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the complete review - epic

Posthomerica

by
Quintus Smyrnaeus

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B+ : great stories, if crowded and uneven in the telling

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "(T)he job market will never be screaming for Quintus specialists, and perhaps rightly so. Yet the Posthomerica certainly deserves more attention than it has received in the past." - Martijn Cuypers, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Homer's Iliad gives only a partial account of the Trojan War -- missing famous episodes including the death of Achilles and the classic Trojan Horse-ploy -- while the Odyssey only begins after the fall of Troy. Several works -- the so-called 'Epic Cycle', of sometime around the seventh century BC -- did cover this in-between time, but only fragments of the component-works survive; Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica, written roughly a thousand years later, is the most complete account of the rest of the battle for and then fall of Troy. Other works, which Quintus likely was familiar with, covered episodes that are also treated here -- Sophocles' Ajax, for example, or the Aeneid -- while later authors also covered this same period (John Tzetzes (ca. 1110 to 1180), for example, wrote: "his own Posthomerica, a prosaic coverage of Quintus' subject matter in 780 faulty hexameters", as another translator of Quintus, Alan James, puts it), but Quintus' large-scale epic -- 14 books, almost 8800 lines -- is the most thorough and extensive narrative filling the gap between Iliad and Odyssey.
       Quintus' work is clearly meant to bridge the two Homeric epics, with the Posthomerica beginning right where the Iliad left off, with Hector's funeral, before the next great hope of the Trojans arrives, the Amazon Penthesileia. While originally written in verse -- in imitation of, and leaning strongly on the Homeric example -- Neil Hopkinson opts for a prose rendering for his new (2018) translation in the Loeb Classical Library -- the edition under review here. Hopkinson's version supplants the 1913 A.S.Way "heavily archaizing iambic pentameter translation" (so Hopkinson in his Introduction) -- the Loeb standard-bearer for over a century (and definitely having grown somewhat long in the tooth) --, which was in a (sometimes forced and certainly over-rich) verse; Alan James' 2004 translation is also a (freer) verse translation.
       Certainly, something is lost in rendering Quintus in prose -- though compared with Way's version, Hopkinson's is also much more accessible -- helped, in no small part, by being freed from the constraints Way put himself under. (As a Loeb edition, the translation is also printed facing the original Greek, so interested readers can readily compare the translation(s) to the verse-original.)
       A comparison of just the opening lines shows the extent of the differences in translation:

Εὖθ᾽ ὑπὸ Πηλείωνι δάμη θεοείκελος Ἕκτωρ
καί ἑ πυρὴ κατέδαψε καὶ ὀστέα γαῖα κεκεύθει,
δὴ τότε Τρῶες ἔμιμνον ἀνὰ Πριάμοιο πόληα
δειδιότες μένος ἠῢ θρασύφρονος Αἰακίδαο·
ἠΰτ᾽ ἐνὶ ξυλοχοισι βόες βλοσυροῖο λέοντος
ἐλθέμεν οὐκ ἐθέλουσιν ἐναντίαι, ἀλλὰ φέβουται
ἰληδὸν πτώσσουσαι ἀνὰ ῥωπήια πυκνά·


When godlike Hector had been vanquished by the son of Peleus and the pyre had consumed him and the earth had covered his bones, the Trojan forces stayed inside the city of Priam terrified of the noble might of bold-hearted Achilles, grandson of Aeacus. Like cows which, unwilling to face a grim lion among the thickets, flee pell-mell and cower in the dense undergrowth
                            - Neil Hopkinson


When godlike Hector by Peleides slain
Passed, and the pyre had ravined up his flesh,
And earth had veiled his bones, the Trojans then
Tarried in Priam’s city, sore afraid
Before the might of stout-heart Aeacus’ son:
As kine they were, that midst the copses shrink
From faring forth to meet a lion grim,
But in dense thickets terror-huddled cower;
                            - A.S.Way

Hektor the equal of gods had been killed by the son of Peleus.
Consumed by the funeral pyre, his bones were under the ground.
The Trojans stayed inside the city of Priam,
Fearing the force of Aiakos’ dauntless grandson.
As cattle in a wood refuse to go
And face a fearsome lion, taking fright
They huddle together among the densest thickets,

     Quintus' diction and style are recognizably Homeric, although he avoids the rare and controversial words, extensive verbatim repetition, and metrical inequalities of Homer.

Reflections on morality and human behavior are uttered not only by the characters, as in Homer, but also by the narrator.

She had no idea how far Achilles and his ashen spear excelled in the murderous mayhem of battle.

Whinnying horses and charging troops trampled the dead lying thick as numberless leaves in a grove as winter comes on at the end of fertile autumn.

You are dead, son of Peleus, foremost of all the Danaans: you are dead, and you have left the great Achaean army without its bulwark: after your death we are easier prey for our enemies. And your fall has left great joy to the Trojans, who used to run away from you like sheep scattering before a lion: now they eagerly carry the fight right up to our swift ships.

Meriones stabbed him with his deadly spear above his private parts [αἰδοίων], and instantly diseboweled him: his spirit instantly rushed down to the darkness. [...] Nestor’s mighty son speared godlike Acamas just above the knee as he rushed at him, and he underwent horrible agonies from that deadly wound: he quitted the battle and left the fighting to his companions, with its tears aplenty: he had no more appetite for war. Next Thoas’ comrade Deïopites the wise was struck just below the shoulder by one of glorious Eurypylus’ attendants. The cruel spear went near his heart and, mingled with the blood, a cold sweat oozed from his limbs. As he turned to flee, the might of Eurypylus caught up with him and severed the tendons that gave him speed; for all his eagerness to flee, his feet were rooted to the spot where he received the blow, and immortal life left him.

My child, where has your good sense flown ? Why do you want to go with these strangers to Ilium, that city of tears, where even men expert in war and ghastly mayhem are dying in droves in the grim battle lines ? You are only young: you know nothing yet about those fighting skills which can keep the evil day at bay.

killing victims one after another: just as a young boy wafts his hand at flies coming near the milk, and they give up the ghost all around the vessel, vanquished by so light a blow, and the boy is kept entertained: such was the joy which the illustrious son of Achilles took in his victims.

to shroud the famous city of Priam in clouds vast and dense, so that the murderous battle was obscured in mist and none of the attackers could any longer make out the position of the wall, which continued to be shrouded in thick cloud.

mankind was not put in fear -- it was the gods’ will that men should remain ignorant of that divine conflict. They meanwhile broke off crags of the range of Ida with their hands and hurled them at one another, and these simply shattered into tiny fragments like sand when they met the gods’ irresistible limbs.

Everywhere the earth overflowed with streams of black blood as the Trojans and their foreign allies were massacred. Some lay in blood in the streets, conquered by chill death, while others breathed their last and fell over their bodies. Others again stumbled pitifully through their houses clutching their entrails; others, their feet amputated, crawled among the corpses with bloodcurdling screams; many who had bitten the dust as they fought tooth and nail had their hands -- and their very heads -- cut off; others, attempting flight, were pierced in the back with ash-wood spears, which emerged through their chests; other spears penetrated as far as the groin, above the private parts, where the spear of tireless Ares gives most pain. All through the city arose a gloomy howling of dogs mingled with the horrid groans of the dying, and every dwelling seemed to echo with endless shrieks.

The Argives would all have crossed the deep sea and reached the sacred soil of Hellas untroubled had not Athena, daughter of Zeus the thunderer, been angry with them.

His arm, severed from his muscular shoulder by that lethal sword, was still eager to brandish his spear and ready for the fight -- in vain, since the man himself was not in control of it, but was thrashing around with randomly convulsive movements.

With these words, he cut off the head of that venerable man as easily as if he were harvesting a dry ear of grain in the hot summer season. It gave a loud gasp as it rolled across the ground a good distance from those limbs which make a man move.

- M.A.Orthofer, 2 December 2018

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Links:

• Harvard University Press publicity page
• Johns Hopkins University Press publicity page
• wbg publicity page
• Akal publicity page
• τὰ μεθ᾿ Ὅμηρον - Greek text

• Bryn Mawr Classical Review*
• Bryn Mawr Classical Review (German)
• Classically Inclined*
• Open Letters Review
• Revisto de Libros (Spanish)

• See Index of Greek literature
• See Index of Books Written Before 1900
• See Index of Bilingual editions under review
• See Index of Poetry
• Other books from the Loeb Classical Library under review

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About the Author:

       Quintus of Smyrna (Quintus Smyrnaeus; Κόιντος Σμυρναίος) lived around the 4th century.

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© 2018 the complete review

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