A Commentary on Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 14

The Posthomerica, a Greek epic by Quintus of Smyrna believed to have been written in the third century AD, tells the story of the Trojan War beginning with the events immediately following the sack of Troy and the narrative of the Iliad. Valued as the earliest surviving account of this period, Book 14, the final book of the poem, covers much of the same ground as the lost Iliupersis (The Sack of Troy) attributed to Arctinus of Miletus, from Helen's return to Menelaus and the sacrifice of Polyxena, to the homeward journey of the victorious Greeks, which is abruptly interrupted by a divine storm.

This detailed commentary divides the text of Posthomerica 14 into smaller narrative units, introducing each with an overview of the relevant literary tradition and a discussion of Quintus' possible direct models. There follows an exhaustive line-by-line commentary addressing points of literary, stylistic, lexicographic, and textual-critical interest, and providing readers with a range of notes on background and vocabulary. The aim throughout is not only to illuminate the main features of Quintus' poetry, but also to offer as full an interpretation as possible of Posthomerica 14 within both its contemporary literary context and also in dialogue with the earlier tradition, in particular the diction, motifs, and narrative and literary techniques of the Homeric poems and the earlier epic tradition more generally. For readers new to the Posthomerica, the volume also includes a thorough, and up-to-date introduction offering an accessible overview of the poems content, dates, context, models, and possible sources, including both the Epic Cycle and Latin literature.

Katerina Carvounis, Lecturer in Ancient Greek Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Katerina Carvounis is a Lecturer in Ancient Greek Literature at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and was previously a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge, where she was also a Fellow of Murray Edwards College. Her main research interests include early hexameter poetry and later Greek literature, and her publications include the edited volumes Signs of Life? Studies in Later Greek Poetry (Ramus vol. 37.1-2) (with Richard Lawrence Hunter; Aureal, 2008) and An Anthology of Late Antique Poetry (with Konstantinos Spanoudakis and Nikos Litinas; e-publication in Modern Greek, 2015).

Frontmatter
Bibliographical Note
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
The contents of Q.'s PH
Q.'s dates and context
Q.'s sources and models
The end of the epic: contrasts, continuity, closure
Note on the manuscript tradition
Text and Apparatus
Commentary
Endmatter
Bibliography
Index