Quintus of Smyrna’s 'Posthomerica'

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.

• Introduction: Going to Rome, Returning to Troy - Silvio Bär, Emma Greensmith and Leyla OzbekPart I: Contexts and PoeticsTemporality and Temper: Time, Narrative and Heroism in Quintus of Smyrna - Simon GoldhillPoetry, Performance, and Quintus’ Posthomerica - Katerina Carvounis A-Sexual Epic? Consummation and Closure in the Posthomerica - Emma GreensmithImages of Life and Death: Visualising the Heroic Body in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica - Ann-Sophie Schoess Part II: Religion, Gods and DestinyA Non-Homeric Fate in Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica? Representation, Function, Problems - Calum A. MaciverDisempowering the Gods - Katia Barbaresco Animal and Human Sacrifice in Quintus of Smyrna - Jan N. BremmerPart III: Between Narratology and LexicologyA Narratological Study on the Role of the Fates in the Posthomerica - Eirini ArgyrouliWielding Words: Neoptolemus as a Speaker of Words in Quintus’ Posthomerica - Tine ScheijnenStepping Out of Place: σχέτλιος in Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica - Jordan Maly-PreussRenewing Homer with Homer: The Use of Epithets in Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica - Alessia FerreccioPolychronic Intertextuality in Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica - Vincent Tomasso Part IV: The Struggle with the Literary PastThe 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 BärtschiReshaping the Nature of Heroes: Heracles, Philoctetes and the Bow in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica - Leyla OzbekQuintus and the Epic Cycle - Giampiero ScafoglioPart V: Re-Readings and Re-WorkingsPhilological Editor and Protestant Pedagogue: How Lorenz Rhodoman (1545‒1606) Worked on the Posthomerica of Quintus Smyrnaeus - Thomas GärtnerToo Homeric to be True: John Tzetzes’ Reception of Quintus of Smyrna and the Importance of Plausibility - Valeria F. LovatoA Postmodern Quintus? Theories of Fan Fiction and the Posthomerica - Stephan RenkerBibliographyGeneral indexIndex of passages citedNote on contributors

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.