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Telegony
Sign in to saveThe Telegony () is a lost epic poem of Ancient Greek literature. It is named after Telegonus, the son of Odysseus by Circe, whose name ("born far away") is indicative of his birth on Aeaea, far from Odysseus' home of Ithaca. It was part of the Epic Cycle of poems that recounted the myths of the Trojan War as well as the events that led up to and followed it. The story of the Telegony comes chronologically after that of the Odyssey and is the final episode in the Epic Cycle. The poem was sometimes attributed in antiquity to Cinaethon of Sparta (8th century BC), but in one source it is said to h
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- literary work
- Part of
- Epic Cycle
- Author
- Eugammon of Cyrene
- Genre
- epic poem
- Country of origin
- Ancient Greece
- Follows
- Odyssey
Show 2 more facts
- language of work or name
- Ancient Greek
- form of creative work
- poem
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
8 sectionsContents
- Title
- Date
- Content
- Later traditions
- Dante's invention
- Notes
- Sources
- Editions
The Telegony () is a lost epic poem of Ancient Greek literature. It is named after Telegonus, the son of Odysseus by Circe, whose name ("born far away") is indicative of his birth on Aeaea, far from Odysseus' home of Ithaca. It was part of the Epic Cycle of poems that recounted the myths of the Trojan War as well as the events that led up to and followed it. The story of the Telegony comes chronologically after that of the Odyssey and is the final episode in the Epic Cycle. The poem was sometimes attributed in antiquity to Cinaethon of Sparta (8th century BC), but in one source it is said to have been stolen from Musaeus by Eugammon of Cyrene (6th century BC) (see Cyclic poets). Its contents are known from surviving summaries by later authors, most notably Eutychius Proclus. The poem comprised two books of verse in dactylic hexameter.
==Title== In Antiquity, the Telegony may have also been known as the Thesprotis (Greek: Θεσπρωτίς), which is referred to once by Pausanias in the 2nd century AD; alternatively, the Thesprotis may have been a name for the first book of the Telegony, which is set in Thesprotia. Such naming of isolated episodes within a larger epic was common practice for the ancient readers of the Homeric epics.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Telegony” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.