Before I read the Iliad, I was warned that it didn’t include a lot of the stories about Troy that you’d expect. There would be no judgment of Paris, no Trojan horse, no one actually winning the war. Despite the warning, it was still disappointing to slog through several hundred pages and not have a Trojan Horse at the end.

Sometime later, I was pointed to a work by Quintus of Smyrna who filled in the gaps between the end of the Iliad and the Fall of Troy. This work is called The Fall of Troy or Posthomerica depending on the publisher.

After googling, I found that the rest of the stories about Troy came from a half-dozen or so other works known collectively as the Epic Cycle. I’d initially thought that an epic cycle was some kind of ancient literary style. Wrong again. The Epic Cycle includes the myths from the Greek Dark Ages.

Sometimes, folks will include tales from the Theban wars with the Trojan war stories under the Epic Cycle umbrella. I’d never heard of the Theban wars (I’ve barely heard of Thebes) and at the moment I don’t especially care. The non-Theban stuff is sometimes called the Trojan cycle.

I tried to find out more about the tales from the Epic Cycle but they’re all lost and only fragments remain. Anything that we know about the Epic Cycle is from what later Greeks had written about it.

One theme that I’ve found in my googling is that while no one knows who wrote these works, Homer wasn’t involved. The poetry isn’t of the same standard as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Not that I would’ve noticed, I can’t read Greek.

I found the summaries to be pretty interesting for filling in the gaps left by the Iliad and the Odyssey except…

…Odysseus gets killed off by Telegonus, the son that he had with Circe. Odysseus had a son with Circe?!? Odysseus gets killed off?!? I’m not sure what to do with this. I preferred the happy ending of the Odyssey. Maybe I should pretend that it doesn’t exist like the Star Wars Phantom Menace deniers.

Here’s a summary of the summaries, largely ripped off from Wikipedia’s Epic Cycle entries:

Cypria: This is the beginning of the whole sordid affair. Zeus figures that there’s too darn many people and that’s putting a strain on his good buddy Gaia. He figured that a nice war would thin the herd. At the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, Strife gets bent out of shape and tosses an apple labeled “For the fairest” into the party. Paris is suckered into figuring out who the fairest is. Paris awards the apple to Aphrodite because she promises that he can totally bang Helen if he did. Paris and Helen run off, wreaking havoc and ending up in Troy. A bunch of Greeks chase after them and start a war.

Aethiopis: This story picks up where the Iliad left off. Achilles kills an Amazon leader. Paris kills Achilles with Apollo’s assistance. Ajax and Odysseus squabble over Achilles’ armor.

Little Iliad: This starts where Aethiopis stops. Odysseus gets to keep Achilles’ armor and Ajax doesn’t. Ajax goes bonkers, kills a bunch of sheep, and then kills himself. Odysseus and Diomedes bring back Philoctetes who kills off Paris. Helen gets over it and marries Deiphobos. Odysseus brings Achilles’ son Neoptelemus to the war and Neoptelemus starts winning it. The Greeks build a wooden horse, stuff it full of Greeks and pretend to bugger off. the Trojans bring the horse into the city.

Iliupersis: Also known as the Sack of Troy. This starts where where the Little Iliad stops. The Trojans wonder about the horse and bring it into the city anyway. That night, the  Greeks pour out of it. A bunch of folks get killed; Menelaus kills Deiphobos, Helen gets over it, and goes back to Menelaus. Ajax the Lesser rapes Cassandra and hides out at Athena’s altar; Athena has him killed at sea.

Nostoi: This starts after the Iliupersis. The Greeks are getting ready to go home from Troy. Athena is pissed off with the Greeks because they misbehaved during the sack of Troy; Agamemnon tries and fails to make Athena happy; Thetis encourages her grandson Neoptelemus to make more attempts to make the gods happy so that he won’t die horribly. Agamemnon goes home and is killed by his wife and her boyfriend. By the end, everyone is either home or dead except for Odysseus.

Telegony: This starts after the Odyssey. Odysseus wanders around a bit more and returns to Ithaca. It turns out that Odysseus and Circe had a son, Telegonus. Telegonus winds up on Ithaca without knowing where he is. He then gets into a fight with Odysseus without either one of them knowing who the other is. Telegonus mortally wounds Odysseus and then they recognise each other.

Some of the links that I used for this:
Table of Contents Proclus, The Epic Cycle
Summaries of the Trojan Cycle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Cycle