Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/148

 134 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY 4. THE ACHAIAN-TKOJAN CYCLE 175. A part of the Achaians once emigrated from Thessaly to Argolis. Some of them were forced by the Dorians into Achaia, and afterwards settled lower Italy. Others went to Asia Minor, and there in company with the Achaians of Thessaly, who migrated thither at the same time, obtained by conquest new homes in the vicinity of Troy, which was then lying in ruins. It was probably the effort to explain the origin of these ruins, which went back to a prehistoric period, that caused the migrating Grecian tribes to connect them with old myths of their own people. Taking their idea from the conquest of this same land, which they had just made an accomplished fact, they fancied the destruction of Ilios- Troia to have been the result of a campaign of their own ancestors. 176. This whole legendary subject-matter was treated in the following independent epics, which group themselves round the Iliad and the Odyssey : (1) The Cypria, by a Cyprian poet, perhaps Stasinus ; a work originating after the completion of the interpolated additions to the Iliad. (2) The Iliad of Homer, who may have lived about 850 B.C. (3) The Aithiopis of Arctinus of Miletus, written perhaps about 750 B.C. (4) The < Little Iliad 7 of the Lesbian Lesches, of the first half of the seventh century B.C. (5) The ' Destruction of Ilios' (IXtbv Wpo-ts), also by Arctinus. (6) The ' Homeward Voyages ' (Noo-rot), by Agias of Troezen, later than Arctinus and the Odyssey. (7) The Odyssey, to be dated somewhere about 775 B.C. (8) The Telegonia, by Eugammon of Cyrene, about 570 B.C. 177. Of the foregoing, aside from fragments and mea- gre excerpts, only the Iliad and the Odyssey are extant.