Introduction

There were many early Greek epics besides the canonical Iliad, Odyssey, Theogony, and Works and Days. Often they were also attributed to Homer and Hesiod, who seemed to have been legendary representatives of heroic and didactic composition respectively. There were other legendary singers of epic, like Musaeus and Orpheus, but most early epic poets were rather obscure, and unfortunately we know little about most early poems as well. Countless traditional compositions in oral traditions of early epic were never recorded. A number were recorded only not to survive. Some fragments have been preserved, and ancient sources often provide further information about the contents of lost poems. Especially notable is the Epic Cycle, a collection of early epics that spanned the mythological past from theogonic beginnings to the death of Odysseus. Our knowledge about non-canonical early Greek epic, limited though it is, is valuable because it gives us a more comprehensive sense of the mythological range and narrative strategies of the genre.

It is clear that different types of epic traditions flourished from the eighth century to the fifth century BCE, and that the singers of early hexameter compositions knew of more than the Trojan War. The Theban wars (e. g., in the Epic Cycle) and Herakles (e. g., the Capture of Oechalia, more than one Heraclea) were certainly popular topics, but much other heroic material could be worked into epic (e. g., Argonautic material in the Corinthiaca by Eumelos, Theseids featuring Theseus). Early epic was not always heroic narrative; often verse was organized by genealogy (e. g., the Hesiodic Catalogue, the Phoronis) or by traditional lore, similarly to the didactic Works and Days by Hesiod (e. g., the Hesiodic Precepts of Chiron). Religious and philosophical speculation could also be expressed in epic verse (e. g., Orphic epic, the verse of Empedocles). The surviving Homeric Hymns, hexameter compositions that were usually comparably brief and which served as prefaces to performance of epic narrative, contained much mythic and cultic information on divinities. Many epics are admixtures of different types of material and not easily classified (see Chapter 1, by Martin, Chapter 23, by Nelson, and Chapter 28, by Garner).

There are many difficulties in reconstructing these early epics. Sometimes we know little more than the title of a poem or the name of a poet. Often poems were ascribed to multiple authors. Many were ascribed implausibly to Homer or Hesiod, and some remained anonymous. Different poems could be labeled with the same title (which were

Probably not original to the epics but applied to them at a later date), and the same poem could be known by more than one title. Some epics became attached to longer works, and parts of epics became known as independent works (e. g., the Hesiodic Catalogue continues the Theogony, and the Hesiodic Shield of Herakles is itself a part of the Catalogue). Added to these difficulties is the probability that many of these epics existed as fluid oral traditions that were performed over long periods of time; textual recordings may represent a late version, or one manifestation of several versions.

It appears that no early epic matched the Iliad and Odyssey in length, but many were reportedly of considerable length, often 6,000 to 7,000 lines (the Theban epics in the Cycle, the Danais), possibly more (Panyassis’ Heraclea was about 9,000). The Cypria is said to have had eleven books, though others may have been as short as a couple of books (Iliou Persis, Telegony). Early epic is usually seen as coming to a close by the fifth century. Certainly epic did not end then, but hexameter compositions in the classical age began to stray from standard boundaries of the genre. Epic poets could describe the recent past (Choerilus of Samos), or display a scholarly perspective (Antimachus of Colophon). Oral traditions of earlier epic composition were dying out, and certain fixed texts, such as those in the Epic Cycle, became well known as exemplars of what was no longer being performed. Attic tragedians featured the narratives contained in non-Homeric epic and may have been influenced by these texts; later composers of epic (e. g. Apollonius of Rhodes, Virgil, and Quintus of Smyrna) probably knew surviving examples of Cyclic and other non-canonical epic.