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Stasinus

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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of Cyprus, according to some ancient authorities the author of the Cypria (in II books), one of the poems belonging to the epic cycle. Others ascribed it to Hegesias (or Hegesinus) of Salamis or even to Homer himself, who was said to have written it on the occasion of his daughter's marriage to Stasinus. 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 judgment 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, and the first engagement before Troy. It is probable that the list of the Trojans and their allies (Iliad, ii. 816-876), which formed an appendix to the catalogue of the Greek 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).

See F. G. Welcker, Der epische Cyclus (1862); D. B. Monro, Appendix to his edition of Odyssey, xiii. - xxiv. (1901); T. W. Allen, "The Epic Cycle," in Classical Quarterly (Jan. 1908, sqq.); and Cycle.