The Cypria: Reconstructing the Lost Prequel to Homer's Iliad

In Classical times, the story of the Trojan War was told in a series of eight epic poems known as the Epic Cycle, of which only the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer survive to the present day. The first poem in the sequence was the Cypria, which described the early years of the war from Eris' casting of the golden apple at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, to Paris' abduction of Helen, the sacrifice of Iphigenia, Odysseus' treacherous murder of Palamedes, and finally, the enslavement of Briseis ...