Library › Greek: Epic › Little Iliad (Fragments)
Little Iliad (Fragments) collects the remains of an early Greek epic of the Trojan Cycle, most often ascribed in antiquity to Lesches of Pyrrha or Mytilene, though other names were also given. The poem is lost and survives in quotations and in the summary of Proclus' Chrestomathy. It told events after the Iliad, from the contest for Achilles' arms and the suicide of Ajax to the arrival of Philoctetes and Neoptolemus, the Wooden Horse and the fall of Troy.
The Little Iliad supplied later poets with much of the story of Troy's capture. Aristotle observed that it provided material for many tragedies, and Sophocles and Euripides drew on its episodes. The fragments help reconstruct the epic tradition outside Homer and show how the Trojan legend was told in archaic Greece.
About this edition. The Greek text comes from the Eulogikon open corpus of public-domain editions (standard reference: Bernabé, PEG I, Ilias parva frr. 1–32). 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). Most ancient sources ascribe the Little Iliad to Lesches of Pyrrha or Mytilene; others named Thestorides, Cinaethon or Diodorus of Erythrae.