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The Cypria is one of the lost sections of the eight volume cycle that told the full story of the Trojan War. The only two that survive being the Iliad and The Odyssey.
The Cypria was made up of eleven books and contained a diverse collection of tales that covers the years before the Iliad from the birth of Achilles to thought the first nine years of the war. These events are summarized in the Iliad or preserved in other sources. A number of passages and quotations from the piece also survive giving a good impression of what it contained.
The Cypria was considered to be a much lesser work that either of Homer's two masterpieces, and was almost certainly by a different author or authors. Aristotle criticized it for its lack of narrative cohesion and focus. It was rather a catalogue of events, far more a history than a tale.
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