One of the two great epic cycles of ancient Greece (the other one being the Theban Cycle).

The cycle is a series of epic poems dealing with the Trojan war itself and the occurances preceding and proceeding it. Of these poems only the Iliad and the Odyssey reached us whole, in addition we have several fragments from the Kypria, a poem that tells us of the events leading to the war.

In addition to the above poems there were many poems dealing with the return of the heros to their homes (the Nostos poems, of these only the Odyssey survived), almost every polis in Greece had a Nostos about her own legendary hero.

Many of the stories of the Nostoi (plural from Nostos) and the rest of the poems in the cycle, reached us from the writings of later poets and playwrights, who used the material of these poems as their themes.

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