Before the Iliad's tenth year — the suitors' oath at Sparta, the muster at Aulis where Iphigenia was sacrificed for a fair wind, the fleet's fatal detour to Mysia where Telephus barred the way, and Protesilaus first ashore at Troy when the true voyage began.1
The oath and the theft
The Cypria opens with the compact that would bind Greece to war. The nested episode on the Suitor Oath at Sparta tells how Odysseus counselled Tyndareus to bind Helen's suitors by oath over a horse-sacrifice, and how Menelaus won her and the kingdom. The nested episode on the Judgment of Paris tells the theft that woke the oath — Alexander judged Aphrodite fairest and carried Helen from Lacedaemon to Priam's Troy. Homer never narrates the abduction outright, but the sin still burns in the last book of the Iliad: holy Ilios remained hateful to Hera and Athena because of Alexander.2
Iphigenia at Aulis⚖
Agamemnon gathered the host at Aulis on the Euboean coast, but the fleet could not sail until Artemis received her price. Calchas declared that the goddess demanded Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia; the king lured her with a promise of marriage to Achilles and set her beside the altar — sacrificed, or snatched away and replaced by a deer, as the sources disagree. The nested episode on the Framing of Palamedes tells how Odysseus' feigned madness failed before the muster and how the grudge born at Ithaca would end in the counsellor's stoning at Troy; the nested episode on Iphigenia at Aulis tells the becalmed muster, the false marriage, and the parentage dispute Pausanias preserves at Hermione.3
The Mysian detour
Blown off course after Aulis, the Achaeans landed in Mysia thinking it was Troy and ravaged Teuthrania. Telephus son of Heracles, king of the Mysians, met them in battle — wounded Achilles with his spear, cut down Thersander the Theban king, and drove the host back to their ships before they knew their error. Achilles scraped rust from the same spear to heal the wound, and Telephus guided the fleet to the true Troad. The nested episode on Telephus at Mysia tells the mistaken landing, Thersander's fall, and the oracle fulfilled on the Ionian shore.4
First ashore and ten years
When the corrected voyage reached the Troad, Thetis warned Achilles not to be first from the ships — for the first to land would be the first to die. Protesilaus leapt first, slew many Trojans, and fell ere the black earth held him; his wife Laodamia mourned in Phylace while his ship became a landmark of the later battles for the wall. The nested episode on Protesilaus at Troy tells the opening landing; the nested saga on the Trojan War opens in the tenth year, when Agamemnon's slight to Achilles opened the wrath that nearly burned the Achaean fleet.5
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Episodes
How the centuries saw it
On screen
In music & on stage
In play
Cypria
The lost Epic Cycle prequel to the Iliad — Judgment of Paris, the suitors' oath, Aulis, and Mysia in eleven vanished books.
Epic Cycle
The Trojan hexameter cycle of which the Cypria is the opening poem — the war told before and after Homer.
Iphigenia in Aulis
Euripides
Euripides' last Aulis play — the Cypria episode that tragedy kept when the epic itself was lost.