“Unveiling the Untold: Discover the Enigmatic Lost Sequels of The Iliad That Could Rewrite History!”
Other than the obvious, what did we lose? Other works stepped in for both the Latin and Greek worlds that filled in the gaps or expanded the story. What we lost was a substantial tradition of Greek epics, of which we have very little surviving. Not only are they worth knowing in their own right, but the prose summaries are… off. Sometimes they contradict each other, mostly they contradict surviving fragments of the poems. It is very clear the prose summaries smooth the poems over to make them fit more in line with the Iliad and Odyssey. This applies stylistically, and narratively. After all, the narratives were usually criticized as lacking unity by ancient critics. The big picture isn’t just incomplete, it’s very wrong. Maybe there were different versions of these poems, perhaps the tradition of prose summaries got distorted down the line.
The biggest loss in all of this is how much this could have helped us understand Greek mythology. The Homeric poems contain many diversions into myth and history, and even the contents of the poems are great sources for our understanding of Greek myths. We know from surviving references that the Epics diverged into myths as well. That said, with the negative reaction against them, if we ever found complete papyrus scrolls of the Epic Cycle, we, perhaps, shouldn’t expect a ground shaking reaction like the Dead Sea Scrolls had for the Bible. Much like if scholars a couple thousands years from now randomly discover She-Hulk, they’ll likely be quite disappointed compared to the no doubt still surviving Infinity saga.
