Six epics with the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" made up the Trojan
Cycle -- The "Cyprian Lays", the "Iliad", the "Aethiopis", the
"Little Iliad", the "Sack of Troy", the "Returns", the
"Odyssey", and the "Telegony".

It has been assumed in the foregoing pages that the poems of the
Trojan Cycle are later than the Homeric poems; but, as the
opposite view has been held, the reasons for this assumption must
now be given. 1) Tradition puts Homer and the Homeric poems
proper back in the ages before chronological history began, and
at the same time assigns the purely Cyclic poems to definite
authors who are dated from the first Olympiad (776 B.C.)
downwards. This tradition cannot be purely arbitrary. 2) The
Cyclic poets (as we can see from the abstract of Proclus) were
careful not to trespass upon ground already occupied by Homer.
Thus, when we find that in the "Returns" all the prominent Greek
heroes except Odysseus are accounted for, we are forced to
believe that the author of this poem knew the "Odyssey" and
judged it unnecessary to deal in full with that hero's
adventures. (12) In a word, the Cyclic poems are `written round'
the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey". 3) The general structure of these
epics is clearly imitative. As M.M. Croiset remark, the abusive
Thersites in the "Aethiopis" is clearly copied from the Thersites
of the "Iliad"; in the same poem Antilochus, slain by Memnon and
avenged by Achilles, is obviously modelled on Patroclus. 4) The
geographical knowledge of a poem like the "Returns" is far wider
and more precise than that of the "Odyssey". 5) Moreover, in the
Cyclic poems epic is clearly degenerating morally -- if the
expression may be used. The chief greatness of the "Iliad" is in