Editing Trojan War (section)

==Sources==

The events of the Trojan War are found in many works of [[Greek literature]] and depicted in numerous works of [[Greek art]]. There is no single, authoritative text which tells the entire events of the war. Instead, the story is assembled from a variety of sources, some of which report contradictory versions of the events. The most important literary sources are the two epic poems traditionally credited to Homer, the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey''<!--traditionally wars end with the destruction or the surrender of the opponent, not with the last soldier coming home.-->, composed sometime between the ninth and sixth centuries BC.<ref>Wood (1985: 19)</ref> Each poem narrates only a part of the war. The ''Iliad'' covers a short period in the last year of the siege of Troy, while the ''Odyssey'' concerns Odysseus's return to his home island of [[Homer's Ithaca|Ithaca]] following the sack of Troy and contains several flashbacks to particular episodes in the war.

Other parts of the Trojan War were told in the poems of the [[Epic Cycle]], also known as the Cyclic Epics: the ''[[Cypria]]'', ''[[Aethiopis]]'', ''[[Little Iliad]]'', ''[[Iliou Persis]]'', ''[[Nostoi]]'', and ''[[Telegony]]''. Though these poems survive only in fragments, their content is known from a summary included in [[Eutychius Proclus|Proclus]]' ''[[Chrestomathy]]''.<ref>It is unknown whether this Proclus is the Neoplatonic philosopher, in which case the summary dates to the fifth century AD, or whether he is the lesser-known grammarian of the second century AD. See Burgess, p. 12.</ref> The authorship of the Cyclic Epics is uncertain. It is generally thought that the poems were written down in the seventh and {{century BC|sixth}}, after the composition of the Homeric poems, though it is widely believed that they were based on earlier traditions.<ref>Burgess, pp. 10–12; cf. W. Kullmann (1960), ''Die Quellen der Ilias''.</ref>

Both the Homeric epics and the Epic Cycle take origin from [[oral tradition]]. Even after the composition of the ''Iliad'', ''Odyssey'', and the Cyclic Epics, the myths of the Trojan War were passed on orally in many genres of poetry and through non-poetic storytelling. Events and details of the story that are only found in later authors may have been passed on through oral tradition and could be as old as the Homeric poems. Visual art, such as [[vase painting]], was another medium in which myths of the Trojan War circulated.<ref>Burgess, pp. 3–4.</ref>

In later ages [[playwright]]s, [[historians]], and other intellectuals would create works inspired by the Trojan War. The three great tragedians of [[Athens]], [[Aeschylus]], [[Sophocles]] and [[Euripides]], wrote a number of dramas that portray episodes from the Trojan War. Among Roman writers the most important is the {{century BC|first}} poet Virgil; in Book 2 of his ''[[Aeneid]]'', [[Aeneas]] narrates the sack of Troy.