ABSTRACT
The poems of the Epic Cycle 1 are commonly regarded as minor satellites of the Iliad and Odyssey. Their authors, whoever they were and whatever their date, 2 are suspected not only of composing introductions and sequels to the Homeric poems, but also of using the Homeric poems as a source to expand upon. 3 The relation between the Cyclic poems and early Greek myth is therefore thought to be problematic. 4 Certainly many scholars have been willing to consider at least some of the material in the Cyclic poems traditional and pre-Homeric. 5 If anything, scholars have become more respectful of the Cyclic poems because of 114two recent critical trends: a) the resurgence of neo-analysis, now practiced from an oralist perspective, 6 and b) a revived focus on a “Pisistratean recension” as the time of fixation for the Homeric poems. 7 The former has most plausibly explained how material in the Cyclic poems could be pre-Homeric; the latter necessarily calls into question the supposed dominance of Homer in the Archaic Age. Yet the manner in which the poems of the Epic Cycle seem to “fill in the gaps” between the Homeric poems causes hesitation. If their very form implies the Homeric poems as a precondition of their composition, to what degree did the shadow of Homer loom over their content?
