Nostoi
Encyclopedia
The Nostoi also known as Returns or Returns of the Greeks, was a lost epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

 of ancient Greek literature
Greek literature
Greek literature refers to writings composed in areas of Greek influence, typically though not necessarily in one of the Greek dialects, throughout the whole period in which the Greek-speaking people have existed.-Ancient Greek literature :...

. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the "Trojan" cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...

 in epic verse. The story of the Nostoi comes chronologically after that of the Iliou persis
Iliou persis
The Iliupersis , also known as The Sack of Troy, is a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the "Trojan" cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse...

(Sack of Ilium), and is followed by that of the Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

. The author of the Nostoi is uncertain: ancient writers attributed the poem variously to Agias of Troizen, Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

, and Eumelos (see Cyclic poets
Cyclic Poets
Cyclic Poets is a shorthand term for the early Greek epic poets, approximate contemporaries of Homer. We know no more about these poets than we know about Homer, but modern scholars regard them as having composed orally, as did Homer. In the classical period, surviving early epic poems were...

). The poem comprised five books of verse in dactylic hexameter
Dactylic hexameter
Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. It is traditionally associated with the quantitative meter of classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin, and was consequently considered to be the Grand Style of classical poetry...

. The word nostos
Nostos
Nostos is the Greek word for homecoming. It is a theme dealt with in many Homeric writings such as the Odyssey, in which the main character, Odysseus, strives to get home after the Trojan War...

means "return home".

Date

The date of composition of the Nostoi, and the date when it was set in writing, are both very uncertain. The text is most likely to have been finalized in the seventh or sixth century BC.

Content

The Nostoi relates the return home of the Greek heroes after the end of the Trojan War. In current critical editions only five and a half lines of the poem's original text survive. For its storyline we are almost entirely dependent on a summary of the Cyclic epics contained in the Chrestomatheia (see also chrestomathy
Chrestomathy
Chrestomathy is a collection of choice literary passages, used especially as an aid in learning a foreign language.In philology or in the study of literature, it is a type of reader or anthology which presents a sequence of example texts, selected to demonstrate the development of language or...

) attributed to an unknown "Proklos" (possibly to be identified with the 2nd-century-CE grammarian Eutychios Proklos
Eutychios Proklos
Eutychius Proclus was a grammarian who flourished in the 2nd century CE. He was born at Sicca in Africa. He was the instructor of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius....

). A few other references also give indications of the poem's storyline.

The poem opens as the Greeks are getting ready to set sail back to Greece. The goddess Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...

 is wrathful because of the Greeks' impious behaviour in the sack of Troy (see Iliou persis
Iliou persis
The Iliupersis , also known as The Sack of Troy, is a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the "Trojan" cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse...

). Agamemnon
Agamemnon
In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope of Mycenae, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra, and the father of Electra and Orestes. Mythical legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area...

 waits behind, to appease her; Diomedes
Diomedes
Diomedes or Diomed is a hero in Greek mythology, known for his participation in the Trojan War.He was born to Tydeus and Deipyle and later became King of Argos, succeeding his maternal grandfather, Adrastus. In Homer's Iliad Diomedes is regarded alongside Ajax as one of the best warriors of all...

 and Nestor
Nestor (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Nestor of Gerenia was the son of Neleus and Chloris and the King of Pylos. He became king after Heracles killed Neleus and all of Nestor's siblings...

 set sail straightaway, and reach home safely; Menelaus
Menelaus
Menelaus may refer to;*Menelaus, one of the two most known Atrides, a king of Sparta and son of Atreus and Aerope*Menelaus on the Moon, named after Menelaus of Alexandria.*Menelaus , brother of Ptolemy I Soter...

 sets sail, but encounters a storm, loses most of his ships, lands in Egypt and is delayed there for several years. Other Greeks, including the prophet Calchas
Calchas
In Greek mythology, Calchas , son of Thestor, was an Argive seer, with a gift for interpreting the flight of birds that he received of Apollo: "as an augur, Calchas had no rival in the camp"...

, go by land to Kolophon, where Calchas dies and is buried.

As Agamemnon is getting ready to sail, Achilles
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....

' ghost appears to him and foretells his fate. Agamemnon makes a sacrifice and sets sail anyway; Neoptolemus
Neoptolemus
Neoptolemus was the son of the warrior Achilles and the princess Deidamia in Greek mythology. Achilles' mother foretold many years before Achilles' birth that there would be a great war. She saw that her only son was to die if he fought in the war...

, however, is visited by his grandmother, the sea-nymph Thetis
Thetis
Silver-footed Thetis , disposer or "placer" , is encountered in Greek mythology mostly as a sea nymph or known as the goddess of water, one of the fifty Nereids, daughters of the ancient one of the seas with shape-shifting abilities who survives in the historical vestiges of most later Greek myths...

, who tells him to wait and make further sacrifices to the gods. Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...

 sends a storm against Agamemnon and those accompanying him at Athena's request, and the lesser Ajax
Ajax the Lesser
Ajax was a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris. He was called the "lesser" or "Locrian" Ajax, to distinguish him from Ajax the Great, son of Telamon. He was the leader of the Locrian contingent during the Trojan War. He is a significant figure in Homer's Iliad and is also...

 dies on the Kapherian rocks on the southern end of Euboia. Neoptolemus follows Thetis' advice and goes home by land; in Thrace
Thrace
Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east...

 he meets Odysseus
Odysseus
Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....

 at Maroneia
Maroneia
Maroneia is a village and a former municipality in the Rhodope peripheral unit, East Macedonia and Thrace, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Maroneia-Sapes, of which it is a municipal unit. Population 7,644...

, who has come there by sea. Neoptolemus arrives home, though Phoenix
Phoenix (Iliad)
In Greek mythology, Phoenix , son of Amyntor and Cleobule, is one of the Myrmidons led by Achilles in the Trojan War...

 dies en route, and there he is recognised by his grandfather Peleus
Peleus
In Greek mythology, Pēleus was a hero whose myth was already known to the hearers of Homer in the late 8th century BCE. Peleus was the son of Aeacus, king of the island of Aegina, and Endeïs, the oread of Mount Pelion in Thessaly; he was the father of Achilles...

.

Agamemnon arrives home and is there murdered by his wife Clytemnestra
Clytemnestra
Clytemnestra or Clytaemnestra , in ancient Greek legend, was the wife of Agamemnon, king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Mycenae or Argos. In the Oresteia by Aeschylus, she was a femme fatale who murdered her husband, Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan princess...

 and her lover, Agamemnon's cousin Aegisthus
Aegisthus
In Greek mythology, Aegisthus was the son of Thyestes and of Thyestes' daughter, Pelopia....

. Later Agamemnon's and Clytemnestra's son Orestes
Orestes
Orestes was the son of Agamemnon in Greek mythology; Orestes may also refer to:Drama*Orestes , by Euripides*Orestes, the character in Sophocles' tragedy Electra*Orestes, the character in Aeschylus' trilogy of tragedies, Oresteia...

 avenges the murder by killing both of them. Finally Menelaus arrives home from Egypt. (This last section, known as the Oresteia, is narrated in Odyssey books 3 and 4 by Nestor and Menelaos; and it was later also the basis for Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...

' trilogy of tragic plays, the Oresteia).

At the end of the Nostoi the only living Greek hero who still has not returned home is Odysseus. His return is narrated in the Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

.

Editions

  • Online editions (English translation):
    • Fragments of the Nostoi translated by H.G. Evelyn-White, 1914 (public domain)
    • Fragments of complete Epic Cycle translated by H.G. Evelyn-White, 1914; Project Gutenberg
      Project Gutenberg
      Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...

       edition
    • Proklos' summary of the Epic Cycle translated by Gregory Nagy
  • Print editions (Greek):
    • A. Bernabé 1987, Poetarum epicorum Graecorum testimonia et fragmenta pt. 1 (Leipzig: Teubner)
    • M. Davies 1988, Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht)
  • Print editions (Greek with English translation):
    • M.L. West 2003, Greek Epic Fragments (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press
      Harvard University Press
      Harvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...

      )
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