"Epica Adespota" is not a single author but a scholarly term for anonymous fragments of ancient Greek epic poetry. These pieces of verse, written in the same meter as Homer’s works, date from the Archaic period through the Hellenistic era (roughly the 8th to 3rd centuries BCE). They survive not as complete poems but as quotations found in the works of later ancient commentators, grammarians, and encyclopedists.

The fragments come from a wide variety of lost epic poems. According to modern scholars, they may include parts of the Epic Cycle—which told fuller stories of the Trojan War and other legends—as well as poems about local foundations, genealogies, or myths. Their anonymous status is an accident of history; they were preserved for their linguistic or mythological content, not with the name of their original poet.

These fragments are significant because they reveal the vast and diverse world of Greek epic beyond the famous works of Homer and Hesiod. They provide evidence for alternate versions of myths, local traditions, and the evolution of poetic language. For historians of literature, they are essential, if challenging, pieces for reconstructing the much larger landscape of early Greek poetry that has been almost entirely lost.