Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/72

48 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE Cypria,* which seems to have stood rather apart and independent in the general epic tradition.

The Télegoneia,* too, though in its essence a mere sequel, making Telegonus, son of Odysseus and Kirkê, sail in search of his father, just as Têlemachus did, is full of genuine saga-stuff. Odysseus is repeated in his son, like Achilles, like Launcelot and Tristram. The sons of the 'Far-wanderer' are 'Far-fighter' and 'Far-born,' and a third, by Calypso, is 'Far-subduer' (Têledamus). The bowman has a bowman son, and the son wanders because the father did. And the end of the Telegoneia* is in the simplest saga-spirit. Telegonus unknowingly slays his father, who gives him Penelope to wed and protect. He takes all the characters to Kirkê in the magic island; she purifies him of blood, and makes Têlemachus and Penelope immortal; finally, the two young men marry their respective step-mothers, Odysseus apparently remaining dead. That is not late or refined work. 'Eugamon' ('Happy-marrier') of Cyrene must have seemed a grotesque figure to the men of the fifth century; he was at home among those old saga-makers who let Heracles give Deianira to Hyllus, and Œdipus take on the late king's wife as part of the establishment.

The critical questions suggested by the rejected epics are innumerable. To take one instance, how comes it that the Little Iliad* alone in our tradition is left in so thin a dress of conventional 'Epic' language that the Æolic shows through? One line actually gives the broad a and probably the double consonants of ^olic, vv^ fiev erjv fxecraa, Xafi'irpa S' iirereWe aeXdva. Others are merely conventionalised on the surface. Possibly some epics continued to be sung in Lesbos in the