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The Aithiopis (; ), also spelled Aethiopis, is a lost Epic poetry of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse. The story of the Aethiopis lands chronologically after the Iliad, and could be followed by that of the Little Iliad. The Aethiopis was often attributed by ancient writers to Arctinus who lived in the 8th century BC (see Cyclic poets). The poem comprised five books of verse in dactylic hexameter. Very few fragments of the Aethiopis survive today; Proclus's summary of the poems' contents establishes the narrative framework of the epic.
According to Davies, Memnon as the helping warrior in the Aethiopis corresponds to Amazon Queen Penthesilea displaying a kind of symmetry in its plot: "two major allies come to help Priam and are killed by Achilles; these are Penthesilea, from the north, and Memnon, from the south, both (in strong contrast to the Trojan allies of the Iliad) dwelling in remote fantasy lands. It rather looks as if Penthesileia and Memnon were early conceived as a corresponding pair.
The poem opens shortly after the death of the Troy hero Hector, with the arrival of the Amazons warrior Penthesileia who has come to support the Trojans. She has a moment of glory in battle, but Achilles kills her. The Greek warrior Thersites later taunts Achilles, claiming that he had been in love with her, and Achilles kills him too. Achilles is ritually purified for the murder of Thersites.
Next another Trojan ally arrives, Memnon, son of Eos and Tithonus, leading an Aethiopia contingent and wearing armour made by the god Hephaestus. In battle, Memnon kills Antilochus, a Greek warrior who was the son of Nestor and a great favourite of Achilles. Achilles then kills Memnon, and Zeus makes Memnon immortal at Eos' request. But in his rage Achilles pursues the Trojans into the very gates of Troy, and at the Scaean Gates he is killed by an arrow shot by Paris, assisted by the god Apollo. Achilles' body is rescued by Ajax and Odysseus.
The Greeks hold a funeral for Antilochus. Achilles's mother, the sea nymph Thetis, comes with her sisters and the Muses to lament over Achilles's body. Funeral games are held in honour of Achilles, at which his armor and weapons are offered as a prize for the greatest hero. A dispute over them develops between Ajax and Odysseus. There the Aethiopis ends; it is uncertain whether the judgment of Achilles' armor, and subsequent suicide of Ajax, were told in the Aethiopis, in the next epic in the Cycle, the Little Iliad, or in both.
Despite being poorly attested, the Aethiopis is frequently cited in modern scholarship on the Homeric Iliad.See e.g. G. Schoeck 1961, Ilias und Aithiopis: kyklische Motive in homerischer Brechung (Zurich); J. Burgess 1997, "Beyond Neo-analysis: problems with the vengeance theory", American Journal of Philology 118.1: 1-17; M.L. West 2003, " Iliad and Aithiopis", Classical Quarterly 53.1: 1-14. It is one of the most important paradigms used in Neoanalytic scholarship on Homer because of strong similarities between its story of Achilles, Antilochus, and Memnon, and the Iliadic story of Achilles, Patroclus, and Hector; the claim that such a similarity exists is known as the "Memnon theory".See especially W. Schadewaldt 1965, Von Homers Welt und Werk (4th ed.; orig. publ. 1944; Stuttgart).
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