Iliupersis

The Iliupersis (Greek: Ἰλίου πέρσις, Iliou persis, "Sack of Ilium"), also known as The Sack of Troy, is a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the "Trojan" cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse. The story of the Iliou persis comes chronologically after that of the Little Iliad, and is followed by the Nostoi ("Returns"). The Iliou persis was sometimes attributed by ancient writers to Arctinus of Miletus (see Cyclic poets). The poem comprised two books of verse in dactylic hexameter.

Date

The Iliou persis was probably composed in the seventh century BCE, but there is much uncertainty. Ancient sources date Arctinus to the eighth century, but evidence concerning another of his poems, the Aethiopis, suggests that he lived considerably later than that.

Content

Only ten lines of the original text of the Iliou persis survive. For its storyline we are almost entirely dependent on a summary of the Cyclic epics contained in the Chrestomathy written by an unknown "Proclus" (possibly to be identified with the 2nd century CE grammarian Eutychius Proclus). A few other references give indications of the poem's storyline. A further impression of the poem's content may be gained from book 2 of Virgil's Aeneid (written many centuries after the Iliou persis), which tells the story from a Trojan point of view.