This series summarises the series of epics known as the Epic Cycle that tell of the events surrounding the Trojan War. Although only three – Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Virgil’s Aeneid – survive in full, this includes others that are known from summaries and fragments. With each episode is a selection of paintings depicting events.
Cypria
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How Zeus plans the Trojan War to prevent the earth becoming too heavy with humans. The first step in his elaborate plan is to marry Thetis to a mortal, resulting in the warrior Achilles, with his vulnerability. This also sets up a beauty contest between goddesses, which in turn provides the motive for the war.
1 Zeus’s plan and a wedding feast
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Paris, Prince of Troy, judges the beauty contest and is bribed by Aphrodite with the promise of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, and currently married to the King of Sparta.
Helen, wife of Menelaos, King of Sparta, is abducted or seduced by Paris, and taken to Troy, providing the motive for the Greeks to declare war on Troy under their joint Oath of Tyndareus.
A brief history of Troy explains how the goddess Athena came to be its protectress. When the Greek expeditionary force is ready to sail for Troy, its commander Agamemnon has to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to propitiate the goddess Artemis.
4 Troy and the Greek expedition
Odysseus retrieves Achilles from Skyros, and the master archer Philoctetes is abandoned on Lemnos after being bitten by a snake. Eventually the expeditionary force lands on the shore of the Troad, country surrounding the city of Troy.
5 Achilles recovered and a stinky snakebite
Iliad
Nine long years of war precede the siege of Troy. Agamemnon and Achilles fall into dispute over a concubine, one of their spoils of war, as a result of which Achilles withdraws from the fighting.
With the Trojan army gaining the upper hand, the gods and goddesses also become involved. Hector, the leading Trojan warrior, takes charge, and Zeus forbids the deities from further involvement.
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Achilles’ friend Patroclus dons the armour of Achilles and takes charge, but overextends himself and is killed by Hector. The Trojans take Patroclus’ body into Troy and make the Greeks fight for it. Achilles vows to avenge his friend’s death, and is rearmed by his mother Thetis using armour and weapons forged by Hephaestus.
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Achilles and his Myrmidon warriors slaughter Trojans and turn the river red with their blood. Athena lures Hector into engaging with Achilles, who promptly kills the Trojan. To avenge the mistreatment of the body of Patroclus, Achilles tows the corpse of Hector behind his chariot. King Priam pleads with Achilles for the return of his son’s body for burial.
Aethiopis
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Achilles kills Penthesileia, the Amazon warrior, and Memnon, King Priam’s nephew. He then comes within range of Paris, who looses an arrow that strikes Achilles in his vulnerable point, and kills him.
Little Iliad, Iliou Persis
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Ajax kills himself after losing a duel with Odysseus for the armour of Achilles. Philoctetes is recovered from Lemnos, and kills Paris. Odysseus then devises the wooden horse as a means of getting a team of commandos inside the city.
11 Paris killed and the Trojan Horse
Helen signals to the Greek fleet to return and take the city. King Priam and his royal line are killed, and their women taken as concubines and slaves.
Greek forces carry off as much booty as they can, and destroy the city of Troy. Polyxena is sacrificed for the fleet to obtain favourable winds.
Odyssey
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Odysseus, whose wife Penelope has been besieged by suitors but remained faithful to him, sets sail to return to Ithaca. He and his crew end up on the island of the Cyclops, where he gets Polyphemus drunk, then blinds his single eye. The following morning Odysseus and his crew make their getaway from the blinded, angry giant. All their ships apart from that of Odysseus are then wrecked in a storm.
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The remaining ship arrives at the island of Circe, the sorceress. She starts turning his men into pigs, but he stops her, and they remain on her island for the next year.
Odysseus and his crew successfully negotiate the Sirens, followed by the combined perils of Scylla and Charybdis. All except Odysseus are then drowned in a shipwreck. He is held captive by Calypso on her island for seven years before the gods finally release him.
Another storm wrecks Odysseus on the island of the Phaeacians, where he bumps into Princess Nausicaä. He wins the support of her father the king, who provides him with treasure and assistance to return to Ithaca.
The king’s blind bard Demodocus tells the story of the Trojan Horse, and the interrupted lovemaking of Ares and Aphrodite, to cheer Odysseus up. Odysseus is then spirited away overnight to a remote harbour on Ithaca, and disguises himself as a beggar to assess the situation before revealing his true identity.
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Odysseus’ son Telemachus returns and the pair plot how best to rid Penelope of her many suitors. Athena prompts Penelope to challenge them to an archery contest, which is won by Odysseus. He then kills the suitors, reveals himself to his wife, and resumes his rule over Ithaca.
Nostoi, Oresteia
When Agamemnon returns to his kingdom of Mycenae, his wife Clytemnestra had taken his cousin Aegisthus as her lover. The couple then murder him, but they are killed by her son Orestes. After a series of murders, the Furies hunt Orestes down and drive him mad.
Aeneid
Aeneas flees the burning city of Troy with his wife Creusa, son Ascanius, and carrying his aged father Anchises on his back. Creusa falls behind. When Aeneas goes back to look for her, her ghost tells him of his destiny. He organises survivors to build a fleet of ships and sail to nearby ports including Delos. Apollo tells them to seek the land of their ancestors. They move on and build Pergamea on Crete, but are struck down by plague. Next they tackle the Harpies before heading for Italy.
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After rounding the tip of Italy, rescuing one of Odysseus’ crew, and the death of Anchises, Aeneas heads north. Juno ensures they are blown south instead, and they land at Carthage, where Queen Dido has recently been widowed. She and Aeneas fall in love and consummate their relationship when hunting, as they take shelter from a rainstorm. Mercury tells Aeneas that he must move on to his destiny. As he resumes his journey, she kills herself with the sword he had given her.
They pause on Sicily to hold funeral games in honour of Aeneas’ father. Juno intervenes and has the Trojan women try to set fire to their fleet, but Jupiter quenches the blaze with a rainstorm. They next land near Lake Avernus, where Aeneas is taken by the Cumaean Sibyl to the Underworld to speak to his father’s ghost. After that they sail on to reach Latium.
The Trojan fleet is burned by Turnus, a Rutulian warrior who fights Aeneas in a duel. The successful Aeneas founds the city of Lavinium, the precursor to Alba Longa, to be founded by Aeneas’ son Ascanius, and from there to Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome itself. But Aeneas is deified as Jupiter Indiges long before that.
Telogony
Fearing the prophecy that he would be killed by his own son, Odysseus sends Telemachus away. It’s Telogonus, youngest of the three sons Circe had borne Odysseus, who’s responsible. Either he injures his father unintentionally with his lance, or a passing heron drops a stingray spine on Odysseus head, causing a fatal infection. His death brings these epics to a close.
I hope you enjoy all the superb paintings in what must be the greatest cycle of epics in Western culture.