Library › Greek: Epic › Sack of Ilium (Fragments)
Sack of Ilium (Fragments) collects the surviving lines of the Iliou Persis, a lost epic of the Epic Cycle ascribed in ancient sources to Arctinus of Miletus, though the authorship of the Cycle's poems is traditional rather than secure. The poem told of the wooden horse and the fall of Troy. The fragments name the serpents Porkis and Chariboia, describe how Poseidon divided the healing arts between Machaon and Podalirius, and mention Agamemnon's gifts to the sons of Theseus.
Though little of its text survives, the Sack of Ilium shaped the ancient imagination of Troy's fall, from Laocoon to the fates of Priam's family, a story later retold in tragedy and in the second book of Virgil's Aeneid. The fragment on Machaon and Podalirius is also an early witness to the distinction between surgery and medicine.
About this edition. The Greek text comes from the Eulogikon open corpus of public-domain editions (standard reference: Iliou Persis frr. 3–7). Every word has been analyzed with odyCy, a neural language model for Ancient Greek — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ). The Iliou Persis of the Epic Cycle is ascribed to Arctinus of Miletus by ancient sources (e.g. Schol. Il. 11.515), though the Cycle's authorships are traditional rather than secure.