all over Earth, wanting to make love, and he was spread out all over her.

Then the child reached out from his ambush with his left hand,

and with his right hand he held the huge sickle, long and saw-toothed,

and furiously he cut off his father’s genitals, and he threw them away,

to fall backwards. They did not flee from his hand for nothing!

Earth received all the bloody drops that shook free, and as the years

rolled around, she bore Erinys and the great and mighty Giants, shining

in their armor and holding long spears in their hands, and she bore

the nymphs that people call the Ash Nymphs upon the boundless earth.

When he first cut off the genitals with his sickle made of an unconquerable

substance, he threw them from the land into the churning sea, where they

were borne for a long time over the waves, and a white foam [aphros]

arose around the deathless flesh. And in it a young woman was raised up.

She first came to holy CYTHERA, and then from there she arrived in

CYPRUS, wrapped in waves. She came forth an awful and beautiful goddess,

and around her slender feet grass grew. Men and gods call her Aphrodite,

a goddess born from the foam, and also lovely-crowned Cythereia—

because she was born of the foam, and Cythereia because she came

to Cythera. And Cyprogenea, because she was born on stormy Cyprus,

and Lover of Laughter because she came to light from the genitals.

THE ORIGINS OF THE TROJAN WAR

Cypria

Epic Cycle

Translated by Martin L. West, 2003

Homer’s epics describe the events and aftermath of a legendary war fought between the Greeks and Trojans in the Late Bronze Age. The ten-year conflict began after Paris, a prince of Troy, judged Aphrodite to be the most beautiful goddess, and as his reward absconded with Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta. Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon consequently marched a Greek army against Troy. A host of poets working in Homer’s wake produced sequels and prequels and adjuncts to these stories. The poems of this so-called ‘Epic Cycle’ are fragmentary, but this one, the Cypria, which is thought to have been composed in the sixth century BC, survives in detailed summary. The poem described Paris meeting Helen for the very first time and the Greeks arriving in Troy. It also included this intriguing backstory, recorded by an ancient scholar on the Iliad, as an additional explanation for the cause of the Trojan War.

There was a time when the countless races [of men] roaming [constantly] over the land were weighing down the [deep-]breasted earth’s expanse. Zeus took pity when he saw it, and in his complex mind he resolved to relieve the all-nurturing earth of mankind’s weight by fanning the great conflict of the Trojan War, to void the burden through death. So the warriors at Troy kept being killed, and Zeus’ plan was being fulfilled.