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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quintus of Smyrna: and the Re-Classicizing, Post-Homeric Epic Recalling the Heroic Age,
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This review is from: The Fall of Troy (Barnes and Noble Library of Essential Readings) (Paperback)
Quintus of Smyrna, writing sometime around the later part of the 3rd century AD, penned his 'Fall of Troy' [mss. 'Post-Homerica'] to fill the interlude between the narrative of the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey.' Truly, tales of the ensuing events between the two major epics had already been told, centuries before Quintus' time, in the 'Epic Cycle', which had by then had fallen into disuse, or the texts were all lost and hence fell into relative oblivion. Thus, Quintus of Smyrna's efforts were of great service to the Greek-speaking world of his time, as his 'Fall of Troy' must have re-vitalized the old classical spirit of the by-gone heroic age.In all likely-hood, Quintus of Smyrna was a fully Hellenized-Asiatic sophist and grammarian, characterized by extremely traditional sensibilities that allowed himself to be figured in with the ancient bards he so emulated and adored. Quintus of Smyrna even went at length to compose this epic in archaic Greek verse, the time-honored dactylic hexameter, so that he could follow as meticulously as possible all the rules that applied to the classical epic genre; and in conjunction with his invocation of the Muses, Quintus of Smyrna sealed his fate as a poet of high-repute among the ancients and immortalized his name for all posterity. Some of the major tales in the 'Fall of Troy' are: 1.) How the Amazonian Queen, Penthesileia, Died for Troy, 2.) the Death of Memnon, 3.) How Apollo Slayed Achilles, 4.) the Death of Paris, 5.) and four books vividly describing the Siege of Troy, the Ruse of the Trojan Horse and the Burning of Troy. Overall, this uncelebrated epic poem, written by an author so obscure and elusive as to be an enigma, deserves more publicity than has been his lot. The sad misfortune of this bold and innovative poet, is that his name and his epic have virtually been stripped and blotted out from the canon of classical poets, for it is probable that only specialists or the most adept readers are the only individuals who have ever heard of Quintus of Smyrna; and their really is no solid justification for this, other than that he has been stereo-typically labeled with the stigma of his existence in the post-classical age. Yet, considering the slight, but general, deficiencies of the intellectual and cultural context of his time, Quintus of Smyrna certainly was himself a bright-spot in the midst of some small glowing pocket of genuine, classicizing Hellenism that was, in all probability, a small circle, or 'scholia,' of 'pagan'-intelligentsia, which from East to West, cropped up now and then in an Empire shifting more towards Christianization. It must be asserted, however, that with Barnes and Nobles re-print edition of the original Loeb version (1913), Quintus of Smyrna's 'Fall of Troy' will enjoy a wider audience, of the type that he deserves.
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