Stasinus

Who is Stasinus?

According to some ancient authorities, Stasinus of Cyprus, a semi-legendary early Greek poet, was the author of the Cypria, in eleven books, one of the poems belonging to the Epic Cycle that narrated the War of Troy. According to Photius others ascribed it to Hegesias of Salamis or elsewhere even to Homer himself, who was said to have written it on the occasion of his daughter's marriage to Stasinus. At Halicarnassus, according to an inscription found in 1995, local tradition ascribed it to a local poet, a "Kyprias".

The Cypria, presupposing an acquaintance with the events of the Homeric poem, confined itself to what preceded the Iliad, and thus formed a kind of introduction. It contained an account of the Judgement of Paris, the rape of Helen, the abandonment of Philoctetes on the island of Lemnos, the landing of the Achaeans on the coast of Asia Minor, and the first engagement before Troy. It is possible that the "Trojan Battle Order" is abridged from that in the Cypria, which is known to have contained a list of the Trojan allies. Proclus, in his Chrestomathia, gave an outline of the poem. Plato puts quotes from Stasinus' works in the mouth of Socrates, in his dialogue Euthyphro.