The lost Trojan cycle of epics is hilarious. You can understand why they weren't rated as highly as Homer.

In the cyclic version, the Greeks took two years to assemble and set off for Troy. But they didn't know the way and landed at the wrong town which they sacked by mistake. When they realised, they set off again but got blown off course and all ended up back at Greece where it took them eight years to assemble again because they didn't have a guide. The king of the town they sacked shows up and says his wound from their fight still hasn't healed and he'll show them the way if they heal him.

So they finally set off in the right direction, but on the way they stop at an island where a Greek carrying the bow of Hercules gets bitten by a snake and his wound stinks so bad they abandon him there. But later it turns out there's a prophect that they need this guy to shoot Paris with Hercules' bow before they can win the war, so they run back and get him. Also, they need to grab the bones of an ancient Greek king, and steal an artifact from Troy that was protecting the city. Also an army of Amazons and then an army of Ethiopians show up but the Greeks kill them all (pic related, Achilles killing the Amazon queen).

Then they're finally allowed to win the siege by using the wooden horse. Plus Hector's baby son gets thrown off the battlements.

On their way back, not just Odysseus, but EVERYONE gets cuckolded and most end up getting killed or exiled. Then in a sequel to the Odyssey, the secret son Odysseus had with Circe shows up and kills his dad without knowing who he is, then marries his step mom.

There's versions where Helen was in Egypt during the war and her double was in Troy. She also marries Achilles in the afterlife.

>>24516889
That’s Euripides’ divine play Helen. He typically tended to have similar themes in each plays. Noticeably, he shows misogyny as wrong and it is shown when the REAL Helen, the woman loved by Paris is in Egypt and the slutty one who joined Paris and ruined the good name of womankind was merely a phantom created by the gods to trick them. Also that play has a bit of a Malthusian bent which is cool. The gods did all this and created this war simply to kill off the excess demographics because the populace is way too large. This section I felt prefigures Malthusianism by like 2,000 years

>>24516946
The story predates Euripides who didn't come up with it on his own. Sparta worshipped Helen as a patron goddess and that was a popular version there since it made their city's goddess look better.

>>24516946
Euripides is the ur-redditor of literature. No wonder the romantics and the decadents loathed him and preferred Sophocles and Aeschylus.

>>24516879 (OP)
>Plus Hector's baby son gets thrown off the battlements.
Did you know the Franks believed he survived that and came to Gaul and changed his name to Francus and was the founder of the Franks?

>>24516879 (OP)
Sounds realistic desu