Page:Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica.djvu/35

 of the 3rd century B.C. At a later time the term Cycle, "round" or "course" was given to this collection.

Of all this mass of epic poetry only the scantiest fragments survive; but happily Photius has preserved to us an abridgment of the synopsis made of each, poem of the "Trojan Cycle" by Proclus, i.e. Eutychius Proclus of Sicca.

The pre-Trojan poems of the Cycle may be noticed first. The Titanomachy, ascribed both to Eumelus of Corinth and to Arctinus of Miletus, began with a kind of Theogony which told of the union of Heaven and Earth and of their offspring the Cyclopes and the Hundred-handed Giants. How the poem proceeded we have no means of knowing, but we may suppose that in character it was not unlike the short account of the Titan War found in the Hesiodic Theogony (617 ff.).

What links bound the Titanomachy to the Theban Cycle is not clear. This latter group was formed of three poems, the Story of Oedipus, the Thebaïs, and the Epigoni. Of the Oedipodea practically nothing is known, though on the assurance of Athenaeus (vii. 277 E) that Sophocles followed the Epic Cycle closely in the plots of his plays, we may suppose that in outline the story corresponded closely to the history of Oedipus as it is found in the Oedipus Tyrannus. The Thebaïs seems to have begun with the origin of the fatal quarrel between Eteocles and Polyneices in the curse called down upon them by their father in his misery. The story was thence carried down to the end of the expedition under Polyneices, Adrastus and Amphiaraus against Thebes. The Epigoni (ascribed to Antimachus of Teos) xxix