The Hello and welcome back to the history of ancient Greece, episode 18 from Epic to Lyric.

Last episode, we discussed the creative energy that exploded forth in the realm of art and architecture.

Well that same sort of energy can also be found in the sphere of writing.

We have already discussed the impact that literacy had on the ancient Greeks and have gone

into extensive detail about the two infamous poets Homer Homer and Heseid. But there was so much more happening than just those two in the realm of literary creation in the archaic period.

In the next few episodes, we are going to discuss other influential people whose writings give us an insight into the various economic, social, and political happenings that are reshaping Archaic Greece.

In addition to Homer, there were other... shaping Archaic Greece.

In addition to Homer, there were other epic poets that some men at the various oral myths

that were passed down from generation to generation.

The other poets of the so-called epic cycle were most assuredly writing after Homer,

and styled their poems after the great bard.

As we have mentioned before, the Iliad only detailed only a small part of the 10th year of the Trojan War, because Homer's audience would have already known the story.

Well, these other epic poets wrote down the rest of the story.

Thus, the epic cycle related the full story of the Trojan War.

Although some scholars sometimes include the Iliad

and the Odyssey, among the poems of the epic cycle, the term is more often used to specify the non-homeric

poems as distinct from the Homeric ones.

Aside from the Iliad in the Odyssey, the epics only survive in fragments. Fortunately, the tales told in the cycle are recounted by other ancient sources, notably Virgil's Anead, Ovets metamorphosis, Quintus of Smyrna's post-Homerica, and Escales' Orastain trilogy, as well as summaries

from late Antiquity and the Byzantine period.

We will do a very brief overview of the six books.

The Cypria, written by Stasinus of Cyprus, narrates the events leading up to the

Iliad and 11 books.

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