Cyclic Poets is a shorthand term for the early Greek epic poets, approximate contemporaries of Homer. We know no more about these poets than we know about Homer, but modern scholars regard them as having composed orally, as did Homer. In the classical period, surviving early epic poems were ascribed to these authors, just as the Iliad and Odyssey were ascribed to Homer. Together with Homer, whose Iliad covers a mere 50 days of the war, they cover the complete war "cycle", thus the name. Most modern scholars place Homer in the 8th century BC. The other poets listed below seemed to have lived in the 7th–5th centuries BC. Excluding Homer's, none of the works of the cyclic poets survive.
Read more about Cyclic Poets: List of Named Poets, Bibliography
Famous quotes containing the word poets:
“There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,
Came that “Ave atque Vale” of the poet’s hopeless woe,
Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago,”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)