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M. L. West. The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. ix, 334. $150.00. ISBN 978-0-19-966225-8.
The "Epic Cycle" was a collection of archaic Greek epics perceived in antiquity as furnishing a unitary account of the "cycle" of Greek myth. The idea of this "cycle" remained vague and the Epic Cycle itself a loose and permeable corpus; at minimum the term referred to a core group of six poems all dealing with the Trojan War and, taken together with the Homeric epics, providing a full history of the war from beginnings to aftermath. These poems are of crucial importance to our understanding of early Greek epic, since they date to the archaic period, dealt with the same heroic mythology as the Homeric poems, and were composed in essentially the same poetic language; yet they differed from the Iliad and Odyssey in length (they were much shorter), in organization (some at least seem to have been rather loosely constructed), and in overall tone (relatively less dignified). Despite their importance, however, they have played as yet an undersized and inconsistent role in Homeric studies, since their reconstruction has remained an esoteric corner of scholarship. M. L. West therefore does a great service in providing an account of these poems,...