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Posthomerica: The Fall of Troy
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This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
418 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 350
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About the author
Quintus Smyrnaeus
54 books5 followersQuintus Smyrnaeus, also known as Kointos Smyrnaios (Greek: Κόϊντος Σμυρναῖος), was a Greek epic poet whose Posthomerica, following "after Homer" continues the narration of the Trojan War.
The dates of Smyrnaeus's life are controversial, but they are traditionally placed in the latter part of the 4th century AD.
The dates of Smyrnaeus's life are controversial, but they are traditionally placed in the latter part of the 4th century AD.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
March 30, 2016
From the introduction, and doesn't the idea of the missing pieces make you crazy?!
Homer's "Iliad" begins towards the close of the last of the ten years of the Trojan War: its incidents extend over some fifty days only, and it ends with the burial of Hector. The things which came before and after were told by other bards, who between them narrated the whole "cycle" of the events of the war, and so were called the Cyclic Poets. Of their works none have survived; but the story of what befell between Hector's funeral and the taking of Troy is told in detail, and well told, in a poem about half as long as the "Iliad". Some four hundred years after Christ there lived at Smyrna a poet of whom we know scarce anything, save that his first name was Quintus. He had
saturated himself with the spirit of Homer, he had caught the ring of his music, and he perhaps had before him the works of those Cyclic Poets whose stars had paled before the sun.
And later, also from the introduction:
In fact, we may say that, though there are echoes of the "Iliad" all through the poem, yet, wherever Homer has, in the "Odyssey", given the outline-sketch of an effective scene, Quintus has uniformly neglected to develop it, has sometimes substituted something much weaker—as though he had not the "Odyssey" before him!
So there is a quick history of how this work was created. It is completely unfair to compare Quintus and Homer. But it is unavoidable. And while I agree that in a few places Quintus did manage to get close to Homer's intensity, there were more times that he did not. He used the same style. He used the same method of similes to Nature. He went into the same detail in the battle scenes. But Homer he is not. I never got lost and had to re-read Homer to comprehend what he was saying, but every so often I found myself saying What? to Quintus. With Homer I never got to the end of a simile and had to go back and check to see what the simile was about in the first place: Quintus tended to get carried away with them at times. He also seemed uneven: sometimes the words did indeed sing, other times they stuttered, and other times they simply made no sense at all. That clunkiness is why I rated this only four stars, not five. But to be fair to Quintus, the awkwardness could have been the fault of the translator. Since beginning my readings of the ancient Greeks, I have learned that the translator makes a world of difference. I may have been spoiled by the Homer/Alexander Pope combination!
Oh, and there were no footnotes in this edition, at least not at Project Gutenberg where I read the book. And although the GR link says this is a dual language book, with the Greek and English together in one volume, Gutenberg had only the English pages of this edition. Not that the Greek would have helped me any, but it would have been cool to look at. So the book for me was only about 320 or so pages, not the 640 GR records.
But yeah, yeah, okay about the nitpicking, what about the story itself, right? Right. It was very dramatic, very exciting. Here is an outline of what happens in its fourteen chapters:
There were Amazons that came to fight for Troy! There was a great battle between Achilles and Memnon, who came with thousands of soldiers who were turned to birds when he was killed! Achilles yells at Apollo for keeping him from charging the walls of the city, Apollo gets mad and finds the opportunity to shoot Achilles in (yes) his heel so Achilles dies! The Greeks have funeral games for their beloved hero Achilles, with wrestling, boxing, a chariot race which, unfortunately, no one will ever read because that portion of the original manuscript was missing, but there is a great horse race! Then Ajax and Odysseus contend for the brilliant armor that belonged to Achilles, and the judges are captured Trojans, because the Greeks thought they would be less partial to one or the other but when they decide in favor of Odysseus, Ajax literally goes insane and ends up killing himself! The grandson of Hercules comes to fight for Troy! The son of Achilles is fetched from his home to fight for the Greeks! Those two new warriors have a huge battle! Odysseus and Diomedes go find Philoctetes on the island where they left him injured nearly 10 years ago and fetch him to fight for the Greeks! Paris (remember him? The one who caused it all?) gets mortally wounded and runs to his first wife for help but she refuses, telling him to go to Helen! One last big
huge bloody fight on the beach! The wooden horse is built in just three days with the help of Athena! The horse is moved into the city, and the rest is history! And finally, the Greeks leave the plains of Troy and sail for home, but Athena is mad because of what another man named Ajax did in her temple, and she asks Zeus for the power to send a gigantic storm and manages to sink a huge portion of the fleet in revenge!
For sheer story, this book was amazing. I never knew about most of the incidents that Quintus told about. I am very glad I read this, especially since I was able to jump directly from The Iliad to this work. And I can't stop now. I left Odysseus in the Aegean Sea: I have to catch up to him (and Homer/Pope) for a little ten-year Odyssey!
Homer's "Iliad" begins towards the close of the last of the ten years of the Trojan War: its incidents extend over some fifty days only, and it ends with the burial of Hector. The things which came before and after were told by other bards, who between them narrated the whole "cycle" of the events of the war, and so were called the Cyclic Poets. Of their works none have survived; but the story of what befell between Hector's funeral and the taking of Troy is told in detail, and well told, in a poem about half as long as the "Iliad". Some four hundred years after Christ there lived at Smyrna a poet of whom we know scarce anything, save that his first name was Quintus. He had
saturated himself with the spirit of Homer, he had caught the ring of his music, and he perhaps had before him the works of those Cyclic Poets whose stars had paled before the sun.
And later, also from the introduction:
In fact, we may say that, though there are echoes of the "Iliad" all through the poem, yet, wherever Homer has, in the "Odyssey", given the outline-sketch of an effective scene, Quintus has uniformly neglected to develop it, has sometimes substituted something much weaker—as though he had not the "Odyssey" before him!
So there is a quick history of how this work was created. It is completely unfair to compare Quintus and Homer. But it is unavoidable. And while I agree that in a few places Quintus did manage to get close to Homer's intensity, there were more times that he did not. He used the same style. He used the same method of similes to Nature. He went into the same detail in the battle scenes. But Homer he is not. I never got lost and had to re-read Homer to comprehend what he was saying, but every so often I found myself saying What? to Quintus. With Homer I never got to the end of a simile and had to go back and check to see what the simile was about in the first place: Quintus tended to get carried away with them at times. He also seemed uneven: sometimes the words did indeed sing, other times they stuttered, and other times they simply made no sense at all. That clunkiness is why I rated this only four stars, not five. But to be fair to Quintus, the awkwardness could have been the fault of the translator. Since beginning my readings of the ancient Greeks, I have learned that the translator makes a world of difference. I may have been spoiled by the Homer/Alexander Pope combination!
Oh, and there were no footnotes in this edition, at least not at Project Gutenberg where I read the book. And although the GR link says this is a dual language book, with the Greek and English together in one volume, Gutenberg had only the English pages of this edition. Not that the Greek would have helped me any, but it would have been cool to look at. So the book for me was only about 320 or so pages, not the 640 GR records.
But yeah, yeah, okay about the nitpicking, what about the story itself, right? Right. It was very dramatic, very exciting. Here is an outline of what happens in its fourteen chapters:
There were Amazons that came to fight for Troy! There was a great battle between Achilles and Memnon, who came with thousands of soldiers who were turned to birds when he was killed! Achilles yells at Apollo for keeping him from charging the walls of the city, Apollo gets mad and finds the opportunity to shoot Achilles in (yes) his heel so Achilles dies! The Greeks have funeral games for their beloved hero Achilles, with wrestling, boxing, a chariot race which, unfortunately, no one will ever read because that portion of the original manuscript was missing, but there is a great horse race! Then Ajax and Odysseus contend for the brilliant armor that belonged to Achilles, and the judges are captured Trojans, because the Greeks thought they would be less partial to one or the other but when they decide in favor of Odysseus, Ajax literally goes insane and ends up killing himself! The grandson of Hercules comes to fight for Troy! The son of Achilles is fetched from his home to fight for the Greeks! Those two new warriors have a huge battle! Odysseus and Diomedes go find Philoctetes on the island where they left him injured nearly 10 years ago and fetch him to fight for the Greeks! Paris (remember him? The one who caused it all?) gets mortally wounded and runs to his first wife for help but she refuses, telling him to go to Helen! One last big
huge bloody fight on the beach! The wooden horse is built in just three days with the help of Athena! The horse is moved into the city, and the rest is history! And finally, the Greeks leave the plains of Troy and sail for home, but Athena is mad because of what another man named Ajax did in her temple, and she asks Zeus for the power to send a gigantic storm and manages to sink a huge portion of the fleet in revenge!
For sheer story, this book was amazing. I never knew about most of the incidents that Quintus told about. I am very glad I read this, especially since I was able to jump directly from The Iliad to this work. And I can't stop now. I left Odysseus in the Aegean Sea: I have to catch up to him (and Homer/Pope) for a little ten-year Odyssey!
February 27, 2019
As The Iliad ends with the overall contest unresolved, Quintus of Smyrna, writing sometime around the 3rd century C.E, undertook to fill in the gaps previously filled in by works that were already fading by his time, and are mostly lost today. What we have, then, with The Fall of Troy (also known as Posthomerica), is fan-fiction from antiquity. It's good though--but as every other review will say, 'it's not Homer-good, but it's unfair to compare the two'.
Stylistically, it's hard for me to compare them--the translation I read of The Fall of Troy was done in 1913, and which is probably the one most people will read, because it's the most accessible. Those who know more than me can compare and contrast translations and styles and might be able to make a judgment call--for myself, the rhythm and use of language in both Homer and Quintus is unusual enough that I'm usually concentrating more on making sure I understand the content rather than the elegance of the passage. I do think Quintus tends to overuse his metaphors--they seem to all follow the basic pattern of, 'as how a lion leaps out of ambush on a ram, so X faced Y and...' My introductory material suggests that Quintus referred to himself as a shepherd (though that's not established), and his metaphors tend to adhere to events that I can imagine a shepherd would be familiar with. Also, and this drove me crazy sometimes: continually throughout the narrative, Quintus will refer to someone as X's son, rather than give their name, and sometimes leaves off that thread without ever directly referring to the actual name of the person doing the action. To make it worse, sometimes he uses the grandfather of the one doing the action as a tag. Plus, he'll not always use the same given name to indicate the character. Thus Paris might be called Alexander, or Priam's son. Odysseus is Laerte's son. Those aren't terrible--but do you know off the top of your head who Oileus' son is? Aeacus's son? Nereus' child? Tydeus' son? Telemon's?* You do? I do too--now, after having looked them up a dozen times each. These are main characters from The Iliad, so if you want to follow your favorite hacker/slasher from Homer, you better get familiar with Wikipedia and learn his genealogy.
Okay, those are really my only gripes here. I don't even mind looking up things I was unfamiliar with, because I don't think it's reasonable to approach works like this and not expect to need some context or some supplemental information. But getting back to the difference between Homer and Quintus, the real difference in my mind is that The Iliad is not concerned with the narrative as much as it is with human behavior in the face of fate, the effect of pride on human events, and, to me, the redeeming factor of grace and mercy in human interactions. Quintus, on the other hand, is bound by the events themselves--he's telling a succession of happenings, rather than tying them to any loftier goal. This is what makes Homer foundational, and Quintus a very enjoyable five star read, though one that, I think, is only going to satisfy if one has already read The Iliad. It was only a few months ago when I finally got around to Homer's work, and this fell right into the groove I was still in. (This makes me want to read Part II--The Aeneid)
I also learned several things reading through this, things I hadn't picked up other places. I do not ever remember encountering the name Penthesilea before, the Amazon warrior who comes to Troy's aid, nor did I realize the story of Laocoön and his sons was also part of Troy's story. (In an amazing bit of synchronicity, not more than a week after reading and learning who Penthesilea was, I was looking through books at a local thrift store, and like a magnet I was drawn to an old paperback of classic German playwrights. Picking it up, I saw on the front cover a list of authors and titles--first was Goethe, then Schiller and then, you guessed it, Heinrich von Kliest and his play Penthesilea. Cue Twilight Zone music.)
I did see there are three other translations of this work that are available, and I believe all are new(er). The War at Troy: What Homer Didn't Tell, The Trojan Epic: Posthomerica and Posthomerica. I don't know anything else about them, but the 1913 translation by Arthur Sanders Way is what you get with this Barnes and Noble 'Library of Essential Reading' and also the Kindle fre(e)-book. I couldn't really find any reviews that suggested one translation over another (though I did find one that dismissed the new Loeb version), I think I might have enjoyed this even more with a contemporary translation. I don't know that I'll live long enough to ever get back around to the Posthomerica, but if I did, I'd like to try one of the others.
*In order: Ajax the Lesser, Achilles (Aeacus is his grandfather--as if Quintus wasn't making this hard enough), Thetis (Achilles mother), Diomedes, and Ajax the Great (bonus info--Achilles and Ajax were first cousins)
Stylistically, it's hard for me to compare them--the translation I read of The Fall of Troy was done in 1913, and which is probably the one most people will read, because it's the most accessible. Those who know more than me can compare and contrast translations and styles and might be able to make a judgment call--for myself, the rhythm and use of language in both Homer and Quintus is unusual enough that I'm usually concentrating more on making sure I understand the content rather than the elegance of the passage. I do think Quintus tends to overuse his metaphors--they seem to all follow the basic pattern of, 'as how a lion leaps out of ambush on a ram, so X faced Y and...' My introductory material suggests that Quintus referred to himself as a shepherd (though that's not established), and his metaphors tend to adhere to events that I can imagine a shepherd would be familiar with. Also, and this drove me crazy sometimes: continually throughout the narrative, Quintus will refer to someone as X's son, rather than give their name, and sometimes leaves off that thread without ever directly referring to the actual name of the person doing the action. To make it worse, sometimes he uses the grandfather of the one doing the action as a tag. Plus, he'll not always use the same given name to indicate the character. Thus Paris might be called Alexander, or Priam's son. Odysseus is Laerte's son. Those aren't terrible--but do you know off the top of your head who Oileus' son is? Aeacus's son? Nereus' child? Tydeus' son? Telemon's?* You do? I do too--now, after having looked them up a dozen times each. These are main characters from The Iliad, so if you want to follow your favorite hacker/slasher from Homer, you better get familiar with Wikipedia and learn his genealogy.
Okay, those are really my only gripes here. I don't even mind looking up things I was unfamiliar with, because I don't think it's reasonable to approach works like this and not expect to need some context or some supplemental information. But getting back to the difference between Homer and Quintus, the real difference in my mind is that The Iliad is not concerned with the narrative as much as it is with human behavior in the face of fate, the effect of pride on human events, and, to me, the redeeming factor of grace and mercy in human interactions. Quintus, on the other hand, is bound by the events themselves--he's telling a succession of happenings, rather than tying them to any loftier goal. This is what makes Homer foundational, and Quintus a very enjoyable five star read, though one that, I think, is only going to satisfy if one has already read The Iliad. It was only a few months ago when I finally got around to Homer's work, and this fell right into the groove I was still in. (This makes me want to read Part II--The Aeneid)
I also learned several things reading through this, things I hadn't picked up other places. I do not ever remember encountering the name Penthesilea before, the Amazon warrior who comes to Troy's aid, nor did I realize the story of Laocoön and his sons was also part of Troy's story. (In an amazing bit of synchronicity, not more than a week after reading and learning who Penthesilea was, I was looking through books at a local thrift store, and like a magnet I was drawn to an old paperback of classic German playwrights. Picking it up, I saw on the front cover a list of authors and titles--first was Goethe, then Schiller and then, you guessed it, Heinrich von Kliest and his play Penthesilea. Cue Twilight Zone music.)
I did see there are three other translations of this work that are available, and I believe all are new(er). The War at Troy: What Homer Didn't Tell, The Trojan Epic: Posthomerica and Posthomerica. I don't know anything else about them, but the 1913 translation by Arthur Sanders Way is what you get with this Barnes and Noble 'Library of Essential Reading' and also the Kindle fre(e)-book. I couldn't really find any reviews that suggested one translation over another (though I did find one that dismissed the new Loeb version), I think I might have enjoyed this even more with a contemporary translation. I don't know that I'll live long enough to ever get back around to the Posthomerica, but if I did, I'd like to try one of the others.
*In order: Ajax the Lesser, Achilles (Aeacus is his grandfather--as if Quintus wasn't making this hard enough), Thetis (Achilles mother), Diomedes, and Ajax the Great (bonus info--Achilles and Ajax were first cousins)
May 13, 2016
“[S]he leapt upon the Argives with all the force of Fate.” I.335 (on Penthesileia).
While the Iliad is (justifiably) the most famous book about the Trojan War, it was actually one of many epic poems centered around the conflict. In addition to the Iliad and the Odyssey, six other poems about the war and its aftermath made up a larger body of work known as the Epic Cycle. These other poems covered events that took place in the first nine years of the war, along with events that happened after the end of the Iliad.
Unfortunately, none of the non-Homeric poems survived past antiquity. However, we have a tantalizing glimpse into what they may have contained in Quintus of Smyra’s Posthomerica. This poem was written in the first few centuries AD – much later than the composition of the Epic Cycle – and it is debatable whether or not Quintus had access to the Epic Cycle at the time he created his own work. However, his description of the Trojan War between the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey contains echoes of an older tradition that will be of real interest to fans of the classics.
Quintus picks up right where Homer left off in the Iliad, and proceeds to cover all of the high points of the legend (the deaths of Achilles and Paris, the arrivals of Neoptolemus and Philoctetes, and the death of Ajax) between the death of Hector and the creation of the Trojan Horse. He proceeds to cover the fall of Troy and the division of the spoils, concluding with the Greeks’ ill-fated voyage home. This neatly brings the reader right up to the point where the Odyssey begins, cleanly bridging the two Homeric epics.
Of course, there is a reason why Homer is a legend and Quintus is a relative unknown. Quintus is not Homer, although he attempts to imitate Homer’s style to a remarkable degree. The poem is clunkily spaced at times, moving from elaborate, detailed descriptions of some events to rather rushed and jumbled presentations of others. This is particularly true towards the end of the poem, when it seems that Quintus was running out of space and was forced to rush through (or effectively skip) key episodes. The poetic style (in translation, anyway) was clean and readable but rarely seemed inspired.
That said, there are interesting pieces here. Some Trojan heroes that readers may not be very familiar with (Penthesileia, Memnon, and Eurypylus) get plenty of screentime here, and they prove to be interesting characters. And for lovers of epic poetry, reading about events like the death of Paris or the Trojan Horse in epic verse is a real treat. Some of these events are covered to a greater or lesser degree in Homer and/or Virgil, but Quintus has the luxury of allowing these events to unfold in real time, not in flashback.
Overall this was a significant step down from Homer’s work, but a solid and entertaining Silver Age epic. For readers interested in ancient epic or the Trojan War, there is a lot to appreciate here. Although the poem was buried in obscurity for quite some time, interest in it has picked up in the last few years. I certainly was glad I sought it out. 3.0 stars, recommended.
June 16, 2017
Dicen que las copias nunca son iguales que el original y esto se puede aplicar a este libro, pero sin embargo me ha encantado muchísimo. El principal "original" en este caso sería Homero. Así es, Quinto de Esmirna en esta obra ("Posthoméricas" o también llamada "La caída de Troya") ha compuesto su épica en una forma muy similar a la de Homero, utilizando frecuentes símiles, discursos o escenas típicas de la "Ilíada" y la "Odisea"; y la verdad es que aunque las notas al pie de página de la editorial Gredos siempre me encantan; esta vez no me gustaron tanto porque a cada momento te recordaban en ciertas frases o escenas la similitud con otros autores como Homero, Virgilio, Apolonio de Rodas, Etc. No sé si en la "Eneida" por ejemplo te mencionan a cada momento que Virgilio copia a Homero.
Pero realmente cuando empecé a leer esta obra me sentí como cuando era un niño y leía a Homero, sentía en verdad nuevamente a Homero con sus descripciones tan detalladas de la guerra y con sus símiles tan característicos. Esta épica me dio lo que realmente esperaba, saber POR FIN qué pasó con todos los héroes griegos y troyanos hasta el final de la guerra de una manera épica, a diferencia de lo que te puede describir Apolodoro o Higinio, de forma más bien narrativa.
Aunque sustentada en otras obras, "Posthoméricas" cuenta todo lo que faltaba. La irrupción en la batalla de la amazona Pentesilea, del rey de los etíopes Memnón y del hijo de Télefo, Eurípilo. Ellos por el bando troyano. Por el lado griego las llegadas de Neoptólemos, hijo de Aquiles y de Filóctetes.
Me encantó las descripciones de las muertes de los aliados troyanos y del combate entre Neoptólemos y Eurípilo, quien fue uno de los más duros enemigos de los griegos. Tiene pasajes realmente emocionantes y diálogos interesantes. Neoptólemos creo es retratado aquí como un verdadero héroe valiente y moral. Siguen en este libro los ya conocidos Eneas, Deífobo, Polidamante, Diómedes, Odiseo, Agamenón, Áyax Oileo, otros más y los olímpicos, infaltables.
La caída de Troya misma es una de las partes más esperadas y también mejor descritas por Quinto de Esmirna, con todo su horror y angustia.
Realmente una obra aunque poco difundida muy recomendable sobre todo para aquel que quiera conocer lo que pasó luego de los funerales de Héctor.
Pero realmente cuando empecé a leer esta obra me sentí como cuando era un niño y leía a Homero, sentía en verdad nuevamente a Homero con sus descripciones tan detalladas de la guerra y con sus símiles tan característicos. Esta épica me dio lo que realmente esperaba, saber POR FIN qué pasó con todos los héroes griegos y troyanos hasta el final de la guerra de una manera épica, a diferencia de lo que te puede describir Apolodoro o Higinio, de forma más bien narrativa.
Aunque sustentada en otras obras, "Posthoméricas" cuenta todo lo que faltaba. La irrupción en la batalla de la amazona Pentesilea, del rey de los etíopes Memnón y del hijo de Télefo, Eurípilo. Ellos por el bando troyano. Por el lado griego las llegadas de Neoptólemos, hijo de Aquiles y de Filóctetes.
Me encantó las descripciones de las muertes de los aliados troyanos y del combate entre Neoptólemos y Eurípilo, quien fue uno de los más duros enemigos de los griegos. Tiene pasajes realmente emocionantes y diálogos interesantes. Neoptólemos creo es retratado aquí como un verdadero héroe valiente y moral. Siguen en este libro los ya conocidos Eneas, Deífobo, Polidamante, Diómedes, Odiseo, Agamenón, Áyax Oileo, otros más y los olímpicos, infaltables.
La caída de Troya misma es una de las partes más esperadas y también mejor descritas por Quinto de Esmirna, con todo su horror y angustia.
Realmente una obra aunque poco difundida muy recomendable sobre todo para aquel que quiera conocer lo que pasó luego de los funerales de Héctor.
October 16, 2022
There is a gap of epic happenings between Homer’s two masterworks, in Ancient Greece there were smaller epics that complete the story but were lost in time then one man rose to the challenge to bridge the gap. The Fall of Troy by Quintus of Smyrna is the rescued remnants of the lost epics between Homer that detail the end of the Trojan War constructed into a single work.
Writing a millennium after the probable date of the first time The Iliad was first written down, Quintus decided to fill in the gap between funeral for Hector and the fall of the Troy by salvaging what was left of the little epics to complete the coverage of the war. Quintus’ quality is nothing compared to Homer, but obviously he knows it and doesn’t try to be Homer just to complete the war. Quintus achieves his goal and frankly the rating of the book is based on his decision to even write the book, what could have improved the book is if the publishers of this edition would have had either footnotes or endnotes but just as a general reader it doesn’t really ruin things it just would have enhanced it.
The Fall of Troy finishes the war that ancient western world obsessed about for a millennium and gives readers today a view of how it ended how it ended.
Writing a millennium after the probable date of the first time The Iliad was first written down, Quintus decided to fill in the gap between funeral for Hector and the fall of the Troy by salvaging what was left of the little epics to complete the coverage of the war. Quintus’ quality is nothing compared to Homer, but obviously he knows it and doesn’t try to be Homer just to complete the war. Quintus achieves his goal and frankly the rating of the book is based on his decision to even write the book, what could have improved the book is if the publishers of this edition would have had either footnotes or endnotes but just as a general reader it doesn’t really ruin things it just would have enhanced it.
The Fall of Troy finishes the war that ancient western world obsessed about for a millennium and gives readers today a view of how it ended how it ended.
December 19, 2018
This is probably my favourite continuation to The Iliad, mainly because it's well written, a feat considering how terrible the other surviving post-Homerica epics in the now mostly lost/incomplete Trojan War cycle are. It's not just that my translation is excellent but that Smyrnaeus is good at the craft, although he is no Homer, but it's a too unfair comparison to even suggest; nobody is like Homer. And also because this book gives protagonism to and brings Penthesilea into the spotlight, who I've always believed deserved to have her day of glory in the Iliad itself and not just be an endnote in the surrounding mythology. Who else, besides Hector, had the guts to face Achilles in battle, anyway?
September 23, 2024
Normally, I have a policy that pre-modern works, works like ancient epics, medieval romances, can't really be rated and reviewed, that they have other value, inherently, besides whatever literary value they may have, and I tend to instead rate them here based on how good the edition of a particular work or corpus is. But Quintus' Posthomerica is such an irredeemable reading experience and so devoid of anything that you won't find somewhere else, like Apollodorus' Bibliotheka or something, so truly, utterly devoid of poetic grace, that it truly feels like an entirely pointless read.
The Posthomerica is the sequel to Homer's Iliad, trying to bridge the gap between that Homeric epic and the Odyssey. It was potentially written after the burning of the Library of Alexandria, which may have meant the loss of Archaic Greek epics, like the Epic Cycle, which told the story leading up to and continuing on from the Iliad. Whatever they may have been, they couldn't have been as bad as the Posthomerica.
First, a brief summary on the poetics here: they're terrible, abysmal even. Quintus is consciously mimicking Homer, however the experience is so inherently inferior it's not even funny: the amount of Lion Similes, i.e. similes comparing such and such warrior or deed of violence to a lion, are so unbelievably excessive and repetitive that you'd think that this was the only simile that Quintus remembered from Homer and that he couldn't think of doing anything besides endlessly repeating it.
The other issue is that of dramatic economy, which Alan James actually tries to defend in his mostly great intro to the poem. Unfortunately, he is wrong: it is unhinged how little of a shit Quintus gives about the matter at end in each Book of his poem. Multiple times, episodes which have had entire tragedies dedicated to them, e.g. getting Philoktetes back from Lemnos, are treated in the most blasé way, done in about a couple hundred of verses which reads more like a summary of an epic which has been put into verse more than an actual epic.
Beyond that, there is the fact of characterization: Quintus is deeply influenced by both stoicism and hero cults, it seems, because the heroes here are entirely whitewashed into Stoic wisemen who spout off stoic couplets about Honor and Glory like it's the only thing they know how to do. As a result, all of the heroes are the exact same, not helped by how all of them are described as they same, having lost their distinctive weapons and fighting styles, functions, etc, that they had from the brilliant Iliad which drew both from Indo-European tradition and the Near East to an excellent result. Here what's drawn on is the stoic banalities which Petronius so brilliantly mocked in the Satyricon.
I'll give an example of both of these two faults, the already mentioned return of Philoktetes, where he says:
And there you go, in but a few verses, the whole conflict is done with. And, what, Philoktetes is not mad anymore? Remember when in Sophocles' famous play it was all about Philoktetes couldn't get over his anger at the betrayal he suffered, which so perfectly mirrored, to this very day, the feelings of all those war veterans who feel "used up and thrown away"? None of that here, Philoktetes is now the strong, stoic type which Seneca and co would have approved of, for "It is not right to be angry and surly forever; / One should be sometimes fierce and sometimes gentle" - more stoic couplet bullshit. The entire poem is full of this.
Although a mimesis of Homer, Quintus multiple times diverts away from Homer's plot, and it is a mystery as to why since whenever he does the result is undeniably inferior.
There's so many examples I could pull up of all of this but honestly just look at the few comments I made as I read this, it would be too tiring to go over all of it as it's the entire book. Absolutely tragic that this is the only surviving poetic treatment of the Penthesilea story surviving from ancient times!
As for translation, not a single good translation of this exists because the poem sucks too hard to be of interest outside of specialist fields. As for the available ones, the A.S. Way one belongs to that category of Loeb translation which is so messy that you use the original ancient Greek to understand the translation more than you use the translation to understand the Greek. The new Loeb translation is a literal prose translation. The other translations are prose as well, and I can only imagine how stiff they get considering the quality of poetics. This translation is actually the best one around, but it is still uncomfortably stiff and unpoetic - in part due to the awful poetics of the Greek original, granted, but many of the decisions taken make the text sound more mechanical than it has to.
Finally, as already touched on, there is not a single unique myth, poetic tradition, or any other feature which would make the Posthomerica a useful source for the student of mythology. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen it being used as a source.
The Posthomerica is the sequel to Homer's Iliad, trying to bridge the gap between that Homeric epic and the Odyssey. It was potentially written after the burning of the Library of Alexandria, which may have meant the loss of Archaic Greek epics, like the Epic Cycle, which told the story leading up to and continuing on from the Iliad. Whatever they may have been, they couldn't have been as bad as the Posthomerica.
First, a brief summary on the poetics here: they're terrible, abysmal even. Quintus is consciously mimicking Homer, however the experience is so inherently inferior it's not even funny: the amount of Lion Similes, i.e. similes comparing such and such warrior or deed of violence to a lion, are so unbelievably excessive and repetitive that you'd think that this was the only simile that Quintus remembered from Homer and that he couldn't think of doing anything besides endlessly repeating it.
The other issue is that of dramatic economy, which Alan James actually tries to defend in his mostly great intro to the poem. Unfortunately, he is wrong: it is unhinged how little of a shit Quintus gives about the matter at end in each Book of his poem. Multiple times, episodes which have had entire tragedies dedicated to them, e.g. getting Philoktetes back from Lemnos, are treated in the most blasé way, done in about a couple hundred of verses which reads more like a summary of an epic which has been put into verse more than an actual epic.
Beyond that, there is the fact of characterization: Quintus is deeply influenced by both stoicism and hero cults, it seems, because the heroes here are entirely whitewashed into Stoic wisemen who spout off stoic couplets about Honor and Glory like it's the only thing they know how to do. As a result, all of the heroes are the exact same, not helped by how all of them are described as they same, having lost their distinctive weapons and fighting styles, functions, etc, that they had from the brilliant Iliad which drew both from Indo-European tradition and the Near East to an excellent result. Here what's drawn on is the stoic banalities which Petronius so brilliantly mocked in the Satyricon.
I'll give an example of both of these two faults, the already mentioned return of Philoktetes, where he says:
Stouthearted Poias’ son made this reply to him:
‘‘Good friend, I am no longer angry with you, nor with any
Other Argive, if anyone else has done me wrong.
I know that the mind of a good man should be pliable.
It is not right to be angry and surly forever;
One should be sometimes fierce and sometimes gentle.
Now let us go and rest, for a man who wants to fight
Does better to sleep than to go on feasting for too long.’’
That said, he rose to leave and went to the quarters
Of his comrades. They then for their warlike king
Hurried to make his bed with happiness filling their hearts.
He was glad to take his rest till the following dawn.
And there you go, in but a few verses, the whole conflict is done with. And, what, Philoktetes is not mad anymore? Remember when in Sophocles' famous play it was all about Philoktetes couldn't get over his anger at the betrayal he suffered, which so perfectly mirrored, to this very day, the feelings of all those war veterans who feel "used up and thrown away"? None of that here, Philoktetes is now the strong, stoic type which Seneca and co would have approved of, for "It is not right to be angry and surly forever; / One should be sometimes fierce and sometimes gentle" - more stoic couplet bullshit. The entire poem is full of this.
Although a mimesis of Homer, Quintus multiple times diverts away from Homer's plot, and it is a mystery as to why since whenever he does the result is undeniably inferior.
There's so many examples I could pull up of all of this but honestly just look at the few comments I made as I read this, it would be too tiring to go over all of it as it's the entire book. Absolutely tragic that this is the only surviving poetic treatment of the Penthesilea story surviving from ancient times!
As for translation, not a single good translation of this exists because the poem sucks too hard to be of interest outside of specialist fields. As for the available ones, the A.S. Way one belongs to that category of Loeb translation which is so messy that you use the original ancient Greek to understand the translation more than you use the translation to understand the Greek. The new Loeb translation is a literal prose translation. The other translations are prose as well, and I can only imagine how stiff they get considering the quality of poetics. This translation is actually the best one around, but it is still uncomfortably stiff and unpoetic - in part due to the awful poetics of the Greek original, granted, but many of the decisions taken make the text sound more mechanical than it has to.
Finally, as already touched on, there is not a single unique myth, poetic tradition, or any other feature which would make the Posthomerica a useful source for the student of mythology. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen it being used as a source.
October 26, 2021
3.5
I've been warned that this was going to be significantly worse than the Iliad. To be fair, it was entertaining, filling the gaps between the Iliad and the Odyssey. Sure, the presentation isn't as great as Homer's, but this follow-up doesn't hurt (Quintus tries to mimic a lot of Homer's style).
I've been warned that this was going to be significantly worse than the Iliad. To be fair, it was entertaining, filling the gaps between the Iliad and the Odyssey. Sure, the presentation isn't as great as Homer's, but this follow-up doesn't hurt (Quintus tries to mimic a lot of Homer's style).
November 18, 2021
Cierto cantante, de cuyo nombre no me acuerdo ni importa mucho en realidad, solía contar a modo de chiste la idea de que todo lo que escribió García Márquez fueron cosas que a éste de niño le relatara su abuela, dando a entender que era a ésta a quien tendrían que haberle dado el Nobel de Literatura, o algo así, pues, al igual que toda esa gente que se acercaba (o se sigue acercando) al director de cine Pedro Almodóvar diciéndole tener una historia excelente con la cual hacer una película, ninguno se daba cuenta que, en realidad, un buen libro, o una buena película, o una buena narración en general no depende más que de forma secundaria de la anécdota que cuenta, esa historia interesantísima que tantos tienen en la cabeza por haberla vivido en persona o visto, y que creen que por sí misma haría la mejor novela o película del mundo, cuando, en realidad, es la forma particular, el talento para narrar las cosas de una forma u otra, con los elementos adecuados, diciendo y callando lo necesario, administrando los tiempos, y añadiendo con todo ello un mayor significado a lo dicho, lo que forma una buena historia, novela o película.
Y si esos tales no lo creen, nada más fácil que sentarse e intentar escribir esa historia súper increíble que tienen en la cabeza, para darse cuenta que, sin el talento narrativo o habilidad para contar, seguramente no podrían redactar más que un par de cuartillas, ni siquiera muy interesantes, de lo que creerían saldría una gran novela.
Pero bueno, todo eso lo escribo porque es algo que a lo largo de la lectura de este libro constantemente se me vino a la cabeza, comparando las magistrales narraciones homéricas con esta especie de fan fiction de época imperial romana, escrita por un entusiasta y acérrimo fan de Homero, quien, seguramente hastiado de tantas malas versiones de las leyendas y mitos alrededor de la guerra de Troya que habría en su época, decidió escribir una propia, metiendo en ella todo lo que pudo encontrar, a su muy peculiar forma, intentando así emular (con todo el debido respeto, claro está) a su muy querido Homero, al completar la narración de lo que pasó después de la muerte de Héctor en la Ilíada y antes de las aventuras de la Odisea, que es muchísimo y que, al leerse éstas Posthoméricas suyas, pareció ser demasiado para su talento narrativo tan modesto.
Aunque, tomando en cuenta al modelo, no se puede ser muy duro con el buen Quinto, que intentó incluir como mejor pudo montones de leyendas, cada una con variantes, en una sola congruente y continua, sin un objetivo concreto o idea ulterior profunda más allá del simple completar la historia, dejada “a medias” por Homero. El gran talento del poeta que contó apenas un episodio concreto de la guerra de Troya, la cólera de su gran caudillo, y supo darle una hondura psicológica inoída a un relato de aventuras de un guerrero envejecido que regresa a casa, es algo que Quinto de Esmirna por desgracia no tiene, y su poema resulta en largos trechos sólo tedioso, repetitivo, insulso e innecesariamente adornado.
Con todo, tampoco es que sea tan malo, y así sea sólo porque no es posible encontrar hoy día en ningún lado más que de forma fragmentaria todo eso que pasó en la guerra de Troya, puede uno habituarse a (o aguantarse) la verborrea de la limitada musa de Quinto de Esmirna y disfrutar sólo de lo que va contando. Mejor aún, y sobre todo con una edición repleta de notas informativas como la de Gredos, todo este libro puede leerse como una especie de tratado de mitología griega, pues, precisamente por todo lo que intenta abarcar, está repleto de datos e historias en sí mismas interesantes, es un excelente ¿Quién es quién? de la mitología griega y al final uno se queda bastante mejor informado de lo que fueron los héroes grecoantiguos y sus gestas.
Casi cada uno de los episodios acumulados por Quinto para su poema podrían dar para una historia aparte, muchos de ellos de hecho lo hicieron a modo de tragedias, y hay que decir que intentar meterlas todas en un solo saco habría resultado demasiado para quizá cualquiera, y, en todo caso, el mismo hecho de que este “mal poema” épico haya sobrevivido hasta nuestros días es buen indicador del aprecio que, pese a todo, se le ha tenido a lo largo del tiempo; indirectamente, además, por las fuentes a las que el poeta tuvo aún acceso, algo más de toda esa literatura antigua ya hace tanto perdida logr�� llegar hasta nosotros.
Dudo mucho que exista alguien que haya llegado a este libro sin haberse leído ya la Ilíada y la Odisea, aunque puede leerse y entenderse bien sin aquellos, y tampoco hará falta insistir que estas Posthoméricas, aparte datos adicionales para “fans”, no añade o enriquece gran cosa a los poemas homéricos.
Y si esos tales no lo creen, nada más fácil que sentarse e intentar escribir esa historia súper increíble que tienen en la cabeza, para darse cuenta que, sin el talento narrativo o habilidad para contar, seguramente no podrían redactar más que un par de cuartillas, ni siquiera muy interesantes, de lo que creerían saldría una gran novela.
Pero bueno, todo eso lo escribo porque es algo que a lo largo de la lectura de este libro constantemente se me vino a la cabeza, comparando las magistrales narraciones homéricas con esta especie de fan fiction de época imperial romana, escrita por un entusiasta y acérrimo fan de Homero, quien, seguramente hastiado de tantas malas versiones de las leyendas y mitos alrededor de la guerra de Troya que habría en su época, decidió escribir una propia, metiendo en ella todo lo que pudo encontrar, a su muy peculiar forma, intentando así emular (con todo el debido respeto, claro está) a su muy querido Homero, al completar la narración de lo que pasó después de la muerte de Héctor en la Ilíada y antes de las aventuras de la Odisea, que es muchísimo y que, al leerse éstas Posthoméricas suyas, pareció ser demasiado para su talento narrativo tan modesto.
Aunque, tomando en cuenta al modelo, no se puede ser muy duro con el buen Quinto, que intentó incluir como mejor pudo montones de leyendas, cada una con variantes, en una sola congruente y continua, sin un objetivo concreto o idea ulterior profunda más allá del simple completar la historia, dejada “a medias” por Homero. El gran talento del poeta que contó apenas un episodio concreto de la guerra de Troya, la cólera de su gran caudillo, y supo darle una hondura psicológica inoída a un relato de aventuras de un guerrero envejecido que regresa a casa, es algo que Quinto de Esmirna por desgracia no tiene, y su poema resulta en largos trechos sólo tedioso, repetitivo, insulso e innecesariamente adornado.
Con todo, tampoco es que sea tan malo, y así sea sólo porque no es posible encontrar hoy día en ningún lado más que de forma fragmentaria todo eso que pasó en la guerra de Troya, puede uno habituarse a (o aguantarse) la verborrea de la limitada musa de Quinto de Esmirna y disfrutar sólo de lo que va contando. Mejor aún, y sobre todo con una edición repleta de notas informativas como la de Gredos, todo este libro puede leerse como una especie de tratado de mitología griega, pues, precisamente por todo lo que intenta abarcar, está repleto de datos e historias en sí mismas interesantes, es un excelente ¿Quién es quién? de la mitología griega y al final uno se queda bastante mejor informado de lo que fueron los héroes grecoantiguos y sus gestas.
Casi cada uno de los episodios acumulados por Quinto para su poema podrían dar para una historia aparte, muchos de ellos de hecho lo hicieron a modo de tragedias, y hay que decir que intentar meterlas todas en un solo saco habría resultado demasiado para quizá cualquiera, y, en todo caso, el mismo hecho de que este “mal poema” épico haya sobrevivido hasta nuestros días es buen indicador del aprecio que, pese a todo, se le ha tenido a lo largo del tiempo; indirectamente, además, por las fuentes a las que el poeta tuvo aún acceso, algo más de toda esa literatura antigua ya hace tanto perdida logr�� llegar hasta nosotros.
Dudo mucho que exista alguien que haya llegado a este libro sin haberse leído ya la Ilíada y la Odisea, aunque puede leerse y entenderse bien sin aquellos, y tampoco hará falta insistir que estas Posthoméricas, aparte datos adicionales para “fans”, no añade o enriquece gran cosa a los poemas homéricos.
December 9, 2021
Good fun. I wonder if the obvious comparison leaves it under appreciated.
April 6, 2013
Giving this book 5 stars does not mean I felt it was as great as Homer, but what a great find! Think of it as some buried treasure for those of us who already read the great classics of mythology and are hungry for something new. The stories include all of the gems we have seen in other sources: Philoctetes (Euripides), The sack of Troy (Virgil, bk. 2 of the Aeneid), The tragic aftermath (Euripides, The Trojan women), and others. The difference is that Quintus presents it all in one epic narrative. Of course it is all not treated in the same way as the other sources, so don't be too disappointed if he does not treat certain episodes with any great depth. He is covering a lot of material: from just after the death of Hector, to the death of Achilles, the coming of Neoptelemos to the leaving of the Greeks. This translation is fun and easy to read.
December 30, 2014
When it comes to bloodshed, Quinchy Quenches!™
Quinch clearly gets the Homeric tone. Of course it's anyone's guess as to translations, and this one was on the Shakespearean side but still not bad, in any event it's the only one I could find anywhere, but aping tone and diction just isn't the same as source material. I liked this better than the Aeniad but that aint sayin much. Most of the scenes, like Achilles demise, the return of Philoctetes, the Horse, the actual, brutal sack of Troy, are illustrated better elsewhere in Greek drama.
Simply put, Greeks do the best Greek. Romans will always be chasing.
Quinch clearly gets the Homeric tone. Of course it's anyone's guess as to translations, and this one was on the Shakespearean side but still not bad, in any event it's the only one I could find anywhere, but aping tone and diction just isn't the same as source material. I liked this better than the Aeniad but that aint sayin much. Most of the scenes, like Achilles demise, the return of Philoctetes, the Horse, the actual, brutal sack of Troy, are illustrated better elsewhere in Greek drama.
Simply put, Greeks do the best Greek. Romans will always be chasing.
May 30, 2018
The War at Troy by Quintus of Smyrna was written in the third century AD and bridges the narrative gap between Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Starting where the narrative left off, Quintus describes the various battles surrounding Troy and the destruction of Troy at the hands of the Trojan Horse.
Written in a style very similar to Homer's epics, the War at Troy is a work that few people know about, even though it belongs right next to the works of Homer and Virgil. Detailing battles, tender moments, and the horrific costs of war, the War at Troy is a beautiful epic. If you enjoyed the Iliad, Odyssey, or Aeneid, you need to read the War at Troy.
Written in a style very similar to Homer's epics, the War at Troy is a work that few people know about, even though it belongs right next to the works of Homer and Virgil. Detailing battles, tender moments, and the horrific costs of war, the War at Troy is a beautiful epic. If you enjoyed the Iliad, Odyssey, or Aeneid, you need to read the War at Troy.
August 16, 2021
A good beach read for a classics nerd. And yes, I read it on the Oregon beach and I guess I'm a classics nerd (wannabe)
It was like Quintus's big take way from reading Homer was (1) similes, similes, similes and (2) list a death with name and address, list a death with name and address. Combellack, the translator, provides a pretty good evaluation of this bland piece of cheese between two tasty slices of French bread with a very non-biased view. He was correct in signing Quintus fails to develop a theme - no
μηνιν Πηληιαδεω Αχιληος no νοστος for a ανδρος πολυτροπος.
It was interesting to hear some pieces of the story that one forgets or doesn't know such as the sacrifice of Polyxena or the washing away of the walls by Poseidon and Apollo.
It was like Quintus's big take way from reading Homer was (1) similes, similes, similes and (2) list a death with name and address, list a death with name and address. Combellack, the translator, provides a pretty good evaluation of this bland piece of cheese between two tasty slices of French bread with a very non-biased view. He was correct in signing Quintus fails to develop a theme - no
μηνιν Πηληιαδεω Αχιληος no νοστος for a ανδρος πολυτροπος.
It was interesting to hear some pieces of the story that one forgets or doesn't know such as the sacrifice of Polyxena or the washing away of the walls by Poseidon and Apollo.
September 1, 2025
Normally I rate these ancient sources higher because of their historical significance. This source is the only substantial abridgement of the Epic Cycle poems occurring after Homer’s Iliad which are now lost to history. But after reading Homer, there is a significant difference in the quality of the prose. This definitely gave me more respect for Homer’s work and why held in such acclaim. This source is still great for containing the myths of Penthesilea and Memnon, the death of Achilles, his sons entry into the war, the death of Ajax the Greater, the Trojan horse and the fall of Troy leading up to the start of the Odyssey
January 1, 2021
The Fall of Troy by Quintus Smyrnaeus is an ancient Greek “literary” retelling of part of the post-Homeric cycle. It covers the events from the end of The Iliad to the Trojan Horse and then the opening scene of the various Returns of the heroes. Since I have read my Homer and my Virgil, plus a lot of the ancient plays, I have always intended to read this one, as well, so I finally got around to it. It was a lot of fun, if a bit more overblown than either Homer or Virgil.
February 7, 2025
Attempting to take on where Homer left off, Quintus of Smyrnea tells the story of the sacking of Troy and the continuous fight between Argive and the Dardanan to tip the scales of Fate in their favor and be victorious in this epic battle. In a kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, odors, and pageantry mimicking Homer, we are transported back to the early traces of civilization to watch the ruin of Troy in what feels like real-time.
Read
April 18, 2024just let kate study the actual iliad during her classics degree challenge
November 27, 2022
Put simply, Quintus' work fills us in in the events after "The Iliad" but before "The Odyssey". Here we read about the death of Achilles, the building of the Trojan horse, and the lamentable sack of Troy. Read it and complete your greek mythology knowledge. You'll like it!
May 15, 2017
While lacking the storytelling ability of Homer and the focus of a good epic, I did enjoy the information provided in these relatively disjoint episodic pieces that ran from the death of Hector to the Greeks leaving Troy.
For the story from just before the Trojan Horse to the Greeks leaving, I much preferred Tryphiodorus's The Destruction of Troy.
For the story from just before the Trojan Horse to the Greeks leaving, I much preferred Tryphiodorus's The Destruction of Troy.
January 17, 2016
This epic poem, probably written in the mid-fourth century AD, picks up right where Homer's Iliad ends (the funeral of Hector). The poet, Quintus of Smyrna, weaves together strands of the story from other sources (e.g. various plays, a surviving summary of the lost Epic Cycle, and possibly the Aenied), and comes up with a coherent account of the remainder of the Trojan War and its immediate aftermath.
He does a fairly good job of copying Homer's style, but (not surprisingly) does not measure up to the master poet. His characters have less personality than those in the Iliad; the men all sound virtually identical when they speak, and the various gods and goddesses are much more (though not entirely) submissive to Zeus than Homer's shrewish Hera and spitfire Athena. The underlying philosophy/theology of the poem is also very different from the Iliad in that all things, including Zeus himself, are subject to the Fates and some heroes who die valiantly achieve a favorable/paradisaical afterlife (or godhood) rather than the relatively uniform underworld/Hades assumed by Homer.
The translation I read (from the Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) was done in a well-executed unrhymed iambic pentameter. I thought it was a tolerable English substitute for the original meter, though Lattimore and Fagles achieve a nice hexameter approximation in their translations of the Iliad that I found more enjoyable. Overall, this is definitely worth reading as a poetic summary of events following the Iliad...just don't expect it to be up to the level of Homer.
He does a fairly good job of copying Homer's style, but (not surprisingly) does not measure up to the master poet. His characters have less personality than those in the Iliad; the men all sound virtually identical when they speak, and the various gods and goddesses are much more (though not entirely) submissive to Zeus than Homer's shrewish Hera and spitfire Athena. The underlying philosophy/theology of the poem is also very different from the Iliad in that all things, including Zeus himself, are subject to the Fates and some heroes who die valiantly achieve a favorable/paradisaical afterlife (or godhood) rather than the relatively uniform underworld/Hades assumed by Homer.
The translation I read (from the Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) was done in a well-executed unrhymed iambic pentameter. I thought it was a tolerable English substitute for the original meter, though Lattimore and Fagles achieve a nice hexameter approximation in their translations of the Iliad that I found more enjoyable. Overall, this is definitely worth reading as a poetic summary of events following the Iliad...just don't expect it to be up to the level of Homer.
October 16, 2011
It turns out that even though the Epic Cycle about the Trojan War is lost, there's still an ancient poem covering everything after the Iliad to the end. Quintus of Smyrna wrote it around the 300's A.D., using the same kind of Greek that the Iliad and Odyssey did a thousand years before. Because it covers a longer story, it's faster-moving than the Iliad, more like the Aeneid. I don't think any one battle lasts longer than a book! Otherwise, it really is like Homer.
March 22, 2014
As you can see: really liked it. I'm now going to go back to the introduction to see where the translator thought the poet had gone wrong for the last part of the book. There's an odd omission at the description of the actual fall makes me wonder if it wasn't because that was the most thumbed bit it was the most likely to wear out whereas the rest kept more intact, but how would I know.
April 14, 2021
It is a very interesting book that follows the narration of Homer after the funeral of Hector until the return of the Greeks back to their homelands. It includes the death of Achiles, Paris and the destruction of Troy. Many works of medieval and modern times (f.e. Shakespeare, Ronsard) take their plots from this underrated epic. Hommage to Quintus of Smyrna.
July 12, 2007
It turns out that what Homer didn’t tell, was quite a lot: the Amazons, the Ethiopians, the Thessalians, the death Achilles at Paris’ hand, the madness and death of Ajax, Neoptlemus, Philocteses, the death of Paris, the Trojan Horse and the fall of Troy.
February 25, 2008
Quintus of Smyrna . . . the ancient author everyone knows, but thinks they don't. You've never heard of him, but half of what you think you know about the Trojan War came from his tellings of stories now otherwise lost.
April 3, 2013
Not as good as Homer, but a nice companion piece to the Ilaid. I have to wonder, however, why are those women taking in war are crying when thier rapists die?
Yes, I know, but as a woman I have to ask!
If you want to read the story that comes after, including the horse, read this.
Yes, I know, but as a woman I have to ask!
If you want to read the story that comes after, including the horse, read this.
July 28, 2013
This was one of the most satisfying books I've ever read. I read "Posthomerica" in between "The Illiad" and "The Odyssey" and it was an excellent decision. I don't understand why Quintus gets such a bad rep, but read for yourself and you'll find yourself asking the same thing.
Want to read
April 8, 2008"A bold and generally underrated attempt in Homer's style to complete the story of Troy from the point at which the Iliad closes."
Sounds good to me!
Sounds good to me!
March 10, 2019
It has always irritated me that the narrative of the final days of Troy wasn't actually in the Iliad or the Odyssey. I was a mass-market-mythology lover who didn't want to take that extra step of taking classics courses or learning Greek or Latin. Due to the loss of several Trojan Cycle manuscripts (the Little Iliad, Aithiopis, etc.), audiences never got to see Helen and Menelaos reconcile. The death of Achilles? The death of Paris? The wooden horse? Nope. And champions like Memnon, Penthesilea, and Neoptolemos were relegated to a couple of paragraphs here and there in English-language collections of the myths. (Hat tip to Robert Graves' "The Greek Myths," Gustav Schwab's "Gods and Heroes," and David Kravitz's "Who's Who In Greek and Roman Mythology," which were all excellent starting points and found in superstores during my early adulthood.)
Wait no more. Quintus of Smyrna, who lived several centuries later than Homer and his contemporaries, put together an epic poem based on who-knows-what manuscripts that have not survived. Alan James and the Johns Hopkins University Press have published a sweet volume with the text of the epic, and a lengthy commentary section that proves quite useful. Quintus has a habit of using epithets of characters rather than their given names, so if you aren't sure which goddess "Tritogenia" is, it's possible to refer to the commentary as if it were endnotes and figure out the majority of references. (Tritogenia, "thrice-born," is Athena.)
So what do we get as the content of the epic? A battle-axe-wielding Amazon. An Ethiopian demigod born of the rosy Dawn. The madness of Great Ajax. Heracles' son killing scores of Greeks (including their doctor!) before facing Achilles' son who has come to avenge his father. Philoctetes, Heracles' ally, wounding Paris with an arrow dipped in the blood of the Hydra, and Paris's attempt to reconcile with his former lover Oenone before the poison works. The horse gambit (complete with a bizarre appearance by two sea serpents that roam right into town to eat Laocoon's kids… really, they couldn't have done that on the beach?). Lastly, it's got the sack of Troy and Aeneas's escape before one final word from Athena to Lesser Ajax, communicated via thunderbolt.
So for content, this volume delivers. The only story I can think of from this period of the war that the Posthomerica doesn't have in detail is the theft of the Palladium. Obviously, that's no fault of the translator. As for whether the poetics carry the same heft as Homer… probably not. There's only fourteen books, not twenty-four, and one can feel the difference. Deaths are more sudden; stories of heroic angst less rich in detail. Deiphobos claiming Helen just before the fall of the city is barely a footnote. But in keeping with the spirit of the subject matter, I suggest the mythology buffs fall upon this book as wolves fall upon the sheep-fold, their jaws drawing blood while the shepherd, tired from day-long toil, sleeps in his bed, unaware of the violent work that…
...uh, sorry. Got carried away. But if you don't mind a lot of extended similes like that, the Posthomerica is the volume for you.
Wait no more. Quintus of Smyrna, who lived several centuries later than Homer and his contemporaries, put together an epic poem based on who-knows-what manuscripts that have not survived. Alan James and the Johns Hopkins University Press have published a sweet volume with the text of the epic, and a lengthy commentary section that proves quite useful. Quintus has a habit of using epithets of characters rather than their given names, so if you aren't sure which goddess "Tritogenia" is, it's possible to refer to the commentary as if it were endnotes and figure out the majority of references. (Tritogenia, "thrice-born," is Athena.)
So what do we get as the content of the epic? A battle-axe-wielding Amazon. An Ethiopian demigod born of the rosy Dawn. The madness of Great Ajax. Heracles' son killing scores of Greeks (including their doctor!) before facing Achilles' son who has come to avenge his father. Philoctetes, Heracles' ally, wounding Paris with an arrow dipped in the blood of the Hydra, and Paris's attempt to reconcile with his former lover Oenone before the poison works. The horse gambit (complete with a bizarre appearance by two sea serpents that roam right into town to eat Laocoon's kids… really, they couldn't have done that on the beach?). Lastly, it's got the sack of Troy and Aeneas's escape before one final word from Athena to Lesser Ajax, communicated via thunderbolt.
So for content, this volume delivers. The only story I can think of from this period of the war that the Posthomerica doesn't have in detail is the theft of the Palladium. Obviously, that's no fault of the translator. As for whether the poetics carry the same heft as Homer… probably not. There's only fourteen books, not twenty-four, and one can feel the difference. Deaths are more sudden; stories of heroic angst less rich in detail. Deiphobos claiming Helen just before the fall of the city is barely a footnote. But in keeping with the spirit of the subject matter, I suggest the mythology buffs fall upon this book as wolves fall upon the sheep-fold, their jaws drawing blood while the shepherd, tired from day-long toil, sleeps in his bed, unaware of the violent work that…
...uh, sorry. Got carried away. But if you don't mind a lot of extended similes like that, the Posthomerica is the volume for you.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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