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ARTICLE TITLE: The Epic Cycle and the uniqueness of Homer

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The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer
Author(s): Jasper Griffin
Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies , 1977, Vol. 97 (1977), pp. 39-53
Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies

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 THE EPIC CYCLE AND THE UNIQUENESS OF HOMER
Dass die Griechen selbst die anderen homerischen Epen friih verkommen lassen konnten, kann ich ihnen
auch heute nicht vergeben-Wilamowitz.1

Es ist kein qualitativer Unterschied zwischen 'O~rptKOu und KvKAK ov-Wilamowitz.2

THE Homeric poems are the subject of such a flood of print that a definite justification
is needed by one who adds to it. Especially perhaps is this so if the Epic Cycle is to be
involved; 'enough and too much has been written about the Epic Cycle', said T. W. Allen
in I908.3 My argument will be that the Cycle has still not been fully exploited as a source
to show, by comparison and contrast, the particular character and style of the two great
epics, particularly the Iliad. With the domination of Homeric scholarship in English by
formulaic studies on the one hand and archaeology on the other, the poems themselves
have perhaps been less discussed than might have been expected, and the uniqueness of the
Homeric style and picture of the world has not been fully brought out. Most treatments
of the Cycle4 have been concerned to assert or to deny that it contained poems or incidents
earlier than the surviving epics,5 a question which will not be raised here. Most recent
writers on Homer have more or less ignored the Cycle; even Hermann Frankel, the first
part of whose book Dichtung und Philosophie des friiken Griechentums (2nd edition 1962; now
available in English, Poetry and Philosophy in Early Greece [I975]), is perhaps the most
illuminating single work to have appeared on Homer in this century,6 does not discuss it,
although it could have been made to support many of his arguments. No inferences are
based on it, for example, in Wace and Stubbings, Companion to Homer, nor by Sir Maurice
Bowra in his posthumous Homer. 'My remarks are restricted to the two epics', says J. B.
Hainsworth in his short account;7 and G. S. Kirk, who does refer to the style of the frag-
ments, does so summarily and without quotation.8 Yet after all the Cycle was a large
body of early Greek heroic poetry, composed at a time not too far removed from that of the
great epics,9 and at least passing as being in the same manner. We have some I20 lines
quoted in the original, and a good deal of information about the content of the poems.
If it proves possible to draw from this material any clear contrast with the Iliad, it may be
felt that this will bring out the individuality of the latter even more strikingly than does the
epic poetry, currently more often invoked, of the ancient Hittites or the modern Yugoslavs.9a
It is at once evident that the Cycle contained a number of things to which the Iliad, and
to a lesser extent the Odyssey also, was inhospitable. Some of these are assembled by

I am greatly indebted for advice to Professor friinkelschen Buches wilrde wohl iiberhaupt manche
Hugh Lloyd-Jones. Seite gelehrter Literatur ungeschrieben lassen'.
1 Erinnerungen (1928) 58. Dihle, Homer-Probleme 15 n. 13.
2 Homerische Untersuchungen (1879) 375. 7 J. B. Hainsworth, Homer = New Surveys iii (1969)
3 CQ ii (1908) 64- 3.
4 Here cited from vol. v of the Oxford Classical 8 See below, p. 51.
Text of Homer, ed. T. W. Allen, sometimes needing 9 It is not really possible to date these lost poems.
to be supplemented by E. Bethe, Homer2 ii 2, aIf,fuller as we are told (Paus. ix 9.5), Callinus ascribed the
collection and discussion of the fragments. Thebais to Homer, that implies a very early date for
5 The attempts by Pestalozzi, Schadewaldt, that poem; A. Severyns, Le Cycle dpique dans l'dcole
Kullmann and others to show that various passages in d'Aristarque 313, puts the Aethiopis as early as the
the Iliad are derivative from episodes in the Cyclic eighth century. But forms like 'ILtaKOio and aidol
poems for which we have evidence, seem to me not to in the Cypria point to a considerably later date;
have produced a single satisfactory example; see the Wilamowitz, Hom. Untersuchungen 367,J. Wackernagel,
sceptical discussion by A. Dihle, Homer-Probleme Sprachliche Untersuchungen zu Homer 182. Probably
(1970) ch. i. That is not of course to say that other, A. Lesky is right (Geschichte der gr. Lit.3 [I971] 104)
earlier, poems on such themes did not influence the to put the composition of the Cyclic epics in general
Iliad and Odyssey. in the late seventh century.
6 'Eine jeweils rechtzeitige Konsultation des 9a Interesting material and reservations on this:

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 40 JASPER GRIFFIN
D. B. Monro in JHS v (1884) I ff.,10 and
The fantastic, the miraculous, and the roma
to which the Iliad confines them." Under
fabulous eye-sight of Lynceus (Cypriafr. xi)
glance and descry Castor and Polydeuces h
(Cypria) and the black Memnon (Aethiopis
of Anius, Oeno Spermo and Elais (Wine-g
will the commodities of which they were ep
nine years (Cypriafr. xx); the transformatio
through a chain of metamorphoses, he purs
seems, in the form of a bird12 (Cypriafr. v
things possessing magical powers, so that
removed (Iliou Persis fr. i), or Philoctetes
(Ilias Parva); while the wound of Telephus
it (Cypria). We observe by contrast that i
Troy, not even in connection with Rhesus a
of Odysseus into Troy reported at Od. iv
purely 'natural' motive of killing and plund
The Iliad is notably more cautious with
Homer puts many things into the mouths o
to vouch for their truth, most notably in t
Glaucus' reminiscences of Bellerophon
Ethiops are in Homer kept to transient and d
central characters in which were Memno
has been shown15 that behind the Iliad an
Achilles was impenetrable (the original re
Iliad xvi by Apollo before he can be killed
place the wearer of the armour in a position
poem with death. The Iliad prefers to say
for mortal men to break the works of go
an absurdity, and the uniqueness of the arm
un-Homeric; but it seems that Ajax was
ascribed invulnerability also to Achilles,16a
catch deer (Pindar Nem. iii 51), while his lea
that it produced a fountain (Antimachus
formulaic expression ord'ar &dK&S 'AXtAA
miraculous speed allows him to catch him
superhuman vision of Lynceus, is not allowe
the story that in childhood Achilles was fed

F. Dirlmeier, Das serbokroatische

14 Amazons: II.Heldenlied und
iii 189 (a reminiscence Home
of Priam),
S. B. Heidelerg 1971.1 vi 196 (family history of Glaucus). Ethiops: IR. i
10 It is a pity that Monro rather
423, xxxiii 2o6 (gods played
go off to seedown
them): Od.this
iv
aspect of the matter in his
84 (a Appendix
reminiscence on 'Homer an
of Menelaus).
the Cyclic Poets' in his edition of the
15 P. J. Kakridis, Achilles'Odyssey, ii(1961)
Riistung, Hermes 89 ( 190
340-84; PP. 352 f., contain 288-97. a little on it.
11 V. Magnien, La discretion 1e See A. Severyns, homerique,
Le cycle dpique 328. RJG 37
(1924) 141-63. E.g. 'I1 a 16a Discussed judiciously
6vitd de decrire by E. Drerup, Das les etres
trop diff6rents de ... cette Homerproblem humanit6
in der Gegenwart (1921) 231iddale
n. 3, who qu'est
divinit6', p. 142. thinks the motif pre-Homeric.
12 A goose, not a swan, 16b On according
II. xx 226 ff. see below, p. 41.to W. Luppe,
Philologus 118 (I974) 193 17 D. S. Robertson, 'The food of Achilles', CR 54
If.
13 Fr. 163R = ET in II. xix io8: see also ET in (1940) 177-80. The transformation by Homer of
II. xx 234. Another application of the distinction:the wholly superhuman heroes of older belief is
what the poet himself says must be self-consistent,eloquently described by P. Von der Miihll, Der grosse
but what his characters are made to say needAias not: (1930) 40 ff. As he puts it, "Heroen sind die
Eustath. 640. 50; Porphyry, Quaest. ad Hornm. I. Helden
ed. Homers in einem neuen, menschlicheren
Schrader p.99. 22 ff. Sinn'.

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 THE EPIC CYCLE AND THE UNIQUENESS OF HOMER 41
features are not tolerated in Homer, where real humanity is insisted upon for all ch
and as far as possible the tutorship of Achilles by Chiron the centaur is suppressed
of the man Phoenix. It is of interest here that in the Argonaut story, which as
from Od. xii 69-72 was very early the subject of epic ('Apywo irtact kLdAovua, with
Jason's helping deity), such special endowments were characteristic: Lynceus' ey
the two Boreads who could fly, Orpheus with supernatural music, etc.: the ship, too
talk."s This confirms that it was the Iliad which was exceptional in this respect.
The episode of Anius' daughters combines the fantastic with a pedantic desire
out problems implicit in the Iliad. It answers the question how the Achaeans so
problem of supplies in a ten-year siege, as fragments xviii and xix of the Cypri
to explain how Chryseis was captured by the Achaeans when her city of Chryse
(she was on a visit to Thebe at the time). Revealingly, Thucydides tried to an
same question. His solution is rational (i i i): difficulty of supplies made the A
take a small force to Troy, and even of that force part was always away foraging fo
and so the war lasted ten years. The solution of the Cypria is magical, in a way
Homer, for whom of course the problem of commissariat is not interesting, except
good wine which Jason's son sent them from Lesbos, vii 467.
The transformations of Nemesis no doubt derive from the better-known stor
transformations of Thetis,19 to whom as a sea-nymph this mutability was more app
(cf. Proteus in Menelaus' story in Odyssey IV). The question of Thetis' relations
Peleus was an ancient difficulty,20 for although the Iliad ignores the story tha
wrestled with her, held her fast through her metamorphoses, and so won her, but
soon as she could she escaped back into the sea, yet she says (xviii 434) that she was
to marry a man, and when Achilles calls her, it is from the sea that she comes; whi
apparently lives alone. The natural inference is that the poet of the Iliad is fami
the story but has suppressed it21--preferring unexplained mystery to the monstrou
metamorphosis and the ascription to Thetis of an un-human Nixie character. It i
the more striking that in the Cypria the motif was fully developed in connection w
amour of Zeus. This allows another contrast with the Iliad: when Zeus tells Hera of the
ladies who have aroused his passion, xiv 315 ff., there is no suggestion that he cam
Europa as a bull, or to Danae in a shower of gold. Periclymenus, Nestor's brother, w
shape-changer (Hesiodfr. 33MW), but here is no hint of that when the Odyssey names h
xi 286, nor when Nestor tells how his brothers were slain by Heracles, II. xi 692.
cyclic Titanomachia,fr. viii, told the story of Cronos possessing Philyra in stallion-form a
begetting Chiron the centaur, but when the Iliad speaks of the fabulous horse Arion we
only that he EdK OEdOV yEVOS 7v, xxiii 347, not that he was begotten by Poseidon in the
of a stallion. The passage in Book xx which tells of Boreas impregnating the mare
Erichthonius Trr7wp 'dELtYEvoS is in all probability a late Attic interpolation, and in any
is much less striking of a wind than of a great god.22
That this love of the fantastic was not restricted to the Trojan epics only is clear from
fact that Epigonoifr. ii dealt with the uncatchable Teumesian fox. When pursued by
hound of Cephalus, which nothing could escape, it produced a logical puzzle resolved
when Zeus turned both animals to stone. Uncatchable foxes and inescapable hounds a
course as alien to Homer as impenetrable armour or invulnerable flesh.

18 Rhys Carpenter, Folk Tale, Fiction, and Saga in

Z on xviii 434, Kat '? T2 ivpog dvEpo ' EvOv I O O2 ta /aOV'K
the Homeric Epics 143-4: R. Roux, Le Probldme des Aristarchus denied that Homer knew this
8O6ovqa.
Argonautes (1949), especially ch. IV, Les figures
story, invented by ot verO'repot.
Argonautiques. Among the Argonauts both Iphiclus 21 So Lesky op. cit.
and Euphemus were gifted with fabulous speed 22 at
Winds in the form of horses: Call. fr. 1 0o. 54:
running. H. Lloyd-Jones in CQn.s. 7 (I957) 24. Erichthonius
19 So Lesky in RE s.v. Peleus, xix 298. On the in II. xx an Attic interpolation: so Fick, Leaf,
mythical pattern of shape-changers and their defeat, E. Heitsch, Aphroditehymnus, Aeneas und Homer (1965)
see now M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, Les ruses de I24-35. The counter-argument of H. Erbse, RM
l'intelligence: La mitis des Grecs (i974) esp. Io7 ff. IIo (1967) 24, that Erichthonius may have entered
20 E.g. XT in II. i 396 ai$tov 68 o~ro rnapacrrlurjyvaa at, Attica from this passage, seems unlikely for many
6'Tt KaO' "'Opurjpov o?3 veoyvdv KaT~tnrev 'Ay~ye'a ~4 1rtsg: reasons, not least his importance in the ancient

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 42 JASPER GRIFFIN
The cycle also admits miracles of a sort w
most basic conditions of human life. In the
Aeson:

av-rtKa 8' At'oova O KE Aov KOpov 7/3wovTa

These execrable lines (what is the significance of Ahov Kdpov ?) derive from Iliad ix 445, wh
Phoenix says to Achilles, 'I should not leave you, #Aov -dKOS' (the source, I suppose, of th
un-Homeric #Aov KdpOV)

V t E v K t 8 LO8 V"K TTOUTaL7rI OEogS av'oS

Yi-pas~ aro&vas ag 77cEw VEy iov-/oov-ra.

In the Iliad of course this is an impossible condition, just as it is when Nestor says, as he so

often does say, E0' cOs P/3Ocoqu . . . The Odyssey is a little less unrelenting: old Laertes prays
to Athena and is granted one powerful cast of his spear, xxiv 520, the goddess breathing
power into him. So in the Odyssey we find a remarkable but not unthinkable event,
(exaggerated into a miracle for Iolaus by Eur. Heraclidae 843 if.), but in the Cycle a piece of
magic.
Even more, in the accommodating world of the Cycle death itself can be evaded. In the
Iliad no rule is more ineluctable than that expounded by Patroclus' ghost, xxiii 69 ff.: the
dead do not return. Even Heracles could not evade death: II. xviii I 7 o1~8 yAp oa3s fl57
'HpaKA?os bVyE Kipa, I oTEp 17a70-o UKE KpovIoVL wvvaKTC. Hector the favourite of Zeus and
Sarpedon his son must die; they can receive no more than the honours of burial. Achilles
himself is under the shadow of death, and that fact is vital for the Iliad, especially its latter
books. Schadewaldt points out that it is essential for the conversation between Achilles and
Priam in Book xxiv,23 which without that background would produce an entirely different
and far less tragic effect; also the conduct of Achilles in a scene like that with Lycaon in
xxi would be unbearable were it not that he must himself soon die, and that he knows it.
Even in the less austere Odyssey, where by his own account Menelaus is exempted from death
'because he has Helen and is son-in-law of Zeus', iv 561, Achilles is really dead, and bitterly
does he deplore his lot, xi 488 ff. But in the Cycle these things were managed more sympa-
thetically. Unlike Sarpedon and Hector, Memnon in the Aethiopis was given immortality
by Zeus after being killed by Achilles, and Achilles himself was taken by his mother to the
White Island.24 Again: in the Iliad the Dioscuri are dead and buried, iii 243, which allows
the poet an unmatched moment of pathos;25 but in the Cypria Zeus gave them 'immortality
on alternate days' (p. 103.16). In the same poem, Iphigenia was taken to the Taurian land
and made immortal by Artemis (p. 104.19). In the Telegony, when Odysseus' son Tele-
gonus has unwittingly killed his father, he is married to Penelope and Telemachus to Circe,
who made them all immortal (p. 109.26), a resolution rightly called by Severyns 'ce
d6nouement a la fois romanesque et ridicule'.26 Even in the sombre Thebaid Athena was in
the act of bringing immortality to the wounded Tydeus when his conduct made her change
her mind.26a The significance of this difference is great. For the Iliad, human life is
defined by the double inevitability of age and death; for the gods, men's opposite, immortality
and eternal youth are inseparable."2 Men must die: in youth they must fight, and if they

initiation-festival of the Arrephoria: cf. W. Burkert in25 See A. Parry in YCS xx (1966) 197 ff. It
Hermes 94 (1966) 1-25. I. xvi 15o is rather different,
comes as a shock to find that the scholiasts thought the
see Leaf ad loc. passage 'added nothing to the poetry', 2B in iii 236;
22a H. Frdinkel, Dichtung und Philosophie2 79. OV6E ydp rpog T7v rO0V pO Evp yOv IV ? r7TOUtOv FiV?7jL?.
23 W. Schadewaldt, Von Homers Welt und Werk4 26 261.A. Severyns, Recherches sur la Chrestomathie de
24 Bethe, Homer2 II 248 denies that the translation
Proclos ii 90.
of Achilles comes from the Aethiopis. His grounds
26a EGen. in II. v 126 . .. . 7rTopla naapd TOtg
are insufficient: could the poem have allowed Eos to
KVUK)tKOTg: not in Allen; cf. Bethe Thebanische Helden-
get for her son what Thetis could not get forlieder
her 76, Severyns, Le Cycle dpique 219.
incomparable Achilles ? 27 The word dyqpcog occurs nine times in the epics

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 THE EPIC CYCLE AND THE UNIQUENESS OF HOMER 43
are not slain they live on only to be old and helpless. The gods remain forever yo
aVo' S' 7' LK7)EES E('Uv says Achilles of them without bitterness, xxiv 526. This is
makes the Iliad both true and tragic, and the very different procedure of the Cycle ind
profoundly different attitudes to the fundamental nature of human life and death
consequently to human heroism and the relation of men to the gods.
The attitude towards women and children is also different. Homer is sparing in ascri
offspring to his characters, and also has no penchant for romantic scenes between men
women. For Homer, Helen has only one child, her daughter Hermione by Men
she has no children by Paris.

'EAE'vV 8E GEot ydvov OVKE' E'ILaVOV

EITEL TO~pWTO v vEyE lTarO rcLL' EpaLELV7VJV,
'Epedir-qv, n E1hOS EXE y pvuIS 'Acpo&81r-s- (Od. iv 12-14).

But the Cypria, fr. ix, gave her a son by Paris, Aganus by name, as well as a son Pleisth
by Menelaus: of vEw'rEpot gave her other sons by both husbands.2s In the same wa
Telegony gave Odysseus a son, Telegonus, by Calypso, and a second son by Penelo
Arcesilaus (the poem had a strong Cyrenean colouring), and a son Polypoetes by Ca
the Thesprotian princess. We recall that the Hesiodic poems made him by Circe fath
Agrius and Latinus, and by Calypso of Nausinous and Nausithous (Theog. IOII if.).
hint at Od. iii 404 led 'Hesiod' to give Telemachus a son by Nestor's daughter Poly
(fr. 221 MW); Hellanicus, FGH 4 F 156, wrote of a union between Telemachus and Nausica
which Jacoby ad loc. thinks must already have been in the Nostoi.
The difference is again not trivial. In the Iliad the relationship of Paris and Hel
contrasted with that of Hector and Andromache: the wrong and the right way for husb
and wife to live together.29 The virtue of Hector and the devotion of Andromache cont
with Paris' frivolity and Helen's contempt; especially II. iii 428 ff., vi 349 ff., and the f
scene of Book vi. It is part of such a conception that Andromache should have a chil
Helen should not. The union of Helen and Paris is not a real marriage, and the pres
of a child would destroy its clearly depicted atmosphere of hedonism and guilt. We
only to imagine the impact of the presence of a baby on the scene at the end of Iliad iii
of the absence of Astyanax from the end of Book vi. All this is thrown away by the Cy
in its indiscriminate passion for elaboration, just as the contrast between Helen's rig
husband Menelaus and her adultery with Paris, so clear in the Iliad, is blurred whe
Ilias Parva makes her marry Deiphobus after Paris' death. As for Odysseus, the Ody
makes effective use of the evil fortune by which in each generation of his house only one
was born, xvi 117 ff.: Telemachus, like Odysseus, is alone in the world. The C
conception of a world liberally populated by half-brothers is as different as it is inferio
Again all the outlines are blurred, and the contrast between Odysseus' dream-like lia
with distant goddesses and his real ycdLos- with Penelope is lost. And the cynical miscon
of Odysseus in the Telegony, in marrying a Thesprotian princess when there is apparent
nothing to stop him going home to Penelope, brings out by contrast the sacrific
renunciation which he made for her sake in the Odyssey.
The surplus children have brought us already to the proliferation of intrigues
episodes of romance. Homer's treatment of Nausicae, touching and perfect in its in
clusiveness, must be developed into a regular love-affair; so must an incidental reference
Telemachus being bathed by Nestor's daughter. Far more was it inevitable that Ach
the most glamorous of heroes, should be given a sex-life richer than the Homeric p
allow him. In the Iliad Achilles is always an isolated figure.29a The only woman impo
to him is his goddess mother, and as for poor Briseis, who had hoped he would marry h
and four times in the Hymns, always with the word
29 E.g. X in II. vi 492 gaTt 6~ i'Oj aTKO7ZClT btaqdpa
dOadvaro. On Homer and death see now CQ n.s. 26
'AAeCdvbpov Kail "EKTopo;, KTjA.
(1976) I86. 29a He is eloquently contrasted with Siegfried in
28 For names see EA in II. iii 175 as well as this respect by E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman4 44.
Cypria fr. ix, and RE s.v. Helene, 2830. 48 ff.

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 44 JASPER GRIFFIN
(xix 297), he can say only that it would have
his quarrel with Agamemnon (xix 59). Alt
that he is anything but romantic about h
at the end of the poem his mother is reco
him up (xxiv I30). He has a son, Neoptolem
still alive' (xix 327).30 The mother is not
that Achilles captured steep Scyros and took
to be thought of, if thought of at all, a
indignation the tale of Achilles hidden ther
went to Scyros as a hero, to conquer.31 Natu
of the Cycle, and in the Cypria (fr. 13.2 i
regrettably not included by Erbse in his ed
7TapOEvots lvvytarplpfwov EqiOEypE A-q&Ld[LEt
That is, the Cypria told the story not as a '
Then Iphigenia had to be fetched to Aul
with Achilles' (Cypria, p. 104.17). Homer
the great epics relishing neither human sacr
silence in the Odyssey about the way in wh
and Helen was naturally too tempting no
explains that she would have married him in
late sources make them live together after
2828.14 ff; the Cypria went on (p. 105-7)
Aphrodite and Thetis brought them togethe
when they rushed to sail home.'33a Here
Iliadic motif. The mutiny of Iliad ii and
romantic and un-Homeric motivation; the a
the beauty of Helen. One sees how akin th
perhaps irreverently reminded of the Duke
war between France and England because
The next lady in the story is the Amazo
question whether in the Aethiopis Achille
moment when he slew her; most have agree

30 This line and the attitude it

Ak. (1942) 34 ff., implies
that shocked
this passage of the Odyssey is the
based on Ka
Alexandrians: LA ad loc., the version of the cyclic pr
zaT-Ga Oedipodeia,
d in which
ndpp) z
?K'pOV KetgIEVqUg. As usual Oedipus had they
by her two resorted
sons, Phrastor and Laonytus.
to deletio
31 'T in ix 668: The story of his concealment Deubner argues that dpiqap need not rule out an interval
among women is an invention of the vetzxepot, d 6of a year, time enough for twins to be born, cf. Od. ii
no0tL)~r 7lpotK g7 tavonAiLavG a v TV a OvGg Eg ZVT7V93, ii 167, and h. Cer. 452; I guess that the poet wished
to gloss over the incestuous offspring, and so used a
X?KVpov defiGflaoCev o3 vO apO~vU)v dLd dvi6p6v 6taxnpa-
4d~oevov -pya. So too Eustathius I956.18. phrase which suggested that there was none.
31a G. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic4 130-40. 33 Bethe, p. 243, 'cannot bring himself to accept
32 XA in II. ix 456 ag /l~ci dqKovTag ditKey yovEOg,this romantic story as part of an heroic epic'. It is
rather depressing to see how subjectively scholars
6dt o36 nepi To0 qxdvov zlg KAvzat~corzpag qaiv: X
in Od. xv 248 on the matricide of Alcmaeon. It wasbehave in this matter. Wilamowitz (Kl. Schr. iv 364,
surely perverse of Bethe to argue from this silence thatand ib. v 2.77) thought Laius' rape of Chrysippus
in the Nostoi she perhaps committed suicide (Homer2and invention of homosexual love was told in the
II 268). The Odyssey even pushes this tendency soTheban epics; Deubner (Abh. Preuss. Ak. (1942) 5)
far as implicitly to deny that Oedipus had childrendenies this on the ground that such a subject is
by his mother, xi 271-4: "einem alten Epos alles andere als angemessen'. As
for Achilles and Helen, it is by no means the only
urPt0pa t' Oinlnd6ao i'6ov KaGlv 'EtKda' rTv, romantic story in the Cycle, and doubtless Rzach
? 7uaya Epyov Epe4ev dt6peirdot vdoto,
(2391. 4-Io) and Severyns (Le cycle ipique 304) are
yrf, aivr 0 ' viei" 6 6'8v Ynaxp' iE'vapi$ag right to accept it.
y,cv" q*gap 6' dv6nvaTa Oeo OrEav dvOp'notoratv. 33a For Bethe, ib., the evidence that Achilles
restrained them is of course a 'kaum verstaindliche
It was pointed out in antiquity (Pausan. ix 5. Io) that
the word diqap seems to rule out the production of Notiz'; as on his anti-romantic assumptions it is
children. This is the more striking as it has been bound to be.
shown by Deubner, 'Oedipusprobleme', Abh. Preuss. 34 Der griechische Roman4 I Io n. 2, (not quite in

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 THE EPIC CYCLE AND THE UNIQUENESS OF HOMER 45
a motif is impossible. But it seems clear from Proclus' summary at least that T
taunted Achilles with this feeling, and consequently that even if it did not happ
epic, it was not simply unthinkable-rather as Achilles at Iliad i 225 calls Agam
olvoflap~r; of course we never in the epic see a hero drunk, but the idea was not th
one which could not enter a heroic head. Achilles behaved with chivalry towa
corpse and killed Thersites for abusing it.
After Achilles' death Polyxena was sacrificed at his tomb (Iliou Persis). Here
motivation is hard to discern beneath the rank growth of mythological exuberance
article 'Polyxena' by Wuist in RE xxi 1840 ff.).35 Later sources colour the episo
sinister eroticism: Achilles claimed in death the woman he had desired in life.
this was not developed in the Cyclic poem, but we observe the repeated pattern of A
being brought into connection with the killing of a young woman-Iphigenia, Pe
Polyxena. In the Iliad he slew twelve Trojan youths at the pyre of Patroclus, xx
his motive being revenge (crdOEv KTa.dLVOLO XoAcWEoOd, xviii 337); this is exceeded
more exciting by the slaughter of a princess. In the Iliad women are not killed,
are slain and women are enslaved. The Cycle was different. Apart from Achille
series of his deadly encounters with women, a famous scene in the Ilias Parva (fr. x
how Menelaus drew his sword to kill Helen but was overcome by her beauty and spa
The scene must have been striking (Rzach calls it 'ein Glanzpunkt des Epos'37),
it has the same character: the perverse attraction of the sword drawn against a
woman, and the romantic resolution of the incident. The Iliad never talks of killing

but rather
while of 'avenging
the Odyssey depicts her
her, cares and groans',
once returned Elorar0at
to hearth 'EAE'vrjsasd.dignified
and husband, p .tka-rC
and-Eindeed
aurovaXas TE,38
commanding. Her activities in Troy at the time of its fall are left by the Odyssey deeply
ambiguous,39 but she is far above explicit criticism, let alone physical chastisement. The
conception of the hero in the Iliad is both more heroic-the warrior does not war on women-
and also no doubt more realistic. As in the classical period, it would have been felt as a
waste to put perfectly good women to the sword. In the Cycle both heroism and realism
are rejected in favour of an over-heated taste for sadistically coloured scenes; more striking,
even more perverse effects are once again what is desired.
The Iliad is also distinguished by the consistency with which it excludes low human types
and motives.40 Thersites alone contrasts starkly with the heroes; like homosexual love,

traitors and cowards are stylised out of existence. Paris is 4dAKLOS, although at times he
does not exert himself, II. vi 521, and when a hero does not fight the assumption is that the
reason will be heroic resentment: II. vi 326 Paris;41 II. xiii 460 Aeneas-as well as Achilles
himself and Meleager in Book ix. By contrast, in the Cycle great heroes would do anything
to avoid military service. Amphiaraus' wife had to be bribed to make him go to Thebes,
agreement with what he said on p. 46 'eine romantische it 'almost romantic', 2419.46; the 'almost' seems to
Sehnsucht'). Bethe emphatically rejects it for the be a bow to the convention among scholars that
Aethiopis. nothing really romantic is to be allowed to have
35 In his view she was originally 'a valkyrie', appeared in the Cycle.
1844.29. 38 As the 'AT on II. ii 356 rightly say, cSg avi'Txi
36 I do not think the phrase KaKd 6N qpesr jd76eso
epya is intended to express explicit condemnation of dKovOiog; tapd tog gO ArEotg oioarlr, iv' d$ItoXpo~ e
flon6eirO at.
this act, a view which goes back to antiquity (EAT 39 Well handled by Cauer, NJbb. 12 (1900) 6o8:
more detailed psychological explanations are given
ad loc.: oarnep dcyavaTcr(ov 6 notzr7g cprTaL ? KaKd d
ppeCat pj6ezo 'pya) and is still popular; for refs. cf. by A. Maniet, L'Ant. Class. 16 (1947) 37-46; R.
C. Segal, The Theme of Mutilation of the Corpse in the Schmiel, TAPA 103 (1972) 463-72. Against such
Iliad, I3. Contra, cf. Bassett in TAPA 64 (I933) psychological elaboration of what Homer does not
41-65; and such passages as II. vii 478 navvdXtog say about his characters, J. T. Kakridis, Homer
e Q2tV KaKda It 6ero Pt7lexa Zev', and Od. viii 273, Revisited (i971) 14f., and, on Helen, his paper
(Hephaestus plans the net to catch Ares and Aphro- Dichterische Gestalten und wirkliche Menschen bei Homer
dite) fl4 ' 'Uev % XaAKeSCva, KaKd qpeSC UflvaaodoFzt'wOv. in Festschrift Schadewaldt (1970) 51-64.
In both cases the phrase means 'evil for the victim'. 40 The point is made by K. Reinhardt, Tradition
The same disagreement over the deLtKa pya to which und Geist 0o.

Achilles subjected Hector's corpse, xxii 395: cf. 4' The speculations based on this by E. Heitsch,
Bassett loc. cit. 44. 'Der Zorn des Paris', in Festschrift J. Klein (1967)
37 RE s.v. 'Kyklos', 2417. 42. He goes on to call 216-47, consequently seem to me unreal.

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46 JASPER GRIFFIN
Achilles was hidden among women, and Od
Unmasked by the clever Palamedes, Odys
Diomede's help by drowning him while he w
a scene more alien to Homer. Fishing is itsel
out in antiquity that his heroes exist exclus
heroic dish par excellence,42 while fish are
straits (iEtpE & yaor-dpa hAtds). Nor can a g
as drowning, which both Achilles in the Ilia
call AEvydEOSg Odva-ro9 and contrast bitte
of the Locrian Aias, Od. iv 499 if., is clearly
that after he had succeeded in reaching land
hero' (Merry and Riddell ad loc.). But mos
of an ally for selfish reasons. The Odyssey d
madness on the Achaean leaders, Od. xi 549
of the contest for the armour of Achilles s
of Palamedes led in the Cycle to his father
luring it on to the rocks (Nostoi); this is alie
ascribes the Achaeans' disastrous home-co
Treachery and revenge on one's friends are
It seems highly likely that the Cycle cont
and others, Ilias Parvafr. ix 2 Bethe (not vis
AJOwpsELo~? LvdyKI7, of which several expl
<ypda/as,) 77ortgv rorVt 7' -io HaATaSlov K07or
is that as they returned from Troy, havi
Odysseus tried to kill Diomede who was walk
shadow of his drawn sword in the moonligh
driving him with his sword. Bethe indeed
('unm6glich kann die kleine Ilias so erzaih
but he must admit that if we do not accept
the poem is inexplicable, ('die Hauptsache
of the treacherous killing of Palamedes perh
when we recall that the epic Alcmaeonis,fr. i,
Peleus and Telamon.
On the Trojan side, Helenus when captured by the Greeks tells them what they m
to destroy his own city (Ilias Parva p. I06.24).
The absence of individual villains in the Iliad (for even the shot of Pandarus at M
in breach of the truce, although it will ensure the fall of Troy as a punishment, is r
by his enemies as 'glorious for him', Tr~ -vly AEo', C alq SE r6i0oS, II, iv 197) is acco
by the treatment of the Trojan enemy as being in no way monstrous or hatefu
ensures that the Achaeans regularly have the best of it,43 and the Trojans have
characteristic defects, especially recklessness, over-confidence, and frivolity;44 but on
Doloneia are they cowardly and abject, and that is one of the many ways in wh
Book differs from the rest of the Iliad.45 In the Theban epics, by contrast, the Seven
have been presented as monsters.46 The blasphemer Capaneus, blasted by Zeus w
thunder-bolt, and the savage Tydeus, from whom Athena turned away in disgu
gnawed the skull of his dead enemy46a--such persons are in the Iliad unthinkable, ju
42 Iliadic diet is discussed at length in Athenaeus
Cf. W. H. Friedrich, Verwundung und Tod in der Ilias
8-II, 25; cf. also e.g. ZEA in II. xvi 407, 747- (1956) 20 ff.
43 M. H. Van der Valk, Homer's Nationalistic 4 Well brought out by K. Reinhardt, Tradition
und Geist 9. See also F. Klingner, Hermes 75 (1940)
Attitude, L'Ant. Class. 22 (1953) 5.ff-: J. T. Kakridis,
346 = Studien zur gr. und ram. Lit. 17.
'Aei ltCAAArv 6 'torotrj ? WS 69 (1956) 26 if. =
Homer Revisited 54 f. The question is much can-4" See K. Reinhardt, Tradition und Geist I4 f.
vassed in the ancient commentaries, e.g. 'BT in 46a Significantly, both Achilles, II. xxii 346, and
II. viii 78, 274, 487: Eustath. 237. 27, 370.15. Hecuba, xxiv 212, express the wish to feast on the
44 Paris, Dolon, and Hector are all OpaaioedtAot enemy's flesh, but this cannot actually happen.
E' in II. iii Ig: Trojans are boasters, E in II. xvii Cf.
186.also iv 35.

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 THE EPIC CYCLE AND THE UNIQUENESS OF HOMER 47
the family feuds and disasters of the house of Laius and the story of Amphi
treacherous wife and his avenging son, all of which bring into the centre of the stag
which the Homeric poems keep as far as possible out of sight. The saucy S
Capaneus' son, who says 'We are better men than our fathers' and is silenced by
(II, iv 405) shows the modest limits within which the Iliad confines blasphemy;
Zeus in that poem blast men with his bolt, as he blasted Capaneus and as in the
blasted Idas (RE v I I 15.12 ff.), but on the contrary he sends it only as a sign and a w
-another way in which the Iliad is more urbane and less violent than other early ep
The heroes of the Iliad are not puritans, but they are never shown revelling
pleasures of the table. Like sex,48 eating and drinking are expressed with scrupulou
heroes eat only roast beef, and the formulae employed emphasise anything rat
actual ingestion. 'They stretched out their hands to the food which lay ready;
they had put off their desire for food and drink, then . . .'49 The feast is ate a
shared', a moral not a physical quality. Even the most explicit passage, of which
Stihlin50 observe that its frank praise of the table 'falls somewhat outside the spirit o
puts the emphasis at least as much on listening to a singer as on enjoying the food.

o3 y %p 7yo y"0 Ki it/ T'oAO XaPLEt'EPOoV ECL tL

0-r'l EV0o00V'VVq
TVLLov Eg 8' J' Cva T cLK0V t..V 8..tLo
octaWVJLL OLvrat JotVo-
et7VoL E EL7, ITcap8 8' TAIWaL O 'TpaL7TElat
atToV Kat KpEtLV, t C OV 8' "K KpaTr-Ipo0S cqaawov

was Homeric; but in these severe poems only characters like the Cyclops (Od. ix) or the

Still more is this true of wine; the heroes are careful with it, and we do not see them the
worse for drink. Revealingly un-Homeric is the extra line quoted by Dioscurides at he. ix
dinn9a, where Agamemnon says

119 a E7' EITELt'JaLraV q!pEarL' AEvyaAEaL rnraTts,

I I9aq 77 oLVL [pEOLEGoV, 7 '1'L Elaoav O/LVaEOL c0VTOt,
120 o oE WOE'A cpract ...

Uncharacteristically, Wilamowitz51 hesitated and admitted uncertainty whether the verse

was Homeric; but in these severe poems only characters like the Cyclops (Od. ix) or the
centaur
centaur Eurytion
Eurytion(Od.
(Od.xxi
xxi295) cancan
295) really be be
really drunk. It isItout
drunk. is of
outkeeping with with
of keeping all this
allfor
this for
Menelaus to be told, as he was in the Cypriafr. xiii, that wine exists to cheer up the gloomy:

otvov -rot MEvEAcLE , tE L 0 otrmrav aJptcr-rov

GVrTro -iS dLv~pOpTotov cIToarKEotrat ,LEAEWcvag,

just as the praise given by Hesiod to the Aeacidae, fr. 2o6 MW, that they were 'as fond of
fighting as of their dinner', IToAE',p Kap7"7-tE -VTErI &att[,-, presents a greatly coarsened
dinner.

47 Pointed out by M. P. Nilsson, Opuscula Selecta

attempt by Acastus' wife upon the virtue of Peleus.
i 359. In Iliad viii, and only in that Book, Zeus 49 It isgoes
wrong of Bowra, Heroic Poetry 198, to call
so far as to cast his warning bolts 'among the such accounts of feasts 'perfunctory'. See rather
Achaeans' or before Diomede's chariot, viii 76, 133. H. Frankel, Dichtung und Philosophie2 31.
4s j. Wackernagel, Sprachliche Untersuchungen zu 50 Schmid-Staihlin, Geschichte der gr. Lit., i I.178.
Homer 224 ff.: in antiquity, e.g. ZT in II. ix 134 51 Die Ilias und Homer 66.2. Rightly van der Valk,
Researches on the Text and Scholia of the Iliad II 486, calls
Oavyaawoio zriv alaXZpyv )t',tv EcKad'vl, Z'i z ( aurvwTAo-
K?)g TaCurtva KWa GvOpomrtvax TutwTdXTatI 7poaoiyopiatg this 'incredible'. In antiquity, when the commen-
EmrKtatdjv, and Hesiodfr. 208 MW, where the deli- tators were looking for a reason why, at II. xiv 75,
cate brevity with which Homer describes Anteia's Agamemnon disgracefully proposed flight, it did not
attempt to seduce Bellerophon is contrasted with the occur to them to mention drink.
prurient fullness of the Hesiodic account of the 52 On the eccentric passage II. xiii 613 ff., where

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 48 JASPER GRIFFIN
These differences, especially those concernin
are naturally accompanied by differences in
seen the importance attached to particular
human sacrifice (Iphigeneia). Another striki
Titanomachia:

LLECULUoLV 8 W/opxEtTO 7OTl7p cLvSpcov TE GEOiV TE.

It is likely53 that the occasion was the first day of Zeus' rule of the world, after the defeat of
the Titans. In the Iliad no god dances. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, I88-206, only the
younger gods dance while Zeus delights his mighty heart looking on, but in the Iliad i 603
with the other gods he listens to the music of Apollo and the song of the Muses. Imagination
fails to see the Zeus of the Iliad dancing.
We have already mentioned the metamorphoses of Zeus and Nemesis. It can be
added that the central importance of a being like Nemesis, a transparent personification, is
also un-Homeric; in the Iliad such figures as Eris, Deimos and Phobos simply underline what
is visibly happening on the human level, while At6 and the Litai are expounded at length
only in reported speech (ix 502 ff.; xix 91 ff.). Nemesis appears as a goddess not in Homer
but in Hesiod (Theog. 223, Erga 200). Welcker thought54 that the un-Homeric conception
of Helen as child of Nemesis had a depth of thought behind it, and made Helen's sin 'a
breach of law which brought ruin with it', as in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, but I cannot
share this flattering view, nor do I find, as he did, an impressive irony in the idea of Nemesis

herself trying to evade Zeus. The pun NLETrL-vE'1acTLS does not add to the impression
of seriousness in the passage, see below p. 50.
In the Cycle, but not in Homer, homicides need to be purified; in the Aethiopis Achilles
after killing Thersites had to sail to Lesbos where he sacrificed to Apollo, Artemis and Leto,
and was purified (KaOapEratL) by Odysseus. The ancients55 were aware that this was un-
Homeric; what we have in the Aethiopis is presumably the influence of Delphi.56
Highly characteristic of the Cycle was the great number of oracles and prophecies it
contained. W. Kullmann56a lists 17 recorded in our sources and rightly infers that such a
number must have given the Cycle a strongly deterministic character. Perhaps in accord-
ance with this was the development in the Cypria of the Iliadic idea of the 'will of Zeus',
AIods ' 'rTEAECEro fovA4. The prologue to Iliad i uses this phrase in such a way as to apply
both to the events of the poem as a whole, and also in particular, if pressed, to the plan
which Zeus devises with Thetis. Eustathius well observes, 20.5, that in the prologue Homer
glorifies his own poem by promising that it will contain 1tvpua Kat 7 PWLKtK, eVTacva E8 Kopwv'sa

tYta EIrTLLOEt& aaV'CYES aE 1a/7YEC 'JltO EA S' ETEAEaETO ov ,', wL7 "V tS )TO AXAAEWs /L7V S8oS
rooaLVa 8VVTYo'Cr7,, Et /L7 GEla rtLS v flovAv: 'he adds a crowning piece of glorification by
adding "and the will of Zeus was fulfilled", suggesting that the anger of Achilles could not
have done all this without some divine will.' But the Cyclic poet felt the need to spell out
fully the effective Homeric hint, and so the story was told of Zeus planning to reduce the
over-population of the world by means of the Trojan war. The idea is of a distressing
thinness and flatness, dissolving the Iliad's imposing opaqueness to an all too perspicuous
'rationality'; the whole story is thus made pre-determined, and a sort of unity is imposed
upon it, of a rather superficial sort.

In this second and shorter section I attempt some stylistic comment on the more substantial
extant fragments of the Cycle. The identification of un-Homeric and late linguistic features
is not what here concerns us; enough work has already been done on this.57 After Aristarchus

the Trojans are blamed for this quality, normally a

5 ZT in II. xi 690 sap'" 'Ojipp oK oor6aKev 'qov5a
virtue, see B. Fenik, Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad KaOatpdopevov dilad dvTtxvovxa n) qvyatevdotevov.
(1968) 147, and 'BT in II. xvi 617: a virtue turned 56 E.g. Lesky, Geschichte der gr. Lit.3 10o4.
into a reproach in the mouth of a taunting enemy. 56a W. Kullmann, Die Quellen der Ilias (i96o) 221.
53 So W. Kranz in Studi Castiglioni I (1960) 481. 57 Wilamowitz, Homerische Untersuchungen 366-7;
54 Der epische Cyclus ii 159- Wackernagel, Sprachliche Untersuchungen 18i ff.; Dihle,

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 THE EPIC CYCLE AND THE UNIQUENESS OF HOMER 49
the ancients used the word KVUKLKW S to convey banality, inexactness, and re
we shall see how just this was.

I. Thebaid fr. II avrap &d 8oyEV #pw, ~toavO Ho7vvEKJS

Trp ra /V Ol~7TO8,7 KahI V r7apTO7KE c7rpT EWav

apyvpE-v K&?8tzoo GEoopovos" aVTacp En E'Ta

aVUap FValr'os TdKEV KaA&jtwSva BE"EPO"S' VT7go

vi I50 ff:

154 Eluv osr AloAl8r,- o 8' cpa I'acv0KOV 7TEKEG UvdV,

7 G7tEO KcOS TE Kl 7OpV paTELV7V

5 Tacav*o aycVtp o HpoTOs KaKi GO U-q . ....

There is however an important difference. In the Iliad this jerky and concise manner is
used for summarising incidental stories, taken presumably from other sources and compressed
for the Iliad's purposes; but our passage from the Thebad is part of the narration of a high
point of the plot, Oedipus' first curse on his sons. It is as if the breaking of the truce in
Book iv, say, or the reconciliation of Agamemnon and Achilles in xix, were to be dealt with
"UpyaE'as
in that style. The fragment goes on 7topadeal
o' "with
EWYthe
8' Otcontent
Aovlav'of"pwvtv*
the curse:

5 a1vap Aa y' " s p~ov a7 vrapaKEfva BrApo0S OVT

-3-qr1)Ev7a YEpa, JlE)a 0LO KaKOV E4LLTTCEE GV4LLp,

Io 8orvaaavT', Jp4 opoT0 8' C~l 7TOa tzl E /Laao . ..

The curse was, it seems, reported in indirect speech, and so was Oedipus' second curse,

used for summarising O , incidental stories, taken presumably (lacuna)

TrT-q'pra yepaLs a tKa oVaE4V' "

Again we have the same dry manner of indirect reporting, and the contrast with the Iliad
seems clear. In that poem, so much of which consists of direct quotation of speeches by the
characters, such a scene would have been directly reported in full, as for example is the
quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles in Book i. The treatment by the Thebaid recalls
Phoenix' report of his father's curse on him:

IToAA& KaTrJpi7o, UTVyEP4s 6- 8'TEKEKAET' 'EptviwS,

tL? EoTE yO aCtLY otatLV E)(/EE0UoCLL qaov vEap
p ,aEEV YEyaw ?o 8pro EO 8 E' o Lo o vO apv' ... ix 4P53t

Homer-Probleme 148 f. (not all of whose examples of 58 Severyns, Le cycle e'pique 155-9.
lateness are convincing); Bethe's commentary on the 59 The Songs of Homer I64. Important reservations
fragments, Homer2 II 2. 150 ff., contains useful about the different styles distinguished by Kirk are
material.
expressed by U. Holscher, Gnomon 39 (1967) 437-8.

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 50 JASPER GRIFFIN
But again the same difference is important.
to the Iliad, and that is why it is reported i
it is given in proper form and in direct s
and summary manner in which the Theba
at the Oedipus Coloneus shows how horrifica
and as unimpressive as possible. It is nota
to avoid too close following of the Homeric
compressed and indirect style: iv 231-5.

2. Cypria fr. vii, Nemesis pursued by Zeu

4 bE?YE yap-, ov5EOEEV ILLXO7IOL

ra7.pt C L Kpovwov" EEITpETo yap q~
KCL , VE/LEt . . .

The expression is doubtless derived from a

fight:

alsWV Ka' waosv,

that is to say both self-respect and respect for the opinion of others. The poet of the Cypria
applies the words to the feelings of Nemesis herself, producing a sort of pun. One is re-
minded that Eustathius loves to point out how Homer is careful to avoid the sound-jingles
deliberately cultivated by later poets;60 such a play on words is hardly in the Homeric
manner.

The fragment goes on: 8 MAAoTE ~v Ka~ KctLa rroAvqooUfloto

IX0V"i Etol0EiV7r 7TOdVTV 7 TOAV E! opdOVVEV,
Io AAo cr'tv CKEfWOV O7T oTcLV Klt 7TEtpaTc ya5

OAAo" dav' '7TELuOV '7roAV/%AaKcL ylyETO 8' a El

O U 777I TEor qLpoSr artvcL ElvaEL, fpa rbVyot VtV.

Here a difficulty is produced by the insertion of line io. Sometimes she was in the sea
(8-9), sometimes on land (I 1-12), in the form of a fish or an animal; how are we to picture
her flight 'in Ocean River and the ends of the earth'? Presumably in Ocean she was a
fish, at the ends of the earth an animal, and the intrusion disrupts the context in order to get
in the distinct idea that she fled not only in both elements, but to the furthest recesses of them
both. The total effect is incoherent.

3. Cypria fr. iv, the adorning of a goddess, probably (Welcker) Aphrodite preparing f
the Judgment of Paris:

Equara JLLv XPo' ET1 o "c ot Xp tr1-Es TE Kat Qrpac

7ToL?7jcrav KcL t/3wsav 'v avOEcTLv EapLvO i~c,

o5 a SdPo) w paL, v OW' t ;a)~ er

LvOwEc vapcKlUov KV atAppoo ..V .

8' oaT' (TOZ' Meineke) 'Abpo85-
o(paLs ravroias OveW vLLEa Ev eara ~'70.
The list of flowers is too long; fewer names would have been more effective. The thr
epithets 3dsov 7' Ev'Iv4 VO Kac~ 78E' VECKpECp is feeble because all three are absolutely gener
60 See Eustathius 682.48, 754-7, 995-15, 1031-51,
1042.29, I107.26, 163412.

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 THE EPIC CYCLE AND THE UNIQUENESS OF HOMER 51
so that between them they add virtually nothing to the name of the rose. Th
epithets is precisely that branded by the ancient commentators as 'cyclic': a goo
is the scholion on Od. viiI 115, the description of the trees in Alcinous' orchard: o' KV

r'd d leE'rawith
contrast 7TpocE'ppt7TTrat,
Homer is thus,AA ' EdKaUTOV
already 8v with
made. As 8pov iT i8 swlain
Nemesis 830L
fr. ro
vii,r TO d-OU
a pun ov rpoum'rE7qpy7at. The
is produced
between the personfied Horae and the impersonal seasons: the Horae made the garments,
which Aphrodite wore Jtpa- 7rav'rolacs. The word d'v0os is twice repeated without adding
anything, and it appears that this, like the over-long list of flowers, represents a conscious
attempt to compose in a richly ornamental manner; compare the 'decorated lyrical style'
which Kirk finds characteristic of the Zosa dTdrcr-, Iliad xiii-xv. Homer however avoids
such weak repetitions in such a context, see the toilet of Hera, II. xiv 169 ff, and the bathing
and adorning of Aphrodite by the Charites, Od. viii 364-6. Even the lusher manner of the
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite is very different: as Aphrodite prepares to seduce Anchises,

E vOa E' tuv Xapt'-Es- Ao -aav Kal Xp aav Eacdw

at/po'prw,, OTcEO1N Eo7TEV7OVOOEV CLEV Eov"TaSL
5c443~poaiw3avcirof peatot i-EQVcb1LLEVOV 77EV.

EcaaaollEV7 ' 8Ev 7Tc-rac rEpt Xpol EtL'cLa KaAc

65 XPv?o KOUI7aa ELU fLLEt87S 'Agpos57
....)' L Tpo-rl-s rpoAtrovo ' Evcosa Kl5rpov
v~bt /IeTaL V EqEoLv Ptlbcza 7Tp77UUaovU KEAEVQOV ...

Here the repetition dcpopdc-rc . .. . tL3poolw is open to criticism, but the passage as a whole
moves quicker and by suggesting more and listing less is far more effective. What depresses
particularly about the Cypria passage is that the poet has clearly set himself to excel his
models and prided himself on the result.

4. The hasty and undramatic style of number I is found again in the account of the great
battle of the Dioscuri with Idas and Lynceus, subject of Pindar's wonderful Tenth Nemean,
(Cypriafr. xi:)
atLa S AvyKEVS
TaV7yET-ov 7rpooiEcltVE 7ro es i-a v wXEEaaT O'TE7ToOOmCon.
aKpoira-rov S' avval/ 8t6SE'pKE-ro vraov al7Taoav
Tav-raAM'ov YhAonosi- 7-&c a' ElaLSE KV''&LOS j"pws
5 SEwVOL' 0aALtLo Zatv E QrW61 op si 4ptKw ioiLAls',

Kdai-op 0' [tr~rdatrov Kacl ctEAoqdpov FoAvEV'Ccaa

VVeE 8 Jp' 4yXt i-r-...

Lynceus runs up Taygetus, spies the hidden heroes in a hollow oak, and next moment he is
stabbing at the tree. Pindar shows how the story could be treated; what the Cypria seems
to have offered was the barest possible narration, again compressed beyond all hope of
excitement.

5. Lastly, the only long fragment of the Ilias Parva, xix:62

from his Anthologia Lyrica Graeca. Max Schmidt,

61 Despite Allen and Welcker, ('dem 4tqow scheint
Nachdruck durch die Stellung gegeben zu sein,' Troika, (Diss. Gottingen 1917) 45 tries to meet the
ii 516), this metrical monster can hardly be right.
stylistic arguments of Frankel. The problem is a
KOtl9 6ppvdg "iqU w Gerhard, and so Bethe. difficult one. The lines seem to lack all the ingenuity
62 Tzetzes quotes another six lines as continuousand point we expect from Simmias, but it is hard to
with these five, but they are ascribed to Simmias knowof how conclusive that is, in view of our ignorance
Rhodes by the Scholiast on Euripides Andromache of io;
most of his work, while Professor Lloyd-Jones
Allen's arrangement conceals this fact. The author- observes that the ascription to him, if not correct, is
ship of Simmias was rejected implicitly by Allen certainly
and very hard to account for. It seems best to
explicitly by H. Frdinkel, de Simia Rhodio 37use ff.:
only the certainly attested lines in the argument
J. U. Powell printed the lines as by Simmias in here.
Collectanea Alexandrina 112, but Diehl omitted them

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 52 JASPER GRIFFIN
acrap )h'AxhotAAos' LEyaOVLOV cal~tLoS
eEK'TopE"v aoXov KcaL-rayEV KoIaS g

PuRE
7TaZa 7TOS>O5'
S' A',)v TOy
E'K KoA7ToVo -6 TEUOV~a
E'V7TYOKCtiLOtO rO'qv'qS

?MaPcE iTopovpEos- ovaroS' K' uotLpa Kp-rat-Lq.

Here is described the fate which in the Iliad Hector foresees for Andromache, vi 456, and
Andromache for her son, xxiv 734. Hector prays that he may be dead and buried before he
hears the shrieks of Andromache as she is dragged away to the Achaean ships,

7Trplv yE 7" oq 7"E U o Vso 0' o E0Kr' 1iqOtotIo 7rTVOEOat,

but in this passage no emotion is even hinted at, by Andromache or anyone else. Astyanax'
death, his mother predicted, would be at the hands of an Achaean warrior,

XCOIUEVOS, CO 87'1 TOV c8EAq!EOV E"KTcVEV 'EK-p

7) 7Tc-Ep 'I7 E Kal VLOV.

In the Ilias Parva Neoptolemus the killer has no such ground for anger-Hector did not kill
his father-and the child's death is described in a manner so flatly dispassionate, one is
tempted to say so uninterested, that we need to remind ourselves that it could be made
deeply moving and pathetic. The foreshadowing in the Iliad is incomparably more tragic
than this narration, and we must turn to the Troades to find the event itself worthily handled.
The Homeric phrases out of which the passage is built up (listed in the apparatus by Bethe
ad loc.) combine rather in the manner which Kirk (p. i66) calls the 'tired or second-hand
formular style' and exemplifies with Iliad i 430-87, the trip to Chryse. But as with numbers
(i) and (4) above, we observe the difference: in the Iliad such passages form relatively
unstressed and relaxing transitions between more highly charged passages (in Iliad i, between
the quarrel and Thetis' supplication of Zeus). The death of Hector's son, 'EK70opl&qv
dya7T-qTrdv, cAlyKLOV crUTE'p Ka 1-(I1. vi 401), by contrast, would in the Iliad certainly have been
a high point of drama; and as for the Ilias Parva, I suspect that a poem which handled such
a scene in such a style as this contained, in Iliadic terms, no high points at all.
It is of course true that we have pitifully few of the thousands of verses which made up
the Cycle, and that long epics are bound to contain weak passages. Yet we can form an
impression of the treatment of Oedipus' curses, of the adorning of Aphrodite, and of the
killing of Astyanax, all of which might reasonably be expected to be striking incidents and
to exhibit the poets at their best. The result of our inspection perhaps casts some doubt on
the optimistic view which some moderns have taken of these lost epics. When Rzach says
both the Thebais and the Cypria contained 'many poetic beauties',63 and Wilamowitz that
the author of the Iliou Persis was 'a creative poet of high rank'63a I suspect that in reality,
while the opportunity for such beauties was certainly present, in the poems it was generally
missed, and that they were very clearly inferior to the Iliad and Odyssey. After all, that
was the verdict of antiquity.
My purpose in this enquiry has not been the arid one of disparaging lost poems, but
rather to use them to illuminate the great epics we have. The tendency of much recent
work on Homer has been to suggest that all epics have much the same qualities, and even
that out of a well organised formulaic technique a poem like the Iliad was more or less
bound to appear; sometimes it seems that its appearance is envisaged as almost spontaneous.
The Cyclic epics show how remote this is from the truth. Beneath a superficial similarity
the style was very different, and so were the attitudes and assumptions embodied in the
poems. Wilamowitz64 was right to point out that cyclic material has got into the two
epics, but over-stated his case when he said that the Iliad itself was 'nothing but a KVKACKOV

63 'Gar manche dichterische Sch6nheit', RE s.v. 63a Die Heimkehr des Odysseus (1927) 183-
'Kyklos' 2372, 2394. 64 Homerische Untersuchungen 373 f.-

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 THE EPIC CYCLE AND THE UNIQUENESS OF HOMER 53
Trol~C(Xa', and that there was no distinction between Homeric and Cyclic. Such a di
did exist, and was due to the exceptional genius which went into the creation o
Homeric epics, especially the Iliad. The strict, radical, and consistently heroic
pretation of the world presented by the Iliad made it quite different from the Cyc
content with monsters, miracles, metamorphoses, and an un-tragic attitude t
mortality, all seasoned with exoticism and romance, and composed in a flatter, loose
dramatic style. The contrast helps to bring out the greatness and the uniquenes
achievement.
JASPER GRIFFIN
Balliol College, Oxford

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