In truth, Quintus – whoever he was – probably couldn’t help himself. To a classicist, the thought is heresy, which is why classicists have always been the killjoys of the intellectual world. But even to the untrained eye, Quintus seems to be making rather free with his sources … Arthur Way was not the first scholar to wonder if he wasn’t in main part just making stuff up. This material would be the so-called ‘Cyclic Poets’ who first chronicled this story in the wake of Homer: the Aethiopis and Iliupersis of Arctinus, the Little Iliad of Lesches, etc. Quintus Smyrnaeus’ book has been enjoyed by readers hungry for more Homer since it was written in the fourth century, but it’s a maddening book: the critical mind wants to believe it’s got some kind of sanction, that Quintus was working from material we no longer have. He was making a point regarding the toughest act in the world to follow, and he knew what he was talking about: in 1945 he took on the task of translating into English Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomeric, a long and detailed epic telling of what happened between the death of Hector – with which the Iliad concludes – and the fall of Troy. By Zachary MasonStarcherone Books, 2007Whenever the great classicist Arthur Way was asked about the perils of the undertaking, he’d always answer with the glimmer of a smile in his eyes: “Well, that’s the trouble with ‘writing Homer’ … Homer did it first, you see.”
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