D M Smith (1)

The Cypria (mostly lost or fragmented) was an epic poem in eleven books, variously attributed to Homer, Hegesias of Salmis, Cyprias of Halicarnassus or Stasinus of Cyprus. The Cypria deals with the early history of the Troyan War ("pre-Iliad"), from its origins at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis to the capture of Chryseis and Briseis, leading into the events of the Iliad.

This is the author's attempt to reconstruct the lost poem from later writings, arranged and edited so as to approximate the lost originals. The author's stated goal was to assemble a coherent, easy-to-follow narrative with the bare minimum of editorial intervention, in as great a detail as possible while relying only on Classical sources, i.e. works composed while the stories told in the Cypria were still a part of the public conscousness. Smith hopes that this will at least allow a reader to enjoy this lost story as a single, (mostly) uninterrupted text for the first time in over a thousand years. In this book, all the "pre-Iliad" excerpts and text are gathered together in one convenient volume, which provides the necessary back-story for anyone preparing to embark on a study of the Homeric epics.

The meat of the book is essentially a collection of excerpts from other texts that deal with the stories that were once included in the Cypria. There is no author commentary to detract from this section of the book. The book is also accompanied by an extensive introduction which details how Smith put together this book and which older texts he used as sources and any discrepencies in the tales. I found the author's introduction to be very informative and this collection of the "pre-Iliad" narrative very useful. This is something useful to have on hand for people who enjoy Homer's epics or wish to know more about the early Trojan War.

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