The Cypria: Reconstructing the Lost Prequel to Homer's Iliad
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The men who took part in the expedition were these: Alcmaeon and Amphilochus, sons of Amphiaraus; Aegialeus, son of Adrastus; Diomedes, son of Tydeus; Promachus, son of Parthenopaeus; Sthenelus, son of Capaneus; Thersander, son of Polynices; and Euryalus, son of Mecisteus. —Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, III
Of these, Amphilochus, Diomedes, Sthenelus, Thersander and Euryalus all fought in the Trojan War.
[56] Heracles’ mother Alcmene was sometimes said to be the daughter or granddaughter of Pelops.
[57] In the Heroicus by Lucius Flavius Philostratus (c. 170 to 250 AD), the wife of Telephus was Hiera. She was slain by Nireus (famous for being the most handsome of the Greeks) whilst leading the Mysian cavalry against the Greek invaders. This episode is also depicted on the Pergamon Altar, which dates from the 2nd century BC. Telephus’ son Eurypylus appeared in the Little Iliad, one of the lost Cyclic Epics, joining the war on the side of the Trojans after the death of Achilles. He killed a number of Greeks, including Machaon the son of Asclepius, before dying at the hands of Neoptolemus. The story is retold in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica.
[58] This friendly exchange is probably unique to Dictys; other accounts placed Telephus’ reconciliation with the Greeks after the healing of his wound at Argos. Proclus seems to imply that in the Cypria Telephus fled after his wounding and did not reencounter the Greeks until his appearance at Argos, but it is impossible to know what has been omitted.
[59] In Euripides’ Telephus, a lost play of the 5th century BC, Telephus kidnaps the infant Orestes and threatens to slay him if Achilles does not heal the wound. This is also the version given by Hyginus.
[60] Contrast with Apollodorus’ version in Chapter I, where the oath is suggested by Odysseus.
[61] The Classical Greeks believed that the city of Mycenae had been built by the Cyclopes, due to the enormous stone blocks used in its construction; hence the term ‘Cyclopean’ used to describe such masonry.
[62] Euripides here conflates Nauplius son of Poseidon with Nauplius son of Clytoneus, father of Palamedes and member of the Argonauts. Many writers—Apollodorus and Hyginus included—made the same error, but the father of Palamedes was in fact the great-great-grandson of the earlier Nauplius.
[63] A figure of speech. Meriones was the son of Molus, the half-brother of Idomeneus (see note 31).
[64] The rumour that Sisyphus, famously condemned to push a boulder up a hill for all eternity, was the true father of Odysseus is not found in Homer, or (presumably) the other Cyclic Epics. Its earliest known appearance is in Sophocles’ Ajax, written in the latter half of the 5th century BC.
[65] Cypris = Aphrodite. ‘Lady of Cypris’, where she is often said to have been born.
[66] Most accounts give Agamemnon and Clytemnestra three daughters: Iphigenia, Chrysothemis and Electra (Laodice in the Iliad). Some versions, including the Cypria, added a fourth:
Either he follows Homer who spoke of the three daughters of Agamemnon, or—like the writer of the Cypria—he makes them four, [distinguishing] Iphigenia and Iphianassa. —Laurentian scholiast on Sophocles, Electra
[67] Inachus was the first king of Argos; i.e. Iphigenia should have grown up to one day be wedded to an Argive prince.
[68] Clytemnestra’s warning of course foreshadows the eventual murder of Agamemnon upon his return from Troy. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon he dies by the hand of Clytemnestra herself; in the Odyssey the murder is said to have been committed by Clytemnestra’s lover (and Agamemnon’s cousin) Aegisthus, who afterwards usurped the throne of Mycenae until he was slain in turn by Orestes.
[69] This is a somewhat mangled version of the Oenotropae myth, which is known to have appeared at some point in the Cypria from a scholiast on Lycophron’s Alexandra. The three daughters of King Anius of Delos (Dictys places them at Aulis, which is nowhere near Delos), known as the Oenotropae, were granted the power of producing oil, corn and wine from the earth by Dionysus. At some point in their voyage to Troy the Greeks landed at Delos, and Anius offered to let them stay there and be fed by his daughters for nine years, knowing that Troy would not be taken until the tenth. Later, while the Greeks were besieging the city, Agamemnon had Palamedes fetch the Oenotropae to keep his armies from starving. According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Agamemnon brought them to Troy by force; they escaped to Andros, and when the Greeks caught up with them and tried to bind them in chains, Dionysus transformed them into snow-white doves.
[70] According to Hyginus the snake was sent by Hera to punish Philoctetes for building the funeral pyre of Heracles.
[71] In the Iliad Protesilaus is described as having been killed by an unnamed Trojan. An oft-repeated version of the myth holds that Odysseus was the first to disembark, but threw his shield upon the shore and leapt down onto it, so as not to be the first to touch Trojan soil. This does not appear to derive from any Classical source, and is likely a modern embellishment.
[72] Protos = first, laos = host or army.
[73] According to Pausanias’ Description of Greece, the wife of Protesilaus in the Cypria was Polydora daughter of Meleager (Argonaut and slayer of the Calydonian Boar). The myth here recounted by Hyginus is probably later. It is not mentioned by Homer, who in Book II of the Iliad describes how ‘his wife, her two cheeks torn in wailing, was left in Phylace and his house but half established…’
[74] According to the Bibliotheca, Laodamia stabbed herself to death.
[75] This refers to the Greek raids on the kingdoms surrounding Troy, which in most accounts take place after the initial landing (see next chapter).
[76] Cycnus or Cygnus (Latin) literally means ‘swan’.
[77] This meeting between Achilles and Helen seems to be unique to the Cypria. Malcolm Davies suggests that Aphrodite’s presence indicates a sexual union, foreshadowing a later myth that the two were wedded in the afterlife.
[78] The episode of the Greek envoys is problematic, with each source placing it at a different point in the narrative. In the Cypria it occurred directly after the landing at Troy and the death of Cycnus, but the Bibliotheca places it beforehand, with Odysseus and Menelaus travelling ahead of the main Greek army. Dictys describes two separate diplomatic missions, the second of which I give here. The first delegation, comprising Menelaus, Odysseus and Palamedes, sets off for Troy immediately after Helen’s abduction, with the Greeks only mustering at Argos after the diplomatic effort fails. I omitted this segment due to the inconsistencies it would have created, and because there is no suggestion that it appeared in the Cypria. The second mission occurs after the Greek attacks on the Trojan allies, when Telamonian Ajax captures Polydorus son of Priam, from the Thracian king Polymestor. The Greeks hope to exchange Polydorus for Helen, and when the Trojans refuse he is murdered within view of the walls—one of a number of myths surrounding Priam’s youngest son, who is slain by Achilles in the Iliad and murdered by Polymestor in Euripides’ Hecuba. I have thus made some minor abridgements in my translation of this passage, omitting references to Polydorus and the fact that this is not Menelaus and Odysseus’ first visit to Troy.
[79] This is a slight variation on an incident referred to in Book XI of the Iliad, when Agamemnon slays Peisander and Hippolochus; ‘the sons of wise-hearted Antimachus, who on a time in the gathering of the Trojans, when Menelaus had come on an embassage with godlike Odysseus, bade slay him then and there, neither suffer him to return to the Achaeans...’
[80] Here is a prime example of Dictys’ attempts to ‘de-mythologise’ his account; holding mortals responsible for events commonly attributed to gods, in order to present it as a factual history. With the exception of Medea’s flight from Colchis in the company of Jason and the Argonauts, the original versions of these myths all feature Zeus as the perpetrator.
[81] Dictys seems to be forgetting that Skyros is the kingdom of Lycomedes, where Achilles fathered Neoptolemus with Deidamia, and where Neoptolemus spent his childhood until he was summoned to Troy by Odysseus. It is therefore highly unlikely that Achi
lles would have sacked it!
[82] Some relate that Chryseis was taken from Hypoplacian Thebes, and that she had not taken refuge there nor gone there to sacrifice to Artemis, as the author of the Cypria states, but was simply a fellow townswoman of Andromache. —Eustathius, 119. 4
[83] Dictys gives the names of Briseis and Chryseis as Hippodamia and Astynome, respectively. I have reverted to the popular forms to avoid confusion. Note that in the Iliad it is Briseis—not Chryseis—who was married to King Eetion.
[84] In the original text Ajax here assaults Thrace first, and receives Polydorus, son of Priam, from King Polymestor as one of his terms of surrender (see note 2). Dictys has the attacks on the Trojan allies occur before the envoys go to Troy, but I have switched these events to fit the known chronology of the Cypria. Note that a Teuthras was also the stepfather of Telephus; they are separate characters, but confusingly, were both rulers of Mysia.
[85] Here Troilus is dispatched rather perfunctorily. With no surviving written sources, our understanding of Troilus’ place in the mythology at this early period largely comes from painted pottery; depictions of Troilus and his sister Polyxena fleeing Achilles were a popular decoration, often showing Achilles dragging the boy from his horse by his hair. Later writers added a homosexual element, with Achilles slaying Troilus for rejecting his advances, as well as a prophecy that the city of Troy would not fall if he reached his twentieth year. The famous romance with Cressida daughter of Calchas, explored by Chaucer and Shakespeare, was a medieval invention.
[86] In Dictys’ account it is Telamonian Ajax who drives away the cattle, and there is no mention of them belonging to Aeneas.
[87] The son of Jason referred to here is Euneus, whose mother was Queen Hipsipyle of Lemnos. During their quest for the Golden Fleece the Argonauts docked at Lemnos, where the women had been cursed by Aphrodite. Their husbands had abandoned them for Thracian slaves, and were subsequently murdered by the women in revenge. The Argonauts, discovering the island devoid of men, fathered numerous children during their sojourn. By the time of the Trojan War, Euneus has succeeded his mother as king of Lemnos.
[88] The capture of Lycaon son of Priam is known only from this retrospective passage in the Iliad, when Achilles encounters him on the battlefield just twelve days after his escape from slavery. Despite Lycaon’s pleading Achilles does not take him prisoner a second time, instead slaying him and casting his body into the River Xanthus.
[89] There are multiple versions of Palamedes’ death. In most accounts he is stoned to death by the Greek army after being falsely denounced as a traitor by Odysseus, but according to Pausanias’ Description of Greece, in the Cypria he was drowned by Odysseus and Diomedes whilst fishing. Dictys offers a further variation: Odysseus and Diomedes, pretending to have discovered a cache of gold in a well, lower Palamedes on the end of a rope so he can retrieve it. When he reaches the bottom they remove the rope and stone him to death.
[90] The following catalogue is essentially a condensed version of the Trojan Battle Order from Book II of the Iliad, omitting the Dardanian contingent under Aeneas and the sons of Antenor.
[91] In Homer, Sarpedon is the son of Zeus and Laodamia, daughter of Bellerophon. Xanthus was the name of a Lycian river and city. This may be interpreted as ‘from Xanthus’, or (more likely) as another example of Dictys excising the divine from his history, and using the name as that of Sarpedon’s mortal father.
[92] Homer does not give the name of Pyraechmes’ father in the Iliad, only saying that he came ‘out of Amydon from the wide-flowing Axius’. Dictys has here supplied the name of the river.