Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/86

64 64 HISTORY OF THE CHAPTER VI. § 1. Genera* character of the Cyclic poems. — § 2. The Destruction of Troy and j*Ethi- opis of Arctinus of Miletus. — § 3. The little Iliad of Lesches. — § 4. The Cypria of Stasinus. — § 5. The Nostoi of Agias of Troezen. — § 6. The Telegonia of Eu« gammon of Cyrene. — § 7. Poems on the War against Thebes. § 1. Homer's poems, as they became the foundation of all Grecian literature, are likewise the central point of the epic poetry of Greece. All that was most excellent in this line originated from them, and was connected with them in the way of completion or continuation ; so that by closely considering* this relation, we arrive not only at a proper understanding of the subjects of these later epics, but even are able, in return, to throw some light upon the Homeric poems themselves, — the Iliad and Odyssey. This class of epic poets is called the Cyclic, from their constant endeavour to connect their poems with those of Ho- mer, so that the whole should form a great cycle. Hence also originated the custom of comprehending their poems almost collectively under the name of Homer*, their connexion with the Iliad and Odyssey being taken as a proof that the whole was one vast conception. More accurate accounts, however, assign almost all these poems to particular authors, who lived after the commencement of the Olympiads, and therefore con- siderably later than Homer. Indeed, these poems, both in their cha- racter and their conception of the mythical events, are very different from the Iliad and Odyssey. These authors cannot even have been called Homerids, since a race of this name existed only in Chios, and not one of them is called a Chian. Nevertheless it is credible that they were Homeric rhapsodists by profession, to whom the constant recitation of the ancient Homeric poems would naturally suggest the notion of continuing them by essays of their own in a similar tone. Hence, too, it would be more likely to occur that these poems, when they were sung by the same rhapsodists, would gradually themselves acquire the name of Homeric epics. From a close comparison of the extracts and fragments of these poems, which we still possess, it is evi- dent that their authors had before them copies of the Iliad and Odyssey in their complete form, or, to speak more accurately, comprehending the same series of events as those current among the later Greeks and our- selves, and that they merely connected the action of their own poems with the beginning and end of these two epopees. But notwithstanding the close connexion which they made between their own productions and the Homeric poems, notwithstanding that they often built upon particular allusions in Homer, and formed from them long passages of their own
 * 0/ f/ivroi u^ctloi Kit) tom Kvx'/.ov uvufipouiriv lis avrov ("O^sjaav). Proclus, Vita Homed,