The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics 1st Edition by M. L. West (PDF)

Description

The Iliad and Odyssey do not cover the main story of the Trojan War. The whole saga, which includes Zeus’ plan to reduce the world’s population, the Judgment of Paris and seduction of Helen, the start of the campaign, the Wooden Horse, the fall of Achilles, the homecoming of Agamemnon, and the eventual death of Odysseus, was related in six other epics, dating from 630-560 BCE, that were influential for lyric poets, tragedians, and artists of the classical age but are known to us only through fragments and brief prose summaries. In this book Martin West presents all the source material and provides the first comprehensive commentary on it, making full use of iconographic as well as literary evidence. Discussing the individual fragments and testimonia, he endeavours to reconstruct the connections between them, so far as possible, and to build up a picture of the plan and course of each poem. In a substantial introduction he addresses general issues, including the nature and formation of the Epic Cycle, the status of the summaries of the Troy epics preserved under the name of Proclus, the validity of the attested ascriptions to particular poets, the reflexes of the Cycle in early art and literature, and its fortunes in and after the Hellenistic period.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: About the Author Martin West was a Fellow and Praelector at University College, Oxford, from 1963 to 1974, then Professor of Greek at Bedford and Royal Holloway Colleges London till 1991, and a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College Oxford from 1991 to 2004. He continues to live and work in Oxford.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is probably the most we will ever be able to know about the missing epics of the great Troy cycle. We could not have learned it from a more knowledgable scholar than Martin West.

⭐This is book is very important to my research on Greek vase that depict scenes from the Epic Cycle (the Trojan War). West is THE scholar whose work I most admire and consult.

⭐Though somewhat pricey, if only choosing one book on this topic, this is the one to buy.It helps to know some ancient Greek.Note: Loeb’s ‘Greek Epic Fragments’ contains many translated passages found in ancient Greek ,in West’s ‘Epic Cycle’ .Quoted Reviews:“Organises an extraordinary amount of information concerning difficult and complex matters”-Burgess“This re-evaluation of Iliadic politics also has important implications for the use of Homeric epic by historians”-Martin

⭐A valuable, if very expensive, book spoilt by the author’s somewhat petulant refusal to provide translations of all the Greek. There is something of a “if you can’t be bothered to read classical Greek to an expert standard, I can’t be bothered to explain myself to you” attitude here. This really is unreasonable as the Greek is hard and often ambiguous. It is also odd because West has himself produced perfectly adequate translations of the Greek Epic Fragments in the Loeb series. Unless you understand Early Classical Greek to a post-gradate standard, you will need a translation. Examining the differences between the two books is, in itself, a good place to start studying these lost epics.

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