Produced by Douglas B. Killings.
The Fall of Troy
by
Quintus Smyrnaeus
("Quintus of Smyrna")
Fl. 4th Century A.D.
Originally written in Greek, sometime about the middle of the 4th
Century A.D. Translation by A.S. Way, 1913.
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Way, A.S. (Ed. & Trans.): "Quintus Smyrnaeus: The Fall of Troy"(Loeb Classics #19; Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA,1913). Greek text with side-by-side English translation.
Combellack, Frederick M. (Trans.): "The War at Troy: What Homer
Didn't Tell" (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK, 1968).
Fitzgerald, Robert (Trans.): "Homer: The Iliad" (Viking Press,
New York, 1968).
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Homer's "Iliad" begins towards the close of the last of the tenyears of the Trojan War: its incidents extend over some fiftydays only, and it ends with the burial of Hector. The thingswhich came before and after were told by other bards, who betweenthem narrated the whole "cycle" of the events of the war, and sowere called the Cyclic Poets. Of their works none have survived;but the story of what befell between Hector's funeral and thetaking of Troy is told in detail, and well told, in a poem abouthalf as long as the "Iliad". Some four hundred years afterChrist there lived at Smyrna a poet of whom we know scarceanything, save that his first name was Quintus. He had saturatedhimself with the spirit of Homer, he had caught the ring of hismusic, and he perhaps had before him the works of those CyclicPoets whose stars had paled before the sun.
We have practically no external evidence as to the date or placeof birth of Quintus of Smyrna, or for the sources whence he drewhis materials. His date is approximately settled by two passagesin the poem, viz. vi. 531 sqq., in which occurs an illustrationdrawn from the man-and-beast fights of the amphitheatre, whichwere suppressed by Theodosius I. (379-395 A.D.); and xiii. 335sqq., which contains a prophecy, the special particularity ofwhich, it is maintained by Koechly, limits its applicability tothe middle of the fourth century A.D.
His place of birth, and the precise locality, is given by himselfin xii. 308-313, and confirmatory evidence is afforded by hisfamiliarity, of which he gives numerous instances, with manynatural features of the western part of Asia Minor.
With respect to his authorities, and the use he made of theirwritings, there has been more difference of opinion. Since hisnarrative covers the same ground as the "Aethiopis" ("Coming ofMemnon") and the "Iliupersis" ("Destruction of Troy") of Arctinus(circ. 776 B.C.), and the "Little Iliad" of Lesches (circ. 700B.C.), it has been assumed that the work of Quintus "is littlemore than an amplification or remodelling of the works of thesetwo Cyclic Poets." This, however, must needs be pure conjecture,as the only remains of these poets consist of fragments amountingto no more than a very few lines from each, and of the "summariesof contents" made by the grammarian Proclus (circ. 140 A.D.),which, again, we but get at second-hand through the "Bibliotheca"of Photius (ninth ce