Narratives

This chapter discusses inset narratives and indirect narratives, with particular attention to their use in the construction of poems and the interconnections of poems to a larger mythological context. The Achaeans’ departure from Troy and the revenge of Athena against Oilean Ajax seem to have been prospectively narrated in the Ilioupersis in a way that causes confusion in Proclus’s summary. Similarly, much Trojan War mythology preceding the judgment of Paris was probably indirectly narrated in the Cypria, as is the case in the famous fragment concerning Helen’s birth. Two major passages of the Nostoi were most likely also narrated indirectly. Under the heading of paradigmatic tales (stories told by characters to one another for rhetorical purposes) our evidence is unfortunately meager, but the one example from the Cypria recorded by Proclus reveals a degree of sophistication equal to the most elaborate Homeric examples.