Epic Cycle

The Epic Cycle (Greek: Επικός Κύκλος, Epikos Kyklos) was a collection of Ancient Greek epic poems that related the story of the Trojan War, which includes the Cypria, the Aethiopis, the so-called Little Iliad, the Iliupersis, the Nostoi, and the Telegony. Scholars sometimes include the two Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, among the poems of the Epic Cycle, but the term is more often used to specify the non-Homeric poems as distinct from the Homeric ones.

Aside from the Odyssey and the Iliad, the cyclic epics only survive in fragments, the most important of which is a detailed summary written by someone named Proclus (not the same person as the philosopher Proclus Diadochus). The epics were composed in dactylic hexameter verse.

The epic cycle was the distillation in literary form of an oral tradition that had developed during the Greek Dark Age, which was based in part on localised hero cults. The traditional material from which the literary epics were drawn treats of Mycenaean Bronze Age culture from the perspective of Iron Age and later Greece.

In modern scholarship the study of the historical and literary relationship between the Homeric epics and the rest of the Cycle is called Neoanalysis.

A longer Epic Cycle, as described by the 9th-century CE scholar and clergyman Photius in his Bibliotheca, also included the Titanomachy and the Theban Cycle, which in turn comprised the Oedipodea, the Thebaid, the Epigoni and the Alcmeonis; however, it is certain that none of the cyclic epics (other than Homer) survived to Photius' day, and it is likely that Proclus and Photius were not referring to a canonical collection. Modern scholars do not normally include the Theban Cycle when referring to the Epic Cycle.