Tryphiodorus
EN Lat Orig

Tryphiodorus

Tryphiodorus

The poet of the sack of Troy

b. fl. c. 3rd century AD

Greek Late Imperial

Tryphiodorus was a Greek epic poet from Egypt, probably active in the late fifth century AD. He belonged to the school of Nonnus of Panopolis.

His surviving work, The Taking of Ilios, is an epyllion of 691 hexameters describing the fall of Troy — from the wooden horse to the sack of the city. He also reportedly composed a lipogrammatic Odyssey, from which each book omitted a single letter of the alphabet. This virtuoso exercise does not survive. The Taking of Ilios, though minor, shows genuine narrative skill.

Works

  • 1
    The Taking of Ilios prose

    A short epic on the fall of Troy — the Wooden Horse, the sack, the destruction. 691 hexameters compressing the catastrophe.

    691 lines
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