Epic Cycle
Translated by Martin L. West, 2003
Homer’s epics describe the events and aftermath of a legendary war fought between the Greeks and Trojans in the Late Bronze Age. The ten-year conflict began after Paris, a prince of Troy, judged Aphrodite to be the most beautiful goddess, and as his reward absconded with Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta. Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon consequently marched a Greek army against Troy. A host of poets working in Homer’s wake produced sequels and prequels and adjuncts to these stories. The poems of this so-called ‘Epic Cycle’ are fragmentary, but this one, the Cypria, which is thought to have been composed in the sixth century BC, survives in detailed summary. The poem described Paris meeting Helen for the very first time and the Greeks arriving in Troy. It also included this intriguing backstory, recorded by an ancient scholar on the Iliad, as an additional explanation for the cause of the Trojan War.
There was a time when the countless races [of men] roaming [constantly] over the land were weighing down the [deep-]breasted earth’s expanse. Zeus took pity when he saw it, and in his complex mind he resolved to relieve the all-nurturing earth of mankind’s weight by fanning the great conflict of the Trojan War, to void the burden through death. So the warriors at Troy kept being killed, and Zeus’ plan was being fulfilled.