Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/90

68 68 HISTORY OF THE their common reference to Homer), but the whole mythology, from the marriage of Heaven and Earth to the last adventures of Ulysses ; for which purpose use must have been made of poems totally distinct from each other, and of whose original connexion, either in their execution or design, no trace whatever is discoverable*. § 4. The poem which in the Cyclus preceded the Iliad, and was clearly intended by its author himself for that purpose, was the Cypria, consisting of eleven books, which may be most safely ascribed to Sta- sinus of the island of Cyprus, who, however, according to the tradition, received it from Homer himself (transformed on that account into a Salaminian from Cyprus), as a portion on the marriage of his daughter. And yet the fundamental ideas of the Cypria are so un-Homeric, and contain so much of a rude attempt at philosophising on mytho- logy, which was altogether foreign to Homer, that Stasinus certainly cannot be considered as of an earlier date than Arctinus. The Cypria began with the prayer of the Earth to Zeus, to lessen the burdens of the race of man, already become too heavy ; and then related how Zeus, with the view of humbling the pride of mankind, begot Helen upon the goddess Nemesis, and gave her to be educated by Leda. The promise by Venus of the woman whose beauty was to cause the destruction of heroes to the shepherd Paris, as a reward for the decision respecting the apple of discord, her abduction from Sparta during the absence of her husband Menelaus in Crete, and while her brothers, the Dioscuri, are slain in battle by the son-s of Aphareus, were all related in conformity with the usual traditions, and the expedition of the heroes of Greece against Troy was derived from these events. The Greeks, however, according to the Cypria, twice set out from Aulis against Troy, having the first time been carried to Teuthrania in Mysia, a district ruled by Telephus, and in sailing away having been driven back by a storm ; at their second departure from Aulis the sacrifice of Iphigenia was related. The nine years' contest before Troy, and in its vicinity, did not occupy near so much space in the Cypria as the preparations for the war; the full stream of tradition, as it gushes forth from a thousand springs in the Homeric poems, has even at this period dwindled down to narrow dimensions : the chief part was connected with the incidental mentions of earlier events in Homer ; as the attack of Achilles upon iEneas near the herds of cattle f, the killing of Troilus J, the selling of Lycaon to Lemnos§; Palamedes — the nobler counterpart of Ulysses — was the only be also mentioned that, according to Proclus, there were Jive, and afterwards two books of Arctinus in the epic cyclus : according to the Tabula Borgiana, however, the poems of Arctinus included 9,100 verses, which, according to the standard of the books in Homer, would at least give twelve books. f II. xx. 90, seq. I II. xxiv. 257. The more recent poetry combines the death of Troilus with the last events of Troy. § II. xxi. 35.
 * As an additional proof of a point which indeed is almost self-evident, it may