 fr.
12), ἀνεῖλεν τὸν Τρωΐλον ἐκτ[ὸς τῆς πό]λεως ἐν τῶι τοῦ Θυµβραίου ἱ [ερῶι; so too
Sophocles (TrGF iv. 453), according to whom he was exercising his horses there. A
bronze tripod leg and a set of bronze shield bands from the late seventh century, all at
Olympia, show the boy seeking refuge on the altar (LIMC Achilleus 375–6).
The Troilos episode is popular with artists from as early as the middle of that century
(Luckenbach 600–13; Fittschen 171f.; (p.122) Ahlberg-Cornell 54–6; Gantz 597–600).
Often Troilos flees on horse-back pursued by Achilles on foot. Alexandrian scholars knew
a literary source for this, as appears from F 25 (οἱ νεώτεροι), and it was most likely the
Cypria (Severyns (1928), 306f.). On some vases Troilos is decapitated, as in Lyc. 313.
Sometimes Troilos’ sister Polyxena is depicted as present at the event; the scene is a
fountain-house to which she has come to draw water (e.g. LIMC Troilos 3, 10, 11). The
Cypria perhaps related that Achilles saw her on that occasion and was smitten with
desire: see on Iliou Persis arg. 4c.
According to Lyc. 313 and Apollod. 3. 12. 5 Troilos was really a son of Apollo. If this goes
back to the Cypria, it reprises a motif that we met with Kyknos, recalling Thetis’ warning
against killing sons of Apollo. A connection might in any case have been made between the
killing in Apollo’s shrine and Apollo’s eventual part in the death of Achilles.
Arg. 11f
Λυκάονά τε Πάτροκλος εἰς Λῆµνον ἀγαγὼν ἀπεµπολεῖ.
Apollod. epit. 3. 32 καὶ νυκτὸς ἐλθὼν ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν Λυκάονα λαµβάνει.
Lykaon was another son of Priam. It is related in Il. 21. 34–48, 23. 746f., that Achilles on a
night incursion caught him cutting fig branches in his father’s vineyard to make a chariot
rail and took him captive. Patroklos sold him to Euneos in Lemnos. Euneos sold him on to
an Imbrian, who sent him to Arisbe in the Troad. He escaped from there and made his
way back to Troy. But within a fortnight Achilles caught him again, on the battlefield, and
this time killed him. The background history may be an improvisation by the Iliad poet
(West (2011a), 375f.). The account in the Cypria seems to have been designed to fit what
was said in the Iliad.
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Arg. 12a
καὶ ἐκ τῶν λαϕύρων Ἀχιλλεὺς µὲν Βρισηΐδα γέρας λαµβάνει, Χρυσηΐδα δὲ Ἀγαµέµνων.
Further preparation for the Iliad. See above on F 24.
(p.123) Palamedes. The Oinotropoi
Arg. 12b
ἔπειτά ἐστι Παλαµήδους θάνατος.
F 27 Paus. 10. 31. 2

Παλαµήδην δὲ ἀποπνιγῆναι προελθόντα ἐπὶ ἰχθύων θήραν, ∆ιοµήδην δὲ τὸν
ἀποκτείναντα εἶναι καὶ Ὀδυσσέα, ἐπιλεξάµενος ἐν ἔπεσιν οἶδα τοῖς Κυπρίοις.
Odysseus and Diomedes are associated in various exploits, cf. on Little Iliad arg. 4e. They
murder Palamedes (who made an enemy of Odysseus at the beginning of the war: above,
arg. 5b) by drowning him on a fishing expedition, presumably claiming that it had been an
accident. He had to be disposed of before the end of the poem as he had no existence in
the Iliad. Later sources have a quite different account of his downfall, in which he is
stoned by the Achaeans after being convicted of treachery on the strength of planted
evidence; see Gantz 605.
Fishing is an uncharacteristic activity for epic. The only time that men of the heroic age do
any fishing in Homer is when they are starving for lack of provisions (Od. 4. 368f., 12. 330–
2). So were the Greeks at Troy short of food (Robert 1130)? There is a tradition that they
were, as will appear in the discussion of:
F 26 Sch. Lyc. 570, “ὁ Ῥοιοῦς ἶνις”

τοῦτον δὲ (῎Ανιον) Ἀπόλλων ἤνεγκεν εἰς ∆ῆλον. ὃς γήµας ∆ωρίππην ἐγέννησε τὰς
Οἰνοτρόπους, Οἰνώ, Σπερµώ, Ἐλαΐδα, αἷς ὁ ∆ιόνυσος ἐχαρίσατο, ὁπότε βούλονται
σπέρµα λαµβάνειν. Φερεκύδης δέ ϕησιν (fr. 140 Fowler) ὅτι ῎Ανιος ἔπεισε (v.l. ἔπειθε)
τοὺς Ἕλληνας παραγενοµένους πρὸς αὐτὸν αὐτοῦ µένειν τὰ θˎ ἔτη· δεδόσθαι δὲ αὐτοῖς
παρὰ τῶν θεῶν τῶι δεκάτωι ἔτει πορθῆσαι τὴν ῎Ιλιον· ὑπέσχετο δὲ αὐτοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν
θυγατέρων αὐτοῦ τραϕήσεσθαι. ἔστι δὲ τοῦτο καὶ παρὰ τῶι τὰ Κύπρια πεποιηκότι.
Lycophron 570–6 encrypts the story that the scholiast cites from Pherecydes. The
emphasis is on Anios’ offer and his promise that his daughters will provide for the Greeks
if they stay on Delos for the nine years during which it is prophesied that they cannot take
Ilios.
(p.124) He does not say, and it is not certain that Pherecydes said, that they took up
the offer.
The last sentence of the scholium is unfortunately vague: which elements of Pherecydes’
account were matched in the Cypria? Lycophron goes on to say in 581–3 that the girls
would one day go to Rhoiteion and relieve the army’s ravenous hunger there. A scholium
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on 581 avers that this came to pass: Agamemnon sent for them by means of Palamedes,
and they came to Rhoiteion and fed the troops.
A variant version is given by sch. Od. 6. 164. Odysseus mentions to Nausicaa that he once
went to Delos, and the scholiast suggests that he is referring to an occasion when
Menelaos went to Delos with Odysseus for the daughters of Anios, the Oinotropoi; ἡ δὲ
ἱστορία καὶ παρὰ Σιµωνίδηι ἐν ταῖς Κατευχαῖς (PMG 537=fr. 301 Poltera).
So what happened in the Cypria? Did the Achaeans (a) stay on Delos for nine years before
ever reaching Troy, or (b) call at Delos on their outward journey, decline Anios’ offer to
stay, but later send back a request for the Oinotropoi to come to the Troad and help
them out, or (c) not call at Delos at all but send for the Oinotropoi later when faced with a
lack of food?
(a) is an absurdity, surely out of the question. How could Proclus have failed to note a
nine-year stay on Delos if it had been in the Cypria? In any case it would not have
exempted the Achaeans from the nine years of fighting in the Troad laid down in Calchas’
prophecy (πτολεµίξοµεν αὖθι, Il. 2. 328). (b) is what we have in Lycophron, but he may
be combining two versions from different sources. It is not clear why the Achaeans
should have sailed via Delos, even allowing for their initial ignorance of where to find Troy.
If (c) is right and the Oinotropoi were fetched to the Troad without the Achaeans’ having
previously visited Delos, the scholiast has been sloppy in following the Pherecydes story
with ‘this is also in the Cypria’, when all that was in the Cypria was an incident of the
Oinotropoi feeding the Achaeans. But it is the kind of sloppiness that occurs.
I conclude that at some point in the narrative of the years at Troy, desperate for more
incident to fill out his story, the poet had the idea of bringing in the myth of the Oinotropoi
and invented a famine for the purpose. Quite likely it was attributed to a divine wrath,
perhaps Apollo’s following the Troilos affair. We saw another hint of an Achaean food
shortage at Troy in the story of Palamedes’ (p.125) murder, F 27 above. The
miraculous maidens were attached to Delos and had to be brought from there. How did
the Achaeans know about them if they had not been to Delos earlier? If the poet troubled
to explain, he might have made Calchas produce the information.
Who went to fetch them: Menelaos and Odysseus, or Palamedes? Palamedes is ruled out
if we are right in inferring famine from fishing: the fishing trip must precede the bringing
of the Oinotropoi, who will at once put an end to the famine, and if Palamedes is drowned
on the fishing trip he cannot then be sent to Delos. If it was Menelaos and Odysseus who
went, the choice of them echoes their pairing in the embassy to Troy at the start of the
war.56 Menelaos was one of the two leaders of the whole expedition (and in the embassy
the claimant of Helen), while Odysseus was an ideal choice to support him with eloquence
and general savoir faire.
The individual names of the Oinotropoi will certainly have appeared in the epic. They go
easily into a hexameter that may conjecturally be reconstructed as Οἰνώ τε Σπερµώ τε
καὶ 〈ἀγλαόκαρπος〉 Ἐλαιΐς.
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For a recent discussion of the problems, with a review of earlier scholars’ views, see T.
Marin, ‘Le Enotrope, Palamede, e la sosta dei Greci a Delo nei “Cypria”’, Lexis 27 (2009),
365–80.
Final Preparation for the Iliad
Arg. 12c
καὶ ∆ιὸς βουλὴ ὅπως ἐπικουϕίσηι τοὺς Τρῶας Ἀχιλλέα τῆς συµµαχίας τῆς Ἑλλήνων
ἀποστήσας· καὶ κατάλογος τῶν τοῖς Τρωσὶ συµµαχησάντων.
Apollod. epit. 3. 34 ἐνναετοῦς δὲ χρόνου διελθόντος παραγίνονται τοῖς Τρωσὶ σύµµαχοι

ἐκ τῶν περιοίκων πόλεων Αἰνείας Ἀγχίσου κτλ.
Zeus’ plan to remove Achilles from the Greek alliance and the catalogue of the Trojans’
allies may seem to be unwanted anticipations of the Iliad. Possibly they have been
displaced here from a mythographic narrative of the whole Trojan story that continued
(p.126) from the events of the Cypria to those of the Iliad. However, we have seen that
the Cypria poet was at pains to work in everything that was presupposed in the Iliad, and
it would not be surprising if he felt obliged to record at some point the arrival of the allies
who are present in the Iliad supporting the Trojans (Hartmann 22f.). It would have been
best to bring them in at the beginning, after the failure of the embassy made it clear that
Priam faced a war; he could at once have sent messengers abroad to summon help.
During the scrappy middle years of the war there was no obvious occasion to describe
the allies’ arrival or show them in battle. The remaining option was to have them come at
the end of the epic, where their gathering might have seemed to make an effective build-
up for the all-out fighting that was to follow in the Iliad. This is where Apollodorus puts
their arrival. He gives a list of leaders and forces that in its substance, and in its sequence
except for one displacement, agrees completely with the one in Iliad 2. 819–77 and is
probably derived from there rather than from the Cypria.57 The catalogue in the Cypria
will also have been based on the Iliad one, but it was perhaps more summary in form.58
As for Zeus’ plan regarding Achilles, the poet had prepared the ground for the fatal
quarrel by recording the awards of Chryseis to Agamemnon and Briseis to Achilles.
Perhaps before concluding his work he saw fit to signal the approach of the momentous
developments of the Iliad by mentioning that the war was soon to swing Troy’s way. He
might have written something on these lines:
So for nine years Achilles and the Achaeans harried the Trojans, killing or capturing sons
of Priam and sacking a series of other towns in the region, and so long as Achilles was
raging in the field, the Trojans did not dare to come out and fight. But when the tenth
year came, their courage grew stronger and they were able to put up resistance and
hope for deliverance. For Zeus was going to remove Achilles from the battlefield and so
relieve their great burden of war. And new forces arrived to support them from other
parts of Asia Minor and from Thrace: (catalogue).
(p.127) Unplaced Fragments
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F 28 Paus. 10. 26. 1

Λέσχεως δὲ (Little Iliad 19) καὶ ἔπη τὰ Κύπρια διδόασιν Εὐρυδίκην γυναῖκα Αἰνείαι.
We know of two contexts in the Cypria where Aeneas played a role. He accompanied
Paris on his journey to Sparta, and he fled from Achilles in a raid on his cattle on Ida.
Neither makes an obvious occasion for mentioning his wife, but there may have been
others.
F 30 Herodian, περὶ µονήρους λέξεως 9 (ii. 914. 15 L.)

καὶ (Σαρπηδὼν) ἡ νῆσος ἰδίως ἐν Ὠκεανῶι Γοργόνων οἰκητήριον οὖσα, ὡς ὁ τὰ Κύπριά
ϕησι·
τῶι δ᾿ ὑποκυσαµένη τέκε Γοργόνας, αἰνὰ πέλωρα,
αἳ Σαρπηδόνα ναῖον ἐπ᾿ Ὠκεανῶι βαθυδίνηι
νῆσον πετρήεσσαν.
1 αἰνὰ Müller: δεινὰ cod. 2 αἳ Henrichsen: καὶ cod.
The parents will be Phorkys and Keto (Hes. Th. 270ff.). In Hesiod (274f.) the Gorgons are
said to live πέρην κλυτοῦ Ὠκεανοῖο, | ἐσχατιῆι πρὸς νυκτός, ἵν᾿ Ἑσπερίδες λιγύϕωνοι.
Stesichorus in his Geryoneis (PMGF S86) spoke of a νῆσος Σαρπηδονία in the western
ocean, probably in connection with Chrysaor, whose mother was one of the Gorgons.59
I have no idea how the Gorgons’ genealogy might have been brought into the Cypria.
There is no plausibility in the suggestion (Huxley 140; cf. Debiasi 115) that it was in the
context of Thetis’ flight from Zeus (F 2). Oceanus is mentioned in the passage about his
pursuit of Nemesis (F 10. 10), but not so as to make any opening for Gorgons.
1. τῶι δ᾿ ὑποκυσαµένη τέκε: cf. Il. 6. 26, 20. 225, Od. 11. 254, Hes. Th. 308, 411,
fr. 26. 27, etc.
αἰνὰ πέλωρα: Od. 10. 219.
2. ἐπ᾿ Ὠκεανῶι βαθυδίνηι: Od. 10. 511. ἐπ᾿ is defended against ἐν (Lehrs,
Bernabé) by G. Parlato, Lexis 28 (2010), 295f.
3. νῆσον πετρήεσσαν: cf. Od. 1. 51, 4. 844.
(p.128) F 31 Clem. Strom. 6. 19. 1

πάλιν Στασίνου ποιήσαντος
νήπιος, ὃς πατέρα κτείνας παῖδας καταλείπει,
Ξενοϕῶν λέγει κτλ.
The line is quoted without ascription by Arist. Rhet. 1376a6 (v.l. υἱοὺς), 1395a16 (v.l.
κτείνων); Polyb. 23. 10. 10 (υἱοὺς).
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Müller 98 thought that the fragment should refer to the killing of Astyanax in the Iliou
Persis and that Clement’s ‘Stasinos’ was a mistake for Arktinos. Welcker (ii. 187, cf. 223)
took a similar view, arguing that the line came from a speech of Odysseus arguing for the
killing; see on Iliou Persis arg. 4a. We must agree that it belongs in a speech justifying the
slaughter of one or more males whose father has already been killed. ‘Stasinos’, however,
is an explicit pointer to the Cypria that we have no adequate basis for rejecting, even if we
cannot divine a suitable context. Tennes and Kyknos were one father and son pair that
Achilles killed in the poem, but the son was killed first and both were killed in battle, not
after deliberation. In the story of Heracles at Oichalia (see on arg. 4b) it was again the
son, Iphitos, who was killed before the father, Eurytos. At Hypoplakian Thebe Achilles’
slaughter of Eetion and his sons may have been related (see on F 24).
Notes:
(1 ) In sch. Eur. Hec. 41, however, where τὰ Κυπριακά is cited with reference to
Polyxena’s death after the fall of Troy, the source is probably a prose history of Cyprus,
the same one cited on Andr. 898 with ὁ τὰς Κυπριακὰς ἱστορίας συντάξας (FGrHist 758
F 6). See Welcker ii. 164; Wilamowitz (1884), 181 n. 27; Jacoby on FGrHist 382 F 12.
(2) I would add Ἰλιάς: West (1999), 365 = (2011b), 407; (2001), 6f. Cf. Little Iliad, intro.
1.
(3) Cf. Welcker ii. 149; Nitzsch (1852), 99f.
(4) Cf. Monro 351; Schmid 210, ‘Nicht bloß in der genauen Anpassung seines Schlusses
an den Anfang der Ilias, auch in der Entnahme einzelner Motive und in der
geflissentlichen Vorbereitung von Stellen und Motiven der Ilias verrät der
Kypriendichter eine fast peinliche Rücksicht auf dieses Gedicht. Noch in dem Auszug
sieht man, wie er seine Nestorepisode der Ilias nachgebildet hat.’
(5) Cf. Heubeck 89f., ‘Nun hat sich aber zweifellos auch der Kypriendichter die
homerische Nestor-Rede im Λ zum Vorbild genommen… Die Auswahl der Sagen und vor
allem das | Bestreben, durch die Vielzahl der Sagen, also doch wohl durch eine rein
quantitative Ausweitung des Vorbildes eben dieses Vorbild zu überbieten, ist das
Zeichen erstarrenden Epigonentums.’
(6) See West (2011a), 32f., 85, 86, 107f., 112.
(7) Cf. Chantraine, i. 161–3; P. Wathelet, Les Traits éoliens dans la langue de l’épopée
grecque (Rome 1970), 154–7 and Ant. Cl. 1 (1981), 819–33. At Od. 22. 249 the
transmitted κενὰ εὔγµατα is unlikely to be right (κενέ᾿ Hermann).
(8) West (2002), 130f. = (2011b), 384–7; (2003a), 30f.
(9) Cf. Robert (1920–6), 1070, ‘Um aber das Schicksal der Helena gleich von Anfang an
mit dem des Achilleus zu verknüpfen, läßt man diesen Streit bei der Hochzeit des Peleus
und der Thetis entbrennen.’
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(10) Pindar’s version underlies that of the ps.-Aeschylean Prometheus trilogy, where
Prometheus has learned from his mother Themis the secret about Thetis that is so
dangerous for Zeus. Cf. Melanippides PMG 765, who probably reflects ps.-Aeschylus.
(11 ) οὕνεκεν here clearly means ‘for which reason’ (=τούνεκεν, which might be read),
not ‘because’.
(12) Cf. Robert (1881), 125; R. Reitzenstein, Hermes 35 (1900), 77f.; Gruppe 663; Bethe
230; A. Lesky, RE xix. 287f.; Kullmann 230; contra, Severyns (1928), 253; Jouan 72–4.
(13) The motif appears also when Menelaos wrestles with Proteus (Od. 4. 454–61) and
when Heracles wrestles with Nereus (Stes. S16a) or Achelous (Soph. Tr. 9–21); cf. M.
Ninck, Die Bedeutung des Wassers im Kult und Leben der Alten (Phil. Suppl. 14. 2,
Leipzig 1921), 138–41.
(14) A. Severyns in Mélanges Joseph Hombert (Brussels 1950/1), 157; cf. Wagner 173.
(15) The motif of throwing a golden apple to distract the female mind appears in archaic
poetry in the story of Atalante, [Hes.] fr. 76. 10ff. On two Attic vases of c.470 depicting the
Judgment of Paris Hera is holding what appears to be an apple: LIMC Paridis Iudicium
37, 38.
(16) Luc. Dial. mar. 7 and other sources listed by A. Severyns, Mélanges Hombert, 164f.
H. Erbse, Rh. Mus. 138 (1995), 119–28, argued from its presence in the expanded
version of the Cypria hypothesis in Vat. Ottob. Gr. 58 (probably due to Tzetzes) that the
inscribed apple went back to the Cyclic epic. But I cannot accept his view that the
expanded version is older and more authentic than the vulgate one.
(17) Gruppe 663; Rzach 2382f.; Jouan 100.
(18) LIMC Paridis Iudicium 5–9, 11–17, etc.; Welcker ii. 90; Stinton 38f.; Jouan 103.
(19) Jouan 102. Eur. Tro. 925–31 alters the order to Athena, Hera, Aphrodite; so too
Colluth. 137–65.
(20) Sch. Od. 11. 299, 300. Cf. Alcmene’s conception of Heracles and Iphicles to Zeus and
Amphitryon respectively, [Hes.] Sc. 1–56.
(21 ) So W. Kullmann, Phil. 99 (1955), 183=(1992), 26, ‘Dieser Vers [F 10. 1] kann in den
Kyprien nur in dem Teil gestanden haben, in dem Paris auf dem Wege nach Sparta bei
den “Tyndariden” in Amyklai einkehrend geschildert war, allenfalls noch im
Zusammenhang mit der Weisung der Aphrodite an Paris bei seiner Abfahrt nach Sparta.’
Cf. Davies (1989), 38.
(22) G. Parlato, Lexis 28 (2010), 292–5, argues that Nemesis is the subject of τέκε in line
1 and that she was the mother of the Dioskouroi as well as of Helen. This hardly seems
compatible with the way she is introduced in line 2.
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(23) W. Kullmann, Phil. 99 (1955), 183=(1992), 27.
(24) Pherecydes fr. 138 Fowler, followed by Lyc. 101, said there were nine.
(25) Rzach 2386 notes that he appears together with Paris and Helen on a number of
vases: LIMC Aineias 19 (Etruscan oinochoe, c.550–525), 11–15 (Attic, fifth century). Cf.
Robert (1881), 53–8.
(26) Welcker ii. 91, ‘und Kassandra prophezeit über das Bevorstehende, vermuthlich, da
Helenos den Abreisenden wahrsagt, den Troern den Untergang der Stadt’; cf. Bacchyl.
23. Cassandra does not appear as a prophetess in Homer, though cf. West (2011a), 426.
Lycophron took her prophecy as Paris embarked as the mise en scène for his Alexandra.
(27) Wagner 174. For other epic instances of nine-day periods cf. N. J. Richardson on
Hymn. Dem. 47.
(28) On another occasion she sent a storm to blow Heracles astray after he had sacked
Troy, and he landed in Cos (Il. 14. 253–6, 15. 26–8) (Wagner 175).
(29) Twenty years later, according to Od. 17. 443, Cyprus was ruled by one Dmetor, son
of Iasos.
(30) Cf. G. L. Huxley, GRBS 8 (1967), 26. H. L. Ahrens, Jahrb. f. Philologie u. Päda-gogik
13 (1830), 193, took the Sidon episode to be a Cypriot interpolation. Others have
supposed it to be a post-Herodotean interpolation to fit the Iliad reference, either in the
actual epic (Welcker ii. 94, Robert (1920–6, 1085) or in the Proclan or pre-Proclan prose
tradition (Wüllner 67, 73; Robert (1881), 247; Wilamowitz (1884), 365 n. 44; and others).
(31 ) G. L. Huxley, GRBS 8 (1967), 27.
(32) It has been suggested that Motylos represents a memory of the Hittite king
Muwatallis, not just because of the similarity of the names but because in about 1275 bce
Muwatallis concluded a treaty with Alaksandus (Alexandros) of Wilusa (Wilios). It would
be conceivable that Muwatallis’ name was remembered in Neo-Hittite tradition in
southern Asia Minor, and from there found its way into Cypriot epic tradition.
(33) F. Staehlin, Phil. 62 (1903), 188–95.
(34) Wilamowitz, Pindaros (Berlin 1922), 429. In Theoc. 22. 207–11 too Lynkeus is killed
first, then Idas pulls up his father’s gravestone and prepares to throw it; but here the
thunderbolt strikes before he can do so. Aphareus’ tomb was shown at Sparta: Paus. 3.
11. 11.
(35) [Hes.] fr. 204. 78–85; Stes. PMGF 190; Soph. Aj. 1113, fr. 144, cf. Phil. 72; Eur. IA
57–65, 78, 391f.; Thuc. 1. 9. 1; Isoc. Hel. 39.
(36) For this cf. also Aesch. Ag. 841; Soph. Phil. 1025 and his Ὀδυσσεὺς µαινόµενος.
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(37) The words enclosed in half-brackets are added from the D scholium on Il. 1. 59
παλιµπλαγχθέντας. Aristarchus asserted that the Iliad line was the source of the Mysia
story related by οἱ νεώτεροι (ποιηταί). The D scholiast notes this and then supplies the
story from a slightly fuller version of Apollodorus than that of the Vatican Excerpts.
(38) LIMC Achilleus 468; Welcker ii. 139, Gruppe 668. Luckenbach 597f. thought the
incident must have stood somewhere in the Cypria, but he did not venture to say where.
(39) Wagner 190, however, argues that the rags go back to the epic.
(40) Apollod. epit. 3. 18 εἰς τὰς πατρίδας καταντῶσιν is then inaccurate.
(41 ) Lucr. 1. 85, however, uses the name Iphianassa for the sacrificed one. In IT 374 and
562 Electra is Iphigeneia’s only sister, while in El. 15 Iphigeneia herself is ignored.
(42) Lyc. 232–9 with sch., Heracl. Lemb. 22, Apollod. epit. 3. 24–5, Conon 26 F 1. 28, Diod.
5. 83. 4, Plut. Qu. Graec. 297d, Paus. 10. 14. 1–4.
(43) For the motif cf. the immediate death of Echion, the first warrior to exit from the
Wooden Horse: Iliou Persis arg. 2b (Bethe iii. 30).
(44) O. Benndorf, Jahrb. d. österr. Kunstsammlungen 12 (1891), 23–5; Gruppe 671 n. 5,

who notes that in this case all three of Achilles’ greatest opponents, Kyknos, Hector, and
Memnon, were killed when Achilles responded to the fall of a friend (Protesilaos,
Patroklos, Antilochos).
(45) Was his name coined to express that primacy, or did it suggest it?
(46) Similarly Lyc. 233, who makes it his collar-bone, as with Hector’s hit on Teukros in Il.
8. 324–7. Compare the story of the invulnerable Kaineus (it was again Poseidon who
made him so), who had to be overcome by battering him into the ground (Acusilaus fr. 22
Fowler); West (2007), 445. Ovid, Met. 12. 72–144, has a different version of Kyknos’ end:
Achilles strangles him with his helmet-strap.
(47) Strab. 13. 1. 19, 46; Diod. 5. 83. 1; Paus. 10. 14. 1.
(48) C. Watkins in M. J. Mellink (ed.), Troy and the Trojan War (Bryn Mawr 1986), 49=his
Selected Writings (Innsbruck 1994–2008), 704; J. Latacz, Troy and Homer (Oxford
2004), 106, 117f.=Troia und Homer, 6th edn. (Leipzig 2010), 162, 173f.
(49) Thucydides argues from the assumed fortification that the Greeks must have won a
battle on landing, something for which he could have certainly appealed to the Cypria. Cf.
my discussion in CR 19 (1969), 256f.=West (2011b), 240.
(50) Cf. Hdt. 2. 118. 2 (the Egyptian priests’ story), ἐκβα̃ σαν δὲ ἐς γῆν καὶ ἱδρυθεῖσαν
τὴν στρατιὴν πέµπειν ἐς τὸ ῎Ιλιον ἀγγέλους, σὺν δέ σϕι ἰέναι καὶ αὐτὸν Μενέλαον·
τοὺς δὲ ἐπείτε ἐσελθεῖν ἐς τὸ τεῖχος, ἀπαιτεῖν Ἑλένην τε καὶ τὰ χρήµατα τά οἱ οἴχετο
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κλέψας Ἀλέξανδρος. In Apollodorus and sch. (bT) Il. 3. 206 the embassy is sent from
Tenedos before the Achaeans continue to the Troad. This was perhaps a modification by
Sophocles in his Ἑλένης ἀπαίτησις (Wagner 197), though Bethe 242 argues that it was
the more logical and primary version.
(51 ) Here Thucydides does draw on the poetic tradition, 1. 11. 1 (after the Greeks had
landed and established their camp), ϕαίνονται δ᾿ οὐδ᾿ ἐνταῦθα πάσηι τῆι δυνάµει
χρησάµενοι, ἀλλὰ πρὸς γεωργίαν τῆς Χερσονήσου τραπόµενοι καὶ ληιστείαν τῆς
τροϕῆς ἀπορίαι. This, Thucydides reasons, is why the Trojans were able to hold out
against them for ten years.
(52) Recall their fundamental status in Zeus’ plan as related in sch. Il. 1. 5: above on arg.
1a.
(53) So C. Tsangális, Ελληνικά 54 (2004), 11f.
(54) Tsangális, op. cit. 12–17, argues that Thetis more likely appealed to Zeus, whom she
could call on for favours (Il. 1. 396–406), and that Zeus instructed Aphrodite to convey
Helen to a private spot within the Achaean camp.
(55) Cf. Welcker (1839–41), i. 159; Tsangális, 17, who then considers the question
whether Achilles and Helen made love (17–22). Tzetzes on Lyc. 174 (p. 80. 7–17 Scheer)
gives two versions of the story that Achilles made love to Helen in a dream, and in both
he also sees her in real life on the city wall, but neither agrees with Proclus.
(56) They are also the two who go on an expedition to Cyprus to try to recruit Cinyras in
an episode that I have rejected for the Cypria.
(57) The catalogue of the Greeks in Apollod. epit. 3. 11–14 (=8–11 Papathom.) shows just
the same relationship to Il. 2. 494–759, though the ship numbers often disagree.
(58) It is to be noted that the catalogues in the Iliad and Apollodorus begin with the
Dardanian contingent led by Aeneas. In the Cypria Aeneas has appeared previously, first
as Paris’ companion on the voyage to Sparta and later as the victim of a raid by Achilles in
Dardania. But there is no indication of his having been treated as allied with Priam in the
defence of Ilios.
(59) L. Antonelli, Hesperia 7 (1996), 60; Debiasi 116.
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Page 60 of 60
Aethiopis

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
Aethiopis
M. L. West
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.003.0003
This chapter presents a commentary on the poem Aethiopis. It first discusses the poem's
title; sources of information about the poem; the scope; the economy of the poem;
characterization of the poem; and dating of the poem. It then reviews individual
fragments and testimonia.
Keywords: Greek epic, epic poetry, epic poems, fragments, testomonia
Introduction
1. Title
The title Αἰθιοπίς is found on the Tabula Capitolina (Tabula Iliaca 1A, early first century
ce) and in the Pindar scholia (F 6), Proclus’ Chrestomathia, and Eusebius’ Chronicle.
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Aethiopis
The Ἀµαζονία which Hesychius of Miletus includes among the poems attributed to
Homer (Vita 6. 6) must represent either the Aethiopis or the first part of it.
2. Attestation
The principal literary source is the summary of Proclus, with the partly parallel narrative
of Apollod. epit. 5. 1–6. We have the two lines that led into the poem from the Iliad (F 1).
There are also:
one (non-verbal) fragment ascribed explicitly to the Aethiopis (F 6); two fragments
ascribed to Arktinos without title that belong hererather than to the Iliou Persis (F
2 and 5);
one ascribed to Ἀρκτῖνος ἐν᾿Ιλίου πορθήσει that is probably to be transferred

here (F 5a);
a couple of others cited with neither author nor title that areconsidered here on
grounds of content (F 3–4 and 7).
Reflexes of the Aethiopis may already be found in the Odyssey (3. 111f., 4. 187f., 11. 522,
24. 36–92), and they appear in some later literary treatments of the subject matter, such
as the poems of Pindar which refer to Memnon and the Aeschylean Memnon,
Psychostasia, and Hoplon Krisis.1 (Cf. Prolegomena, §5.) Quintus of Smyrna covered the
same matter in the first five books of his Posthomerica, but it is doubtful whether the
Cyclic epic was still available to him.
(p.130) Penthesileia’s combat with Achilles is a favourite subject for vase-painters, at

least from the sixth century; possibly already on a late proto-Corinthian fragment from
Aegina, dated c.630, where an unnamed Αµασζων supplicates a bearded warrior (LIMC
Amazones 254=Penthesileia 11). Penthesileia’s name first appears on shield-band reliefs
of the period 600–530 (LIMC Amazones 172–4=Penthesileia 10). She may have been
invented as an opponent for Achilles, as her name may be seen as a counterpart to his
(πένθος : ἄχος).2
Memnon first appears in art c.580,3 and from then on he is a favourite subject for artists.
The scenes in which he is shown clearly derive from the Aethiopis: his combat with
Achilles; the weighing of the two heroes’ destinies; his dead body carried away by his
mother Eos. The epic provenance is confirmed beyond doubt by three blackfigure vases
that have Memnon on one side and Penthesileia on the other:
(1) an amphora by Exekias (c.540–530), LIMC Achilleus 724: side A, Achilles

pursues Penthesileia; B, Memnon stands with two Aithiopians;
(2) a Nicosthenic amphora (c.530), LIMC Achilleus 727: A, Achilles and Memnon
fight over the body of Antilochos; B, Achilles pursues Penthesileia;
(3) an amphora by the Theseus Painter (c.490), LIMC Penthesileia 23: A,
Penthesileia and Achilles between Thetis and Hermes; B, Achilles and Memnon.
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Aethiopis
Scenes from the Aethiopis are depicted on three or perhaps four of the Tabulae Iliacae.
The source is named explicitly on the Tabula Capitolina (1A). In the space in the centre of
his composition the artist has put its title, ΤΡΩΙΚΟΣ (sc. πίναξ?). Above it is the caption
Ἰλίου Πέρσις | κατὰ Στησίχορον, referring to the synoptic (p.131) scene of the sack
above. Below the title, in a separate space, appear the other source references: Ἰλιὰς |
κατὰ Ὅµηρον, | Αἰθιοπὶς κατὰ Ἀρκτῖ|νον τὸν Μιλήσιον, |Ἰλιὰς ἡ Μικρὰ λε | γοµένη
κατὰ|Λέσχην Πυρραῖον. Two series of scenes from each of the two Cyclic epics appear in
friezes underneath (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Tabula Capitolina (1A, drawing by Feodor Ivanovich): the

Aethiopis frieze.
Those in the upper frieze (Aethiopis) are, from left to right, with their preserved
captions:
(1) Only an indeterminate fragment from the right-hand edge of the first scene
remains. (That it was the first is fairly certain; see Valenzuela Montenegro
[hereafter VM] 98.) A relic of the caption was formerly read as]κης and
understood to indicate that it showed Penthesileia’s defeat of Podarkes during
her aristeia, cf. on arg. 1b. But Mancuso 697 reads π]ρ̣ος and, assuming the
scene to have been of her arrival at Troy, posits a second line beginning [῎Ιλιον
or [-γίνεται (but the verb would have been παραγίνεται, see below). That the
scene was of Penthesileia’s arrival is highly probable in view of the parallels in
other Tabulae (see below).
(2) Πενθεσίλεια is being pulled off a collapsing horse(?) by Ἀχιλλεύς. The horse is
indistinct but probable, especially in view of Penthesileia’s posture. Cf. VM 98.
(3) Ἀχιλλεύς holds up a weapon to kill Θερσίτης, who is on his knees. VM 99 says
the weapon is a lance, but a sword would be expected in the circumstances.
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Aethiopis
Behind Thersites is a structure of sepulchral type, taken to be Penthesileia’s tomb

(Mancuso 698, VM 100, after Michaelis).
(4) Ἀχιλλεύς kills Μέµνων, behind whom lies the fallen Ἀντίλοχος with the city wall
behind.
(5) Ἀχιλλεύς, before the open gate of Troy, whose battlements are crowded with
onlookers, has sunk to a seated position; he is holding up his shield as if to defend
himself from arrows. Behind him stands Αἴας, also holding his shield up as if to
protect Achilles.
(6) Behind the protection of Ὀδυσσεύς a warrior (Ajax) hauls Ἀχιλλέως σῶµα
away.
(p.132) (7) Achilles lies back in the hollow of his shield. A female figure stands
over his head, and then there are two more figures with an altar(?) between
them; captions identify Μοῦσα and Θέτις and then perhaps Ἀχιλλέ [ως] τ̣ά̣ [ϕος].
(8) Αἴας µα [νιώ]δης sits in a distraught attitude, his right arm raised to his
forehead. In front of him are some vague shapes that could be pretty well
anything. For discussion see VM 106.
On the Tabula Thierry (7Ti; the original is lost) parts of five scenes are preserved: (1)
Penthesileia arriving on horseback and being received by Priam; (2) Πενθεσίληα Ἀµαζών
in battle with Achilles; (3) the death of Μ] έµνων; (4) ?ϕόνο] ς Ἀχιλλέως: Achilles is shown
collapsed before the gates of Troy; (5) Achilles lies on his pyre, attended by Thetis.
On the Tabula Veronensis II (9D) there are again parts of five scenes: (1) Πενθεσίληα
Ἀµαζὼν παραγίνεται; she arrives on horseback and is met by Priam; (2) Ἀχιλλεὺς
Πενθεσίληαν ἀποκτείνει; Penthesileia is again on her horse (VM 197); (3) Μέµνων
Ἀντίλοχον ἀποκτείνει; (4) Ἀχιλλεὺς Μέµνονα ἀποκτείνει; (5) ἐν ταῖς Σκαιαῖς πύλαις
Ἀχιλλεὺς ὑπο [. Achilles has sunk to the ground; behind him another warrior advances
with spear and shield raised, probably Ajax coming to protect the body (VM 198).
On the Tabula Froehner I (20Par) there are fragmentary and uninformative remains of
two scenes that are now conjectured to relate to the Aethiopis.4
These sequences all agree well with Proclus, who however omitted the suicide of Ajax
from his summary of the Aethiopis because it was to come in the Little Iliad.
Penthesileia’s reception by Priam is depicted on other Roman monuments, and earlier on

four of the Macedonian Homeric cups, where the two are shown in front of Hector’s
tomb.5
3. Scope
The poem was apparently composed as a continuation of the Iliad (see on F 1). It
culminated in the death of Achilles, an event of which there were many premonitions in
the Iliad and which was clearly (p.133) destined to occur before long. But first he slew
two newly arrived foreign champions after they had enjoyed some brief success on the
field: the Amazon Penthesileia and the Aethiopian king Memnon. The poem went on to
cover the events that were integrally linked to Achilles’ death: the funeral games in his
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honour, the awarding of his arms to Odysseus, and the suicide of Ajax.
Considered as an independent composition rather than as an extension of the Iliad, the

poem has some semblance of organic unity. Achilles’ victories over Penthesileia and
Memnon served as build-up for the climactic episode in which he fell to Paris’ arrow and
Apollo, and the narrative did not continue beyond the immediate consequences of his
death.
However, the Penthesileia episode looks as if it may originally have been an independent
Einzellied about an encounter between Achilles and the Amazon, with no particular
context.6 Her sudden arrival at Troy arises out of nothing that has gone before, and her
defeat does nothing to bring Achilles’ death any closer; on the contrary, it delays it,
because it leads to Thersites’ taunting of Achilles and Achilles’ killing of Thersites, which
necessitates his going away to Lesbos for purification. That was the ending of the
Penthesileia story; it led on to nothing else. Achilles simply had to return to Troy and
resume his warrior role. The whole episode could have taken place at any time in the war.
We may therefore postulate an Amazonis that has been made part of the Aethiopis and
stitched on to the end of the Iliad. There was no reason to stitch it on to the Iliad except
as part of a narrative that was to lead to Achilles’ death. So the stitching presupposes the
whole Aethiopis. But we cannot tell whether what we may call the Memnonis (the
remainder of the Aethiopis following the Amazonis) first existed as an independent poem,
and someone linked it up to the Iliad by putting the Amazonis in between, or whether the
Memnonis poet did this himself from the beginning. The poet of the Odyssey alludes more
than once to the Memnon episode, but nowhere to Penthesileia, and it is possible that he
knew only a Memnonis.
(p.134) 4. Economy of the poem

According to Proclus the poem comprised five books. We have no information on the
distribution of material among them. Quintus of Smyrna allots his first book to
Penthesileia, his second to Memnon, his third to Achilles’ death and funeral, his fourth to
the funeral games, and his fifth to the awarding of the arms, Ajax’s madness and suicide,
and his funeral. But it is doubtful whether he had the Aethiopis before him, and even if he
did, we cannot assume that he followed its book-divisions. Nevertheless, it seems likely
that anyone dividing up the Aethiopis would naturally have arrived at much the same
partition, provided that the resulting books were not grossly unequal in length.
The action of the poem extended over a span of something like twenty-four days, the
greater part being taken up by the extended lamentation for Achilles. The timetable may
plausibly be reconstructed as follows:
Day 1 Penthesileia arrives.

Day 2 She goes out to battle and is killed. Achilles kills Thersites.
Day 3 Funeral of Penthesileia. Achilles goes to Lesbos and
returns. Memnon arrives.
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Day 4 Memnon goes out to battle and is killed. So is Achilles.
Day 5–21 Funeral of Antilochos. Lamentation for Achilles.

Day 22 Achilles’ funeral.
Day 23 Tumulus built. Funeral games. Awarding of armour.
Day 24 Suicide of Ajax. His funeral

The poem evidently had a certain grandeur of conception, with its succession of great
battles and heroic deaths culminating in the fall of Achilles. The gods’ attention was fully
engaged, at least after Memnon came on the scene, and both he and Achilles received
forms of posthumous immortality. The lamentations for Achilles were heightened by the
presence of the Muses and Nereids, and after the funeral games came the sombre
episode of Ajax’s derangement and suicide. Whether the execution measured up to the
conception, we cannot well judge. The funeral games seem to have been less elaborated
than those in the Iliad (see below on arg. 4c), and two Attic artists of c.580–70, Sophilos
and Kleitias, both chose to paint (p.135) the games for Patroklos rather than those for
Achilles.7 In other parallel episodes too the Aethiopis may have failed to match the
supreme excellence of the Iliad. Yet it clearly impressed Pindar and the tragedians, and
provided inspiration for many vase-painters.
To the heroic dignity of the Iliad it added a novel exotic element in the Amazon queen
Penthesileia and the Aethiop king Memnon, both representatives of peoples mentioned in
the Iliad but lying beyond the areas represented by the Trojans’ actual or imaginable
allies. Achilles’ posthumous translation to a remote island in the Black Sea also marks an
excursion into the fabulous outer regions of a wider world.
There was pathos in the death of Penthesileia and Achilles’ belated apprehension of her
beauty, in Thetis’ and Eos’ poignant concern for their doomed sons, and in the various
laments which we may assume to have been uttered over the fallen, especially over the
young heroes Antilochos and Achilles.
We may quote without much discomfort the judgment of Welcker (ii. 235f.): ‘Das
Unterscheidende seines [Arktinos’] Epos, wenn wir ihn mit Stasinos und Lesches
vergleichen, ist in das Erhabene und Tragische zu setzen, während das Gedicht des
Lesches [the Little Iliad] einen heiteren, an das Komische streifenden Charakter gehabt
haben muß, Stasinos, [in the Cypria] die Werke der Aphrodite mit denen des Ares
mischend, zum Gefälligen und zu heiterm Humor bei ernsten Dingen gestimmt war.’
6. Dating
I have argued above that the Aethiopis was a continuation of the Iliad constituted from
two independent pieces of composition, an Amazonis and a Memnonis. The Memnonis
certainly post-dates the Iliad, to which it was conceived as the sequel from the start, and
this applies a fortiori to the composite Aethiopis, whether or not it was the Memnonis
poet himself who prefixed the Amazonis. The original Amazonis, set at some earlier stage
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of the Trojan War, may have been composed a decade or two before, and there is no
definite argument (p.136) for its being later than the Iliad beyond the absence of any
allusion to an encounter of Achilles with an Amazon.
The Odyssey, as mentioned above, contains several clear references to the Memnonis; it
has none to the Amazonis, though we cannot safely argue from that silence. The
Memnonis at least, if not the whole Aethiopis, must have been already current when the
Odyssey was composed, which is not likely to have been later than 600 bce. A similar
conclusion is to be drawn from a mention by Alcman of Memnon and Ajax on the same
battlefield (below on arg. 2c).
It was also noted above that Memnon first appears in art around 580, but Penthesileia
somewhat earlier, perhaps as early as 630, which is about the same time as the first clear
representations of scenes from the Iliad.
Putting these data together, we may put the Aethiopis, or at any rate its component
parts, in the second half of the seventh century. The (or an) Amazonis may go back to
640–30, while the Memnonis more likely dates from 630–610. If it was a later poet who
joined up the Iliad, Amazonis, and Memnonis into a continuous narrative sequence, he
might have worked a good deal later.
The FragmentsPenthesileia
F 1 Sch. (T) Il. 24. 804a

τινὲς γράϕουσιν
ὣς οἵ γ᾿ ἀµϕίεπον τάϕον Ἕκτορος· ἦλθε δ᾿ Ἀµαζών,
῎Αρηος θυγάτηρ µεγαλήτορος ἀνδροϕόνοιο.
In the manuscript tradition the Iliad ends with the line (804) ὣς οἵ γ᾿ ἀµϕίεπον τάϕον
Ἕκτορος ἱπποδάµοιο. It has usually been thought that someone who wanted to create
continuity with the Aethiopis altered that into what the scholiast reports. In West (2011a),
428–30, I have argued, following Christ and Fick, that the Iliad ended at 803 and that
[804] is a relic of the transition to the Aethiopis: someone faced with separating the two
poems took the backward-looking sentence ὣς οἵ γ᾿ ἀµϕίεπον τάϕον Ἕκτορος as
belonging to the Iliad, and filled out the verse with ἱπποδάµοιο. In (p.137) reality the
line was composed to move on from the funeral of Hector to the new topic.
A first-century papyrus, P. Lit. Lond. 6, contains a large part of Iliad 2 and then in
columns xxi-xxii a short prose account of the background to the Trojan War. This is
abruptly followed, not even on a new line, by the two verses (written as prose)
ως οι γ αµϕιε̣ π̣ ον ταϕο[ν]Εκτορος ηλθε δ Αµαζ̣ω̣ [ν]
οτρηρ[η]θυγατηρ ευειδης Πενθεσι̣λ ε ια.
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Here appears the indispensable name of Penthesileia. I discussed the relationship

between this and the scholiast’s version in West (2001), 283–5. As the divergent forms of
the second line have nothing in common but the word θυγάτηρ, and can hardly be
variants of one another, I concluded that a three-line original probably lies behind the two
quotations, e.g.
Wλθε δ Rµαζ7ν
ἦλθε δ᾿ Ἀµαζών
Ὀτρήρης θυγάτηρ µεγαλήτορος ἀνδροϕόνοιο
῎Αρηός 〈τε θεοῦ〉, εὐειδὴς Πενθεσίλεια.
It was Crönert who made οτρηρ[η] into Ὀτρήρης; a genitive is wanted, and Otrere is
attested as the name of Penthesileia’s mother in Lycophron (997) and mythographers.
The Homeric cups (above, intro. 2) have the scene of Priam supplicating Achilles as well as
his reception of Penthesileia and her combat with Achilles. Here again the contiguity of
Iliad 24 and Amazonis is presupposed.
Arg. 1a
Ἀµαζὼν Πενθεσίλεια παραγίνεται Τρωσὶ συµµαχήσουσα, ῎Αρεως µὲν θυγάτηρ,

Θρα̃ισσα δὲ τὸ γένος.
Apollod. epit. 5. 1 names both of Penthesileia’s parents, Otrere and Ares, and adds that
she had involuntarily killed Hippolyte and was purified by Priam before going into battle.
Hippolyte was famous as the Amazon queen whose girdle Heracles was charged with
obtaining; she also alternates with Antiope as the one who was captured by Theseus and
became the mother of Hippolytos. She should therefore belong to the generation before
Penthesileia. Diodorus 2. 46. 5 says that Penthesileia had killed a kinswoman (clearly not
Hippolyte, whom he has dealt with previously) and left her homeland διὰ τὸ µύσος,
coming to fight for the Trojans. Quintus 1. 18–47 says that (p.138) she had killed her
sister Hippolyte in a hunting accident,8 and that she came to Troy seeking purification as
well as kudos in battle; she was accompanied by twelve comrades, whose names are
listed. Tzetzes, Posthom. 6–21, distinguishes Quintus’ version from that of ‘Hellanicus,
Lysias, and other men of note’, who said that Penthesileia came to win distinction in battle
as the necessary qualification for marriage (Hellan. fr. 149 Fowler; cf. Hdt. 4. 117); and
also from others who said that she came under the inducement of gifts from Hector, and
that when she learned that he was dead she wanted to go away again.
Which of these data, if any, go back to the Aethiopis? Probably Penthesileia’s motive for
coming was explained, and the kindred homicide has the strongest claim to have been
that motive; Apollodorus is not following Hellanicus, and we do not know what other
source he might have had but a summary of the Cyclic poem. The motif is a common one
in epic and elsewhere.9 We may remain hesitant as to whether the woman killed was
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Penthesileia’s sister and whether she was named Hippolyte. The purification motif
provided a convenient motivation for the arrival of a new character from a foreign land
(Wagner 208). As the most powerful king in Asia, Priam would be able to afford protection
to a refugee from the interior. It is not certain whether other Amazons came with
Penthesileia. Virgil has her leading Amazonidum… agmina (Aen. 1. 490), whereas Quintus,
as noted above, says she had only twelve followers. On her Thracian nationality cf. A.
Severyns, Le Musée belge 30 (1926), 5–16.
She arrives on the day of Hector’s funeral. Clearly there will be no fighting the same day.
What will happen on this first evening will be her reception by Priam, something
represented on Homeric cups, Tabulae Iliacae, and other Roman monuments, as
mentioned above.10 According to the programme agreed with Achilles in Il. 24. 664–70,
fighting will resume on the day following Hector’s funeral. She will be there ready to take
part. So it goes in Quintus (1. 85–178): on the first evening Priam gives her a hearty
dinner and rich gifts, promising more if she can defend the Trojans, and when (p.139)
morning comes she dons her armour and rides out to battle on horseback at the head of
her Amazon comrades and the Trojans.
F 2 P. Oxy. 1611 fr. 4 ii 145
[“τίς πόθεν εἰς]σύ, γύναι; τίνος ἔκγον[ος]ε̣ ὔ̣χ̣[ε]αι εἶν

̣ αι̣
καὶ τ[ὰ ἑ]ξῆς, καὶ ὡς ἐκτίθετ[αι Ἀρκτῖ]ν̣ος ὅλον αὐτῆ[ς τὸν]θάνατον.
The papyrus contains a scholarly discussion of some sort. The identity of the author and
the context of this fragment are unknown. The verse is clearly from the Aethiopis, and
Penthesileia the addressee. The speaker is surely either Priam, when she first appears
before him, or Achilles, when she confronts him in battle. The words following the
quotation may suggest the battle context. There is no such dialogue in either context in
Quintus.
Arg. 1b
καὶ κτείνει αὐτὴν ἀριστεύουσαν Ἀχιλλεύς
Apollod. epit. 5. 1 µάχης γενοµένης πολλοὺς κτείνει, ἐν οἷς καὶ Μαχάονα· εἶθ᾿ ὕστερον
θνήισκει ὑπὸ Ἀχιλλέως.
Similarly Diodorus 2. 46. 5, συµµαχήσασαν δὲ τοῖς Τρωσὶ µετὰ τὴν ῞Εκτορος τελευτὴν
πολλοὺς ἀνελεῖν τῶν Ἑλλήνων (sc. ϕασὶ τὴν Πενθεσίλειαν), ἀριστεύσασαν δ᾿ αὐτὴν ἐν
τῆι παρατάξει καταστρέψαι τὸν βίον ἡρωικῶς ὑπ᾿ Ἀχιλλέως ἀναιρεθεῖσαν.
It is likely that the detail in Apollodorus about the death of Machaon came in the Aethiopis.
It diverges from the Little Iliad (arg. 2, F 7), in which Machaon healed Philoctetes and
was killed by Eurypylos, and as Wagner 208f. observes, ‘vix veri simile est Apollodorum
tantulam rem ex alio fonte accivisse’. Another of Penthesileia’s victims would seem to have
been Podarkes, the brother of Protesilaos (Il. 2. 704). He is chief among those whom the
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Greeks honour with funerals at the end of the day in Quintus (1. 811–22).
The Tabula Capitolina may indicate that in the Aethiopis, as in Quintus, Penthesileia fought
from horseback and was killed on and together with her horse.11 In vase paintings she is
usually shown fighting Achilles on foot, for example on a neck amphora by Exekias
(p.140) (LIMC Achilleus 723=Penthesileia 17, c.530). But on another neck amphora,
slightly later, both of them are on horseback (Ach. 726= Penth. 21), while on another by
Polygnotos he is killing her on the ground and her horse is cantering off (Ach.
732=Amazones 179=Penth. 32, c.450/40).
Mounted warriors are not typical of epic narrative, but Amazons are often depicted on
horseback in early art, and Magnes of Smyrna in the time of Gyges is said to have
composed a poem about a ἱπποµαχία of Lydians against Amazons: the word is equivocal,
but may refer to fighting from horseback.12
Arg. 1c
οἱ δὲ Τρῶες αὐτὴν θάπτουσι.
The funeral must have had sufficient prominence in the epic for Proclus to mention it. Cf.
on Little Iliad arg. 2d. Penthesileia’s body was initially in Achaean hands (below on arg.
1d). A black-figure hydria of the Leagros group (LIMC Achilleus 725=Penthesileia 20,
c.520–500) actually shows Achilles carrying it off over his shoulder amid the fighting. Its
return to the Trojans for burial presumably involved a truce; that would have provided a
convenient lull during which Achilles might absent himself from Troy (below). In Quintus
(1. 782–810) the Atreidai, moved by pity and admiration for the fallen heroine, accede to
a request from Priam and allow the Trojans to take her body and armour back to Troy. A
pyre is built before the city and she receives an honorific funeral; her remains and those
of the other twelve Amazons (who have all fallen in the battle) are given a place in the
tumulus of Laomedon. The Argeioi meanwhile cremate their own dead, chief among whom
is Podarkes (cf. above). Machaon has not been mentioned: Quintus follows the Little
Iliad’s version of his fate (see above).
Thersites
Arg. 1d
καὶ Ἀχιλλεὺς Θερσίτην ἀναιρεῖ λοιδορηθεὶς πρὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ ὀνειδισθεὶς τὸν ἐπὶ τῆι
Πενθεσιλείαι λεγόµενον ἔρωτα.
(p.141) The nuance given by λεγόµενον his alleged love’, is lost in Apollodorus, who
continues the passage quoted above with (ὑπὸ Ἀχιλλέως)ὅστις µετὰ θάνατον ἐρασθεὶς
τῆς Ἀµαζόνος κτείνει Θερσίτην λοιδοροῦντα αὐτόν.
When Penthesileia fell, the Trojans will have fled to safety and the Achaeans will have
gathered round to admire the body, as they do in Il. 22. 369 when Hector falls. So it goes
in Quintus (1. 630ff., 657ff.). According to Propertius (3. 11. 15f.) and Quintus it was only
when the dead heroine’s helmet was removed that her beauty was revealed. This could
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Aethiopis
go back to the Aethiopis, as the Corinthian-type helmet that covers most of the face had
come into use by the time of its composition, and Amazons are occasionally shown
wearing it in art.13 In Quintus it is not only Achilles who is impressed but all the Argeioi:
they wish that they had wives like that to sleep with. Achilles is filled with remorse that he
has killed her instead of taking her back to Phthia as his bride. In the Aethiopis he must
have shown some emotional reaction sufficient to provoke Thersites’ taunts. It
presumably found expression in a speech (Welcker ii. 172).
In Il. 2. 220f. Thersites is said to have been a habitual critic of Achilles and Odysseus,
though they were not the objects of his raillery in that passage. The Iliad poet probably
had no knowledge of the Penthesileia story (pace Kullmann 303); he will be alluding to
some other occasion(s) on which Thersites had barracked Achilles. A plausible occasion (if
the episode already existed in poetry known to the Iliad poet) would be the assembly at
which Achilles, after having seen Helen, persuaded the despondent Achaeans to continue
the war (Cypria arg. 11b).
It seems likely that, as in Quintus, his taunting and Achilles’ violent response to it followed
directly on from Penthesileia’s death and the viewing of her body. Proclus has probably
altered the sequence by putting the funeral first, appending it to the death notice for
narrative convenience. The funeral may have taken place on the following day, when it
could be conveniently synchronized with Achilles’ visit to Lesbos (below, arg. 1e).
Similarly in the Little Iliad, I shall suggest, Paris’ funeral took place on the day after his
death and while the Achaeans awaited Odysseus’ return from Skyros with Neoptolemos.
(p.142) There are two different versions of how Achilles killed Thersites. In Quintus he
simply strikes him dead with a blow of his fist,14 In Lycophron (999–1001) Thersites has
had the gall to stick his spear in the eye of the corpse,15 and Achilles cleaves him
(τέµνειν) with a τράϕηξ, whatever that means.16 One source of divergences may have
been Chairemon’s tragedy Ἀχιλλεὺς Θερσιτοκτόνος (TrGF 71 F 1–3). An Apulian volute
crater from c.350–40 which shows Thersites decapitated in a shrine has been taken to
reflect that play.17 But it is far from clear which version is to be assumed for the
Aethiopis. In the representation on the Tabula Capitolina Achilles is about to strike
Thersites with a weapon in front of a tomb(?) conjectured to be Penthesileia’s.
Arg. 1e
καὶ ἐκ τούτου στάσις γίνεται τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς περὶ τοῦ Θερσίτου ϕόνου. µετὰ δὲ ταῦτα
Ἀχιλλεὺς εἰς Λέσβον πλεῖ, καὶ θύσας Ἀπόλλωνι καὶ Ἀρτέµιδι καὶ Λητοῖ καθαίρεται τοῦ
ϕόνου ὑπ᾿ Ὀδυσσέως.
In Quintus the Achaeans are nearly all delighted at Thersites’ death; only Diomedes,
being a kinsman of his, is angry and ready to attack Achilles, but he is restrained by
others and that is the end of the matter. Quintus is following the tradition that Thersites
was a son of Agrios, who was a brother of Diomedes’ grandfather Oineus (1. 769–73).
This goes back to Pherecydes fr. 123 Fowler. It represents a probably erroneous
identification of the Iliadic Thersites with an older homonym known from Aetolian saga.18
On the crater mentioned above that may reflect Chairemon’s tragedy, Diomedes is
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Aethiopis
shown storming towards Achilles’ quarters, with Menelaos restraining him and Aitolos
coming up behind. It remains doubtful, however, whether the identification with the
Aetolian Thersites and Diomedes’ involvement in the matter are to be assumed for the
Aethiopis; 19 the quarrel over Thersites’ death that Proclus mentions might have been
differently motivated.
(p.143) The journey to Lesbos and purification (eliminated in Quintus) were inherited, I
have suggested, from an earlier, independent Amazonis, of which they formed the
conclusion. The focus on Lesbos, with which Achilles has other connections,20 may reflect
some local interest; was the Amazonis the work of a Lesbian poet? The Little Iliad was
attributed to one; and when we come to it we shall find a romantic element in it that might
be thought similar to what we have in the Penthesileia story. When her face is uncovered,
the sight of it melts Achilles and turns his hostile thoughts aside, and when Helen
uncovers her bosom in the Little Iliad (F 28) the sight of it melts Menelaos and makes
him drop his sword.21
Apollo is a god of purification, and Artemis and Leto belong with him. But it is a trio more
associated with Delos than with Lesbos. This was by no means an obvious place for
Achilles to go, and we may guess that he was directed to go there by Calchas. The role of
Odysseus also requires explanation. It is perhaps inspired by his mission to Chryse in Il.
1. 308–11, 430–74, when he took propitiatory sacrifices to Apollo in the context of
purification from a plague (313–16). Cf. Nitzsch (1831), 59.
Purification from homicide is un-Homeric, as observed by sch. (T) Il. 11. 690. All the more
noteworthy that the motif appeared twice in the Amazonis, with Penthesileia and now with
Achilles.
Memnon
Arg. 2a
Μέµνων δὲ ὁ Ἠοῦς υἱὸς ἔχων ἡϕαιστότευκτον πανοπλίαν παραγίνεται τοῖς Τρωσὶ
βοηθήσων.
As with Penthesileia, we must suppose that Memnon arrived the day before he went out
to fight, and that on the eve of battle he was entertained by Priam; so in Quintus 2. 111–
63. Probably he arrived late on the day of the Amazon’s funeral. Similarly in the Little
Iliad, I shall suggest, Eurypylos and his Mysian force arrived late on the day of Paris’
funeral.
(p.144) The phrasing of Μέµνων … παραγίνεται τοῖς Τρωσὶ βοηθήσων is similar to that
at the arrival of Penthesileia, arg. 1a. Apollod. epit. 5. 3 makes it Μέµνων ὁ Τιθωνοῦ καὶ
Ἠοῦς, and adds that he brought a large force of Aithiopes with him. The naming of his
father is relevant, as Tithonos was Priam’s brother and Memnon his nephew, like
Eurypylos in the Little Iliad. He was coming to help his uncle. Later sources say that
Priam had sent an appeal to him.22 This might have been so in the Aethiopis; the motif is
paralleled in Priam’s appeal for Eurypylos to come from Mysia in Little Iliad F 6. But
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Aethiopis
whereas he knew that his sister Astyoche had married Telephos in Teuthrania, his
brother Tithonos had been carried off by Eos, and it is less plausible that he should have
known what became of him; he may have been unaware of Memnon’s existence. In this
case Memnon may have explained that his mother had brought him word of the Trojan
War and of Priam’s difficulties, and that he had come of his own accord to help.23
Penthesileia’s outstanding beauty was matched by Memnon’s, as appears from Od. 11.
522 κεῖνον δὴ (Eurypylos) κάλλιστον ἴδον µετὰ Μέµνονα δῖον. Altogether he cut a
splendid figure with his divinely made panoply. Eos had no doubt commissioned it from
Hephaestus for her son, as Thetis does for Achilles in the Iliad; so Virgil, Aen. 8. 383f.
(Venus to Vulcan), arma rogo genetrix nato: te filia Nerei, | te potuit lacrimis Tithonia
flectere coniunx, though I do not think we need go as far as Eduard Fraenkel and
postulate for the Aethiopis an actual scene in which Eos visited Hephaestus.24 It must
however have given some prominence to a description of the armour, the fame of which
is reflected perhaps in Hes. Th. [984] Μέµνονα χαλκοκορυστήν and more clearly in Virg.
Aen. 1. 489 Eoasque acies et nigri Memnonis arma; 751 (Dido’s questions to Aeneas),
nunc (rogitans) quibus Aurorae uenisset filius armis.
(p.145) Arg. 2b
καὶ Θέτις τῶι παιδὶ τὰ κατὰ τὸν Μέµνονα προλέγει.
Thetis’ prophecies and warnings to her son are a familiar motif from the Iliad. At 18. 96
she told him that his determination to kill Hector meant that he would not live long,
αὐτίκα γάρ τοι ἔπειτα µεθ᾿ Ἕκτορα πότµος ἑτοῖµος. Her prediction in the Aethiopis was
no doubt similar, to the effect that he would die shortly after Memnon (Welcker ii. 173).
Some Neoanalysts have taken the prophecy in the Aethiopis to be primary and the Iliad
passage to be a mechanical adaptation of it, with Hector’s name substituted for
Memnon’s.25 This is to be rejected. Memnon was a post-Iliadic import into the saga; and if
we were to suppose that the Iliad poet knew of the Memnon story, it would make no
sense for him to have Thetis prophesying Achilles’ death αὐτίκα µεθ᾿ Ἕκτορα. He must
have composed the line for a version in which Achilles, after killing Hector, did what
Patroklos did after killing Sarpedon: forgot the advice he had been given and went on
pursuing the enemy to the gates of Troy, there to meet his death. See below on arg. 3a.
Arg. 2c
καὶ συµβολῆς γενοµένης Ἀντίλοχος ὑπὸ Μέµνονος ἀναιρεῖται.
Typically (like Penthesileia, and Eurypylos in the Little Iliad) the new hero at first enjoys a
period of success, killing at least one Achaean of note. This is only possible so long as he
does not meet Achilles. Thetis’ warning to her son that he was destined to die soon after
Memnon would have served to restrain him initially from confronting the Aethiop, against
whom he had no special animus. To override his restraint when the time came, the poet
imitated the Iliad’s powerful mechanism. He had Memnon kill Nestor’s son Antilochos,
who was a friend of Achilles’, so arousing the latter’s fury and his need for vengeance at
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whatever cost.26 His friendship with Antilochos, however, though mentioned casually in
the Iliad (23. 556), is never (p.146) developed or explained as Patroklos’ is, and the use
of his death in the Aethiopis remains a pale shadow of the Patroklos drama in the Iliad.27
Antilochos makes quite frequent appearances in the Iliad, without doing anything
outstanding. His death at Memnon’s hands is mentioned in Od. 4. 187f., cf. 3. 111f., 24. 78.
The circumstances are related by Pindar, Pyth. 6. 28–42, no doubt following the Aethiopis
(Welcker ii. 174), though the scholia make no reference to it.28 An arrow shot by Paris
struck one of Nestor’s horses, preventing him from escaping in his chariot from
Memnon’s onset. He shouted to Antilochos, who came to his aid, held Memnon up long
enough for his father to get away, but lost his life in the process.
There is a similar incident in Il. 8. 80ff. The Achaeans are fleeing. An arrow from Paris
strikes one of Nestor’s horses and halts his chariot. Hector is rapidly approaching in his,
and Nestor is saved only by the intervention of Diomedes. Many scholars have held that
the Antilochos episode was primary and the Iliad passage derived from it. But the
converse relationship is equally plausible and must be assumed if Memnon is a post-
Iliadic figure.29
An encounter between Memnon and Ajax has sometimes been inferred from Alcman
PMGF 68, δουρὶ δὲ ξυστῶι µέµανεν Αἴα˘ς αἱµατῆι τε Μέµνων, ‘Ajax is raging with
sharpened spear and Memnon is athirst for blood’. It is a puzzling fragment (and the text
is disputed); the perfect and present tenses imply that the verse came in a speech, but
whose could it have been? In any case µέµανεν (=µαίνεται) signifies raging over the
battlefield, killing right and left, not attacking a specific opponent, and αἱµατῆι should be
read similarly. So the two heroes are not engaging with one another, but someone is
decribing the furious state of the battle at large while Memnon is active.
(p.147) Arg. 2d
ἔπειτα Ἀχιλλεὺς Μέµνονα κτείνει.
As the battle approached its climax, Zeus weighed the destinies (κῆρε) of Achilles and
Memnon against one another, as in the Iliad (22. 208–14) he weighs those of Achilles and
Hector. This is a certain inference from the fact that the scene appears on many vases
from about 530 bce on, usually with Hermes holding the scales,30 and was dramatized in
the prologue of the Psychostasia attributed to Aeschylus.31
Pindar repeatedly mentions Achilles’ killing of Memnon (but never that of Penthesileia) as
one of his greatest heroic deeds: Ol. 2. 83; Nem. 3. 61–3, 6. 49–54; Isth. 5. 41f., 8. 54. The
passage in Nem. 6 gives us a detail of the battle:
(The fame of the Aiakidai) καὶ ἐς Αἰθίοπας
Μέµνονος οὐκ ἀπονοστήσαντος ἔπαλτο· βαρὺ δέ σϕιν
νεῖκος Ἀχιλεύς
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Aethiopis
ἔµπεσε χαµαὶ καταβαὶς ἀϕ᾿ ἁρµάτων,
ϕαεννα̃ ς υἱὸν εὖτ᾿ ἐνάριξεν Ἀόος ἀκµα̃ ι
ἔγχεος ζακότοιο. καὶ ταῦτα µὲν παλαιότεροι
ὁδὸν ἀµαξιτὸν ηὗρον, ἕποµαι δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς ἔχων µελέταν.
The παλαιότεροι must stand for the poet of the Aethiopis, though the scholiast (91a)
seems to have no information on who is meant. For χαµαὶ καταβαὶς ἀϕ cf. Il. 16. 426,
where Sarpedon ἐξ ὀχέων σὺν τεύχεσιν ἄλτο χαµα̃ ζε·| Πάτροκλος δ᾿ ἑτέρωθεν, ἐπεὶ
ἴδεν. ἔκθορε δίϕρου, and the two then fall upon each other.
The combat is depicted on the east frieze of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi, dated c.525
(LIMC Memnon 14). Memnon and Achilles fight over the body of Antilochos. Behind
Achilles are Nestor (Antilochos’ father) and the charioteer Automedon; behind Memnon
are Aeneas and a charioteer named Lykos; each charioteer is looking after a team of four
horses. The gods are shown in an (p.148) upper register, and it is thought that a
destiny-weighing scene may be lost from the centre of it.
Instead of Antilochos as the dead man one vase-painter has Phokos (LIMC Achilleus 822,
c.570/60) and another has Melanippos (Achilleus 833, c.470). It is possible that these
names occurred in the epic narrative (a Melanippos is mentioned at Il. 19. 240), but they
may well be random ones. They do not occur in Quintus.
Arg. 2e
καὶ τούτωι µὲν Ἠὼς παρὰ ∆ιὸς αἰτησαµένη ἀθανασίαν δίδωσι.
In the Psychostasia Thetis and Eos appeared in the weighing scene, each pleading for her
son’s life (Plut. De aud. poet. 17a). It is doubtful whether Thetis could have been so
portrayed in the epic, as she would have had first to travel up to Olympus; besides, her
prophecy to Achilles (above, arg. 2b) implies that she was resigned to his fate: to save his
life she ought to have pleaded for Memnon’s survival. Eos, on the other hand, is in
heaven during the hours of daylight and could without difficulty have been represented
as appealing to Zeus. Robert is rightly open-minded about whether she did so before or
after the (resolution of the) battle.32 Probably it came after Memnon’s fate had been
decided by the weighing and before he died. The best parallel is Il. 16. 450–61, where
Zeus, having resigned himself to the necessity of Sarpedon’s death, agrees to Hera’s
proposal that he should receive special honour afterwards.
Many vases and other artefacts from c.510 onwards depict Eos bearing Memnon’s body
away, and in the Psychostasia the crane was used to show her raising it up from the
earth into the sky.33 She was capable of such operations; she had after all carried off
Memnon’s father Tithonos, and in other myths Kephalos, Kleitos, and Orion.
But what sort of immortality was Memnon to have? He was never worshipped as a god.
He had a tomb in the Troad, near the mouth of the Aisepos, where there was also a
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Μέµνονος κώµη.34 He may have (p.149) enjoyed heroic honours in that locality. But
perhaps we should regard his immortality as the poetic type, with no reality in cult, that
Eos had already conferred on his father Tithonos (Hymn. Aphr. 220–2) and Zeus on his
great-great-uncle Ganymedes (ibid. 214). Calypso wanted to confer it on Odysseus (Od.
5. 136, al.), and in the Telegony Circe did confer it on Penelope, Telemachos, and
Telegonos. Menelaos is not to have an ordinary death but live on in Elysium (Od. 4. 561–
9). There are others who would have been given immortality if something had not gone
wrong: Demophon in Hymn. Dem. 242ff., Tydeus in Thebaid F 9⋆ (where, however,
Athena agreed to make his son Diomedes immortal). Polygnotos depicted Memnon in the
underworld together with Sarpedon and Hector (Paus. 10. 31. 5).
The Death of Achilles
Arg. 3a
τρεψάµενος δ᾿ Ἀχιλλεὺς τοὺς Τρῶας καὶ εἰς τὴν πόλιν συνεισπεσὼν ὑπὸ Πάριδος
ἀναιρεῖται καὶ Ἀπόλλωνος.
Apollod. epit. 5. 3 τοξεύεται ὑπὸ Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ Ἀπόλλωνος εἰς τὸ σϕυρόν.
It is a typical motif that at the fall of the champion the troops turn to flight.35 But here
there is a special connection with two passages of the Iliad. In 16. 656ff., after Sarpedon is
killed by Patroklos (though not immediately after), the Trojans and Lycians lose heart and
flee, and Patroklos pursues them towards Troy; and he would have taken the city, if
Apollo had not taken his stand on the wall and repulsed him. The god then encourages
Hector to turn back from the Scaean Gate and fight him. In 22. 376ff. Achilles, after killing
Hector, is minded to go on and attack the city, where the rest of the Trojans have taken
refuge, but then he changes his mind. These passages and the one in the Aethiopis are all
variants on the Iliad poet’s original, unwritten account of Achilles’ death, in which after
killing Hector he pursued the Trojans towards the city and would have taken it if Apollo
had not stopped him by guiding Paris’ arrow, so that he fell in front of the Scaean Gate.
He thus died ‘straight after Hector’, as (p.150) Thetis prophesied in 18. 96. In
composing the Iliad the poet changed his plan, postponing Achilles’ death to a point after
the end of the poem. The poet of the Aethiopis had to bring in a new hero, Memnon, for
Achilles to kill, to trigger again the sequence that brings him to the spot where he is to
die, the sequence that the poet knew from older accounts.36 His narrative probably
contained some lines similar to Il. 16. 698ff., e.g.
ἔνθά κεν ὑψίπυλον Τροίην ἕλον υἷες Ἀχαιῶν
Πηλείδεω ὑπὸ χερσί, πέριπρο γὰρ ἔγχεϊ θυῖεν,
εἰ µὴ Ἀπόλλων Φοῖβος Ἀλέξανδρον προσέειπεν…
Cf. Pind. Pae. 6. 89–91 (of Achilles), πρὸ πόνων δέ κε µεγάλων ∆αρδανίαν ἔπραθεν, εἰ µὴ
ϕύλασσεν Ἀπό [λ]λ[ω]ν, and Q.S. 3. 26–36.
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Aethiopis
According to the Iliad Paris and Apollo were to bring Achilles down ἐνὶ Σκαιῆισι
πύληισιν (22. 359f.), or Τρώων ὑπὸ τείχεϊ (21. 277); Apollodorus says πρὸς ταῖς Σκαιαῖς
πύλαις. Proclus’ συνεισπεσών would suggest that he actually got in through the gates,
but he is normally represented as having fallen just outside, as implied in the second Iliad
passage and depicted on the Tabula Capitolina. That makes more sense of the battle to
recover his body.
What is meant by saying that he was killed by Paris and Apollo (cf. also Il. 19. 417) is that
Paris shot the arrow and Apollo guided it to its mark (Virg. Aen. 6. 56–8; Porphyrio on
Hor. C. 4. 6. 3). Probably he also directed Paris’ attention to the availability of the target
(Ov. Met. 12. 600–6), as Athena directs Pandaros’ in Il. 4. 92ff. and Heracles’ in [Hes.] fr.
33. 31–3.
Apollodorus says that Achilles was shot in the ankle, εἰς τὸ σϕυρόν. Several vase-paintings
show him shot in that part, or an archer aiming at it (LIMC Achilleus 850, 851=Alexandros
92; Gantz 626). An arrow in the foot would not normally be fatal, unless it was a poisoned
one, so if it was specified that Achilles was shot there, it must have been because he was
vulnerable only in the ankle or foot. The tradition that this was the case does not appear in
literature before Statius, but it seems necessary to postulate its currency much
earlier.37 The poet of the Aethiopis probably adverted to it in the context of the fatal shot,
whether or not the explanation he gave was (p.151) the one given by the late sources,
that Thetis had held him by the foot when she dipped him in the Water of Styx to make his
skin impenetrable.
Horace, C. 4. 6. 9f., says that Achilles fell mordaci uelut icta ferro | pinus aut impulsa
cupressus Euro. The simile is typically epic and may reflect the account in the Aethiopis,
especially as Simonides too almost certainly uses it of Achilles, fr. eleg. 11. 1–3 [σὺ δ᾿
ἤριπες, ὡς ὅτε πεύκην] ἢ πίτυν ἐν βήσ|σαις… ] | ὑλοτόµοι τάµ[νωσι.
The Battle Over Achilles’ Body
Arg. 3b
καὶ περὶ τοῦ πτώµατος γενοµένης ἰσχυρα̃ ς µάχης Αἴας ἀνελόµενος ἐπὶ τὰς ναῦς
κοµίζει, Ὀδυσσέως ἀποµαχοµένου τοῖς Τρωσίν.
Apollod. epit. 5. 4 γενοµένης δὲ περὶ τοῦ νεκροῦ µάχης Αἴας Γλαῦκον ἀναιρεῖ· καὶ τὰ
ὅπλα δίδωσιν ἐπὶ τὰς ναῦς κοµίζειν, τὸ δὲ σῶµα βαστάσας Αἴας βαλλόµενος βέλεσι
µέσον τῶν πολεµίων διήνεγκεν, Ὀδυσσέως πρὸς τοὺς ἐπιϕεροµένους µαχοµένου.
F 3 Sch. (A, Aristonici) Il. 17. 719

ὅτι ἐντεῦθεν τοῖς νεωτέροις ὁ βασταζόµενος Ἀχιλλεὺς ὑπ᾿ Αἴαντος, ὑπερασπίζων δὲ
Ὀδυσσεὺς παρῆκται. εἰ δὲ Ὅµηρος ἔγραϕε τὸν Ἀχιλλέως θάνατον, οὐκ ἂν ἐποίησε τὸν
νεκρὸν ὑπ᾿ Αἴαντος βασταζόµενον, ὡς οἱ νεώτεροι.
The long and strenuous battle to recover Achilles’ body no doubt goes back to an older
model upon which the poet of the Iliad based battles for the bodies of Sarpedon (16.
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563ff.), Kebriones (16. 755ff.), and most notably Patroklos (17. 1ff.). The Aethiopis
version, or one closely related to it, is reflected in Od. 24. 37–42, where Agamemnon’s
ghost tells Achilles’ about it:
ἀµϕὶ δέ σ᾿ ἄλλοι
κτείνοντο Τρώων καὶ Ἀχαιῶν υἷες ἄριστοι
µαρνάµενοι περὶ σεῖο· σὺ δ᾿ ἐν στροϕάλιγγι κονίης
κεῖσο µέγας µεγαλωστί, λελασµένος ἱπποσυνάων.
ἡµεῖς δὲ πρόπαν ἦµαρ ἐµαρνάµεθ᾿· οὐδέ κε πάµπαν
παυσάµεθα πτολέµου, εἰ µὴ Ζεὺς λαίλαπι παῦσεν.
(p.152) In Il. 16. 775f. the words ὃ δ᾿ ἐν στροϕάλιγγι κονίης | κεῖτο µέγας µεγαλωστί,
λελασµένος ἱπποσυνάων are used of Kebriones, and the last phrase is more appropriate
to the charioteer, even if µέγας µεγαλωστί better suits Achilles (as in 18. 26); see West
(2011a), 326. The same lines, however, may have been used for Achilles in the Aethiopis.
They are echoed again in Horace, C. 4. 6. 11f. (of Achilles), procidit late posuitque collum
in puluere Teucro.
Ajax and Odysseus played the leading roles in the battle, Ajax carrying the great corpse
while Odysseus fought the Trojans off (cf. Od. 5. 309f.). Depictions of a warrior carrying an
enormous corpse draped over his shoulders appear in art from the end of the eighth
century on: LIMC Achilleus 860–5; Fittschen 179–81; Ahlberg-Cornell 35–8, 287–91 figs.
44–52. Odysseus’ defence of the operation was the basis on which Achilles’ arms were
awarded to him in the Little Iliad (F 2).
The additional detail in Apollodorus that Ajax killed Glaukos (before taking up Achilles’
body) is confirmed as archaic by a Chalcidian amphora of c.550/40 (LIMC Achilleus 850),
which depicts the battle over Achilles’ body: ΓλυϘος (sic) has tied a rope round his foot
to drag him away (cf. Il. 17. 289f.), but is speared by Ajax. This may reasonably be
attributed to the Aethiopis. The same painting shows Αινεες and ΛεοδοϘος advancing to
join the fray, and in Quintus, when Ajax kills Glaukos, Aeneas at once comes forward to
rescue his corpse and to take up the fight for Achilles’ (3. 278–86). Leodoqos will be the
Antenorid Laodokos mentioned in Il. 4. 87. He may have played a role in the battle for
Achilles’ body in the Aethiopis.38 Quintus does not mention him in that context, but at 11.
85 a Laodokos is killed by Diomedes. The amphora also shows ∆ιοµεδες, wounded in the
hand, being tended by Σθενελος. This too is probably based on the Aethiopis (Severyns
(1928), 322).
Apollodorus’ words καὶ τὰ ὅπλα δίδωσιν ἐπὶ τὰς ναῦς κοµίζειν appear at first sight to
refer to Glaukos’ armour. But although this might have been thought of interest as being
Diomedes’ original armour, which he exchanged for Glaukos’ in Il. 6. 230–6, its recovery
would hardly be important enough to be noticed in such a sketchy summary of the
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Aethiopis
narrative. It is rather Achilles’ armour, contrasted with his body: καὶ τὰ ὅπλα δίδωσιν
ἐπὶ τὰς ναῦς κοµίζειν, τὸ (p.153) δὲ σῶµα βαστάσας.… Securing the armour was
essential in preparation for the dispute over it following the funeral games, and Achilles’
great body was a big enough burden on its own for Ajax to carry. In Proclus’ more
compressed version the phrase ἐπὶ τὰς ναῦς κοµίζει is transferred to the body (Wagner
211 n. 2). In the original poem there were no doubt verses similar to Il. 16. 664f. τὰ µὲν
(Sarpedon’s armour) κοίλας ἐπὶ νῆας | δῶκε ϕέρειν ἑτάροισι Μενοιτίου ἄλκιµος υἱός.
The Mourning for Achilles
Arg. 4a
ἔπειτα Ἀντίλοχόν τε θάπτουσι καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως προτίθενται. καὶ Θέτις
ἀϕικοµένη σὺν Μούσαις καὶ ταῖς ἀδελϕαῖς θρηνεῖ τὸν παῖδα.
In the Iliad (18. 239) the sun sets as soon as Patroklos’ body has been secured, and Od.
24. 41 (quoted above) implies that in the Aethiopis too the battle for the body filled out
the remainder of the day’s action. Antilochos’ funeral then was left for the morrow. He will
have been lamented especially by his father, whose words, deploring the fact that he had
lived long enough to see his son’s death, have perhaps left echoes in Prop. 2. 13. 49f.,
non ille Antilochi uidisset corpus humari,
diceret aut ‘O mors, cur mihi sera uenis?’
and Juv. 10. 251–5,
quantum de legibus ipse queratur
Fatorum et nimio de stamine, cum uidet acris
Antilochi barbam ardentem, cum quaerit ab omni
quisquis adest socius, cur haec in tempora duret,
quod facinus dignum tam longo admiserit aeuo.
At the same time the lamentation for Achilles got under way. The Odyssey passage
continues (43–6):
αὐτὰρ ἐπεί σ᾿ ἐπὶ νῆας ἐνείκαµεν ἐκ πολέµοιο
κάτθεµεν ἐν λεχέεσσι, καθήραντες χρόα καλόν
ὕδατί τε λιαρῶι καὶ ἀλείϕατι· πολλὰ δέ σ᾿ ἀµϕί
δάκρυα θερµὰ χέον ∆αναοὶ κείραντό τε χαίτας
It goes on to relate that Thetis and the Nereids came up from the sea; the Achaeans
Page 19 of 29
Aethiopis
were terrified and would have run for their ships if (p.154) Nestor had not calmed
them. The Nereids stood round Achilles lamenting, and the nine Muses joined them. This
agrees nicely with Proclus, and there is no reason to doubt that the poet is following the
account in the Aethiopis or one closely related to it. A similar scene is already
presupposed in the Iliad, where the Nereids come up to lament Patroklos (18. 35–69),
though only Thetis then says or does anything; this must be adapted from what the poet
had been accustomed to describe in relating the death of Achilles.39 The Muses may have
been added by the Aethiopis poet. The point of their presence is less obvious, but it may
be recalled that according to Pindar (Pyth. 3. 89–93, Nem. 5. 22) they had sung at Thetis’
wedding to Peleus, and it would be their office to perpetuate Achilles’ fame in epic song
(cf. Q.S. 3. 645–7).
Briseis too laments Patroklos as soon as she is returned to Achilles (19. 282–302). We
should expect her to have played a role in the lamentation for Achilles in the Aethiopis,
and Propertius (2. 9. 9–16) describes her washing his bloody body in the Simoeis,
embracing it, wildly beating her head, defiling her hair, and handling his bones. He is
presumably following some literary source, and it may have been the epic, though there
is no guarantee of it. Quintus has her lamenting and later cutting her hair as an offering to
the dead hero (3. 551–81, 687f.).
F 3a⋆ (= Epic. adesp. 6) Sch. (T) Il. 24. 420b, “σὺν δ᾿ ἕλκεα πάντα µέµυκεν”
ἀδύνατον νεκρῶν τραύµατα µύειν, ὥς ϕησιν Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 167) εἰρηκέναι Ὅµηρον.
µύσεν δὲ πέρι βροτόεσσ᾿ ὠτειλή.
τοῦτο δὲ τὸ ἡµιστίχιον οὐδὲ ϕέρεται.
The fragment refers to a fatal wound that closed up, like those of Hector in the passage to
which the scholion relates. Aristotle attributed the half-line to Homer, but as it does not
occur in the Iliad or Odyssey, and is unlikely to have done so in a rhapsode’s
interpolation, he was presumably remembering it from some other epic. The dead hero
whose (single) wound preternaturally closed up must have been one who, like Hector,
enjoyed special divine favour.
(p.155) The obvious candidate is Achilles, and the fragment may come from the
description of his laying-out in the Aethiopis.
Achilles’ Funeral and Translation

The lamentation by goddesses and mortals continued for seventeen days, and the body
was finally committed to the pyre on the eighteenth (Od. 24. 63–5).40 The Odyssey
passage continues with details of the funeral ritual (65–70):
πολλὰ δ᾿ ἐπ᾿ αὐτῶι
µῆλα κατεκτάνοµεν µάλα πίονα καὶ ἕλικας βοῦς.
καίεο δ᾿ ἔν τ᾿ ἐσθῆτι θεῶν καὶ ἀλείϕατι πολλῶι
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Aethiopis
καὶ µέλιτι γλυκερῶι· πολλοὶ δ᾿ ἥρωες Ἀχαιοί
τεύχεσιν ἐρρώσαντο πυρὴν πέρι καιοµένοιο,
πεζοί θ᾿ ἱππῆές τε, πολὺς δ᾿ ὀρυµαγδὸς ὀρώρει.
Arg. 4b
καὶ µετὰ ταῦτα ἐκ τῆς πυρα̃ ς ἡ Θέτις ἀναρπάσασα τὸν παῖδα εἰς τὴν Λευκὴν νῆσον
διακοµίζει.
This is something that the Odyssey poet, if he knew it from the Aethiopis, had to eliminate,
as it was incompatible with his own narrative, where Achilles was in Hades listening to this
account of his obsequies. He just says that in the morning (the pyre having burned
through the night, as in Il. 23. 217–28) the Achaeans gathered the bones and placed them
in a golden amphora provided by Thetis,41 together with those of Patroklos and
separately those of Antilochos. Over it they built a great tumulus on the headland by the
Hellespont (sc. at Sigeion). This follows the lines of the Iliad poet’s version, though for him
it is only Patroklos who is to share Achilles’ tomb. In 23. 236–48 Achilles gives instructions
to collect Patroklos’ bones from the pyre and conserve them in a golden ϕιάλη until his
own death; only a small tumulus is to be made, to be enlarged later. It was only in the
Aethiopis, where Antilochos was promoted to the status (p.156) of a second Patroklos,
that his remains too were put beside those of Achilles and Patroklos.
Achilles’ translation to the White Island was an innovation of the Aethiopis. If Memnon got
a form of immortality from his mother, Achilles merited no less. The White Island may
originally have been a purely mythical place; the Indian epics also know of a White Island
in the north where certain men go who die in battle.42 In Greek sources, however, it is
identified with a real uninhabited island in the Black Sea, 50 km off the mouth of the
Danube, now the Ukrainian island of Ostrov Zmeinyy.43 It was associated primarily with
Achilles, though some later sources admit other heroes to it too. Sherds with scratched
dedications to Achilles are found there, starting from the late sixth century. Ionian
mariners in the second half of the seventh had carried his cult into the Black Sea and
attached his name to this and certain other sites; they had passed his Sigeian tumulus on
their way into the Hellespont. Alcaeus, who fought at Sigeion, said something about
Ἀχίλλευς ὀ τὰς (or γα̃ ς) Σκυθίκας µέδεις (fr. 354), the Achilles worshipped in the Pontic
region, and he no doubt knew the story of the hero’s posthumous translation to the
White Island. See E. Diehl, RE xxii. 1–18; Hommel; G. Hedreen, Hesperia 60 (1991), 313–
30; J. Hupe (ed.), Der Achilleus-Kult im nördlichen Schwarzmeerraum (Rahden 2006).
The poet of the Aethiopis imposed the translation on an older account of the funeral that
did not have it, leaving an unresolved contradiction: on the one hand the body is burned
on the pyre, the remains collected in a vessel, and a tumulus built over them, on the
other hand Achilles is snatched from the pyre and transported overseas. Cf. Kullmann
41f.
The Funeral Games
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Aethiopis
Arg. 4c
οἱ δὲ Ἀχαιοὶ τὸν τάϕον χώσαντες ἀγῶνα τιθέασι.
(p.157) Apollod. epit. 5. 5 τιθέασι δὲ ἐπ᾿ αὐτῶι ἀγῶνα, ἐν ὧι νικα̃ ι Εὔµηλος ἵπποις,
∆ιοµήδης σταδίωι, Αἴας δίσκωι, Τεῦκρος τόξωι.
Od. 24. 85–6
µήτηρ δ᾿ αἰτήσασα θεοὺς περικαλλέ᾿ ἄεθλα
θῆκε µέσωι ἐν ἀγῶνι ἀριστήεσσιν Ἀχαιῶν.
Agamemnon’s ghost goes on to say that these were the most splendid funeral games he
ever attended. There were perhaps more than the four events mentioned by
Apollodorus, cf. F 4–5. If the victors he names correspond to those in the Aethiopis, it
looks as if the bestqualified competitor won in each case: Eumelos was acknowledged to
have the best horses after Achilles’ (Il. 2. 763–7, cf. 23. 289), and Teukros to be the best
archer (13. 313f.). This contrasts with the games for Patroklos in Il. 23, where various
twists make the outcomes less predictable: Eumelos has an accident in the chariot race
and comes in last; Teukros forgets to pray to Apollo and misses the prize. The Iliad poet
was no doubt adapting oral accounts that he had previously given of games for Achilles.
Cf. Kullmann 334.
Quintus’ account of the games in book 4 of his epic agrees with Apollodorus in respect of
Ajax’s and Teukros’ victories, but not otherwise, and cannot be used to supplement our
information about the Aethiopis.
F 4⋆ Sch. (D) Il. 23. 660 “ὧι δέ κ᾿ Ἀπόλλων | δώηι καµµονίην”

Φόρβας ἀνδρειότατος τῶν καθ᾿ ἑαυτὸν γενόµενος, ὑπερήϕανος δέ, πυγµὴν ἤσκησεν,
καὶ τοὺς µὲν παριόντας ἀναγκάζων ἀγωνίζεσθαι ἀνήιρει· ὑπὸ δὲ τῆς πολλῆς
ὑπερηϕανίας ἠβούλετο καὶ πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς τὸ τοιοῦτο ϕρόν. διὸ Ἀπόλλων
παραγενόµενος καὶ συστὰς αὐτῶι ἀπέκτεινεν αὐτόν. ὅθεν ἐξ ἐκείνου καὶ τῆς πυκτικῆς
ἔϕορος ἐνοµίσθη ὁ θεός. ἡ ἱστορία παρὰ τοῖς κυκλικοῖς.
This Phorbas was king of the Phlegyai in Boeotia; a fuller version of the story appears in
Philostr. Imag. 2. 19, cf. Ov. Met. 11. 413f. Some reference to it occurred in a Cyclic
poem, most likely on the occasion of a boxing match. The games for Achilles provide the
only context we know of in which boxing might have been mentioned. The fragment was
assigned to this context by T. W. Allen, CR 27 (1913), 190.
(p.158) F 5 Diomedes, Gramm. Lat. i. 477. 9 Keil

Alii a Marte ortum Iambum strenuum ducem tradunt, qui cum crebriter pugnas iniret et
telum cum clamore torqueret, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἱεῖν καὶ βοα̃ ν Iambus appellatur. Idcirco ex breui
et longa pedem hunc esse compositum, quod hi qui iaculentur ex breui accessu in
extensum passum proferuntur, ut promptiore nisu telis ictum confirment. Auctor huius
librationis Arctinus Graecus his uersibus perhibetur: {ὁ ῎Ιαµβος}
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Aethiopis
ἐξ ὀλίγου διαβὰς προϕόρωι ποδί, γυῖά οἱ ὄϕρα
τεινόµενα ῥώοιτο καὶ εὐσθενὲς εἶδος ἔχησιν.
1 γυῖά οἱ ὄϕρα West: ofra oi gya vel gria codd.
The verses are quoted from Arktinos (so from the Aethiopis or Iliou Persis) as describing
the footwork of one throwing a javelin and taking first a short step forward and then a
long stride, to put his weight into the shot and give it greater force. This interpretation is
contrived to support the alleged connection of ἴαµβος with a warrior’s ‘throw+shout’. But
what sense were the lines composed to convey?
διαβὰς προϕόρωι ποδί refers to a man setting one foot in front of the other. It is not clear
to me what ἐξ ὀλίγου means, but I do not believe it can signify ‘after taking a small(er)
step’. Thucydides uses the phrase to mean ‘at short notice, suddenly’ (see LSJ ὀλίγος IV.
4), and this would be appropriate at Solon 13. 14 if we retain the transmitted text, ἀρχὴ
δ᾿ ἐξ ὀλίγου γίγνεται ὥστε πυρός.
ῥώοµαι or ἐπιρρώοµαι is used in the epic language of vigorous bodily movement, as of

dancers or of troops surging forward. By taking up the stance described in the first
verse the man stretches his limbs in readiness for vigorous action, or prepares for their
energetic working when stretched. He also gives his body εὐσθενὲς εἶδος, the
appearance of strength or muscularity.
Altogether the fragment suggests an athlete rather than a warrior, though it is not clear
what he is preparing to do. He might be getting set for a foot race, only then several
competitors would be lining up together and it is unclear why one would be picked out.
The emphasis on strength would better suit boxing, wrestling, or hurling a discus or a
javelin. Javelin-throwing is what Diomedes says the verses referred to, though by
juxtaposing the quotation with the ἱεῖν καὶ βοα̃ ν etymology he gives the impression that
we are to think of a (p.159) battle context. An athletic setting looks more likely, and as
with F 4 the games for Achilles make the obvious one.
The Dispute Over the Arms. Ajax’s Suicide
Arg. 4d
καὶ περὶ τῶν Ἀχιλλέως ὅπλων Ὀδυσσεῖ καὶ Αἴαντι στάσις ἐµπίπτει.
Apollod. epit. 5. 6 τὴν δὲ Ἀχιλλέως πανοπλίαν †τίθεισι τῶι ἀρίστωι νικητήριον.
The story of the dispute over the arms and Ajax’s suicide was told both in the Aethiopis
and in the Little Iliad, but Proclus, to avoid duplication, breaks off his summary of the
Aethiopis with the bare mention of the quarrel.
Robert (1881), 221, suggested that the Aethiopis was the source for a series of vase
paintings where Ajax and Odysseus are shown being restrained from setting upon each
other with swords; cf. Gantz 633. This could easily have been accommodated in an epic
Page 23 of 29
Aethiopis
narrative; cf. Il. 1. 188ff., and especially 7. 273ff., καί νύ κε δὴ ξιϕέεσσ᾿ αὐτοσχεδὸν
οὐτάζοντο, | εἰ µὴ κήρυκες κτλ.
In this poem the adjudication was perhaps entrusted to Trojan prisoners of war; see on
Little Iliad F 2.
F 5a Sch. (T) Il. 11. 515, “ἰούς τ᾿ ἐκτάµνειν”

ἔνιοι δέ ϕασιν ὡς οὐδὲ ἐπὶ πάντας τοὺς ἰατροὺς ὁ ἔπαινος οὗτός ἐστι κοινός, ἀλλ᾿ ἐπὶ
τὸν Μαχάονα, ὃν µόνον χειρουργεῖν τινες λέγουσι· τὸν γὰρ Ποδαλείριον διαιτα̃ σθαι
νόσους…, τοῦτο ἔοικε καὶ Ἀρκτῖνος ἐν Ἰλίου πορθήσει νοµίζειν, ἐν οἷς ϕησι
αὐτὸς γάρ σϕιν ἔδωκε πατὴρ †ἐνοσίγαιος πεσεῖν†
ἀµϕοτέροις· ἕτερον δ᾿ ἑτέρου κυδίον᾿ ἔθηκεν·
τῶι µὲν κουϕοτέρας χεῖρας πόρεν ἔκ τε βέλεµνα
σαρκὸς ἑλεῖν τµῆξαί τε καὶ ἕλκεα πάντ᾿ ἀκέσασθαι,
τῶι δ᾿ ἄρ᾿ ἀκριβέα πάντα ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν ἔθηκεν
ἄσκοπά τε γνῶναι καὶ ἀναλθέα ἰήσασθαι
ὅς ῥα καὶ Αἴαντος πρῶτος µάθε χωοµένοιο
ὄµµατά τ᾿ ἀστράπτοντα βαρυνόµενόν τε νόηµα.
1 〈γέρας〉 Ἐννοσίγαιος West post Dübner (〈γέρα〉): νουσήλια παισίν Welcker

(παισίν iam Heyne).
(p.160) We know nothing of any role played by Machaon or Podaleirios in the Iliou
Persis. Machaon had been killed before the action of that poem started, according to
Apollod. epit. 5. 1 (=Aethiopis? see on arg. 1b) and the Little Iliad (F 7). Quintus 12. 321
includes Podaleirios among the heroes who went in the Horse, but his naming in that
context in the Iliou Persis would hardly have provoked this excursus on the two
brothers.
Had the fragment not been attributed to that poem, one would have assumed its context
to be the madness of Ajax. I agree with Welcker and others44 that it belongs in the
Aethiopis and that the scholiast, finding it ascribed to ‘Arktinos’, erroneously added ἐν
Ἰλίου πορθήσει. If this is right, it refutes the view of some scholars.45 that Ajax’s madness
(with his slaughter of animals) was an innovation in the Little Iliad and that in the Aethiopis
it was just the slight to his honour from the awarding of the arms to Odysseus that drove
him to suicide. An Αἴας µανιώδης is in any case depicted in a scene from the Aethiopis on
the Tabula Capitolina.
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Aethiopis
Nitzsch (1831), 50n., argues from ὅς ῥα καί that the reference to Ajax was incidental to
the context. But cf. Il. 13. 356, 514, 15. 194, where a similar combination is used in
returning to the main point.46
It is perplexing that Machaon and Podaleirios appear to be sons of Poseidon instead of (as
usual) Asklepios. Attempts to explain it are hardly convincing.47 But the end of line 1 is
anyway corrupt, and if Ἐννοσίγαιος which Eustathius also read, 859. 45) is retained we
have both to supply something before it and to excise πεσεῖν (sc. παισίν) as a gloss on
ἀµϕοτέροις (Kinkel). Possibly Welcker (ii. 525f.) was on the right lines with his change of
ἐνοσίγαιος πεσεῖν to νουσήλια παισίν.
5–6. Neither ἀκριβής and ἀναλθής is otherwise attested before the fifth century, but
they do not look like recent coinages.
8. The eyes are often mentioned as giving signals of mental arousal or disturbance, cf.
Fraenkel on Aesch. Ag. 1428; Page on Eur. Med. 1174–5; Dodds on Eur. Bacch. 1122–3.
Ocular lightning, however, is normally associated with Cρω, cf. Pearson on Soph. fr. 474.
2; (p.161) Gow–Page on Meleager A.P. 12. 84. 4 (HE 4605); Mosch. Eur. 86. J. Mattes,
Der Wahnsinn im griech. Mythos und in der Dichtung bis zum Drama des 5. Jahrhunderts
(Heidelberg 1970), 65, writes ‘Es handelt sich hier aber nicht um reine Depression. Denn
dazu passen nicht blitzende Augen als Symptom der Erkrankung. Sie deuten eher
darauf, daß sich der Groll bald in einer Tat entladen wird.’
F 6 Sch. Pind. Isth. 4. 58b, “ἴστε µὰν Αἴαντος ἀλκάν, ϕοίνιον τὰν ὀψίαι ἐν νυκτὶ ταµὼν
περὶ ὧι ϕασγάνωι µοµϕὰν ἔχει παίδεσσιν Ἑλλάνων ὅσοι Τροίανδ᾿ ἔβαν”
τὸ δὲ “ὀψίαι ἐν νυκτί” τριχῶς νοεῖται· ἢ γὰρ τὴν ὀψίαν τῆς ἡµέρας…ἢ κατὰ τὸ ὀψὲ τῆς
νυκτός, οἷον τὸ µεσονύκτιον…ἢ τὸ πρὸς ἕω, ὅτε ἐστὶ τῆς νυκτὸς ὀψὲ πρὸ τοῦ
ὄρθρου.τοῖς δὲ τὸν ὄρθρον ἀκούουσι καὶ τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς ἱστορίας συνάιδει· ὁ γὰρ τὴν
Αἰθιοπίδα γράϕων περὶ τὸν ὄρθρον ϕησὶ τὸν Αἴαντα ἑαυτὸν.
The dispute over the arms and the adjudication in favour of Odysseus will have come late
in the day, following the raising of the tumulus over Achilles’ remains and the series of
games. It must have been that evening, before the Achaeans retired to bed, that
Podaleirios noticed the first signs of Ajax’s mental disturbance (F 5a). The poet may have
written on these lines:
All the other Achaeans and Trojans slept the night through, but Ajax did not sleep,
but lay awake, now tossing and turning, now pacing about, raging in his heart
because of his defeat in the contest for the armour.
(Cf. Il. 24. 1–12; Q.S. 5. 333–4, 346–54.) Then Ajax’s deluded massacre of the army’s
flocks and herds must have been described; see on Little Iliad arg. 1b. This took place
during the night, while no one else was about. It was then convenient to put his suicide
towards dawn, as the last event related before the Achaeans rose to discover the
carnage.
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Aethiopis
The narration may have run approximately as follows:
When it was not yet dawn but still twilight, he arose, taking his sword, and went out
determined to kill the two Atreidai. And he would have done it, and they would have died
before their appointed time, had Athena not turned his wits astray, so that when he came
upon the sheep and cattle that the Achaeans were keeping for their food, he thought that
they were the Atreidai and their men, and he fell upon them and slaughtered them.
(p.162) Then the goddess restored his sanity, and he realized what he had done in his
madness. In total despair, he fixed his sword in the ground with the blade upwards, and
after a passionate monologue threw himself upon it, and his soul went to Hades.
There was a tradition that Ajax had an invulnerable skin that could be pierced only under
his arm, and that he had to find this weak spot in order to kill himself.48 There is no
evidence that this goes back to the Aethiopis, but it may well do so.
Artistic representations of Ajax’s suicide go back to the first quarter of the seventh
century: LIMC Aias (I) 110, 118, 120, 121, 125; Fittschen 181f.; Ahlberg-Cornell 74f.,
322–4 figs. 110–14.
The poem will not have closed without an account of Ajax’s funeral. We cannot tell
whether this involved a controversy as in the Little Iliad (F 3), nor whether, as there, it
took the form of inhumation without cremation.
Notes:
(1 ) It is curious that no Greek tragedian is known to have written a play about
Penthesileia; there is a tiny fragment of a Latin one (p. 271 Ribbeck). A chorus of
Amazons would have been an attractive spectacle.
(2) H. Mühlestein, Mus. Helv.43 (1986), 219=his Homerische Namenstudien (Frankfurt

1987), 184.
(3) The two warriors fighting a duel on a Melian amphora of the third quarter of the
seventh century (LIMC Achilleus 846; Ahlberg-Cornell 320 fig. 106) have sometimes
been identified as Achilles and Memnon on the ground that each has a woman or goddess
standing behind him. But the fact that they are fighting over a suit of armour set on the
ground between them seems hard to reconcile with the identification. Cf. Fittschen 178f.
For Memnon in vase painting and the relationship to the Aethiopis cf. also Luckenbach
614–22. On the etymology of Memnon’s name cf. M. Janda, Gymnasium 113 (2006), 521–
4.
(4) VM 179 n. 1089; M. Squire, ZPE 178 (2011), 67–9 with 76 fig. 8.
(5) MB 23–26 in Sinn 92f. and Taf. 12–14.
(6) So E. Bethe, Hermes 26 (1891), 597, ‘Die Penthesileasage ist jung und in sich
abgeschlossen. Sie möchte daher wohl in einem einzelnen kleinen Epos besungen worden
Page 26 of 29
Aethiopis
sein … Zur Aithiopis aber gehört sie eben so wenig oder eben so sehr, wie zur Ilias.’
(7) Sophilos: Athens 15499; Kleitias: Florence 4209 (the François Vase); LIMC Peleus
211, 212. Cf. Snodgrass 117–20. On the handle of the same vase Kleitias painted Ajax
carrying Achilles’ corpse, as in the Aethiopis and Little Iliad, so he can hardly have been
unfamiliar with the poetic account of the games for Achilles.
(8) Likewise Serv. Aen. 1. 491.
(9) Cf. Il. 2. 661–6, 13. 696, 15. 431f., 16. 573f., 24. 480–2, Od. 15. 224, [Hes.] Sc. 11–
13~80–5; Robert Parker, Miasma (Oxford 1983), 375–92.
(10) Note that the caption on Tabula 9D (Veronensis II), Πενθεσίληα Ἀµαζὼν
παραγίνεται, corresponds almost exactly to the wording of Proclus.
(11 ) Cf. Prop. 3. 11. 13f. ausa ferox ab equo quondam oppugnare sagittis | Maeotis
Danaum Penthesilea ratis; Robert (1920–6, 1177 n. 3.
(12) Cf. West (2011b), 349.
(13) So on one of the sixth-century shield-band reliefs, LIMC Amazones 173.
(14) 1. 742–7, cf. sch. and Tz. in Lyc. 999; sch. Soph. Phil. 445.
(15) This too appears in sch. Soph. Phil. 445. Cf. Il. 22. 371–5: Hcctor’s body receives
blows from the Achaeans who come up to view it.
(16) The paraphrast, scholiast, and Tzetzes think it is a sword or spear.
(17) LIMC Agamemnon 61=Achilleus 794=Thersites 3. Cf. TrGF 71 F 3.
(18) Cf. Ø. Andersen, Symb. Osl. 57 (1982), 19–29; Gantz 333.
(19) As assumed by J. Ebert, Phil. 113 (1969), 167–70.
(20) Cf. West (2011a), 43f.
(21 ) It may be of no significance that in Vita 6. 6 (Hesychius of Miletus) Ἰλιὰς Μικρά stand
together at the head of a disorderly list of poems attributed to Homer besides the Iliad
and Odyssey.
(22) Ctesias FGrHist 688 F 1 pp. 441–2 Jac. (Diod. 2. 22. 2), echoed by Pl. Leg. 685c,
Cephalion 93 F 1 p. 441 Jac.; Q.S. 2. 34–7.
(23) In Aeschylus too I believe that Memnon was a stranger to Priam and had to explain
who he was: see West (2000), 344. In the Aethiopis he, or the poet in introducing him,
might have related the story of Tithonos. Cf. D. Meyerhoff, Traditioneller Sto ff und
individuelle Gestaltung. Untersuchungen zu Alkaios und Sappho (Hildesheim 1984), 190f.
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Aethiopis
(24) E. Fraenkel, Phil. 87 (1932), 242=Kleine Beiträge (Rome 1964), ii. 173. Virgil might
have extrapolated the visit from Memnon’s possession of the arms.
(25) Pestalozzi 9; W. Schadewaldt, Von Homers Welt und Werk (4th edn., Stuttgart1966),
167, 192f.; Kullmann 38, 311.
(26) Cf. Q.S. 2. 447f. ῞Εκτορα γὰρ Πατρόκλοιο, σὲ δ᾿ Ἀντιλόχοιο χολωθείς|τείσοµαι.

Pindar, Nem. 3. 62, alludes to a specific resolve by Achilles that Memnon should have no
homecoming.
(27) Cf. E. Löwy, NJb. 33 (1914), 90; Robert (1901), 446f., ‘wie die Aithiopis dies
Verhältniss [Antilochos’ friendship with Achilles] noch weiter ausgebildet hat, so dass er
zu einem zweiten Patroklos wird, ist bekannt’; Bethe i. 100, ‘dies Verhältnis ist in der Ilias
ganz unbekannt bis auf Ψ 556. Die Aithiopis aber hat es ausgestaltet’; Karl Reinhardt, Die
Ilias und ihr Dichter (Göttingen 1961), 353f., ‘wenn derselbe Achill… die Rache für
Antilochos, da er auch sein Freund ist, übernimmt, so werden Tod und Rache
aneinander geknüpft, aber die Verknüpfung ist viel lockerer als im Falle des Patroklos’;
West (2003b), 10f.; (2011a), 405.
(28) A. Kelly, Hermes 134 (2006), 13–19, argues that Pindar’s account is so coloured by
the Iliad as to be unreliable as a source for the Aethiopis. He does not persuade E.
Heitsch, Rh. Mus. 151 (2008), 2 n. 9, or me.
(29) Cf. West (2003b), 3 and 10; (2011a), 202.
(30) Robert (1881), 143–6, who takes Hermes’ role to go back to the Aethiopis; L. D.
Caskey and J. D. Beazley, Attic Vase Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 3
(Boston 1963), 44–6; LIMC s.vv. Ker and Memnon. Gruppe 681 n. 6 explains Hermes as a
reflection of the Egyptian Thoth’s role in weighing the souls of the dead.
(31 ) TrGF iii. 375. I have argued in West (2000), 345f., that the play, or at least this
opening scene, was not the work of Aeschylus but probably of his son Euphorion.
(32) Robert (1881), 145.
(33) LIMC Memnon 62–88; Poll. 4. 130. Aelian’s statement that she carried him to Susa
(NA 5. 1) probably also derives from the play; cf. Aesch. fr. 405.
(34) [Hes.] fr. dub. 353, Strab. 13. 1. 12, Dionys. Av. 1. 8, Paus. 10. 31. 6, Q.S.2. 585–91.
(35) Cf. Il. 5. 27–9, 37; 11. 744–6; 16. 290–2; 21. 206–8; Od. 9. 58–61; Cypria arg. 10bwith
Apollod. epit. 3. 31; Fenik 13.
(36) Cf. West (2003b), 6–9, 12=(2011b), 250–4, 259; (2011a), 346.
(37) Gantz 627. On the motif of the one vulnerable spot cf. West (2007), 444–6.
(38) Pestalozzi 19, cf. Kullmann 179.
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Aethiopis
(39) Cf. D. Mülder, Die Ilias und ihre Quellen (Berlin 1910), 193; Pestalozzi 32; J. Th.
Kakridis, Homeric Researches (Lund 1949), 66–73; West (2011a), 344, 345.
(40) Hector was to be mourned for nine days in Il. 24. 664. For such prolonged
lamentations and other traditional features of heroic funerals cf. West (2007), 496–9.
(41 ) She had been given it by Dionysus, presumably in gratitude for his salvation by her
from Lykourgos as related in Il. 6. 135–7; so Stes. PMGF 234.
(42) West (2007), 349.
(43) Pind. Nem. 4. 49 with sch. 79ab; Eur. Andr. 1260–2, IT 435–8; Lyc. 188f. with sch.
186, 188; Strab. 2. 5. 22, 7. 3. 16; Mela 2. 98; Pliny HN 10. 78; ps.-Scymn. 790; Dion. Per.
541–8; Ant. Lib. 27. 4; Arr. Peripl. 21–3; Max. Tyr. 9. 7; Paus. 3. 19. 11–13; Philostr. Her.
19. 16; Q.S. 3. 775–9; St. Byz. Ἀχίλλειος δρόµος; Eust. on Dion. Per. 306 and 541.
(44) Welcker ii. 178f.; Kinkel 35; R. C. Jebb, Sophocles. The Ajax (Cambridge 1896), xiii n.
2; E. Schwartz, Zur Entstehung der Ilias (Strassburg 1918), 25 n. 4.
(45) Lobeck on Soph. Aj. 285; Welcker ii. 179f.; Robert (1920–6, 1200, 1202f.
(46) Less relevant examples are Od. 8. 225, 226; 11. 313; [Hes.] fr. 23a. 29.
(47) Wilamowitz, Isyllos von Epidauros (Berlin 1886), 51, referred to Poseidon’s title of
〉ατρon Tenos (Philochorus 328 F 175), but this is an isolated notice.
(48) Aesch. fr. 83, Pind. Isth. 6. 44–6, apparently after [Hes.] fr. 250, Lyc. 455–8 withsch.
On the motif cf. West (2007), 444–6.

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Little Iliad

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
Little Iliad
M. L. West
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.003.0004
This chapter presents a commentary on the poem Little Iliad. It first discusses the
poem's title; sources of information about the poem; the scope; the economy of the
poem; its relation to the Odyssey; characterization of the poem; and dating of the poem. It
then reviews individual fragments and testimonia.
Keywords: Greek epic, epic poetry, epic poems, Odyssey, fragments, testomonia
Introduction
1. Title
The poem is normally cited as 6 ἡ Μικρὰ Ἰλιάς. Variants are Ἰλιὰς Μικρά (Proclus,
Hesychius Milesius); Ἰλιὰς ἡ Μικρὰ λεγοµένη (Tabula Capitolina); Ἰλιὰς ἡ ἐλάσσων (F
1); Ἰλιὰς καλουµένη Μικρά (F 20). The earliest definite attestation of the title is in
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Aristotle (below), but Hellanicus is said to have ascribed the poem to a specific author (F
6), so he presumably referred to it under a recognizable form of its usual title. The
pseudo-Herodotean Vita Homeri is thought to be based on a work of the fifth or fourth
century BCE, so the reference to the poem in F 1 may also go back to the classical
period.
The qualification µικρά or ἐλάσσων served to distinguish this epic from the more famous
Iliad (= Ἰλιάδα τὴν µεγάλην, ps.-Hdt. Vit. Hom. 28).1 Yet its subject matter did not
overlap with that of the Iliad and it was in no way a shorter form of the Iliad. The
inference is that it acquired the title Iliad independently of the major epic, the addition of
µικρά being secondary. I have for some years advocated the view that both poems were
originally so called because of their currency in the region of Ilion.2 However, the fact
that the Little Iliad began ῎Ιλιον ἀείδω might have been a factor in its case.
2. Attestation
Besides the summary of Proclus (with the partly parallel narrative of Apollod. epit. 5. 6–
16) and the fragments supplied by various authors and scholiasts, we have three
significant supplementary sources of information: Aristotle’s remarks about the poem in
his Poetics, the Homeric cups MB 31–32 (third to second century BCE), and the Tabula
Capitolina (Tabula Iliaca 1A, first century CE).
(p.164) Arist. Poet. 1459a37
οἱ δ᾿ ἄλλοι περὶ ἕνα ποιοῦσι καὶ περὶ ἕνα χρόνον καὶ µίαν πρα̃ξιν πολυµερῆ, οἷον ὁ τὰ
Κύπρια ποιήσας καὶ τὴν Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα. τοιγαροῦν ἐκ µὲν Ἰλιάδος καὶ Ὀδυσσείας µία
τραγωιδία ποιεῖται ἑκατέρας, ἢ δύο µόναι, ἐκ δὲ Κυπρίων πολλαὶ καὶ τῆς Μικρα̃ς
Ἰλιάδος [[πλέον] ὀκτώ, οἷον Ὅπλων κρίσις, Φιλοκτήτης, Νεοπτόλεµος, Εὐρύπυλος,
Πτωχεία, Λάκαιναι, Ἰλίου πέρσις, [καὶ Ἀπόπλους καὶ Σίνων] καὶ Τρωιάδες].
It is generally agreed that the list of titles of potential tragedies is not part of the original
text.3 A first list was added with the number ‘eight’, and then as an afterthought a couple
more titles were added and πλέον inserted before ὀκτώ; no one who had nine or ten
items in mind from the start would have said ‘more than eight’ rather than ‘nine’, ‘ten’, or
‘nine or ten’. It has been supposed that the list initially went as far as Ἀπόπλους, with καὶ
Σίνων καὶ Τρωιάδες being added afterwards. The Ἀπόπλους was then the Achaeans’
sailing away after the sack of the city; but in that case how would it be distinct from the
Τρωιάδες? Rather Ἀπόπλους καὶ Σίνων go together, referring to the pretended
departure of the ships before the sack and the associated commission of Sinon to signal to
them.4 The insertion would have gone better before Ἰλίου πέρσις.
Most of the titles, perhaps all, are those of dramas actually written by Aeschylus,
Sophocles, or others. The list must have been added early, by someone with a good
knowledge both of the epic and of Tragedy. They are most likely annotations made by
Aristotle himself as he revisited and revised his text. In any case the interpolated text is
valuable independent evidence for the contents of the Little Iliad, providing welcome
corroboration of the general accuracy of Proclus’ summary. It is inconceivable that it was
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produced by a late meddler working from Proclus (as Else supposed) and imaginatively
translating the summarized action into authentic tragedy titles; apart (p.165) from
anything else, he covers the sack of Troy, which in Proclus is eliminated to avoid overlap
with the Iliou Persis.
Homeric cups MB 31 and 32 (p. 97 Sinn)
The scene depicted is of pairs of warriors fighting. The captions read:
(31) κατὰ ποιητὴν Λέσχην | ἐκ τῆς Μικρα̃ς Ἰλιάδος | ἐν τῶ(ι) Ἰλίω (ι) οἱ
σύµµα̣[χοι] | µείξαντες πρὸς | τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς | µάχην.
(32) [κατὰ ποιητὴν Λέσχην] | ἐκ τῆς Μικρα̃ς Ἰλιάδος | ἐν τῶ (ι) Ἰλίω (ι) οἱ
σύµµα [χοι] | µείξαντες πρὸς | τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς | µάχην.
The Trojan allies mentioned are presumably the Mysians brought by Eurypylos. The
battle in which he fought and was killed is the only general engagement of forces
mentioned in Proclus’ summary.
Tabula Iliaca 1A (Capitolina) [Figure 2]
Figure 2. Tabula Capitolina (1A, drawing by Feodor Ivanovich): the

Little Iliad frieze.
On the layout of the composition see Aethiopis, intro. 2. The source-reference Ἰλιὰς ἡ
Μικρὰ λεγοµένη κατὰ Λέσχην Πυρραῖον refers to the series of seven scenes in the
lower of two friezes at the bottom of the tablet. They are, from left to right, with their
preserved captions:
(1) The left side is missing, but on the right an archer is seen falling in battle. This
must be Paris, defeated by Philoctetes.
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(2) A naked warrior clasps the hand of a figure in a long peplos, over an altar. He
is taken to be Eurypylos being received by Priam (Mancuso 702; Valenzuela
Montenegro [hereafter VM] 109f.).
(3) Νεοπτόλεµος slays Εὐρύπυλος.
(4) Ὀδυσσεύς steps up from a low vaulted opening in a stone structure, preceded
by ∆ιοµήδης who holds the stolen image of Παλ(λ)άς. The opening is certainly
(pace VM 111f.) that of the city sewer; cf. on arg. 4e.
(5) The δούρηος ἵππος is pulled along by a crowd of Τρωάδες καὶ Φρύγες (who)
ἀνάγουσι τὸν ἵππον; before them go two or (p.166) perhaps three figures
dancing excitedly. The inscription overlaps with scene 6.
(6) Πρίαµος strides in front of the procession with his arm stretched out, pointing
the way to the city gate to an underling ahead of him, who is marching Σίνων
along with his hands tied behind his back.
(7) Κασσάνδρα, distraught, is manhandled back into Troy through the Σκαιὰ
πύλη.
There is no room for another scene before (1); there will have been a larger image to
frame the series, balancing the gate of Troy at the right-hand end, most likely
representing the Achaean ships. Cf. VM 98.
Here again we find good agreement with the contents as summarized by Proclus. Ajax’s
suicide appears in the Aethiopis frieze and naturally was not repeated in the Little Iliad
one. (Proclus included it in the Little Iliad and omitted it from the Aethiopis.) The sack of
the city is left out with equal reason, as it is dealt with in the main panel above, κατὰ
Στησίχορον. It is just a coincidence that Proclus also eliminated it from his Little Iliad
because of an overlap with another source.
The Tabula Thierry (7Ti) has a heading Ἰλιὰς Μεικρὰ κα[ὶ Ἰλίου Πέρσις,5 but the
relevant reliefs are missing.
3. Scope
Whereas the Iliou Persis is really an Einzellied, the Little Iliad is, as Aristotle saw, a
concatenation of potential Einzellieder (six anyway) without organic connection:
The Ὅπλων κρίσις and suicide of Ajax.
Philoctetes and the death of Paris.
Neoptolemos and Eurypylos.
The Πτωχεία: Odysseus’ meeting with Helen.
The theft of the Palladion.
The Wooden Horse and the sack.
The fetching of Philoctetes and Neoptolemos and the Palladion episode are three
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concurrent instances of the ‘necessary condition’ motif. Their lack of organic connection is
shown by the variations of (p.167) sequence in other accounts: in P. Rylands 22 (PEG
75) the Palladion episode precedes Neoptolemos’ encounter with Eurypylos; in
Sophocles, Quintus, and others the bringing of Neoptolemos and his killing of Eurypylos
precede the bringing of Philoctetes.
The poet set himself the task of telling the remainder of the Troy story after the death of
Achilles, which must have been previously established as a major event ending a phase in
the war. He did not necessarily know it from the Memnonis, the canonical account for
later readers; there must have been other accounts in oral currency, and the Iliad poet
himself must have given one. The Little Iliad, then, is ‘cyclic’ in the same sense as the
Cypria and Nostoi, designed to cover with a continuous narrative an area of the Troy
saga hitherto patchily represented by several detached songs that did not cohere.
The closing phase of the war began with the making of the Horse. The poet also had to
work in Philoctetes, Neoptolemos, and the Palladion episode, which could have come in
any order. Apparently he made Helenos’ revelations the trigger for all three. So first
Helenos had to be captured.
Why did he begin with the ῞Οπλων κρίσις and suicide of Ajax, which ought to have been
included with the death of Achilles? Perhaps to establish a mood of despair among the
Achaeans as a starting-point, with Achilles and Ajax both dead. Cf. Apollod. epit. 5. 7, Q.S. 6.
9–31, and the opening of Triphiodorus’ Ἰλίου ἅλωσις, which has a similar scope.

Epic narrative is divided up into days, the poets using nightfall as a means of rounding off
a phase of action. Sometimes evening debate serves to prepare the way for the action of
the following day. Proclus’ summaries of the Cyclic poems naturally omit the articulation
by days. But if we take the information that he and others provide about the action of the
Little Iliad and apply to it the usual principles of epic narrative technique, we can arrive at
a plausible timetable extending over twelve days, as follows:
Day The awarding of Achilles’ arms

1
— Ajax’s madness and suicide
Night
Day Debate over what to do. Ajax’s funeral
2
— Odysseus goes out and captures Helenos
Night
Day Diomedes sails to Lemnos, Odysseus to Skyros.
3
Day Diomedes parleys with Philoctetes on Lemnos and brings him back to Troy.
4 Machaon heals him.
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Day Duel of Philoctetes and Paris.

5
Day Paris’ funeral. Odysseus arrives back with Neoptolemos. Eurypylos and his
6 Mysian force arrive to support the Trojans.
Day Eurypylos’ aristeia; Neoptolemos kills him. The Trojans penned into their city.
7
Day The Wooden Horse is conceived and its construction begun. Odysseus enters
8 Troy in disguise and meets Helen.
Day The building work continues. The Achaeans become aware of the need to
9 obtain the Palladion.
— Odysseus and Diomedes get into Troy and steal the Palladion.
Night
Day The Horse is finished and manned. Sinon is briefed.
10
— The Achaeans fire their encampment and sail round the headland to Tenedos.
Night
Day The Trojans, after some argument, take the Horse into the city.
11
— The ships return after a torch signal. The heroes who were in the Horse let
Night the main army into the city. The sack proceeds.
Day Division of the spoils.
12
(p.168) This is a minimum timetable, which I adopt below for economy of hypothesis.
There are certain points where it might have been extended by several days of inaction
when an impasse appeared to have been reached. For example, after Day 7 the poet
might have said, ‘for nine days then the Achaeans waited to see if the Trojans would come
out to fight, but they would not, and there seemed no prospect of further progress. Then
on the tenth day Odysseus called the leaders to assembly and proposed the Horse
stratagem.’
Proclus’ summary is headed ἑξῆς δ᾿ ἐστὶν Ἰλιάδος Μικρα̃ς βιβλία τέσσαρα Λέσχεω
Μυτιληναίου περιέχοντα τάδε. The material is very abundant for four books, and the
narrative must have been rather concise (as it is in F 29–30). It has been conjectured
that Proclus’ ‘four books’ refers only to the portion needed for the continuous story, i.e.
without the Sack (Welcker i. 203, ii. 279; Monro 342 n. 3; cf. Burgess 28–31). But the
figure probably goes back to a (p.169) stage in the transmission before the overlaps
between certain epics were eliminated.
Any attempt to guess where the book divisions came is hazardous. A possible allocation
would be:
Book 1 Days 1–4.
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Book 2 Days 5–7.

Book 3 Days 8–10, including the night of the withdrawal to Tenedos.
Book 4 Days 11–12.
5. Relation to the Odyssey

The Odyssey poet shows knowledge of many of the events related in the Little Iliad. Apart
from those covered also in the Aethiopis and Iliou Persis, he refers to Philoctetes’
fighting at Troy (8. 219), Odysseus’ bringing of Neoptolemos from Skyros (11. 506–9),
Neoptolemos’ defeat of Eurypylos, whose presence was connected with gifts to a woman
(11. 519–22), Helen’s marriage to Deiphobos (4. 276, 8. 517), Epeios’ building of the
Wooden Horse (8. 492f., 11. 523), and Odysseus’ visit to Troy in disguise and his meeting
with Helen (4. 242ff.). It would be rash to conclude, however, that the Little Iliad, in its
classical form, existed before the Odyssey. There is nothing to show that those episodes
had yet been brought within the compass of a single poem.
What should make us even more wary is that the two passages in Odyssey 4 in which
Helen and Menelaos respectively recall Odysseus’ meeting with her (242ff.) and her
teasing of the men inside the Horse (271ff.) both appear, on close inspection, to have
been expanded with verses bringing them into closer accord with the Little Iliad; see
below on F 9 and F 13. The original text gave slightly different versions of those episodes.
That does not prove that the Odyssey poet did not know the Cyclic poem, but if the most
detailed agreements turn out to result from secondary adjustments, the temptation to
assume that he knew it is diminished.

Aristotle’s criticism of the poem’s lack of overall unity must be upheld. It is true that once
Ajax is buried, the capture of Helenos triggers a series of initiatives that bring the fall of
Troy nearer step by (p.170) step and so are linked to the dénouement, but the effect
remains episodic. In view of the amount of material covered in four books, the narrative
must have been quite brisk, without the leisurely amplitude of the Iliad and Odyssey. The
poet was not aiming to create an epic of great length to rival them but to get through the
episodes on his agenda.
The greatest heroes on both sides having fallen, there was limited scope for battle
narrative of the Iliadic type, though the arrival of Neoptolemos and Eurypylos provided
for one day of it. Overall it is Odysseus, the exponent of cleverness and cunning, who
plays the leading part, capturing Helenos, fetching Neoptolemos, penetrating Troy in
disguise, going again with Diomedes to steal the Palladion, masterminding the Horse
stratagem, and commanding the men who go in the Horse.6
Critics have often been struck by the presence in the poem of a certain lightness and
humour.7 An overheard dialogue between two Trojan girls is made the means of settling
the dispute between Ajax and Odysseus over the arms of Achilles. The infant
Neoptolemos’ healthy growth is likened to that of a cucumber. Odysseus and Diomedes
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enter the city by the Cloaca Maxima to steal the Palladion, and then have an extraordinary
falling-out that leads to Diomedes sword-whipping his companion back to the ships. Helen,
knowing that the Horse contains a band of warriors, teases them with imitations of their
wives’ voices, for no sensible reason that we can see. Menelaos, poised to slay her, drops
his sword at the sight of her lovely bosom. One senses that the older conventions of
heroic epic are being modified by the admission of more comical and romantic elements.
So Severyns (1928), 333f.:
La Petite Iliade montre le genre épique en pleine décadence, épuisé d’avoir déjà fourni
une trop longue carrière. Il a perdu aussi de sa grandeur. … Leschès n’est pas un grand
poète épique; l’épisode de la dispute des armes témoigne de sa tendance au
romanesque, au compliqué.
(p.171) And again, apropos of the story of the quarrel over THE Palladion, 352:
Dans ce récit agréablement présenté, nous reconnaissons la manière habituelle de

l’auteur de la Petite Iliade; ici encore, nous sentons le poète plus jeune, obligé, pour
avoir du succès, de renouveler la vieille matière épique. Mais nous sentons aussi que le
genre a fait son temps, que les auditoires ont changé de goûts. Ils ne demandaient plus
ces grands coups d’épées, ces prouesses de guerre ou de chasse, qui faisaient la joie
des rudes seigneurs, descendants des chefs achéens, du temps que les rhapsodes
allaient, de manoir en manoir, chanter la Geste épique. A une société plus molle et plus
douce, la Petite Iliade apportait de beaux contes.
Welcker had written that Lesches (‘wenn so der Verfasser hieß’) placed himself in the
same relation to Arktinos as the Odyssey to the Iliad, or as New Comedy to tragedy (i.
270; cf. ii. 236). For Bergk (51), ‘Lesches verhält sich der heroischen Welt gegenüber
gerade so, wie später unter den Tragikern Euripides’.
7. Dating
The preceding remarks on the character of the epic, subjective as they are, represent a
viewpoint that several scholars have separately reached. If they have any implication for
dating, they would suggest an era somewhat later than that in which the Odyssey was
composed: the sixth century rather than the seventh. The ‘Cyclic’ conception that the
Little Iliad shares most obviously with the Cypria, the endeavour to cover a major
stretch of the saga by a concatenation of episodes, may also be a relatively late feature in
the development of epic.
The only linguistic indications of lateness are the forms ἠΰζωνον and ἐπίηρον in F 30;
there is a slight question-mark over this fragment, but the probability is that it does
belong to the poem. (See ad loc.) The traditional formulaic system uses ἐΰζωνος where a
short first syllable is required (after feminine caesura), καλλίζωνος where a long one is
wanted (after masculine caesura). ἠϋ- for εὐ- in compounds normally occurs only where
the second syllable is short, as in ἠΰκοµος, ἠϋγένειος, and the like. ἠΰζωνος is an
understandable but unnecessary and anti-traditional coinage, likely to date from a time
when hexameter poets were beginning to use more conscious artifice in their diction.
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(p.172) ἐπίηρος is an adjective formed from the fossil form ἐπίηρα (= ἐπὶ ἦρα). It first
occurs otherwise in Empedocles 31 B 96. 1 (χθὼν ἐπίηρος) and Epicharmus fr. 181 K.–A.
(ἐπιηρεστέραν), both Sicilian writers of the first half of the fifth century. There is no logical
reason why the Little Iliad should not be as late as that; nor, on the other hand, why
ἐπίηρος should not have already been coined by a sixth-century poet.
The curious statement in the same fragment that Neoptolemos took Aeneas back to
Greece with him must date from a period when Aeneas’ descendants were no longer
sought in the Troad, as in the seventh century, but in Europe; see ad loc.
The presence at Troy of Theseus’ mother Aithra and his sons Demophon and Akamas (F
17; also in the Iliou Persis, arg. 4, F 6) is unlikely to go back to the seventh century.
There is no sign of the Theseids in the Iliad, and the identification of one of Helen’s
attendants as Aithra in 3. 144 is surely an interpolation. So is the reference to Theseus in
1. 265, which is absent from almost the whole manuscript tradition. In the Odyssey
Theseus is mentioned at 11. 322 in connection with Ariadne, but the lines about him and
Peirithoos at 11. 630f. are suspect. He was still evidently a very marginal figure in heroic
tradition. By 580–570 he had joined Peirithoos among the Lapiths ([Hes.] Sc. 182 and the
François Vase). The story of his abduction of the child Helen and her brothers’ recovery
of her from Aphidna, where they seized Aithra, is first attested in Alcman (PMGF 21); it
was known to Stesichorus, as were Demophon and Akamas (PMGF 191, 193).
None of this gives us a handle for a narrower dating. The earlier part of the sixth century
may seem likelier than the later part on general grounds: the codification of different
parts of the Troy saga in sizeable written epics seems to have been well under way by
600, and it is hardly probable that the process would stall and more than a generation
pass before the episodes covered by the Little Iliad were worked into a continuous
narrative.
(p.173) The Fragments

The Incipit
F 1. Ps.-Hdt. Vita Homeri 16

διατρίβων δὲ παρὰ τῶι Θεστορίδηι ποιεῖ Ἰλιάδα τὴν ἐλάσσω, ἧς ἡ ἀρχή·
῎Ιλιον ἀείδω καὶ ∆αρδανίην εὔπωλον,
ἧς πέρι πόλλα πάθον ∆αναοὶ θεράποντες ῎Αρηος.
The form is typical of epic incipits, with the theme indicated immediately by an initial
accusative that is then developed by a relative clause. For ἀείδω (rather than a request
to the Muse) cf. Hymn. 12. 1; 18. 1; 27. 1; the note on the incipit of the Iliou Persis; West
(1997), 170–3. ‘Ilios and Dardania’ corresponds to the common Iliadic pairing Τρῶες καὶ
∆άρδανοι.
The lines are very general in reference, and one can imagine that they might have been
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used by more than one poet to introduce epic narratives concerned with Troy. But they
arouse the expectation that the sack of the city will be covered.8 The subject matter of
the Little Iliad was too diffuse for a more focused theme to be formulated. Note that the
Odyssey poet uses Ιλιος to stand for ‘the story of Troy’: 10. 14f. µῆνα δὲ πάντα ϕίλει µε
καὶ ἐξερέεινεν ἕκαστα, | Ιλιον Ἀργείων τε νέας καὶ νόστον Ἀχαιῶν.
For the scansion of ᾱ̓είδω cf. Od. 17. 519, Hymn. 21. 1, 18. 1, 27. 1; Chantraine i. 103.
εὔπωλος is transferred to Dardania from the Homeric Ιλιον εἲς εὔπωλον. ∆αναοὶ
θεράποντες ῎Αρηος = Il. 2. 110, al.
Parts of the lines are found on two sherds of the late fifth century BCE from Olbia and the
Tauric Chersonese. At that date it is likely that they were associated specifically with the
Little Iliad. See Prolegomena, p. 46.
How were the opening lines developed? I have suggested that the poet chose to start
from the contest over the arms and the suicide of Ajax in order to set up a situation of
extreme despair for the Achaeans, against which a series of beneficial initiatives could be
undertaken. The structure might have been:
(p.174) Of Ilios and Dardania I sing, over which the Danaans endured great sufferings.
For for nine years they had been fighting around the city of Priam, seeking to sack it, and
it was already the tenth, but they could not achieve a conclusion. And now their greatest
hero, Achilles the son of Peleus, who had killed many of the Trojans and brought victory
close, lay dead, slain by Paris and Zeus’ son Apollo; and dead too was the next greatest
after Achilles, Telamonian Ajax, by Athena’s doing.
For a quarrel had arisen between Odysseus and Ajax over the armour of Achilles: each
of them claimed that he should have it as prize for his supreme valour, etc.
Cf. Triph. 1–42.9
Day One
For the first four days, at least, the action was all on the Achaean side. The Trojans stayed
inside the city and did nothing to distract them. From what we know of the Aethiopis it
appears that after the battle to secure Achilles’ corpse there was no further fighting. The
mourning period for him, his funeral, and the funeral games occupied many days,
eighteen according to Od. 24. 63–5. Whether a truce was in force, as during the
obsequies of Patroklos and Hector, we are not informed. Priam might well have agreed to
one, as the Trojans and their allies had many dead of their own to lament and bury. Or
they may just have been unwilling to venture out of the city in the absence of any major
champion to lead the attack; Aeneas was hardly adequate. In the early part of the Little
Iliad hostilities remained suspended.
The Awarding of the Arms
Arg. 1a
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ἡ τῶν ὅπλων κρίσις γίνεται καὶ Ὀδυσσεὺς κατὰ βούλησιν Ἀθηνα̃ς λαµβάνει.
(p.175) F 2. Sch. Ar. Eq. 1056a

διεϕέροντο περὶ τῶν ἀριστείων ὅ τε Αἴας καὶ ὁ Ὀδυσσεύς, ὥς ϕησιν ὁ τὴν Μικρὰν
Ἰλιάδα πεποιηκώς· τὸν Νέστορα δὲ συµβουλεῦσαι τοῖς ῞Ελλησι πέµψαι τινὰς ἐξ αὐτῶν
ὑπὸ τὰ τείχη τῶν Τρώων Τρώων ὠτακουστήσοντας περὶ τῆς ἀνδρείας τῶν
προειρηµένων ἡρώων. τοὺς δὲ πεµϕθέντας ἀκοῦσαι παρθένων διαϕεροµένων πρὸς
ἀλλήλας, ὧν τὴν µὲν λέγειν ὡς ὁ Αἴας πολὺ κρείττων ἐστὶ τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως, διερχοµένην
οὕτως·
Αἴας µὲν γὰρ ἄειρε καὶ ἔκϕερε δηϊοτῆτος
ἥρω Πηλείδην, οὐδ᾿ ἤθελε δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς.
τὴν δὲ ἑτέραν ἀντειπεῖν Ἀθηνα̃ς προνοίαι·
πῶς ἐπεϕωνήσω; πῶς οὐ κατὰ κόσµον ἔειπες;
Aristophanes himself had quoted the following fragment, which must have followed the
lines reported by the scholiast:
καί κε γυνὴ ϕέροι ἄχθος, ἐπεί κεν ἀνὴρ ἀναθείη,
ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἂν µαχέσαιτο· [χέσαιτο γάρ, εἰ µαχέσαιτο.]
The last half-line can scarcely be authentic as it stands; such a vulgar word as χέζοµαι is
out of place in the linguistic register of epic, so unless our poet was less fastidious than
most, this would appear to be Aristophanes’ contribution. But it is possible, as A. von
Blumenthal conjectured (Hermes 74 (1939), 96), that he was humorously distorting an
original χάσαιτο, ‘she would give way’.
ἥρω in line 2 is a later form for Homeric ἥρωα, cf. Schwyzer i. 480. Nauck 379
conjectured ἥρω˘α, which is found in a fourth-century inscription from Priene, CEG 854.
4.
According to the Odyssey it was Thetis who set up the contest for her son’s arms (11.
546), just as she had arranged his funeral games (24. 85–92). In the Little Iliad Ajax and
Odysseus each claimed the arms for themselves, no doubt in an alternation of testy
speeches. Vase-painters show them on the point of coming to blows; cf. on Aethiopis arg.
4d. Nestor mediated (as he does between Agamemnon and Achilles in Iliad 1), proposing
a procedure to resolve the dispute: eavesdropping under the walls of Troy to discover
the Trojans’ opinion of which hero was the greater. In this the Little Iliad differs from all
other versions. It cannot be what the Odyssey poet means by παῖδες δὲ Τρώων δίκασαν
καὶ Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη (11. 547); that implies a formal decision by a jury, with Athena
somehow involved.
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(p.176) The scholiast says that these παῖδες Τρώων were prisoners of war, and that
Agamemnon asked them whether Ajax or Odysseus had done them the most harm. This
may have been the version of the Aethiopis (Severyns (1928), 331). In fifth-century
sources the matter is decided by the Greeks themselves.10
The Little Iliad’s version is the silliest and most far-fetched, but it serves to deliver a
witty sophism. That Ajax carried Achilles’ body out of the battle while Odysseus fought
the enemy off corresponds to the Aethiopis (F 3) and nearly all other literary and artistic
sources.11 The second girl’s aphorism, which is decisive for the award of the arms to
Odysseus, is inspired by Athena, whose influence in the matter is mentioned even in
Proclus’ jejune summary.
We may suppose that on hearing the girls’ dialogue the men returned to the ships and
reported it to the Achaeans, who approved the argument and called for the armour to be
awarded to Odysseus. The day’s business was perhaps concluded on the following lines:
Ajax made an angry speech of protest, but could not persuade them to overturn the
decision. Agamemnon closed the debate, proposing that all should go and have their
dinner and then go to their beds, ‘and tomorrow we will consider what to do next,
whether to resume the fighting or take further counsel’. They all went and made their
dinners, and then went to bed at their various ships.
Everyone else slept through the night, but Ajax did not sleep, etc. (cf. on Aethiopis F 6).
Ajax’s Suicide
Arg. 1b
Αἴας δ᾿ ἐµµανὴς γενόµενος τήν τε λείαν τῶν Ἀχαιῶν λυµαίνεται καὶ ἑαυτὸν ἀναιρεῖ
(p.177) More fully in Apollod. epit. 5. 6: Αἴας δὲ ὑπὸ λύπης ταραχθεὶς ἐπιβουλεύεται
νύκτωρ τῶι στρατεύµατι. καὶ αὐτῶι µανίαν ἐµβαλοῦσα Ἀθήνη εἰς τὰ βοσκήµατα
ἐκτρέπει ξιϕήρη· ὃ δὲ ἐκµανεὶς σὺν τοῖς νέµουσι τὰ βοσκήµατα ὡς Ἀχαιοὺς ϕονεύει.
〈δύο δὲ µεγίστους κριοὺς κατασχὼν ὡς Ἀγαµέµνονα καὶ Μενέλαον δεσµεύσας
ἐµάστιξε, καὶ κατεγέλα τούτων µαινόµενος. 〉12 καὶ σωϕρονήσας ὕστερον ἑαυτὸν
κτείνει. But this may be based on the Aethiopis version, as the preceding lines refer to
the arms being awarded by a Trojan or Greek jury. Cf. on Aethiopis F 6.
G. Grossmann, Mus. Helv. 25 (1968), 71, 83, suggests that Ajax was described laughing
manically as he slaughtered the animals and that this was the origin of the proverbial
phrase Αἰάντειος γέλως (Zenob. vulg. 1. 43). Cf. Soph. Aj. 303, and on the motif of manic
laughter Finglass’s commentary ad loc.
A cup by the Brygos Painter (LIMC Aias (I) 140, dated c.490) shows a woman coming to
cover Ajax’s body with a cloth. She may reasonably be identified as the Tecmessa of
Sophocles’ play; cf. B. Shefton, Revue archéologique 1973, 203–11. Perhaps she goes
back to one of the Cyclic poems.
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Day Two
Day Two will have been occupied with the reaction to Ajax’s suicide and his funeral. The
poet will also have made preparation for the next item on his programme, which was
Odysseus’ night excursion to capture Helenos.
F 32⋆ Aeschin. 1. 128

εὑρήσετε καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἡµῶν καὶ τοὺς προγόνους Φήµης ὡς θεοῦ µεγίστης βωµὸν
ἱδρυµένους, καὶ τὸν ῞Οµηρον πολλάκις ἐν τῆι Ἰλιάδι λέγοντα πρὸ τοῦ τι τῶν
µελλόντων γενέσθαι·
ϕήµη δ᾿ εἰς στρατὸν ἦλθε.
(p.178) The half-line does not occur ‘often’ in the Iliad, or even once. Perhaps Aeschines
had the Little Iliad in mind.13 There is another inaccuracy in his reference: a ϕήµη is not a
premonition of something that is going to happen but a rumour of something that has
happened and will presently be known for certain.
One obvious context for the phrase in the Little Iliad would be the suicide of Ajax, the
news of which must have spread rapidly through the army, bringing universal dismay. I
imagine that the narrative went something like this:
When dawn came, bringing light to gods and men, the Achaeans roused themselves and
got up. At once the slaughtered animals were discovered, and Ajax’s body. Quickly the
rumour of it spread through the whole army, and a mighty groaning rose up to heaven.
Someone quickly brought the news to Agamemnon, who ordered his heralds to call the
army to assembly.
For another possible context for the fragment see below on arg. 5b.
Ajax’s Funeral
F 3. Porph. Paralip. fr. 4 Schrader ap. Eust. 285. 34

ὁ τὴν Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα γράψας ἱστορεῖ µηδὲ καυθῆναι συνήθως τὸν Αἴαντα, τεθῆναι δὲ
οὕτως ἐν σορῶι διὰ τὴν ὀργὴν τοῦ βασιλέως.
Cf. Apollod. epit. 5. 7 Ἀγαµέµνων δὲ κωλύει τὸ σῶµα αὐτοῦ καῆναι· καὶ µόνος οὗτος τῶν
ἐν Ἰλίωι ἀποθανόντων ἐν σορῶι κεῖται.ὁ δὲ τάϕος ἐστὶν ἐν Ῥοιτείωι.
Agamemnon was angry because Ajax’s aggression had been directed against the
Achaeans—perhaps especially against him and his brother, as in Soph. Aj. 57, 97, etc. The
insistence on inhumation instead of the usual heroic cremation may have some cultic
significance; perhaps it was an article of belief that the Rhoiteion tomb (p.179) contained
the hero’s whole body.14 According to Philostratus (Heroicus 12. 3 §176), Calchas had
decreed that it was not holy for suicides to be cremated, and certainly in many societies it
is held that the bodies of suicides must be disposed of in some special way, to prevent
their ghosts from returning and causing harm.15 But this motif does not fit well with the
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reference to Agamemnon’s anger, a strictly personal factor. P. Holt, in an interesting

article in AJP 113 (1992), 319–31, shows that the suicide is not a satisfactory explanation
of the inhumation, and suggests that as the genuine Mycenaean practice it is an archaism
traditionally associated with Ajax, who was evidently a very ancient figure.
The Capture of Helenos
Arg. 2a
µετὰ ταῦτα Ὀδυσσεὺς λοχήσας ῞Ελενον λαµβάνει.
Sophocles, no doubt following the Little Iliad, tells us that the ambush took place on a solo
excursion that Odysseus made at night (Phil. 604–9):
µάντις ἦν τις εὐγενής,
Πριάµου µὲν υἱός, ὄνοµα δ᾿ ὠνοµάζετο
῞Ελενος· ὃν οὗτος νυκτὸς ἐξελθὼν µόνος …
δόλοις Ὀδυσσεὺς εἷλε, δέσµιόν τ᾿ ἄγων
ἔδειξ᾿ Ἀχαιοῖς ἐς µέσον, θήραν καλήν.
He must have made the excursion for the specific purpose of catching Helenos.16
According to the Hypothesis of Sophocles’ play Calchas had advised that the Trojan seer
had mantic knowledge (p.180) bearing on the capture of the city: Ἑλένου … ὃς κατὰ
µαντείαν Κάλχαντος, ὡς εἰδὼς χρησµοὺς συντελοῦντας πρὸς τὴν τῆς Τροίας ἅλωσιν,
ὑπὸ Ὀδυσσέως νύκτωρ ἐνεδρευθεὶς δέσµιος ἤχθη τοῖς ῞Ελλησιν.
The night in question must have been the one following Ajax’s funeral; otherwise there
would be a hiatus in the action of at least a day. Odysseus must have caught Helenos as
he was attending to some business outside the city walls.17 It would naturally have been
conceived as religious business, and it seems very likely that it is the ambush of Helenos
that is alluded to in [Eur.] Rhes. 507–9 (of Odysseus), αἰεὶ δ᾿ ἐν λόχοις εὑρίσκεται, |
Θυµβραῖον ἀµϕὶ βωµὸν ἄστεως πέλας | θάσσων. The author may be following an earlier
tragedy, but the Little Iliad will be the ultimate source. Thymbra is mentioned in Il. 10.
430, and it appears also as the site of Achilles’ ambush of Troilos (cf. on Cypria arg. 11e/F
25⋆). According to Hesych. θ 868 it and the shrine of Apollo lay about a mile (ten stades)
from the city.18 On its location see J. M. Cook, The Troad (Oxford 1973), 117–23.
The outlines of the debate that had taken place during the day may now be conjecturally
reconstructed as follows:
AGAMEMNON. Dear Danaan warriors, Zeus has ensnared me in grievous troubles. For
long years we have toiled here at Troy, expecting to take the city of Priam, and yet it
stands firm as ever. Now we have lost not only our best hero, Achilles, but also the one
we rated second only to him, Ajax. There is no longer any prospect of success. Let us
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embark on our ships and go back to Greece.
ODYSSEUS. Son of Atreus, do not be so pessimistic. Do we not remember the omen of

the snake and the birds at Aulis, and how Calchas prophesied that we would fight for nine
years and take Troy in the tenth? We are in the tenth year now, and we are surely close
to our goal, if the seer prophesied truly. But let us ask him if he knows any τέκµωρ for us
in our present situation.
(p.181) CALCHAS. All I can tell you is that the tale of years is true: the fall of Troy
cannot be far off. How you are to proceed, I cannot advise. But there are secret oracles
pertaining to the fate of the city, known only to the Trojan seer, Helenos. If you could
capture him, he might reveal what you need to know.
AGAMEMNON. That is as may be. But Helenos is safe in Troy, and I do not see how we
can get hold of him.
ODYSSEUS. Son of Atreus and leaders of the Achaeans, I will make that my concern.
Tonight I will make my way to Troy, and with Athena’s help I think I may be able to find
him.
As for Ajax, I bitterly regret that my victory in the matter of the armour came at so high a
price; such a mighty ally has been taken by Hades. Now let wood be gathered to build
his pyre, and let us honour him with a heroic funeral, as is fitting.
AGAMEMNON. Son of Laertes, what an utterance has escaped the enclosure of your
teeth. Does it mean nothing to you that this man tried to kill us all in the night? We thought
he was our ally, but he turned out to be a dangerous enemy and a traitor. There will be
no pyre for him. His followers must dispose of his body privately.
TEUKROS. Sire, you are the greatest among us, and your word must be obeyed. But we
will not deprive Ajax of his due honour. We will put his body in a coffin and bury it near
our ships, at Rhoiteion, and over it we will raise a great mound, so that future men will
see it and say, ‘There lies Ajax, who was the greatest, bar Achilles, of the Achaeans who
fought at Troy.’
The assembly broke up and all dispersed to their ships. Ajax’s men, lamenting, put the
hero’s body in a coffin, buried it near their ships, at Rhoiteion, and raised a great mound
over it. They completed the task, and night fell.
Then Odysseus prepared himself and went out over the plain …
Days Three and FourThe Bringing of Philoctetes and Neoptolemos
Arg. 2b
καὶ χρήσαντος περὶ τῆς ἁλώσεως τούτου ∆ιοµήδης ἐκ Λήµνου Φιλοκτήτην ἀνάγει.
In the continuation of the passage quoted above, Sophocles says that Helenos after being
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captured revealed to the Achaeans τά τ᾿ ἄλλα πάντα and that they would never take
Troy unless they prevailed upon Philoctetes and brought him back from Lemnos (Phil.
610–13). He was essential because he possessed the bow of Heracles, and it was
(p.182) only with that that Troy could be taken (113; so already in Euripides’
Philoctetes, TrGF v(2). 827).
But there will turn out to be two further essential steps that the Achaeans need to take
before they can win the war: fetching Achilles’ son from Skyros, and removing the
Palladion from Troy. Proclus does not say that it was Helenos who gave the cue for these
too, but other sources suggest that he may have done. In Apollodorus, while the
prophecy about Heracles’ bow is transferred to Calchas, he later advises that Helenos
knows further essential sooth: Odysseus captures Helenos, and he reveals that three
more measures are required, namely obtaining the bones of Pelops, recruiting
Neoptolemos, and capturing the Palladion (epit. 5. 9–10). In P. Rylands 22 too it is Helenos
who tells about the Palladion, and this was evidently not his first oracle (τοῦτο Ἑλ] ένου
πάλιν αὐτοῖς εἴπαν[τος). It seems likely that he fulfilled this function with regard to
Neoptolemos and the Palladion in the Little Iliad.
As a result of Helenos’ disclosures, Proclus says, Diomedes went off to Lemnos to fetch
Philoctetes.19 In the next paragraph he relates that Odysseus went to Skyros to fetch
Neoptolemos.20 In the epic, as Schneidewin saw, the two expeditions will have been
synchronous.21 At a meeting of the leaders Odysseus will have set out the situation and
proposed, ‘Let Diomedes sail to Lemnos and bring Philoctetes, while I go to Skyros and
find the son of Achilles’. Skyros was further away than Lemnos, and Odysseus’ voyage
would take at least a day longer than Diomedes’. The timetable will be: (p.183)
Day Diomedes and Odysseus set out for Lemnos and Skyros respectively
3
Day Diomedes parleys with Philoctetes on Lemnos and brings him back to Troy
4 Machaon heals him
Day Philoctetes fights Paris and kills him. Priam negotiates a day’s truce so that he
5 can be buried (see below)
Day Funeral of Paris. Odysseus arrives back with Neoptolemos. Eurypylos and his
6 Mysian troops arrive to support the Trojans
Day Emboldened by these reinforcements, the Trojans go out to fight. Eurypylos
7 enjoys an aristeia before being killed by Neoptolemos
The presupposition for this reconstruction is that Helenos on being first interrogated
revealed (at least) the two secrets that led to the fetching of Philoctetes and
Neoptolemos. Were they two independent prophecies, or was there some connection
between them? And why was the Trojan seer so cooperative with the enemies of his city?
It may be that he did not realize that he was helping them. It is possible to envisage a
defiant speech on these lines:
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Leaders of the Achaeans, listen to what I have to tell you. You will never take Troy. Its
walls were built by Aiakos with Poseidon and Apollo. The section that the mortal Aiakos
built is theoretically vulnerable, but only to a hero of his seed.22 His son Telamon did take
the city with Heracles.23 The ancient θέσϕατα from that time say that it cannot be taken
again except with Heracles’ bow, which took it before,24 and by another descendant of
Aiakos. Now, Heracles’ bow is not available to you, and Aiakos’ grandsons, Achilles and
Ajax, are both dead.25 So your campaign is hopeless, and you may as well all go back to
Greece.
On hearing this, Odysseus would have realized that the two conditions that Helenos
believed unfulfillable could in fact be met.
(p.184) Heracles’ bow was in Philoctetes’ possession on Lemnos, and Philoctetes could
be fetched. A son of Achilles was said to be growing up on Skyros: he too could be
brought into the game.
The Philoctetes story is known to the poet of the Iliad (2. 716–25). The vital bow is not
mentioned there, but there can be no other reason why the Achaeans ‘were soon to
bring him to mind’. Neoptolemos, however, has no existence for the Iliad poet; the two
apparent references to him (19. 326–37, 24. 467) are surely interpolated.26 He did find
mention in Archilochus (fr. 304), as well as in the Odyssey (4. 5; 11. 492f., 506–40), Cypria,
and Iliou Persis.
F 4. Sch. (T) Il. 19. 326, “ὃς Σκύρωι µοι ἐνιτρέϕεται”

ὁ δὲ τὴν Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα ἀναζευγνύντα αὐτὸν ἀπὸ Τηλέϕου προσορµισθῆναι ἐκεῖ·
Πηλείδην δ᾿ Ἀχιλῆα ϕέρε Σκῦρόνδε θύελλα·
ἔνθ᾿ ὅ γ᾿ ἐς ἀργαλέον λιµέν᾿ ἵκετο νυκτὸς ἐκείνης.
2 ἁρπαλέον Weil
The fragment looks back to events early in the war. It comes from a passage explaining
the circumstances of Neoptolemos’ birth. It agrees with the account given in the Cypria,
arg. 7 ἀποπλέουσι δὲ αὐτοῖς ἐκ τῆς Μυσίας χειµὼν ἐπιπίπτει καὶ διασκεδάννυνται·
Ἀχιλλεὺς δὲ Σκύρωι προσσχὼν γαµεῖ τὴν Λυκοµήδους θυγατέρα ∆ηϊδάµειαν. The
alternative account, according to which Peleus or Thetis had hidden Achilles on Skyros to
avoid his being recruited for the war, and he was raised there among the girls and
impregnated Deidameia at that time (sch.DG and Eust. on Il. 19. 326, Apollod. 3. 13. 8),
derives from Euripides’ Skyrioi; see on Cypria F 19.
If Neoptolemos was only conceived after the Teuthranian expedition, then on the usual
chronology of the Trojan War he would only be about nine years old by the end. Such
youthful warrior heroes are not unknown to other poetic traditions,27 but Greek poets
imagined him older and either ignored the arithmetic or did what they could to stretch
the chronology. Cf. Welcker ii. 263–6; Severyns (1928), 288f., 338.
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It is not clear from the two verses whether the exposition of Neoptolemos’ birth in the
Little Iliad came in someone’s speech or (p.185) from the poet’s mouth, but if the next
fragment is rightly placed here, the latter will be likely.
F 31. Ath. (epitome) 73e

σικυός … καὶ Λέσχης·
ὡς δ᾿ ὅτ᾿ ἀέξηται σικυὸς δροσερῶι ἐνὶ χώρωι.
Λέσχης (or ∆ιεύχης) Kaibel: λευχης, λάχης codd.
Λέσχης is the easiest emendation of the author’s name. (For other possibilities see H.
Lloyd-Jones and P. J. Parsons, Supplementum Hellenisticum, at no. 379.) Wilamowitz
(1916), 405 n. 1, approves it, while noting that ‘Athenaeus wird seiner Sitte gemäß über
den Verfasser des alten Epos Angaben gemacht haben, aus denen sich die Unsicherheit
ergab’; he means that ‘Lesches’ in the epitome probably corresponds to something like
‘the author of the Little Iliad, whether it is Lesches or whoever’ in Athenaeus’ original
text. Cf. his manner of citation at Thebais fr. 2, Alcmeonis fr. 2, Cypria frr. 5, 10, 18,
Nostoi frr. 3, 12, Eumelos frr. 8, 10, 14.
If the unusual simile did appear in the Little Iliad, I think it could only have referred to
the infant Neoptolemos’ growing quickly and strongly in the benign seclusion of Skyros.
After being abandoned on Lemnos for nine years, Philoctetes was presumably not well
disposed towards the Achaeans. The three great tragedians all made dramas out of the
difficulties the envoy or envoys experienced in trying to persuade him to come to Troy
and assist the war effort, and when Aristotle listed Φιλοκτήτης as one of the tragedies
that could be extracted from the material of the Little Iliad, he presumably had the
Lemnian episode in mind. So the poet may have devoted a good part of his Day 4 to
Diomedes’ encounter with Philoctetes on Lemnos.
After they set sail he might have changed the scene to Skyros and described how
Odysseus found Neoptolemos, and how the young hero was readily persuaded to
accompany him back to Troy.
Philoctetes reached Troy late on the same day. His healing by Machaon (next text) no
doubt took place without delay and was swiftly effective, making him ready to fight the
next morning.28
(p.186) Day FiveThe Duel of Philoctetes and Paris. Paris’ Death
Arg. 2c
ἰαθεὶς δὲ οὗτος ὑπὸ Μαχάονος καὶ µονοµαχήσας Ἀλεξάνδρωι κτείνει.
µονοµαχήσας points to a duel fought in response to a challenge; cf. Apollod. epit. 4. 1

µονοµαχεῖ Ἀλέξανδρος πρὸς Μενέλαον, 4. 2 προκαλουµένου ῞Εκτορος τὸν ἄριστον εἰς
µονοµαχίαν, referring to the duels in Iliad 3 and 7 respectively. These Iliadic duels take
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place on days of general fighting, which has to be halted for their sake. Similarly Dictys (4.
19) and Quintus (10. 207–54) set the encounter of Philoctetes and Alexander in a context
of a general engagement. In the Little Iliad, however, as we have seen, there have been
no battles so far. So it remains unclear whether the challenge that led to the duel was
issued on the battlefield or by diplomatic channels.
Quintus’ account, in which Philoctetes’ mortal wounding of Paris is just an episode in the
battle and there is no µονοµαχία, seems to owe nothing to the Little Iliad, which was
probably no longer extant when Quintus wrote. In Dictys there is a µονοµαχία, and
although he is a thoroughly unreliable source, his account of it is worth quoting:
tunc Philocteta progressus aduersus Alexandrum lacessit, si auderet, sagittario

certamine. ita concessu utriusque partis Vlixes atque Deiphobus spatium certaminis
definiunt. igitur primus Alexander incassum sagittam contendit, dein Philocteta insecutus
sinistram manum hosti transfigit; reclamanti per dolorem dextrum oculum perforat, ac
iam fugientem tertio consecutus uulnere per utrumque pedem traicit, fatigatumque ad
postremum interficit.29
There is nothing here that would be out of place in an early epic version.30
Paris was the one warrior on the Trojan side who would have been a danger to
Neoptolemos. He had after all killed Achilles. Having him (p.187) removed from the
scene before Neoptolemos appears on it ensures that the latter will have a clear run. In
an earlier form of the saga Paris’ death may have signified the conclusion of the war;
hence the importance of Philoctetes, as the one who was to bring this about. When the
killing of Paris ceased to be pivotal, the prophecy about Heracles’ bow was modified to
the effect that it was essential for the taking of Troy. But in fact it plays no particular role
once Paris is felled.
Arg. 2d
καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν ὑπὸ Μενελάου καταικισθέντα ἀνελόµενοι θάπτουσιν οἱ Τρῶες.
Menelaos is allowed some vindictive maltreatment of the corpse. This is a rare motif in
epic narrative; where it occurs, the perpetrator is motivated by personal animus against
the victim (Il. 11. 146, 13. 202f., 22. 395ff.).31 Perhaps there was a battle over Paris’ body
(as in Dictys). At any rate the Trojans are able to recover it for burial.
Day Six
Paris’ funeral takes place.
Arg. 2e
µετὰ δὲ ταῦτα ∆ηΐϕοβος Ἑλένην γαµεῖ.
It may seem indecently hasty of Helen to take a new husband on the day after the
previous one’s death. But according to the Iliou Persis (arg. 2, cf. Od. 4. 276, 8. 517) she
was coupled with Deiphobos by the time of the sack, and that was now only a few days
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away. Probably he appeared as her husband in the account of the sack in the Little Iliad
too. If so, the poet had to give notice of the new liaison at some point. In the context of
Paris’ funeral he might have put a speech in Helen’s mouth in which she lamented that
she had foolishly abandoned one husband and now lost a second; to which he might have
appended the wry comment, ‘So she lamented; but she did not remain long without a
man, for before much time elapsed she was to give herself to Deiphobos’.
(p.188) Nitzsch (1831), 53, argues that the death of Paris would have raised hopes of
an immediate restitution of Helen to Menelaos and an end to the war; ‘de qua re inter
deos hominesque consilia esse agitata, probabiliter sumimus. Sed vicit sive fatum sive
deorum prava jubentium cupido, ut Helena Deiphobo potius uxor concederet.’
The Coming of Neoptolemos and Eurypylos
Arg. 3a
καὶ Νεοπτόλεµον Ὀδυσσεὺς ἐκ Σκύρου ἀγαγὼν τὰ ὅπλα δίδωσι τὰ τοῦ πατρός.
While the Trojans are occupied with the funeral of Paris, Odysseus arrives back at the
Achaean camp with Neoptolemos. He gives him the arms of Achilles that he had been
awarded five days before. Neoptolemos was no doubt as delighted with them as Achilles
had been when he received them from Thetis (Il. 19. 15–19). Their possession enhances
his identity as a new Achilles, and his sense of it.
F 5. Sch. (T) Il. 16. 142, “ἀλλά µιν οἶος ἐπίστατο πῆλαι Ἀχιλλεύς”
ἐπίστατο· ἐδύνατο. καὶ Σοϕοκλῆς (fr. 903)· “οὐπώποθ᾿ ὑµα̃ ς συµβαλεῖν ἐπίσταµαι”. 4οἳ
δὲ πλάττονται λέγοντες ὡς Πηλεὺς µὲν παρὰ Χείρωνος ἔµαθε τὴν χρῆσιν αὐτῆς,
Ἀχιλλεὺς δὲ παρὰ Πηλέως, ὃ δὲ οὐδένα ἐδίδαξεν. καὶ ὁ τῆς Μικρα̃ ς Ἰλιάδος ποιητής·
ἀµϕὶ δὲ πόρκης
χρύσεος ἀστράπτει, καὶ ἐπ᾿ αὐτῶι δίκροος αἰχµή.
The fragment, also quoted by sch. Pind. Nem. 6. 85b, is from a description of the famous
Πηλιὰς µελίη that Achilles wields in the Iliad. It probably came in the context of
Odysseus’ handing over Achilles’ arms to Neoptolemos (cf. E. Fraenkel, Kleine Beiträge
ii. 177), though Heyne 308 and Welcker ii. 240 noted that it might have come near the
beginning of the poem, when the arms were to be awarded as a prize.
The present tense of ἀστράπτει (in both sources) implies a speech (unless the poet
thought of the spear as being still available to be seen somewhere, which is scarcely
conceivable). But it is hard to see why the weapon should have been described in a
speech. Odysseus would not have needed to give Neoptolemos such a minute (p.189)
account of his father’s arms to tempt him to come to Troy, though it is true that he does
give an account of them in the corresponding episode in Quintus (7. 194–204).
ἄστραπτεν (or ἤστραπτεν) would be an easy emendation.
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Severyns (1928), 338–42, points out that there is a logical hiatus in the Iliad scholion,
which is concerned to argue that ἐπίστατο meant simply ‘was able’ and that there was no
special technique that had to be learned, as certain other poets had fancied. The quotation
from the Little Iliad, as it stands, is irrelevant to the argument. Severyns (342) supposes
that the connection in the epic was as follows:
Néoptolème, amené de Scyros, reçoit d’Ulysse les armes de son père, et notamment la
lance fameuse que Chiron avait autrefois donnée à Pélée. Cette lance avait une double
pointe, et pour arriver à produire avec elle une double blessure, il fallait un certain tour
de main, dont Chiron avait livré le secret à Pélée, et celuici à Achille. Ce dernier ne l’ayant
enseigné à personne, aucun des Achéens ne savait la brandir.
When Neoptolemos arrived at Troy, Achilles’ ghost appeared (see below) and taught him
the technique.
It is a brilliant hypothesis, but not really satisfactory. If the sentence about the
transmission of expertise from Chiron paraphrases an account in the Little Iliad, why
could the continuation, the instruction of Neoptolemos by Achilles’ ghost, not have been
dealt with in the same way? If verses needed to be quoted, why the particular fragment
that the Pindaric scholiast more pertinently quotes in company with other poets’
references to the two-pointed spear? What has happened is rather that the Byzantine
scribe, having copied a note concerning Achilles’ famous spear, remembered a scholion
on Pindar that contained a quotation with some material details of it, and appended the
information.
There is a verbal similarity with the description of Hector’ spear in Il. 6. 319f., πάροιθε δὲ
λάµπετο δουρός | αἰχµὴ χαλκείη, περὶ δὲ χρύσεος θέε πόρκης. For the more vivid
metaphor in ἀστράπτει cf. Od. 4. 72 χαλκοῦ τε στεροπήν, Soph. OC 1067, Eur. Phoen.
111, Hyps. fr. 752f. 30. On forked spears cf. A. B. Cook, Zeus ii(1) (Cambridge 1925),
799–806.
(p.190) Arg. 3b
καὶ Ἀχιλλεὺς αὐτῶι ϕαντάζεται.
Neoptolemos’ bond with the father he never knew is further strengthened by an

encounter with his ghost. Possibly he goes to Achilles’ grave-mound and sees an
epiphany of it there; 32 or it may have been a dream-visitation, like that of Patroklos’ ghost
to Achilles in Il. 23. In any case Achilles will have addressed his son with inspiring words.
Whether he gave him any special instruction in manipulating his weapons (cf. above) is
more doubtful. He might have enjoined upon him the sacrifice of Polyxena.33 His ghost
made another appearance, to Agamemnon, in the Nostoi (arg. 3a), and another perhaps in
the Iliou Persis (arg. 4c n.).
Arg. 3c
Εὐρύπυλος δὲ ὁ Τηλέϕου ἐπίκουρος τοῖς Τρωσὶ παραγίνεται.
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Apollodorus says that Neoptolemos killed many Trojans before Eurypylos arrived with a
large force of Mysians (epit. 5. 11–12). As Neoptolemos would not have gone out to fight
until a new day dawned, and Eurypylos would not have arrived and joined the fighting in
the middle of a day, that would mean expanding our timetable by a day (if not more)
during which Neoptolemos fought with great success but nothing of particular note
occurred. Proclus does not mention anything of the kind. It seems preferable to assume
that in the epic Neoptolemos and Eurypylos both took the field for the first time on the
same day, having arrived at Troy the previous evening, the day of Paris’ funeral. It may
have been during the obsequies, or directly after them, that Eurypylos and the Mysians
made their appearance, to be welcomed gratefully into the city and feasted in an
atmosphere of rising confidence for the renewal of hostilities the next day. Compare the
receptions of Penthesileia and Memnon in the Aethiopis (arg. 1a and 2a nn.).
In this context it must have been explained who Eurypylos was and why he had come. He
was the son of Telephos, the hero whom Achilles had wounded at Teuthrania and later
healed. He was also, (p.191) like Memnon in the Aethiopis, a nephew of Priam, his
mother Astyoche being Priam’s sister. Priam, desperate for a new champion, had sent to
Teuthrania with an urgent request for him to come. Astyoche did not want to let him go,
but she was won over with an expensive gift (cf. below on F 6).
The story of Eurypylos’ presence at Troy with an army of Κήτειοι (Hittites) and their
rout by Neoptolemos is recalled in Od. 11. 519–22, where Odysseus calls him the finest-
looking hero he ever saw after Memnon. He and Memnon were no doubt both
presented by the Cyclic poets as splendid and glamorous figures. Cf. on Aethiopis arg. 2a.
F 6. Sch. Eur. Tro. 822

τὸν Γανυµήδην … Λαοµέδοντος νῦν εἶπεν ἀκολουθήσας τῶι τὴν Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα
πεποιηκότι. … ϕησὶ δὲ οὕτως
ἄµπελον, ἣν Κρονίδης ἔπορεν οὗ παιδὸς ἄποινα
χρυσείην, ϕύλλοισιν ἀγαυοῖσιν κοµόωσαν
βότρυσί θ᾿, οὓς ῞Ηϕαιστος ἐπασκήσας ∆ιὶ πατρί
δῶχ᾿, ὃ δὲ Λαοµέδοντι πόρεν Γανυµήδεος ἀντί.
2 ἀγαυοῖσιν Jortin: ἀγανοῖσι(ν) codd.: ἀγα〈λλοµέ〉νοις Peppmüller, NJb 131

(1885), 836 cl. Opp. H. 4. 328: α〈εὶ〉 γανόωσι κοµῶσαν T. Gärtner, QUCC 88
(2008), 19–20 cl. Od. 7. 128
The fragment describes a wonderful heirloom which Priam had in his house and which he
gave his sister Astyoche to induce her to let her son Eurypylos come to fight at Troy. This
is alluded to in Od. 11. 521 γυναίων εἵνεκα δώρων and explained by the scholiast there,
who cites Acusilaus (fr. 40 Fowler) as authority for the tale. The motif appears more
famously in the story of Eriphyle, whom Polyneikes bribed with the necklace of Harmonia
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to send her husband Amphiaraos to fight at Thebes with the Seven; the Odyssey poet
uses the same phrase γυναίων εἵνεκα δώρων of that story too, 15. 247, cf. 11. 326f. Sch.
Juv. 6. 655 confuses the two, identifying Eriphyle as Eurypylos’ wife.
As the Euripidean scholiast notes, Ganymede is here made a son of Laomedon and thus a
brother of Priam. In the Iliad (5. 266, 20. 232) and the Hymn to Aphrodite (202ff.) he is
placed two generations earlier, as a son of Tros. There too we find the motif of Zeus
giving the boy’s father a valuable gift in compensation for his abduction, but there it is a
line of horses (5. 265f., Hymn. Aphr. 210–17).
(p.192) The fragment may have continued with αὐτὰρ Λαοµέδων Πριάµωι λίπε or the
like (D. B. Monro, JHS 5 (1884), 22).
Day SevenEurypylos’ Aristeia and Death
Arg. 3d
καὶ ἀριστεύοντα αὐτὸν ἀποκτείνει Νεοπτόλεµος.
F 7. Paus. 3. 26. 9
Μαχάονα δὲ ὑπὸ Εὐρυπύλου τοῦ Τηλέϕου τελευτῆσαί ϕησιν ὁ τὰ ἔπη ποιήσας τὴν
Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα.
Cf. sch. Lyc. 1048 ὁ µὲν γὰρ Μαχάων ἀνήιρηται ἐν τῶι πολέµωι ὑπὸ Εὐρυπύλου τοῦ
Τηλεϕίδου.
Before a major hero is killed he must enjoy an aristeia to show how formidable he was;
so it was with Patroklos, Hector, Penthesileia (Aethiopis arg. 1b), Memnon, Achilles.
Machaon is the only one of Eurypylos’ victims that we can name for certain. In Il. 11.
506ff. Machaon and a different Eurypylos, the son of the Thessalian Euhaimon, are
successively wounded by Paris’ arrows. Wilamowitz, Isyllos von Epidauros (Berlin 1886),
51f., brings a third Eurypylos into play, the legendary king of Cos in Heracles’ time: he
thinks that a Coan saga about this Eurypylos and Machaon lies behind the killing of the
latter by the Mysian Eurypylos in the Little Iliad. But there was no fixed tradition about
Machaon’s death. Apollodorus, as mentioned above, has him killed by Penthesileia, which
may have been the version of the Aethiopis (arg. 1b n.). If he was to live long enough to
heal Philoctetes but not survive the war, Eurypylos’ aristeia was almost the last
opportunity to dispose of him. Virgil, however, has him in the Wooden Horse (Aen. 2. 263,
whence Hyg. Fab. 108; [Hippocr.] Ep. 27. 50 p. 318 Hercher).
Later sources include Nireus of Syme and the Boeotian Peneleos among Eurypylos’
victims.34 They may have been so represented in the Little Iliad (Wilamowitz, Isyllos 48;
Robert (1920–6, 1223 n. 3).
(p.193) Arg. 3e
καὶ οἱ Τρῶες πολιορκοῦνται.
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On the analogy of the successes of Patroklos over Sarpedon (Il. 16. 684ff.) and of Achilles
over Hector (22. 381–4) and Memnon, we should expect that Neoptolemos, having slain
Eurypylos, would pursue the fleeing Trojans and Mysians towards Troy. Unlike Patroklos
and Achilles, he was not killed at the Scaean Gate, but neither was he able to storm the
city. The enemy shut themselves in and were safe against attack.
And so it continued. With their last champion killed and the Achaeans again dominant, the
Trojans dared make no further sorties. There was nothing left for the Achaeans but to
breach the defences by guile.
We cannot say what became of Eurypylos’ body. There does not appear to have been any
opportunity for a funeral.
Days Eight to TenProject Horse
Arg. 4a
καὶ Ἐπειὸς κατ᾿ Ἀθηνα̃ ς προαίρεσιν τὸν δούρειον ἵππον κατασκευάζει.
Epeios is fixed in the tradition as the builder of the Horse (Od. 8. 493, 11. 523, etc.). He
may well have been the subject, and it the object, of the clause ἐπεὶ σοϕὸς ἤραρε τέκτων
which is quoted from ‘the poet’ or ‘Homer’ (Epic. adesp. 15). Despite being famed for this
extraordinary accomplishment, Epeios appears otherwise as a lowly and ineffectual figure.
He is never mentioned in the battle narratives of the Iliad, and although he is a son of
Panopeus, the eponym of the Phocian city, he is not mentioned among the leaders of the
Phocians in 2. 517f. He first appears in the funeral games, as a big strong boxer who
claims to be unbeatable and proves to be so (23. 664–99), and then as a laughably
unsuccessful competitor in the weight-throwing contest (838–40). For Stesichorus
(PMGF 200) he was a menial water-carrier whom Athena out of pity elevated to celebrity.
The emphasis on her assistance to him is noteworthy, and must correspond to something
significant in the epic; cf. Od. 8. 492f. (p.194) ἵππου … δουρατέου, τὸν Ἐπειὸς ἐποίησεν
σὺν Ἀθήνηι; 35 Stes. S89. 6–8 ἀνὴρ [θ]εα̃ ς ἰ[ό]τατι δαεὶς σεµν[α̃ ς Ἀθάνας] µέτ[ρα] τε καὶ
σοϕίαν; Eur. Tro. 9–12 ὁ γὰρ Παρνάσιος | Φωκεὺς Ἐπειὸς µηχαναῖσι Παλλάδος |
ἐγκύµον᾿ ἵππον τευχέων συναρµόσας | πύργων ἔπεµψεν ἐντός.36 Proclus’ wording is
sometimes taken to imply that Athena actually gave Epeios the idea. But it seems unlikely
that such an undistinguished man should have suddenly spoken up among the leaders
and made the astonishing proposal. It is enough that he has the technical ability to
construct the monster (and this is all that need be meant by Stesichorus’ σοϕίαν).37
Once it is built, Odysseus appears as the one in charge of carrying the project through
(cf. Od. 8. 494f., 11. 524), and we expect it to have been his brainwave in the first place. So
it is in Apollod. epit. 5. 14: ὕστερον δὲ ἐπινοεῖ δουρείου ἵππου κατασκευήν, καὶ
ὑποτίθεται Ἐπειῶι, ὃς ἦν ἀρχιτέκτων. In Od. 22. 230 Athena says to Odysseus σῆι δ᾿
ἥλω βουλῆι Πριάµου πόλις. According to an anonymous verse quoted by Strabo and
others (Epic. adesp. 11) he took Ilion βουλῆι καὶ µύθοισι καὶ ἠπεροπηΐδι τέχνηι. As
Welcker ii. 540 suggested, this might have come from the Little Iliad, in which Odysseus
appeared throughout as the leading spirit.
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Early pictorial representations of the Horse show that the story goes back at least to the
late eighth century.38 On its origins and possible Near Eastern roots see West (1997),
487f. In terms of Greek saga it was a strikingly original theme, and even if it was
Odysseus who proposed the stratagem we may well think it likely that it was Athena who
put it into his head. But it is not easy to imagine how the subject was broached in the epic,
or what led to the identification of Epeios as the man to do the carpentry.
A stretch of narrative must have been devoted to the construction work. The passage
just quoted from Apollodorus continues: οὗτος (p.195) ἀπὸ τῆς ῎Ιδης ξύλα τεµὼν
ἵππον κατασκευάζει κοῖλον ἔνδοθεν εἰς τὰς πλευρὰς ἀνεωιγµένον. Epeios will hardly
have been described going and personally cutting down all the timber he needed. A
larger party of men will have been sent for the purpose. Il. 23. 110–26 may serve to give
an idea of the scene to be posited. Quintus has a corresponding woodcutting scene for
the building of the Horse (12. 122–38); here the Achaeans not only bring the timber but
saw it up to the required lengths at Epeios’ direction. But Quintus probably did not have
the Little Iliad before him, and he could easily have constructed the scene suo Marte.39
The poet can hardly have imagined that the Horse was finished in a single day. According
to Quintus it took three days, given Athena’s help: 12. 147f. τετέλεστο δ᾿ ἐνὶ τρισὶν
ἤµασι πάντα | Παλλάδος ἐννεσίηισι. We cannot say whether he had authority for this in
his sources, but it is the kind of thing that could have been said in early epic, cf. Od. 5. 262
(the building of Odysseus’ boat) τέτρατον ἦµαρ ἔην, καὶ τῶι τετέλεστο ἅπαντα. Three
days seems a reasonable minimum, not in practical terms but in epic conception, and I
provisionally allow this period for the job. We cannot exclude the possibility that other
days had intervened between the last battle and the beginning of work on the Horse; cf.
intro. 4.
Two major episodes occurred while the Horse was being constructed: the πτωχεία, that
is, Odysseus’ visit to Troy in disguise, and the nocturnal incursion with Diomedes to steal
the Palladion.
Odysseus Enters Troy in Disguise
Arg. 4b
Ὀδυσσεύς τε ἀικισάµενος ἑαυτὸν κατάσκοπος εἰς ῎Ιλιον παραγίνεται.
F 8. Sch. Lyc. 780 p. 246. 25 Scheer

ὁ Ὀδυσσεὺς βουλόµενος κατάσκοπος εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὴν ῎Ιλιον καὶ ϕοβούµενος µὴ
νοηθεὶς ἀποθάνηι, ἔπεισε Θόαντα πληγῶσαι αὐτὸν πληγαῖς βιαίαις πρὸς τὸ γενέσθαι
ἀγνώριστον … (p. 247. 2) ὁ δὲ τὴν Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα γράψας ϕησὶ τρωθῆναι τὸν Ὀδυσσέα
ὑπὸ Θόαντος ὅτε εἰς Τροίαν ἀνήρχοντο.
(p.196) The initiation of the Horse project would hardly have provided enough
narrative interest to fill up a day, so Odysseus’ first incursion into Troy is probably also
to be put on Day 8. The episode is recalled by Helen in Od. 4. 242–64. She says that
Odysseus subjected himself to disfiguring blows, dressed himself in poor garments like a
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servant (σπεῖρα κάκ᾿ ἀµϕ᾿ ὤµοισι βαλών, οἰκῆϊ ἐοικώς), and slipped into the city. She
alone recognized him under his disguise. She questioned him, but he kept up his
pretence. But after she had bathed him and reclothed him and sworn not to betray him
before he made his getaway, he told her of the Achaeans’ intentions. He then returned to
the ships, killing many Trojans on the way.
Two notes of Aristonicus in the scholia (= F 9 and 10 below) show that Aristarchus
believed the passage to have been imitated by a Cyclic poet, presumably that of the Little
Iliad. We cannot be sure that all the details in the Odyssey version match what was in the
Cyclic poem, but there must have been a close correspondence. Od. 4. 244 αὐτόν µιν
πληγῆισιν ἀεικελίηισι δαµάσσας agrees with Proclus’ ἀικισάµενος ἑαυτόν and is
equally compatible with the assistance of Thoas attested in F 8. The Aetolian Thoas
appears next to Odysseus in the Catalogue of Ships, Il. 2. 631–44 (cf. [Hes.] fr. 198), and
in 7. 168, Od. 14. 499.
F 9. Sch. Od. 4. 248, “∆έκτηι”

ὁ κυκλικὸς τὸ ∆ΕΚΤΗΙ ὀνοµατικῶς ἀκούει· παρ᾿ οὗ ϕησι τὸν Ὀδυσσέα τὰ ῥάκη
λαβόντα µετηµϕιάσθαι … Ἀρίσταρχος δὲ δέκτηι µὲν ἐπαίτηι
In the Cyclic poem Odysseus changed his clothes for mean garments that he got from a
man named Dektes. The Odyssey passage reads (244–50):
αὐτόν µιν πληγῆισιν ἀεικελίηισι δαµάσσας,
σπεῖρα κάκ᾿ ἀµϕ᾿ ὤµοισι βαλών, οἰκῆϊ ἐοικώς
ἀνδρῶν δυσµενέων κατέδυ πόλιν εὐρυάγυιαν.
ἄλλωι δ᾿ αὐτὸν ϕωτὶ κατακρύπτων ἤϊσκεν,
∆έκτηι, ὃς οὐδὲν τοῖος ἔην ἐπὶ νηυσὶν Ἀχαιῶν.
τῶι ἴκελος κατέδυ Τρώων πόλιν, οἳ δ᾿ ἀβάκησαν
πάντες· ἐγὼ δέ µιν οἴη ἀνέγνων τοῖον ἐόντα.
Aristarchus took ∆ΕΚΤΗΙ here as a common noun meaning ‘beggar’, and claimed that the
Cyclic poet had misinterpreted it as a (p.197) proper name.40 But as Welcker saw (i. 70,
ii. 254f.), the interpretation as a name would appear to be correct: it gives specificity to
ἄλλωι ϕωτί, besides making sense of ὃς οὐδὲν τοῖος ἔην ἐπὶ νηυσὶν Ἀχαιῶν, ‘a man at
the Achaean camp who was by no means of his quality’. Aristarchus’ argument fails. And
there is a further point. After 245 οἰκῆϊ ἐοικώς, the two lines about Dektes seem to give
a separate statement of Odysseus’ alias, and 249 κατέδυ Τρώων πόλιν duplicates 246
δυσµενέων κατέδυ πόλιν. L. Friedländer, Phil. 4 (1849), 580f., plausibly argued that 246
εὐρυάγυιαν–249 Τρώων πόλιν was an insertion designed to bring the text into
agreement with the Little Iliad. Cf. Von der Mühll 708.
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The ‘beggar’ interpretation was probably much older than Aristarchus, as several
sources state that Odysseus assumed the role of a πτωχός or ἐπαίτης.41 This does not
really harmonize with the information that he represented himself as an οἰκεύς. Some say
he claimed to have defected from the Achaeans after being maltreated by the Atreidai,
and this accords with his self-inflicted disfigurements.42
But what was the purpose of his journey? Proclus says he went as a κατάσκοπος, and
most sources are similarly vague.43 What needed to be spied out? According to sch. Od.
4. 246 his aim was to measure the city gates for the Horse, or else to persuade Helen to
assist the Achaeans. The encounter with Helen may well be the poetic raison d’être of the
episode, but it cannot have been given as Odysseus’ intention, as he clearly did not mean
Helen to recognize him. The motive attributed to him was spying. The idea that he
measured the gates does not fit the later narrative, according to which the Horse was
too big to go through them and the Trojans had to demolish part of the city wall to get it
in.
(p.198) Arg. 4c
καὶ ἀναγνωρισθεὶς ὑϕ᾿ Ἑλένης περὶ τῆς ἁλώσεως τῆς πόλεως συντίθεται.
What passed between Odysseus and Helen? According to the Odyssey passage she
bathed him, oiled him, and reclothed him. Evidently she had taken him into her house.
After she had sworn not to betray him, he told her πάντα νόον Ἀχαιῶν (256). The
scholiast infers from the following lines, where she rejoices at the thought of returning to
Greece, that he told her about the Horse stratagem, and this seems to be the only thing
that the phrase can refer to.
Proclus says that he came to an agreement with her about the capture of the city. She
must have agreed to help in some important way with the execution of the Achaeans’ plan.
One occasion when she might give some assistance was when the Trojans found the
Horse and were in two minds about whether to destroy it or keep it for Athena (Od. 8.
506–9, Iliou Persis arg. 1a). Helen’s arguing in favour of the latter course would have
been helpful to the Achaeans’ cause. But it is hard to see why her intervention in
particular should have been decisive or why Odysseus should have attached such weight
to it. No source attests that she played such a role.
According to Virgil (Aen. 6. 515–19) Helen did something much more positive to assist the
Greeks. She raised the torch signal to give them the go-ahead, under the pretence of
leading a celebratory dance:
cum fatalis equus saltu super ardua uenit
Pergama et armatum peditem grauis attulit aluo,
illa chorum simulans euhantis orgia circum
ducebat Phrygias; flammam media ipsa tenebat
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ingentem, et summa Danaos ex arce uocabat.
That it was Helen who sent the signal was a tradition known to the first-century Gnostic
Simon Magus, who gave an allegorical interpretation of it that is mentioned by Hippolytus
and Epiphanius; the latter is under the impression that the story came from ‘Homer’.44
Schneidewin drew attention to these texts in 1852 and suggested that, (p.199) as the
signal was given by Sinon in the Iliou Persis (arg. 2a), the Helen version may derive from
the Little Iliad.45 We know that Sinon played a significant role in the Little Iliad too, but it
may have been confined to giving the Trojans misleading information about the meaning of
the Horse.
If Schneidewin was right, then, this is what Odysseus agreed with Helen: that if the
Trojans were persuaded to take the Horse into the city, she would wave a torch from the
citadel at nightfall—or, if we accept Virgil’s account, lead torchlit dances there—as a signal
for the Achaeans waiting at Tenedos. Her agreement to do this was a vital gain from
Odysseus’ mission.
Arg. 4d
κτείνας τέ τινας τῶν Τρώων ἐπὶ τὰς ναῦς ἀϕικνεῖται.
Similarly in Od. 4. 257f., πολλοὺς δὲ Τρώων κτείνας ταναήκεϊ χαλκῶι | ἦλθε µετ᾿
Ἀργείους, κατὰ δὲ ϕρόνιν ἤγαγε πολλήν; Rhes. 506f. κτανὼν δὲ ϕρουροὺς καὶ
παραστάτας πυλῶν | ἐξῆλθεν. The incidental killing of Trojans was a bonus, perhaps
suggested by the Doloneia if that already existed.
F 10. Sch. Od. 4. 258, “κατὰ δὲ ϕρόνιν ἤγαγε πολλήν”

οἱ δὲ νεώτεροι ϕρόνιν τὴν λείαν ἀπεδέξαντο.
This is the other place where Aristarchus, comparing the Odyssey passage with the Little
Iliad, concluded that the poet of the latter had misinterpreted the former. He was surely
right that whatever ϕρόνιν means, it does not mean booty. But if the Cyclic poet said that
Odysseus returned from Troy with some booty, it does not follow that he got the idea
from misunderstanding the Odyssey.
The Theft of the Palladion
Arg. 4e
καὶ µετὰ ταῦτα σὺν ∆ιοµήδει τὸ Παλλάδιον ἐκκοµίζει ἐκ τῆς Ἰλίου.
(p.200) The Palladion was a portable statuette of Athena kept in her shrine. It was
evidently not identical with the statue on whose knees a robe is laid in Il. 6. 303; cf.
Welcker ii. 255. Nor, if Odysseus and Diomedes had stolen it, can it be the same as the
ξόανον that Cassandra clung to when assaulted by the Locrian Ajax (Iliou Persis arg. 3a;
but in that poem the true Palladion was not stolen, F 4). The Palladion was that
embodiment of Athena on which the safety of the city depended. Possession of it was a
further condition that needed to be fulfilled before the Achaeans could take Troy.
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Odysseus and Diomedes succeeded in getting into Troy during the night and stealing it,
killing the temple personnel (Virg. Aen. 2. 166 caesis summae custodibus arcis). For the
motif of carrying off the gods of an enemy city cf. West (1997), 486.
According to Sophocles’ Lakainai and other sources the heroes gained access to the city
by way of its capacious sewer passage.46 Servius distinguishes this version from one in
which they dug their own tunnel: Aen. 2. 166 tunc Diomedes et Vlixes, ut alii dicunt
cuniculis, ut alii cloacis, ascenderunt arcem et occisis custodibus sustulere simulacrum.
Chavannes 50 ascribes the tunnel version to the Little Iliad. It is the sewer, however,
that is implied by the Tabula Capitolina, where the two heroes are shown emerging with
the Palladion from a low vaulted opening (above, intro. 2).
The exploit makes a self-contained story and may often have been related as an
Einzellied. It was evidently a given for the poet; he felt it necessary to incorporate it in his
narrative, although it lacks all connection with the surrounding episodes. There is no
logical reason why it has to come where it does, after Odysseus’ solo visit to Troy and
after the arrivals of Philoctetes and Neoptolemos. The poet may have reckoned that
putting it where he did would help to fill the time required for the building of the Horse.
On the hypothesis that three days were allocated to the work, there were two nights
available for the Palladion expedition. The first, the night between Days 8 and 9, would
come immediately after Odysseus returned from his meeting with Helen. The poet might
well have judged it more plausible to leave a greater interval between the two episodes;
he will then have placed the Palladion expedition in the second night, between Days 9 and
10. Day 9 itself remains a blank, at any rate from our point of (p.201) view. There might
have been something about the progress of the building work, and a scene in which the
need to capture the Palladion was made known to the Achaeans, leading into one in which
it was decided who was to undertake the difficult and dangerous mission. Odysseus and
Diomedes are paired also in the Doloneia and other contexts,47 and the fetching of
Philoctetes and Neoptolemos from the islands was divided between them. The Palladion
adventure may have been the model for all these if it had been established in the
tradition for some time.
It is not certain how, in the Little Iliad, the Achaeans were made aware of the need to get
the Palladion. They may have learned it from Helenos,48 either at the time when he
revealed the need for Heracles’ bow and an Aiakid or at some later point. According to
Dion. Hal. Ant. 1. 68. 4 Dardanos had received, with the Palladia, an oracle assuring him
that his city would be safe so long as these holy images remained in place, and such an
oracle would have been known to Helenos. It is also conceivable that the poet let
Odysseus learn the secret from Helen during his visit (Welcker (1839–41), i. 146–8).49
In Apollodorus the visit to Helen and the Palladion mission are run together, and precede
Odysseus’ conception of the Horse project. Epit. 5. 13:
Ὀδυσσεὺς δὲ µετὰ ∆ιοµήδους παραγενόµενος νύκτωρ εἰς τὴν πόλιν ∆ιοµήδην µὲν
αὐτοῦ µένειν εἴα, αὐτὸς δὲ ἑαυτὸν ἀικισάµενος καὶ πενιχρὰν στολὴν
ἐνδυσάµενος ἀγνώστως εἰς τὴν πόλιν εἰσέρχεται ὡς ἐπαίτης. γνωρισθεὶς δὲ ὑπὸ
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Ἑλένης, δι᾿ ἐκείνης τὸ Παλλάδιον ἐκκλέψας καὶ πολλοὺς κτείνας τῶν

ϕυλασσόντων ἐπὶ τὰς ναῦς µετὰ ∆ιοµήδους κοµίζει.
(p.202) This may reflect Sophocles’ Lakainai, which was presumably set in Helen’s
house, as the Laconian women of the chorus must have been her servants. Aristophanes
(Vesp. 350f.) and Antisthenes (Ajax 6) also conflate the two forays, combining Odysseus’
rags with his theft of temple property (Antisth.) or escape through a narrow opening (Ar.).
The author of the Rhesus, however, keeps them separate (501–7). In the Aristotelian list
of Little Iliad tragedies Λάκαιναι clearly stands for the Palladion episode; it is distinct
from the Πτωχεία.
F 11. Hesych. δ 1881

∆ιοµήδειος ἀνάγκη· παροιµία. Κλέαρχος µέν (fr. 68 Wehrli) … ὁ δὲ τὴν Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα
ϕησὶν ἐπὶ τῆς τοῦ Παλλαδίου κλοπῆς γενέσθαι.
Paus. Att. δ 14 (Phot. Lex. δ 637, Suda δ 1164, sch. Ar. Eccl. 1029, etc.)
∆ιοµήδειος ἀνάγκη· παροιµία … οἳ δέ, ὅτι ∆ιοµήδης καὶ Ὀδυσσεὺς τὸ Παλλάδιον

κλέψαντες νυκτὸς ἐκ Τροίας ἐπανήιεσαν, ἑπόµενος δὲ ὁ Ὀδυσσεὺς τὸν ∆ιοµήδην
ἐβουλήθη ἀποκτεῖναι· ἐν τῆι σελήνηι δὲ ἰδὼν τὴν σκιὰν τοῦ ξίϕους ὁ ∆ιοµήδης,
ἐπιστραϕεὶς καὶ βιασάµενος τὸν Ὀδυσσέα ἔδησε καὶ προάγειν ἐποίησε παίων αὐτοῦ
τῶι ξίϕει τὸ µετάϕρενον. τάττεται δὲ ἐπὶ τῶν κατ᾿ ἀνάγκην τι πραττόντων.
Serv. auct. Aen. 2. 166
Qui cum reuerterentur ad naues, Vlixes, ut sui tantum operis uideretur effector, uoluit
sequens occidere Diomedem; cuius ille conatum cum ad umbram lunae notasset,
religatum prae se usque ad castra Graecorum egit.
The proverbial expression ‘a Diomedean compulsion’ is used in Ar. Eccl. 1029 and Pl. Rep.
439d. Clearchus in his Paroimiai explained it as referring to a Diomedes who forced
strangers to make love to his ugly daughters until they (or their funds) were exhausted,
when he killed them. This suits the context in Aristophanes excellently, it is the explanation
given by the scholiast ad loc., and it is no doubt the correct one. Others, however,
connected it with an incident that occurred during the Palladion mission. Hesychius’
article may be taken as evidence that the incident was described in the Little Iliad, but he
is clearly wrong to say that the epic poet gave it as an (p.203) explanation of the
proverb. Presumably the source-reference to the Little Iliad belongs together with the
account of the incident given elsewhere in the paroemiographical tradition, so that we
may take it to have followed the same lines in the epic. Conon, FGrHist 26 F 1. 34, tells a
divergent version in which it is Diomedes who tries to deceive Odysseus and win all the
credit for getting the Palladion, and Odysseus who ends up driving his companion along
by slapping him on the back with the flat of his sword.
In view of Odysseus’ and Diomedes’ harmonious collaboration in other exploits (see

above on arg. 4e), it is curious that they were represented as having fallen out so bitterly
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over the Palladion.
Day TenOperation Horse is Put into Action
Arg. 5a
ἔπειτα εἰς τὸν δούρειον ἵππον τοὺς ἀρίστους ἐµβιβάσαντες τάς τε σκηνὰς
καταϕλέξαντες οἱ λοιποὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων εἰς Τένεδον ἀνάγονται.
F 12. Apollod. epit. 5. 14–15

εἰς τοῦτον Ὀδυσσεὺς εἰσελθεῖν πείθει πεντήκοντα τοὺς ἀρίστους, ὡς δὲ ὁ τὴν Μικρὰν
γράψας Ἰλιάδα ϕησί, τρισχιλίους. … (15) αὐτοὶ δὲ ἐµπρήσαντες τὰς σκηνὰς καὶ
καταλιπόντες Σίνωνα, ὃς ἔµελλεν αὐτοῖς πυρσὸν ἀνάπτειν, τῆς νυκτὸς ἀνάγονται καὶ
περὶ Τένεδον ναυλοχοῦσιν.
Epeios completed his work and the Horse was ready. Odysseus, as leader of the
operation, must then have selected the heroes who were to hide in it with him, and their
names will have been listed. Perhaps he called for volunteers, as in Triph. 122ff. Virgil
(Aen. 2. 18) suggests that a drawing of lots was involved.
Different sources give widely divergent figures for the number of men involved.
Stesichorus (PMGF 199) made it a hundred; Apollodorus (see above) fifty, perhaps
following the Iliou Persis; Virgil (Aen. 2. 261–4) names nine; Quintus (12. 314–32) names
thirty, but adds ‘and all the other outstanding men that the horse could hold’;
Triphiodorus (153–83) enumerates twenty-two besides Odysseus. Eustathius (Od. 1698.
2) says some made it twelve, and (p.204) he lists the names but then is perplexed that
they do not include Antiklos (Od. 4. 285; F 13 below).
Beside all these, the figure of three thousand that Apollodorus attributes to the Little
Iliad appears fantastic and unimaginable. All that was needed was a force big enough to
overpower the guards and open the city gates for the mass of the army. Tzetzes (in Lyc.
930) had the same text of Apollodorus, writing τὸν δούριον ἵππον, εἰς ὃν νˎ ἢ ′γ ἢ κατ᾿
ἐµὲ κγˎ ἄνδρες εἰσελθόντες ῞Ελληνες ἐκάθηντο. (His last figure derives from
Triphiodorus.) Severyns’s conjecture that ˎγ (=3,000) was a corruption of ιγˎ (=13) is
very plausible.50 He observes that the poet will not have given the figure but listed
thirteen names—perhaps Eustathius’ twelve plus Antiklos. Eustathius’ twelve are:
Menelaos, Diomedes, Philoctetes, Meriones, Neoptolemos, Eurypylos, Eurydamas,
Pheidippos, Leonteus, Meges, Odysseus, and Eumelos. They include nearly all of those
mentioned in the fragments as having played notable parts in the sack (Diomedes,
Philoctetes, Neoptolemos, Eurypylos, Meges), only not Lykomedes (F 16); of course
they did not all have to have been in the Horse.
With the Horse manned, the rest of the Achaeans burn their huts (cf. Od. 8. 501), embark
on their ships, and sail out round the Sigeian promontory and down to the island of
Tenedos, out of sight of the Trojans. If Apollodorus’ τῆς νυκτός is rightly taken with what
follows, he says that it was after dark that they sailed away, so that their deserted camp
was a surprise for the Trojans in the morning.
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Sinon
Apollodorus also says that they left Sinon behind to send them a torch signal when they
were to return. That Sinon featured in the Little Iliad is guaranteed by Ἀπόπλους καὶ
Σίνων in Aristotle’s list of potential tragedies and by his depiction on the Tabula
Capitolina; cf. also Tz. in Lyc. 344 (below, F 14). But as explained above on arg. 4c, it is
uncertain whether his role extended to sending the signal: it (p.205) may have been
confined to deceiving the Trojans about the purpose of the Horse, while the signal was
given by Helen.
Sinon’s name is from σίνος ‘harm’: like Dolon and Thersites, he is a figure characterized
by his name. Later sources (Triph. 220, 294, Serv. on Aen. 2. 79, cf. Lyc. 344 with sch.)
say that he was the son of Aisimos, who was a brother of Antikleia, Odysseus’ mother. It
is possible that Aisimos’ name at least, or the patronymic Αἰσιµίδης, goes back to one of
the two Cyclic epics in which Sinon appeared.
Day ElevenThe Trojans’ Reception of the Horse
Arg. 5b
οἱ δὲ Τρῶες τῶν κακῶν ὑπολαβόντες ἀπηλλάχθαι τόν τε δούρειον ἵππον εἰς τὴν πόλιν
εἰσδέχονται διελόντες µέρος τι τοῦ τείχους, καὶ εὐωχοῦνται ὡς νενικηκότες τοὺς
῞Ελληνας.
The morning when the Trojans first saw the Achaean camp abandoned might have been
another occasion for the formula ϕήµη δ᾿ εἰς στρατὸν ἦλθε (F 32⋆; see above under Day
2). Cf. Virg. Aen. 2. 17 ea fama uagatur (that the Horse had been left as a votive offering);
Triph. 235–7 ἤδη δὲ Τρώεσσι καὶ Ἰλιάδεσσι γυναιξίν | ὄρθρον ὕπο σκιόεντα πολύθροος
ἤλυθε ϕήµη, | δήϊον ἀγγέλλουσα ϕόβον σηµάντορι καπνῶι.
Proclus’ summary of the Little Iliad breaks off here. His single sentence probably
conceals a more varied sequence of events. In the Iliou Persis, as in Demodokos’ song in
the Odyssey (8. 500–10) and in Stesichorus (S88 ii), the Trojans debated what to do with
the Horse, whether to destroy it or dedicate it to Athena. According to the Odyssey, at
least, the debate took place after they had already taken the Horse up to the acropolis,
but it looks as if this was not so in Stesichorus. There was not necessarily any such
debate in the Little Iliad. Cassandra, however, uttered an impassioned warning against
accepting the Horse (cf. Virg. Aen. 2. 246f., Apollod. epit. 5. 17): this is guaranteed by the
Tabula Capitolina, where she appears in the Little Iliad frieze, struggling under restraint
between the advancing procession bringing the Horse and the Scaean Gate, as if trying to
obstruct its entry. There is no evidence that the poem contained the episode of the seer
Laokoon and his son killed by serpents (Iliou (p.206) Persis arg. 1c). Despite the
existence of Sophocles’ Laokoon, there is no such title in Aristotle’s list of Little Iliad
tragedies,51 and no Laokoon scene on the Tabula Capitolina.52
Sinon probably played the vital role in inducing the Trojans to take the Horse in. In the
Iliou Persis he gained admission to the city under a pretence (arg. 2a προσποίητος),
which implies that he engaged in dialogue, and his lies will have been designed to further
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the Achaeans’ cause. But that epic seems not to have included an account of how the
Horse was brought to the city. Virgil does, and his narrative may reflect the Little Iliad.
There (Aen. 2. 57–198) Sinon allows himself to be captured by herdsmen and is brought
before Priam just as the dispute about the Horse is raging. He spins the tale that he is an
enemy of Ulysses, condemned to death as a sacrifice on behalf of the departing Danaans,
but he has escaped. The Horse is their propitiatory offering to Pallas, who has been
angered by the sacrilegious removal of the Palladion. Calchas told them to make it so big
that it could not be got into Troy, otherwise it would be disastrous for Greece. This leads
the Trojans to make a gap in their walls (234) so that they can get the Horse inside.—The
breaching of the walls agrees with Proclus, and the detail that Sinon’s hands are tied
behind his back (57) agrees with the representation of him on the Tabula Capitolina.
Another detail in Virgil’s brief account of the transporting of the Horse may also go back
to the Little Iliad: the crowd pulling the Horse along were accompanied by boys and girls
singing hymns (2. 238f. pueri circum innuptaeque puellae | sacra canunt, funemque manu
contingere gaudent). We may compare the depiction on the Tabula, where the procession
is led by a little group of male and female dancers, and Eur. Tro. 529, Triph. 308f., 342,
350–7.
Both Euripides (Tro. 537–40) and Quintus (12. 428–32) compare the haulage of the Horse
to that of a ship, either onto land (Eur.) or down to the sea (Quintus). The simile possibly
derives from the Little Iliad.
F 13. Sch. Od. 4. 285

ὁ ῎Αντικλος ἐκ τοῦ κύκλου.
In Od. 4. 271–89 Menelaos recalls how Helen, accompanied by Deiphobos, approached

the Horse and called out the names of the (p.207) men inside it, imitating their wives’
voices. Most of them kept quiet, but Antiklos would have responded and given them away
if Odysseus had not stopped him. Aristarchus athetized 285–9 on the ground that
Antiklos was an un-Homeric figure who first appeared in the Cycle.53 This need not mean
more than that he was named as one of the warriors in the Horse. But it is possible that
the Helen incident appeared in the Little Iliad or Iliou Persis. Lines 285–8 look like an
alternative to 282–4 (S. West ad loc.) and do not sit well together with them; as in 246–9
(see above on F 9), we may suspect a secondary insertion to bring in Cyclic material.54
The same may apply to 276, the line that mentions Deiphobos. Dektes in 248 came from
the Little Iliad, and this was also the poem that recorded Helen’s marriage to Deiphobos,
so we may suppose it, rather than the Iliou Persis, to have been the source for the little-
known Antiklos too.55 In Apollodorus (epit. 5. 19) the episode appears between Sinon’s
raising of the torch signal and the heroes’ emergence from the Horse with the death of
Echion. These probably belong to the Iliou Persis (cf. there on arg. 2a and b), and for this
reason Wagner 235 argued that the Antiklos episode did also. But Apollodorus may have
interpolated it from the Odyssey.
Whatever the origin of the incident, it is problematic, as Helen’s mischievous behaviour

seems at odds with her well-established desire for the Achaeans’ success, which she has
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affirmed in her own speech at 259ff. Menelaos in 274f. ascribes its irrationality to the
prompting of the Trojans’ favouring δαίµων. If she knows that there are warriors in the
Horse, and indeed who they are, it is presumably because of what Odysseus told her
during his visit. In a version where she approached the Horse alone, without Deiphobos
and with no one else within earshot, she would not have been putting the heroes at risk,
and she might then have been simply amusing herself by seeing if she could get any of
them to respond to her impersonations.
(p.208) The story has a frivolity of the same order as the eavesdropping on the Trojan
girls’ chatter in F 2.56
In the evening the Trojans abandoned themselves to feasting and drinking. Singing and
dancing may have continued (as in Eur. Hec. 915–18, Tro. 544–7, 551–4, Q.S. 13. 1–4),
providing a context for the dance with torches that Helen led up to the acropolis, if
Virgil’s account echoes the Little Iliad. At some point, probably soon after nightfall, a
torch was raised from an eminence as a signal, whether by Helen or by Sinon. This was
vital, as the Achaeans needed confirmation that the Horse had been taken inside the city.
If the signal was sent from Troy, it could not in fact have been seen from the ships at
Tenedos (just as the ships were not visible to the Trojans), but someone could have been
sent up to higher ground to watch for it; the top of the island is visible from the city.57
Some sources say that Sinon signalled from Achilles’ tomb at Sigeion.58 Whether or not a
Lesbian Lesches was the author of the poem, the tradition was shaped by someone with
a fair knowledge of the local topography.
The Sack of Troy
F 14. Callisthenes (FGrHist 124 F 10a) ap. sch. Eur. Hec. 910
ἑάλω µὲν ἡ Τροία Θαργηλιῶνος µηνός, ὡς µέν τινες τῶν ἱστορικῶν, ιβˎ ἱσταµένου, ὡς
δὲ ὁ τὴν Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα, ηˎ ϕθίνοντος· διορίζει γὰρ αὐτὸς τὴν ἅλωσιν, ϕάσκων
συµβῆναι τότε τὴν κατάληψιν, ἡνίκα
νὺξ µὲν ἔην µέσση, λαµπρὰ δ᾿ ἐπέτελλε σελήνη.
µεσονύκτιος δὲ µόνον τῆι ὀγδόηι ϕθίνοντος ἀνατέλλει, ἐν ἄλληι δὲ οὔ.
(p.209) Clem. Strom. 1. 104. 1
κατὰ δὲ τὸ ὀκτωκαιδέκατον ἔτος τῆς Ἀγαµέµνονος βασιλείας ῎Ιλιον ἑάλω …

Θαργηλιῶνος µηνὸς δευτέραι ἐπὶ δέκα, ὥς ϕησι ∆ιονύσιος ὁ Ἀργεῖος (308 F 1)· Ἀγίας
δὲ καὶ ∆ερκύλος ἐν τῆι τρίτηι (2 Fowler), µηνὸς Πανήµου ὀγδόηι ϕθίνοντος· Ἑλλάνικος
δὲ (152 Fowler) δωδεκάτηι Θαργηλιῶνος µηνός· καί τινες τῶν τὰ Ἀττικὰ
συγγραψάντων (329 F 3) ὀγδόηι ϕθίνοντος … πληθυούσης σελήνης· “νὺξ µὲν ἔην”
ϕησὶν ὁ τὴν Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα πεποιηκώς “µεσάτα, λαµπρὰ δ᾿ ἐπέτελλε σελάνα”.
Many historians gave calendar dates for the fall of Troy; see F. Jacoby, Das Marmor
Parium (Berlin 1904), 148f. The earliest are Hellanicus (ap. Clement, above) and
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Damastes of Sigeum (fr. 7 Fowler). Both gave the month as Thargelion; Hellanicus gave
the day as the 12th, Damastes as the 24th (ἑβδόµηι ϕθίνοντος). Both apparently quoted
and argued from the verse in the Little Iliad. Hellanicus, focusing on the brightness of
the moon, took it to be nearly full; cf. Clement’s πληθυούσης σελήνης. But this is to ignore
ἐπέτελλε, ‘rising’: if the moon is rising around midnight, it is approaching its last quarter,
and Damastes’ dating to the 24th of the month is the one that makes sense astronomically.
The dating that Callisthenes attributes to the Little Iliad and Clement to ‘some of the
Atthidographers’, ὀγδόη ϕθίνοντος = the 23rd, is essentially the same. Cf. A. T. Grafton
and N. M. Swerdlow, CQ 36 (1986), 212–18.
Clement’s quotation of the line in non-Ionic form (µεσάτα, σελάνα) is unexplained. Even if
Lesbian rhapsodes recited it in their own dialect and were so quoted by Hellanicus or
Damastes, it would not be satisfactorily accounted for, as we should then expect µέσσα,
σελάννα. For λαµπρὰ (rather than λαµπρὴ) … σελήνη cf. my Hesiod, Theogony (Oxford
1966), 81.
F 14a⋆ Sch. (D) Il. 18. 486a, “Πληϊάδες”

ἑπτὰ ἀστέρες κείµενοι ἐπὶ τῆι οὐρα̃ ι τοῦ Ταύρου. … αὗται δέ εἰσιν ῎Ατλαντος καὶ
Πληϊόνης θυγατέρες, ὧν τὰ ὀνόµατα Μαῖα, Ταϋγέτη, Κελαινώ, Μερόπη, Ἠλέκτρα,
Στερόπη, Ἀλκυόνη. … ϕασὶν δὲ Ἠλέκτραν οὐ βουλοµένην τὴν Ἰλίου πόρθησιν θεάσαθαι
διὰ τὸ κτίσµα 〈εἶναι〉 τῶν ἀπογόνων καταλιπεῖν τὸν τόπον οὗ κατηστέριστο, διόπερ
οὔσας πρότερον ἑπτὰ γενέσθαι ἕξ. ἡ ἱστορία παρὰ τοῖς κυκλικοῖς.
(p.210) Electra was the mother of Dardanos by Zeus ([Hes.] fr. 177. 5–7) and so
particularly affected by the fortunes of Troy and Dardania. There was always a
discrepancy between the theoretical number of seven Pleiades and the fact that only six
are easily distinguished; cf. Arat. 257f. and other texts quoted in D. Kidd’s commentary.
The story about Electra recurs without attribution in Aratus SH 103, Ov. F. 4. 177f., Hyg.
Astr. 2. 21. 3, Fab. 192. 5, Q.S. 13. 551–60; cf. sch. Hes. Op. 383a, sch. Arat. 257 and 259,
sch. Germ. p. 149. 10 and 19 Br., Serv. in Georg. 1. 138.
How was it introduced into the narrative of whichever Cyclic epic it was? Presumably the
poet referred to the Pleiades being in the sky at the hour when the heroes emerged
from the Horse and the carnage began, just as in F 14 above it was noted that the moon
was rising. Aeschylus must be alluding to this in Ag. 824–6, πόλιν διηµάθυνεν Ἀργεῖον
δάκος | ἵππου νεοσσός, ἀσπιδηϕόρος λεώς, | πήδηµ᾿ ὀρούσας ἀµϕὶ Πλειάδων δύσιν.
Fraenkel, without making the connection with Electra’s disappearance, argues
convincingly in his commentary that ἀµϕὶ Πλειάδων δύσιν does not refer to the season of
the year, as references to rising or setting Pleiades normally do, but to the time of night,
as in PMG 976 δέδυκε µὲν ἁ σελάνα | καὶ Πληϊάδες, µέσαι δὲ | νύκτες, even though in
reality it could indicate a time of night only if the date were known. If the Pleiades were
approaching their setting at midnight, it should have been about January, but there is no
reason to suppose that the poet had a particular time of year in mind.
In my Loeb edition I assigned this fragment to the Iliou Persis (F 5⋆). But on closer
consideration it seems more likely that it goes together with F 14 than that the Little Iliad
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gave one astronomical datum and the Iliou Persis another. I envisage something on these
lines:
νὺξ µὲν ἔην µέσση, λαµπρὰ δ᾿ ἐπέτελλε σελήνη,
ταὶ δ᾿ ἤδη δύνοντο Πελειάδες, ἑπτὰ ϕαειναί
῎Ατλαντος κοῦραι. τῶν δ᾿ ἡ µία θυµὸν ὀρίνθη,
Ἠλέκτρη κυανῶπις, ἀπ᾿ οὐρανόθεν καθορῶσα
τὴν δ᾿ ἄτλητον ἄχος πύκασε ϕρένας, οἷον ἔµελλεν
ἔσσεσθαι· ἣ γὰρ τέκε ∆άρδανον ἐκ ∆ιὸς εὐνῆς,
τοῦ δ᾿ ἄρα Τρὼς Ἶλός τε περικλυτὸς ἔκγονοι ἦσαν.
τούνεκ᾿ ὀρίνθη θυµόν, ὅτ᾿ αἶψ᾿ ἤµελλεν ὀλέσθαι
῎Ιλιος ὀϕρυόεσσα θεῶν τ᾿ ἐρικυδέες ἕδραι
καὶ Πρίαµος καὶ λαὸς ἐϋµµελίω Πριάµοιο.
(p.211) ἣ δ᾿ ἄρ᾿ ἀποστρεϕθεῖσα καλύψατο καλὰ πρόσωπα,
µὴ λεύσσοι ∆αναῶν ταχυπώλων ὄβριµα ἔργα·
ἐκ τοῦ δ᾿ οὐκέτι ϕαίνετ᾿ ἐν ἀστράσι νυκτὸς ἀµολγῶι
ἧισι κασιγνήτηις ἐναρίθµιος, ἀλλὰ κέκρυπται.
It may be objected that if the verse about the full moon was immediately followed by one
about the Pleiades setting, the ancient writers who used the first line to calculate the day
of the month in which Troy fell ought to have inferred from the second that the month
was Gamelion (or thereabouts), whereas they actually make it Thargelion or Skirophorion,
four or five months later, when the Pleiades were rising shortly before the sun and their
setting was not visible at all. But this is perhaps asking too much of historians with only a
layman’s knowledge of astronomy. As we have seen, some of them fell down even on the
easier deduction from the line about the moon. I presume that they had some separate
reason for thinking that Troy fell in the early summer, and that they disregarded the
reference to the Pleiades.
Dion. Hal. Ant. 1. 63. 1 says that Ilios was taken on 23 Thargelion (cf. above on F 14) and
that this was seventeen days before the summer solstice. Grafton-Swerdlow (as cited on
F 14, at p. 215) conjecture that the epic contained a statement that ‘for seventeen days
(the Achaeans continued to ravage the city), and on the eighteenth they sailed away, at
the solstice’.59 It is a bold hypothesis, but it would account not only for Dionysius’
seventeen days but for the consensus that Troy fell in a midsummer month.
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The verses about the moon and the Pleiades referred to the situation as the warriors
emerged from the Horse.60 It was the middle of the night, so all was quiet. There was a
bright moon, so they could see their way. Their plan was to go down to the gates, kill the
guards, and let the main army in (cf. Apollod. epit. 5. 20; Virg. Aen. 2. 266f.). Opening the
gates ought not to have been necessary, given that the Trojans had made a large breach
in the wall to get the Horse through; the anomaly suggests that the breaching of the wall
may have been an innovation in the Little Iliad. The Achaeans must have received the
(p.212) go-ahead signal (from Sinon or Helen) hours before, as soon as it was dark.
On the warriors’ exit from the Horse see on Iliou Persis arg. 2b.
F 15–27 Paus. 10. 25. 5–27. 2

Around the middle of the fifth century BCE the Cnidians built a club-room (λέσχη) at
Delphi and commissioned the great painter Polygnotos to decorate its internal walls with
murals of mythological content. Pausanias saw them and devoted a long section of his
Periegesis, nineteen Teubner pages, to a close description of them, in which he compares
the details of the painting with data he found in poetic sources, mainly the early epics. The
mural on the right-hand side of the room was devoted to ῎Ιλιός τε ἑαλωκυῖα καὶ
ἀπόπλους ὁ Ἑλλήνων (10. 25. 2). A page into his account of it, Pausanias cites ‘Lescheos
the son of Aischylinos from Pyrrha in his Iliou Persis’, and thereafter he refers
repeatedly to the evidence of ‘Lescheos’. This is the poet whom others call Lesches;
Pausanias61 has formed a new nominative from the Ionic genitive Λέσχεω that Proclus
uses. (The Pindaric scholiast uses Λέσχου.) But in all other sources Lesches is the author
of the Little Iliad, not the Iliou Persis, which is attributed to Arktinos of Miletus. So is
Pausanias referring to the Iliou Persis under the wrong author’s name, or to the Little
Iliad under the wrong title?
In favour of the first alternative is the fact that at one point (F 20 below) he cites (without
an author’s name) ‘the Iliad known as Little’, and in another part of his work too he cites ὁ
τὰ ἔπη ποιήσας τὴν Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα (3. 26. 9 = F 7 above). Is his practice, then, to cite
the Little Iliad anonymously and the Iliou Persis as by ‘Lescheos’?
(p.213) Against this there are at least two matters on which Pausanias’ ‘Lescheos’
agreed with what is elsewhere attested for the Little Iliad and differed from what is
attested for the Iliou Persis.62 Firstly, in the Iliou Persis, according to Proclus (arg. 2c, =
Apollod. epit. 5. 21), Priam fled to the altar of Zeus Herkeios and Neoptolemos slew him
there. Pausanias, however, states that according to Lescheos Priam was not killed at the
altar-hearth of Zeus Herkeios: he was dragged away from it and killed by Neoptolemos at
the doorway (F 25). This agrees with what is attested for ‘the poet Lesches in the Little
Iliad’ on a group of the Homeric cups. Secondly, in the Iliou Persis (arg. 4a) Astyanax was
killed by Odysseus, whereas in the Little Iliad (F 29) he was killed by Neoptolemos, and
so in ‘Lescheos’ (F 18). For a third possible discrepancy between ‘Lescheos’ and the
Iliou Persis see below on F 17.
On the strength of these agreements I assign all Pausanias’ ‘Lescheos’ citations to the
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Little Iliad, a poem to which we know he had access, whereas we have no proof that he
had the Iliou Persis attributed to Arktinos. If in one place he misnames the Lesches poem
as the Iliou Persis, it may just be a lapsus calami, given that he is focusing on the part of
the epic that dealt with the sack of Troy, and that in the same context he has occasion to
cite Stesichorus’ Iliou Persis (10. 26. 1). Another possibility, canvassed by Nitzsch,63 is
that Pausanias found the last portion of the Little Iliad separately titled as (Lesches’)
Ἰλίου πέρσις (the poet’s name distinguishing it from the Iliou Persis attributed to
Arktinos). Of his two citations of the Little Iliad under that name, one at least (F 7) was
from the earlier part of the epic; the other (F 20) only says that the Trojan woman
Deinome was mentioned in the poem, and she might have appeared in an earlier context
than the sack.
Another possible explanation is that Pausanias is putting together notes made from his
reading at different times. There is another early epic that he usually cites anonymously
but in one place with its reputed author: 9. 5. 8 ποιήσεως Μινυάδος, 10. 28. 2 ποιήσει
Μινυάδι, 28. 7 ἡ Μινυὰς καλουµένη, 31. 3 ἡ Μινυάς, but 4. 33. 7 Πρόδικος Φωκαεύς, εἰ
δὴ τούτου τὰ ἐς τὴν Μινυάδα ἔπη, … ϕησι.
(p.214) F 15. Paus. 10. 25. 5

πλησίον δὲ τοῦ Ἑλένου Μέγης ἐστί· τέτρωται δὲ τὸν βραχίονα ὁ Μέγης, καθὰ δὴ καὶ
Λέσχεως ὁ Αἰσχυλίνου Πυρραῖος ἐν Ἰλίου περσίδι ἐποίησε· τρωθῆναι δὲ ὑπὸ τὴν µάχην
τοῦτον ἣν ἐν τῆι νυκτὶ ἐµαχέσαντο οἱ Τρῶες ὑπὸ Ἀδµήτου ϕησὶ τοῦ Αὐγείου.
The men who had been in the Horse joined up with the main army and invaded the
sleeping Trojans’ houses: Apollod. epit. 5. 20–1 καὶ τὰς πύλας ἀνοίξαντες ὑπεδέξαντο
τοὺς ἀπὸ Τενέδου καταπλεύσαντας. χωρήσαντες δὲ µεθ᾿ ὅπλων εἰς τὴν πόλιν, εἰς τὰς
οἰκίας ἐπερχόµενοι κοιµωµένους ἀνήιρουν; Virg. Aen. 2. 266f. The Trojans roused
themselves and resisted as best they could. Battle raged through the city, and the poet
described many individual encounters, as in a normal daytime battle. Meges is one of the
more prominent warriors in the Iliad. The Admetos who wounds him is killed by
Philoctetes (F 23), probably immediately. He and his father are otherwise unknown.
Another Augeias was grandfather of Meges, so the name might have been invented by
association.
F 16. Paus. 10. 25. 6

γέγραπται δὲ καὶ Λυκοµήδης παρὰ τὸν Μέγητα ὁ Κρέοντος, ἔχων τραῦµα ἐπὶ τῶι
καρπῶι· Λέσχεως οὕτω ϕησὶν αὐτὸν ὑπὸ Ἀγήνορος τρωθῆναι. δῆλα οὖν ὡς ἄλλως γε
οὐκ ἂν ὁ Πολύγνωτος ἔγραψεν οὕτω τὰ ἕλκη σϕίσιν, εἰ µὴ ἐπελέξατο τὴν ποίησιν τοῦ
Λέσχεω.
Lykomedes is a minor figure in the Iliad (9. 84, 12. 366, 17. 345–51, 19. 240). Agenor is
one of the leading Trojans, notable especially for his stand against Achilles in 21. 544–98.
He will be killed by Neoptolemos (F 27), despite being a son of Antenor (cf. on F 22). As
in the case of Meges and Admetos (F 15), we may assume the narrative pattern that A is
wounded by B, who is straight away killed by C. Cf. Fenik 10 (‘chain-reaction’ fight).
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Pausanias’ inference seems valid, that in depicting Meges and Lykomedes with those
particular wounds Polygnotos was following Lesches’ poem.
(p.215) F 17. Paus. 10. 25. 7–8

ἐϕεξῆς δὲ τῆι Ἑλένηι µήτηρ τε ἡ Θησέως ἐν χρῶι κεκαρµένη, καὶ παίδων τῶν Θησέως
∆ηµοϕῶν ἐστι ϕροντίζων, ὅσα γε ἀπὸ τοῦ σχήµατος, εἰ ἀνασώσασθαί οἱ τὴν Αἴθραν
ἐνέσται. … Λέσχεως δὲ ἐς τὴν Αἴθραν ἐποίησεν, ἡνίκα ἡλίσκετο ῎Ιλιον, ὑπεξελθοῦσαν
ἐς τὸ στρατόπεδον αὐτὴν ἀϕικέσθαι τὸ Ἑλλήνων καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν παίδων γνωρισθῆναι
τῶν Θησέως, καὶ ὡς παρ᾿ Ἀγαµέµνονος αἰτήσαι ∆ηµοϕῶν αὐτήν· ὃ δὲ ἐκείνωι µὲν
ἐθέλειν χαρίζεσθαι, ποιήσειν δὲ οὐ πρότερον ἔϕη πρὶν Ἑλένην πεῖσαι· ἀποστείλαντι δὲ
αὐτῶι κήρυκα ἔδωκεν Ἑλένη τὴν χάριν. ἔοικεν οὖν ὁ Εὐρυβάτης ὁ ἐν τῆι γραϕῆι (cf. 25.
4) ἀϕῖχθαί τε ὡς τὴν Ἑλένην τῆς Αἴθρας ἕνεκα καὶ τὰ ἐντεταλµένα ὑπὸ τοῦ
Ἀγαµέµνονος ἀπαγγέλλειν.
Aithra, the aged mother of Theseus, was supposed to have been brought to Troy by
Helen as one of her servants; she had been captured from Attica by the Dioskouroi when
they retrieved their sister, whom Theseus had kidnapped (Alcm. PMGF 21; Hellan. 168c
Fowler). She appears in the Iliad in what is surely an interpolated line, 3. 144.64 Her
grandsons Demophon and Akamas, not mentioned in the Iliad, were supposed to have
gone to Troy to recover her (‘Homer’ ap. [Demosth.] 60. 29, quoted on Iliou Persis F 6;
cf. Hellan. 143 F.).
Her recovery was described in the Iliou Persis, but apparently not in quite the same way
as above. According to Pausanias’ ‘Lescheos’ Aithra made her own way out of Troy and
came to the Greeks’ στρατόπεδον, i.e. the encampment to which they had returned after
completing the sack of the city. Theseus’ sons recognized her, and Demophon asked
Agamemnon for possession of her. Agamemnon agreed subject to Helen’s permission
and sent a herald to Helen (who was in Menelaos’ hands by now) to ask for it.65 In the
Iliou Persis, as I shall argue (on arg. 4b, after arg. 2d), the Theseids found Aithra in Troy
during the sack and took her back to the ships.
(p.216) F 18. Paus. 10. 25. 9

γέγραπται µὲν Ἀνδροµάχη, καὶ ὁ παῖς οἱ προσέστηκεν ἑλόµενος τοῦ µαστοῦ. τούτωι
Λέσχεως ῥιϕέντι ἀπὸ τοῦ πύργου συµβῆναι λέγει τὴν τελευτήν, οὐ µὴν ὑπὸ δόγµατός γε
τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ἀλλ᾿ ἰδίαι Νεοπτόλεµον αὐτόχειρα ἐθελῆσαι γενέσθαι.
We have in F 29 (below) the verses relating the event. Pausanias emphasizes that the
throwing of the child from the walls was Neoptolemos’ personal initiative, not (as in Eur.
Tro. 721–5, 1122) a measure decided on by the Achaeans in debate. That Astyanax was
to suffer such a fate is hinted at in Il. 22. 63f., 24. 734f.66 In the Iliou Persis (arg. 4a) it was
Odysseus who killed him, probably by the same means, as he does in Statius, Silv. 2. 1.
145, and Triph. 644–6.
Three Attic vases of the first half of the fifth century, LIMC Andromache (I) 46–8, show
Andromache brandishing a pestle in a furious attempt to protect her young son. The
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earliest, a cup by the Brygos Painter, is discussed by Robert (1881), 62–79, who
suggests that the motif came from Stesichorus. O. Rossbach, NJb. 143 (1891), 81f.,
argues for an epic source. Andromache’s brave resistance may perhaps have been
portrayed in this way in the Little Iliad or Iliou Persis.
F 19. Paus. 10. 26. 1

Λέσχεως δὲ καὶ ἔπη τὰ Κύπρια (F 28) διδόασιν Εὐρυδίκην γυναῖκα Αἰνείαι.
Pausanias contrasts the testimony of these epic poets with the commoner identification of
Aeneas’ wife as Kreousa. Cf. Robert (1920–6, 1517.
F 20. Paus. 10. 26. 2

γεγραµµέναι δὲ ἐπὶ κρήνης ὑπὲρ ταύτας ∆ηϊνόµη τε καὶ Μητιόχη καὶ Πεῖσίς ἐστι καὶ
Κλεοδίκη. τούτων ἐν Ἰλιάδι καλουµένηι Μικρα̃ ι µόνης ἐστὶ τὸ ὄνοµα τῆς ∆ηϊνόµης.
We know nothing of any of these women.
(p.217) F 21. Paus. 10. 26. 4

Ἀστύνοον δέ, οὗ δὴ ἐποιήσατο καὶ Λέσχεως µνήµην, πεπτωκότα ἐς γόνυ ὁ Νεοπτόλεµος
ξίϕει παίει.
A Trojan Astynoos appears at Il. 15. 455; Diomedes had killed another at 5. 144.
F 22. Paus. 10. 26. 8

Λέσχεως δὲ τετρωµένον τὸν Ἑλικάονα ἐν τῆι νυκτοµαχίαι γνωρισθῆναί τε ὑπὸ
Ὀδυσσέως καὶ ἐξαχθῆναι ζῶντα ἐκ τῆς µάχης ϕησίν.
Helikaon was a son of Antenor, married to a daughter of Priam (Il. 3. 123). Odysseus
saves him because of the favour that Antenor’s family enjoys with the Achaeans.
Polygnotos showed their house door hung with a leopard skin as a sign to the Achaeans
to spare it (Paus. 10. 27. 3, cf. Soph. fr. 11 and Antenoridai arg., etc.). Welcker ii. 247
assumes that the story came in the Little Iliad. See also on Iliou Persis arg. 2c. On the
motif cf. West (1997), 488f.
F 23. Paus. 10. 27. 1

νεκροὶ δὲ ὁ µὲν γυµνὸς Πῆλις ὄνοµα ἐπὶ τὸν νῶτόν ἐστιν ἐρριµµένος, ὑπὸ δὲ τὸν Πῆλιν
Ἠιονεύς τε κεῖται καὶ Ἄδµητος, ἐνδεδυκότες ἔτι τοὺς θώρακας. καὶ αὐτῶν Λέσχεως
Ἠιονέα ὑπὸ Νεοπτολέµου, τὸν δὲ ὑπὸ Φιλοκτήτου ϕησὶν ἀποθανεῖν τὸν Ἄδµητον.
For Admetos cf. above on F 15. Eioneus is equally unknown to the Iliad.
F 24. Paus. 10. 27. 1

ἀϕίκετο µὲν δὴ ἐπὶ τὸν Κασσάνδρας ὁ Κόροιβος γάµον· ἀπέθανε δέ, ὡς µὲν ὁ πλείων
λόγος, ὑπὸ Νεοπτολέµου, Λέσχεως δὲ ὑπὸ ∆ιοµήδους ἐποίησεν.
Koroibos was a son of the Phrygian leader Mygdon mentioned at Il. 3. 186. Virgil, Aen. 2.
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341–6, says that he came to Troy insano Cassandrae incensus amore, | et gener auxilium
Priamo Phrygibusque ferebat; Quintus 13. 176f. says he promised to drive the Achaeans
away, and agrees with the Little Iliad in having him killed by Diomedes, while in Virgil (2.
424) his slayer is neither Diomedes nor (p.218) Neoptolemos but Peneleos. In P.
Rylands 22 he is killed by Odysseus and Diomedes on their Palladion expedition. His
foolish over-confidence may underlie his reputation as an idiot, for which see Pfeiffer on
Call. fr. 587; H. Langerbeck, HSCP 63 (1958), 44f.
F 25. Paus. 10. 27. 2

εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ ἐπάνω τοῦ Κοροίβου Πρίαµος καὶ Ἀξίων τε καὶ Ἀγήνωρ. Πρίαµον δὲ οὐκ
ἀποθανεῖν ἔϕη Λέσχεως ἐπὶ τῆι ἐσχάραι τοῦ Ἑρκείου, ἀλλὰ ἀποσπασθέντα ἀπὸ τοῦ
βωµοῦ πάρεργον τῶι Νεοπτολέµωι πρὸς ταῖς τῆς οἰκίας γενέσθαι θύραις.
Homeric cups MB 27–29 (~30) (pp. 94–6 Sinn)
κατὰ ποιητὴν Λέσχην ἐκ τῆς Μικρα̃ ς Ἰλιάδος· καταϕυγόντος τοῦ Πριάµου ἐπὶ τὸν
βωµὸν τοῦ Ἑρκείου ∆ιός, ἀποσπάσας ὁ Νεοπτόλεµος ἀπὸ τοῦ βωµοῦ πρὸς τῆ(ι) οἰκίαι
κατέσϕαξεν.
On Priam’s end see above in the general discussion of Pausanias’ Lescheos references.
His death in the doorway is anticipated in Il. 22. 66–71.67
F 26. Paus. 10. 27. 2

Ἀξίονα δὲ παῖδα εἶναι Πριάµου Λέσχεως καὶ ἀποθανεῖν αὐτὸν ὑπὸ Εὐρυπύλου τοῦ
Εὐαίµονός ϕησι.
Axion appears in Hyginus’ list of Priam’s sons (Fab. 90) but is not known from elsewhere.
Eurypylos is one of the more significant Achaean heroes in the Iliad.
F 27. Paus. 10. 27. 2

τοῦ Ἀγήνορος δὲ κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν ποιητὴν Νεοπτόλεµος αὐτόχειρ ἐστί.
Cf. Tabula Veronensis II (9D) [Νεοπτόλεµος ἀ]π[οκ]τείνει Πρίαµον καὶ Ἀγήνορα,

Πολυποίτης Ἐχεῖον, Θρασυµήδης Νι〈κ〉αίνετον, Φιλοκτήτης ∆ιοπ(ε)ίθην, ∆ιο[µήδης …
See above on F 16.
(p.219) F 28. Sch. Ar. Lys. 155, “ὁ γῶν Μενέλαος τα̃ ς Ἑλένας τὰ µα̃ λά παι | γυµνα̃ ς
παραυιδὼν ἐξέβαλ᾿, οἰῶ, τὸ ξίϕος“
ἡ ἱστορία παρὰ Ἰβύκωι (PMGF 296)· τὰ δὲ αὐτὰ καὶ Λέσχης ὁ Πυρραῖος ἐν τῆι Μικρα̃ ι
Ἰλιάδι.
It was related earlier that Helen had married Deiphobos. He could not have been
ignored in the sack, and it may be assumed that his death at Menelaos’ hands was
narrated, as in the Iliou Persis (arg. 2d). Menelaos was minded to kill Helen as well, but at
the last moment he was disarmed by her beauty. The story is recalled by Ibycus l.c. and
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Eur. Andr. 627–31, and apparently already represented on the famous relief pithos from
Mykonos (second quarter of the seventh century).68 If Helen uncovered her breasts on
purpose, the motif recalls Hekabe’s exposure of hers for a different purpose in Il. 22. 80.
For the disarming effect of female beauty cf. on Aethiopis arg. 1d (Penthesileia).
Day Twelve
F 29–30 Tzetz. in Lyc. 1268 (cf. 1232)

Λέσχης δὲ ὁ τὴν Μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα πεποιηκὼς Ἀνδροµάχην καὶ Αἰνείαν αἰχµαλώτους ϕησὶ
δοθῆναι τῶι Ἀχιλλέως υἱῶι Νεοπτολέµωι, καὶ ἀπαχθῆναι σὺν αὐτῶι εἰς Φαρσαλίαν τὴν
Ἀχιλλέως πατρίδα. ϕησὶ δὲ οὑτωσί·
αὐτὰρ Ἀχιλλῆος µεγαθύµου ϕαίδιµος υἱός
Ἑκτορέην ἄλοχον κάταγεν κοίλας ἐπὶ νῆας·
παῖδα δ᾿ ἑλὼν ἐκ κόλπου ἐϋπλοκάµοιο τιθήνης
ῥῖψε ποδὸς τεταγὼν ἀπὸ πύργου, τὸν δὲ πεσόντα
ἔλλαβε πορϕύρεος θάνατος καὶ µοῖρα κραταιή.…
(30)
ἐκ δ᾿ ἕλετ᾿ Ἀνδροµάχην, ἠΰζωνον παράκοιτιν
῞Εκτορος, ἥν τέ οἱ αὐτῶι ἀριστῆες Παναχαιῶν
δῶκαν ἔχειν ἐπίηρον ἀµειβόµενοι γέρας ἀνδρί·
αὐτόν τ᾿ Ἀγχίσαο κλυτὸν γόνον ἱπποδάµοιο
Αἰνείαν ἐν νηυσὶν ἐβήσατο ποντοπόροισιν
ἐκ πάντων ∆αναῶν ἀγέµεν γέρας ἔξοχον ἄλλων.
2 αὐτοὶ Wilamowitz
(p.220) Tzetzes quotes all eleven lines; the last six (F 30) are also quoted by sch. Eur.
Andr. 14, and there ascribed to Simias’ Gorgon (fr. 6 Powell). But the verses are archaic
in style, nothing like Simias, and the attribution must be mistaken.69 Presumably a
quotation from Simias has fallen out. It is clear, though, that the lines do not continue the
five that precede them in Tzetzes. There are two excerpts from the Little Iliad, the first
telling how Neoptolemos took Andromache to the ships, the second how at the
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subsequent division of booty both she and Aeneas were awarded to him. The second
must have stood in the part of the poem corresponding to Τρωιάδες in Aristotle’s list of
tragedies.
F 29 looks as if it may come from a passage detailing what a series of Achaean leaders did
when the fighting was concluded. If this very perfunctory piece of narrative was typical of
the Little Iliad, it helps us to understand how so much material was covered in four
books.
F 30 gives an idiosyncratic account of what happened to Aeneas. The idea of such a hero
being taken away as a prisoner of war is very un-epic (Schmidt 47). In the Iliou Persis
(arg. 1d) he withdrew to Ida before the sack; this connects with the tradition of his
Dardanian dynasty enduring in the Troad (Il. 20. 302–8, Hymn. Aphr. 196f.). But that
seems not to have been a fact to be reckoned with from our poet’s viewpoint.70 From at
least the sixth century there were stories that Aeneas migrated westwards into Europe
and founded new cities.71 The regions with which he is associated include Thrace and
Macedonia; his name seems related to Thracian toponyms such as Ainos and Aineia, and
he was certainly linked with them a posteriori.72 According to the Nostoi (arg. 4)
Neoptolemos, making (p.221) his way home overland, passed through Thrace, meeting
Odysseus at Maroneia, and continued to the land of the Molossians, where he became
king. There is no sign of his having had Aeneas with him on that journey; in Apollod. epit. 6.
12 he is accompanied by Helenos. But it may be significant that according to Hellanicus
(fr. 84 Fowler) Aeneas somehow reached the Molossians (who were presumably under
Neoptolemos’ dominion) and went from there to Italy with Odysseus. See further D.
Canavero, ‘Enea e Andromaca in Epiro’, Acme 55 (2002), 151–64, esp. 156–64.
Notes on the language of the two fragments:
29.
1. Ἀχιλλῆος µεγαθύµου ϕαίδιµος υἱός = Od. 3. 189 (Nostoi material). The
formula must be of recent creation, since Neoptolemos was a new
character, though it is built from traditional elements.
2. κάταγεν κοίλας ἐπὶ νῆας ≈ Il. 5. 26, 21. 32.
3. ≈ Il. 6. 467 ἂψ δ᾿ ὁ πάϊς πρὸς κόλπον ἐϋζώνοιο τιθήνης.
4. ≈Il. 1. 591 ῥῖψε ποδὸς τεταγὼν ἀπὸ βήλου, 24. 735 (of Astyanax) ῥίψει
χειρὸς ἑλὼν ἀπὸ πύργου. Artists from the late eighth century onward
often show a warrior holding a child up by the leg or ankle, evidently
following the epic phrase: LIMC Astyanax (I) 26–7; Fittschen 184;
Ahlberg-Cornell 81f., 328 fig. 124.
5. = Il. 5. 83, al.
30.
1. ἐκ δ᾿ ἕλετ : cf. Il. 9. 272. On the neologism ἠΰζωνον see intro. 7.
2. ἥν τε: an irregular use of τε where the relative has specific reference.
Cf. C. J. Ruijgh, Autour de “te épique” (Amsterdam 1971), 916, ‘l’emploi
de ὅς τε n’est pas régulier: il s’agit d’un fait temporaire’.
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ἀριστῆες Παναχαιῶν: Il. 10. 1, al.

3. ἐπίηρον: on this form see again intro. 7.
4. Ἀγχίσαο κλυτὸν γόνον ἱπποδάµοιο is untraditional; on the prolixity of
the combination, typical for the Cycle, cf. Curti 38. The κλ- of κλυτός fails
to make position, as it always does in Homer (though in the Odyssey short
syllables necessarily stand before κλεηδόνι, Κλυταιµήστρη). γόνος is
restricted in the Iliad to sons of deities, though the Odyssey is freer in this
respect. ἱππόδαµος is not otherwise used of Anchises.
5. ἐν νηυσὶν … ποντοπόροισιν: Il. 13. 628, al.; Od. 15. 284 ἂν δὲ … νηὸς
ἐβήσετο ποντοπόροιο. There is no need to consider (p.222) E.
Schwartz’s conjecture of ἐµήσατο for ἐβήσατο (Scholia in Euripidem, ii.
251).
6. ἐκ πάντων ∆αναῶν ≈Il. 1. 90, 16. 85.
ἔξοχον ἄλλων: Il. 6. 194, al.
F 31: see above after F 4.
F 32: see above before F 3.

It is likely enough that the Little Iliad included other celebrated episodes connected with
the sack of Troy, such as the sparing of the Antenorids (cf. F 22) and the Locrian Ajax’s
assault on Cassandra in Athena’s shrine. The sacrifice of Polyxena is perhaps more
doubtful in view of the fact that Aristotle does not include a Polyxena in his list of potential
Little Iliad tragedies, despite Sophocles’ having written a tragedy on that theme.
If the poem ended with the Achaeans sailing away, we should expect it to have contained
some anticipatory allusion to the troubles that lay ahead for certain of the heroes.
Notes:
(1 ) For the use of µέγας and µικρός in titles see further my Hesiod. Works and Days
(Oxford 1978), 22 n. 4.
(2) West (1999), 365=(2011b), 410, cf. (2001), 6f.
(3) G. F. Else, Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument (Cambridge, Mass. 1957), 588–93. F.
Ritter in 1839 had condemned everything from τοιγαροῦν on. Hermann in 1802 had
diagnosed πλέον and καὶ Σίνων καὶ Τρωιάδες as later additions by Aristotle to his own
text; similarly D. de Montmollin, La Poétique d’Aristote: texte primitif et additions
ultérieures (Neuchâtel 1951), 91–3.
(4) So J. Vahlen, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Österreichischen Akademie der

Wissenschaften in Wien 56 (1867), 283f.=Beiträge zu Aristoteles Poetik (Leipzig 1914),
163.
(5) For this restoration, rather than κα[τὰ Λέσχην Πυρραῖον, see VM 199.
(6) Cf. Welcker, ii. 270, ‘Doch ist auch Neoptolemos … offenbar nicht der Held der
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Kleinen Ilias; sondern es scheint daß, wie von Achilleus in der Ilias Alles, so von ihm
nichts abhängt außer dem was er unmittelbar thut. Desto mehr ist durch das Ganze die
List und die aufopfernde rastlose Thätigkeit des Odysseus verflochten, er zeigt sich als
die Seele des Kriegs, als der Günstling der Dichtung.’
(7) Cf. Welcker, ii. 272–6; 272, ‘Aber Odysseus ist nicht bloß für die Handlung oder den
Zusammenhang des Ganzes die Hauptperson, sondern es verräth sich auch hier und da
in der Behandlung der Geschichte ein heitrer, dem komischen verwandter Sinn.’
(8) H. Weil. RPh 11 (1887), 3, ‘un tel début ne se comprendrait guère, si le sort définitif
d’Ilion n’eût pas fait partie du plan du poème’.
(9) I am to some extent anticipated by Nitzsch (1831), 50: ‘Ipsum exordium, si quis
conjecturae locus est, illis duobus quos legimus: ῎Ιλιον ἀείδω–θεράποντες ῎Αρηος,
subjunctum habuit recensum eorum, qui tum jam ceciderant Graecorum fortissimi,
similem fortasse Nestoris sermoni Odyss. γ 109. et recentiorum epicorum locis, qui illum
imitati esse putantur, Quinti et Tryphiodori (v. 17, et Wernickium p. 60 sq.).… Aut
simplicius Lesches omnino ortam inter illos litem in quandam similtudinem exordii Iliadis
vertit.’
(10) Pind. Nem. 8. 26; Soph. Aj. 445–9, 1135f., 1243; Antisth. Ajax 1, Od. 1; red-figure
vases (Gantz 633). Cf. Apollod. epit. 5. 6 κρινάντων τῶν Τρώων, ὡς δέ τινες, τῶν
συµµάχων.
(11 ) Cf. Od. 5. 309f. It is the other way round in sch. Od. 5. 310, Ov. Met. 13. 282–5, and
the epic fragment P. Oxy. 2510=Bernabé’s Il. Parv. fr. dub. 32, which cannot therefore, as
Lobel saw, be from either the Aethiopis or the Little Iliad; B. Bravo’s attempt in QUCC
67 (2001), 49–114, to reconcile the text with the standard version of the episode is
tendentious. It would in any case be highly unlikely that a fourthcentury papyrus should
preserve Cyclic epic.
(12) The sentence in angle brackets is supplied from Zenob. vulg. 1. 43, who was using
the full Apollodorus (Wagner 214). Sophocles (Aj. 97–100, 238–44, 302–4) evidently
reflects the account in the Cyclic poem.
(13) F. A. Wolf, Prolegomena in Homerum (Halle 1795), cap. xi n. 7, ‘aliquando Iliadem

parvam significari putabam’. B. Marzullo, Maia 6 (1953), 74, suggested ἐν τῆι 〈Μικρα̃ ι〉
Ἰλιάδι or ἐν τῆι Ἰλιάδι 〈τῆι Μικρα̃ ι λεγοµένηι〉. There are similar expressions in Sappho
44. 12, ϕάµα δ᾿ ἦλθε κατὰ στράτον; Hdt. 9. 100. 1 ϕήµη τε ἐσέπτατο ἐς τὸ στρατόπεδον
πα̃ ν … ἡ δὲ ϕήµη διῆλθέ σϕι ὧδε, ὡς.…
(14) The idea that the denial of cremation was a dishonour for Ajax made less sense at
Athens, where inhumation was normal, and so Sophocles modified it into a complete denial
of burial (Aj. 1047ff.), a sentence which Agamemnon is later persuaded to repeal. I
believe that this was the source of the motif of Polyneikes’ denied burial in the Antigone.
(15) Cf. E. Rohde, Psyche (9th German edn., Tübingen 1925), i. 217 n. 5 (= Eng. (London–
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New York 1925), 187 n. 33); Frazer ii. 219–21; J. N. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept
of the Soul (Princeton 1983), 96.
(16) F. W. Schneidewin, Phil. 4 (1849), 647: ‘Ich denke, nach Odysseus siege im
waffengericht und der traurigen entleibung des Aias entstand niedergeschlagenheit und
zwist im heere: man verzweifelte, Troja noch erobern zu können. Wie immer in solchen
nöthen wird Kalchas befragt: er enthüllt, Helenos kenne die schick-salssprüche, an denen
Trojas fall hänge. Odysseus, jetzt schuld an der noth, erbietet sich, Helenos einzufangen.’
(17) Cf. Achilles’ ambush of Troilos (Cypria arg. 11e/F 25⋆) and his nocturnal capture of
Lykaon (Il. 21. 36f.). According to Apollod. epit. 5. 9 Helenos had left Troy in dudgeon
because the Trojans had given Helen to Deiphobos. But that happened only after
Philoctetes had come and killed Paris; it had been Calchas who had revealed that Troy
could only be taken with the bow of Heracles, which had prompted the fetching of
Philoctetes (5. 8). This is incompatible with the sequence of events in the Little Iliad,
where it was Helenos who made the prophecy (below, arg. 2b).
(18) Servius on Aen. 2. 166 has Helenos caught at Arisbe, but Odysseus can hardly have
gone as far as that in a night excursion.
(19) Apollodorus says that Odysseus and Diomedes both went to Lemnos, and Welcker ii.
238 suggested that ‘with Odysseus’ had fallen out of Proclus’ text. But Apollodorus is
probably adapting his narrative to the version of Euripides (TrGF v. 829 test. ivc, cf. Soph.
Phil. 570, 592; Hyg. Fab. 102; Wagner 217). Pindar (Pyth. 1. 52) already speaks of plural
heroes going to fetch Philoctetes.
(20) In Od. 11. 508–9 too it is Odysseus who brings him. In Apollodorus Phoenix is sent to
Skyros with Odysseus: that reflects Sophocles’ version (Phil. 344; Skyrioi fr. 557?;
already on a vase of c.470, Gantz 640). If Epic. adesp. 17 W. ἔπλεον εἰς Σκῦρον
∆ολοπηΐδα comes from the Little Iliad and refers to the fetching of Neoptolemos, and if
the verb is 3 pl. not 1 sg., the subject could be simply Odysseus and his rowers.
(21 ) F. W. Schneidewin, Phil. 4 (1849), 648, ‘Allein das gleichzeitige aussenden beider so
oft zu gemeinsamer tat gesellten helden konnte die poesie natürlich nur nach einander
erzählen’. Schneidewin did not take into account the greater distance of Skyros, which
made it natural that Odysseus would not return from his mission until a day or two after
Diomedes had brought Philoctetes.
(22) Cf. Pind. Ol. 8. 31–46 with sch. 41a, 44b–d, 53e, 59, 60a–c; Philostr. Jun. Imag. 2 p.
394. 2 Kayser λογίου δὲ ἐς τοὺς ῞Ελληνας ἐµπεσόντος ὡς οὐκ ἄλλωι τωι ἁλωτὸς ἔσοιτο
ἡ Τροία πλὴν τοῖς Αἰακίδαις, στέλλεται ὁ Φοίνιξ ἐς τὴν Σκῦρον ἀνάξων τὸν παῖδα;
Serv. Aen. 2. 13. There may be a hint of an oracle about the vulnerable section of the wall
in Il. 6. 438.
(23) According to a few authors Peleus too took part in the enterprise: Pind. fr. 172, Eur.
Andr. 797, Q.S. 1. 503–5.
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(24) Cf. Soph. Phil. 1439f. τὸ δεύτερον γὰρ τοῖς ἐµοῖς αὐτὴν χρεών | τόξοις ἁλῶναι.
(25) If the poet agreed with the author of the Hesiodic Catalogue that Patroklos was also
a grandson of Aiakos, he might have named him as well.
(26) West (2011a), 359.
(27) West (2007), 429.
(28) In Apollodorus’ account Machaon has been killed by Penthesileia, and Philoctetes is
healed by Podaleirios; the first datum probably comes from the Aethiopis (arg. 1b n.),
and the second is a corollary. In the Little Iliad Machaon is to be killed by Eurypylos (F
7).
(29) Tzetzes follows Dictys’ account in Posthomerica 585–95 and in his commentary on
Lyc. 64 and 911. Lycophron himself (914f.) says, no doubt on ancient authority, that
Philoctetes’ arrow was guided by Athena.
(30) For the motif of marking out the area for the duel cf. Il. 3. 315; West (2007), 487.
(31 ) Cf. C. Segal, The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad (Mnem. Suppl. 17,
Leiden 1971).
(32) P. Rylands 22. 9 has been supplemented Ἀ[χιλλεὺς δὲ αὐτῶι ϕαντάζε]ται παρὰ τῶι
[τύµβωι, but this is very speculative. In Dictys 4. 21 Neoptolemos goes with the
Myrmidons to the tomb to lament, makes a hair-offering, and spends the night there.
(33) Anderson 60 n. 21 wrongly says that this is in Proclus.
(34) Nireus: Hyg. Fab. 113, Dictys 4. 17, Q.S. 6. 372. Peneleos: Dictys 4. 17, Paus. 9. 5.
15, Q.S. 7. 104. In Quintus Machaon is killed while trying to avenge Nireus, and Müller
111 conjectured that this was so in the Little Iliad.
(35) δουράτεος, used of the Horse also by Triphiodoros and Quintus, may have been the
word used in the Little Iliad and Iliou Persis. Outside hexameter verse it is regularly
δούρειος or (rarely) δούριος. Cf. Wackernagel (1916), 171; N. Dunbar on Ar. Av. 1128.
(36) Further passages in Robert (1920–6, 1227 n. 1; M. Campbell, A Commentary on

Quintus Smyrnaeus Posthomerica XII (Leiden 1981), 37.
(37) In Q.S. 12. 106–16 Athena appears to Epeios in a dream, bids him build the Horse,
and promises to assist him in his labour. He wakes ‘chortling in his heart’ and devotes
himself single-mindedly to the task.
(38) LIMC Equus Troianus 22–4; Fittschen 182f.; Ahlberg-Cornell 77f., 325f. figs. 116–18.
(39) The felling of timber on Ida is also referred to by Petr. Sat. 89. 4, Stat. Silv. 1. 1. 10,
Triph. 59f.
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(40) δέκτης occurs in the sense of ‘beggar’ in a Christian funerary poem of the fifth
century ce, SEG 39. 449. 36; the author no doubt derived it from the Odyssey passage.
(41 ) He must have been so portrayed in the lost play Πτωχεία implied by the Aristotelian
list of Little Iliad tragedies. So also [Eur.] Rhes. 503, 715; Apollod. epit. 5. 13; sch. Eur.
Hec. 240.
(42) [Eur.] Rhes. 504f., 717–19; Polyaen. 1 proem. 9; sch. Lyc. 785. The further details of
Odysseus’ appearance given in Eur. Hec. 240f. and [Eur.] Rhes. 711 and 716 may be of
tragic origin.
(43) Cf. Epicharm. 97. 14–16; Eur. Hec. 239; [Eur.] Rhes. 505; sch. Lyc. 780; Plaut. Bacch.
951.
(44) Hipp. Ref. 6. 19. 1 καὶ γὰρ τὸν δούρειον ἵππον ἀλληγορεῖ, καὶ τὴν Ἑλένην ἅµα τῆι
λαµπάδι; Epiphan. Panarion i. 241 Holl αὕτη γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ῎Εννοια ἡ παρὰ Ὁµήρωι Ἑλένη
καλουµένη. καὶ τούτου ἕνεκεν ἀναγκάζεται αὐτὴν διαγράϕειν Ὅµηρος ἐπὶ πύργου
ἑστηκέναι καὶ διὰ λαµπάδος ὑποϕαίνειν τοῖς ῞Ελλησι τὴν κατὰ τῶν Φρυγῶν
ἐπιβουλήν. Cf. also Hyg. Fab. 249.
(45) Schneidewin’s argument, published in an out-of-the-way place, was transcribed by G.

Knaack, Rh. Mus. 48 (1893), 632–4. Cf. O. Immisch, Rh. Mus. 52 (1897), 127–9, who
favoured Stesichorus as the source; Gerlaud 33f., who refers also to a Pompeian fresco.
Triphiodorus 510–21 combines both versions: he has Sinon signalling from Sigeion, Helen
from her chamber in Troy.
(46) Soph. fr. 367 στενὴν δ᾿ ἔδυµεν ψαλίδα κοὐκ ἀβόρβορον, ‘we entered a narrow vault
not free from mire’; sch. Ar. Vesp. 351; Robert (1920–6, 1233 n. 2.
(47) See Hainsworth’s note on Il. 10. 243.
(48) So Conon (FGrHist 26 F 1. 34. 2), Apollod. epit. 5. 10, P. Rylands 22 (cf. above on arg.
2b), and Serv. Aen. 2. 166. In Apollodorus Helenos also tells the Achaeans that they must
obtain the bones of Pelops. It is then nonchalantly stated that they did so, although
according to other authors the bones were located in Elis (Lyc. 54 with sch., Paus. 5. 13.
4). This makes little sense. However, there was another version according to which the
Palladion itself was made from Pelops’ bones (Dionysius of Samos FGrHist 15 F 3). The
only conceivable point of this is to combine the acquisition of the bones with that of the
Palladion. One may surmise that there was some account according to which the
Achaeans were told they needed to get the bones of Pelops, and they were in
understandable perplexity until it was somehow revealed that this meant, not a journey
to Elis, but stealing the Palladion from Troy. It remains obscure why the bones of Pelops
should come into the story at all.
(49) Antisthenes (Od. 3) just says it was κεχρηµένον. He represents the Palladion as
having been originally stolen from Greece by Paris.
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Little Iliad
(50) Revue Belge de philologie et d’histoire 5 (1926), 312–22; id. (1928), 355f. Wagner
230 (and NJb. 145 (1892), 251 n. 19) had decided that the numeral must be corrupt but
did not venture an emendation.
(51 ) Noted by Nitzsch (1831), 56f.
(52) Noted by Welcker ii. 267f.
(53) Didymus, moreover, says that the lines were absent from most copies. Cf. F. Pontani,
Scholia Graeca in Odysseam ii (Rome 2010), 265f. with bibliography.
(54) Cf. Bethe 260 n. 18. Wüllner 90 was tempted to suggest (‘paene dixerim’) that 285–9
were adapted from the Iliou Persis. It would be possible that 285–8, with δέ µιν in place
of δὲ σέ γ᾿, stood in one of the Cyclic epics.
(55) Welcker ii. 244f. argues that the humorous episode suits the tone of the Little Iliad
rather than the Iliou Persis. Triph. 178 gives Antiklos the patronymic Ortygides, and
when he endangers the mission Odysseus’ smothering hand stifles him to death (cf. Ov.
Ibis 567), so that he has to be left entombed in the Horse (178f., 478–86).
(56) Cf. Severyns (1928), 336, ‘A quel auteur cyclique attribuer cette ϕωνῶν µίµησις,
sinon à celui qui imagina de montrer des jeunes filles troyennes bavardant, près des
murailles de la ville, sur les mérites de deux chefs achéens, de peindre un Ajax tuant, en
sa folie, des troupeaux de moutons, de présenter un Ménélas, jaloux, cherchant la
maison de Déiphobe? A qui, sinon à Leschès, l’auteur de la Petite Iliade?’ The story
appears also in Apollod. epit. 5. 19 and Triph. 454–97, but their only source is probably
the Odyssey.
(57) Cf. Virg. Aen. 2. 21 est in conspectu Tenedos.
(58) Plaut. Bacch. 938, Apollod. epit. 5. 19, Triph. 510. A fire signal there might also have
served as a guide to the ships as they landed in the dark (Gantz 650).
(59) For the seventeen-day period they compare Od. 5. 278, 7. 267, 24. 63.
(60) Tzetzes in Lyc. 344 and Posthom. 720f. links the verse with Sinon’s raising his torch
signal, but this seems to be his own combination, not based on any ancient authority. If
the signal had not been sent till midnight, the Achaeans would not have reached Troy
much before dawn.
(61 ) Or so it is usually assumed, and the assumption is in line with Pausanias’ wilful
independence in matters of literary history. O. Immisch, Rh. Mus. 48 (1893), 290–8,
argued unconvincingly that Lescheos was the correct and original form of the name. W.
Schmid, ibid. 626–8, tacitly refuting Immisch, nevertheless thought that Pausanias was too
well educated to misconstrue an Ionic -εω genitive and that some earlier writer must
have created the nominative in -εως. O. Regenbogen, RE Supp. viii. 1056, does not
believe in a mistake by Pausanias, ‘eher schon an eine pseudo-ionische Preziosität, so wie
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Little Iliad
man das Ionische damals auffaßte, wofür die medizinische Schrift des Aretaios einen
Hinweis geben kann’. On this subject see J. L. Lightfoot, Lucian On the Syrian Goddess
(Oxford 2003), 139–42. Pausanias, however, does not affect Ionic.
(62) Nitzsch (1831), 47f.; Welcker i. 202f.
(63) Nitzsch (1831), 48; (1852), 50. Cf. T. Tyrwhitt, Aristotelis de Poetica liber (Oxford
1792), 189; Heyne 313; Welcker i. 201; Rzach 2405. 51, 2421. 20; Kullmann 219 n. 1.
(64) See West (2001), 185f.
(65) Similarly Dionysios Kyklographos FGrHist 15 F 5, where Demophon asks the Atreidai
and Menelaos sends Talthybios to ask Helen. In Polygnotos’ painting a man labelled as
Eurybates was sitting near Helen (10. 25. 4), and Pausanias guessed that this was
Eurybates the herald of Odysseus.
(66) Aristarchus, typically, took the latter passage to be the origin of the story: sch. 735a
ὅτι ἐντεῦθεν κινηθέντες οἱ µεθ᾿ Ὅµηρον ποιηταὶ ῥιπτόµενον κατὰ τοῦ τείχους ὑπὸ τῶν
Ἑλλήνων εἰσάγουσι τὸν Ἀστυάνακτα.
(67) The motif of dragging an old man to the threshold of his house reappears in a ‘folk
tale’ discussed by Hansen 117–19. But I cannot see its relevance here.
(68) LIMC Helene 225; Fittschen 185; Ahlberg-Cornell 78–80, 327 fig. 120.
(69) H. Fränkel, De Simia Rhodio (Diss. Göttingen 1915), 37–40; Debiasi 180–5. Full
discussion and bibliography: M. Perale in Ettore Cingano (ed.), Tra panellenismo e
tradizioni locali. Generi poetici e storiografia (Alessandria 2010), 497–518, who takes a
different view.
(70) Cf. Welcker ii. 266, ‘Vermuthlich war die Herrschaft der Aeneaden in Dardania und
selbst in der Sage nicht mehr von Bedeutung’; cf. 147 n. 83, 224. Gabriella Vanotti in
Mele et al., 130, suggests that Aeneas’ removal from the region was designed to make
space for Lesbian claims to it: ‘la leggendaria partenza di Enea dalla Troade, unitamente
alla morte violenta del figlio di Ettore, Astianatte, che lasciava la regione del tutto
sguarnita di regnanti, contribuiva a fornire, nella prassi storica, ulteriori, forti
giustificazioni alla successiva occupazione eolica, che poteva quindi proporsi come
legittima e pacifica, visto che era destinata a realizzarsi in un’area rimasta deserta.’
(71 ) E. Wörner in Roscher i. 166f.; Robert (1920–6, 1516–26; Gantz 713–17.
(72) Welcker ii. 266f.
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Little Iliad

Page 51 of 51
Iliou Persis

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
Iliou Persis
M. L. West
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.003.0005
This chapter presents a commentary on the poem Iliou Persis. It first discusses the
poem's title; sources of information about the poem; the scope; the economy of the
poem; characterization of the poem; and dating of the poem. It then reviews individual
fragments and testimonia.
Introduction
1. Title
The poem is cited as Ἰλίου πέρσις (Proclus), Ἰλίου πόρθησις (sch. Hom., F 2), ἡ Πέρσις
(sch. Eur., F 3 and 6). Ἰλίου πέρσις is also used by Pausanias when he cites from
‘Lescheos’ the corresponding portion of the Little Iliad (see on Little Iliad F 15−27), and
Page 1 of 18
Iliou Persis
by Aristotle for one of the tragedies that he says could be made out of that epic (Poet.
1459b6). It was the title of a poem of Stesichorus too, and of a tragedy by Sophocles’ son
Iophon (TrGF 22 T 1a), while Πέρσις alone is given as a title of plays by Cleophon (77 T 1)
and Nicomachus (127 T 1).
This word πέρσις is peculiar. Aristotle, Poet. 1456a16, writes of tragedians ὅσοι πέρσιν
Ἰλίου ὅλην ἐποίησαν καὶ µὴ κατὰ µέρος ὥσπερ Εὐριπίδης, as if it were a regular nomen
actionis from πέρθω, and the variant title Ἰλίου πόρθησις implies the same
understanding. But whereas πόρθησις is found in use as a common noun, πέρσις is not;
and what is more remarkable is that the genitive and dative of (Ἰλίου) πέρσις are not
πέρσεως, πέρσει, but περσίδος, περσίδι, and when the Cyclic poem or Stesichorus is
being cited the accusative is περσίδα.1 (These forms are often written proparoxytone.)
Presumably the word was coined in the first place on the pattern of nomina actionis in
-σις, but then the analogy of epic titles in -ίς (Θηβαΐς, Ἀλκµεωνίς, Αἰθιοπίς, Φορωνίς,
∆αναΐς, etc.) asserted itself; cf. Müller 117.
2. Attestation
For attributed sources we are limited to the summary of Proclus, three fragments
where the poem is cited by title, and two where Arktinos is given as the authority. But the
Iliou Persis appears to be a (p.224) main source for Apollod. epit. 5. 16−24, as its close
relationship to Proclus indicates.
3. Scope
The theme of the poem was the sack of Troy. The stratagem of the Wooden Horse was
integral to the story of the sack, and the poem had to begin, if not with the building of the
Horse, with the Trojans’ discovery of it. (Cf. Prolegomena §3.) Demodokos, whose song in
Od. 8. 499−520 has a similar scope to the Iliou Persis, began
ἔνθεν ἑλών, ὡς οἳ µὲν ἐϋσσέλµων ἐπὶ νηῶν
βάντες ἀπέπλειον, πῦρ ἐν κλισίηισι βαλόντες,
Ἀργεῖοι, τοὶ δ᾿ ἤδη ἀγακλυτὸν ἀµϕ᾿ Ὀδυσῆα
εἵατ᾿ ἐνὶ Τρώων ἀγορῆι κεκαλυµµένοι ἵππωι·
αὐτοὶ γάρ µιν Τρῶες ἐς ἀκρόπολιν ἐρύσαντο.
The Horse is already on the citadel, and the Trojans then debate whether to destroy it or
leave it as a placatory offering to the gods. Proclus’ summary of the Iliou Persis begins
with this debate. It continues with the story of the sack and ends with the burning of the
city, the division of booty, and the sacrifice of Polyxena.
The poet presupposes certain developments that had occurred since the death of Achilles
and that were related in the Little Iliad: the death of Paris and Helen’s marriage to
Deiphobos (whom Menelaos kills in her presence, arg. 2d); Neoptolemos’ arrival at Troy
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Iliou Persis
(arg. 2c, 4a).

The action occupied only two days, corresponding to days 11 and 12 of the Little Iliad as
reconstructed above. They cannot be neatly aligned with the two books into which the
poem was divided, as most of the important action took place during the night. The
bookdivision probably fell in the night but before the slaughter began, perhaps at the
point where the heroes emerged from the Horse, or where the fleet returned from
Tenedos.

The Iliou Persis contained some dramatic scenes of action and also of debate. Besides the
Trojans’ debate over how to treat the Wooden (p.225) Horse, in which Laokoon
perhaps underlined his opinions by driving his spear into its flank, there was a discussion
among the Achaeans about the Locrian Ajax’s act of sacrilege, resulting in a move to stone
him. It is more doubtful whether there was another about whether to spare Astyanax;
see below on F 3.
There are no signs of the romantic or light-hearted character that we detected in the
Little Iliad. But there were elements of the grotesque in the description of the Horse and
in the prodigy of the serpents that appeared suddenly and killed Laokoon and one of his
sons.
6. Dating
Nineteenth-century scholars were in general agreement that the Iliou Persis was an
older poem than the Little Iliad. They saw it as an austere epic in the traditional manner,
not yet affected by the changes of taste that the Little Iliad seemed to reflect. They were
influenced also by Eusebius’ dating of Arktinos a full century before Lesches (Ol. 1 or 5
as against Ol. 30). Phaenias (fr. 33 Wehrli; FGrHist 1012 F 10) spoke of Lesches’ having
successfully competed against Arktinos, but it was possible to interpret the statement as
referring to emulation of a dead predecessor. Clearly Phaenias did not think Lesches was
earlier than Arktinos, but that is all we can infer.
Timpanaro’s discovery of F 1 in 1957 dented the poem’s image of Homeric seriousness.

However, there remain some considerations that may favour its priority over the Little
Iliad.
(i) It is ‘pre-Cyclic’, in the sense that it is essentially an Einzellied, describing a

single, integrated piece of action; it is not designed, like the Little Iliad, to
contribute towards a continuous narrative of the war by taking up the story
where an existing epic has left it and by stringing together a series of episodes
without organic unity. The Cyclic approach was, we may assume, a new
development that appeared some time after the Iliad, the preceding period
having been characterized by Einzellieder. It does not follow, of course, that all
Einzellieder were older than all Cyclic-type epics.
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Iliou Persis
(ii) In the Iliou Persis the infiltrator Sinon raised the vital firesignal for the
Achaeans to return from Tenedos. In the Little Iliad his role is reduced to that of
the con-man who convinced the Trojans to accept the Horse (also vital, but it
does not depend on the presence (p.226) of such an agent), while the signal was
raised by Helen. This, although perhaps implicit in the Odyssey (see on Little Iliad
arg. 4c), is less straightforward, as it meant that Helen had to be apprised
beforehand of the Achaeans’ plan, and it may be judged the secondary version.
(iii) In the Iliou Persis Neoptolemos killed Priam at the very altar of Zeus
Herkeios; in the Little Iliad (F 25) he dragged him from the altar to the door and
killed him there. The latter version, being clearly designed to mitigate the impiety
of the former, is logically secondary. The motif of dragging the victim from the
altar might have been borrowed from the episode of Ajax and Cassandra: in the
Iliou Persis he dragged her from the sanctuary of Athena but did not succeed in
detaching her from the goddess’s protection, as she clung fast to the image.
(iv) In the Iliou Persis Aeneas escaped to the Dardanian uplands, implying the
establishment there of the Aenead dynasty whose existence is foretold in the Iliad
and Hymn to Aphrodite. In the Little Iliad he was taken to Thessaly by
Neoptolemos, which points towards the later legends of his new foundations in
the West, while the Dardanian dynasty is now left out of account. Cf. on Little Iliad
F 30.
Two points might argue in the opposite sense.
(i) In the Little Iliad (F 29) Neoptolemos, finding Andromache together with a
nurse who was cradling Astyanax, seized the child, threw him down from the city
wall, and took Andromache back to the ships. In the Iliou Persis it was Odysseus
who killed Astyanax. We do not know the exact circumstances, but Andromache is
still assigned to Neoptolemos when the women are allocated. So the blame for the
brutal murder of the infant is transferred from the son of Achilles to the coldly
calculating Odysseus. In this case it is the Little Iliad that had what looks like the
prior version.
(ii) In the Little Iliad there was just one Palladion at Troy, which Odysseus and
Diomedes stole, whereas in the Iliou Persis there were two: the stolen one was a
dummy, and the true one remained hidden in the citadel. Again the Iliou Persis
had the secondary version.
The balance of probability is for the Iliou Persis’ having been the earlier of the two poems.
But its inclusion of the recovery of Aithra by the sons of Theseus argues against its being
much earlier than 600; see Little Iliad, intro. 7. It appears not to have achieved wide
currency (p.227) or canonic status by the time the Little Iliad was composed, for if it
had, the poet of the latter might have contented himself with bridging the gap between
the Aethiopis and Iliou Persis without composing a new account of the sack.
The Fragments
The Incipit
Hor. Ars poetica 136f.
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Iliou Persis
nec sic incipies ut scriptor cyclicus olim:
‘Fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile bellum.’
A scholiast on the passage (ii. 600 Hauthal) identifies the scriptor cyclicus as Antimachus
(test. 26C Matthews), a statement rightly rejected by editors. The verse quoted must
surely render the first line of an actual Cyclic poem. But it does not correspond to the
opening of the Little Iliad, F 1 ῎Ιλιον ἀείδω καὶ ∆αρδανίην εὔπωλον, having nothing in
common with it except ‘I (will) sing’.2 Henrichsen (76) thought it might be quoted from
Naevius’ Cypria Ilias. Bergk (28 n. 2) more convincingly suggested that Horace had the
Iliou Persis in view. The Greek may have been something like ἀείδω Πριάµοιο τύχας
πόλεµόν τ᾿ ἀρίσηµον, developed as usual by a relative clause, ‘the famous war which
…’.3
The Horse
F 1 Sch. Monac. on Virg. Aen. 2. 15, ‘instar montis equum’

Arctinus dicit fuisse in longitudine pedes C et in latitudine pedes L; cuius caudam et
genua mobilia fuisse tradidit.
Servius auctus on Virg. Aen. 2. 150, ‘immanis equi’ Hunc tamen equum quidam longum
centum uiginti 〈pedes〉, latum triginta fuisse tradunt, cuius cauda genua oculi
mouerentur.
(p.228) The narrative began with the Trojans finding the Wooden Horse and debating
what to do with it.4 The poet evidently saw fit to give a description of it at the outset.
The two Virgil commentators give somewhat different measurements but presumably
derive them from one source, in which Arktinos was cited as the authority. Whether it
was 100×50 feet or 120×30, the size indicated is fantastic, even if the poet wanted the
structure to contain fifty or a hundred men (see on Little Iliad F 12; Apollodorus’ ‘fifty’
perhaps derives from the Iliou Persis). The mobile eyes, knees, and tail can have had no
practical purpose. These amusing details served only as additional testimony to Epeios’
wonderful craftsmanship.
Arg. 1a
†ὡς† τὰ περὶ τὸν ἵππον οἱ Τρῶες ὑπόπτως ἔχοντες περιστάντες βουλεύονται ὅ τι χρὴ
ποιεῖν. καὶ τοῖς µὲν δοκεῖ κατακρηµνίσαι αὐτόν, τοῖς δὲ καταϕλέγειν, οἳ δὲ ἱερὸν
αὐτὸν ἔϕασαν δεῖν τῆι Ἀθηνα̃ι ἀνατεθῆναι· καὶ τέλος νικα̃ι ἡ τούτων γνώµη.
It is not clear from the summary whether the debate takes place after the Horse has
already been brought into the city, as in Demodokos’ song (above). It would happen
more logically out on the plain where the Achaeans left the Horse, and only after making
their decision would the Trojans undertake the laborious operation of moving it. That
must have been the primary version, followed apparently by Stesichorus (S88 ii), by
Virgil, and perhaps in the Little Iliad (see on its arg. 5b). Apollodorus, however, agrees
Page 5 of 18
Iliou Persis
with Demodokos: epit. 5. 16, ἡµέρας δὲ γενοµένης ἔρηµον οἱ Τρῶες τὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων
θεασάµενοι στράτευµα καὶ νοµίσαντες αὐτοὺς πεϕευγέναι, περιχαρέντες εἷλκον τὸν
ἵππον καὶ παρὰ τοῖς Πριάµου βασιλείοις στήσαντες ἐβουλεύοντο τί χρὴ ποιεῖν. This will
not have been modelled on the Odyssey passage, and the Iliou Persis may have been the
source. The transfer of the debate from its natural setting would have allowed the poet to
omit an account of how the Horse was transported. But it causes a problem for the
Laokoon scene, see below on arg. 1c.
(p.229) According to Apollodorus (epit. 5. 17) both Cassandra and the seer Laokoon
gave warning that the Horse concealed an armed force. I have assumed on the strength
of the Tabula Capitolina that Cassandra’s warning came in the Little Iliad. It may have
come in the Iliou Persis too (if it did, it was probably less explicit than Apollodorus
implies); but it is very possible that the mythographer has put her in because of her
prominence in other sources.
As for Laokoon, I have given reasons for not including him in the Little Iliad (at its arg.
5b). But we know that the portent in which he was attacked by sea-serpents appeared in
the Iliou Persis (below, arg. 1c), so presumably he had been one of the major opponents
of the Horse. In Virgil (Aen. 2. 40−56) he does not merely speak against its acceptance,
he drives a spear into its flank, an act of violence against the sacred object with which his
subsequent fate may be thought commensurate. The incident may go back to the Iliou
Persis, as he must have done something distinctive there (Robert (1920−6), 1246f.,
1249).
Proclus and Apollodorus say that the Trojans considered three alternative courses of
action: pushing the Horse over a precipice,5 setting fire to it, or treating it as a holy
offering. Demodokos also lists three choices (506−9), but he speaks of chopping through
it instead of burning it:
τρίχα δέ σϕισιν ἥνδανε βουλή,
ἠὲ διατµῆξαι κοῖλον δόρυ νηλέϊ χαλκῶι,
ἢ κατὰ πετράων βαλέειν ἐρύσαντας ἐπ᾿ ἄκρης,
ἠ᾿ ἐάαν µέγ᾿ ἄγαλµα θεῶν θελκτήριον εἶναι.
Robert acutely suggests that this is a modification to take account of Laokoon’s spear-
thrust.6
Arg. 1b
τραπέντες δὲ εἰς εὐϕροσύνην εὐωχοῦνται ὡς ἀπηλλαγµένοι τοῦ πολέµου.
Similarly Apollodorus (above), only with ἐπὶ θυσίαν in place of εἰς εὐϕροσύνην; and
Proclus uses similar phrasing in the Little Iliad (p.230) summary, τῶν κακῶν
ὑπολαβόντες ἀπηλλάχθαι … εὐωχοῦνται ὡς νενικηκότες τοὺς ῞Ελληνας. There the
festivity is located in the city after the Horse has been brought in. The presumption must
Page 6 of 18
Iliou Persis
be the same for the Iliou Persis. As in the other poem, it will have involved feasting,
music, and dancing; cf. on Little Iliad F 13.
Laokoon’s Fate. The Flight of Aeneas
Arg. 1c
ἐν αὐτῶι δὲ τ〈ούτωι〉 δύο δράκοντες ἐπιϕανέντες τόν τε Λαοκόωντα καὶ τὸν ἕτερον
τῶν παίδων διαϕθείρουσιν.
Apollodorus (epit. 5. 18) gives extra details, with a divergence over the serpents’ victims:
Ἀπόλλων δὲ αὐτοῖς σηµεῖον ἐπιπέµπει· δύο γὰρ δράκοντες διανηξάµενοι διὰ τῆς
θαλάσσης ἐκ τῶν πλησίον νήσων τοὺς Λαοκόωντος υἱοὺς κατεσθίουσιν. As a
protecting god of Troy, Apollo might have been expected to reinforce the seer’s
warnings, not undermine them. It may have been Sophocles in his Laokoon who brought
Apollo into the story. According to Euphorion fr. 95 Lightfoot, Laokoon was a priest of
Thymbraean Apollo and had offended the god in another matter. That complication can
hardly have come into the epic narrative.7
The ‘nearby islands’ in Apollodorus are Tenedos and the islets to the north of it, the
Κάλυδναι νῆσοι.8 Virgil, Aen. 2. 199−227, gives Tenedos itself as the source of the two
monstrous serpents. He describes them swimming across, emerging onto the land, and
making straight for Laokoon. (He is apparently under the illusion that the sea channel
between Tenedos and the mainland is visible from the Trojan plain.) They devour his two
sons, as in Apollodorus, and disappear into the shrine of Athena, under her statue, as if
they belong to her.
Are Virgil and Apollodorus then following the Iliou Persis? But they diverge from it in
saying that the serpents devoured Laokoon’s (p.231) two sons, not him and one son.9
There is a further difficulty. In the Iliou Persis (and Apollodorus, but not Virgil) the
Trojans appear to be inside the city, more than a mile from the shore. The picture of the
serpents coming out of the sea and heading for Laokoon is much better suited to a
version where they are all down at the Achaeans’ burnt-out encampment, where the
Horse was left. This must have been the original setting of the Laokoon scene. If the poet
of the Iliou Persis had the Horse in the city from the start, he had to transfer the
Laokoon scene there. Perhaps he eliminated the serpents’ journey from the islands.
Proclus just says that they ‘appeared’, he does not say where from. Virgil then is
following a different source, and Apollodorus is contaminating.
Sophocles is reported to have given the serpents names (fr. 372), and the names appear
in Nicander (SH 562. 11) and other sources as Porkis (or Porkes) and Chariboia.10 They
fit nicely into the first half of a hexameter, as in Nicander l.c. Πόρκην κα[ὶ Χαρίβοι]αν, and
Bernabé has conjectured that they appeared similarly in the Iliou Persis.11 But it is hard
to imagine how two serpents, never seen before, could have acquired names, or how
anyone at Troy could have known what they were, or why names should have been
bestowed on them subsequently.12 The names probably originated in the peculiar
version attested for Bacchylides (fr. 9), who de serpentibus a Calydnis insulis uenientibus
Page 7 of 18
Iliou Persis
atque in homines conuersis dicit (into a man and a woman, presumably).13 We cannot
consider this for the Iliou Persis.
What is behind the bizarre story of Laokoon, which gives the cue for Aeneas’ departure
from Troy? Hyg. Fab. 135 makes him a brother of Anchises, so Aeneas’ uncle, while for
sch. Lyc. 347 he is a son of Antenor. In either case he is linked with a family that survived
the fall of Troy (Robert (1920−6), 1251). This may point to his having had some
significance at New Ilion. Quintus 12. 480−97 relates that there was a marker (σῆµα) at
the temple of Apollo where the serpents disappeared into the earth, and before it a
cenotaph of Laokoon’s sons. It may have been only a Hellenistic construction, but
possibly (p.232) there was an archaic cult at Ilion involving sacred snakes and a tomb of
two male children.14 It need have had no connection with Tenedos or the Kalydnai: the
version of the myth in which the snakes swim over from there may be accounted for by
the desire to make them symbols or harbingers of the Achaean conquerors who were
about to return from that quarter. The version of the Iliou Persis, in which the victims are
not the two sons but one son and the father, is presumably a modification designed to
enable the surviving son to have descendants. It implies Laokoontids in New Ilion,
probably a priestly family. Porkis and Chariboia, the human couple into whom the
serpents mutated in Bacchylides (if we are right in attributing the names to his version),
will also have had some role in the local cult myth, probably as ancestors of a surviving
line.
Arg. 1d
ἐπὶ δὲ τῶι τέρατι δυσϕορήσαντες οἱ περὶ τὸν Αἰνείαν ὑπεξῆλθον εἰς τὴν ῎Ιδην.
Aeneas and his followers leave before it is too late. The expression οἱ περὶ τὸν Αἰνείαν
could mean his immediate family, or just Aeneas; but as Anderson (62 n. 1) remarks, ‘in
this instance, as used by an epitomizer who chooses words with economy and precision,
there can be little doubt that the phrase denotes a group of followers’. This is supported
by the fragment from Sophocles’ Laokoon where someone reports that Aeneas is
standing at the gates with his father on his back,
κύκλωι δὲ πα̃σαν οἰκετῶν παµπληθίαν·
συµπλάζεται δὲ πλῆθος οὐχ ὅσον δοκεῖς
οἳ τῆσδ᾿ ἐρῶσι τῆς ἀποικίας Φρυγῶν (fr. 373. 3−5).
The lines may reflect an explicit reference in the epic to a sizeable entourage.
Aeneas thus escapes the slaughter and survives to establish his dynasty in the Dardanian
uplands, the one anticipated in Il. 20. 306−8 and Hymn. Aphr. 196f. Demetrius of Scepsis
identified his own city, which lay in the upper valley of the Scamander, as Aeneas’ seat
(Strabo 13. 1. 53). The noble family that claimed descent from Aeneas may still have been
flourishing in the poet’s time (Welcker ii. 224).
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Iliou Persis
By the fifth century it was widely claimed that Aeneas had travelled much further afield to
found a new city, even as far as Italy; see on (p.233) Little Iliad F 30. This may have
been the presupposition in Sophocles’ play, as the word ἀποικία rather suggests. But the
arguments of Debiasi 146−50 that the Italian migration went back to the Iliou Persis are
unconvincing.
F 2 (Machaon and Podaleirios): see Aethiopis F 5a.

Sinon. The Sack
Arg. 2a
καὶ Σίνων τοὺς πυρσοὺς ἀνίσχει τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς, πρότερον εἰσεληλυθὼς προσποίητος.
For Sinon cf. on Little Iliad F 12 and 13. Proclus’ phrasing suggests that Sinon raised his
signal from the city, not from Sigeion, and that the manner in which he gained admission to
Troy was explained in a digression. If the scene of action was set in the city from the
beginning of the poem, it would have been difficult to deal with Sinon’s arrival when it
happened without interrupting the flow of the narrative. Once night fell and the Trojans
settled down to sleep, he could go into action, and it could be explained then how he had
got into Troy.
Arg. 2b
οἳ δὲ ἐκ Τενέδου προσπλεύσαντες, καὶ οἱ ἐκ τοῦ δουρείου ἵππου, ἐπιπίπτουσι τοῖς
πολεµίοις.
Apollodorus is fuller, epit. 5. 20−1:
ὡς δὲ ἐνόµισαν κοιµα̃σθαι τοὺς πολεµίους, (the heroes in the Horse) ἀνοίξαντες

σὺν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἐξήιεσαν· καὶ πρῶτος µὲν Ἐχίων Πορθέως ἀϕαλλόµενος
ἀπέθανεν· οἱ δὲ λοιποὶ σειρα̃ι ἐξάψαντες ἑαυτοὺς ἐπὶ τὰ τείχη παρεγένοντο, καὶ
τὰς πύλας ἀνοίξαντες ὑπεδέξαντο τοὺς ἀπὸ Τενέδου καταπλεύσαντας.
χωρήσαντες δὲ µεθ᾿ ὅπλων εἰς τὴν πόλιν, εἰς τὰς οἰκίας ἐπερχόµενοι
κοιµωµένους ἀνήιρουν.
The death of the over-eager Echion (a man unknown to the Iliad) may well come from the
Iliou Persis.15 For the rope that the others use to descend cf. Virg. Aen. 2. 262; Robert
(1920−6), 1254 n. 4.
(p.234) Arg. 2c
καὶ πολλοὺς ἀνελόντες τὴν πόλιν κατὰ κράτος λαµβάνουσι. καὶ Νεοπτόλεµος µὲν
ἀποκτείνει Πρίαµον ἐπὶ τὸν τοῦ ∆ιὸς τοῦ ἑρκείου βωµὸν καταϕυγόντα.
Apollodorus agrees almost verbatim, epit. 5. 21 καὶ Νεοπτόλεµος µὲν ἐπὶ τοῦ ἑρκείου
∆ιὸς βωµοῦ καταϕεύγοντα Πρίαµον ἀνεῖλεν. Most authors follow this account; 16 the
Little Iliad gave a slightly different one (F 25).
After this Apollodorus (Vatican epitome only) mentions two who escaped the slaughter:
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Iliou Persis
the Antenorid Glaukos, who fled to his house and was recognized and saved by
Odysseus and Menelaos, and Aeneas, who fled with Anchises on his back, and the Greeks
let him go because of his piety (sc. towards his father). The Aeneas item cannot come
either from the Iliou Persis, where Aeneas had left the city earlier, or from the Little
Iliad, where he remained to become Neoptolemos’ captive, but it has a close parallel in
Xenophon, Cyn. 1. 15 Αἰνείας δὲ σώσας µὲν τοὺς πατρώιους καὶ µητρώιους θεούς,
σώσας δὲ καὶ αὐτὸν τὸν πατέρα, δόξαν εὐσεβείας ἐξηνέγκατο, ὥστε καὶ οἱ πολέµιοι
µόνωι ἐκείνωι ὧν ἐκράτησαν ἐν Τροίαι ἔδοσαν µὴ συληθῆναι. The Glaukos incident
might in principle come from the Iliou Persis. It resembles what we hear about his
brother Helikaon in the Little Iliad, F 22. Odysseus and Menelaos were particularly
qualified to recognize Antenorids because of their embassy into Troy at the beginning of
the war, when Antenor provided them with hospitality and saved them from lynching (Il.
3. 207, 11. 123−42; Cypria arg. 10c with Apollod. epit. 3. 28−9).
Arg. 2d
Μενέλαος δὲ ἀνευρὼν Ἑλένην ἐπὶ τὰς ναῦς κατάγει, ∆ηΐϕοβον ϕονεύσας.
Again Apollodorus is copying the same source as Proclus: epit. 5. 22 Μενέλαος δὲ

∆ηΐϕοβον κτείνας Ἑλένην ἐπὶ τὰς ναῦς ἄγει. Demodokos in Od. 8. 517f. tells how
Odysseus and Menelaos made for the house of Deiphobos; Helen was no doubt with him.
Odysseus’ presence may be a detail added by the Odyssey poet to suit his context,
though the two are together in the report about Glaukos discussed above; Wagner 238
inferred that they encountered Glaukos as they (p.235) were on their way to
Deiphobos’ house. The killing of Deiphobos was probably related in the Little Iliad too,
see on its F 28. Alcaeus SLG 262. 12 mentions it as one of the salient incidents of the sack.
After this the sequence of events in Apollodorus differs somewhat from that in Proclus:
Proclus Apollodorus
Theseids take Aithra

Ajax violates Cassandra Ajax violates Cassandra
Odysseus kills Astyanax City fired
Booty and women distributed Booty distributed
Theseids take Aithra Greeks kill Astyanax
City fired Polyxena sacrificed
Polyxena sacrificed Women distributed
In principle Proclus ought to be the more reliable guide to the sequence. But his
sentence about Aithra, as formulated, seems to belong in the earlier context where
Apollodorus has her, so I take it here out of order:
Arg. 4b
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Iliou Persis
∆ηµοϕῶν δὲ καὶ Ἀκάµας Αἴθραν εὑρόντες ἄγουσι µεθ᾿ ἑαυτῶν.
Apollodorus continues the sentence quoted above (Μενέλαος δὲ … Ἑλένην ἐπὶ τὰς ναῦς
ἄγει··) with ἀπάγουσι δὲ καὶ τὴν Θησέως µητέρα Αἴθραν οἱ Θησέως παῖδες ∆ηµοϕῶν
καὶ Ἀκάµας· καὶ γὰρ τούτους λέγουσιν εἰς Τροίαν ἐλθεῖν ὕστερον. Proclus’ phrasing
likewise suggests the Theseids’ finding their grandmother in the city and taking her back
to the ships, as Menelaos took Helen. Later, when the booty and captives were
distributed, they were given possession of her (F 6). Proclus has confined himself to a
single mention of her, apparently transferring a sentence formulated for her finding to the
later context. The Little Iliad gave a different account of the reunion (F 17).
Arg. 3a
Κασσάνδραν δὲ Αἴας ὁ Ἰλέως πρὸς βίαν ἀποσπῶν συνεϕέλκεται τὸ τῆς Ἀθηνα̃ς ξόανον·
ἐϕ᾿ ὧι παροξυνθέντες οἱ ῞Ελληνες καταλεῦσαι βουλεύονται τὸν Αἴαντα· ὃ δὲ ἐπὶ τὸν
τῆς Ἀθηνα̃ς βωµὸν καταϕεύγει, καὶ διασώιζεται ἐκ τοῦ ἐπικειµένου κινδύνου.
(p.236) This version in which Athena’s statue was pulled away from its base was
apparently followed by Sophocles (fr. 10c. 8f. with restoration by H. Lloyd-Jones, ZPE 22
(1976), 40); cf. Paus. 10. 26. 3. It is probably implied in Apollod. epit. (Vat. only) 5. 22 Αἴας
δὲ ὁ Λοκρὸς Κασάνδραν ὁρῶν περιπεπλεγµένην τῶι ξοάνωι τῆς Ἀθηνα̃ς βιάζεται,
though what he then adds, διὰ 〈τοῦ〉το τὸ ξόανον εἰς οὐρανὸν βλέπειν 〈λέγουσι vel
sim.〉, belongs to the version that the statue stayed in place while Cassandra was raped in
front of it (Call. fr. 35 Pf.=42 Massimilla, Lyc. 361; Schmidt 59; Robert (1920−6), 1267f.).
Proclus then again confuses the proper sequence by continuing from Ajax’s crime to its
aftermath. The Greeks’ reaction must have come later, when they were preparing to sail
home (Wagner 251f.). So in Apollod. epit. 5. 25: ὡς δὲ ἔµελλον ἀποπλεῖν πορθήσαντες
Τροίαν, ὑπὸ Κάλχαντος κατείχοντο, µηνίειν Ἀθηνα̃ν αὐτοῖς λέγοντος διὰ τὴν Αἴαντος
ἀσέβειαν. καὶ τὸν µὲν Αἴαντα κτείνειν ἔµελλον, ϕεύγοντα δὲ ἐπὶ βωµὸν εἴασαν. This
amplifies Proclus but is evidently the same version of what happened.
Calchas’ warning must have led to some sort of debate; cf. Proclus’ βουλεύονται, and
Paus. 1. 15. 2 (Polygnotos’ paintings in the Stoa Poikile at Athens), ἐπὶ δὲ ταῖς Ἀµαζόσιν
῞Ελληνές εἰσιν ἡιρηκότες ῎Ιλιον, καὶ οἱ βασιλεῖς ἠθροισµένοι διὰ τὸ Αἴαντος ἐς
Κασσάνδραν τόλµηµα. The same painter in the Cnidian Lesche at Delphi (Little Iliad F
15−27 n.) depicted Ajax at an altar ὀµνύµενος ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἐς Κασσάνδραν τολµήµατος, and
the Atreidai were administering the oath; ἣ δὲ κάθηταί τε ἡ Κασσάνδρα χαµαὶ καὶ τὸ
ἄγαλµα ἔχει τῆς Ἀθηνα̃ς, εἴγε δὴ ἀνέτρεψεν ἐκ βάθρων τὸ ξόανον ὅτε ἀπὸ τῆς ἱκεσίας
αὐτὴν ὁ Αἴας ἀϕεῖλκε (Paus. 10. 26. 3). It is not easy to make it clear in a painting that
someone is swearing an oath, and Pausanias’ interpretation of the picture was no doubt
based on his knowledge of the story as told in an authoritative source—surely the Iliou
Persis, as it also had the statue pulled away from its base. But what was Ajax swearing?
He cannot have denied what he had done; but he might have denied that the injury to
the goddess had been intentional.17
(p.237) Whatever the content of his oath, it did not move the Achaeans to leniency, and
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Iliou Persis
the decision was taken to stone him, apparently at Odysseus’ urging (Paus. 10. 31. 2). He
avoided this fate only by taking refuge at the altar of Athena, presumably the very one
from which he had dragged Cassandra and the statue. Alcaeus evidently knew the story,
observing that it would have been better for the Achaeans if the execution had been
carried out: they might have found calmer seas off Aigai (SLG 262. 4−7). Cf. H. Lloyd-
Jones, GRBS 9 (1968), 137f. = Greek Epic, Lyric, and Tragedy (Academic Papers i,
Oxford 1990), 49−51.
In writing Αἴας ὁ Ἰλέως, Proclus may possibly reflect the occurrence in the epic of that
form of Oïleus’ name (Severyns (1928), 365). Aristarchus noted that it was recognized by
τινὲς τῶν νεωτέρων (sch. Il. 2. 527−31), an expression that sometimes refers to the
Cyclic poets, though here it may refer only to the poets cited for Ἰλεύς in sch.T 15. 336d,
namely ‘Hesiod’ (fr. 235. 1) and Stesichorus (PMGF 229). In Pausanias’ account of
Polygnotos’ rendering of the scene (10. 26. 3) the paradosis likewise points to Αἴας ὁ
Ἰλέως.
F 4 Dion. Hal. Ant. 1. 69. 3

Ἀρκτῖνος δέ ϕησιν ὑπὸ ∆ιὸς δοθῆναι ∆αρδάνωι Παλλάδιον ἓν καὶ εἶναι τοῦτο ἐν Ἰλίωι
τέως ἡ πόλις ἡλίσκετο, κεκρυµµένον ἐν ἀβάτωι· εἰκόνα δ᾿ ἐκείνου κατεσκευασµένην
ὡς µηδὲν τῆς ἀρχετύπου διαϕέρειν ἀπάτης τῶν ἐπιβουλευόντων ἕνεκεν ἐν ϕανερῶι
τεθῆναι, καὶ αὐτὴν Ἀχαιοὺς ἐπιβουλεύσαντας λαβεῖν.
Serv. Aen. 2. 166
quamquam alii dicant simulacrum hoc a Troianis absconditum fuisse intra exstructum
parietem, postquam agnouerunt Troiam esse perituram; quod postea bello Mithridatico
dicitur Fimbria quidam Romanus inuentum indicasse.
The story of the theft of the Palladion by Odysseus and Diomedes was told in the Little
Iliad (arg. 4e, F 11). There is nothing to suggest that that was not the genuine Palladion,
whose removal enabled the city to be taken. What Dionysius attests for Arktinos, i.e. the
Iliou Persis, is a secondary version, the purpose of which is to claim that the authentic
Trojan Palladion did not fall into Greek hands but was kept safe. It has been suspected of
reflecting the Roman claim to (p.238) possess it, Aeneas having taken it with him when
he left the city.18 But Dionysius says the image remained in its place during the capture of
the city, hidden away in an abaton; it had not, therefore, been taken away by Aeneas. The
same objection applies to the idea that the Aineiadai claimed to possess it in their
Dardanian seat (Welcker ii. 183, Monro 375f.). It is in fact only in the Roman legend that
Aeneas is associated with the Palladion (Chavannes 69f., 82). It was surely the priests of
Athena in New Ilion itself who claimed that the holy image had remained in place
throughout.19
How did the poet fit this information into his narrative? Perhaps he identified the Palladion
with the ξόανον that Cassandra clung to (pace Bethe 255 n. 13; Debiasi 153); in that case
she retreated into the abaton and Ajax pursued her there. The poet could then have
explained that the Palladion taken by Odysseus and Diomedes had not been the genuine
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Iliou Persis
one.
The motif of the dummy Palladion reappears, clearly in a secondary application, in Conon’s
version of the raid by Odysseus and Diomedes (FGrHist 26 F 1. 34). Diomedes stands on
Odysseus’ shoulders to climb over the wall into Troy and leaves him there instead of
pulling him in after him. He returns with a Palladion. On their way back, afraid that
Odysseus plans to cheat him of its possession, he tells him that this is not the Palladion
specified by Helenos but a facsimile; whereupon the image jerks, proving to Odysseus
that it is the genuine one. Dionysius, in an account based on Domitius Callistratus
(FGrHist 433 F 10) and Satyrus (20 F 1), says there were two Palladia: one the Achaeans
stole, while Aeneas removed the other when the lower city was being taken and carried it
to Italy.
Arg. 3b
ἔπειτα ἀποπλέουσιν οἱ ῞Ελληνες, καὶ ϕθορὰν αὐτοῖς ἡ Ἀθηνα̃ κατὰ τὸ πέλαγος
µηχανα̃ ται.
Here is a yet more drastic anticipation of what belongs later: the Greeks appear to sail
away before the killing of Astyanax and the other (p.239) events related in arg. 4. In
Venetus A, our only source, the sentence stands at the end of the folio (6V) and the
remainder of the Iliou Persis summary comes at the beginning of what should be the next
(4r; the leaves are out of order). Heyne and others thought that the sailing away must
mark the end of the Iliou Persis and that what followed onf. 4 must belong to the account
of a different poem, an intervening leaf having been lost, but codicological studies have
shown that this is impossible.20 Others transposed the sentence to the end of the
summary (Westphal, Lehrs), or judged it an interpolation from a marginal note inspired
by Od. 3. 130−61 (Hiller, Wissowa; Wilamowitz (1884), 331 n. 7), or supposed that the
epitomator initially omitted the episodes in arg. 4 and then decided to append them
(Wüllner, K. W. Müller, Düntzer). In my Loeb edition I emended to ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀποπλέουσιν
οἱ ῞Ελληνες, ϕθορὰν αὐτῶι ἡ Ἀθηνα̃ κατὰ τὸ πέλαγος µηχανα̃ ται, making it a parenthetic
assurance that Ajax did not go unpunished: by taking refuge at the altar he saved himself
from the immediate danger of stoning, but subsequently, after the Greeks set sail, Athena
devised his destruction. The alteration is hardly necessary,21 but the explanation would
in any case seem to be that later events are being anticipated in order to round off the
story of Ajax.22 The poet of the Iliou Persis surely did not continue his narrative as far as
the death of Ajax, which was a major episode in the Nostoi, but he may well have included
some lines anticipating it.
F 3 Sch. Eur. Andr. 10, “ῥιϕθέντα πύργων Ἀστυάνακτ᾿ ἀπ᾿ ὀρθίων”

Λυσανίας κατηγορεῖ Εὐριπίδου … Ξάνθον δὲ τὸν τὰ Λυδιακὰ γράψαντα 〈 … οἳ δέ
ϕασιν ὅτι 〈οὐκ ἔµελλεν〉 ὁ Εὐριπίδης Ξάνθωι προσέχειν περὶ τῶν Τρωϊκῶν µύθων, τοῖς
δὲ χρησιµωτέροις καὶ ἀξιοπιστοτέροις· Στησίχορον µὲν γὰρ (PMGF 202) ἱστορεῖν ὅτι
τεθνήκοι, καὶ τὸν τὴν Πέρσιδα συντεταχότα κυκλικὸν ποιητὴν ὅτι καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ τείχους
ῥιϕθείη, ὧι ἠκολουθηκέναι Εὐριπίδην.
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Iliou Persis
(p.240) Arg. 4a
καὶ Ὀδυσσέως Ἀστυάνακτα ἀνελόντος, Νεοπτόλεµος Ἀνδροµάχην γέρας λαµβάνει, καὶ
τὰ λοιπὰ λάϕυρα διανέµονται.
The third-century BCE critic Lysanias of Cyrene accused Euripides of having falsely
inferred from Andromache’s fears expressed in Il. 24. 735 that Astyanax was thrown
from the walls. He cited Xanthos as attesting that Skamandrios (=Astyanax) had led a
Phrygian migration after the war (FGrHist 765 F 14, but the substance is lost in a lacuna
in the scholion). The scholiast then cites an Alexandrian retort to Lysanias, to the effect
that Euripides would not have followed Xanthos for a Trojan myth but rather sources like
Stesichorus and the Iliou Persis, the latter of which, at least, had indeed related that the
child was thrown from the walls. He might have quoted the Little Iliad too (F 29), where
the deed was done by Neoptolemos. Proclus names Odysseus.23 In Eur. Tro. 721−5
Odysseus persuades the assembled Greeks that it should be done, and it is to ‘the
Greeks’ that the deed is attributed in ib. 1122; cf. Apollod. epit. 5. 23. Welcker (ii. 187, cf.
223) assumed that there was a corresponding debate in the Iliou Persis and that
Odysseus’ speech in it is the source of a verse quoted anonymously by several authors
but by Clement attributed to Stasinos (Cypria F 31): νήπιος, ὃς πατέρα κτείνας παῖδας
καταλείπει. Certainly it would be a very apt line in this context (Odysseus in Euripides
urges ἀρίστου παῖδα µὴ τρέϕειν πατρός), and we cannot guess how it could have been
used in the Cypria. But the debate is more likely a Euripidean innovation than a feature of
the Iliou Persis.
Apollodorus implausibly puts the killing of Astyanax after the burning of the city and the
division of booty. Proclus, although his account is extremely compressed, just a series of
headlines, seems to preserve the right sequence. After the killing phase was concluded,
the captives and other spoils were distributed. Neoptolemos’ acquisition of Andromache
is singled out as being especially notable. Apollodorus returns to the fates of the Trojan
women after a few lines (5. 24−5): Agamemnon, he says, took Cassandra, Neoptolemos
Andromache, Odysseus Hekabe (here he is following Euripides’ (p.241) Troades);
Priam’s loveliest daughter, Laodike (Il. 6. 252), was swallowed up by the earth in full view
of everybody.24 It is not clear how much of this came in the Iliou Persis.
F 6 Sch. Eur. Tro. 31, “τὰς δὲ Θεσσαλὸς λεώς | εἴληχ᾿ Ἀθηναίων τε Θησεῖδαι πρόµοι”
ἔνιοι ταῦτά ϕασι πρὸς χάριν εἰρῆσθαι, µηδὲν γὰρ εἰληϕέναι τοὺς περὶ Ἀκάµαντα καὶ
∆ηµοϕῶντα ἐκ τῶν λαϕύρων ἀλλὰ µόνην τὴν Αἴθραν, δι᾿ ἣν καὶ ἀϕίκοντο εἰς ῎Ιλιον
Μενεσθέως ἡγουµένου. Λυσίµαχος δὲ (FGrHist 382 F 14) τὸν τὴν Πέρσιδα πεποιηκότα
ϕησὶ γράϕειν οὕτως·
Θησείδαις δ᾿ ἔπορεν δῶρα κρείων Ἀγαµέµνων
ἠδὲ Μενεσθῆϊ µεγαλήτορι ποιµένι λαῶν.
Ps.-Demosth. 60. 29
ἐµέµνηντ᾿ Ἀκαµαντίδαι τῶν ἐπῶν ἐν οἷς Ὅµηρος ἕνεκα τῆς µητρός ϕησιν Αἴθρας
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Iliou Persis
Ἀκάµαντ᾿ εἰς Τροίαν στεῖλαι· ὃ µὲν οὖν παντὸς ἐπειρα̃ το κινδύνου τοῦ σῶσαι τὴν
ἑαυτοῦ µητέρ᾿ ἕνεκα.
The recovery of Aithra was the only point of Akamas’ and Demophon’s presence at Troy.
There is nothing to suggest that they did anything else. The Euripides scholion implies, in
Μενεσθέως ἡγουµένου, that they were there from the start with the Athenian contingent,
of which Menestheus was the leader in the Iliad; Apollod. epit. 5. 22, however, to account
for their absence from that poem, says that they went at a later stage. Having found
Aithra during the sack, they took her straight back to the ships (arg. 4b above). When the
captives were divided among the leaders, Menestheus asked for her on the Theseids’
behalf and got her. Cf. on Little Iliad F 17.
2. µεγαλήτορι ποιµένι λαῶν: on the padded-out formular combination cf. Curti 36.
Arg. 4c
ἔπειτα ἐµπρήσαντες τὴν πόλιν Πολυξένην σϕαγιάζουσιν ἐπὶ τὸν τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως τάϕον.
The last events that Proclus mentions are the firing of the city and the sacrifice of
Polyxena at Achilles’ tomb. She is another daughter of Priam, not mentioned in the Iliad.
The idea may originally have been (p.242) to provide Achilles with a consort in the other
world, and specifically a daughter of the defeated enemy king.25 Wagner 245 notes that
the sacrifice of Polyxena at the end of the expedition mirrors that of Iphigeneia at the
beginning.
But why the otherwise inconspicuous Polyxena? We might have a better idea if we had
the whole of the speech made by Achilles’ ghost in the prologue of Sophocles’ Polyxena
(fr. 523); he must have called for the sacrifice, and he presumably specified the victim and
gave his reason. In Eur. Hec. 94f., which may be interpolated, the ghost is said to have
asked for τῶν πολυµόχθων τινὰ Τρωϊάδων, as if it did not matter who it was. In the
other Euripidean references to the sacrifice (Hec. 40f., 220f., etc.; Tro. 39f., 262−71,
622f.) no reason is given for why it should have been Polyxena. In later sources too the
sacrifice is carried out in response to a demand made by Achilles’ ghost (Ov. Met. 13.
439−48; Q.S. 14. 209−22, where the hero appears to Neoptolemos in a dream and
threatens to keep the Achaeans pent up at Troy by storms). Wagner 245 argues that as
other apparitions of Achilles’ ghost are explicitly mentioned by Proclus, he would not have
passed over one here, and that the instruction might have come from Calchas. It is
possible, however, that Achilles charged Neoptolemos with the sacrifice when he
appeared to him straight after his arrival from Skyros (Little Iliad arg. 3b with n.).
Neoptolemos appears as the sacrificer on a Tyrrhenian amphora of c.570−560 (LIMC
Polyxena 26) and in Ibycus, PMGF 307.
According to a story first alluded to by Lycophron, Achilles had wanted to marry

Polyxena, had come to the precinct of Thymbraean Apollo to discuss it with Priam, and
had there been sneakily shot dead by Paris.26 No earlier author hints that he died in
such a way or that the sacrifice of the girl had anything to do with a love interest; see
Gantz 658f. Yet a love interest seems the only premise that makes sense of the sacrifice;
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Iliou Persis
it need not have entailed the unconventional (p.243) version of Achilles’ death. Vases
from about 575 BCE show Polyxena present at Achilles’ ambush of Troilos (Gantz
598−601), and so suggest an occasion when he could have seen her and been smitten by
her beauty. The Troilos story came in the Cypria (arg. 11e, F 25⋆), and the romance
might have been taken further there. That was before Achilles came into possession of
Briseis (Cypria arg. 12a), who is his only love in the Iliad and may have been a prominent
mourner at his death (cf. on Aethiopis arg. 4a).
The name Polyxena rather suggests promiscuity, if not prostitution; cf. Pind. fr. 122. 1
πολύξεναι νεάνιδες, of the Corinthian temple prostitutes.
W. Rösler, ZPE 69 (1987), 7, suggests that the poem ended with a forward reference to
the catastrophe that Athena was soon to bring upon the Achaean ships. Cf. above on arg.
3b. Wagner 252 suspects that following the Achaeans’ acquittal of Ajax and preparation for
embarkation there was a council of the gods at which Athena spoke of the destruction she
was going to visit upon them and asked Zeus and Poseidon for their assistance; he refers
to the prologue of Euripides’ Troades. ‘Habes Ilii persidis exitum tamquam ab ipso
fabularum conexu oblatum, quo aptiorem nemo excogitare poterat, quoniam poetae
occasionem praebebat proficiscentis classis fata futura in fine carminis breviter indicandi.’
Nitzsch (1852), 52, had already interpreted Proclus’ ϕθορὰν αὐτοῖς ἡ Ἀθηνα̃ κατὰ τὸ
πέλαγος µηχανα̃ ται as implying a negotiation with Zeus, but he thought that the actual
storm must have been related in a conclusion to the poem that was suppressed to avoid
overlap with the Nostoi.
Notes:
(1 ) Note however Euseb. Chron. Ol. 5. 1 (Jerome) Arctinus qui Aethiopidam conposuit et
Ilii Persin agnoscitur.
(2) C. O. Brink, Horace on Poetry ii (Cambridge 1971), 214.
(3) A similar reconstruction already in Salmasius 601B, ἀείσω Πριάµοιο τύχαν πόλεµόν
τε κλεεννόν. (He thought it was from Lesches’ Little Iliad and should be in Lesbian.)
(4) It is not necessary to suppose, with Welcker ii. 182, 198, that it first described the
building of the Horse and the Achaeans’ withdrawal to Tenedos.
(5) This favours the city setting for the debate, though it may be noted that the banks of
the Scamander are described as κρηµνοί in Il. 21. 26, 175, etc.
(6) Robert (1920−6), 1247: ‘Der Demodokos der Odyssee, der diese Episode
summarisch wiedergibt, trägt dem Lanzenstoß des Laokoon, den er nicht erwähnt,
dadurch Rechnung, daß er an Stelle des Verbrennens den Vorschlag machen läßt, den
Leib des Pferdes mit einem ehernen Instrument zu durchbohren.’
(7) In Virgil Laokoon is a priest of Poseidon (Aen. 2. 201). The story that Servius ad loc.
attributes to Euphorion reconciles this with his priesthood of Apollo; cf. Hyg. Fab. 135.
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Iliou Persis
According to sch. Lyc. 347 it was in the shrine of Thymbraean Apollo that the serpents
killed Laokoon’s sons; this perhaps comes from Sophocles. The play contained a choral
prayer to Poseidon, fr. 371. Cf. Robert (1920−6), 1249f.; Gantz 648f.
(8) Bacchyl. fr. 9, sch. Lyc. 347, Q.S. 12. 452. Tzetzes on Lyc. 344 says that it was to these
islands that the Greeks had withdrawn.
(9) A single son also in Nicander, SH 562. 12; Tz. in Lyc. 344, 347, and Posthom. 714.
(10) Sch. Lyc. 347, Tz. in Lyc. 344; Lysimachus FGrHist 382 F 16 ap. Serv. auct. Aen. 2.
211 († curifin et Periboeam).
(11 ) Emerita 50 (1982), 89−92; PEG 91 (fr. 3); cf. Debiasi 141.
(12) Cf. Robert (1881), 199.
(13) Cf. Welcker (1839−41), i. 153, on the naming of names in Sophocles, ‘es ist daher
wahrscheinlich, daß auch bey ihm durch die Verwandlung das Wunderzeichen noch
verstärkt war: denn wozu Namen, wenn nicht in diesem Zusammenhange?’
(14) One thinks of the cult of Medea’s children at Corinth.
(15) He is in a way, as Wagner 235 noted, an analogue of Protesilaos, the first Achaean to
leap ashore at Troy, who was killed at once.
(16) Cf. Pind. Pae. 6. 113; Eur. Hec. 23, Tro. 16f., 483; Triph. 400, 635, etc.
(17) Some suppose that it was a promissory oath, a vow to propitiate Athena by instituting
after his return home the annual tribute of Locrian maidens: C. Robert, Die Iliupersis des
Polygnot (Halle 1893), 63f.; id. (1920−6), 1269; M. Robertson, BSA 62 (1967), 10−12; W.
Rösler, ZPE 69 (1987), 5. According to S. West, ZPE 82 (1990), 1−3, he was swearing
that Cassandra’s virginity was intact: she was to be Agamemnon’s prize.
(18) Cf. Dion. Hal. Ant. 1. 69. 4, 2. 66. 5; R. G. Austin, P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber
Secundus (Oxford 1964), 83−5; N. Horsfall, CQ 29 (1979), 374f.; P. M. Smith, HSCP 85
(1981), 25−8. This would imply a Hellenistic interpolation in the Iliou Persis.
(19) Chavannes 60−4; Wilamowitz (1916), 382; cf. Bethe 255. On the ξόανον in New Ilion
cf. Strab. 13. 1. 41, App. Mithr. 53.
(20) Severyns (1938−63), iii. 79f., 93−8.
(21 ) αὐτοῖς. is defensible, as the storm aroused by Athena afflicted the whole fleet; cf. Od.
1. 326f., 3. 132f.; Alc. SLG 262. 4−7; Aesch. Ag. 649, 652; Eur. Tro. 66. Gruppe 693 n. 4
emended to ἔπειτα ἀποπλέουσιν τοῖς ῞Ελλησι ϕθορὰν ἡ Ἀθηνα̃ κατὰ τὸ πέλαγος
µηχανα̃ ται.
(22) Cf. Wagner 252f.; D. Comparetti, Homeri Ilias cum Scholiis. Codex Venetus A,
Page 17 of 18
Iliou Persis
Marcianus, phototypice editus (Leiden 1901), vii f.
(23) On the seventh-century relief pithos from Myconos showing scenes from the sack of
Troy (LIMC Equus Troianus 23) it is a bearded warrior who holds a child up by the leg;
cf. Fittschen 184.
(24) On the story of Laodike cf. Gerlaud 168 on Triph. 660−3.
(25) Hommel 30. The Slavs are reported by tenth-century Arab observers to have
slaughtered girls as companions for young noblemen who died unmarried: Ibn Fad.l¯n in
C. H. Meyer, Fontes Historiae Religionis Slavicae (Berlin 1931), 88−92; Masʿu¯di¯, ibid.
95, ‘wenn ein Mann gestorben ist, so wird mit ihm sein Weib lebendig verbrannt… Und
wenn ein Unverheirateter stirbt, so wird er nach seinem Tode verheiratet.’ This practice
was adduced in connection with Polyxena by C. Fontinoy, Ant. Cl. 19 (1950), 393.
(26) Lyc. 323 with Tz., Hyg. Fab. 110, sch. Eur. Hec. 41, Lact. in Stat. Ach. 1. 134, Serv.
Aen. 6. 57; Gantz 628.

Page 18 of 18
Nostoi

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
Nostoi
M. L. West
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.003.0006
This chapter presents a commentary on the poem Nostoi. It first discusses the poem's
title; sources of information about the poem; the scope; the economy of the poem; its
relation to the Odyssey; characterization of the poem; and dating of the poem. It then
reviews individual fragments and testimonia.
Keywords: Greek epic, epic poetry, epic poems, Odyssey, fragments, testomonia
Introduction
1. Title
The standard title is (οἱ) Νόστοι (Philodemus, Apollodorus, Proclus, Pausanias, etc.). A
fuller version, Νόστοι/Νόστoς Ἀχαιῶν or Ἑλλήνων, appears in three places: on the
Homeric cup MB 36 (below, F 10); in Suda ν 500 νόστος· ἡ οἴκαδε ἐπάνοδος….καὶ οἱ
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Nostoi
ποιηταὶ δὲ οἱ τοὺς Νόστους ὑµνήσαντες ἕπονται τῶι Ὁµήρωι ἐς ὅσον εἰσὶ δυνατοί,
where codd. add from the margin ϕαίνεται ὅτι οὐ µόνος εἷς εὑρισκόµενος ἔγραψε
Νόστον Ἀχαιῶν ἀλλὰ καί τινες ἕτεροι; and sch. Pind. Ol. 13. 31a, “ἐν δὲ Μοῖσ᾿
ἁδύπνοος”, τοῦτο δὲ διὰ τὸν Εὔµηλον (so Gyraldus for Εὔµολπον) ὄντα Κορίνθιον καὶ
γράψαντα Νόστον τῶν Ἑλλήνων. Νόστος is a poetic word, and the title must have been
a traditional one, going back to the time of composition. The poet of the Odyssey (1. 326,
10. 15) already knows Ἀχαιῶν νόστος or νόστος Ἀχαιῶν as a theme of epic song. In this
singular phrase with the added genitive the Achaeans’ Return is considered as a single
coherent tale; the plural version Νόστοι treats it as a series of individuals’ stories.
Athenaeus twice quotes from a poem in at least three books that he calls ἡ τῶν Ἀτρειδῶν
κάθοδος (F 3 and 12), using a more prosaic word for ‘return’ that is first attested in this
sense in the fifth century. He cites ‘the poet of the Return of the Atreidai’, as if it was one
of the archaic epics whose authorship was uncertain, and it usually assumed that it was
the same as the Nostoi1 From Proclus’ summary of the Nostoi it appears that the return
of the two Atreidai formed the framework of the whole epic: it began with the dispute that
separated them, and ended with Menelaos’ belated arrival home following Orestes’ killing
of Clytaemestra and Aegisthus. The murder and avenging of Agamemnon was the main
heroic subject matter of the narrative, and it is understandable that some might (p.245)
have designated the poem by reference to it. It would seem unlikely that a separate
archaic poem covering these events in several books was transmitted concurrently with
the Nostoi and not included in the canonical Cycle. It may further be noted that one of the
passages cited by Athenaeus (F 3) described the posthumous fate of Tantalos: this
probably stood in the context of the underworld scene attested for the Nostoi (F 1, 2⋆,
and perhaps 4–8, 14). Odysseus too sees Tantalos in Hades (Od. 11. 582–92), though
with a different version of his torment. See further below, §4.
2. Attestation
Besides Proclus’ summary and the partly parallel narrative of Apollod. epit. 6, we have
one verse fragment ascribed to the Nostoi (F 6), one to the Return of the Atreidai (F 12),
and one to Agias (F 7: Αὐγ⟦ε⟧ίας cod.); six non-verbal fragments ascribed to the Nostoi
(F 1, 4, 5, 9, 11, 13), one to the Return of the Atreidai (F 3), and one to Hegias (=Agias?
F 14); a Homeric cup with a scene labelled [κατὰ τὸν ποιητὴν] Ἀ [γίαν] ἐκ τῶν
[Νό]στων̣ Ἀχα[ι]ῶν (F 10); and two references to the Cycle or to οἱ κυκλικοί that are
conjecturally assigned to the Nostoi.
3. Scope
The poem covered the stories of heroes’ returns from Troy that were known to the poet,
except that Odysseus’ return, if it was dealt with at all, can only have been treated very
summarily. (Cf. on arg. 4b.) A separate Odyssey was evidently already current and the
poet did not want to duplicate it. The other principal return stories were (a) the drowning
of the Locrian Ajax as punishment for his sacrilege at Troy (see on Iliou Persis arg. 3), and
(b) the murder and avenging of Agamemnon.
The uneventful homecomings of Diomedes and Nestor were recorded. There were more
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Nostoi
extensive narratives of how Calchas led a party to Colophon and died there and of
Neoptolemos’ journey to Phthia, the land of his father. Perhaps some other heroes were
dealt with too, but it seems certain that many must have been passed over without
mention. There is no evidence that any of the returning heroes founded new towns, as in
the many of the legends that proliferated later.
(p.246) The poem contained what must have been an extended underworld scene. It
was probably here that various mythological data cited from the Nostoi and relating to
earlier generations had their place. It is not clear whether they were selected in pursuit
of any particular agenda.

The return of the Atreidai, as mentioned above, was made the framework of the Nostoi
as a whole. The epic began with a divine initiative that led the two brothers to separate.
Agamemnon tarried at Troy, while Menelaos and some other leaders set sail. Diomedes
and Nestor went first and got home safely, but Menelaos was caught by storm and blown
off to the eastern Mediterranean, where he was to remain out of sight until his return at
the end of the poem.
The returns of other heroes were accommodated within this frame. It is evident that the
Nostoi was not just a loose sequence of separate stories but was carefully structured so
as to integrate in one design several lines of action that proceeded concurrently in
different places.2 It had this feature in common with the Odyssey, an epic with which, as
we shall see, it stood in a close relationship. The narrator would leave one character in
mediis rebus and turn to another located in a different arena. Thus after the removal of
Menelaos from the Aegean area, with Agamemnon still at Troy, he passed to Calchas and
his party and told how they went off overland towards the south. We cannot be sure
whether he stayed with them until they reached their destination and their story was
complete or just set them moving and left the rest of their tale for a later point; see the
end of the notes below on arg. 2.
Next came the departure from Troy of Agamemnon, Ajax, and others. Neoptolemos
started out with them, but then received advice from Thetis to wait for two days and
after that to make his way on foot through Thrace. During those two days came the
tempest in which many Achaean ships were sunk and Ajax met his end. Then Neoptolemos
was sent on his way. Again it is uncertain whether the whole story of his homecoming was
related continuously from that point or the latter part of it was held back till after the
murder of Agamemnon; see below, pp. 271f.
(p.247) Proclus states that the Nostoi were divided into five books. We may assume
that the story of Agamemnon’s homecoming and Orestes’ revenge occupied a
considerably larger proportion of the whole than do the two or three corresponding lines
in Proclus. This is relevant to the question of the Ἀτρειδῶν κάθοδος cited by Athenaeus.
From its third book he quotes a line and a half (F 12) that come from an account of
fighting involving men named Isos and Hermioneus. This is taken to be the fighting in
which Agamemnon was killed together with his supporters and those of Aegisthus.3 If that
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Nostoi
is right, and if the poem known to Athenaeus as ἡ τῶν Ἀτρειδῶν κάθοδος was the same
as the Nostoi and had the same book-divisions, the inference will be that Agamemnon’s
murder came already in Book 3 and that the two remaining books were filled out with
Aegisthus’ reign at Mycene (and any other events assigned to those years), Orestes’
nurture and return, his killing of his mother and her lover, and the homecoming of
Menelaos. So Bethe 272, who argues that the underworld scene must have taken up a
significant amount of space, perhaps in Book 4, where, he thinks, Agamemnon’s soul (like
those of the Suitors in Od. 24) was described arriving in Hades. I take a different view of
the occasion for the scene, but I too put it after Agamemnon’s murder.
5. Relation to the Odyssey

The poet of the Odyssey takes pains to set Odysseus’ return against the background of
the other heroes’ returns: 1. 11-14,
ἔνθ᾿ ἄλλοι µὲν πάντες, ὅσοι ϕύγον αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον,
οἴκοι ἔσαν, πόλεµόν τε πεϕευγότες ἠδὲ θάλασσαν·
τὸν δ᾿ οἶον, νόστου κεχρηµένον ἠδὲ γυναικός
νύµϕη πότνι᾿ ἔρυκε Καλυψὼ δῖα θεάων.
Phemios sings of the Ἀχαιῶν νόστον | λυγρόν, ὃν ἐκ Τροίης ἐπετείλατο Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη
(1. 326f.), and νόστος Ἀχαιῶν is one of the headings under which Odysseus relates to
Aiolos the tale of the war (10. 15). There is particular emphasis on the story of
Agamemnon, which is repeatedly adverted to, from 1. 29ff. to 24. 199ff. Telemachos
learns about it and about some other heroes’ returns from Nestor in 3. 130ff., and they
are supplemented by (p.248) Menelaos’ account of his own adventures in 4. 351ff.
There is extensive agreement between what is said in these passages and Proclus’
summary of the Nostoi. It looks as if the poet knew an account very similar to the Nostoi.
The poet of the Nostoi, on the other hand, leaves Odysseus out of his narrative except
for a passing mention, evidently because a large-scale Odyssey is already in circulation.4
One hypothesis might be that the Odyssey known to him was a predecessor of ours, and
that the Nostoi antedated our Odyssey and is reflected in it. However, Menelaos’
wanderings seems to me to raise a problem for this model. The Nostoi, if we can trust
Proclus, gave exactly the same account of them as the Odyssey: see below on arg. 1a–c.
Now, it is clear that these wanderings were invented to answer the question that
Telemachos raises at Od. 3. 249–52: where was Menelaos when Agamemnon was killed
and during the following years when Aegisthus was lording it at Mycene? Did Aegisthus
dispatch him too, or was he away roaming in other lands? This was a problem. The
tradition of Agamemnon’s murder and Orestes’ revenge had established itself, but there
was no role in it for Menelaos, Agamemnon’s hero brother, who might have been
expected to take some action before Orestes did. A poet became aware of the difficulty
and invented the story that Menelaos did not get back to Greece for seven years and in
fact arrived just after Orestes had killed the murderers, on the very day that he was
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Nostoi
holding the funeral feast. That is what Nestor tells Telemachos in answer to his query. It is
not something that the Odyssey poet only thought of as he put the question in
Telemachos’ mouth, because it is prepared for by the quarrel and separation of the
brothers that Nestor has mentioned in 3. 136ff. But the poet is vividly aware of the
problem to which Menelaos’ wanderings were the answer, and we have the impression
that it is a recently devised solution—perhaps his own— for a recently recognized
difficulty.
There is another consideration that might point in the same direction. Several scholars
have seen reason to suspect that Odysseus’ wanderings were originally located in the
eastern Mediterranean, the same part of the world as Menelaos tours in the Odyssey.5
When the need arose to provide Menelaos with seven years of wanderings in those
parts, it became necessary to transfer Odysseus’ wanderings elsewhere so that they did
not overlap. So after he is blown past (p.249) Cythera (9. 81)—that is, east of it, as he
wanted to pass north of it— instead of arriving in Crete as Menelaos does (3. 286ff.), he is
diverted further west, and from then on he is travelling in the littleknown expanses of the
western Mediterranean.6 Yet traces of the earlier version remain (a) in Odysseus’ false
stories, where he mostly represents himself as a Cretan and speaks of journeys to Egypt,
where he stayed for seven years, to Phoenicia, where he spent a year, and to Cyprus;
(b) in the opening lines of the poem, where he is described as the man who wandered far
and wide after sacking Troy, and saw many men’s cities and learned their minds (1. 3
πολλῶν δ᾿ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω); and (c) in Zenodotus’ variants at 1.
93 and 285, according to which Telemachos was to visit Idomeneus in Crete, as the last of
the Achaeans to get home, instead of Menelaos in Sparta—evidently a relic of a version
partly recorded in writing before the invention of Menelaos’ wanderings, a version in
which Telemachos might actually have picked up his father’s trail in Crete (cf. 14. 382f.).
The implication of all this is that Menelaos’ wanderings were developed in the course of
the composition of the Odyssey, perhaps by the Odyssey poet himself, or if not, in another
poet’s concurrent elaboration of the Nostoi. In any case it looks as if the two epics were
being developed at the same time and with mutual interaction (if not actually by the same
poet).7 The Odyssey poet is deeply engaged with the Nostoi tradition and helping to shape
it. It was remarked above that the two epics had a notable technical feature in common,
being both structured so as to integrate in one design lines of concurrent action in
different arenas. Both, moreover, contained underworld episodes and touching scenes of
reunion and recognition with grandfathers of the family (Odysseus with Laertes;
Neoptolemos with Peleus, Nostoi arg. 4c).

The Nostoi maintained the traditional picture of a heroic world in which gods could make
decisive interventions from personal (p.250) motives, sometimes after consultation.
Athena caused the quarrel between Agamemnon and Menelaos and, after making her
case with Zeus, raised the storm that hit the fleet. Thetis visited Neoptolemos to advise
him how to make a safe homecoming. Poseidon, angered by Ajax’s defiance of Athena’s
thunderbolt, took action to finish him off, while Hera kept Agamemnon safe till he reached
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Nostoi
land. I shall suggest (though there is no attestation) that in the eighth year, following a
divine council, Athena went to stir Orestes to action while Hermes went to tell Menelaos
of his brother’s death and then took him to Hades and back.
Agamemnon’s fate was heralded long in advance by a warning from Achilles’ ghost, and
probably at some point by a prophecy of Cassandra. The Hades scene gave further rein
to the taste for the uncanny. It also displayed an interest in genealogical lore, with an
emphasis on women.
The story of Agamemnon’s murder and Orestes’ revenge must have been told on quite
an ample scale. The relevant passages of the Odyssey imply that it contained some moving
and dramatic action. The marriage of Menelaos’ daughter Hermione to Neoptolemos may
have provided the poem with a romantic and happy ending.
7. Dating
I have suggested above that the Nostoi was composed in parallel with the Odyssey, and if
not by the same poet, by one who was in contact with the Odyssey poet. The Odyssey,
which presupposes the Memnonis (see Aethiopis intro. 3 and 6), probably dates from the
last quarter of the seventh century. I assign the Nostoi to the same period. It may also be
noted that it seems to have made no mention of Demophon and Akamas, the sons of
Theseus, who appeared at Troy in both the Little Iliad and the Iliou Persis to take their
grandmother Aithra back to Athens.8 Their inclusion in the Troy saga must have come
about by the early sixth century at latest, and they were important enough figures for
their return home to have been dealt with.
(p.251) The Fragments
The Incipit
The reference to Phemios’ song in Od. 1. 326f. may suggest the form of the opening lines:
Sing, Muse, of the νόστον Ἀχαιῶν | λυγρόν, ὃν ἐκ Τροίης ἐπετείλατο Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη.
This would have led to a résumé of Ajax’s sacrilege, the cause of Athena’s anger. Cf. the
beginning of Nestor’s account in Od. 3. 130–5, αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ Πριάµοιο πόλιν διεπέρσαµεν
αἰπήν, | [131] | καὶ τότε δὴ Ζεὺς λυγρὸν ἐνὶ ϕρεσὶ µήδετο νόστον | Ἀργείοις, ἐπεὶ οὔ τι
νοήµονες οὐδὲ δίκαιοι | πάντες ἔσαν· τῶι σϕεων πολέες κακὸν οἶτον ἐπέσπον | µήνιος
ἒξ ὀλοῆς γλαυκώπιδος Ὀβριµοπάτρης. The same passage inspired Grotefend to
reconstruct the Nostoi incipit as µῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ γλαυκώπιδος Ὀβριµοπάτρης, | ἥ τ᾿
ἔριν Ἀτρείδηισι µετ᾿ ἀµϕοτέροισιν ἔθηκεν (=γ 136).
Menelaos Removed from the Scene
Arg. 1a
Ἀθηνα̃ Ἀγαµέµνονα καὶ Μενέλαον εἰς ἔριν καθίστησι περὶ τοῦ ἔκπλου. Ἀγαµέµνων µὲν
οὖν τὸν τῆς Ἀθηνα̃ς ἐξιλασόµενος χόλον ἐπιµένει.
Apollod. epit. 6. 1 καὶ µετὰ ταῦτα συνελθόντων εἰς ἐκκλησίαν Ἀγαµέµνων καὶ
Μενέλαος ἐϕιλονείκουν, Μενελάου λέγοντος ἀποπλεῖν, Ἀγαµέµνονος δὲ ἐπιµένειν
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κελεύοντος καὶ θύειν Ἀθηνα̃ι.
Nestor’s account continues: (γλαυκώπιδος Ὀβριµοπάτρης), ἥ τ᾿ ἔριν Ἀτρείδηισι µετ᾿

ἀµϕοτέροισιν ἔθηκεν. They held an assembly of all the Achaeans, but it was disorderly,
as the victorious troops had drunk deep. Menelaos argued that they should set sail for
home, but Agamemnon wanted to stay longer and sacrifice hecatombs to propitiate
Athena. The meeting broke up in division and rancour, and a night passed with the two
sides full of ill feeling towards each other. In the morning half of them loaded up their
ships and put out to sea, while the other half remained with Agamemnon (Od. 3. 135–57;
cf. Soph. fr. 522). All of this no doubt corresponds closely to the account in the Nostoi. The
knowledge that Athena was behind the quarrel is more appropriate to the omniscient poet
of the Nostoi than to Nestor.
(p.252) The motif of a quarrel between leaders at the outset of an epic may have been
borrowed from the Iliad. It is the mechanism for separating Agamemnon from Menelaos.
If they had travelled together, it would have been awkward for the story of
Agamemnon’s murder. Menelaos has to be kept away from Greece for seven years.
Arg. 1b
∆ιοµήδης δὲ καὶ Νέστωρ ἀναχθέντες εἰς τὴν οἰκείαν διασώιζονται.
Likewise Apollod. epit. 6. 1. Nestor gives more circumstantial details in Od. 3. 157–83: half
of the Achaeans set sail on a calm sea, landed on Tenedos, and made sacrifices to the
gods. But then Zeus caused another dispute, and some of them, led by Odysseus,
returned to Agamemnon at Troy.
What is the point of this to-ing and fro-ing? The dissension of the Achaeans has been made
to serve a secondary purpose. Besides dividing Menelaos from Agamemnon, it divides
those who, while travelling by sea, are going to escape the great storm sent by Athena
from those who are going to be caught in it. The former group includes principally
Menelaos, Diomedes, Nestor, and Odysseus. But then Odysseus has to be divided from
the others, as he is to sail by a quite different route and more or less disappear from the
narrative (cf. on arg. 4b). That must be why he leaves Tenedos at this point. It must have
been explained later why he did not remain together with Agamemnon and the others.
Nestor, realizing that there was trouble brewing, made for home, and so did Diomedes
(Od. 3. 165-7). Menelaos followed them after an interval and caught them up at Lesbos,
where they were deliberating whether to take the direct route to the west across the
open sea or to continue south between Chios and the mainland with a view to island-
hopping. They prayed for a portent, and received one indicating that they should take the
former alternative. The god supplied a favouring wind, and they reached Geraistos at the
southern end of Euboea the same night; there they sacrificed many bulls’ thighs to
Poseidon. The wind continued to blow, and on the fourth day after setting out Diomedes
arrived home in Argos and Nestor in Pylos. Again we may suppose that the narrative in
the Nostoi followed much the same lines.
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Nostoi
The poet seems (pace Severyns (1928), 372–6) to have known (p.253) nothing of the
later stories about the infidelities of Diomedes’ wife Aigialeia, his near escape from death
when he came home, and his subsequent migration to Italy; for these see Gantz 699f.
Hor. AP 146, nec reditum Diomedis ab interitu Meleagri (sc. orditur Homerus), has been
thought to be a criticism of the Nostoi, as line 137 may be of the Iliou Persis and line 147
of the Cypria.9 It would imply that when the poet came to deal with Diomedes he went at
length into his ancestry and background, of which we hear something in Il. 14. 113-25.
Hecker thought that this was because it was the first return to be narrated in the poem:
‘Diomedis igitur reditus non fuit quidem initium carminis, sed primus a poeta et quidem
uberrime prae reditu reliquorum enarratus est.’
Arg. 1c
µεθ᾿ οὓς ἐκπλεύσας ὁ Μενέλαος µετὰ πέντε νεῶν εἰς Αἴγυπτον παραγίνεται, τῶν
λοιπῶν διαϕθαρεισῶν νεῶν ἐν τῶι πελάγει.
Apollod. epit. 6. 1 Μενέλαος δὲ µετὰ τούτων [read τούτους] ἀναχθείς, χειµῶνι

περιπεσών, τῶν λοιπῶν ἀπολοµένων σκαϕῶν, πέντε ναυσὶν ἐπ᾿ Αἴγυπτον ἀϕικνεῖται.
In order for Menelaos to become separated from everyone else he had firstly to be of
the group that left Troy when Agamemnon stayed, and then to lag behind Nestor and
Diomedes who reached home without incident. In Nestor’s account he tarried longer at
Tenedos than they did, but then caught up with them at Lesbos (Od. 3. 168f., above).
Later (3. 276–302, cf. 4. 488) Nestor says that he and Menelaos sailed from Troy
together and that the fatal separation occurred at Sounion, where Menelaos’ helmsman
Phrontis Onetorides died. Menelaos stayed to give him burial and then, when he
continued on his way and was attempting to round Cape Malea, Zeus sent a tempest that
scattered his fleet, driving some of the ships to Crete, where they were wrecked on the
rocks near Gortyn, the men narrowly escaping death, while five ships, including
Menelaos’ own, were blown to Egypt. There he stayed, roaming among men of foreign
speech and accumulating much wealth.
Menelaos originally had sixty ships (Il. 2. 587). This needed to be reduced to a much
smaller number for the eastern wanderings. There is no indication that the poet of the
Nostoi thought of the (p.254) storm that afflicted Menelaos as being the same one that
brought Ajax to grief.
I think it probable that he initially said only that Menelaos was blown to Egypt, and held
back the further account of his eastern adventures for a later point. Cf. Nitzsch (1831),
22.
The Death of Calchas
Arg. 2
οἱ δὲ περὶ Κάλχαντα καὶ Λεοντέα καὶ Πολυποίτην πεζῆι πορευθέντες εἰς Κολοϕῶνα
†Τειρεσίαν ἐνταῦθα τελευτήσαντα θάπτουσι.
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Nostoi
This episode is based on Colophonian local tradition relating to the Apolline oracular site at
Claros and a tomb of the seer Calchas at the harbour town of Notion or on the nearby
mountain of Kerkaphos. It was natural to account for his presence there by saying that he
had gone there after the Trojan War. Proclus’ jejune report can be supplemented from
Apollod. epit. 6. 2, and the Vatican and Sabbaitic recensions of the epitome (ES) can
themselves be filled out from Tzetzes on Lycophron 980 (cf. 427), who was using a fuller
version of Apollodorus:
ES TZ
Ἀµϕίλοχος δὲ καὶ Κάλχας Κάλχας, Λεοντεύς, Πολυποίτης καὶ Ποδαλείριος ἐν
καὶ Λεοντεὺς καὶ Ποδα- Ἰλίωι τὰς αὐτῶν ναῦς ἀπολιπόντες πεζῆι
λείριος καὶ Πολυποίτης ἐν πορεύονταιεἰς Κολοϕῶνα καὶ Κιλικίαν, καὶ
Ἰλίωι τὰς ναῦς ἀπολιπόντες καταντῶσι περὶ τούτωι τῶι Μόψωι ὅπου καὶ
ἐπὶ Κολοϕῶνα πεζῆι ἡττηθέντα µαντικῆι τὸνΚάλχαντα θάπτουσιν.…
πορεύονται. κἀκεῖ θάπτουσι Πολυποίτης δὲ καὶ Λεοντεὺς µετὰ τὸ θάψαι αὐτὸν
Κάλχαντα τὸν µάντιν. µετ᾿ ὀλίγον εἰς Ἑλλάδα ἀνεχώρησαν.
The seer who died and was buried was certainly Calchas, not Teiresias as in the Proclus
text10 Teiresias belongs in the Theban saga (p.255) and has no place in the Trojan.
Proclus names Calchas as the leader of the party.11 His journey to Colophon was
determined by the tradition of his tomb at Notion. It was probably motivated in the
Nostoi, as in Quintus 14. 360f., by saying that he foresaw the disaster threatening those
who undertook the sea voyage to Greece. Cf. his warning in Apollod. epit. 5. 25, quoted on
Iliou Persis arg. 3a.
Who accompanied him to Colophon? Certainly Leonteus and Polypoites (Procl.), and
probably Podaleirios (Apollod., Tz.). Apollodorus adds Amphilochos (and so Tz. in Lyc.
427); he was another seer, the son of Amphiaraos. But this is probably contamination with
a separate tradition in which he was Calchas’ only companion: Hdt. 7. 91, Theopompus
115 F 351, Q.S. 14. 365–9; Strabo 14. 1. 27 λέγεται δὲ Κάλχας ὁ µάντις µετ᾿
Ἀµϕιλόχου12 τοῦ Ἀµϕιαράου κατὰ τὴν ἐκ Τροίας ἐπάνοδον πεζῆι δεῦρο (to Colophon)
ἀϕικέσθαι, περιτυχὼν δ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ κρείττονι µάντει κατὰ τὴν Κλάρον, Μόψωι τῶι
Μαντοῦς τῆς Τειρεσίου θυγατρός, διὰ λύπην ἀποθανεῖν. Amphilochos was associated
with Mopsos, not at Colophon but in Cilicia, where they established the oracle of Mallos
but also fell out in bitter rivalry.13 The Pamphylians, the Cilicians’ western neighbours,
claimed to be τῶν ἐκ Τροίης ἀποσκεδασθέντων ἅµα Ἀµϕιλόχωι καὶ Κάλχαντι (Hdt. l.c.),
and Sophocles (fr. 180) is credited with having transferred Calchas’ and Mopsos’ rivalry
to ‘Pamphylia’ (which Strabo takes to mean Cilicia). The two traditions about Calchas’ post-
war peregrinations are thus:
Calchas+Leonteus, Polypoites, Podaleirios to Colophon (Nostoi).
Calchas+Amphilochos to Cilicia ([Hes.] Melampodia?).14
We see contamination of the two traditions not only in the Apollodorus passage but in
Strabo, who makes Amphilochos Calchas’ companion to Colophon, and in Tzetzes, who
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Nostoi
adds καὶ Κιλικίαν after εἰς Κολοϕῶνα. That Amphilochos featured in the Nostoi
narrative is the less likely in that we hear nothing of his (p.256) presence at Troy in the
Iliad or the other poems of the Trojan Cycle, though ps.-Hesiod included him among the
suitors of Helen, and Quintus perhaps among the warriors in the Wooden Horse.15
Polypoites and Leonteus were Lapiths, leaders of a battle contingent from the Peneios
valley (Il. 2. 738–47, 12. 128–30). They were supposed to have founded Aspendos in
Pamphylia (Eust. 334. 29), and this may be why they are associated with Calchas’
southward trek, though new foundations do not seem to have been typical of the Nostoi.
Perhaps he prophesied their destiny to them. Sch. Dion. Per. 850 says that after Calchas’
demise Mopsos led them on to Cilicia. Tzetzes, on the other hand, says that not long after
the seer’s funeral they returned to Greece, as if they got no further than Colophon.
Possibly some Colophonian family claimed Lapith descent.
As for the third Thessalian in the party, the healer Podaleirios, the surviving son of
Asklepios (Machaon having been killed by Penthesileia or Eurypylos), he too was held to
have found a home in southern Anatolia, in Caria (Apollod. epit. 6. 18~Tz. in Lyc. 1047;
Paus. 3. 26. 10; St. Byz. s.v. Σύρνα). This or some similar tradition presumably underlies
his accompanying Calchas in the Nostoi.16 It was perhaps in this context that the poet
referred to the story of Asklepios’ death at the hands of Zeus:

τὸν Ἀσκλ[ηπιὸν δ᾿ ὑ]πὸ ∆ιὸς κα[τακταν]θῆναι γεγρ[άϕασιν Ἡ]σίοδος (fr.51 M.–W.)…
λ[έγεται] δὲ καὶ ἐν το̣ [ῖς Νόσ] τοις.
Calchas’ death is generally attributed to his defeat by Mopsos in a contest between the
two seers. Strabo, following the passage quoted above, gives an account of the contest
from a Hesiodic poem, probably the Melampodia (fr. 278 M.-W.): Calchas pointed to a
wild fig tree and asked how many figs it had on it. Mopsos was able to give (p.257) the
exact number, whereupon Calchas died. Then he cites Pherecydes (fr. 142 Fowler) for a
version in which Calchas’ question is how many piglets there are inside a certain pregnant
sow and Mopsos replies correctly that there are ten, one of which is female. Strabo adds
that others say that Calchas asked about the sow and Mopsos about the fig tree, and that
Calchas died ὑπὸ λύπης καὶ κατά τι λόγιον.
Apollodorus tells the story in the continuation of the epitome excerpt given above (6. 2–
4), and Tzetzes in the gap in my quotation indicated by ‘ … ’. The λόγιον was that Calchas
would die when he encountered a seer more skilled than himself,17 and this happened
when the travellers were received by Mopsos, son of Apollo and Manto.18 Calchas posed
the fig-tree riddle and Mopsos answered it, in exactly the same terms as in the Hesiodic
fragment. Then Mopsos asked Calchas about the sow: not only how many piglets she had
inside her, but also when she was going to give birth. Calchas said eight, but Mopsos
declared it was ten, nine female and one male, to be born at noon the following day; and
so it proved. Calchas died of chagrin (ἀθυµήσας) and was buried at Notion.
Some version of the seers’ contest may have stood in the Nostoi. It might have
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corresponded to Apollodorus’ version, though it is suspicious that this is appended after

the notice of Calchas’ burial, as if drawn from a different source, and that it combines the
two riddles that Strabo cites successively from Hesiod and Pherecydes19 It does
mention ‘others’ whose version included both riddles, one of them posed by Calchas, and
also the λόγιον. Both riddles are there in Lyc. 427–9. Apollodorus’ version of the sow
riddle differs from Pherecydes’ in that it has one male piglet among the ten instead of one
female.
Poetic, vatic, and riddle contests were an old institution; cf. Severyns (1928), 72–4, and
for the sow riddle ibid. 364. The motif that the loser in such a contest dies recurs in the
stories of Homer’s death when he is defeated by the fisherboys’ riddle and of the
Sphinx’s death when Oedipus answers hers, as well as in Indian and Nordic myth (West,
ibid. 74).
(p.258) Proclus gives the impression that the story of Calchas was taken to its
conclusion before the poet returned to Agamemnon’s departure from Troy. But we have
seen (on Iliou Persis arg. 4b, 3) that Proclus is capable of taking things out of order for
the sake of keeping connected events together. It may well be that the poet used the
wellestablished Homeric interlacing technique and described first the departure of
Calchas and his party, then Agamemnon’s embarkation and perhaps the storm and the
death of Ajax, and then Calchas’ arrival at Colophon and what happened there.
The Remaining Departures from Troy
Arg. 3a
τῶν δὲ περὶ τὸν Ἀγαµέµνονα ἀποπλεόντων Ἀχιλλέως εἴδωλον ἐπιϕανὲν πειρα̃ται
διακωλύειν προλέγον τὰ συµβησόµενα.
Apollod. epit. 6. 5 Ἀγαµέµνων δὲ θύσας ἀνάγεται, καὶ Τενέδωι προσίσχει.
The phrase οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἀγαµέµνονα will stand for that ‘half’ of the Achaeans (Od. 3. 155)
which sided with Agamemnon in the quarrel and postponed their departure. They must
include Ajax, but not Odysseus, who, shrewd enough to see the danger of staying with
the others—or perhaps warned by Athena, his protectress in the Odyssey—chose to sail
off in a different direction.
The poet introduced Achilles’ ghost to enliven the narrative with a dramatic apparition and
a warning figure. The ghost appeared also in the Little Iliad (arg. 3b n.), and perhaps in
the Iliou Persis (arg. 4c n.), but was not, so far as we know, there credited with
foreknowledge of future events. The poets of these episodes either did not know of
Achilles’ translation to Leuke (Aethiopis arg. 4b) or did not regard it as precluding his
reappearance at Troy.
The warning to Agamemnon presumably concerned not the danger of the storm at sea
(Calchas had given warning of Athena’s anger against the Achaeans, and Agamemnon had
already shown himself aware of it) but the danger that faced him at home. The warning
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Nostoi
probably did not go into explicit detail of what was going on at Mycenae and what
Aegisthus planned to do, but was couched in vaguer terms. At any rate it was not
sufficient to dissuade Agamemnon from setting out. His sacrifices to Athena are those
(p.259) programmed in arg. 1a~Apollod. epit. 6. 1, the hecatombs of Od. 3. 144.
His landing on Tenedos (Apollod.) echoes that of the party that left earlier (see on arg. 1b
and c). Perhaps it was mentioned simply as the natural first stopping-place, where the first
night was passed. But possibly it served, as previously, to occasion a further division of
the fleet, so that Agamemnon would be separated from Ajax and escape the latter’s fate.
Apollod. epit. 6. 5
Νεοπτόλεµον δὲ πείθει Θέτις ἀϕικοµένη ἐπιµεῖναι δύο ἡµέρας καὶ θυσιάσαι, καὶ
ἐπιµένει.
It appears from the sequel (see below on arg. 4a) that Neoptolemos went with the others
as far as Tenedos. It must have been there that Thetis appeared to him, coming up out of
the sea as she did at Troy in the Iliad and Aethiopis, to advise her grandson on his next
moves. Born on Skyros, he had never been to Thessaly. He needed to be told where to
go to find Peleus and how to get there. Phoenix might have seemed a sufficient guide, but
Phoenix was to die en route. This was a good opportunity for a scene between
Neoptolemos and Thetis, whom so far as we know he had not met before. And she was
able to give him advice that would keep him clear of the coming storm in the Aegean. That
was perhaps the point of his travelling overland.
There was a poetic motive for the two-day wait, which Thetis justified by the need to
make sacrifices. In Apollodorus the sentence quoted above is followed by the account of
the storm and the death of Ajax (6. 6–7), and then by the story of Nauplios, which is taken
from another source (6. 8–11; Bethe 279f.). Then Neoptolemos, after waiting his two days
on Tenedos, proceeds on his way. This (without Nauplios) was no doubt the sequence of
events in the Nostoi. Neoptolemos received his instructions when Agamemnon and the
others were still at the start of their voyage, then the storm was related, and then the
narrative went back to Neoptolemos and dealt with the continuation of his story. Proclus
passes over the Thetis scene and just mentions her advice when he comes to the journey
(arg. 4a).
(p.260) The Storm; The Death of Ajax
Arg. 3b
εἶθ᾿ ὁ περὶ τὰς Καϕηρίδας πέτρας δηλοῦται χειµὼν καὶ ἡ Αἴαντος ϕθορὰ τοῦ Λοκροῦ.
Apollod. epit. 6. 5 οἳ δὲ ἀνάγονται, καὶ περὶ Τῆνον χειµάζονται· Ἀθηνα̃ γὰρ ἐδεήθη ∆ιὸς
τοῖς ῞Ελλησι χειµῶνα ἐπιπέµψαι· καὶ πολλαὶ νῆες βυθίζονται. Ἀθηνα̃ δὲ ἐπὶ τὴν
Αἴαντος ναῦν κεραυνὸν βάλλει· ὃ δὲ τῆς νεὼς διαλυθείσης ἐπί τινα πέτραν διασωθεὶς
παρὰ τὴν θεοῦ ἔϕη πρόνοιαν σεσῶσθαι. Ποσειδῶν δὲ πλήξας τῆι τριαίνηι τὴν πέτραν
ἔσχισεν, ὃ δὲ πεσὼν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν τελευτα̃ ι. καὶ ἐκβρασθέντα θάπτει Θέτις ἐν
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Μυκόνωι.
Proclus is again extremely niggardly. Apollodorus’ account bears the hallmarks of an epic
source and may be taken as reflecting the Nostoi. The references to Tenos and Mykonos
imply that the voyagers took the second of the alternative routes considered by Nestor
and Diomedes in Od. 3. 170–2 (see above on arg. 1b), the one that they shrewdly
rejected, passing through the channel east of Chios and skirting the northern Cyclades
(Bethe 278f.). At Tenos they were at their furthest from both mainlands. Ajax finally came
to grief at the Γυραὶ πέτραι (Od. 4. 499–511), which, as F. H. Sandbach put beyond
doubt in CR 56 (1942), 63–5, were on Tenos. Proclus refers instead to the rocks of
Kaphereus, the easternmost promontory of Euboea. This is an assimilation to the later
vulgate, according to which Nauplios lured the Achaean ships onto the rocks there.20
In an Olympian scene Athena, infuriated by Ajax’s sacrilege, complained to Zeus and

prevailed upon him to send a storm on the ships at sea. (Cf. Eur. Tro. 78–81, quoted
below.) There is a parallel (p.261) with Helios’ complaint and Zeus’ response in Od. 12.
376–88.21 Alcaeus gives a typically elliptical sketch of the affair (SLG 262. 20–7): Ajax
dragged Cassandra away from Athena’s image; the goddess turned livid, rushed out to
sea, and roused unforeseen tempests.
Many ships besides Ajax’s were sunk. The poet probably did not list the heroes who
perished in them; the postulate of the large-scale disaster dispensed him from accounting
for everyone individually.
Apollodorus says that Athena herself hurled the thunderbolt that struck Ajax’s ship. That
she personally inflicted punishment on the man who had offended her is confirmed by
Eur. Tro. 78–81, where she tells Poseidon what is to happen when the Greeks set sail
from Troy:
καὶ Ζεὺς µὲν ὄµβρον καὶ χάλαζαν ἄσπετον
πέµψει δνοϕώδη τ᾿ αἰθέρος ϕυσήµατα,
ἐµοὶ δὲ δώσειν ϕησὶ πῦρ κεραύνιον,
βάλλειν Ἀχαιοὺς ναῦς τε πιµπράναι πυρί.22
Likewise Virg. Aen. 1. 42f.; Sen. Ag. 528–56; Q.S. 14. 530–8.
What follows in Apollodorus agrees closely with Od. 4. 500–10:
500
Γυρῆισίν µιν πρῶτα Ποσειδάων ἐπέλασσεν
πέτρηισιν µεγάληισι, καὶ ἐξεσάωσε θαλάσσης·
καί νύ κεν ἔκϕυγε κῆρα, καὶ ἐχθόµενός περ Ἀθήνηι
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Nostoi
εἰ µὴ ὑπερϕίαλον ἔπος ἔκβαλε καὶ µέγ᾿ ἀάσθη·
ϕῆ ῥ᾿ ἀέκητι θεῶν ϕυγέειν µέγα λαῖτµα θαλάσσης
505
τοῦ δὲ Ποσειδάων µεγάλ᾿ ἔκλυεν αὐδήσαντος
αὐτίκ᾿ ἔπειτα τρίαιναν ἑλὼν χερσὶ στιβαρῆισιν
ἤλασε Γυραίην πέτρην, ἀπὸ δ᾿ ἔσχισεν αὐτήν·
καὶ τὸ µὲν αὐτόθι µεῖνε, τὸ δὲ τρύϕος ἔµπεσε πόντωι,
τῶι ῥ᾿ Αἴας τὸ πρῶτον ἐϕεζόµενος µέγ᾿ ἀάσθη,
510
τὸν δ᾿ ἐϕόρει κατὰ πόντον ἀπείρονα κυµαίνοντα
The account in the Nostoi may have been very similar or identical. Lycophron 387–95
describes the same sequence of events in his own riddling style. Cf. sch.D Il. 13. 66.
(p.262) The motif of the hero’s impious boast that seals his fate recalls that of Kapaneus
in the Theban saga (Aesch. Sept. 425–31, etc.). We may also compare Od. 9. 525, where
Odysseus boasts that not even Poseidon will heal Polyphemos’ eye, and Polyphemos’
prayer to his father then arouses Poseidon’s wrath against Odysseus, which nearly
brings him to grief. Poseidon’s splitting of the Γυραίη πέτρη is no doubt an aetiology for a
detached rock in the sea close to the cliffs of Tenos (Sandbach, CR 56 (1942), 64 col. ii n.
2).
Apollodorus says finally that Ajax’s body was washed up and given burial on Mykonos by
Thetis: καὶ ἐκβρασθέντα θάπτει Θέτις ἐν Μυκόνωι. The D scholion on Il. 13. 66,
however, says ἐκριϕέντα δὲ αὐτὸν κατὰ ∆ῆλον νεκρὸν Θέτις ἐλεήσασα θάπτει. There
is no contradiction: the body was washed up on Delos, but could not be buried on the
holy island, so Thetis buried it on Myconos.23 Lycophron 396–402 provides fuller detail:
the body is washed up and lies withering and rotting in the sun until Thetis takes pity on it
and buries it; the trembling(?) tomb.24 is by the sea, and close (at the closest point?) to
Delos. There must have been an actual tomb supposed to be that of Ajax. Thetis had
already played a part in the Nostoi narrative. She had no reason to feel affection towards
Ajax, but there was no one else to bury him, and as a goddess of coasts and islands she
took note of the situation and acted.
Neoptolemos’ Journey
Arg. 4a
Νεοπτόλεµος δὲ Θέτιδος ὑποθεµένης πεζῆι ποιεῖται τὴν πορείαν.
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Apollod. epit. 6. 12 Νεοπτόλεµος δὲ µείνας ἐν Τενέδωι δύο ἡµέρας ὑποθήκαις τῆς

Θέτιδος εἰς Μολοσσοὺς πεζῆι ἀπήιει µετὰ Ἑλένου.
The narrative now returned to Neoptolemos; cf. above on arg. 3a/Apollod. epit. 6. 5. Like
Calchas and his party, he was to avoid the dangers of the sea and travel overland. First,
of course, he had to cross from Tenedos to some landing-place north of the Dardanelles.
(p.263) He was leading the Myrmidons (Od. 3. 188f.), accompanied by Phoenix and no
doubt by other retainers of Achilles.
According to Apollodorus he was also accompanied by Helenos and went to the land of
the Molossoi. The two details go together: the seer served to guide him to the land
appointed by destiny. The Little Iliad (F 30) and Iliou Persis (arg. 4a) would lead us to
suppose that he was in possession of Andromache. She too belongs with the Molossian
journey, because by her Neoptolemos was to father the eponymous hero Molossos,
from whom the later Molossian kings claimed descent: Apollod. epit. 6. 12–13 καὶ νικήσας
µάχηι Μολοσσοὺς βασιλεύει. καὶ ἐξ Ἀνδροµάχης γεννα̃ ι Μολοσσόν. ῞Ελενος δὲ κτίσας
ἐν τῆι Μολοσσίαι πόλιν κατοικεῖ, καὶ δίδωσιν αὐτῶι Νεοπτόλεµος εἰς γυναῖκα τὴν
µητέρα ∆ηιδάµειαν.25 But I doubt whether any of this stood in the Nostoi. (If it did, it
was the first appearance of the Molossians in Greek literature.) In the Odyssey, which as
we have seen agreed extensively with the Nostoi in regard to the Return stories,
Neoptolemos marries Menelaos’ daughter Hermione, who was promised to him at Troy;
he is located in the Μυρµιδόνων ἄστυ, and there is no hint of a union with Andromache or
of a Molossian kingdom (4. 5–9). Cf. Bethe 277.
Arg. 4b
καὶ παραγενόµενος εἰς Θράικην Ὀδυσσέα καταλαµβάνει ἐν τῆι Μαρωνείαι.
Maroneia is a harbour site below Mt Ismaros, which appears in the Odyssey (9. 39f.) as
Odysseus’ first landfall after leaving Troy. He had evidently chosen a route different from
all the other voyagers, who went southward towards Lesbos.26 There is no mention in
the Odyssey of his having seen Neoptolemos in Thrace; Odysseus says nothing of it in
reporting on him to Achilles’ ghost in 11. 533–7, and indeed he implies that he went home
by ship. The purpose of the encounter at Maroneia, so far as we can see, was simply to
give a sight of Odysseus on his way at the start of his adventures, which were otherwise
excluded from the Nostoi.27 It was possibly for this (p.264) that Neoptolemos was sent
by the land route. He could have got to Maroneia by sea just as Odysseus did, but it was
necessary for their ways to part after that.
Arg. 4c
καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν ἀνύει τῆς ὁδοῦ, καὶ τελευτήσαντα Φοίνικα θάπτει· αὐτὸς δὲ εἰς
Μολοσσοὺς ἀϕικόµενος ἀναγνωρίζεται Πηλεῖ
Apollod. epit. 6. 12 καὶ παρὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ἀποθανόντα Φοίνικα θάπτει. (There follows the
passage about the conquest of Molossia quoted above.)
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The death of Phoenix, like that of Calchas, may have had to do with the existence of a tomb
(Bethe 279). According to Lycophron 417–20 and sch. he was buried at Eion by the
mouth of the Strymon.
It was poetically necessary that Neoptolemos should find his aged grandfather Peleus,
much as Odysseus must be reunited with Laertes. But Peleus lived in Phthia, far
removed from Molossia. We must suspect that Proclus’ εἰς Μολοσσοὺς ἀϕικόµενος
represents an intrusion from the Molossian version.28 In Il. 24. 488f. and Od. 11. 494–503
there are concerns that Peleus is under threat and in need of a protector. If this was so
in the Nostoi, Neoptolemos’ arrival will have had more dramatic interest than if it was not.
Cf. Welcker ii. 289f.
All that Nestor has to say of Neoptolemos’ nostos is that he and the Myrmidons had a
successful one (Od. 3. 188f.). He adds that Philoctetes and Idomeneus were equally
fortunate. We may guess that they too were briefly dealt with in the Cyclic poem.
Agamemnon Reaches the Argolid
Arg. 5
〈ἔπει〉τα Ἀγαµέµνονος ὑπὸ Αἰγίσθου καὶ Κλυταιµήστρας ἀναιρεθέντος ὑπ᾿ Ὀρέστου
καὶ Πυλάδου τιµωρία, καὶ Μενελάου εἰς τὴν οἰκείαν ἀνακοµιδή.
It was natural that the saga of Agamemnon and Orestes, the most elaborate story in the
Nostoi and the one that extended longest in (p.265) time after the war, should have
been held back till other heroes’ returns had been dealt with. It may have taken up the
whole latter half of the epic; see intro. 4.
Agamemnon’s departure from Troy, undeterred by a warning from Achilles’ ghost, was
related earlier. We have seen him get as far as Tenedos (arg. 3a). It was suggested that
his pause there might have had the effect of saving him from the worst of the storm. But
we cannot say for sure whether the poet concerned himself with the exact whereabouts
of Agamemnon during the storm and the degree of trouble it may have caused him. In
Aeschylus (Ag. 650–80) the Herald relates how it raged through the night, and how when
morning came they saw the sea covered with bodies and wreckage, while their own ship
by some divine assistance had come through unscathed. Perhaps this may be connected
with what Proteus tells Menelaos at Od. 4. 512f.: after relating Ajax’s fate, he says, ‘but
your brother escaped death at sea, saved by lady Hera’. The Nostoi poet may have had
the goddess of Argos and Mycenae (Il. 4. 52) intervene in some way to protect
Agamemnon in the storm, even though she was not going to be able to keep him safe for
long.
Proteus continues with an account of Agamemnon’s movements that is barely intelligible.
ἀλλ᾿ ὅτε δὴ τάχ᾿ ἔµελλε Μαλειάων ὄρος αἰπύ
515
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ἵξεσθαι, τότε δή µιν ἀναρπάξασα θύελλα
πόντον ἔπ᾿ ἰχθυόεντα ϕέρεν βαρέα στενάχοντα
ἀγροῦ ἐπ᾿ ἐσχατιήν, ὅθι δώµατα ναῖε Θυέστης
τὸ πρίν, ἀτὰρ τότ᾿ ἔναιε Θυεστιάδης Αἴγισθος.
ἀλλ᾿ ὅτε δὴ καὶ κεῖθεν ἐϕαίνετο νόστος ἀπήµων,
520
ἂψ δὲ θεοὶ οὖρον στρέψαν, καὶ οἴκαδ᾿ ἵκοντο,
ἤτοι ὃ µὲν χαίρων ἐπεβήσετο πατρίδος αἴης
καὶ κύνει ἁπτόµενος ἣν πατρίδα, πολλὰ δ᾿ ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ
δάκρυα θερµὰ χέοντ᾿, ἐπεὶ ἀσπασίως ἴδε γαῖαν.
τὸν δ᾿ ἄρ᾿ ἀπὸ σκοπιῆς εἶδε σκοπός, ὅν ῥα καθεῖσεν
525
Αἴγισθος δολόµητις ἄγων, ὑπὸ δ᾿ ἔσχετο µισθόν,
χρυσοῦ δοιὰ τάλαντα· ϕύλασσε δ᾿ ὅ γ᾿ εἰς ἐνιαυτόν,
µή ἑ λάθοι παριών, µνήσαιτο δὲ θούριδος ἀλκῆς.
βῆ δ᾿ ἴµεν ἀγγελέων πρὸς δώµατα ποιµένι λαῶν.
The problems are:
(i) Why did Agamemnon go anywhere near Cape Malea, the south-eastern tip of
the Peloponnese? Menelaos needed to round it to get to Sparta; Odysseus
needed to round it to get to Ithaca; but (p.266) Agamemnon should have been
heading into the Argolic Gulf, fifty miles to the north, as his palace was at Mycenae
(3. 305) and Aegisthus lived µυχῶι ῎Αργεος (263).29 It is sometimes supposed
that the present passage reflects a version in which Agamemnon did not rule at
Mycenae but jointly with Menelaos at Sparta or Amyklai, as in Stesichorus (PMGF
216), Simonides (PMG 549=F 276 Poltera), and Pindar (Pyth. 11. 16, 32, Nem. 11.
34).30 The alternative answer is that the typical association of Malea with sailors
being blown off course has led the Odyssey poet, if not the Nostoi poet,
thoughtlessly to take Agamemnon there.31
(ii) But what was the point of the diversion? Agamemnon has survived the great
storm; why send him astray again? Nothing comes of it.
(iii) 517 connects badly with 516; we miss ‘but presently he made landfall’. It
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would connect better with 513: σάωσε δὲ πότνια ῞Ηρη | ἀγροῦ ἐπ᾿ ἐσχατιήν,
etc.
(iv) 519ff. connect badly with 518. The νόστος ἀπήµων results from a change in
the wind, implying that Agamemnon is still at sea. The lines would follow better
after 516.
An altogether more natural and straightforward narrative results if 514–16 and 519–20
are removed.32 Hera saves Agamemnon from the dangers of the sea, and he lands in the
part of the Argolid where Aegisthus lives. He rejoices to be back in his own country.
Aegisthus’ lookout sees him and goes to tell his employer. It is tempting to suppose that
this simple narrative corresponded to that of the Nostoi. Someone has forcibly conflated it
with a five-line passage from an alternative version, inserting three of the lines after 513
and two after 518. This alternative version may have been designed to locate Agamemnon
in Laconia.
At some point, either before Agamemnon reached the Greek mainland or soon
afterwards, the poet must have given an account of how Aegisthus had seduced
Clytaemestra. It probably resembled the account that Nestor gives in Od. 3. 262–75.
While the Achaeans were fighting at Troy, Aegisthus, sitting untroubled in his corner of
the (p.267) Argolid, made persistent attempts to win Clytaemestra over with seductive
words. At first she rejected his advances, being a sensible woman and moreover being
watched over by a singer whom Agamemnon had charged to look after her. But in the
end Aegisthus removed the singer and left him to perish on a desert island; 33
Clytaemestra melted, and he brought her to live with him, celebrating his success with
liberal sacrifices and dedications.
Elsewhere (Od. 1. 37–43) we hear that the gods had sent Hermes to warn Aegisthus not
to embark on this course of action: not to court Clytaemestra and not to kill Agamemnon,
because there would be vengeance from Orestes once he reached manhood and felt the
yearning to return to his own land. But Aegisthus had not taken the good advice. Zeus
cites this in illustration of the principle that mortals, despite blaming the gods for their
misfortunes, suffer more than they need through their own wicked follies. Athena then
raises the contrasting case of Odysseus, who is suffering woes that he does not deserve.
It may be that the poet has invented the Hermes episode for this context, wanting to
bring the Agamemnon theme into view right at the beginning of his epic. It is difficult to
imagine it having a place in the narrative of the Nostoi, as supposed by Nitzsch (1831),
37.
The Murder of Agamemnon

I continue to assume that the Nostoi gave more or less the same account as the relevant
passages of the Odyssey (1. 36; 3. 193f., 303–5; 4. 529–37; 11. 409–34; 24. 20–2, 199–
202). Cf. below on F 10. After learning of Agamemnon’s arrival in his district, Aegisthus
assembled a force of twenty men and put them in concealment, while his kitchen staff
prepared a feast (4. 530f.). Then he went in his chariot to where his cousin Agamemnon
was (perhaps he had already made his way home), invited him to dinner, and led him back
to his own place. Agamemnon was accompanied by his Trojan captive Cassandra and by a
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company of his retainers. After they had dined, (p.268) Aegisthus’ men stormed in and
a furious battle broke out. Clytaemestra was present,34 and she killed Cassandra. Here is
the vivid account given by Agamemnon’s ghost (11. 409–26):
ἀλλά µοι Αἴγισθος τεύξας θάνατόν τε µόρον τε
410
ἔκτα σὺν οὐλοµένηι ἀλόχωι, οἶκόνδε καλέσσας,
δειπνίσσας, ὥς τίς τε κατέκτανε βοῦν ἐπὶ ϕάτνηι.
ὣς θάνον οἰκτίστωι θανάτωι· περὶ δ᾿ ἄλλοι ἑταῖροι
νωλεµέως κτείνοντο …
418
ἀλλά κε κεῖνα µάλιστα ἰδὼν ὀλοϕύραο θυµῶι,
ὡς ἀµϕὶ κρητῆρα τραπέζας τε πληθούσας
420
κείµεθ᾿ ἐνὶ µεγάρωι, δάπεδον δ᾿ ἅπαν αἵµατι θυῖεν.
οἰκτροτάτην δ᾿ ἤκουσα ὄπα Πριάµοιο θυγατρός
Κασσάνδρης, τὴν κτεῖνε Κλυταιµήστρη δολόµητις
ἀµϕ᾿ ἐµοί· αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ ποτὶ γαίηι χεῖρας ἀείρων
βάλλον ἀποθνήισκων περὶ ϕασγάνωι. ἣ δὲ κυνῶπις
425
νοσϕίσατ᾿, οὐδέ µοι ἔτλη ἰόντί περ εἰς Ἀΐδαο
χερσὶ κατ᾿ ὀϕθαλµοὺς ἑλέειν σύν τε στόµ᾿ ἐρεῖσαι
I understand 420–4 to mean that as Agamemnon sank forward to the ground, pierced by
Aegisthus’ sword, vainly throwing up his arms, he could hear Cassandra’s cries behind
him as she was slain over him.35 Although it is Aegisthus who kills him, Clytaemestra is
treated as being equally guilty of it (3. 235; 4. 92; 11. 410, 430; 24. 97, 200). All of
Agamemnon’s followers and all of Aegisthus’ men were slain (4. 532–7; 11. 409–26; 24.
21f.).
It is not unlikely that at some point Cassandra prophesied what was to happen, as she
does in Aeschylus. There seems no point otherwise in Agamemnon’s bringing a
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prophetess all the way from Troy to Argos, only for them both to be killed.
F 10 Poculum Homericum MB 36 (Berlin inv. 4996; p. 101 Sinn)

The cup, dating from around 200 BCE, was published by C. Robert, JDAI 34 (1919), 72–6
with Tafel 6; an illustration may also be found in Severyns (1928), facing p. 403, and in
Sinn. The scenes, crudely executed in relief using a collection of stamps, extend round
the (p.269) circumference. They bear the overall caption [κατὰ τὸν ποιητὴν] Ἀ[γίαν] ἐκ
τῶν [Νό] στων̣ Ἀχα [ι]ῶν. θάνατος Ἀγαµέµ[νο]νος. Following the frieze from left to right
from this point, we see first Aegisthus (not named), with raised sword, rushing at
[Ἀ]γαµέµνων, who reclines on a couch. Cassandra (not named) is tearing her hair and
apparently throwing herself between them. Next, behind Agamemnon, three of his
retainers, Η̣ι̣ι̣ι̣ας, Ἀλκµέων, and Μήστωρ Αἴαντος, all en déshabille and unarmed, start
up from their couches as Ἀντ[ί]οχος and Ἀργεῖος, armed with spears and shields,
advance against them. Finally we see Κλυτα[ι]µήστρα, trampling over the dead body of
Ἀγαµέµνων, attacking Κασσάν[δρα] with raised sword and with her left hand grabbing
her by the hair.
The fighting was evidently described at length in the epic, with naming of individuals on
both sides. Perhaps there was a complete catalogue of both parties. We may assume that
the names of the retainers on the cup were taken from the epic. They seem to be just
stock heroic names. Mestor at least was provided with a famous father, Ajax (the Locrian
according to Robert, JDAI 34 (1919), 73, on the ground that Telamonian Ajax was an
enemy of Agamemnon).
The picture confirms the presumed agreement of the Nostoi and Odyssey versions in
several particulars. Agamemnon and his followers are caught off guard by Aegisthus and
his men as they relax unsuspecting at a feast.36 Agamemnon is killed by Aegisthus and
Cassandra is killed over him by Clytaemestra.
Lycophron (1114) speaks of Clytaemestra trampling on Cassandra’s neck. This might be a

detail deriving from the Nostoi.
F 12 Ath. 399a, “δρα”

ὁ τὴν τῶν Ἀτρειδῶν κάθοδον πεποιηκὼς ἐν τῶι τρίτωι ϕησίν·
Ἶσον δ᾿ Ἑρµιονεὺς ποσὶ καρπαλίµοισι µετασπών
ψύας ἔγχεϊ νύξε.
2 ψοίας Kaibel.
(p.270) For the equation of The Return of the Atreidai with the Nostoi see intro. 1. The
fragment comes from a battle scene, no doubt the battle in Aegisthus’ house. Again the
men named cannot be traced elsewhere. An Isos appears in Il. 11. 101 as a bastard son
of Priam, killed by Agamemnon. Hermioneus recalls Menelaos’ daughter Hermione and
the Argive town of the same name. If we accept the indication of the cup (F 10) that only
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Aegisthus’ men were armed, he would be one of them, like Argeios.37 But as they were
all killed in the fighting, we must suppose that Agamemnon’s men also had weapons to
hand or were able to get hold of some after being attacked.
ποσὶ καρπαλίµοισι µετασπών is not exactly paralleled in Homer, but cf. Il. 17. 190 ποσὶ
κραιπνοῖσι µετασπών and 16. 342 κιχεὶς ποσὶ καρπαλίµοισιν. The word ψῦαι or ψοῖαι,
‘groin’, is not otherwise found in high poetry. ἔγχεϊ νύξε occurs in the same place in the
verse at Il. 5. 579.
Tragic references to the dishonourable disposal of Agamemnon’s and Cassandra’s bodies

may possibly reflect the epic. Aeschylus (Ag. 1554 and Cho. 429–44) indicates that
Agamemnon was subjected to µασχαλισµός and buried in a clandestine operation
without mourners. Euripides (Tro. 446–50) says he was buried at night, while
Cassandra’s naked corpse was thrown into a mountain stream.
The poet had now to relate Orestes’ removal to another land. Agamemnon’s words in Od.
11. 452f., ἣ δ᾿ ἐµὴ οὐδέ περ υἷος ἐνιπλησθῆναι ἄκοιτις | ὀϕθαλµοῖσιν ἔασε, πάρος δέ µε
πέϕνε καὶ αὐτόν, imply that when he reached Argos Orestes was still there, though in
458–61 he surmises that he is now in exile. He must have been taken or sent away
immediately after the murder. In Pindar (Pyth. 11. 17) he is smuggled away by a nurse
when it becomes apparent that his life may be in danger, and so perhaps in Stesichorus’
Oresteia, where a nurse is known to have played a role at some point (PMGF 218). In
Aeschylus (Ag. 877ff., Cho. 913ff.) Clytaemestra herself sent him away while she pursued
her affair. In Sophocles (El. 11–14, 1348–56, cf. Eur. El. 16–18) Electra gave him to a
trusted old manservant to take away. In a version known to (p.271) vase-painters and
to Nicolaus of Damascus FGrHist 90 F 25, which Robert (1881), 153–72, argued derived
from Stesichorus, this part was played by the herald Talthybios.
In these versions he was taken to Phocis. In the Nostoi, however, he went to Athens; at
least, according to Od. 3. 306f. he returned in the eighth year ἂψ ἀπ᾿ Ἀθηνάων or ἀπ᾿
Ἀθηναίων, or with Aristarchus’ reading ἀπ᾿ Ἀθηναίης. (Zenodotus’ variant ἀπὸ Φωκήων
is to be discounted as an assimilation to the version familiar from Pindar and the
tragedians.) Aristarchus understood his Ἀθηναίης to mean ‘Athens’, like Ἀθήνην in 7. 80;
perhaps it should be taken rather as ‘Athena’s land’, i.e. Attica, but in any case it was in
Attica or at Athens that Orestes grew to manhood. We have no idea who he was staying
with. The sons of Theseus? But there is no evidence that they appeared at all in the
Nostoi.
The Years Pass

After disposing of Agamemnon, Aegisthus settled down with Clytaemestra to rule over
Mycenae, δέδµητο δὲ λαὸς ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶι· |ἑπταετὲς δ᾿ ἤνασσε πολυχρύσοιο Μυκήνης (Od.
3. 304f.). Did the poet at this point simply jump forward seven years to Orestes’ return,
or did he mitigate the transition by interposing other matter?
He shows other evidence of artistry in the disposition of his material by interlacing action
that was proceeding on different fronts, and it is likely that he did something of the sort
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here. Nitzsch suggested that he delayed the latter part of Neoptolemos’ story— indeed
his actual departure from Troy—till after the death of Agamemnon so as to separate the
latter from Orestes’ return.38 I think he must have departed before then (see above on
arg. 3a/ Apollod. epit. 6. 5), but the poet might have left him trekking through Thrace,
postponing the encounter with Odysseus at Maroneia and the rest of his story. That is
not how it appears from Proclus, but it deserves serious consideration. The author of the
(p.272) summary might very reasonably have dealt with Neoptolemos’ return as an
undivided whole before turning to Agamemnon’s. In fact the same thing could have
happened with the story of Calchas. The departure of him and his companions from Troy
might have been related before Agamemnon sailed, as in arg. 2–3, and their arrival at
Colophon and Calchas’ death left till after the great storm and Agamemnon’s disastrous
homecoming.
There were other, still more obvious matters to refer to. The wanderings of Menelaos
and of Odysseus were in progress throughout the years of Aegisthus’ reign at Mycene,
and it was natural to say something of them. We assume that the poet did not aim to
compete with the Odyssey by offering his own full version of Odysseus’ story. But we
know he mentioned his stop at Ismaros-Maroneia and Neoptolemos’ meeting with him
there. After completing the tale of Neoptolemos’ homecoming he might have given a
summary account of Odysseus’ subsequent adventures as far as Calypso. As for
Menelaos, this was the most suitable place to describe his travels in Cyprus, the Levant,
and north Africa. The account might have included his stays with Polybos and Thon in
Egypt and Phaidimos in Sidon (Od. 4. 125ff., 228f., 615ff.). In Cyprus he might have stayed
with Cinyras, as we have conjectured in the case of Paris (on Cypria arg. 2d). In Lyc. 853–
5 Menelaos is to dedicate in a Calabrian shrine of Athena a Cypriot crater and a pair of
Helen’s oriental slippers, and it has been conjectured that these were gifts from
Cinyras.39 Presumably these objects were actually to be seen in the temple, and if they
were said to be of Cypriot origin it was probably on the basis of literary authority for the
couple’s visit there.
The Hades Scene

It is in this part of the poem that, for reasons explained below, I place the Hades scene
which is explicitly attested by F 1 and to which, as all critics have agreed, a series of other
fragments relating to mythological figures of earlier times (Tantalos and various women)
are to be assigned. Here are the relevant fragments.
(p.273) F 1 Paus. 10. 28. 7

ἡ δὲ Ὁµήρου ποίησις ἐς Ὀδυσσέα καὶ ἡ Μινυάς τε καλουµένη καὶ οἱ Νόστοι (µνήµη γὰρ
δὴ καὶ ἐν ταύταις ῞Αιδου καὶ τῶν ἐκεῖ δειµάτων ἐστίν) ἴσασιν οὐδένα Εὐρύνοµον
δαίµονα.
F 2⋆ Et. Gen., Magn., and Gud. s.v. νεκάδες

Ὅµηρος (Il. 5. 886) εἴωθε λέγειν νεκάδας τὰς τῶν νεκρῶν τάξεις … παρὰ µὲν τοῖς
κυκλικοῖς αἱ ψυχαὶ νεκάδες λέγονται
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The Homeric verse is ἦ τέ κε δηρόν | αὐτοῦ πήµατ᾿ ἔπασχον ἐν αἰνῆισιν νεκάδεσσιν,

where Aristarchus rightly explained it as ‘the ranks of corpses’ on the battlefield (see the
testimonia in Erbse’s edition of the scholia ad loc.), but others no doubt took it as ‘down
among the dead in Hades’.
Where in the Cycle might souls have been spoken of in the plural? The Hades scene of
the Nostoi is the most obvious possibility.
F 3 Ath. 281b
ϕιλήδονον δὲ οἱ ποιηταὶ καὶ τὸν ἀρχαῖόν ϕασι γενέσθαι Τάνταλον. ὁ γοῦν τὴν τῶν
Ἀτρειδῶν ποιήσας κάθοδον ἀϕικόµενον αὐτὸν λέγει πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς καὶ
συνδιατρίβοντα ἐξουσίας τυχεῖν παρὰ τοῦ ∆ιὸς αἰτήσασθαι ὅτου ἐπιθυµεῖ· τὸν δέ, πρὸς
τὰς ἀπολαύσεις ἀπλήστως διακείµενον, ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν τε τούτων µνείαν ποιήσασθαι καὶ
τοῦ ζῆν τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον τοῖς θεοῖς. ἐϕ᾿ οἷς ἀγανακτήσαντα τὸν ∆ία τὴν µὲν εὐχὴν
ἀποτελέσαι διὰ τὴν ὑπόσχεσιν, ὅπως δὲ µηδὲν ἀπολαύηι τῶν παρακειµένων ἀλλὰ
διατελῆι ταραττόµενος, ὑπὲρ τῆς κεϕαλῆς ἐξήρτησεν αὐτῶι πέτρον, δι᾿ ὃν οὐ δύναται
τῶν παρακειµένων 〈ἡδονῆς〉 τυχεῖν οὐδενός.
Odysseus sees Tantalos undergoing his everlasting torment in Od. 11. 582–92, though
there it takes a less canonical form. He is one in a series of famous sinners condemned to
special punishments (576–600). There may have been a similar group in the Nostoi.
For Tantalos’ rock cf. Archil. 91. 14f., Alcm. PMGF 79, Alc. fr. 365. Pausanias 10. 31. 12,
finding it represented in Polygnotos’ underworld painting in the Cnidian Lesche at Delphi,
infers that Polygnotos followed Archilochus’ account, and says he does not know whether
Archilochus invented it or took it from someone else. It is odd that he overlooks its
presence in the Hades scene of the Nostoi, which he cites three times in the context (F 1,
4, 5). But it (p.274) would be unsafe to argue from this that ἡ τῶν Ἀτρειδῶν κάθοδος
was a different poem, unknown to Pausanias.
F 4 Paus. 10. 29. 6

ἔστι δὲ πεποιηµένα ἐν Νόστοις Μινύου µὲν τὴν Κλυµένην θυγατέρα εἶναι, γήµασθαι δὲ
αὐτὴν Κεϕάλωι τῶι ∆ηίονος, καὶ γενέσθαι σϕίσιν ῎Ιϕικλον παῖδα.
F 5 Paus. 10. 30. 5

ὑπὲρ τούτους Μαῖρά ἐστιν ἐπὶ πέτραι καθεζοµένη. περὶ δὲ αὐτῆς πεποιηµένα ἐστὶν ἐν
Νόστοις ἀπελθεῖν µὲν παρθένον ἔτι ἐξ ἀνθρώπων, θυγατέρα δὲ αὐτὴν εἶναι Προίτου
τοῦ Θερσάνδρου, τὸν δὲ εἶναι Σισύϕου.
F 4 and 5 are from Pausanias’ description of Polygnotos’ underworld painting. He has

already referred in this context to the Hades scene in the Nostoi (above, F 1), which
makes it all the more probable that he has that portion of the poem in mind here. Klymene
and Maira are mentioned together in Od. 11. 326 in the long section on famous women of
the past whom Odysseus saw and interrogated (225–330). The D scholia there (p. 244
Ernst) give information that matches and amplifies what Pausanias attests for the Nostoi:
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Nostoi
Μαῖρα ἡ Προίτου τοῦ Θερσάνδρου θυγάτηρ καὶ Ἀντείας τῆς Ἀµϕιάνακτος

ἐγένετο κάλλει διαπρεπεστάτη. ἡγουµένη δὲ περὶ πλείονος τὴν παρθενίαν εἵπετο
τῆι Ἀρτέµιδι ἐπὶ τὰ κυνηγέσια. (Zeus fell in love with her and made her pregnant;
she gave birth to Lokros, and was shot by Artemis because she had abandoned
hunting. The story is in Pherecydes [fr. 170b Fowler].)… Κλυµένη Μινύου τοῦ
Ποσειδῶνος καὶ Εὐρυανάσσης τῆς Ὑπέρϕαντος γαµηθεῖσα Φυλάκωι τῶι ∆ηίονος
῎Ιϕικλον τίκτει ποδώκη παῖδα.
F 6 Arg. Eur. Med. (ii. 136. 12 Schwartz) (cf. sch. Ar. Eq. 1321)
Φερεκύδης δὲ (fr. 113 Fowler) καὶ Σιµωνίδης (PMG 548=F 270 Poltera) ϕασὶν ὡς ἡ
Μήδεια ἀνεψήσασα τὸν Ἰάσονα νέον ποιήσειε. περὶ δὲ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ Αἴσονος ὁ
τοὺς Νόστους ποιήσας ϕησὶν οὕτως·
αὐτίκα δ᾿ Αἴσονα θῆκε ϕίλον κόρον ἡβώοντα,
γῆρας ἀποξύσασ᾿ εἰδυίηισι πραπίδεσσιν,
ϕάρµακα πόλλ᾿ ἕψουσ᾿ ἐνὶ χρυσείοισι λέβησιν.
3 ἐνὶ Wolf: ἐπὶ codd.
(p.275) Ovid gives a lurid account of Aison’s rejuvenation in Met. 7. 159–293. More
often we hear of Jason’s.
1–2 .≈ Il. 9. 446 γῆρας ἀποξύσας θήσειν νέον ἡβώοντα; for the spelling of ἡβώοντα see
my critical apparatus ad loc. κόρος for epicIonic κοῦρος is un-Homeric; cf. N. J.
Richardson on Hymn. Dem. 439. Griffin 42 takes ϕίλον κόρον to be adapted from ϕίλον
τέκος (voc.) two lines before the Iliadic line quoted.
F 7 Clem. Strom. 6. 12. 7

Ἀντιµάχου τε τοῦ Τηΐου εἰπόντος “ἐκ γὰρ δώρων πολλὰ κάκ᾿ ἀνθρώποισι πέλονται”,
Ἀγίας ἐποίησεν
δῶρα γὰρ ἀνθρώπων νόον ἤπαϕεν ἠδὲ καὶ ἔργα.
Ἀγίας Thiersch: Αὐγ⟦ε⟧ίας cod. νόον Sylburg: νοῦν cod.
The line quoted from Antimachus of Teos is Epigonoi F 2; it may have referred to
Polyneikes’ bribing of Eriphyle in the earlier Theban war. ‘Agias’, if the name is rightly
restored, should mean the Nostoi. Nitzsch (1831, 42 n.⋆⋆) and Welcker (i. 264 n. 467)
conjectured that this line too referred to Eriphyle, and that she was mentioned among
the other heroines in the underworld scene, as she is in Od. 11. 326 (in the same line as
Maira and Klymene). An alternative possibility would be that it stood in the account of
Aegisthus’ wooing of Clytaemestra and was a comment on her yielding to the persuasion
of gifts from him.
F 8⋆ Sch. Od. 2. 120
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Nostoi
Μυκήνη Ἰνάχου θυγάτηρ καὶ Μελίας τῆς Ὠκεανοῦ· ἧς καὶ Ἀρέστορος ῎Αργος, ὡς ἐν τῶι
Κύκλωι ϕέρεται.
It is not clear whether ὡς ἐν τῶι Κύκλωι ϕέρεται covers Mykene’s parentage or refers
only to her marriage and son. That she was a daughter of Inachos and the wife of Arestor
was stated also in the Hesiodic Megalai Ehoiai (fr. 246 M.-W.). Her son Argos was the
many-eyed one, the watcher of Io; cf. Severyns (1928), 396f.
Mykene is mentioned together with Tyro and Alkmene at Od. 2. 120 as a laudable lady of
the past; Tyro and Alkmene then feature among the heroines of the Nekyia (11. 235–9,
with Aison mentioned as one of Tyro’s sons; 266–70).
(p.276) F 14 (new) Paus. 1. 2. 1

ἐσελθόντων δὲ ἐς τὴν πόλιν ἐστὶν Ἀντιόπης µνῆµα Ἀµαζόνος. ταύτην τὴν Ἀντιόπην
Πίνδαρος µέν (fr. 175) ϕησιν ὑπὸ Πειρίθου καὶ Θησέως ἁρπασθῆναι, Τροιζηνίωι δὲ
Ἡγίαι (FGrHist 606) τοιάδε ἐς αὐτὴν πεποίηται· Ἡρακλέα Θεµίσκυραν πολιορκοῦντα
τὴν ἐπὶ Θερµώδοντι ἑλεῖν µὴ δύνασθαι, Θησέως δὲ ἐρασθεῖσαν Ἀντιόπην (στρατεῦσαι
γὰρ ἅµα Ἡρακλεῖ καὶ Θησέα) παραδοῦναι τὸ χωρίον. τάδε µὲν Ἡγίας πεποίηκεν.
A contentious fragment. Some in the nineteenth century identified the otherwise unknown
‘Hegias of Troizen’ with Agias of Troizen, the poet named by Proclus as the author of the
Nostoi.40 After Kirchhoff and Wilamowitz rejected the identification, scholarship has
remained generally unfavourable to it.41 Jacoby accepted that Pausanias’ πεποίηται and
πεποίηκεν imply a poem, but he thought the ‘novelistic character’ of the story pointed to
the Hellenistic period. However, the motif of the Amazon who betrayed her country by
falling in love with Theseus is pre-Hellenistic (Isoc. Panath. 193), and his union with
Antiope can be traced back to the late sixth century.42 Kirchhoff’s argument that
Pausanias elsewhere cites the Nostoi anonymously can be countered by observing that
he twice cites the Little Iliad without author’s name but in one passage refers to what
seems to be that poem as ‘Lescheos’ (see on Little Iliad F 15–27), and that he four times
cites the Minyas anonymously but in one passage says ‘Prodikos of Phocaea, if he is the
author of τὰ ἐς τὴν Μινυάδα ἔπη’. Which is the more unlikely: that there were two
Troizenian mythographical poets with effectively the same name, one held to be the
author of the Nostoi, the other known only to Pausanias (who likes to cite Cyclic poems);
or that the story of Heracles’ expedition with Theseus to Themiscyra existed as early as
the Nostoi? Theseus’ presence in the Odyssey (11. 321–5, 631) and Cypria and that of his
mother and sons in the Little Iliad and Iliou Persis indicates that his mythology was
evolving in several directions. (p.277) Given his strong early associations with Troizen,
he might well have been of interest to an archaic Troizenian poet.
If the fragment does belong to the Nostoi, we shall naturally assign it to the underworld
scene. Theseus himself might have appeared there (a possibility acknowledged at Od. 11.
631), or Antiope might have been seen among the heroines, like her Theban homonym at
Od. 11. 260–5.
The above fragments point to a Hades scene that had much in common with the Nekyia of
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Nostoi
the Odyssey. There was at least one famous sinner undergoing his punishment—Tantalos,
also seen by Odysseus—and there may have been others. More significantly, a series of
past heroines was presented, as in Od. 11. 225–329, where several of the same ones
appear. It may well be that others who appear in the Odyssey passage such as Tyro,
Alkmene, Epikaste, etc., also featured in the Nostoi (Severyns (1928), 395).
The women in these catalogues may seem a curiously random selection, including some
fairly obscure figures. In fact there are signs of underlying genealogical coherences.
Odysseus actually says that he questioned the women, and they informed him, about
their families (234, cf. 236f., 261, 306). Some of those he names are drawn from Theban
and Attic saga, but a whole group belong among the descendants of the sons and
daughters of Aiolos. The genealogy was set out in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, and
we know that the story of Tyro, at least, was told there (frr. 30. 31–5, 31, 32) in verses
very similar to Od. 11. 238–50.43 The women in Nostoi F 4, 5, and 8 come with
genealogical details attached. Klymene (F 4) is the wife of Kephalos, who is a son of Aiolos’
son Deion. Maira (F 5) is descended from Aiolos’ son Sisyphos. F 6 concerns Aison, son of
another son of Aiolos, Kretheus. It thus appears that the Hades scenes in the Odyssey
and Nostoi are jointly and severally drawing on a body of genealogical poetry similar to
(but older than) the Hesiodic Catalogue. It is not obvious why poets describing the
underworld should do this. The parallelism reinforces the close affinities between the two
epics that we have observed throughout.
(p.278) The whole Hades scene must have occupied several hundred lines. If it stood
somewhere between the murder of Agamemnon and Orestes’ return, it would have
helped to mitigate the abruptness of the fast-forward effect. In intro. 4 I have cited
Bethe’s observation that if Agamemnon was killed in Book 3 of the Nostoi there was a
good deal of space to be filled in Books 4 and 5, and that the Hades scene might have had
its place in Book 4.
Its generic similarity with the Nekyia of Odyssey 11 suggests that it may similarly have
been the account of things experienced by a living person who in exceptional
circumstances visited Hades and returned. Welcker (ii. 298 n. 17) suggested as one
possibility that Menelaos learned about Agamemnon’s fate and his own Elysian destiny in
a visit to Hades instead of from Proteus. His preferred hypothesis, however (i. 262, ii.
300), was that Neoptolemos went from Molossia to consult a Thesprotian oracle of the
dead.44 But we have taken leave to doubt that Neoptolemos went so far west in the
Nostoi. Wilamowitz (1884), 176, thought that Odysseus might have visited Hades in the
Nostoi as in the Odyssey. Gruppe 702 conjectured that Orestes descended to Hades
(how?) to hear Agamemnon’s instructions on avenging him.
Others have preferred to suppose that the occasion for the underworld description was
the arrival in Hades of one or more newly dead persons, as in Od. 24. 1−204, where it is
the souls of the suitors. Nitzsch (1831), 44f., pointed out that in lines 19−97 of that
episode Agamemnon, surrounded by his followers killed in Aegisthus’ house, approaches
Achilles and other heroes and is greeted very much as if they have only just arrived in
Hades. He inferred that the passage was adapted from the Nostoi and that the occasion
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Nostoi
there was Agamem-non’s descent to Hades.45
The attraction of the latter hypothesis is that it allows us to account for the oddly
inapposite dialogue in Od. 24. 19−97. In the original Achilles would have met Agamemnon
and his men (p.279) arriving and questioned him about what had happened to them.
Agamemnon would have replied as he does to Odysseus’ questions in 11. 396−434, and
perhaps gone on to contrast his own inglorious fate with Achilles’ glorious death and
spectacular funeral (24. 36−97). It is perhaps not a problem that Agamemnon arrived in
Hades together with not only a company of his own men but also twenty of Aegisthus’.
Two other difficulties seem more serious. How would all the heroines and sinners fit in?
And what would be the point of a scene in which we follow Agamemnon down to Hades
only to hear him relate to Achilles the events that the poet has already related? In the
Odyssey Amphimedon’s report of the suitors’ fate allows Agamemnon to pass judgment
on the whole story, to contrast Penelope’s virtue with his own wife’s vice, and to acclaim
the epic poetry that will celebrate that virtue in parallel to the poetry that will tell of
Clytaemestra’s wickedness—putting, as it were, the Odyssey and the Nostoi side by side
(192−202).
What of the other theory: a katabasis by a living person who returned to the upper
world? There are two heroes roaming in strange and remote regions of the world:
Menelaos and Odysseus. A katabasis by either of them in the course of those
peregrinations is conceivable. At first sight Odysseus appears the likelier candidate,
seeing that according to the Odyssey he did visit Hades in the period between
Agamemnon’s murder and Orestes’ return. He had sailed as far as Circe’s island, hard
by the sunrise, and from there it was not far to the shore of Ocean and the land of the
dead. How could such an excursion have been accommodated in Menelaos’ east
Mediterranean itinerary?46
Yet if we consider the poet’s likely motive for inventing an underworld scene, the poetic
purpose it was suited to serve, Menelaos does after all appear the most appropriate
protagonist.
The purpose of Odysseus’ journey to Hades is ostensibly to enable him to consult

Teiresias. But the poetic gain lies rather in his meetings with his mother and Agamemnon.
His mother is the first soul to approach after the unburied Elpenor. She had still been
alive when Odysseus left Ithaca for Troy, and the meeting in Hades takes the place of the
reunion that was not possible when he got home.
(p.280) Agamemnon’s death too had occurred without Odysseus’ knowing of it. The
meeting enables him to learn the horrid story so that he can bear it in mind as he makes
his own way home.
Menelaos had quarrelled with his brother at the beginning of the Nostoi, and they had
parted. He was never to see Agamemnon alive again. That he should learn of his murder
only seven years later when he reached home, after Orestes had dealt with the whole
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Nostoi
matter, was poetically not very satisfactory. Better if, as in the Odyssey, he learned of it
earlier from a non-human source; better still if, like Odysseus, he could learn it from
Agamemnon’s ghost itself, and bid farewell to his brother face to face. Agamemnon plays a
conspicuous role in both Nekyiai of the Odyssey, and in both he is still accompanied by
the men who were killed with him in Aegisthus’ house (11. 388f.=24. 21f.). Nitzsch and
Dümmler, as mentioned above, thought that the second passage, where Agamemnon and
his followers approach Achilles, reflected an episode in the Nostoi describing their first
arrival in Hades. But perhaps both Odyssey passages reflect one where Agamemnon and
his entourage approached Menelaos, who, like Odysseus in 11. 395ff., wept and asked
Agamemnon how he had died. This encounter would have been the centrepiece of a visit
to Hades in the course of which Menelaos also saw a series of heroines from the past and
certain other denizens of the place such as Tantalos. Some of these would have had some
family relevance. Tantalos was his great-grandfather. Mycene and her son Argos were
local eponyms.
I would suppose that Menelaos was represented as actually going into Hades rather than
standing at the edge and summoning ghosts up one by one as Odysseus does. The
Odyssey poet has undertaken to copy the procedure at a Greek nekyomanteion, but he
is unable to sustain the scenario consistently, as Odysseus sees and talks to a number of
figures who cannot have come up out of Hades but clearly remain deep inside
(568−626); they include Tantalos. Rather than attribute the same incoherence to the
Hades scene of the Nostoi, it would be preferable to assume that it was a genuine
katabasis, and that the Odyssey poet drew on a scene in that form that he was unable
fully to reconcile with his necromantic mise en scène.
Supposing that Menelaos made such a katabasis, how did it come about? He certainly
needed a guide to take him in and bring him out again. That could only have been
Hermes, who escorted Heracles on his mission to capture Cerberus (Od. 11. 626) and
who escorts the (p.281) souls of the suitors (24. 1−10). Now, Hermes could begin the
journey from anywhere. We do not need to bring Menelaos to the shore of Ocean or to
some place on earth that boasted an entrance to Hades.
Like Plato who, when his argument will take him no further, resorts to a myth of his own
devising, I have to turn to one of my imaginative reconstructions. It will of course be a
highly speculative construct, a flight of fancy, but it will serve to illustrate how the thing
could have been done, using motifs and narrative strategies familiar from the Odyssey.
When the eighth year arrived and the seasons came round, the gods were gathered in
Zeus’ house, and he spoke to them, for his mind was on Aegisthus, who had killed
Agamemnon and was still ruling in Mycene [Od. 1. 26−30]. ‘This is no longer supportable.
Orestes is now of an age to take revenge, but he remains inactive in Athens. Meanwhile
Menelaos roams in the east gathering more riches, not knowing that his brother has been
killed and that the murderer is lording it at home. Come, let us send Athena to Athens to
rouse Orestes to action, and Hermes to Libya to inform Menelaos of the situation and
urge him to return home without delay.’
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So Athena flew down from Olympus, and came to Marathon and broadwayed Athens, and
went in to Erechtheus’ firm-built mansion [7. 80f.] …
Then Hermes tied on his ambrosial sandals that carry him over land and sea, and took up
his wand [5. 44−8], and flew to the broad land of Libya, and found Menelaos. He stood
before him in the likeness of a young man [10. 278f.], and said, ‘Greetings, Menelaos; I
am Hermes, and I come as a messenger from Zeus. Tarry no longer in Libya, but hasten
home to Greece, for your brother Agamemnon when he got home from Troy was slain by
Aegisthus and the faithless Clytaemestra. Ever since then they have ruled at Mycene,
and no one has done anything about it.’ So he spoke, but Menelaos was overwhelmed
with grief, and he wept copiously. ‘Then let me die straight away,’ he said, ‘for I no longer
have any desire to live [4. 539f.]. Let me go down to Hades’ house, so I may embrace my
brother, with whom I quarrelled at Troy, and I never saw him again to bid him farewell.’
Said Hermes, ‘Menelaos, it is not your destiny to die, for you are a son-in-law of Zeus,
being married to Helen. When your earthly life comes to an end, the gods will send you
to Elysium [4. 561−9] … However, I have the power to escort people to Hades, and to
bring them back again, if I care to, as I did with Heracles [11. 626]. If this is your wish, I
will take you there to see your brother.’
So he bore him up and carried him away through the air. They passed the stream of
Ocean and the White Rock, the gates of the Sun and the land of Dreams, and soon they
came to the asphodel meadow where the souls of the dead dwell [24. 11−14]. On they
went, and Menelaos saw many of the (p.282) famous women of the past … And then
they found Agamemnon, surrounded by all the men slain with him in Aegisthus’ house
[11. 387−9= 24. 20−2]. Agamemnon wept to see Menelaos, and asked him, ‘Has
Aegisthus killed you too? [3. 249] Or did Poseidon overwhelm you in your ships with
furious tempest, or … [11. 398−403]?’ ‘None of those things,’ Menelaos answered, ‘but
Hermes told me of your death, and I prevailed on him to bring me to see you, and
presently I must return to the light. But come, let us embrace and have our fill of
weeping.’
And they would have gone on indefinitely, had Hermes not said, ‘Stop now, we must go
back, lest Persephone show you the Gorgon’s Head [11. 634f.].’ He led Menelaos back
through Hades, and he saw mighty men of the past, such as Heracles [11. 601] and
Theseus and Peirithoos [11. 631]; and sinners such as Tantalos. Then they left Hades,
and swiftly Hermes bore him back to Libya and to his ships. ‘Now make ready and sail
home with all speed. You may catch Aegisthus still alive, or perhaps Orestes will have
killed him first and you will be in time for the funeral [4. 546f.].’
The Return of Orestes

In the version of Od. 1. 40f. Aegisthus was warned that Orestes would return to avenge
his father ὁππότ᾿ ἂν ἡβήσηι τε καὶ ἧς ἱµείρεται αἴης, as if maturity would automatically
bring the desire to go to his homeland. In the Nostoi narrative, however, his return was
surely not spontaneous but instigated by the gods. In Stesichorus (PMGF 217) he
received a bow from Apollo, whom he had perhaps consulted at Delphi. Consultation of
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the Pythian oracle is not impossible for an epic narrative, cf. Od. 8. 79−81. But it would
still mean that Orestes took the initiative. It is easier to imagine, as in the Telemachy, a
divine council and a visit by Athena to stir the young man to action, as I have suggested in
the above reconstruction. Such a scene might well have been the model for the one that
launches the Telemachy, and Athena’s journey to Athens to find Orestes might have been
the model for her unexplained diversion there in Od. 7. 80f.
We have no information on how Orestes achieved his aim, whether he returned openly or
in disguise, and whether he used guile of any other kind. There is nothing to suggest that
Electra played any part in the story.47 We only know for sure that Orestes killed
Aegisthus.
(p.283) It is likely that he also killed Clytaemestra, as in [Hes.] fr. 23(a). 30 and other
sources. He celebrated the funeral feast µητρός τε στυγερῆς καὶ ἀνάλκιδος Αἰγίσθοιο
(Od. 3. 310), which indicates plainly that she died at the same time as her lover; the line is
possibly an interpolation, but we know of no alternative version in which Orestes did not
kill her. Robert (1881), 163, suggested that she hanged herself:48 that is possible, but if
so, we might have expected the Odyssey poet to mention it. His reticence if Orestes killed
her is easier to understand. A. Olivieri, Riv. Fil. 25 (1897), 574, suggested that she
attempted to win mercy by baring her maternal breast to him, as in Aesch. Cho. 896. The
motif is not alien to epic, cf. Il. 22. 80 (Hekabe to Hector), and it appeared also in
Stesichorus’ Geryoneis (PMGF S13: Kallirhoe to Geryones).
A little more circumstantial detail is perhaps given by:
F 11 Apollod. 2. 1. 5
ἔγηµεν (Ναύπλιος), ὡς µὲν οἱ τραγικοὶ λέγουσι, Κλυµένην τὴν Κατρέως, ὡς δὲ ὁ τοὺς
Νόστους γράψας, Φιλύραν, ὡς δὲ Κέρκωψ ([Hes.] fr. 297 M.−W.), Ἡσιόνην· καὶ
ἐγέννησε Παλαµήδην Οἴακα Ναυσιµέδοντα.
Pausanias (1. 22. 6) records a painting in the gallery on the Athenian Acropolis that
showed Orestes killing Aegisthus while Pylades killed the sons of Nauplios, who had come
to Aegisthus’ aid.49 It is not clear from Apollodorus if the sons were named in the Nostoi
or only the parents. If the sons were too, the killing of Aegisthus is a likely context for
their mention. If Aegisthus had these supporters to defend him, Orestes could hardly
have prevailed on his own, and Pylades’ presence, as in the painting, would be
indispensable. Proclus speaks of ‘the avenging by Orestes and Pylades’, ὑπ᾿ Ὀρέστου
καὶ Πυλάδου τιµωρία. However, this raises a problem if it is accepted that Orestes has
been staying in Attica and not Phocis. For in that case he has not been in the care of
Strophios, and we cannot explain how Strophios’ son Pylades comes to be Orestes’
companion. So far as Proclus is concerned, it would be possible to suppose that, as at
some other points, he has allowed a detail from the vulgate version to slip in, and that
Pylades played no part in the (p.284) Nostoi. But then we are left in uncertainty about
the implications of F 11.50
Following the deaths of Aegisthus and Clytaemestra Orestes δαίνυ τάϕον Ἀργείοισιν
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(Od. 3. 309). The account of the celebratory feast took the place of an honorific funeral of
the sort that heroes such as Achilles and Patroklos enjoy in epic. It is implied in 3.
258−61, however, that Aegisthus did receive a decent burial, with mourners, as Nestor
affirms that it would not have been so if Menelaos had found him alive in the palace.
Now at last Menelaos could reappear on the scene. His eastern adventures had kept him
away just long enough to leave the field clear for Orestes’ act of vengeance. Now it was
appropriate for him to complete his homecoming, and he arrived on the very day of the
feast. If we accept that he had already been told of the events unfolding at Mycenae,
there is no problem about why he appears there when his home is at Sparta. In the
Odyssey he is told by Proteus. But the Proteus episode was not necessarily a feature of
Menelaos’ wanderings in the Nostoi.51 It may originally have belonged to Odysseus, and
it may have been the Odyssey poet who transferred it to Menelaos. I have suggested
above that it might have been Hermes who brought him the news.
Menelaos Returns to Sparta
F 12a⋆ (=Epic. adesp. 3) Hippocr. περὶ ἄρθρων ἐµβολῆς 8

καλῶς γὰρ Ὅµηρος καταµεµαθήκει ὅτι πάντων τῶν προβάτων βόες µάλιστα ἀτονέουσι
ταύτην τὴν ὥρην (sc. τοῦ χειµῶνος τελευτῶντος) … τὰ µὲν γὰρ ἄλλα πρόβατα δύναται
βραχεῖαν τὴν ποίην βόσκεσθαι, βοῦς δὲ οὐ µάλα, πρὶν βαθεῖα γένηται διὰ τοῦτο οὖν
ἐποίησεν τάδε τὰ ἔπη·
ὡς δ᾿ ὁπότ᾿ ἀσπάσιον ἔαρ ἤλυθε βουσὶν ἕλιξιν,
ὅτι ἀσµενωτάτη αὐτοῖσιν ἡ βαθεῖα ποίη ϕαίνεται.
Cf. eund. Vectiarius 5.
The Hippocratic writer quotes from ‘Homer’ the beginning of a simile that may have
referred to someone’s glad feelings on reaching his homeland after a prolonged absence.
For other similes in similar (p.285) contexts cf. [Hes.] Sc. 42f.; Od. 23. 233−8. The
source was probably a Cyclic poem. One naturally thinks of the Nostoi. Of the home-
comings described in the poem, Menelaos’ was perhaps the most appropriate one for the
simile: he had been abroad for seventeen years, and his return signalled the happy
ending of the whole story.
F 13 Sch. Od. 4. 12, “ἐκ δούλης“

αὕτη, ὡς µὲν Ἀλεξίων, Τειρίς (ὡς δ᾿ ἔνιοι Τηρίς), θυγάτηρ Ζευξίππης· ὡς δὲ ὁ τῶν
Νόστων ποιητής, Γέτις.
The reference is to a female slave by whom Menelaos fathered Megapenthes. According

to a scholion on the preceding line, he lay with the woman after Helen had left him, and
the child’s name expressed his grief at the loss of her; this may have been said in the
Nostoi (Severyns (1928), 379).
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Nostoi
In the Odyssey it is just ἐκ δούλης. In the Nostoi it may have been ἐκ δούλης Γέτιδος,
‘from a Getic slave’. This would be the earliest reference to the Getai, who next appear in
Herodotus.52 The D scholion on the Odyssey passage gives her name as Τηριδάη; this
looks Thracian and might therefore be combined with the Getic origin, though it does not
look from the first scholion as if the name was in the Nostoi. Variants of it are attributed to
Acusilaus (fr. 41 Fowler ap. Apollod. 3. 11. 1, Τηρηΐς) and the first-century commentator
Alexion (above).
Megapenthes was evidently a late invention. It was established in the tradition that Helen
had left only a daughter when she went with Paris (see on Cypria arg. 2c). The younger
son Nikostratos of [Hes.] fr. 175 and Cinaethon fr. 3 W. (cf. Soph. El. 539) is evidently not
known to the Odyssey poet.
Megapenthes can hardly have been mentioned in the Nostoi in any other context than
that of Menelaos’ return to Sparta, where he had been growing up. In Od. 4. 3−19
Telemachos finds Menelaos celebrating a double wedding, that of Hermione to
Neoptolemos and that of Megapenthes to an unnamed local girl. Nitzsch and Welcker
supposed, plausibly enough, that in the Nostoi these weddings were performed following
the father’s happy homecoming.53 That the (p.286) Odyssey poet puts them three years
later for his own purposes is hardly a difficulty.
According to Od. 4. 6f. Hermione had been promised to Neoptolemos at Troy, and indeed
the betrothal could not have come about in any other way. But we cannot identify a likely
occasion for it in the Little Iliad or the Iliou Persis, and it may be invented for the present
context if the marriage itself was a novelty. We can see what inspired it. We noted in
connection with the Cypria a tendency towards a romantic pairing of Achilles and Helen.
Now Achilles’ glamorous young son had arrived in Phthia and taken over his
grandfather’s throne: a prime match for the beautiful daughter of Helen.54 Thus two
strands in the Nostoi narrative could be prettily tied up.
If it had just been the story of the Atreidai, the natural marriage at the end would have
been between Hermione and her cousin Orestes. This alternative marriage appears in
fifth-century authors, mostly in the version that Tyndareos had promised Hermione to
Orestes while Menelaos was away at the war.55 It was variously combined with the prior
tradition of her marriage to Neoptolemos. The latter union was childless, at least in earlier
sources, whereas to Orestes Hermione bore Teisamenos, who was to unite the
kingdoms of Argos and Sparta before falling to the Herakleidai.
A. Olivieri, Riv. Fil. 25 (1897), 575, conjectured that Pylades married Electra, as in
Euripides (El. 1249, IT 695, Or. 1653, cf. 1078f.) and Hellanicus (fr. 155 Fowler). It is an
attractive possibility, but we do not know that Electra played any part in the Nostoi
narrative.
The End of the Story

So far as we can see, the poem ended with Menelaos and Helen happily re-installed at
Sparta, as Telemachos finds them in the Odyssey. The war precipitated by Helen’s ancient
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Nostoi
defection had run its course; the story of the heroes’ returns was complete except for
that of Odysseus. That was the subject of a separate, much longer epic, and the poet
might reasonably have been content to leave it (p.287) aside. Or he might have dealt
with it summarily, assuming his hearers’ familiarity with the Odyssey.56
Welcker (ii. 282, 292) proposed that the poem concluded with Menelaos’ translation to
Elysium, as foretold by Proteus in Od. 4. 561−9; cf. Wagner 295. But Proclus would
surely have mentioned such a significant event. If the marriages of Menelaos’ children
took place shortly after he reached home, and the Nostoi ended with them, there would
have been an interval of some three years until the point where the Odyssey begins. But
if the poem went on to the end of Menelaos’ life, its time-frame would have been
extended beyond that of the Odyssey.
Notes:
(1 ) Nitzsch (1830), 117; Welcker i. 261, cf. ii. 291f.; Monro 379; Bethe 270–3; Debiasi 232
n. 26; contra, Wilamowitz (1884), 156f.; Huxley 167f. Bernabé, PEG 93, writes ‘Ἀτρειδῶν
κάθοδος potius pars Nostorum mihi esse videtur’.
(2) Cf. Bethe 281–3.
(3) Od. 4. 536f., 11. 412f., 24. 21f.; Wilamowitz (1884), 157; Bethe 271f.
(4) Bethe 282.
(5) See West (2005), 60f.=(2011b), 305f.
(6) The western geographical frame is disturbed, it is true, by the introduction of a block
of adventures botrrowed from the Argonauts. See West (2005), 43f.=(2011b), 284f.
(7) Cf. G. Scafoglio, RPh 78 (2004), 294, who speaks of of ‘una dipendenza reciproca’
between the two poems.
(8) Apollodorus’ account of Demophon’s adventures in Thrace and Cyprus (epit. 6. 16–
17, cf. Tz. in Lyc. 495, where it is Akamas) evidently comes from another source.
(9) A. Hecker, Phil. 5 (1850), 437; R. Stiehle, Phil. 8 (1853), 54.
(10) Müller 50 n. 34; Nitzsch (1831), 35; A. Meineke, Analecta Alexandrina (Berlin 1843),
79, citing Tzetzes. (The Apollodorus epitome was not yet known.)
(11 ) It is certainly illogical to say that οἱ περὶ Κάλχαντα (etc.) buried Calchas (Welcker i.
265). But it is easy to see how the illogicality resulted from compression of consecutive
episodes into one sentence.
(12) So Xylander for Ἀντιλόχου.
(13) [Hes.] fr. 279; Euphorion fr. 103 Lightfoot; Lyc. 439–46 with sch. and Tz.;Apollod.
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Nostoi
epit. 6. 19.
(14) So Ingrid Löffler, Die Melampodie (Meisenheim 1963), 51.
(15) [Hes.] fr. 197. 6, cf. Apollod. 3. 10. 8; Q.S. 12. 325 (ci. Vian). Two Attic black-figure
vases of 570–550 show (an) Amphilochos in Trojan contexts: LIMC Amphilochos 2 and 3.
He appears in Theoklymenos’ genealogy at Od. 15. 248. Apollod. epit. 6. 19 says that
according to some he came late to Troy, and that during the Returns the storm blew him
to Mopsos’ (Cilician) shore. Like the preceding paragraph about Podaleirios consulting
the Delphic oracle and settling in the Carian Chersonese, this clearly came from a
different source from the Nostoi.
(16) The two were also associated in Italy: Robert (1920–6), 1476. Podaleirios in aria: ibid.
1477f.
(17) This was alluded to in Sophocles’ Ἑλένης ἀπαίτησις (fr. 180).
(18) According to Epigonoi fr. 4 Manto, daughter of Teiresias, was sent by the Epigonito
Delphi and dedicated as a tithe. Later she went to Colophon and established pollo’s
oracular shrine at Claros.
(19) See Wagner 257f., who argues that Apollodorus is following the Melampodia for he
contest.
(20) Kirchhoff 331; Bethe 279f.; cf. Gruppe 698 n. 5, 700 n. 3; Robert (1920–6), 1292f.
Alcaeus refers to a place called Aigai, SLG 262. 6f.: if the Achaeans had stoned Ajax, ἴσως
κε π]αρπλέοντες Αἴγαις | [ληοτέρα] ϲ̣ ἔτυχον θαλάσσας. This may be the Kane
promontory across the strait from Mytilene (Strabo 13. 1. 68; St. Byz. s.v. Αἶγα); see A.
M. van Erp Taalman Kip in J. M. Bremer et al., Some Recently Found Greek Poems
(Mnemosyne Suppl. 99, Leiden 1987), 112f. If so, it stands for the place of transition,
familiar to Lesbians, from the sheltered channel to the open sea, and there is no
reference to the location of the disaster in the Tenos-Mykonos area. The Aigai of Il. 13. 21
and that of Hymn. Ap. 32 cannot be identified; the scholia on Il. l.c. (cf. on Od. 5. 381, Pind.
Nem. 5. 67a and A.R. 1. 831) speak of an island close to Euboea. Wilamowitz (1916), 445,
argues that it was on Euboea, at Karystos/Geraistos.
(21 ) In the corresponding scene in Quintus (14. 419–65) Athena threatens to secede
from the gods if Zeus does not allow her to take her revenge on the Achaeans; the motif
is borrowed from the Helios scene in the Odyssey. Zeus offers her the use of his
thunder and lightning and invites her to raise a storm. He puts the weapons before her,
and she, exulting, puts on the aegis, takes up the ἔντεα πατρός, ἅ περ θεὸς οὔ τις ἀείρει
| νόσϕι ∆ιὸς µεγάλοιο (459f.), and goes to work.
(22) n Aesch. Eum. 827f. she claims to have sole access to Zeus’ thunderbolt silo. Cf. Ar.
Av. 1538.
(23) Wagner 261. The Myconos location also in [Arist.] Peplos 16. Rheneia was the sual
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Nostoi
cemetery for Delos, cf. Holzinger 232.
(24) The scholia say that Τρέµων was the name of a place πρὸς τῆι ∆ήλωι. Tzetzes rongly
took it to be actually on Delos (Wagner 261).
(25) Cf. Eratosthenes, FGrHist 241 F 42. On Molossos cf. Robert (1920–6), 1457.
(26) Odysseus had at first gone to Tenedos, but then returned to Troy; see above onarg.
1b.
(27) Welcker, ii. 291, says ‘eine unterhaltende Zwischenscene [war] die Begegnung es
Neoptolemos und Odysseus in Maronea’.
(28) Nitzsch (1831), 37.
(29) Cf. S. West on Od. 4. 514–20; Danek 117–19. If the Nostoi poet was really a
Troizenian, as the main tradition alleged, he could have been in no doubt about the
geography.
(30) Cf. Hdt. 7. 159, Paus. 3. 19. 6; Schwartz 77; Bethe 274f.; Merkelbach 47f.
(31 ) A. Momigliano, SIFC 8 (1930), 317–19.
(32) Von der Mühll 708.
(33) Sch. on 270 identifies the island as Karphe, a detail that may well come from the
Nostoi (Bethe 266 n. 5). A Karphe is otherwise unrecorded, but it may have been some
islet known to the poet. There was no need to invent a name. The descriptive name,
‘Dried up’, is typical; in the Argolic Gulf there are islets known today as Rombe, Psili, and
Plateia. We may think also of Kranae, ‘Rugged’, the islet where Paris and Helen first made
love (Il. 3. 445), if that is in fact a proper name.
(34) How was her presence in Aegisthus’ house explained to Agamemnon? Perhaps the
allusions to her δόλος (Od. 3. 235, 4. 92, 11. 439) have to do with this.
(35) Bethe 273f. takes the women to have been in a separate room, but this involves
giving ἀµϕ᾿ ἐµοί the less natural sense of ‘on account of me’ and supposing that
Clytaemestra immediately came into the men’s room, only to turn her back on
Agamemnon.
(36) The depiction of them as reclining on couches, however, is perhaps not true to the
epic. In the Homeric poems banqueters sit up, they do not recline, though the practice of
reclining was beginning to come in by the end of the seventh century; cf. West (1997), 32.
(37) Cf. Wilamowitz (1884), 157, ‘ein kämpfer heißt Ἑρµιονεύς, das paßt für einen
gefährten des Thyestessohnes Aigisthos, der µυχῷ ῎Αργεος ἱπποβότοιο am meere
seinen sitz hat’ (Od. 3. 263).
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Nostoi
(38) Nitzsch (1831), 36–8, esp. 37, ‘Quod temporis explendi artificium—interfuerunt enim
septem anni (Od. γ, 305.)—quamvis ad rei veritatem parum idoneum, ad poetae licentiam
quodammodo supervacaneum sit: negari tamen non potest, auditorem ejusmodi
intercapedine adhibitâ facilius se pati ad tempus aliquot annis posterius traduci, quam in
narratione continua. Adde, quod Neoptolemi iter sane longum erat …. ’ He goes on to
suggest that, as Neoptolemos had been promised at Troy the hand of Menelaos’
daughter Hermione (Od. 4. 6), this afforded a means of transition back from him to
Orestes and Menelaos.
(39) Holzinger 296, who wrongly thinks of the Cypria instead of the Nostoi.
(40) Nitzsch (1831), 41; G. J. C. Muetzell, De emendatione Theogoniae Hesiodeae libri

tres (Leipzig 1833), 181; Welcker i. 260; Allen 141. Kinkel, Bethe, Davies, and Bernabé
printed the fragment as a dubium or spurium, and I should perhaps have allowed it that
status in my edition rather than omitting it.
(41 ) Kirchhoff 338n.; Wilamowitz (1884), 342. See Jacoby’s commentary on FGrHist 606.
(42) Gantz 282–5; Theseis fr. 1. The romantic potential of Amazons was already apparent
in the Penthesileia episode of the Aethiopis.
(43) Cf. West (1985), 32. F. Dümmler, Rh. Mus. 45 (1890), 183f., detected a nexus of links
with the Melampous saga (11. 281–97, cf. 15. 225–55): Klymene (326) is in the Nostoi the
mother of Iphiklos (290, 296); Prokris (321) preceded her as wife of Kephalos; Maira
(326) was one of the Proitids cured by Melampous; Eriphyle (326) was the wife of
Melampous’ great-grandson Amphiaraos.
(44) The Nekyia of the Odyssey is, after all, essentially a consultation at such an oracle,
transposed from Greece to the shore of Ocean.
(45) Similarly F. Dümmler, Rh. Mus. 45 (1890), 189−92=Kl. Schr. (Leipzig 1901), ii.
390−3, and others. Düntzer (1840), 23, thought that the arrival of Aegisthus’ and
Clytaemestra’s ghosts would make a better analogy with that of the justly slain suitors:
‘Die Fragmente beziehen sich fast alle auf eine νεκυΐα, die ich in das fünfte Buch setze,
wo nach meiner Annahme Klytämnestra und Aegisth in die Unterwelt geführt wurden.’
Against Nitzsch and Düntzer: Welcker i. 264, ii. 299; Bethe 281.
(46) Cf. Nitzsch (1831), 43, against Welcker.
(47) She is not named among Agamemnon’s daughters in Il. 9. 145; she first appears in
[Hes.] fr. 23(a). 16. Cf. on Cypria F 20.
(48) Cf. Wernicke, RE i. 723f.; Gruppe 702; Bethe 268.
(49) On the painting cf. Robert (1881), 182f.
(50) On Strophios and Pylades cf. Gruppe 701f.
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Nostoi
(51 ) So Bethe 268f.
(52) The feminine ethnic Γέτις is attested in St. Byz. γ 67 (so Salmasius for γέτης).
(53) Nitzsch (1831), 38; Welcker ii. 282; cf. Severyns (1928), 377.
(54) For her beauty cf. Od. 4. 14, Sappho 23. 4f., Prop. 1. 4. 6.
(55) Pherec. fr. 135a F.; Soph. Hermione; Eur. Andr. 966−84, Or. 1653−7; Philocles TrGF
24 F 2; Theognis TrGF 28 F 2.
(56) Burgess 143 suggests that the Nostoi might have taken in the return of Odysseus,
rightly noting that it would have been cropped from Proclus’ summary to avoid overlap
with the Odyssey.

Page 37 of 37
Telegony

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
Telegony
M. L. West
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.003.0007
This chapter presents a commentary on the poem Telegony. It first discusses the poem's
title; sources of information about the poem; the poet; the scope; the economy of the
poem; and characterization of the poem. It then reviews individual fragments and
testimonia.
Introduction
1. Title
Proclus gives the title as Τηλεγονία, as does Eusebius, Chron. Ol. 53. Choeroboscus(?)
περὶ ποσότητος, An. Ox. ii. 299. 26 (Herodian. i. 249. 9, ii. 451. 20 Lentz), teaches that
titles of this sort should end in -εια, giving as examples Ὀδύσσεια ἡ κατὰ Ὀδυσσέα (sc.
Page 1 of 25
Telegony
πραγµατεία), Ἡράκλεια ἡ κατὰ Ἡρακλέα, Τηλεγόνεια ἡ κατὰ Τηλέγονον, and

Eustathius repeats this rule (Il. 785. 21, cf. Od. 1796. 48). But the cases are not parallel,
as Ὀδύσσεια and Ἡράκλεια are formed from stems containing the ε. With titles formed
from other stems we find -ία, though some fluctuation occurs owing to the influence of
Ὀδύσσεια etc.:
Ἀµαζονία Hesychus of Miletus, Vit. Hom. 6. 6 (-όνεια Nauck 374).
Εὐρωπία (Eumelos) sch. Hom., Clement, but ἡ Εὐρώπεια Philodemus.
Οἰδιποδία sch. Eur., but ἡ Οἰδιπόδεια the Tabula Borgiana (Tabula Iliaca 10K, cf. Proleg.
§1). Pausanias refers to this poem as τὰ ἔπη ἃ Οἰδιπόδια ὀνοµάζουσι; the neuter plural
is usual with the (ἔπη) Κύπρια, Ἀριµάσπεια (-εα Herodotus, -ια Tatian), and
Ναυπακτι(α)κά / Ναυπάκτια.
Τιτανοµαχία, Θεογονία, etc.
Pausanias 8. 12. 5 cites a poem entitled Thesprotis, by which he may mean the first book
of the Telegony; see below, §5 and on F 3. Hartmann 59 argued that the title Thesprotis
might have been applied to the whole work, just as the Aethiopis was known by a name
that really applied only to part of it.
2. Attestation
The main sources are Proclus and the parallel narrative of Apollod. epit. 7. 34−7. There
are no verse fragments explicitly attributed to the poem; two anonymous ones are
conjecturally assigned to it, one (p.289) quoted by Athenaeus (F 1 ⋆), one by Synesius
(F 2⋆). It is possible that Athenaeus might still have had access to a copy of the epic,
unlikely that Synesius did, though he might have taken over a quotation from an earlier
writer. Pausanias apparently knew at least the Thesprotian portion (F 3), while material on
the story of Telegonos was handed on by the Odyssey scholia and Eustathius (F 4−6).
3. The poet
Proclus’ ascription to one Eugammon of Cyrene is very credible, and so is Eusebius’
dating of his floruit to Ol. 53. 2 = 567/6 BCE; see the Prolegomena, §4. In giving Odysseus
and Penelope a second son Arkesilaos (F 4) he evidently sought to add prestige to the
Battiad royal house by providing it with a mythical ancestor sprung from Odysseus.
If the Eusebian date is accurate, the poet was active during the reign of Arkesilas II. One
of this monarch’s brothers who founded Barke (Hdt. 4. 160) is named by Stephanus of
Byzantium β 45 as Zakynthos, which (if historical) might suggest that their father, Battos
II, already had some interest in the area from which Odysseus was the famous hero. The
same author S.V. Ζάκυνθος records a Libyan town Zakynthos or Zakynthia, perhaps
settled from the Zakynthos near Ithaca.
Eugammon’s name, with its double µ, is hard to explain from Greek.1 In a name formed
from γάµος it seems unlikely that the nasal would have been geminated even in a
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Telegony
hypocoristic form. But it might be explained as the Hellenized form of a non-Greek name
containing Ammon, who as Zeus Ammon was a principal god of Cyrene. Many names in
-άµµων are attested. Cf. Hartmann 47 n. 8.
4. Scope
The poem was conceived as a sequel to the Odyssey, covering the rest of Odysseus’ life
after his return from Troy, his death, and what became of Penelope and his sons. By the
time of its composition the epics dealing with the sack of Troy and the various heroes’
returns (p.290) were probably becoming widely known. Eugammon may have seen an
opportunity to add one final poem to the sequence.
In it he brought together two narrative plots that have no connection with one another
and do not harmonize very well.2 One was the story of how Odysseus travelled far
inland, fought a war, married a queen, and founded a new Thesprotian kingdom. The
other was the tale of how, as he ruled over his subjects in Ithaca, a son whom he had
fathered overseas and never seen, Telegonos, came in search of him and, before a
recognition could be effected, fought and killed him. In order to combine the two stories
Eugammon had to bring Odysseus back from Thesprotia to Ithaca instead of leaving him
to rule over his new people.
The first was presumably an existing Thesprotian legend reflecting the claims of a local
dynasty to Odyssean ancestry. It may have been of recent origin, and it had not
necessarily been embodied in a poem before Eugammon. Eugammon identified
Odysseus’ Thesprotian journey with the inland journey enjoined on him by Teiresias in
the Odyssey; but that had been of a different nature, see on arg. 1c. The Telegonos story
is likely to have been Eugammon’s own invention, based on the folktale motif of the son
who unwittingly kills his father (see on arg. 3/F 5) and borrowing from another tradition
the motif of the poisonous sting-ray (see the Excursus at the end).

Proclus tells us that the poem was divided into two books. It is natural to assume that the
division was made at the end of the Thesprotian part (Wilamowitz (1884), 187), perhaps
specifically at the change of scene from Greece to Circe’s island for the introduction of
Telegonos (Hartmann 73). The Thesprotis cited by Pausanias (above, §1) seems to have
been the same as the first part of the Telegony, suggesting that book 1 may sometimes
have enjoyed independent circulation.
A passage of Clement, Strom. 6. 25. 1, tends to confirm that the Thesprotian narrative in
the Telegony occupied the greater part of book 1. Giving examples of plagiarism (following
the Hellenistic writer Aristobulus),3 he claims that Eugammon appropriated his (p.291)
whole ‘book about the Thesprotians’ from Musaeus: αὐτοτελῶς γὰρ τὰ ἑτέρων
ὑϕελόµενοι ὡς ἴδια ἐξήνεγκαν, καθάπερ Εὐγάµµων ὁ Κυρηναῖος ἐκ Μουσαίου τὸ περὶ
Θεσπρωτῶν βιβλίον ὁλόκληρον. This is one of four examples that Clement gives of
plagiarism from Musaeus by other poets (DK 2 B 4−7). It appears that someone had
found the same or a similar narrative in a poem circulating under the name of Musaeus.
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Telegony
It is not clear whether it was in fact an independent poem or just a detached portion of
the Telegony, as Pausanias’ Thesprotis appears to have been. It is quite obscure why in
either case it should have been put under Musaeus’ name.4

The dearth of verbatim fragments makes it impossible for us to judge the quality of the
poetry. But we are well enough informed about the poem’s contents, and the critics’
contempt is understandable. ‘Ein schlechtes, spätes Rhapsodenkonglomerat’ was
Schwartz’s verdict (144). The eloquent denunciation by Severyns (1928, 409f.) may be
quoted at length. After giving Proclus’ summary he continues:
A travers ce résumé de Proclos, nous entrevoyons ce qu’était ce misérable poème, le

dernier des Cycliques. Eugammon de Cyrène a fait tomber l’épopée plus bas encore que
Leschès, dont il exagère les défauts jusqu’à l’invraisemblance. Une œuvre comme la
Télégonie marque la fin du genre épique, annonce un genre nouveau, celui du roman en
prose. Les héros d’Homère sont devenus méconnaissables: cet Ulysse qui s’en va, sans
raison, au pays des Thesprotes, où il épouse une reine, alors que Pénélope veillit dans
Ithaque, cette Pénélope elle-même, qui finit par épouser le fils de son mari, ce
Télémaque, qui épouse la maîtresse de son père! Que d’invraisemblances! que de
mauvais goût! quelle déchéance profonde et définitive de l’épopée qui, durant tant de
siècles, avait charmé les oreilles et les cœurs, quelle mort lamentable d’un genre qui avait
montré les adieux d’Hector et d’Andromaque, le roi Priam aux pieds d’Achille, la
radieuse agonie de Penthésilée, l’apparition virginale et fugitive de Nausicaa, la mort du
vieux chien sur son fumier.
There is no point in voicing moral censure of mythical characters except in relation to

author’s intentions, but apart from that Severyns’s appraisal cannot be called unjust.
(p.292) 7. Early currency

There are no signs of the Telegony’s having achieved wide currency in the first century
of its existence. We find no echo of it in Stesichorus. The suggested connection of the
Battiad line with Odysseus failed to take root even in Battiad ideology, for in the fifth
century, as we see from Pindar and Herodotus, the official tradition was that Battos was
descended from the Minyan Euphemos. Aeschylus had a version of Odysseus’ death that
had no place for Telegonos (see the Excursus at the end). Sophocles, however, wrote a
tragedy about Telegonos’ appearance in Ithaca and his father’s fatal encounter with him,
the Ὀδυσσεὺς ἀκανθοπλήξ, which presupposes the Telegony as source. We do not know
the date of the play, but certain points of contact with the Philoctetes—the portrayal of
the hero in agonies of pain, and the use of a deus ex machina—suggest that it may have
been a late one. It may be, then, that the Telegony did not become known at Athens
before the second half of the fifth century.5
The Fragments
The Incipit
Arg. 1a
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Telegony
Arg. 1a
οἱ µνήστορες ὑπὸ τῶν προσηκόντων θάπτονται.
In Od. 24. 417−19 it is stated perfunctorily that the Ithacans fetched the bodies from
Odysseus’ house and buried them or, in the case of suitors from outside the island, sent
them home on fishing boats. But it is unsafe to infer, with Kirchhoff 340 and Wilamowitz
(1884), 185, that Eugammon did not know the last portion of our Odyssey. He had to
define the starting-point of his narrative, and he might well have begun with ‘Odysseus
had come home from Troy and killed all the suitors of Penelope’. Then before continuing
Odysseus’ story he might have felt it appropriate to put in a paragraph about the
funerals.
(p.293) Voyage to Elis
Arg. 1b
καὶ Ὀδυσσεὺς θύσας Νύµϕαις εἰς Ἦλιν ἀποπλεῖ ἐπισκεψόµενος τὰ βουκόλια, καὶ
ξενίζεται παρὰ Πολυξένωι δῶρόν τε λαµβάνει κρατῆρα, καὶ ἐπὶ τούτωι τὰ περὶ
Τροϕώνιον καὶ Ἀγαµήδην καὶ Αὐγέαν.
The sacrifice to the Nymphs fulfils the vow made in their cave in Od. 13. 356−60. As
Wilamowitz (1884), 185, observed, the poet of that passage had no thought of the vow’s
fulfilment. Eugammon, however, needed to take Odysseus back to the cave if he was to
recover the treasures he had hidden there, ‘und da fand sich das opfer von selbst ein’.
We might expect Ithaca’s closest continental ties to be with Acarnania and Aetolia; the
Aetolian Thoas is loosely associated with Odysseus in several places, see on Little Iliad F
8. But in the Odyssey the islanders are more oriented towards Elis and Pylos. Noemon
keeps a herd of mares in Elis, 4. 635; Telemachos couples Ithaca with ‘the islands towards
Elis’, 21. 347; in 24. 430f. it is anticipated that Odysseus may flee to Pylos or Elis. Elis may
well be the region meant at 14. 100−2, where he is said to possess extensive livestock
over the water as well as on Ithaca:
δώδεκ᾿ ἐν ἠπείρωι ἀγέλαι· τόσα πώεα οἰῶν,
τόσσα συῶν συβόσια, τόσ᾿ αἰπόλια πλατέ᾿ αἰγῶν
βόσκουσι ξεῖνοί τε καὶ αὐτοῦ βώτορες ἄνδρες.
So he might reasonably make an inspection visit to Elis once he had established control of
his estates at home. But what was its poetic point? Nothing appears to happen beyond a
hospitable reception by the appropriately named Polyxenos, and it is passed over in
Apollodorus’ narrative. It may perhaps be seen as a small-scale imitation of Telemachos’
Peloponnesian journey in the Odyssey; the κρατήρ that Odysseus receives from
Polyxenos as a guest-present, no doubt of silver, parallels the one given to Telemachos
by Menelaos (4. 613−19, 15. 113−23).6 At the same time the episode is a leisurely
interlude of similar character to the visit to Laertes in Od. 24. One (p.294) function of
that excursion was to keep Odysseus out of the way while the suitors’ funerals took
Page 5 of 25
Telegony
place, and it is possible that the trip to Elis served a like purpose in the Telegony. Proclus
gives the impression that it followed the funerals. But after recording the funerals
Eugammon might have continued, ‘So they buried their dead; αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεύς
(meanwhile) went to the cave of the Nymphs … and then he sailed to Elis … ’. The
epitomator would naturally treat these as successive activities.
Polyxenos is one of the four Epeian leaders listed in Il. 2. 618−24 (two of the others are
later killed in battle). The crater was the subject of an ecphrasis. On it was depicted 7 the
story of Augeas (Polyxenos’ grandfather), Trophonios, and Agamedes. This is known from
Charax FGrHist 103 F 5 (cf. Paus. 9. 37. 5−7). It was a version of the same folktale as the
story of Rhampsinitus in Herodotus 2. 121.8 Augeas commissioned the master builders
Trophonios and Agamedes to build him a treasure-house. They made a secret door in it,
which they made use of to enter and steal treasure. Augeas set a trap, and Agamedes
was caught in it. But Trophonios cut off his accomplice’s head to conceal his identity and
escaped. A single work of art could not tell the whole story, but the poet in describing the
bowl could, and he seems to have told it at some length. It has no perceptible relevance
to Odysseus; probably Eugammon, having heard it (not necessarily in versified form),
liked it and made himself an opportunity to retell it.9
(p.295) The Journey Inland
Arg. 1c
ἔπειτα εἰς Ἰθάκην καταπλεύσας τὰς ὑπὸ Τειρεσίου ῥηθείσας τελεῖ θυσίας. καὶ µετὰ
ταῦτα εἰς Θεσπρωτοὺς ἀϕικνεῖται.
Apollod. epit. 7. 34 θύσας δὲ ῞Αιδηι καὶ Περσεϕόνηι καὶ Τειρεσίαι, πεζῆι διὰ τῆς
Ἠπείρου βαδίζων εἰς Θεσπρωτοὺς παραγίνεται, καὶ κατὰ τὰς Τειρεσίου µαντείας
θυσιάσας ἐξιλάσκεται Ποσειδῶνα.
Teiresias in Od. 11. 121−31 (cf. 23. 248−87) instructed Odysseus, after he killed the
suitors, to take an oar and travel inland with it over his shoulder until he came to a people
so unacquainted with the sea that they took it for a winnowing shovel. There he was to
stick it in the earth, sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to Poseidon, return to Ithaca, and
offer hecatombs to all the gods in turn. This looks as if it should be the aition for some
local Poseidon cult (Hartmann 91−3), but we cannot identify the place that the Odyssey
poet had in mind. It is unlikely to have been in Thesprotia, which in the Odyssey is a
coastal kingdom, entirely familiar with ships (14. 315, 16. 65, 19. 287−92). Eugammon
made it Thesprotia for the sake of a connection with the Kallidike saga; cf. below on arg.
2.10
The sacrifices to Hades, Persephone, and Teiresias represent the fulfilment of the vow
made in Od. 11. 29−33 (following Circe’s instructions, 10. 521−5) to sacrifice a cow to the
ghosts and a black sheep to Teiresias; Hades and Persephone (cf. 10. 491, 534) take the
place of the νεκύων ἀµενηνὰ κάρηνα. What follows in Apollodorus is faithful to Teiresias’
programme. Proclus has abbreviated severely and confused the order by conflating the
sacrifice to Teiresias with the ones ordained by Teiresias.
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Telegony
Before setting out on his new journey Odysseus presumably explained to Penelope why
it was necessary, as in Od. 23. 248−87. Then he trekked inland, proceeding from town to
town (Od. 23. 267), (p.296) until at last he encountered someone who asked him why he
was carrying a winnowing shovel. There he set up his oar and made his sacrifices to
Poseidon.11
F 2⋆ Synes. Epist. 148
οὐ γὰρ σϕα̃ς ἐκ νυκτὸς ἐγείρει κῦµ᾿ ἐπιθρῶισκον.
Synesius in 402/3 CE writes to Olympius that he lives to the south of Cyrene, far from the
sea, with landlubber neighbours like the people that Odysseus went to seek out in
obedience to the prophecy, the men who ‘do not know the sea, and do not eat salted
food’ (Od. 11. 122f.=23. 269f.). A page later he says that his neighbours’ ignorance of the
sea is pardonable, because they do not wake to the sound of waves breaking (οὐ γὰρ
σϕα̃ς ἐκ νυκτὸς ἐγείρει κῦµ᾿ ἐπιθρῶισκον) but only to neighing horses, bleating sheep
and goats, lowing cattle, and buzzing bees. E. Livrea, ZPE 122 (1998), 1−3, conjectures
that the anonymous verse, which from the rhythm looks pre-Hellenistic, came from the
Telegony and referred to the inland people that Odysseus reached. It is an attractive
guess; it would certainly be surprising if any Cyclic epic was still extant in Synesius’ time,
but as the Telegony was believed to be by a Cyrenaean poet, it is conceivable that it
continued to be read in Cyrenaica after it had gone out of circulation everywhere else.
When I asked Donald Russell for his opinion he reacted sceptically, suggesting that
Synesius might have adapted to his own purpose a verse without the negative (e.g. καὶ
γὰρ σϕα̃ς κτλ.), describing the uncomfortable life of mariners who find waves breaking
over them in the night. For the theme he compares the fragment of Aristeas’ Arimaspeia
quoted in ‘Longinus’ De subl. 10. 4. Why, though, should such a recherché verse have
come into Synesius’ head, if its context was one so remote from that of his letter? And if it
referred to waves breaking over a ship at sea, its negation would be applicable to
everyone who sleeps on land, whether they live near the sea or not.
It is, to be sure, a far from commonplace notion that people who do not live far inland are
regularly woken by the noise of the sea (p.297) breaking on the beach. If that is what
the original verse referred to, it was most likely conceived by someone who did live near
a noisy shore and was accustomed to waking up to the sound.
ἐπιθρώισκω ‘leap upon’ really requires some specification of what was leapt upon. I
conjecture that αἰγιαλῶι followed in the next line and was omitted by Synesius.
Arg. 2
καὶ γαµεῖ Καλλιδίκην βασιλίδα τῶν Θεσπρωτῶν. ἔπειτα πόλεµος συνίσταται τοῖς
Θεσπρωτοῖς πρὸς Βρύγους, Ὀδυσσέως ἡγουµένου. ἐνταῦθα ῎Αρης τοὺς περὶ τὸν
Ὀδυσσέα τρέπεται, καὶ αὐτῶι εἰς µάχην Ἀθηνα̃ καθίσταται· τούτους µὲν Ἀπόλλων
διαλύει· µετὰ δὲ τὴν Καλλιδίκης τελευτὴν τὴν µὲν βασιλείαν διαδέχεται Πολυποίτης
Ὀδυσσέως υἱός, αὐτὸς δὲ εἰς Ἰθάκην ἀϕικνεῖται.
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Telegony
Apollod. epit. 7. 34−5 ἡ δὲ βασιλεύουσα τότε Θεσπρωτῶν Καλλιδίκη καταµένειν αὐτὸν

ἠξίου, τὴν βασιλείαν αὐτῶι δοῦσα. καὶ συνελθοῦσα αὐτῶι γεννα̃ι Πολυποίτην. γήµας
δὲ Καλλιδίκην Θεσπρωτῶν ἐβασίλευσε, καὶ µάχηι τῶν περιοίκων νικα̃ι τοὺς
ἐπιστρατεύσαντας. Καλλιδίκης δὲ ἀποθανούσης, τῶι παιδὶ τὴν βασιλείαν ἀποδιδούς,
εἰς Ἰθάκην παραγίνεται· καὶ εὑρίσκει ἐκ Πηνελόπης Πολιπόρθην αὐτῶι γεγεννηµένον.
This episode, in which Odysseus takes over an inland kingdom and leaves it in the hands
of a son, is a self-contained tale serving to confer Odyssean ancestry on a Thesprotian
dynasty. Welcker noted the parallel with the Molossian claim to descent of their kings
from Neoptolemos.12 How the Thesprotian story came to the attention of a Cyrenaean
poet, we cannot know. It was clearly not part of the programme laid down by Teiresias:
there Odysseus was simply to establish a cult of Poseidon in whatever district the
Odyssey poet had in mind, and then go home. In the Telegony he must have stayed in
(p.298) Thesprotia for fifteen or twenty years if Polypoites was to be old enough to take
over the throne when he left. This is incongruous with the rest of Odysseus’ story. The
hero who for ten years yearned and strove to get home to Penelope, refusing the offer
of marriage to a goddess, now goes away, voluntarily marries another woman in a distant
realm, and stays with her for longer than the duration of his previous wanderings.13 In
the Odyssey the Thesprotians are ruled at the time of Odysseus’ homecoming by a king
Pheidon, who has a healthy son (14. 316−19, 19. 287). So why, a few weeks later, are
they under an unattached queen Kallidike? The dynastic legend needed such a figure, for
it was by marrying the queen that Odysseus could become king. For this typical pattern
in myth cf. M. Finkelberg, CQ 41 (1991), 303−15; ead., Greeks and Pre-Greeks
(Cambridge 2005), 65−89.
How was the story told? After making his sacrifices to Poseidon Odysseus must
somehow have been brought to the queen’s house. Kallidike will have received and
entertained him, and he will have explained his identity and history. On the next morning,
perhaps, she, being in want of a noble and heroic husband, offered him herself and her
kingdom on terms that he found persuasive. Perhaps he agreed to stay only until there
was a son big enough to take over. In a purer form of the legend he should have stayed
permanently (Wilamowitz (1884), 189). It was the combination with the Telegonos myth
that required his return to Ithaca.
The war against the Brygoi (of whom this is the earliest attestation) was part of the local
saga. They were a Thracian people (Hdt. 6. 45). Proclus’ wording suggests that Odysseus
and the Thesprotians were the aggressors, while Apollodorus’ suggests the opposite.
Ares supported the Thracian tribe, as in Il. 13. 298−303 he is pictured going out from
Thrace to invade the Ephyroi or the Phlegyai (Wilamowitz (1884), 187). Athena is
Odysseus’ regular supporting deity, but her worsting of Ares in battle must have been
inspired by the episode in Il. 5. 814ff. where she helps Diomedes to defeat him. Apollo had
made a brief intervention to check Diomedes’ onslaught (p.299) (5. 344−6, 432ff.), but
the mediating role assigned to him in the Thesprotian battle probably reflects his cultic
importance in the region.
Odysseus had left Penelope pregnant and in his absence she had borne another son,
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Telegony
P(t)oliporthes, who must have been nearly grown up (like Polypoites) when his father
finally returned and learned of his existence. On him see below on F 3 and arg. 4a. It
appears from subsequent events that Penelope was still alive and at home, as was
Telemachos, who remained unmarried.
F 3 Paus. 8. 12. 5−6

καὶ ἐν δεξια̃ι τῆς ὁδοῦ γῆς χῶµα ὑψηλόν· Πηνελόπης δὲ εἶναι τάϕον ϕασίν, οὐχ
ὁµολογοῦντες τὰ ἐς αὐτὴν ποιήσει 〈τῆι〉 Θεσπρωτίδι ὀνοµαζοµένηι. ἐν ταύτηι µέν γέ
ἐστι τῆι ποιήσει ἐπανήκοντι ἐκ Τροίας Ὀδυσσεῖ τεκεῖν τὴν Πηνελόπην Πτολιπόρθην
παῖδα.
The tomb in question was located in Arcadia, by one of the roads from Mantinea to
Orchomenos. The Mantinean story was that Odysseus, on returning from Troy,
convicted Penelope of bringing men into the house and banished her; she went first to
Sparta and later to Mantinea, where she died. (Cf. Apollod. epit. 7. 38.) Pausanias says that
this contradicts the Thesprotis, in which Odysseus did not banish her but resumed
conjugal relations and indeed fathered a second son. The Thesprotis, mentioned nowhere
else, was evidently an authoritative epic account of Odysseus’ later life. Apollodorus
mentions the birth of P(t)oliporthes in an account that otherwise agrees closely with
Proclus’ summary of the Telegony, and Eustathius (below, F 4) explicitly ascribes to the
Telegony the birth of a second son to Odysseus and Penelope, though he names him as
Arkesilaos, not Ptoliporthes (cf. intro. 3). So it is very probable that Pausanias’ Thesprotis
is the Telegony, or the first part of it that dealt with Odysseus’ journey to Thesprotia and
return to Ithaca. Cf. Clement’s reference to Eugammon’s περὶ Θεσπρωτῶν βιβλίον
(intro. 1).
Ptoliporthes’ name is derived from Odysseus’ Homeric epithet πτολίπορθος; cf.

Telemachos’ son Persepolis in [Hes.] fr. 221. For his raison d’être see below on arg. 4a.
(p.300) The End of Odysseus’ Life. Telegonos
F 1⋆ Ath. 412d
γέρων τε ὢν (Ὀδυσσεὺς)
ἤσθιεν ἁρπαλέως κρέα τ᾿ ἄσπετα καὶ µέθυ ἡδύ.
The verse looks pre-Hellenistic, and the Telegony is the obvious candidate for an early
hexameter poem containing a description of Odysseus’ life in old age. Teiresias
prophesied that he would reach a γῆρας λιπαρόν with his people prospering about him
(Od. 11. 136f.). The ascription to the Telegony goes back to H. Diels, Hermes 23 (1888),
279, who thought of Odysseus’ visit to Elis as one possible context. I follow Hartmann 75
n. 71 and Rzach 2432 in putting it after his return from Thesprotia, when he was more
properly characterized as an old man.
F 4 Eust. Od. 1796. 48

ὁ δὲ τὴν Τηλεγόνειαν γράψας Κυρηναῖος ἐκ µὲν Καλυψοῦς Τηλέγονον υἱὸν Ὀδυσσεῖ
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Telegony
ἀναγράϕει ἢ Τηλέδαµον, ἐκ δὲ Πηνελόπης Τηλέµαχον καὶ Ἀρκεσίλαον.
Eustathius confusedly names Calypso instead of Circe as Telegonos’ mother. A few lines
later (below, F 6) he correctly names Circe but by a further confusion gives the source
as the Nostoi.14 He probably found Teledamos in his source as a marginal variant for
Telegonos.
Arg. 3
κἀν τούτωι Τηλέγονος, ἐπὶ ζήτησιν τοῦ πατρὸς πλέων, ἀποβὰς εἰς τὴν Ἰθάκην τέµνει
τὴν νῆσον· ἐκβοηθήσας δὲ Ὀδυσσεὺς ὑπὸ τοῦ παιδὸς ἀναιρεῖται κατ᾿ ἄγνοιαν.
Apollod. epit. 7. 36 Τηλέγονος δὲ παρὰ Κίρκης µαθὼν ὅτι παῖς Ὀδυσσέως ἐστίν, ἐπὶ τὴν
τούτου ζήτησιν ἐκπλεῖ· παραγενόµενος δὲ εἰς Ἰθάκην τὴν νῆσον ἀπελαύνει τινὰ τῶν
βοσκηµάτων· καὶ Ὀδυσσέα βοηθοῦντα τῶι µετὰ χεῖρας δόρατι 〈τρυγόνος〉 κέντρον τὴν
αἰχµὴν ἔχοντι τιτρώσκει, καὶ Ὀδυσσεὺς θνήισκει.
(p.301) F 5 Sch. Od. 11. 134, “θάνατος δέ τοι ἐξ ἁλός“

ἔξω τῆς ἁλός· οὐ γὰρ οἶδεν ὁ ποιητὴς τὰ κατὰ τὸν Τηλέγονον καὶ τὰ κατὰ τὸ κέντρον
τῆς τρυγόνος.
Sch.D ibid. οἱ νεώτεροι τὰ περὶ Τηλέγονον ἀνέπλασαν τὸν Κίρκης καὶ Ὀδυσσέως, ὃς
δοκεῖ κατὰ ζήτησιν τοῦ πατρὸς εἰς Ἰθάκην ἐλθὼν ὑπ᾿ ἀγνοίας τὸν πατέρα
διαχρήσασθαι τρυγόνος κέντρωι.
Lyc. 789−98
λοῖσθον δὲ καύηξ ὥστε …
σῦϕαρ θανεῖται πόντιον σκέπας ϕυγών
κόραξ σὺν ὅπλοις Νηρίτων δρυµῶν πέλας·
κτενεῖ δὲ τύψας πλευρὰ λοίγιος στόνυξ
κέντρωι δυσαλθὴς ἔλλοπος Σαρδωνικῆς.
κέλωρ δὲ πατρὸς ἄρταµος κληθήσεται,
Ἀχιλλέως δάµαρτος αὐτανέψιος.
Opp. Hal. 2. 497−505
κεῖνό ποτ᾿ αἰγανέηι δολιχήρεϊ κωπηέσσηι
Κίρκη Τηλεγόνωι πολυϕάρµακος ὤπασε µήτηρ,
αἰχµάζειν δηίοις ἅλιον µόρον· αὐτὰρ ὃ νήσωι
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Telegony
αἰγιβότωι προσέκελσε, καὶ οὐ µάθε πώεα πέρθων
πατρὸς ἑοῦ· γεραρῶι δὲ βοηδροµέοντι τοκῆϊ
αὐτῶι, τὸν µάστευε, κακὴν ἐνεµάξατο κῆρα.
ἔνθα τὸν αἰολόµητιν Ὀδυσσέα, µυρία πόντου
ἄλγεα µετρήσαντα πολυκµήτοισιν ἀέθλοις,
τρυγὼν ἀλγινόεσσα µιῆι κατενήρατο ῥιπῆι.
Sch. ad loc. ἡ ἱστορία Ὀδυσσέως· πρὸ τοῦ πορευθῆναι αὐτὸν εἰς Τροίαν (!) συµµιγεὶς
Κίρκηι ἐποίησε Τηλέγονον, ὧι ἀνδρωθέντι ἔδωκε κέντρον τρυγόνος εἰποῦσα,
“πορεύου πρὸς ἀναζήτησιν τοῦ πατέρος σου εἰς Ἰθάκην, καὶ διὰ τούτου τίτρωσκε τοὺς
πολεµοῦντάς σε.” ὃ δὲ παραγενόµενος εἰς Ἰθάκην καὶ εὑρὼν τοὺς ποιµένας τοῦ
Ὀδυσσέως ποιµαίνοντας τὰ ποίµνια αὐτοῦ, τούτους ἐδίωκεν, ἀγνοῶν ὅτι τοῦ πατρὸς
αὐτοῦ εἰσι. µαθὼν δὲ ταῦτα ὁ Ὀδυσσεὺς ἐξήιει ἐπὶ τὸ τοῦτον ϕονεῦσαι· ὃ δὲ τιτρώσκει
τοῦτον τῶι τῆς τρυγόνος κέντρωι, καὶ παραυτίκα θανάτωι καθυποβάλλει.
In the Odyssey Odysseus had sex with Circe on the day they met (10. 347) and
apparently continued to share her bed during the (p.302) year of his stay (cf. 10. 480).
There is no suggestion that she became pregnant, and the poet surely had no thought of
it. Telegonos, the ‘Faraway-born’, is a subsequent invention for the sake of attaching to
Odysseus a version of the wandering (perhaps Indo-European) tale of the son who
unwittingly kills his father, on which see Hartmann 224f.; West (2007), 440−2.15
After Odysseus’ return from Thesprotia had been related, the scene changed to Circe’s
island. This may have been where the book-division was made (Hartmann 73). Telegonos
was by this time fully grown; in fact he would have been seven or eight years older than
Polypoites and Ptoliporthes.16 Circe told him about his father and encouraged him to go
forth and find him.17 For self-defence she provided him with a spear tipped with the barb
of a sting-ray, a feature that ‘not only lacerates, but … carries a powerful narcotoxic
venom’ (Thompson 270). Eugammon might have described how the young man built
himself a boat, as Odysseus did in order to leave Calypso’s isle. He arrived on Ithaca,
evidently not knowing that this was his father’s island, and started to plunder the flocks.
Odysseus came to defend his property. Telegonos struck him with the sting-ray spear,
with fatal results. On the significance of the peculiar weapon see the Excursus below.
Details of its making are cited in sch. Od. 11. 134 from an unnamed authority: ἔνιοι δέ …
ϕασιν ὡς ἐντεύξει τῆς Κίρκης ῞Ηϕαιστος κατεσκεύασε Τηλεγόνωι δόρυ ἐκ τρυγόνος
θαλασσίας, ἣν Φόρκυς ἀνεῖλεν ἐσθίουσαν τοὺς ἐν τῆι Φορκίδι λίµνηι ἰχθῦς· οὗ τὴν µὲν
ἐπιδορατίδα ἀδαµαντίνην, τὸν δὲ στύρακα χρυσοῦν εἶναι· ὧι τὸν Ὀδυσσέα ἀνεῖλεν.
This may derive from an (p.303) epic source,18 but if so it was probably a Hellenistic
one, as the Φορκὶς λίµνη, located in Circe’s vicinity, is surely the same as the Φόρκη or
Φόρκης λίµνη of Lycophron 1275, which is linked with Κίρκαιον (1273) in an Italian
setting.19 The meeting of Circe with Hephaestus is far-fetched, whether he was supposed
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to have visited Aiaia (like Hermes in Od. 5) or she was supposed to have gone to Olympus
(like Thetis in Il. 18). Lyc. 796 says the fish was Sardinian, but this may mean no more than
‘from the western Mediterranean’, where by his time Circe was located.20
According to Dictys Telegonos wounded his father in the side, κατὰ τοῦ πλευροῦ.21
Dictys of course invented many details of his narrative, and there is no guarantee that
this one corresponds to the account in the Telegony, though it is plausible enough in
itself.
Hyginus, Fab. 127. 1−2, gives the following account of these events:
Telegonus Vlyssis et Circes filius, missus a matre ut genitorem quaereret, tempestate in

Ithacam est delatus, ibique fame coactus agros depopulari coepit; cum quo Vlysses et
Telemachus ignari arma contulerunt. Vlysses a Telegono filio est interfectus, quod ei
responsum fuerat ut a filio caueret mortem.
This almost certainly derives from Sophocles’ Ὀδυσσεὺς ἀκανθοπλήξ.22 Odysseus

received a warning from an oracle to beware of being killed by his son. He naturally
assumed that it referred to Telemachos. In fr. 460 of the play he referred to something of
which no oracle could persuade him, sc. that Telemachos would threaten his life.
(p.304) Two Weddings and a Funeral23
Arg. 4a
Τηλέγονος δὲ ἐπιγνοὺς τὴν ἁµαρτίαν τό τε τοῦ πατρὸς σῶµα καὶ τὸν Τηλέµαχον καὶ
τὴν Πηνελόπην πρὸς τὴν µητέρα µεθίστησιν.
Apollod. epit. 7. 37 ἀναγνωρισάµενος δὲ αὐτὸν καὶ πολλὰ κατοδυράµενος, τὸν νεκρὸν

〈καὶ〉 τὴν Πηνελόπην πρὸς Κίρκην ἄγει.
Hyg. Fab. 127. 2 quem postquam cognouit qui esset, iussu Mineruae cum Telemacho et
Penelope in patriam redierunt: in insulam Aeaeam ad Circen Vlyssem mortuum
deportarunt ibique sepulturae tradiderunt.
There must have been a dialogue in which Telegonos was made aware of his victim’s
identity and Odysseus of his slayer’s. It might have gone along these lines:
ODYDDEUS. Oh, alas, I am dying; I feel my life ebbing away. Who are you, young man,
that have slain me, Odysseus son of Laertes, whom no enemy at Troy, no Polyphemus or
Scylla, no tempest at sea was ever able to overcome?
TELEGONOS. In the gods’ name, what are you saying? You are Odysseus, my father by
immortal Circe, who sent me over the seas to find you? Is this then Ithaca, the land I
sought? I thought it was a nameless island, inhabited only by sheep. When you came
rushing at me, I was forced to defend myself.
Odysseus died; Telegonos lamented at some length (Apollod.). Events must then have
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moved on quite rapidly. A heroic funeral would be expected, but before it could be
arranged the decision was made to convey the body to Circe, accompanied by
Telegonos, Telemachos, and Penelope. According to Hyginus Athena arrived in the
manner of a tragic deus ex machina (cf. Hartmann 119f.) to enjoin this course of action.
He may have got this, like the earlier part of his account, from a hypothesis to Sophocles’
Ὀδυσσεὺς ἀκανθοπλήξ. But it seems necessary to postulate an intervention by Athena in
the Telegony too. Telegonos could hardly have hit on the proper course of action on his
own initiative: ‘Ye gods, this is a pretty kettle of … Why don’t we all get in my boat, taking
the corpse too, (p.305) and I’ll sail us back to my mother, who is a resourceful witch
and may be able to sort us out.’ Surely it was Athena (who had intervened to help
Odysseus earlier in the poem, in the Thesprotian episode) who told them what to do.
Perhaps she also sped the ship on its way so that the immense distance was traversed
swiftly and easily.
There is no indication of what happened to Ptoliporthes. Presumably he remained in

Ithaca to rule benignly over his father’s people, who were otherwise left leaderless, and
to carry on Odysseus’ line there.24 We may surmise that it was from this that he
received the second name Arkesilaos, οὕνεκα … ἤρκεσε λαοῖς, the point of which was to
make him the ancestor of the Cyrenaean Battiads. Eugammon may or may not have given
an indication of how the supposed connection worked.25
Hartmann 53 suggests that Odysseus’ burial on Aiaia rather than Ithaca points to a grave
and cult somewhere in Italy or elsewhere in the west, Circe’s island being already given a
location in the real world. I do not find this likely. This was not the first funeral to be
performed on Aiaia, as there had previously been Elpenor’s (Od. 12. 8−15). That of
Odysseus was perhaps dealt with at not much greater length so far as the ritual was
concerned, though a set of laments from each of the four persons present would have
been appropriate. It would have been an opportunity to sum up the whole story of
Odysseus.
Arg. 4b
ἣ δὲ αὐτοὺς ἀθανάτους ποιεῖ, καὶ συνοικεῖ τῆι µὲν Πηνελόπηι Τηλέγονος, Κίρκηι δὲ
Τηλέµαχος.
Apollod. epit. 7. 37 κἀκεῖ τὴν Πηνελόπην γαµεῖ. Κίρκη δὲ ἑκατέρους αὐτοὺς εἰς
Μακάρων νήσους ἀποστέλλει.
(p.306) Hyg. Fab. 127. 2 eiusdem Mineruae monitu Telegonus Penelopen, Telemachus
Circen duxerunt uxores.
Sch. Lyc. 805 µῦθος ϕέρεται ὅτι µετὰ τὸ ἀνελεῖν αὐτὸν (sc. Ὀδυσσέα) τὸν Τηλέγονον
Κίρκη ϕαρµάκοις ἀνέστησε, καὶ ἐγήµατο Τηλεµάχωι, καὶ Πηνελόπη Τηλεγόνωι, ἐν
Μακάρων νήσοις.
F 6 Eust. Od. 1796. 52

ὁ δὲ τοὺς Νόστους ποιήσας Κολοϕώνιος Τηλέµαχον µέν ϕησι τὴν Κίρκην ὕστερον
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γῆµαι, Τηλέγονον δὲ τὸν ἐκ Κίρκης ἀντιγῆµαι Πηνελόπην.
Calypso had offered to make Odysseus immortal if he stayed with her (Od. 5. 135f., 7.
256f., 23. 335f.). Circe now confers this boon on her new consort Telemachos, as well as
on her son and his elderly bride.26 According to the scholiast on Lycophron she also
brings Odysseus back to life. It might be argued that there was no point in taking his
body to her island except for that to happen; but then Penelope would not have been
free to marry Telegonos, and the neat ending by means of the double marriage is spoiled
if a resurrected Odysseus is left over.27 The location in the Isles of the Blest also seems
to be foreign to the Telegony. In the Apollodorus epitome Circe sends Telegonos and
Penelope there while remaining on her own island. Telemachos does not appear;
Apollodorus perhaps preferred him to marry Nestor’s daughter Polykaste, as in [Hes.]
fr. 221. In the Telegony, then, Circe and Telemachos and Telegonos and Penelope live on
in Aiaia. The divergent versions arose from the tendency to locate all immortalized heroes
on the Isles of the Blest and from the feeling that Odysseus should have his place among
them.
These fantastic marriages and immortalizations brought the Epic Cycle to a tidy fairytale
conclusion. They spring from the same outlook as the mythical accounts according to
which the Heroic Age ended with the removal of the heroes to a happier place at the ends
of the earth (Hes. Op. 167−73, [Hes.] fr. 204. 99−103). Some of them, as Hartmann 52
notes, enjoyed posthumous marriages: Heracles with Hebe, Achilles with Medea.
(p.307) Excursus: The Death of Odysseus

Teiresias prophesies to Odysseus in Od. 11. 134−7:
θάνατος δέ τοι ἐξ ἁλὸς αὐτῶι
ἀβληχρὸς µάλα τοῖος ἐλεύσεται, ὅς κέ σε πέϕνηι
γήραι ὕπο λιπαρῶι ἀρηµένον· ἀµϕὶ δὲ λαοί
ὄλβιοι ἔσσονται. τὰ δέ τοι νηµερτέα εἴρω.
Death will come to yourself from the sea, a quite mild death that will kill you when you are
worn down by a sleek old age, with your people prospering round about. This is the truth
I tell you.
What is this ‘mild’ death that is to come from the sea? The story in the Telegony, that
Odysseus was killed with a sting-ray spear, was accepted by some as the fulfilment of the
prophecy. Nicander, Th. 835f. λόγος γε µὲν ὥς ποτ᾿ Ὀδυσσεύς | ἔϕθιτο λευγαλέοιο
τυπεὶς ἁλίου ὑπὸ κέντρου, surely alludes to the Odyssey’s ἐξ ἁλός, as does Oppian when
he writes that Circe gave Telegonos the weapon αἰχµάζειν δηίοις ἅλιον µόρον (Hal. 2.
499).
Aristarchus disagreed, refusing as usual to explain Homer in terms of something known

only to later poets, οἱ νεώτεροι. He interpreted ἐξ ἁλός to mean ‘far away from the sea’
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(sch. Il. 11. 163a, Od. 11. 134), comparing the use of ἐξ in Il. 11. 163f. ῞Εκτορα δ᾿ ἐκ
βελέων ὕπαγε Ζεὺς ἔκ τε κονίης | ἔκ τ᾿ ἀνδροκτασίης ἔκ θ᾿ αἵµατος ἔκ τε κυδοιµοῦ.
This approach was developed further by his pupil Ptolemy of Ascalon, who explained the
ΕΞ in ἐξ ἁλός as elided ἔξω (which is impossible), and by Herodian, who read ἔξαλος as
one word, ‘an extramarine death’.28
A surprising number of modern scholars have followed Aristarchus.29 But θάνατος δέ

τοι ἐξ ἁλὸς … ἐλεύσεται can only mean ‘death will come to you from the sea’, just as in 4.
401 ἐξ ἁλὸς εἶσι γέρων ἅλιος means ‘the Old Man of the Sea will come out of the sea’.
Besides, the context strongly implies that Odysseus will be settled on Ithaca among his
subjects, so not at all ‘far from the sea’.
Does Teiresias’ prophecy then refer to Telegonos’ spear, as others before and after
Aristarchus thought? This would account for (p.308) ἐξ ἁλός all right, but it can hardly
have been what the Odyssey poet had in mind. He knew nothing of Telegonos, who was a
post-Odyssean invention; Aristarchus was right about that.30 Besides, to be fatally
wounded in a fight cannot be called a mild or gentle death, especially if the weapon is such
an unpleasant one. Robert (1920−6), 1439 n. 2, thought that ἀβληχρός could refer to the
soft structure of the sting-ray and its barb. Dornseiff argued absurdly that the word is
apt because for an old man to be suddenly stabbed through the heart is a death free
from all suffering.31 If so, why not use a normal spear? It would still have come from the
sea if Telegonos brought it.
Laceration by a sting-ray is extremely painful. Pacuvius in his Niptra, in a scene modelled

on Sophocles’ Ὀδυσσεὺς ἀκανθοπλήξ, showed Ulysses in agonies from his wound (fr.
199. 8−12 Schierl):
retinete, tenete: opprimit ulcus.
nudate! heu miserum me, excrucior.
operite! abscedite! iam iam 〈me〉
mittite, nam attrectatu et quassu
saeuum amplificatis dolorem.
In Sophocles’ play, according to Cicero (Tusc. 2. 49), the hero lamented in even less
restrained terms. Oppian describes the stingray’s barb as ἄγριον, … ὁµοῦ χαλεπόν τε
βίηι καὶ ὀλέθριον ἰῶι (Hal. 2. 470f.), and the fish as the τρυγὼν ἀλγινόεσσα (505).
Thompson 270f. quotes the following account of the sufferings of a man who was stung by
a ray. It comes from John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia (1624), from an account of
how the sailors in a certain ship, finding a place where there were abundant fish, amused
themselves by spearing them with their swords.
It chanced our Captain, taking a fish from his sword (not knowing her condition) being
much of the fashion of a Thornbacke, but having a long tayle like a riding rodde, whereon
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the middest is a most poisoned sting of 2 or 3 inches long, bearded like a saw on each
side, which she stucke into the wrist of his arme near an inch and a half; no blood nor
wound was seene, but a little blewe spot, but the torment was instantly so extreeme, that
in foure houres had so swollen his hand, arme and shoulder we all with much (p.309)
sorrow concluded his funerall, and prepared his grave on an island by himself directed;
yet it pleased God, by a precious oyle Dr Russell at the first applied to it with a probe, ere
night his tormenting paine was so well asswaged that he eate of the fishe to his supper.
I attach an image of the sting of a ray (Figure 3).32
Figure 3. This is one of the six inch long razor sharp tail barbs of an
undermined species of stingray. Wounds from such barbs are
extremely painful and occasionally life threatening, but are easily
avoided. Komodo National Park, Indonesia.
There is another version of Odysseus’ death that involves the sting-ray in a quite
different way. It appears in a fragment of Aeschylus’ Psychagogoi (fr. 275), where again it
is a prophecy by Teiresias, only this time not in such riddling terms:
ἐρωιδιὸς γὰρ ὑψόθεν ποτώµενος
ὄνθωι σε πλήξει νηδύος χαλώµασιν·
ἐκ τοῦδ᾿ ἄκανθα ποντίου βοσκήµατος
σήψει παλαιὸν δέρµα καὶ τριχορρυές.
A heron in flight will strike you from above with its loose-bowelled dropping. From this
the barb of a sea-nurtured creature will rot your old skin that has lost its hair.
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(p.310) In other words, a heron flying overhead would one day defecate onto
Odysseus, and its droppings would contain the (obviously much reduced and degraded)
barb of a fish that would poison his aged, balding scalp.
What are we to make of this? Vürtheim, Mnem. n.s. 29 (1901), 58, thought that such a
grotesque and unseemly scenario could only have come in a satyr play. Johannes Schmidt
considered Aeschylus to have made a travesty of the older Telegonos saga, while
according to Eduard Schwartz, because the Telegonos interpretation of the traditional
prophecy was so forced, Aeschylus boldly replaced it with a still more artificial one that
better fitted the wording.33
Only Gruppe (715) saw it as representing the probable original version that the Odyssey
poet was alluding to. I believe he was right. It cannot have been Aeschylus’ invention but
must have come to him from older tradition. It fits the Odyssey prophecy well: the hero’s
death will come from the sea, in a mild form, ἀβληχρός, and his extreme old age will be a
contributory factor, γήραι ὕπο λιπαρῶι ἀρηµένον.
But what would have been the origin of such a bizarre story? Gruppe could only suggest
that it came from some cult legend, but it has no possible cultic relevance.
The key is to identify the particular genre of myth that it belongs to. There is a species of
myth that hinges on a sort of riddle and its solution. The riddle involves a set of conditions
that have to be fulfilled if a certain result is to come about, conditions so framed that they
appear impossible to meet. They are however met by contriving an unimagined
combination of circumstances.
Here is a Lithuanian example in which the outcome is not a death but a marriage. A
traveller comes to a house where there is a girl spinning and asks if she has anything
there for him to drink. She answers in a riddling manner. He solves her riddle, and poses
one of his own: ‘If you come to me neither naked nor clothed, neither on horse or on foot
or on a wagon, neither on the road nor on the footpath nor beside the road, in summer
and at the same time in (p.311) winter, I’ll marry you.’ She meets the challenge by
removing her clothes and draping herself in a net (so she is neither naked nor clothed).
She rides up on a billy-goat (so neither on horse or on foot or on a wagon), keeping to the
ruts in the track (so neither on the road nor on the footpath nor beside the road), and
then goes into a coachhouse and places herself between a sleigh (winter) and a carriage
(summer) (so she is in both seasons at once).34 If we had only the ending of the story—
the account of the girl’s actions without the preceding dialogue—we should wonder what
on earth was going on.
Other myths tell of a person who can only be killed if certain apparently impossible
conditions are fulfilled. In an episode related in the Mah¯abh¯arata Indra’s great enemy
Vṛtra secures an agreement that he cannot be killed ‘with matter dry or wet, rock or
wood, thunderbolt or weapon, by day or by night’. Indra, frustrated, ponders how he
might nevertheless compass Vṛtra’s death. One day he observes him on the seashore at
twilight, and in the sea he sees a great mound of foam. He reflects, ‘Now it is neither day
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nor night, and this foam is neither dry nor wet, nor is it a weapon. I shall throw it at Vṛtra,
then he will instantly perish.’ ‘Quickly he threw the foam at him with the thunderbolt, and
Vis.n.u entered the foam and destroyed Vṛtra.’35
Welsh saga tells of the hero Lleu Llaw Gyffes, who knows that he is a difficult man to kill. ‘I
cannot be slain within a house, nor can I outside. I cannot be slain on horseback, nor can I
a-foot.’ He knows too that there is a way to kill him, though it is not one that a foe would
be likely to hit upon. It would have to be in a thatch-roofed bathtub on a river bank, with
him standing with one foot on the edge of the tub and the other on the back of a he-goat;
and then he would have to be struck with a spear made over the course of a year when
people were at Sunday Mass. His faithless wife Blodeuwedd wheedles these details out of
him, and so becomes able to bring about his death.36
(p.312) I have previously used these parallels to elucidate the Norse myth of the death
of Baldr.37 He was the beautiful god, the darling of all the other gods. They were afraid
for his life and resolved to secure immunity for him from all kinds of danger. Solemn
promises were obtained from all things that he should not be harmed by fire or water,
iron or any other metal, stones, earth, trees, diseases, animals, birds, poison, snakes. This
seemingly comprehensive immunity having been conferred on him, the gods took to
amusing themselves by striking at him with weapons and missiles as he stood in their
midst; nothing they did caused him any harm. But the malign Loki found out that there
was a shoot of mistletoe, growing west of Valhall, from which Frigg had not troubled to
exact the oath, as it had seemed too young and harmless to bother with. Loki went and
got the mistletoe and took it to the place where Baldr was being bombarded. The blind
god Hǫðr was standing on the sidelines, not taking part in the game, as he could not see
where Baldr was and had no weapon. Loki put the mistletoe in his hand and showed him
where to aim. He threw, and Baldr fell dead.38
What is the point of his being killed by a blind god throwing mistletoe? I argued that in an
older version of the myth it must have been laid down that Baldr could not be harmed by
anything on earth or in heaven, or by any creature that sees the light of day. Mistletoe
grows between earth and heaven, and so was not covered by the stipulation; nor was the
blind god who could not see the light of day. So we make sense of the bizarre
circumstances of the death by reconstructing the restrictive conditions that they are
designed to circumvent. Instead of being given a riddle and having to guess the solution,
we are given the solution and have to guess what the riddle was.
Here is one more example, this time of an actual riddle, an ancient Greek one, attributed
to a certain Panarkes (IEG ii. 93):
αἶνός τίς ἐστιν ὡς ἀνήρ τε κοὐκ ἀνήρ
ὄρνιθα κοὐκ ὄρνιθ᾿ ἰδών τε κοὐκ ἰδών
ἐπὶ ξύλου τε κοὐ ξύλου καθηµένην
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λίθωι τε κοὐ λίθωι βάλοι τε κοὐ βάλοι.
(p.313)
There is a tale that a man who was no man,
seeing and not seeing a bird that was no bird
as it sat on a stock that was no stock,
hit it and hit it not with a stone that was no stone.
The solution is: a short-sighted eunuch dimly made out a bat that was clinging to a fennel-
stalk, and threw a pumice-stone at it, hitting it but not killing it. So here again we are
presented with a thoroughly zany combination of circumstances that would be quite
incomprehensible without the riddle that they are devised to solve, a riddle consisting of
apparent impossibilities.
Now let us return to Odysseus and his extraordinary demise, poisoned by the droppings
of a heron that had digested a sting-ray. Here is a nexus of circumstances with the same
bizarre quality as characterizes the above riddle-myths. The story surely belongs in the
same category. What we have to do to understand it is to work out the riddle, or the set
of conditions, to which the defecating heron was the solution.
The answer must lie, as in the stories of Vṛtra, Lleu, and Baldr, in an apparently
comprehensive set of immunities enjoyed by Odysseus. When this account of his death
was first produced—no doubt long before Aeschylus—his immunities must have been
stated in advance, before the fatal incident occurred. They might have been stated by a
seer such as Teiresias, only they must have been much more restrictive than his rather
vague prophecy in the Odyssey about a mild death from the sea. In any case a mere
prophecy will not suffice; we require an explanation of how Odysseus came to acquire
such immunity. Most likely it was conferred on him at his birth. We may imagine a story
on these lines:
Just after Odysseus was born, a god, or two or three gods, came to Laertes’ house,
disguised in human form, and he gave them hospitality. They then revealed their identity
and rewarded him by declaring ‘your son will not be vulnerable to any living creature on
land or sea or in the air, or to any of the diseases that roam the earth, or to shipwreck at
sea’. And indeed Odysseus grew up to be a great hero; he survived the Trojan War, and
escaped all the perils that he faced at sea on his homeward journey. He grew old in peace
and tranquillity and perfect health, and seemed to be safe from all mortal dangers. But
one day a heron flew over … and so at last his life came to an end.
The heron story presupposes Odysseus’ immunities; Teiresias’ prophecy in the Odyssey
presupposes the heron story. Its details are exact. The hero’s death comes from the sea,
not just because the (p.314) heron comes from that direction but, more importantly,
because of the sting-ray. The death comes in a mild form: Odysseus is not subjected to
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the agonies of being stung by the fish; the residual toxicity of its digested remains seeps
into his balding scalp and he succumbs to it without pain. He has grown vulnerable
because of his γῆρας λιπαρόν.39
What is the relationship of the Telegony version of Odysseus’ death to the one involving
the heron? They cannot be completely independent, as they have the sting-ray in
common. Gruppe assumed that as the death by sting-ray had become an established
feature of the legend, it was retained in ‘eine jüngere Gestaltung der Sage’ which used
the motif of Telegonos, the son who slew his father.40 This is probably right. There is no
need to suppose that the prophecy about Odysseus’ immunities, which made sense of
the sting-ray, appeared in the Telegony. Eugammon may have taken over the motif of the
lethal sting-ray without preserving any trace of its original rationale. The idea of a spear
fitted with a sting-ray barb need not be a poetic fiction. Hartmann (50f., cf. 221f.) points
out that the use of such weapons is documented from some of the Pacific islands. He
considers Telegonos’ spear as a relic from a primitive cultural milieu, on a par with the
arrow poison that Odysseus gets from Thesprotia (Od. 1. 261) and appropriate as a gift
from Circe the πολυϕάρµακος (10. 276).
It may be felt that death by heron-excrement is not very fitting for a Homeric hero. Can
we really suppose that it was solemnly related in some early epic? No, surely not. The
original story no doubt had its existence not in epic but at the folktale level. Otto Crusius
wrote that Aeschylus with his heron story seems to preserve something old and crude,
deriving from ‘the pre-epic phase’ of the Odysseus saga.41
(p.315) ‘The pre-epic phase of the Odysseus saga’: this raises the question, who was
Odysseus? Was he a Mycenaean warrior king, renowned from the start as an epic hero?
He is called a sacker of cities, πτολίπορθος Ὀδυσσεύς, but we do not hear of any actual
cities he sacked, or of any heroic adversaries that he slew in combat. His renown is
rather for deeds of guile, cunning tricks and stratagems. He introduces himself to
Alcinous (Od. 9. 19f.) as ‘Odysseus son of Laertes, known everywhere for my tricks’:
εἶµ᾿ Ὀδυσεὺς Λαερτιάδης, ὃς πα̃ σι δόλοισιν
ἀνθρώποισι µέλω, καί µεο κλέος οὐρανὸν ἵκει.
To him alone belongs the formula ∆ιὶ µῆτιν ἀτάλαντος, which has every appearance of
going back to a Mycenaean prototype; 42 it suggests that from the beginning his
distinguishing quality was µῆτις, resourceful cleverness. He was descended from
Hermes through the famous trickster Autolykos, who used to steal horses and change
their colour so that they could not be recognized ([Hes.] fr. 67); or according to others
he was a bastard son of Sisyphos. It looks likely that Odysseus too was originally a folktale
trickster, to whom all kinds of stories became attached, for example of how he found
himself in the land of the one-eyed ogres, trapped in the cave of one of them, but
outwitted him and escaped. The variant forms of his name, Odysseus, Olytteus, Olixes,
and so on, confirm that he must have been widely celebrated outside epic. It was surely
this sub-heroic Odysseus of popular storytelling who seemed invincible but was
Page 20 of 25
Telegony
overcome in the end by an incontinent heron.
But as the generations went by, epic, and the saga of the Trojan War in particular, drew
more and more legendary characters into its orbit, and with Odysseus’ dignification as an
epic hero the mainstream tradition set the heron story aside as unbefitting for such a
man. It left its echo in Teiresias’ prophecy in the Odyssey, which the poet perhaps put in
without full awareness of its purport, to presage an eventual happy end to Odysseus’ life
(cf. Danek 228). The tale survived in some side-channel of tradition to reach Aeschylus.
But when an epic poet such as Eugammon came to deal with Odysseus’ end, he adapted
the tale to a more heroic mode. The sting-ray remains, but the hero dies in battle.
Notes:
(1 ) In the manuscript of Clement (Strom. 6. 25. 1) it is written with a single µ, but in
Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 10. 2. 7, who was copying Clement, it appears as Εὐγράµµων.
(2) Cf. Wilamowitz (1884), 187−9; Hartmann 86−8; Merkelbach 151f.
(3) Wilamowitz (1884), 240f., 347; Hartmann 55 n. 26.
(4) See West (1983), 39−44 for the ascription of poetry to Musaeus, and especially 43f.
on the Thesprotian book.
(5) Cf. Hartmann 158.
(6) J. Vürtheim, Mnem. n.s. 29 (1901), 39.
(7) This seems to be the meaning of ἐπὶ τούτωι (or ἐπὶ τούτου, as Bekker accidentally
wrote), though Dübner and others have taken it as ‘after that (there came)’. See A.
Severyns, Ant. Cl. 31 (1962), 19−24.
(8) On the folk tale see Hansen 357−71; on the Rhampsinitus story in particular, S. West
in J. Marincola (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography (Oxford 2007),
322−7. Hartmann 69 argues that the tale originated in Egypt, where the secret entrance
through a removable stone was at home as an architectural feature, and that it passed
from there to Cyrene. A Corinthian vase of the early sixth century (so perhaps earlier
than Eugammon) has been thought to depict the Trophonios story (LIMC Agamedes 2). It
shows two men, both with their heads caught in traps, and a woman who approaches
bringing them food. But it is hard to interpret this as a version of the Trophonios story.
(9) Cf. Hartmann 70, 85.
(10) By the fourth century Odysseus had an oracle in the land of the Eurytanes (Arist. fr.
508, Lyc. 799, Nic. fr. 8), which seems to presuppose his death there. There was another
at Trampya, near Bounima(i), deep in Epirus, which also claimed to have been Odysseus’
final destination: Lyc. 800 with sch., St. Byz. β 147 S.V. Βούνιµα, Eust. 1675. 35. N. G. L.
Hammond, Epirus (Oxford 1967), 708 and 675 map 16, places these obscure towns on
the uppermost reaches of the river Arachthos. Bounimai was of sufficient consequence to
Page 21 of 25
Telegony
serve as the venue for a meeting of the Epirote League shortly before 170 (GDI 1339).
(11 ) The motif of an oar planted in the earth appears also at Od. 11. 77f.~12. 15 (Elpenor’s
grave-mound). Hansen 371−8 discusses folk parallels for the ex-sailor who carries an oar
inland until it is not recognized and who settles down there. They come from modern
Greece, Britain, and America, and there seems a good chance that they derive from the
story of Odysseus.
(12) Welcker ii. 302, ‘Dieß hinderte aber nicht daß ein Thesprotisches Fürstengeschlecht,
geschmeichelt durch den erdichteten Besuch des Odysseus, seine eigene Abstammung
von ihm erdichtete, wie das Molossische Herrschergeschlecht sich von Neoptolemos
ableitete, in Zeiten als in allen mit den epischen Sagen bekannten Gegenden unter
Griechen und den fremden Geschlechtern, die sie bewunderten und nachahmten, nichts
für ehrenvoller galt als Verwandtschaft mit den Helden der altgriechischen Lieder und
Sagen.’ On the Molossian legend cf. on Nostoi arg. 4a. For other stories of sons left by
Odysseus in north-west Greece cf. Hartmann 182−207; Merkelbach 224f.
(13) Merkelbach 146−8 argues that Odysseus had been exiled from Ithaca because of
his killing of the suitors, and that this accounted for his prolonged absence. If this had
been so in the Telegony, it would surely have been mentioned by Proclus and/or
Apollodorus. He was due to make a journey anyway because of Teiresias’ instructions.
(14) Some, however, take the attribution to the Nostoi seriously. See e.g. Hartmann 97f.
(15) Another poet made Odysseus and Circe the parents of Agrios and Latinos, the first
kings of the Etruscans ([Hes.] Th. 1011−16, where 1014 is a secondary interpolation to
bring in Telegonos). He also named two sons born to Calypso by Odysseus, one of them
the first king of the Phaeacians (1017f.). Telegonos was later (probably by Varro) made
the founder of Praeneste and Tusculum: Livy 1. 49. 8, Dion. Hal. Ant. 4. 45. 1, Festus p.
116. 8 L., Hor. C. 3. 29. 8, Ov. F. 3. 92, etc.; Roscher v. 253; Hartmann 164; Robert
(1920−6), 1444 n. 5.
(16) It is not necessary to suppose, with Hartmann 88, that the motive for inserting the
Thesprotian saga in the Telegonos story was to give him time to grow up. Odysseus could
have spent some peaceful years at home before Telegonos’ arrival.
(17) There is a certain parallel with Athena’s encouraging Telemachos to go abroad to

seek news of his father. This might have influenced Eugammon. Cf. J. N. Svoronos, Gazette
archéologique 13 (1888), 267; Hartmann 219−21.
(18) ἐπιδορατίς corresponds to epic αἰχµή (Hesych. α 2201 αἰχµή· ἐπιδορατίς, cf. sch. Il.
22. 319a), στύραξ to epic πόρκης. Cf. the gold πόρκης of Hector’s spear, Il. 6. 320=8. 495.
(19) Cf. Holzinger 344, 345 ; Hartmann 109 n. 9.
(20) Cf. Gerson Schade, Lykophrons ‘Odyssee’. Alexandra 648−819 (Berlin-New York
1999), 197.
Page 22 of 25
Telegony
(21 ) Attested indirectly by Malalas ap. Ἐκλογὴ ἱστοριῶν in An. Par. ii. 215 Cramer
(Hartmann 175).
(22) Hartmann 115−22; Petra Schierl, Die Tragödien des Pacuvius (Berlin-New York
2006), 390f.
(23) I borrow the rubric from Debiasi 261. It plays on the title of a delightful British
romantic comedy film from 1994, Four Weddings and a Funeral.
(24) Schwartz 143 n. 1. Dictys (who called him Ptoliporthos) had him inherit part of
Odysseus’ kingdom, as is attested indirectly by Malalas ap. Ἐκλογὴ ἱστοριῶν in An. Par.
ii. 216 Cramer (Hartmann 175); but there he was the son of Telemachos and Nausicaa
(Dict. 6. 6). In the fourth century (Arist. fr. 507) there were families on Ithaca claiming
descent from Odysseus’ trusty herdsmen Eumaios and Philoitios but not, so far as we
know, from Odysseus himself.
(25) As a parallel we may think of Nestor’s untraditional son Peisistratos in Od. 3. 36 etc.,
whom the homonymous Athenian tyrant could claim as his ancestor (cf. Hdt. 5. 65. 3f.)
without there being anything in the text to point forward to Athenian descendants. Cf. S.
West ad loc.
(26) They do not become actual gods; for the type of honorary immortality involved see
on Aethiopis arg. 2e.
(27) Cf. Hartmann 52f.
(28) Sch. Od. 11. 134 (Herodian ii. 150. 19 L.).
(29) Wecklein (1839−41), i. 245; Ameis-Hentze ad loc.; J. Vürtheim, Mnem. n.s. 29 (1901),
52; Hartmann 74; Schwartz 141; Schmid 217 n. 7; Heubeck ad loc.; contra Merry-
Riddell ad loc.; R. D. Dawe, The Odyssey (Lewes 1993), 437; Danek 226f.; V. Di
Benedetto, Omero. Odissea (Milano 2010), 607.
(30) Rightly Hartmann 91, ‘λ 134ff. weiß nichts von der Telegonosgeschichte oder will
nichts von ihr wissen’, cf. 218. There is no hint in the Odyssey narrative that Odysseus left
Circe pregnant.
(31 ) F. Dornseiff, Hermes 72 (1937), 354=Antike und alter Orient (Leipzig 1956), 168,
‘denn es ist für einen alten Menschen kein leidloserer Tod denkbar als plötzlich einen
Stich ins Herz zu bekommen’.
(32) From David Fleetham/Alamy.
(33) Schmidt in Roscher V. 249. 62, ‘Aischylos … hat der Überlieferung von Odysseus’
Tode eine ganz eigenartige, fast skurrile Wendung gegeben, die wie eine parodistische
Widerlegung oder Verdrehung der herkömmlichen Telegonossage aussieht’; Schwartz
143; cf. Wilamowitz, Aischylos. Interpretationen (Berlin 1914), 247 n. 0; Hartmann 51.
Page 23 of 25
Telegony
(34) A. Schleicher, Litauische Märchen, Sprichworte, Rätsel und Lieder (Weimar 1857), 3.
(35) Mah¯abh¯arata 5. 10. 32−8, trans. J. A. B. van Buitenen. The intrusion of the
thunderbolt here is illegitimate, as it has been agreed that Indra cannot use the
thunderbolt. But the narrator could not accept that the foam by itself would be effective,
so he has put the thunderbolt inside it.
(36) The Mabinogion, trans. Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones (London 1949), 70f.
(37) Journal of Indo-European Studies 32 (2004), 1−9; cf. Severyns (1928), 369f.
(38) Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning 49; cf. Jan de Vries, Altgermanische Religions-
geschichte (2nd edn, Berlin 1957), ii. 215−20.
(39) I wonder whether this phrase might originally have alluded to Odysseus’ hair loss.
λιπαρός in Homer is applied inter alia to gleaming skin, as in ποσσὶν ὕπο λιπαροῖσιν
ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα. We also find the phrase πολιὸν γῆρας, ‘grey-haired old age’, in
Pindar and Euripides, and ‘gleaming-pated old age’ would be analogous.
(40) Gruppe 715; cf. Danek 227, who, although he does not think that the heron version
can be the original one, allows that the death by sting-ray may originally have had nothing
to do with Telegonos.
(41 ) O. Crusius, Rh. Mus. 37 (1882), 311, ‘Vielmehr scheint der Dichter [Aeschylus], wie
so oft, einen alterthümlich-rohen, noch aus der vorepischen Phase der Odysseussage
stammenden Zug bewahrt zu haben.’ Crusius argues plausibly in that paper that the tale
of Aeschylus himself being killed when an eagle dropped a tortoise onto his bald head was
inspired by the Odysseus story.
(42) Cf. C. J. Ruijgh, Études sur le grammaire et le vocabulaire du grec mycénien

(Amsterdam 1967), 53; I. K. Promponâs, Ἡ µυκηναϊκή ἐπική ποίησις µέ βάση τά
µυκηναϊκά κείµενα καί τά Ὁµηρικά ἔπη (Athens 1980), 44f.; West (2011b), 46.

Page 24 of 25
Telegony
Page 25 of 25
Bibliography

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
(p.316) Bibliography
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Page 6 of 6
Index of Greek Words and Forms

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
(p.321) Index of Greek Words and Forms

--αισι 77
δέκτηϛ 196–7
∆ιὸϛ βουλή 57, 68
-εια / -ία in epic titles 288
ἐξ ὀλίγου 158
ἐπίηροϛ 172
ἠΰζωνοϛ 171
Ἰλιακόϛ 63–4, 67
ἱπποµαχία 140
κενώσειεν 64, 67
κυκλικόϛ 1 1 , 22
κύκλοϛ 1
Λέσχηϛ, -εω, -εωϛ 36, 212
λιπαρὸν γῆραϛ 314
µονοµαχεῖν 186
νιν 82
ὅσα φέρουσιν ὧραι 76
πέρσιϛ 223
Page 1 of 2
Index of Greek Words and Forms
πλάτοϛ 67
πολυπῖδαξ, -πίδακοϛ 77
ῥώοµαι 158
τε, ‘epic’ 221
-υι 82
Φορκὶϛ λίµνη 303
Page 2 of 2
Index of Passages

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
(p.322) Index of Passages

Aeschines
1. 128: 177–8
Aeschylus
Ag. 650–80: 265
— 824–6: 210
— 1554: 270
Cho. 429–44: 270
fr. 275: 309–15
dictum ap. Ath. 347e: 28
Alcaeus
SLG 262. 4–7: 237, 26020
— 262. 12: 235
— 262. 20–7: 261
fr. 354 Voigt: 156
Alcidamas
Odysseus 18: 89–90
Alcman
PMGF 68: 146
Page 1 of 11
Index of Passages
Antisthenes
Ajax 6: 202
Odysseus 3: 201 49
Apollodorus, Bibl.
3. 10. 7: 82–3
3. 11. 2: 96
epit. 3. 1–35: 66–126
— 5. 1–6: 137–60
— 5. 6–16: 177–205
— 5. 16–24: 224, 228–40
— 6. 1–12: 251–64
— 6. 16–17: 2508
— 6. 18–19: 256
— 7. 34–7: 295–306
Apollonius Rhodius
4. 790–8: 70
Archilochus
P. Oxy. 4708: 106
Aristophanes
Eccl. 1029: 202
Eq. 1056–7: 175
Vesp. 350–1: 202
Aristotle
Anal. post. 77b32: 23–4
Poet. 1456a16: 223
— 1459a37–b7: 18, 60, 164–5, 202, 204, 206
Rhet. 1417a12: 23–4
Soph. elench. 171a10: 23–4, 29
fr. 507 R.: 30524
— 508: 29510
Athenaeus
682d: 32–3
Bacchylides
13. 100–67: 45
15: 117
fr. 9: 231–2
Callimachus
Epigr. 28. 1 Pf.: 1 1
Callisthenes, FGrHist 124
F 10a: 208–9
Catullus
68. 74–6: 115
Charax, FGrHist 103
F 5: 294
Clearchus
Page 2 of 11
Index of Passages
fr. 68 Wehrli: 202

Clement
Strom. 6. 25. 1: 290–1
Conon, FGrHist 26
F 1. 34: 203, 238
Cratinus
Dionysalexandros 46
Nemesis 46, 81, 83
Cypria (fragments discussed out of sequence)
8: 83–4
15: 87
27: 123
29, 29a: 85–6
[Demosthenes]
Epitaphios (Or. 60) 29: 29
Dictys
2. 2: 107
4. 17: 19234
4. 19: 186
ap. Malalam: 303, 30524
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Ant. 1. 63. 1: 211
— 1. 69. 3: 237–8
(p.323)
Dionysius of Samos, FGrHist 15
F 3: 201 48
Epica adespota
3–6 W.: 29
3 (= Nostoi F 12a ): 284–5
6 (= Aethiopis F 3a ): 154
7 (= Cypria F 17a ): 100
11: 194
15: 193
17: 18220
Epigonoi
fr. 1 W.: 21
— 2: 275
— 4: 257 18
Epiphanius
Panarion i. 241: 19844
Euphorion
fr. 95 Lightfoot: 230
Euripides
Andr. 627–31: 219
Hec. 94–5: 242
Page 3 of 11
Index of Passages
— 240–1: 197 42
— 915–18: 208
Tro. 78–81: 261
— 446–50: 270
— 529–40: 206
— 544–54: 208
— 721–5, 1122: 240
[Euripides]
Rhes. 501–7: 202
— 504–5, 711–19: 197 42
— 506–7: 199
— 507–9: 180
Eusebius
Chron. Ol. 4. 1: 38
Eustathius
Od. 1796. 37: 38
— 1796. 48: 300, 306
Hellanicus
fr. 84 Fowler: 221
— 152: 209
— 202c: 36
Herodotus
2. 53. 2: 29
2. 113–17: 91–2
2. 117: 28
2. 121: 294
4. 32: 28
5. 67. 1: 29
7. 91: 255
Hesiod
Th. 77–9: 71
— [984]: 144
— [1011–18]: 30215
Op. 161–73: 66
[Hesiod]
fr. 204. 95–104: 66
Melampodia: 255–7
Hippolytus
Ref. 6. 19. 1: 19844
Homer
Il. 1. 1 (alternatives): 22
— 1. 106–8: 110
— 1. [265]: 172
— 2. 220–1: 141
— 2. 698–702: 114, 115
Page 4 of 11
Index of Passages
— 2. 716–25: 184
— 3. [144]: 172, 215
— 5. 59–64: 83–4
— 5. 715–16: 98
— 5. 886: 273
— 6. 289–92: 91
— 6. 438: 18322
— 8. 80–117: 146
— 16. 775–6: 152
— 18. 35–69: 154
— 18. 96: 145, 149–50
— 19. [326–37]: 184
— 22. 63–4: 216
— 24. [467]: 184
— 24. 734–5: 216
— 24. [804]: 136
Od. 1. 3: 249
— 1. 11–14: 247
— 1. 37–43: 267, 282
— 1. 93, 285: 249
— 1. 326: 244, 247, 251
— 3. 36: 30525
— 3. 130–5: 251
— 3. 135–83: 251–2
— 3. 189–92: 264
— 3. 235: 268
— 3. 249–52: 248
— 3. 258–61: 284
— 3. 262–75: 266–7
— 3. 276–302: 253
— 3. 304–7: 271
— 3. 309–10: 283–4
— 4. 5–9: 263, 286
— 4. 12–19: 285
— 4. 92: 268
— 4. 125–9, 228–9: 272 (p.324)
— 4. 242–64: 169, 196–9
— 4. 271–89: 169, 206–8
— 4. 499–511: 260–2
— 4. 512–13: 265
— 4. 514–28: 265–6
— 4. 529–37: 267–8
— 4. 561–9: 287
— 4. 615–19: 272
— 7. 80–1: 282
Page 5 of 11
Index of Passages
— 8. 75–82: 98
— 8. 492–3: 193–4
— 8. 499–520: 19, 224, 229, 234
— 9. 39: 46
— 10. 15: 244, 247
— 11. 121–31: 295
— 11. 134–7: 307–15
— 11. 225–329: 275, 277
— 11. 301–4: 97
— 11. 321–5: 276
— 11. 326: 274–5
— 11. 388–9: 280
— 11. 409–34: 267–8
— 11. 439: 26834
— 11. 452–61: 270
— 11. 519–22: 144, 191
— 11. 547: 175–6
— 11. 582–92: 273
— 11. [630–1]: 172, 276–7
— 14. 100–2: 293
— 22. 230: 194
— 23. 248–87: 295
— 24. 1–204: 278–81
— 24. 37–92: 43, 151, 153–5, 157, 174
— 24. 417–19: 292
Hymn. Hom. 10: 65
Horace
Ars poet. 136–7: 1 1 , 227
— 146: 253
— 147: 69
Carm. 4. 6. 9–12: 151, 152
Hyginus, Fabulae
92. 1–3: 73–4, 78–9
113: 19234
127. 1–2: 303–4, 306
135: 231
Ibycus
PMGF 296: 219
— 315: 93
Iliou Persis (fragments discussed out of sequence)
2 (= now Aethiopis F 5a): 159–61
5 (= now Little Iliad F 14a ): 209–11
Inscriptions
IG 14. 1284 (= Tabula Capitolina (1A)): 131–2, 165–6
— 1292 (= Tabula Borgia (10K)): 2–3
Page 6 of 11
Index of Passages
Inscr. Cret. i. 280: 1 2

Merkelbach–Stauber, Steinepigramme 01/12/02: 33
SEG 40. 612 no. 26: 46, 173
Juvenal
10. 251–5: 153
Little Iliad (fragments discussed out of sequence)
31: 185
32 : 177–8, 205
Lycophron
232–9: 111
240–2: 112
313: 122
323: 242
344: 205
387–95: 261
396–402: 262
417–20: 264
427–9: 257
538–49: 88
570–6, 581–3: 123–4
789–98: 301–3
799–800: 29510
853–5: 272
999–1001: 142
1114: 269
1275: 303
Nicander
Ther. 835–6: 307
SH 562. 11: 231
Nostoi (fragments discussed out of sequence)
9: 256
10: 268–9
12: 269–70
14: 276–7
Oppian
Hal. 2. 499: 307 (p.325)
Ovid
Her. 16. 67–8: 78
Met. 13. 439–48: 242
Pacuvius
Niptra fr. 199. 8–12
Schierl: 308
Papyri
P. Lit. Lond. 6: 137
P. Oxy. 2510: 17611
Page 7 of 11
Index of Passages
— 3829 ii: 68–9, 73–4

— 5094 fr. 1: 86
P. Rylands 22: 167, 182, 19032, 218
Pausanias
3. 26. 10: 256
9. 9. 5: 28
10. 25. 5–27. 2: 212–18
Phaenias
fr. 33 Wehrli: 34–5, 225
Pherecydes
fr. 123 Fowler: 142
— 140: 123–4
— 142: 257
Philoponus in Arist. Anal. post., CAG xiii. 3
77b32 p. 157. 11: 22–3
— p. 157. 16: 50–1
Philostratus
Heroicus 12. 3 §176: 179
Pindar
Ol. 9. 70–5: 106
Pyth. 6. 28–42: 146
Nem. 3. 62: 14526
— 6. 49–54: 147
— 7. 20–8: 28
— 10. 55–91: 94–7
Isth. 8. 27–58: 69–70
fr. 265: 28
Plautus
Bacch. 938: 20858
Plutarch
De aud. poet. 14e: 47 97
Proclus, Chrestomathy ap. Phot. Bibl.
319a30: 9, 25
319a34: 32–3
Propertius
2. 9. 9–16: 154
2. 13. 49–50: 153
3. 11. 13–16: 13911 , 141
Quintus of Smyrna
1. 18–47: 137–8
1. 782–810: 140
2. 447–8: 14526
3. 278–86: 152
3. 551–81, 687–8: 154
6. 372 ff.: 19234
Page 8 of 11
Index of Passages
10. 207–54: 186

12. 147–8: 195
12. 314–42: 203
12. 428–32: 206
12. 480–97: 231
13. 1–4: 208
13. 176–7: 217
14. 209–22: 242
14. 360–1, 365–9: 255
14. 419–65: 261 21
14. 530–8: 261
Sappho
fr. 166 Voigt: 83
Scholia ad Euripidem
Andr. 10: 1
Hec. 41: 551
Tro. 822: 35–6
Scholia ad Gregorium Nazianzenum
Laud. Basil. Magn. 12: 8
Scholia ad Homerum
Il. 1. 5: 65–6, 68–9
— 3. 242: 87
— 3. 443: 83
— 13. 66: 262
— 19. 326: 103–4
Od. 3. 270: 267 33
— 11. 134: 302–3, 307
Scholia ad Pindarum
Ol. 13. 31a: 38
Scholia ad Sophoclem
El. 157: 111
Seneca
Ag. 528–56: 261
Simias
fr. [6] Powell: 220
— 25 (Pelekys): 29–30
Simonides
PMG 546: 28
eleg. 11. 1–3 W.2: 151
Solon
fr. 13. 14 W.: 158
Sophocles
Aj. 1047 ff.: 17914
El. 157: 110
Phil. 604–9: 179
Page 9 of 11
Index of Passages
— 610–13: 181
fr. 10c. 8–9: 236 (p.326)
— 11: 217
— 180: 255, 257 17
— 367: 200
— 460: 303
— 522: 251
— 523: 242
Stephanus Byzantius
s.v. Βάρκη: 289
— Βούνιµα: 20510
— Ζάκυνθοϛ: 289
— Σαµυλία: 93
— Σύρνα: 256
Stesichorus
PMGF 187: 93
— 192: 92–3
— 218: 270
— S86: 127
— S88 ii: 228
Strabo
14. 1. 27: 255–7
Suda
α 3960 Ἀρκτῖνοϛ: 34
π 2473 Πρόκλοϛ: 8
Synesius
Epist. 148: 296–7
Telegony (fragment discussed out of sequence)
1 : 300
Theocritus
22. 207–11: 9634
Thucydides
1. 11. 1: 116, 11851
Triphiodorus
1–42: 167, 174
122 ff.: 203
153–83: 203
178–9: 207 55
220, 294: 205
235–7: 205
308–9, 342, 350–7: 206
510–21: 19945, 20858
Virgil
Aen. 1. 42–3: 261
— 1. 489, 751: 144
Page 10 of 11
Index of Passages
— 1. 490: 138
— 2. 17: 205
— 2. 18: 203
— 2. 40–56: 229
— 2. 57–198: 206
— 2. 166: 200
— 2. 199–227: 230–1
— 2. 238–9: 206
— 2. 246–7: 205
— 2. 261–4: 192, 203, 233
— 2. 341–6, 424: 217
— 6. 515–19: 198
— 8. 383–4: 144
Xenophon
Cyn. 1. 15: 234
Symp. 3. 5: 46
Page 11 of 11
General Index

M. L. West

Print ISBN-13: 9780199662258
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662258.001.0001
(p.327) General Index

Achilles
apparitions of his ghost 189–90, 242, 258
arms given to Neoptolemos 188–9
battle over his body 151–3
cult 156
death 132–3, 149–51
dispute over his arms 159, 166–7, 173–6
education by Cheiron 41, 104
funeral 155–6
— games 133, 134, 156–9
kills Memnon 147
— Penthesileia 139–40
— Troilos and Lykaon 121–2
meeting with Helen 61, 118–19
mourned 153–4, 174
on Skyros 41, 104, 107, 184
Polyxena sacrificed for him 241–3
quarrels with Agamemnon 98, 113
Page 1 of 16
General Index
raids in Troad 59, 106, 118, 120–2

romantic figure 61
spear 188–9
translation to Leuke 35, 44, 135, 156, 258
vulnerable ankle 150–1
Admetos 214, 217
Aegisthus 266–70, 282–4
Aeneas
accompanies Paris to Sparta 84, 91
cattle raided by Achilles 120
Dardanian 12658
his wife 127, 216
in battle for Achilles’ body 152
in Europe 172, 220–1, 226, 232–3
leaves Troy before sack 232; during sack 234
postwar Dardanian dynasty 220, 226, 232, 238
taken captive 172, 219–21
Aeschylus 28, 45, 129
Psychostasia 147–8
Aethiopis 18–19, 22, 129–62
authorship 34–5
continuation of Iliad 136–7
dating 135–6
reception 41–2, 44–5, 129–32
Agamedes 294
Agamemnon
location of kingdom 266
murder 45, 244–5, 247–8, 250, 267–70
voyage from Troy 246, 258–9, 264–6
Agenor 214, 218
Agias of Troizen 26, 38, 276
Aigai 26020
Aison 274–5
Aithra 87, 172, 215, 226, 235, 241
Ajax, Locrian
assault on Cassandra 222, 235–7
drowning 239, 245, 260–2
Ileus / Oïleus 237
Ajax, Telamonian
funeral 162, 177–9
in battle for Achilles’ body 131–2, 152
in dispute over Achilles’ arms 175–6
in games for Achilles 157
invulnerable skin 162
madness and suicide 132–3, 159–62, 166–7, 173–4, 175–7
Page 2 of 16
General Index
Akamas, see Theseus, his sons

Alaksandus 9332, 116
Alcidamas 47
Alcman 146
Alcmeonis 2
Amazonia 129
Amazonis 133, 135–6, 143
Amazons 138, 140, 141 see also Antiope, Hippolyte, Penthesileia
Ammon 289
Amphilochos 255–6
Andromache 121, 216, 219–20, 226, 240, 263
Anios and his daughters 123–5
Antenor, Antenorids 59, 117, 217, 222, 231, 234
Antiklos 206–7
Antilochos 132, 135, 145–7, 153, 155–6
Antiope (Amazon) 276–7
Antisthenes 47 (p.328)
Apharetidai 87–8, 94–6
Aphrodite 75–9, 119
Apollo
god of purification 143
god of Tenedos 111–12
helps kill Achilles 150
in Thesprotia 298–9
oracles 98, 109
Apollodorus, Bibliotheke 11–14, 48–9, 52–3
apple of discord 73–4
Ares 298
Arethas 7
Aristarchus 47–8, 84, 10537, 196–7, 199, 207, 21666, 273, 307
Aristophanes 46
Aristotle
kyklos syllogism 23–4, 29
on Cypria and Little Iliad 18, 60, 163–5
Arkesilaos, son of Odysseus 38–9, 289, 305
Arkesilas II of Cyrene 38–9, 289
Arktinos 26–7, 34–5
army flees when leader killed 116, 149
Asios 49
Asklepios 256
Aspendos 256
Astyanax 216, 221, 226, 239–40
Astyoche 191
Athena 175–6, 193–4, 235–7, 243, 251, 260–1, 282, 298, 304–5
Athenaeus 50
Page 3 of 16
General Index
Attic correption 64, 221

Auge(i)as 214, 294
Aulis, Achaean gathering(s) at 58, 104–5, 107, 109–10
separate poem 59, 105
Bacchylides 45, 231
Baldr 312
Battiads of Cyrene 38–9, 292
boasts, impious 262
breasts, baring of women’s 219, 283
Briseis 57–8, 59, 120–2, 154
Brygoi 298
Brygos Painter 177, 216
Calchas
death, tomb 245–6, 254–8, 272
on way to Troy 105, 109
sooth said at Troy 179, 182, 242
warning before departure from Troy 236
Capture of Oichalia 31, 99
Cassandra
assaulted by Ajax 222, 226, 235–8
awarded to Agamemnon 240
killed with Agamemnon 267–70
warns against Paris’ voyage 84–5
— against Wooden Horse 166, 205, 229
Catalogue of Ships 59
catalogue of Trojan allies 126
Certamen 30
Chairemon 142
Chryseis 59, 120–2
Chrysippus 47
Cilicia 255–6
Cinyras 91, 103, 272
Circe 300–6
Claros 254
Clearchus 47
Clement 49–50
Clytaemestra 266–70, 283–4
Colluthus 50
Colophon 38, 245, 254–6
Cratinus 46, 79, 81
‘cycles’, poetic 1, 17
‘cyclic’ approach to epic composition 17–20, 57, 63, 167, 225
‘cyclic’ edition of Odyssey 22
Cypria 19–21, 55–128
authorship 32–4
Page 4 of 16
General Index
dating 63–5
given as dowry 28, 31, 33
miraculous elements 61–2
reception 42–50
relation to Iliad 57–8, 125–6
speeches 62
title 6, 32–3, 55
treatment of chronology 62–3
use of gods 60–1
variant version known to Herodotus 91–2
Cyprus
claim to Homer 3374
rhapsodic activity 55
visited by Menelaos and Helen 272
— by Paris and Helen 91–2
Cyrene 38–9, 50, 289, 296
Danaides, Danais 3–4
Deiphobos 169, 187, 207, 219, 234–5 (p.329)
Dektes 196–7, 207
Delos 123–4, 262
Demophon, see Theseus, his sons
Dictys 186, 303
Didymus on lyric poetry 9–10
Diodoros of Erythrae 36–7
Diomedes
‘Diomedean compulsion’ 202–3
exploits with Odysseus 123, 201
fetches Philoctetes 182
in battle for Achilles’ body 152
kinsman of Thersites 142
return from Troy 252–3
theft of Palladion 200–3
wife’s infidelity, migration to Italy 252–3
Dionysius of Halicarnassus 48
Dionysius of Samos (ὁ κυκλογράφοϛ) 1
Dioskouroi
birth 79–80
dispute with Apharetidai 61, 87–8, 94–7
immortal on alternate days 97
in Iliad 58
Paris’ stay with 86–7
recovered Helen from Theseus 87–8
Doloneia 199, 201
duels 186
Echion 233
Page 5 of 16
General Index
Eetion 121, 128

Egypt, Paris and Helen in? 92
Electra, daughter of Agamemnon 110–11, 282, 286
Electra, Pleiad 209–10
Elis 293
embassy to demand restitution of Helen 42, 58–9, 116–17
Eos 144, 148
Epeios 193–5
Epic Cycle, defined 1–4
ambit 12–13
ascriptions 26–40
formation 16–26
overlaps between poems 15
prose epitomes 24–6, 47–51
reception in antiquity 40–51
relationship to Iliad and Odyssey 17
use in education 46
Epicharmus 46
Epigonoi 2, 21, 26, 29, 30, 46
Epirus 29510
Epopeus 98–9
Eriphyle 191, 275
Eris 74
Euboea 260
Eugammon 26, 38–9, 289
Eumelos 32, 38, 64–5
Euripides
Philoctetes 18219
Skyrioi 104, 184
Telephos 108–9
Eurypylos, son of Euhaimon 218
Eurypylos, son of Telephos 144, 165–7, 190–3
Eusebius, Chronicle 26, 38–9
Eutychius Proculus 11
Exekias 130, 139–40
eyes betray mental state 160–1
‘fanning’ metaphor 60, 67
fishing 123
folktale elements 290, 294, 29611
François Vase 54, 71, 134–5
Ganymede 149, 191
Getai 285
Glaukos (Antenorid) 234
Glaukos (Lycian) 152
goddess’s adornment 75–6
Page 6 of 16
General Index
Gorgias 46–7
Gorgons 127
Halicarnassian literary claims 33
Hector 112, 114, 121
Hegesias, Hegesinos 32–3
Hegias of Troizen 38, 276
Hekabe
dream of firebrand birth 86
father’s identity 86
taken captive by Odysseus 240
Helen
bares breast 219
birth 61, 62–3, 68–9, 79–83
capture by Theseus 87, 172
marriage to Deiphobos 169, 187, 207, 224
meeting with Achilles 61, 118–19
— with Odysseus 196–9, 201–2
raises torch-signal 198–9, 208
romantic figure 61
seduction by Paris 89–90
teases men in Horse 206–8 (p.330)
Helenos 84–5, 167, 169, 179–83, 201, 221, 263
Helikaon 217
Hellanicus 36, 209
helmet, Corinthian type 141
Hera 70, 72, 85, 91, 265
Heracles
bow 113, 181–4
epics 17
madness 99
siege of Themiscyra 276
Hermes 147, 267, 280–1
Hermione, daughter of Menelaos 90, 263, 285–6
hero has aristeia before being killed 139, 145, 192
Herodian 49
Herodotus 28–9
[Herodotus], Life of Homer 30, 37
heroines 99, 274–7
[Hesiod], Catalogue of Women 65, 277
Hippolyte 137–8
Homer, Cyclic poems ascribed to 27–31
‘Homeric cups’ 13–15, 26, 132, 137, 165, 245, 268–9
Homeridai 31, 39–40
horse-riding 139–40
Horse, Wooden
Page 7 of 16
General Index
building 193–5
capacity, crew 203–4
collusion of Helen 197–9
description 227–8
in art 41, 43, 165
integral to story of sack 19, 224
reception by Trojans 205–8, 228–30
Ibycus 44
Idas 94–6
Idomeneus 249, 264
Iliou Persis 19, 212–13, 223–43
authorship 34–5
book division 224
dating 225–7
reception 43–5, 48–50
title 223
immortality offered or conferred 97, 148–9, 155–6, 305–6
Indra and Vŗtra 311
inhumation 178–9
interlacing technique 258, 271
invulnerable heroes 116
one vulnerable spot 150–1, 162
Ion of Chios 28
Iphigeneia 110–11
Isles of the Blest 306
Ithacan genealogies 30524
Judgment of Paris 58, 60–1, 75–9
as Einzellied 59
in art 42–3, 78–9
Kadmos Painter 42–3, 56
Kallidike 297–8
Kinaithon 26, 32, 36–7, 38, 49
kingship acquired by marrying queen 298
Kleitias, vase painter 54, 71, 134–5
Klymene 274
Koroibos 217–18
Kreophylus of Samos 31
Kukkunnis 116
Kyknos 115–16
Kyprias, fictitious poet 6, 32–3
Laodike 241
Laodokos 152
Laokoon 205–6, 225, 229–32
Lapiths 256
laughter, manic 177
Page 8 of 16
General Index
Leonteus 254–6
Lesbos 36, 106, 143
Lesches 26–7, 34–7, 208
Pausanias’ ‘Lescheos’ 212–13
Leukippides 87, 94
Little Iliad 19, 163–222
authorship 35–7
book division 168–9
comparison with Iliou Persis 225–7
dating 171–2
dialect anomaly 209
lightness and humour 170–1
reception 43, 45–50
relation to Odyssey 169, 196–7
title 163
Lleu Llaw Gyffes 311
Locrian maidens 23617
Lycophron 47
Lykaon 59, 122
Lykomedes 214
Lynkeus 94–6
Lyrnessos 57, 59, 120
Machaon 139, 159–60, 185, 192
Magnes of Smyrna 140 (p.331)
Maira 274
maltreatment of corpses 187
Megapenthes 285
Meges 214
Melanippos 148
Melesigenes 31
Memnon 133–5, 143–50
created for Memnonis / Aethiopis 41–2
glamorous figure 144, 191
his armour 144
in art 130–2, 136
immortality 148–9
Memnonis 133, 135–6
Menekles 1
Menelaos
goddesses’ promise to 98
homecoming 284–7
translation to Elysium 287
travels after Troy 246, 248–9, 251–4, 272, 279–82
Menestheus 241
Mestor, son of Ajax 269
Page 9 of 16
General Index
Mestor, son of Priam 120

Molossians 221, 263–4, 278
Momos 66
Mopsos 255–7
Motylos 93
Musaeus 291
Muses
at Peleus’ wedding 71
mourn Achilles 154
Myconos 262
Mykene (heroine) 275
Naevius, poet of Cypria Ilias 48, 56, 60, 77, 90
Naupaktia 3–4
Nauplios 259–60, 283
his sons 283
Nemesis 61, 80–3
Neoptolemos
alias Pyrrhos 108
birth 107, 184
fetched to Troy 166–7, 182–5, 188–90
in Odyssey 169
in Pindar 45
kills Agenor 218
kills Astyanax 216
kills Eurypylos 165, 183, 190–3
marriage to Hermione 286
return from Troy 245, 246, 259, 262–4, 271–2, 278
sacrifices Polyxena 242
takes Aeneas and Andromache 219–21, 240
Nereids mourn Achilles 153–4
Nestor
his drinking-cup 101
recital of stories 57, 98–100
return from Troy 252–3
saved by Antilochos 146
nine-day hospitality 89
Nireus 192
Nostoi 20, 244–87
authorship 38
book division 247, 278
dating 250
Hades scene 52, 247, 250, 272–82
reception 43–5, 48–50
relationship to Odyssey 246–9
title 244
Page 10 of 16
General Index
use of gods 249–50

oath of Helen’s suitors 101
Odysseus
awarded Achilles’ arms 159, 161, 175–6
capture of Helenos 179–81
death 300–3, 307–15
enters Troy in disguise 195–9
exploits with Diomedes 123, 201
funeral on Circe’s island 304–5
hero of Little Iliad 170
homecoming 287 56
in fight for Achilles’ body 131, 152, 175–6
kills Astyanax 226, 240
last years 293–9
oracle among Eurytanes 29510
original nature 315
purifies Achilles in Lesbos 142–3
return from Troy 252, 263
simulated madness 102–3
theft of Palladion 165, 199–203
wanderings 248–9, 272
Wooden Horse 194
Odyssey
interpolated after Little Iliad? 197, 207
— from alternative version 266
Nekyiai 273–80 (p.332)
reflects Memnonis 133, 136, 146, 151, 153–4
— Nostoi 247–9, 251–3, 258, 260–1, 263, 265–9, 274, 277–86
relation to Little Iliad 169, 196–7, 206–7
Oedipus 99
Oidipodeia 2, 3, 26
Oinotropoi 61–2, 123–5
Olbia sherds 46, 173
Olympia tripod leg 42, 56, 63, 117, 121
omen at Aulis 105, 110
Orestes
exile 270–1
marriage to Hermione 286
return and vengeance 244, 248, 250, 282–4
— in Pindar and Aeschylus 45
Otrere 137
overpopulated earth myth 66
Palamedes 102, 123–5
Palladion
dummy replica 226, 237–8
Page 11 of 16
General Index
Roman legend 237–8

stolen by Odysseus and Diomedes 165–7, 182, 199–203
Pamphylia 255–6
Paris
abduction of Helen 89–94
funeral 187
killed by Philoctetes 165, 186–7
kills Achilles 149–50
see also Judgment of Paris
Patroklos 106–7, 155, 18325
Pausanias 49, 56, 212–13, 276
Pedasos 57, 59, 120
Peisistratos, son of Nestor 30525
Peleus
found by Neoptolemos 264
wedding to Thetis 54, 58, 69–73
wedding gifts 72–3
wrestled with Thetis 41, 71–2
Pelops, bones of 182, 201 48
Peneleos 192
Penelope 299, 304–6
tomb in Arcadia 299
Penthesileia 42, 130–41
as horse-rider 139–40
funeral 140, 141
Peripatetic literary history 23, 27
Phaenias of Eresus 27, 34–5, 225
Phayllos 23–5
Phereklos 58, 83–4
Philoctetes
abandoned on Lemnos 58, 112–13
fetched back 45–6, 166–7, 181–5
fights at Troy 169, 214
kills Paris 165, 183, 186–7
return from Troy 264
Philodemus 48
Phoenix 108, 259, 263–4
Phokais 37
Phokos 148
Phorbas 157
Photius, Bibliotheke 4–5
Pindar 28, 44–5, 147
Pisander of Laranda 50–1
Pleiades 209–11
plural verb after ‘N with attendants’ 77
Page 12 of 16
General Index
[Plutarch], De Homero 10
De musica 10
Podaleirios 159–60, 18528, 254–6
Podarkes 131, 139–40
poetic contests 257
Polygnotos 104, 140, 149, 212, 236–7, 273–4
Polypoites, Lapith 254–6
Polypoites, son of Odysseus 297–8
Polyxena 61, 122, 190, 222, 241–3
Polyxenos 293–4
Porphyry 50
Poseidon 295
Priam
receives Memnon 144
— Penthesileia 132, 137–8
sends for Eurypylos 191
slain 213, 218, 226
Proclus
Chrestomathy 1–2, 4–16, 26, 51–2
Life of Homer 4, 8, 30
takes things out of sequence 88, 258
Prodicus 46
prophecies 84–5
Protesilaos 58, 114–15
Proteus 284
protocol establishing Epic Cycle 22–6
P(t)oliporthes 299, 305
purification
of Achilles 133, 142–3
of Penthesileia 137–8
Pylades 283, 286 (p.333)
quarrel motif 57, 252
of Best of the Achaeans 98
Quintus of Smyrna 50, 129, 134, 157, 186, 195
reclining at dinner 26936
Return of the Atreidai 244–5, 247, 274
Rhampsinitus 294
rhapsodes 37, 39–40
riddles, riddle contests 257, 310–13
Sarpedon (island) 127
Scepsis 232
seers’ contest 256–7
Sicyon 64, 99
Sidon, Paris’ visit 58, 91, 9230
Simias of Rhodes 29–30, 220
Page 13 of 16
General Index
similes 151, 185, 206, 284–5

Simon Magus 198
Simonides 28
Sinon 166, 199, 204–6, 208, 211 60, 212, 225–6, 233
Siphnian Teasury 147
Sophilos, vase painter 54, 71, 134–5
sophists 46–7
Sophocles 45
Antigone 17914
Lakainai 202
Laokoon 230–3
Odysseus Akanthoplex 292, 303–4, 308
Polyxena 242
Stasinos 26, 31, 32–4, 59
Stesichorus 43–4, 92–3
sting-ray spear 300–3, 307–9, 314
Strabo 48
Synesius 296–7
Tabulae Iliacae 3, 13–14, 48, 130–2
T. Borgia 2–3, 2559
T. Capitolina 49, 1436, 15, 26, 48, 130–2, 142, 165–6, 205
T. Froehner 132
T. Thierry 132, 166
T. Veronensis II 13–14, 132, 218
Talthybios 117, 271
Tantalos 245, 273
Tecmessa 177
Telegonos 42, 290, 292, 300–6
founder of Praeneste and Tusculum 30215
Telegony 20, 31, 39, 42, 288–307, 314
authorship 38–9
book division 290, 302
reception 45, 49–50, 292
relation to Odyssey 292–3
title 288
Telemachos 102, 299, 303–6
Telephos 46, 106, 108–9
Tenedos 111–13, 204, 208, 230, 252–3, 259
Tennes 111–12
Tenos 260, 262
Teukros 157
Teuthrania 58, 106
Theano 117
Thebaid 1 1 , 2, 3, 28, 29, 30
Theban epics 2, 21
Page 14 of 16
General Index
Theban War 66
Themis 42–3, 68, 69–70
‘there was a time when’ 67
Thersandros 106–7
Thersites 131, 133–4, 140–2
Theseus 64, 87, 100, 137, 172, 276–7
his sons 172, 215, 235, 241, 250
Theseus Painter 130
Thesprotia 290, 295, 297–9
Thesprotis 288, 290–1, 299
Thestorides 31, 36–7
Thetis
advises Neoptolemos 259
arranges contest for Achilles’ arms 175
— Achilles’ meeting with Helen 119
buries Locrian Ajax 262
marriage to Peleus, see Peleus
mourns Achilles 153–4
pleaded for Achilles’ life? 148
pursued by Zeus 69–70
warnings to Achilles 112, 122, 145
Thoas 196
Thucydides 116, 11851
Thymbra 121, 180, 230, 242
Titanomachy 2, 30–1
Tithonos 144, 149
Triphiodorus 50
Troilos 42, 121–2, 243
Troizen 277
Trojan War
as plan of Zeus 66
in art 41–3
Trophonios 294
Troy, sack of 208–19, 233–41
calendar date 208–11 (p.334)
vase paintings, use of 41–3, 53–4
Venetus A (Iliad manuscript) 4, 239
Virgil 48, 206, 230–1
weighing of destinies 147–8
White Island 156
Wilamowitz
attitude to Pausanias 49
on ascriptions of epics 27
woodcutting scenes 84, 195
wound of corpse closes up 154–5
Page 15 of 16
General Index
wrestling with supernatural figure 72

Xenophon 46
Zakynthos 289
Zenodotus’ Odyssey text 249, 271
Zeus
as king of the gods 81
his plans 66, 125–6
Zeus Ammon 289
Zieliński’s Law 62
Page 16 of 16

West-Commentary Epic Cycle

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University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online

The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics

Print publication date: 2013

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

First published 2013

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University Press Scholarship Online

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The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics

Print publication date: 2013

It has become increasingly common in works of classical scholarship to provide

be done conveniently, especially in the Prolegomena, but it is not practicable in a work

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The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics

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A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, Hellenistic Epigrams

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The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics

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Abstract and Keywords

1. What was the Epic Cycle?

(p.2) διαπορεύεται δὲ τά τε ἄλλως περὶ θεῶν τοῖς ῞Ελλησι µυθολογούµενα καὶ

τῆς Εὐµήλου Τιτανο]µαχίας, οὐχ ἣν Τέλεσις ὁ Μηθυµναῖος ὑ-

]ἔπεσιν· καὶ ∆αναΐδας ˎ Ϝϕˎ ἐπῶν, καὶ τὸν

Λακεδαιµονίου πεποιηµένην προαναγνόν]τες ἐπῶν οὖσαν ˎ Ϝχˎ ὑποθήσοµεν

καὶ τὴν ]……ˎ Μ∆δυˎ· ταύτηι δὲ

ὑποθήσοµεν καὶ συµπληρώσοµεν οὕτω] τὸν κ̣ ύκλον̣.

2. Proclus’ Chrestomatheias Eklogai and Apollodorus’ Bibliotheke

Opposition of poetry and prose. Their virtues.

Judging poetry. ἦθος, πάθος.

Its invention and original use; why called ἔπος.

The best practitioners: Homer, Hesiod, Peisandros, Panyassis, Antimachus.

Their lives and achievements.

Definition, original use; why called ἐλεγεία.

Origins, original use.

The best practitioners: Archilochus, Semonides, Hipponax. Their dates.

The varieties of melic poetry:

for gods (hymn, prosodion, paean, dithyramb, nome, Adonidia,Iobacchos,

for men and gods (parthenia, daphnephorika, tripodephorika, oschophorika,

(p.6) occasional poems (pragmatika, emporika, apostolika, gnomologika, georgika,

Who was Proclus?

This is all rather reminiscent of the pseudo-Plutarchean dialogue De musica, a work of

Οὐρανὸς πρῶτος τοῦ παντὸς ἐδυνάστευε κόσµου· γήµας δὲ Γῆν ἐτέκνωσε

Tabula Veronensis Procl./Apollod.

Πενθεσίληα Ἀµαζὼν Ἀµαζὼν Πενθεσίλεια παραγίνεται Τρωσὶ