By Martin L. West

*pdf is made of Oxford Scholarship web pages. it's very readable, yet formatting may well glance abnormal first and foremost, because it is neither test nor retail PDF.*

For those who flinch at a $150- buy rate while stocking their own library...here's a PDF of this highly-praised work.

Publisher's details, by way of Bryn Mawr Review
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First accomplished observation at the misplaced Troy epics
Includes a considerable creation which discusses the final concerns and ancient context to the texts
Fully documented and recent, together with the newest fabric and scholarship
The Iliad and Odyssey don't hide the most tale of the Trojan conflict. the entire saga, along with Zeus' plan to minimize the world's inhabitants, the Judgment of Paris and seduction of Helen, the beginning of the crusade, the wood Horse, the autumn of Achilles, the homecoming of Agamemnon, and the eventual dying of Odysseus, was once comparable in six different epics, courting from 630-560 BCE, that have been influential for lyric poets, tragedians, and artists of the classical age yet are recognized to us merely via fragments and short prose summaries.

In this publication Martin West provides all of the resource fabric and gives the 1st accomplished observation on it, making complete use of iconographic in addition to literary proof. Discussing the person fragments and testimonia, he endeavours to reconstruct the connections among them, as far as attainable, and to accumulate an image of the plan and process each one poem. In a considerable advent he addresses common concerns, together with the character and formation of the Epic Cycle, the prestige of the summaries of the Troy epics preserved lower than the identify of Proclus, the validity of the attested ascriptions to specific poets, the reflexes of the Cycle in early artwork and literature, and its fortunes in and after the Hellenistic period.

Readership: For students and graduate scholars of Classical stories, specifically these drawn to classical texts and the epic tradition.

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BRYN MAWR REVIEW

M. L. West, The Epic Cycle: A remark at the misplaced Troy Epics. Oxford; big apple: Oxford collage Press, 2013. Pp. ix, 334. ISBN 9780199662258. $150.00.

Reviewed via Patrick O’Sullivan, collage of Canterbury, New Zealand ([email protected])

Martin West’s learn of the misplaced Trojan epics is one other significant contribution of this pupil to Classics in a profession spanning good over part a century. because the subtitle makes transparent, this statement doesn't care for the Theban saga, or the fragments of different epic poems, similar to the Heraclea of Panyassis or the Theseis. as an alternative, the focal point is on these poems, except the Iliad and Odyssey, which whole the complete Trojan saga and its aftermath. Such poems comprise episodes starting from Zeus’ Malthusian determination to reason the warfare at Troy (and Thebes) to alleviate Earth of over the top human inhabitants within the Cypria—the world’s first-known prequel—to the dying of Odysseus as stated within the Telegony

In the preface West proclaims that he intends to head past interpreting particular fragments and testimonia; he additionally goals to reconstruct the overall narratives of the misplaced epics (cf. additionally pp. 51-4). to do that he is based, unavoidably, yet no longer exclusively, at the prose summaries we now have from Proclus’ Chrestomathy; yet he additionally takes under consideration what historical literature and artwork depicting a similar tales can let us know concerning the cyclic epics. The remark, then, is extensive in scope, and is the entire extra enticing for this reason. evidently, there'll be moments while readers will disagree with a few of West’s reconstructions. yet, as an entire, this paintings is a version of readability, jam-packed with scholarly insights and exhibiting command of an enormous diversity of fabric mixed with believable research. because the first of its variety, this statement drastically complements our figuring out of those very important and influential, if in moderation preserved, poems.

In the wide-ranging advent we discover a superb coaching for the statement forward. It explores many concerns and topics regularly that obtain extra particular remedy in all of the six chapters which follow—one for every of the six Trojan cyclic epics (Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Iliou Persis, Nostoi, Telegony). West means that our significant resources for the Cycle, Proclus’ Chrestomathy and Apollodorus’ Bibliotheke, derive their debts from digests of the cyclic epics datable to the Hellenistic interval. yet West curiously makes an attempt to track the formation of those epics as a ‘Cycle’ past the Hellenistic interval to the shadowy mid-fourth-century determine Phayllos, pointed out via Aristotle (Rhet. 1417a15) as placing jointly a succinct precis of ‘the Cycle’, which the thinker compares to Odysseus’ precis (ἀπόλογος) of his adventures to Penelope on his go back (cf. Od. 23.310-41). by means of ‘cyclic’ poetry West capacity poems designed to shape a section of a vaster narrative series, filling in components no longer coated via latest epic poems, akin to the Iliad and Odyssey, either one of which are thought of free-standing and entire in themselves (p. 17, cf. p. 20).

West additionally issues out that the cyclic poems usually are not all solid within the related mold: the Aethiopis appears to be like to were extra unified than, say, the Cypria, in its continuation of the Iliad and in finishing the tale of Achilles. Nor have been all of the cyclic epics created ex nihilo after the Iliad and Odyssey had accomplished pre-eminence; really, what finally grew to become the Epic Cycle is predicated on oral poems, latest in a little fluid shape, relationship to the 8th and 7th centuries BC (pp. 21-6).

The advent additionally bargains quite often with such concerns as ascriptions and authorship and the methodological problems of making an attempt reconstructions of misplaced fabric via later literature or works of art (pp. 40-47). Many could baulk altogether at utilizing iconographic fabric to reconstruct misplaced literature, yet West is correct in my opinion to think about what gentle such fabric can shed on at the very least a few misplaced epics. whereas final wary, he plausibly entertains the opportunity of allusions to convinced misplaced epics in scenes or figures that as a rule could haven't any ‘organic’ connection to one another, yet seem jointly on an artifact, once they are awesome good points of a misplaced epic. One instance is a portray of the Judgment of Paris by means of the Kadmos Painter of c. 420 (= LIMC Eris 7) which on an higher point contains Eris and Themis in dialog, figures who function within the Cypria (Arg. 1a, cf. Arg. 1b), yet differently should not hooked up to every other.

Treatment of every poem is at the start divided into sections facing problems with its attestation in historical literature and artwork, authorship, date, the scope of its contents and its relation to the good Homeric epics. Then stick with the fragments and commentaries. The texts are usually not translated; West recommends utilizing the translations that seemed in his Loeb variation of the Greek epic fragments in 2003. a couple of striking variations emerge among this statement and the Loeb variation: for example, Cypria Fr. 29a and F 14 of the Nostoi don't seem within the Loeb variation. in other places, West has revised his considering on a couple of issues in view that 2003, and indicates an admirable willingness to re-examine his previous released paintings at the Cycle (see pp. 238-9 the place he reviews one among his emendations to Arg. 3b of the Iliou Persis).

Considerations of house hinder a close account of West’s commentaries, yet a couple of issues are worthy stating the entire comparable. West stocks Aristotle’s view (Poet. 1458a37) that either the Cypria and Little Iliad are episodic (πολυμερῆ); and this is often possibly to be anticipated a minimum of of the previous poem, that is designed to carry the hearer/reader up to the mark at the first 9 years of the Trojan struggle. West discusses textual difficulties within the Cypria, suggesting occasional emendations, and notes ways that the poet not just displays the language of Homer and Hesiod but additionally screens novelty in adapting the older poets’ formulae (e.g. F 10.6, cf. Hesiod, Th. 413; Il. 14.204; etc.). attention-grabbing speculations abound the following, and West toys with historicizing readings once in a while (p. ninety three, 116), in addition to noting the poem’s effect on Pindar, between others (p. 106, etc.).

West dates the Aethiopis to the overdue 7th century, contemplating it to predate the Odyssey and restates his view that it truly is one of many extra unified of the cyclic epics, with the occasions best as much as the demise of Achilles as its principal subject matter; this, he indicates, has its roots in prior compositions dealing individually with Memnon and Penthesileia which develop into mixed into what we all know because the Aethiopis at the present time. He sees Memnon as a post-Iliadic determine, (pp. 145-6) and rightly issues out that says that the Iliad borrows lots of its motifs from the Aethiopis—so a lot an indicator of Neoanalytical scholarship—can be simply as plausibly reversed.

Aristotle’s view of the disjointed nature of the Little Iliad is reiterated via West (p. 169), and he posits a ‘programme’ of occasions over a twelve-day interval to hide all of the significant episodes at Troy from the competition over the armour of Achilles to the Sack. regardless of its obviously episodic constitution, West however attractively indicates a unifying trajectory through the poem that starts with the depression of the Greeks over the loss of life of Achilles and suicide of Ajax and ends with the Greeks effective on the sack of Troy. Like different students, West additionally sees the Little Iliad as slightly strange in the Epic Cycle in its inclusion of earthy, light-hearted parts, akin to the Greeks’ determining to permit an overheard dialogue among Trojan ladies come to a decision who may still win Achilles’ palms. From this he infers a later playful remodeling of the older epic culture. Such components are undeniably found in the poem, yet as early because the Iliad Homer may perhaps show earthy humour, corresponding to in e-book 14 in Hera’s comical seduction of Zeus, or the obnoxious Ajax, son of Oïleus slipping over within the footrace in the course of Patroklos’ funeral video games and finishing up with a mouthful of cow-dung. it truly is remarkable then, that West needs to delete χέσαιτο γάρ, εἰ μαχέσαιτο from Little Iliad F 2, within which one of many women discussing who may still get Achilles’ armour mentions girl ‘would shit herself if she fought’ in conflict. the truth that Aristophanes in his Knights (1057) prices this a part of the fragment may additionally weaken the case for deletion or emendation here.

In distinction, the doubtless older Iliou Persis indicates no signal of light-heartedness, at the very least in its scanty continues to be, and West means that it by no means accomplished broad foreign money, hence prompting the poet of Little Iliad to compose a brand new account of the Sack.

The Nostoi would appear to be one other episodic cyclic epic, integrating a number of narratives of assorted heroes’ returns from Troy, together with Agamemnon, Menelaos and Neoptolemos; the poet, it is recommended, could by surprise swap from one narrative to the subsequent to create the unique cliff-hangers. West sees during this poem a detailed engagement with the Odyssey and dates either to the overdue 7th century; he additionally sees, if no longer an analogous poet for either, then wide contacts among the composers to provide an explanation for the narrative and structural parallels (p. 250). between those West argues for a Nekuia scene to parallel that during Odyssey eleven; in this examining, the Nostoi has Menelaos encountering the ghost of his murdered brother, who tells him the wretched story of his homecoming. whereas primary connections among the 2 poems certainly exist, they can be defined by way of a poet operating less than the effect of the Odyssey, which arguably had attained its pre-eminence a long time, if no longer generations, past; it doesn't look essential to me to work out the poems as coeval or via an identical hand.

Discussion of the Telegony by means of Eugammon concludes with a desirable conjecture that Odysseus’ unique loss of life was once now not by the hands of his son Telegonos, who stabbed him with a spear that had the barb of a sting-ray as its aspect (Proclus Arg. four; cf. F 5). seeing that antiquity, with the outstanding exception of Aristarchus, this used to be thought of to be what the Homeric Teiresias was once pertaining to whilst he prophesied that Odysseus’ ‘mild death’ (θάνατος ... ἀβληχρὸς) might come from the ocean (Odyssey 11.134-7). West, notwithstanding, noting that ache because of a sting-ray barb is whatever yet gentle, argues that Teiresias is pertaining to an occasion defined within the Psychagogoi (F 275) by way of Aeschylus within which a heron defecates at the bald head of an growing old Odysseus; the hero’s dying is attributable to a fish barb inside the bird’s droppings which poisons his scalp. the sort of death, in response to West, additionally conforms to a couple of folktale traditions in Greece and in different places within which the shape of loss of life is posited as a riddle. The loss of life by the hands of Telegonos is, following this interpreting, a post-Homeric invention by means of Eugammon so as to add grandeur to Odysseus’ dying, and raise him from his unique folk-tale prestige as a trickster to at least one of the good heroes of the Trojan saga.

Any reconstruction of fabric as fragmentary because the (Trojan) Epic Cycle will include a lot that's speculative, and West admits that at the very least considered one of his makes an attempt may well stretch credulity (p. 281-2); somewhere else he looks overly reliant on opt for resources, reminiscent of Pausanias, in his bid to reconstruct the ultimate occasions of Little Iliad (pp. 212-22). but there's a lot that's believable and insightful during this wealthy and necessary paintings, considering that quite a bit of the dialogue is educated by way of a powerful erudition which sits frivolously on its writer. The writing is obvious and fascinating, the standard of proofreading excessive; typos are infrequent and harmless (e.g. on p. 142 n. 15; on p. 202 learn Plato Republic 493d, now not 439d). scholars and students will derive nice make the most of West’s labours, for his handy assortment and research of the traditional resource fabric for the Cycle (e.g., attestations in literature and art), up to for his wide-ranging and coherent therapy of the Cycle total. English readers may perhaps infrequently ask for a greater synoptic research of the without end attention-grabbing is still of this corpus of poetry, as a way to shape the root for destiny discussions of the Cycle for many years to come back.