Euripide et les légendes des Chants Cypriens

Cyprus. When the Iliad begins, the Trojan War has been going on for twenty years. It had been recounted in a twelve-song epic, the Cyprian Songs, now lost and traditionally attributed to Stasinos of Cyprus, but a late summary of the story allows us to reconstruct its plot. This vast treasure trove of legends provided the tragic poets of Athens with much of the material for their dramas. Among them, it is Euripides in particular, thanks to his preserved plays and his lost theatre, that we can best imagine the forms through which this transmutation from epic to theatre took place in a city that was also constantly experiencing the horrors of war.