Stasinus

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According to some ancient authorities, Stasinus of Cyprus, a semi-legendary early Greek poet, was the author of the Cypria, in eleven books, one of the poems belonging to the Epic Cycle. According to Photius others ascribed it to Hegesias (or Hegesinus) of Salamis or elsewhere even to Homer himself, who was said to have written it on the occasion of his daughter's marriage to Stasinus. At Halicarnassus, according to an inscription found in 1995 they ascribed it to a local poet, a "Kyprias".^[1]

The Cypria, presupposing an acquaintance with the events of the Homeric poem, confined itself to what preceded, and thus formed a kind of introduction to the Iliad. It contained an account of the judgement of Paris, the rape of Helen, the abandonment of Philoctetes on the island of Lemnos, the landing of the Achaeans on the coast of Asia Minor, and the first engagement before Troy. It is possible that the "Trojan Battle Order" (the list of Trojans and their allies, Iliad 2.816-876, which formed an appendix to the "Catalogue of Ships") is abridged from that in the Cypria, which was known to contain a list of the Trojan allies. Proclus, in his Chrestomathia, gave an outline of the poem (preserved in Photius, cod. 239). Plato puts quotes from Stasinos' works in the mouth of Socrates, in his dialogue Euthyphro.

[edit] References

[edit] Authorities

• FG Welcker, Der epische Cyclus (1862).
• DB Monro, Appendix to his edition of Odyssey, xiii.-xxiv. (1901).
• Thomas W Allen, "The Epic Cycle," in Classical Quarterly (Jan. 1908, sqq.).

[edit] Sources

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.