The writer of the Odyssey appears to have known most of those lost poems of the Epic cycle—eight in number—that relate to Troy, but as all we know about them is from the summaries given in the fragment of Proclus, and from a few lines here and there quoted in later authors, we can have no irrefragable certainty that she had the poems before her even when she alludes to incidents mentioned by Proclus as being dealt with in any given one of them. Nevertheless, passages in Od. i. and iii. make it probable that she knew the Nosti or the Return of the Achæans from Troy, and we may suppose that Nestor's long speeches (Od. iii. 102-200 and 253-328) are derived mainly from this source, for they contain particulars that correspond closely with the epitome of the Nosti given by Proclus.
We can thus explain the correctness of the topography of the Ægæan sea that is manifested in Nestor's speeches, but no where else in the poem beyond a bare knowledge of the existence of Apollo's shrine in Delos (Od. vi. 162) and an occasional mention of Crete. I see Professor Jebb says that the Odyssey "shows a familiar knowledge of Delos;"[1] but there is no warrant for this assertion from anything in the poem.
The writer of the Odyssey seems, in Book iv., to have also known the Cypria, which dealt with the events that led up to the Trojan war.
Book xxiv. of the Odyssey (35-97) suggests a knowledge of the Æthiopis. So also does the mention of Memnon (Od. xi. 522).
Knowledge of the Little Iliad may be suspected from Od. iv. 271-283, where Helen seems to be now married to Deiphobus, and from xi. 543-562; as also from xi. 508, 509, where Ulysses says that he took Neoptolemus to Scyrus. Ulysses entering Troy as a spy (Od. iv. 242-256) is also given by Proclus as one of the incidents in the Little Iliad. I do not see, therefore, that there can be much doubt about the writer of the Odyssey having been acquainted with the Little Iliad, a poem which was apparently of no great length, being only in four Books.
From the two Books of the Sack of Troy we get the account of the council held by the Trojans over the wooden horse (Od. viii. 492-517).
We have seen how familiar the authoress of the Odyssey was with the Iliad; there only remains, therefore, one of the eight Trojan poems which she does not appear to have known—I mean the Telegony, which is generally, and one would say correctly, placed later than the Odyssey; but even though it were earlier we may be sure that the writer of the Odyssey would have ignored it, for it will hardly bear her out in the character she has given of Penelope.
In passing I may say that though Homer (meaning, of course, the writer of the Iliad) occasionally says things that suggest the Cypria, there is not a line that even suggests knowledge of a single one of the incidents given by Proclus as forming the subjects of the other Books of the Trojan cycle; the inference, therefore, would seem to be that none of them, except possibly, though very uncertainly, the Cypria, had appeared before he wrote. Nevertheless we cannot be sure that this was so.