¹ M. Mansur, ‘The treatment of Homeric characters by Quintus of Smyrna’ (Diss., Columbia University, 1940), 2. Other examples of Quintus’ generally negative reception in early scholarship are collected in Maciver, C., Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica: Engaging Homer in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2012), 24–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Maciver (n. 1); Baumbach, M. and Bär, S. (edd.), Quintus Smyrnaeus: Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic (Berlin, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Maciver (n. 1), 9, 24.

⁴ See e.g. Ozbek, L., ‘Ripresa della tradizione e innovazione compositiva: la medicina nei Posthomerica di Quinto Smirneo’, in Baumbach, M. and Bär, S. (edd.), Quintus Smyrnaeus: Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic (Berlin, 2007), 159–83Google Scholar; Bär, S., ‘Quintus of Smyrna and the Second Sophistic’, HSPh 105 (2010), 287–316Google Scholar; and V. Tomasso, ‘“Cast in later Grecian mould”: Quintus of Smyrna's reception of Homer in the Posthomerica’ (Diss., Stanford University, 2010).

⁵ Exceptions are Jahn, S., ‘Die Darstellung der Troer und Griechen in den Kampfszenen der Posthomerica des Quintus von Smyrna’, WS 122 (2009), 87–108Google Scholar, which analyses the narrative sequences of the battles, especially the frequency of fight and flight within them, and Ozbek (n. 4), which touches on wounding and medicine in the epic. Scheijnen, T., ‘Ways to die for warriors: death similes in Homer and Quintus of Smyrna’, Hermes 145 (2017), 2–24Google Scholar, offers a careful reading of death similes in the epic. All of the major modern commentaries on the epic have focussed on books or parts of books in which no battles take place; S. Bär's 2009 commentary on Book 1, for instance, considers only lines 1–219, leaving off immediately before the first battle begins.

⁶ See e.g. Roberts, M., The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, NY, 1989), esp. ch. 2Google Scholar; Cameron, Alan, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, 1970), 253–304Google Scholar.

⁷ Text from J. Rolfe's Loeb edition (Cambridge, MA, 1963); the translation is my own.

⁸ Roberts (n. 6), 41–4. The term is derived from Aquila Romanus.

⁹ See e.g. at 17.328–52.

¹⁰ On the difficulty of categorizing the Posthomerica, see Maciver (n. 1), 13–24; as he notes, it is ‘very Homeric and non-Homeric, post Alexandrian and Alexandrian, anti-Callimachean but also Callimachean … It is extremely difficult to tie down the Posthomerica with definitions and labels, and equally difficult to give the poem an easily definable aesthetic, let alone an aesthetic that can be readily applied to other poems of an approximate era’ (at 24).

¹¹ Bär (n. 4). Pointing in the same direction, though somewhat less generously, is Cameron's description of the Posthomerica as ‘that most conventional of all Greek epics’ ([n. 6], 300).

¹² James, A. (transl. and ed.), The Trojan Epic: Posthomerica (Baltimore, 2004), xxvGoogle Scholar. He is referring in particular to Quintus’ plentiful use of similes.

¹³ For a discussion of Nonnus’ striking divergences from Homeric narrative-style in his battle scenes, see Wifstrand, A., Von Kallimachos zu Nonnos (Lund, 1933), 152–4Google Scholar. In his assessment, in contrast to Homer, ‘Nonnos bietet nicht so sehr eine Erzählung wie eine Beschreibung der Schlacht’ (152), a practice he attributes to the influence of rhetoric.

¹⁴ A classic study is G. Strasburger, ‘Die kleinen Kämpfer der Ilias’ (Diss., Stuttgart, 1954).

¹⁵ They have been praised, for example, as ‘a master-stroke of Iliadic art’ (Mueller, M., The Iliad [London, 2009], 86Google Scholar) and ‘among the great glories of the poems’ (R. Renehan, ‘The Heldentod in Homer: one heroic ideal’, CPh 82 [1987], 99–116, at 111).

¹⁶ The best expression of this sentiment is Griffin, J., Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1980), ch. 4Google Scholar. He ends his study with the assertion that ‘the obituaries and the other passages of austere pathos are vitally important’ to the poet in developing his ‘tragic and consistent view of human life’ (143). Schein, S., ‘The death of Simoeisios’, Eranos 74 (1976), 1–5Google Scholar offers an analysis along similar lines of a single, particularly poignant Iliadic death-scene. Macleod, C.W., ‘Homer on poetry and the poetry of Homer’, in Cairns, D. (ed.), Oxford Readings in Homer's Iliad (Oxford, 2001), 294–310, at 308Google Scholar connects the pathos of these scenes with the overall thematics of the epic.

¹⁷ For a more nuanced account, which notes the apparently partial distribution of such biographies between Achaean and Trojan victims, see Stoevesandt, M., Fiende – Gegner – Opfer: Zur Darstellung der Troianer in den Kampfszenen der Ilias (Basel, 2004), 131–4Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Tsagalis, C., Epic Grief: Personal Laments in Homer's Iliad (Berlin, 2004), 179–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar discusses the connection between the biographies and the importance of lamentation in the epic; cf. Oswald's admittedly non-scholarly reaction to the Iliad’s death scenes: ‘I like to think that the stories of individual soldiers recorded in the Iliad might be recollections of those laments, woven into the narrative by poets who regularly performed both high epic and choral lyric poetry’ (Oswald, A., Memorial: A Version of Homer's Iliad [New York, 2012], 1–2Google Scholar).

¹⁹ E.g. Bakker, E., Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse (Ithaca, NY, 1997), 118 n. 58Google Scholar: ‘the kleos of the warrior slain serves as context for the kleos of the victorious hero’. As he notes, this mindset is sometimes referenced by the warriors themselves, who reflect on the men they kill, and their quality, as important for their own prestige; he cites Il. 7.81–91. See also Hunter, R., The Argonautica of Apollonius: Literary Studies (Cambridge, 1993), 43Google Scholar.

²⁰ My terminology here is adopted from Ready, J., Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad (Cambridge, 2011), 228–9Google Scholar, who focusses ‘on the relationship between the obituaries and the [narrative] spotlight’.

²¹ Griffin (n. 16).

²² For frequency statistics, see N. Kauffman, ‘Rereading death: ethics and aesthetics in the ancient reception of Homeric battle-narrative’ (Diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2015), 144.

²³ 7.606–15.

²⁴ E.g. the motif of an individual's birth occurs in fourteen separate biographies: we are told that no fewer than ten lads were born by rivers, another two beneath mountains, two less specifically in regions, and one beside a lake. This motif is itself Homeric (see n. 27 below); on its formulaic character, see Fenik, B., Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad (Wiesbaden, 1968), 152Google Scholar. Quintus’ interest in the birth of warriors may reflect the influence of rhetorical training, on which see n. 35 below.

²⁵ The most extensive of which, devoted to Iphidamas, is thirteen lines long (Il. 11.222–30, 242–5).

²⁶ Text from Vian, F., Quintus de Smyrne: La suite d'Homère, 3 vols. (Paris, 1963–9)Google Scholar; translation from James (n. 12), with minor modifications.

²⁷ The most elaborated example is the death of Simoesios (Il. 4.473–84; sensitively discussed by Schein [n. 16]), where we learn of the warrior's birth beside the river, his mother's pursuits, his naming and his inability (owing to death) to take care of his parents in their old age. See also the accounts of Satnios (14.443), Iphition (20.382), Gorgythion (8.302) and the brothers Aisepos and Pedasos (6.21).

²⁸ On the structure of death scenes in the Iliad, see especially C.R. Beye, ‘Homeric battle-narrative and catalogues’, HSPh 68 (1964), 345–73; also Fenik (n. 24), 16–18; and Morrison, J., ‘Homeric darkness: patterns and manipulation of death scenes in the Iliad’, Hermes 127 (1999), 129–44, at 129–36Google Scholar.

²⁹ Occasionally, a biography will devote a line or two to details about the fallen warrior's homeland, as e.g. in the case of Iphition (Il. 20.385).

³⁰ Köchly, A.H. (ed.), Quinti Smyrnaei Posthomericorum libri XIV (Leipzig, 1850), iii–ivGoogle Scholar; Glover, T., Life and Letters in the Fourth Century (Cambridge, 1901), 82–4Google Scholar; James (n. 12), xviii and 271.

³¹ Vian, F., Recherches sur les Posthomerica de Quintus de Smyrne (Paris, 1959), 144Google Scholar.

³² See e.g. Tomasso (n. 4), 115–16 on the link between Quintus’ discussion of the Niobe Rock and Achilles’ narrative of Niobe in Iliad 24; James (n. 12), 305 on Quintus’ cave of the nymphs in light of the caves in Apollonius (2.727–45) and the Odyssey (13.103–12); Chrysafis, G., ‘Pedantry and elegance in Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica’, Corolla Londiniensis 4 (1985), 17–42, at 33–42Google Scholar examines the parallels between the caves in Quintus, Homer and Apollonius more thoroughly, though with a strictly philological interest.

³³ His aetia, moreover, are often seen to bridge the gap between the mythological past and the contemporary world in a way quite foreign to Homer. See e.g. Fusillo, M., Il tempo delle Argonautiche: Un'analisi del racconto in Apollonio Rodio (Rome, 1985), 137–42Google Scholar.

³⁴ Maciver (n. 1) offers a thorough and up-to-date account of Quintus’ reworking of Homer. See also the discussion in B. Boyten, ‘Epic journeys: studies in the reception of the hero and heroism in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica’ (Diss., University College London, 2010), 14. On Quintus’ interaction with Apollonius, see Vian, F., ‘Echoes and imitations of Apollonius Rhodius in late Greek epic’, in Papanghelis, T. and Rengakos, A. (edd.), A Companion to Apollonius of Rhodes (Leiden, 2001), 285–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maciver, C., ‘Representative bees in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica’, CPh 107 (2012), 53–69Google Scholar; and André, L.-N., ‘“Storm landscape”: from the reality effect to the moralized mimesis. The examples of Apollonius Rhodius and Quintus of Smyrna’, Aitia 3 (2013)Google Scholar (online).

³⁵ Quintus’ emphasis on the homelands of his victims might be seen as adding a rhetorical dimension to the interpretation of biographies (discussed in n. 19 above) in which the elaboration of the victim gives him kleos, which is then added to that of the victor; praise of an individual's homeland was an important element of the encomium (see e.g. Men. Rhet. 369.18–370.8).

³⁶ Many readers have taken such horrible wounds as ways in which the poet communicates the awfulness and ugliness of war; see e.g. Weil, S., ‘The Iliad, or the poem of force’, transl. McCarthy, M., Chicago Review 18 (1965 [1940]), 5–30, at 26Google Scholar; Nicolai, W., ‘Rezeptionssteuerung in der Ilias’, Philologus 127 (1983), 1–12, at 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Slatkin, L., ‘Notes on tragic visualizing in the Iliad’, in Kraus, C. et al. (edd.), Visualizing the Tragic: Drama, Myth, and Ritual in Greek Art and Literature. Essays in Honour of Froma Zeitlin (Oxford, 2007), 19–34, at 20–1Google Scholar. However, cf. Vermeule, E., Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley, CA, 1979), 95–6Google Scholar, who thinks that such scenes would have delighted Homer and his audience, who had much stronger stomachs than us moderns.

³⁷ Severed but still animated limbs crop up elsewhere in literature of the period, e.g. at Nonnus, Dion. 28.126–42; cf. also the head of Dolon in Iliad 10, which continues to speak when it is cut off (457).

³⁸ Homer sometimes introduces a hypothetical spectator as well, and the difference is instructive. At the end of one battle-sequence, he indicates the response that is appropriate for an onlooker: ἔνθά κεν οὐκέτι ἔργον ἀνὴρ ὀνόσαιτο μετελθών | … | πολλοὶ γὰρ Τρώων καὶ Ἀχαιῶν ἤματι κείνῳ | πρηνέες ἐν κονίῃσι παρ’ ἀλλήλοισι τέταντο (‘There no more could a man who was in that work make light of it … for on that day many men of the Achaeans and Trojans lay sprawled in the dust face downward beside one another, 4.539–44). In this passage the killing of war brings sombre and sober reflection, a kind of awe, where in Quintus it brings eager curiosity.

³⁹ And perhaps also for the anatomical learning it displays. Ozbek ([n. 4], 159–64) has analysed several of Quintus’ wound descriptions, connecting them specifically to his interest in contemporary medicine. So again, we might see here the poet putting his erudition on display at the moment of an individual's death.

⁴⁰ Scheijnen ([n. 5], §3.2.2) refers to Quintus’ similes for mass slaughter as a ‘major innovation’.

⁴¹ 8.67, 11.85, 15.319, 16.778.

⁴² 11.337, 17.413; cf. 5.452, 12.425, 15.708.

⁴³ 15.2, 8.344; cf. 4.538, 4.543.

⁴⁴ Raaflaub, K., ‘Homeric warriors and battles: trying to resolve old problems’, CW 101 (2008), 469–83, at 475Google Scholar uses cinematic language to describe this narrative device.

⁴⁵ 11.154, 178 and 497 (Agamemnon); 20.494; 21.20, 521 (Achilles).

⁴⁶ In two books, collective killings actually outnumber individual ones; in Book 7 the ratio is 7:3; in Book 9 it is 8:4.

⁴⁷ Along these lines, note that Quintus often highlights the fact that his heroes do not grow weary while engaged in killing (κάματος … οὔ τι μενεπτολέμου Ἀχιλῆος | ἄμπεχεν υἱέα δῖον, 7.581–4); this is in sharp contrast to the Iliad, where even Achilles is worn out by his efforts in the Scamander (ὃ δ’ ἐπεὶ κάμε χεῖρας ἐναίρων …, 21.26).

⁴⁸ 2.370, 6.510, 6.598, 8.129, 9.202, 10.169.

⁴⁹ 6.618, 7.618, 11.243.

⁵⁰ 1.492, 9.184; similarly at 1.528 and 7.112.

⁵¹ E.g. a group of Penthesilea's victims are compared to trees felled in a storm (1.486–90).

⁵² Simoesios (4.482–7); see also 13.178–80. Rood, N., ‘Craft similes and the construction of heroes in the Iliad’, HSPh 104 (2008), 19–43Google Scholar offers an insightful analysis of this set of similes.

⁵³ A victim of Patroclus is compared to a speared fish at 16.406–8; two victims are compared to cattle (13.571–2, 20.403–5).

⁵⁴ See Kauffman, N., ‘Monstrous beauty: the transformation of some death similes in Apollonius’ Argonautica’, CPh 111 (2016), 372–90, at 373–9Google Scholar for an account of various interpretations of Iliadic tree-similes and plant-similes.

⁵⁵ Scheijnen ([n. 5], §2) notes the increased focus in Posthomeric death-similes on the epic's primary heroes (as both victims and agents of death), where comparable similes in the Iliad generally included minor warriors.

⁵⁶ The closest parallels are the simile applied to Aegisthus’ slaughter of Agamemnon's followers, likening them to pigs slaughtered for a feast (Od. 11.412–15), and the harvest-simile at Il. 11.67–71 (discussed below).

⁵⁷ Text from Monro, D. and Allen, T., Homeri Opera, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1920)Google Scholar; translation from Lattimore, R., The Iliad of Homer (Chicago, 1951)Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ It may be, for instance, that Quintus is correcting Homer's simile, which involves some logical problems; see Hainsworth, B., The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1993), 228CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Simile 5 is in fact much closer in spirit to the Iliadic grain-simile, though it too changes it in key ways for the sake of consistency.

⁵⁹ Apollonius uses a similar simile (3.1399–403), but pointedly relates that the effect on the farmer is sorrow (τὸν δὲ κατηφείη τε καὶ οὐλοὸν ἄλγος ἱκάνει, 1402). I suspect that Quintus, in using an opposite emotion in a parallel simile, is in dialogue with Apollonius here (see note 34 above).

⁶⁰ Combellack, F. (ed. and transl.), The War at Troy (Norman, OK, 1968), 18Google Scholar makes this argument: ‘there is nothing in the narrative equivalent to the pleasure felt by the owner of the field in the simile’. Similar arguments have often been made about Iliadic similes, most famously in Parry, A., ‘The language of Achilles’, TAPhA 87 (1956), 1–7Google Scholar, on the watchfire simile of Book 8 (555–9), in which reference is made to the delight a shepherd feels at the sight of the stars to which the fires are compared (γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα ποιμήν, 559). Other interpreters, however, have seen this detail as thematically and emotionally significant: e.g. de Jong, I., Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad (Amsterdam, 1989), 32Google Scholar (discussed below).

⁶¹ We might note in this simile (and in the other fishing-simile listed in the chart above) some correspondences with Oppian's Halieutica. Oppian presents fishing as pleasurable (1.56–7), and his fishermen take delight in their stratagems (see esp. 3.227–8, in the context of a simile). Yet, in scenes where the death of masses of fish is described, Oppian sometimes notes this as a cause of pity (e.g. at 4.486: οἰρκτὸν ἰδεῖν μογεροῖσιν ἐοικότα σώματα νεκροῖς; see also 4.549–50), though in one instance the fishermen do enjoy the large-scale slaughter of their prey (4.679–80). For a discussion of Quintus’ intertextual use of Oppian, see Kneebone, E., ‘Fish in battle? Quintus of Smyrna and the Halieutica of Oppian’, in Baumbach, M. and Bär, S. (edd.), Quintus Smyrnaeus: Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic (Berlin, 2007), 285–305Google Scholar.

⁶² In the grain-simile, no specific individual is mentioned, but I think the emotion can be linked with Ajax, who was responsible for a great many of the corpses: in the narrative since Achilles’ death, he killed nine named men and four indefinite groups of them, more than all the other characters combined.

⁶³ de Jong (n. 60), 136: ‘The comparison or simile, thereby, acquires as a secondary function the expression of the emotions of characters.’

⁶⁴ B. Spinoula, ‘Animal-similes and creativity in the Posthomerica of Quintus of Smyrna’ (Diss., University of St. Andrews, 2009), 109; Maciver (n. 1), 181.

⁶⁵ Maciver (n. 1), 174.

⁶⁶ Spinoula (n. 64), 109. Cf. Vian, F., ‘Les comparaisons de Quintus de Smyrne’, Revue de Philologie 28 (1954), 30–51, at 33Google Scholar, who calls it ‘une image de mauvais gout’.

⁶⁷ Notably, both Maciver and Spinoula cite Porter, D., ‘Violent juxtaposition in the similes of the Iliad’, CJ 68 (1972), 11–21Google Scholar, which is explicitly indebted to Simone Weil (at 11 n. 1); Weil's reading, though influential, is notoriously unscholarly, and has often been criticized for its oversimplifications; see Holoka's introduction to Holoka, J. (ed.), Simone Weil's The Iliad, or, The Poem of Force: A Critical Edition (New York, 2003)Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Mansur ([n. 1], 1) calls them ‘absurdly idealized owing to the omission of derogatory traits and the exaggeration of good qualities’; see also, less critically, James (n. 12), xxvi–xxvii and Boyten (n. 34).

⁶⁹ Boyten, B., ‘More “parfit gentil knyght” than “Hyrcanian beast”: the reception of Neoptolemos in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica’, in Baumbach, M. and Bär, S. (edd.), Quintus Smyrnaeus: Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic (Berlin, 2007), 307–36, at 308–9Google Scholar. For another generally positive assessment of Neoptolemus’ character, see Scheijnen, T., ‘“Always the foremost Argive champion”? The representation of Neoptolemus in Quintus of Smyrna's Posthomerica’, Rosetta 17 (2015), 93–110Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Boyten (n. 69), 308–9, 314–19.

⁷¹ Scheijnen ([n. 5], §3.2.3) discusses the ‘joyful killing’ in the Posthomerica, and finds it unproblematic, given the code of the warriors in the epic, though she does not offer an explanation for the emphasis Quintus puts upon it (as opposed to the Iliad, where the code is the same, but pleasure in killing is never explicitly discussed). She is right, however, to note a shift in the character of the slaughter-similes in the sack of Troy in Books 13–14, where they become much more dark and joyless, focussing much more on the victims than elsewhere in the epic (§3.3).

⁷² Discussed in n. 60 above.

⁷³ Wofford, S., The Choice of Achilles: The Ideology of Figure in the Epic (Stanford, 1992), 38Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ For a recent summary of the evidence for the epic's date, see Maciver (n. 1), 3–6; for a more thorough treatment, see Baumbach and Bär (n. 2), 1–8.

⁷⁵ Tomasso (n. 4), 127–39 discusses the simile's reception in scholarship, and offers a thorough discussion of the historical, cultural and intertextual dynamics of this scene. It is from his study also that I take the translation ‘engineering’ for τεύχοντες.