Athena

The Ionic School of Epic poetry was dominated by the Homeric tradition, and while the style and method of treatment are Homeric, it is natural that the Ionic poets refrained from cultivating the ground tilled by Homer, and chose for treatment legends which lay beyond the range of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey“. Equally natural it is that they should have particularly selected various phases of the tale of Troy which preceded or followed the action of the “Iliad” or “Odyssey”. In this way, without any preconceived intention, a body of epic poetry was built up by various writers which covered the whole Trojan story. But the entire range of heroic legend was open to these poets, and other clusters of epics grew up dealing particularly with the famous story of Thebes, while others dealt with the beginnings of the world and the wars of heaven. In the end there existed a kind of epic history of the world, as known to the Greeks, down to the death of Odysseus, when the heroic age ended. In the Alexandrian Age these poems were arranged in chronological order, apparently by Zenodotus of Ephesus, at the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. At a later time the term “Cycle”, ’round’ or ‘course’, was given to this collection. ::More

The fleets soon came face to face; and Xerxes took up his post on a mountain, where he sat in state upon a hastily built throne to see his vessels destroy the enemy. He had made very clever plans, and, as his fleet was far larger than that of the Greeks, he had no doubt that he would succeed in defeating them. ::More

The news of Xerxes’ crossing of the Hellespont, and of his approach to conquer Greece, soon reached Athens, where it filled all hearts with fear. The people then remembered Miltiades, and bitterly regretted his death, and their ingratitude, which had been its real cause. ::More

Boeotia was now rid of the Sphinx; and when the Thebans heard the joyful news of its death, they welcomed Oedipus with much joy. In reward for his bravery, they gave him not only the throne, but also the hand of Jocasta, the widowed queen. It was thus that Oedipus, although he did not know it, fulfilled the second part of the prophecy, and married his own mother. ::More

When Oedipus was grown up, he once went to a festival, where his proud manners so provoked one of his companions, that he taunted him with being only a foundling. Oedipus, seeing the frightened faces around him, now for the first time began to think that perhaps he had not been told the truth about his parentage. So he consulted an oracle. ::More