Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/68



When amid the floating masses of recited epos two poems were specially isolated and organised into complex unity, there remained a quantity of authorless poetry, originally of equal rank with the exalted two, but now mangled and disinherited. This rejected poetry was not fully organised into distinct wholes. The lays and groups of lays were left for each reciter to modify and to select from. It is an anachronism to map out a series of epics, to cut off Cypria,* Iliad, Æthiopis,* Little Iliad,* Sack of Ilion,* Homecomings,* Odyssey, Têlegoneia,* as so many separate and continuous poems composed by particular authors. The Cypria,* for instance, a great mass of 'Epê' centring in the deeds of Paris and the Cyprian goddess before the war, is attributed to Homer, Creophŷlus, Cyprias, Hêgêsias, and Stasînus; the Sack* is claimed by Homer, Arctînus, Leschês, and a person who gives his name as Hegias, Agias, or Augias, and his home as Troizên or Colophon. Some of these names perhaps belonged to real rhapsodes; some are mere inventions. 'Cyprias,' for instance, owes his existence to the happy thought that in the phrase τὰ Κύπρια ἔπη the second word might be the Doric genitive of a proper name, Κνπριαs, and then the question of authorship would be solved.