Stasinus

According to some ancient authorities, Stasinus (Greek: Στασῖνος) of Cyprus, a semi-legendary early Greek poet, was the author of the Cypria, in eleven books, one of the poems belonging to the Epic Cycle that narrated the War of Troy. According to Photius others ascribed it to Hegesias (or Hegesinus) of Salamis or elsewhere even to Homer himself, who was said to have written it on the occasion of his daughter's marriage to Stasinus. At Halicarnassus, according to an inscription found in 1995, local tradition ascribed it to a local poet, a "Kyprias" (Κυπρίας).^[1][2]

The Cypria, presupposing an acquaintance with the events of the Homeric poem, confined itself to what preceded the Iliad, and thus formed a kind of introduction.^[3] It contained an account of the Judgement 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 Minor, and the first engagement before Troy. It is possible that the "Trojan Battle Order" (the list of Trojans and their allies, Iliad 2.816-876, which formed an appendix to the "Catalogue of Ships") is abridged from that in the Cypria, which is known to have contained a list of the Trojan allies. Proclus, in his Chrestomathia, gave an outline of the poem (preserved in Photius, cod. 239). Plato puts quotes from Stasinus' works in the mouth of Socrates, in his dialogue Euthyphro.^[4]

References

1. Jonathan Burgess, Kyprias, the 'Kypria,' and Multiformity Phoenix 56.3/4 (Autumn 2002), pp. 234-245.
2. Jonathan Burgess, Kyprias, Poet of the Iliaka
3. Thus it forms the earliest identifiable "prequel".
4. Plato, Euthyphro 12a–b (Stasinus Cypria Fr. 20).

Sources

• F.G. Welcker, Der epische Cyclus, oder Die homerischen Dichter Bonn : E. Weber, 1849-65.
• D.B. Monro, Homer's Odyssey, books XIII-XXIV Appendix to his edition of Odyssey, xiii–xxiv. (1901)
• Thomas W Allen, "The Epic Cycle," in Classical Quarterly 2.1 (January 1908:54-64).

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Stasinus". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.