Quintus of Smyrna’s 'Posthomerica'

Writing Homer Under Rome

Edited by Silvio Bär, Emma Greensmith, Leyla Ozbek

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Offers a literary and cultural-historical analysis of the Posthomerica

Connects Quintus with a far wider range of ancient literature: historical, philosophical, dramatic, and rhetorical genres; and prosaic and poetic works
Moves away from the localized study of particular aspects of the poem to a joined-up understanding of this era of epic, as a corpus engaging dialogically with issues of empire, literary inheritance and cultural change
Intersects with the growing field of study of Late Antique literature, and the burgeoning interest in imperial Greek poetry and its accounts of the sack of Troy – a story which continues to resonate in scholarly and public discourse

This collection offers a new collaborative reading of Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica: one of the most important Greek epics written at the height of the Roman Empire. Building on the surge of interest in imperial Greek poetry seen in the past decades, this book applies new approaches - literary, theoretical and historical - to ask new questions about this mysterious, challenging poet and to re-evaluate his role in the cultural history of his time.

Contents

Introduction: Going to Rome, Returning to Troy - Silvio Bär, Emma Greensmith and Leyla Ozbek

Part I: Contexts and Poetics

Temporality and Temper: Time, Narrative and Heroism in Quintus of Smyrna - Simon Goldhill

Poetry, Performance, and Quintus’ Posthomerica - Katerina Carvounis

A-Sexual Epic? Consummation and Closure in the Posthomerica - Emma Greensmith

Images of Life and Death: Visualising the Heroic Body in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica - Ann-Sophie Schoess

Part II: Religion, Gods and Destiny

A Non-Homeric Fate in Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica? Representation, Function, Problems - Calum A. Maciver

Disempowering the Gods - Katia Barbaresco

Animal and Human Sacrifice in Quintus of Smyrna - Jan N. Bremmer

Part III: Between Narratology and Lexicology

A Narratological Study on the Role of the Fates in the Posthomerica - Eirini Argyrouli

Wielding Words: Neoptolemus as a Speaker of Words in Quintus’ Posthomerica - Tine Scheijnen

Stepping Out of Place: σχέτλιος in Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica - Jordan Maly-Preuss

Renewing Homer with Homer: The Use of Epithets in Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica - Alessia Ferreccio

Polychronic Intertextuality in Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica - Vincent Tomasso

Part IV: The Struggle with the Literary Past

The Dissolution of Troy: Homeric Narratology in the Posthomerica - Fran Middleton

‘Why So Serious?’ The Ambivalence of Joy and Laughter in the Iliad, Odyssey and Posthomerica - Arnold Bärtschi

Reshaping the Nature of Heroes: Heracles, Philoctetes and the Bow in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica - Leyla Ozbek

Quintus and the Epic Cycle - Giampiero Scafoglio

Part V: Re-Readings and Re-Workings

Philological Editor and Protestant Pedagogue: How Lorenz Rhodoman (1545‒1606) Worked on the Posthomerica of Quintus Smyrnaeus - Thomas Gärtner

Too Homeric to be True: John Tzetzes’ Reception of Quintus of Smyrna and the Importance of Plausibility - Valeria F. Lovato

A Postmodern Quintus? Theories of Fan Fiction and the Posthomerica - Stephan Renker

BibliographyGeneral indexIndex of passages citedNote on contributors

Reviews

As this splendid collection demonstrates, our times are suited to an appreciation of Quintus of Smyrna’s epic, What Came after Homer, which might be called The Iliad: A Modern Sequel (with a wink to Kazantzakis). This volume is unquestionably the best introduction to its originality and complex relation to the past.
– David Konstan, Professor of Classics, New York University

About the Author

Silvio Bär is Professor of Classics at the University of Oslo. His research areas and interests include Greek hexameter poetry (especially of the imperial period), tragedy, lyric, the novel, mythology, rhetoric, the Second Sophistic, intertextuality, transtextuality, diachronic narratology, and the reception of antiquity in English literature and popular culture. He has published widely on Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica, on the genre ‘epyllion’, and on the character of Herakles in Greek epic and beyond.

Emma Greensmith is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John’s College. She specialises in imperial Greek literature and is particularly interested in epic, poetics and religion. Her recent book, The Resurrection of Homer in Imperial Greek Epic: Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica and the Poetics of Impersonation (CUP, 2020) offers a new reading of the role of epic and the reception of Homer in Graeco-Roman culture. She has also written recent articles on Nonnus, Gregory of Nazianzus and the Sibylline Oracles and is editing a new Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Epic.

Leyla Ozbek is Research Fellow of Greek Language and Literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. She obtained her PhD in Classics at the Scuola Normale with a dissertation on Quintus’ Posthomerica Book 9, now forthcoming for publication. She has been research fellow at the Scuola Normale and annual visiting scholar at the University College London and at the University of Zurich. In 2015-2016 she was Research Associate at the University of Cambridge on the AHRC-funded Project ‘Greek Epic of the Roman Empire: A Cultural History’. Her research interests are Greek epic and culture of the imperial period, Greek tragedy and fragments, papyrology and the study of ancient manuscripts transmission.