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SLAUGHTER AND SPECTACLE IN QUINTUS SMYRNAEUS’ POSTHOMERICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2019

Nicholas Kauffman
Nicholas Kauffman*
Affiliation:
Gonzaga University
*
kauffman@gonzaga.edu
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Extract

Scholarship on Quintus Smyrnaeus has long moved past the point where he is considered nothing more than an ‘artificial imitator of a bygone age’. Rather, scholars generally recognize the dynamism of Quintus’ relation to Homer, as can be seen in the subtitles of two volumes on Quintus published in the past few years: Engaging Homer in Late Antiquity and Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic. Even in passages that are clearly modelled on passages in Homer, Quintus is no longer seen as slavishly imitating but as creatively rereading and re-imagining his works. Calum Maciver, perhaps Quintus’ most vocal champion, sums this approach up nicely, arguing that ‘Quintus imitates, manipulates, comments on, differs from, in sum reads, Homer’, and describing the epic as ‘a demanding text with intricate possibilities for interpretation’. And Maciver is hardly alone in this; various studies in recent years have shown that Quintus’ use of Homer reflects his own values and preoccupations, and those of his society.

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , December 2018 , pp. 634 - 648
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

Scholarship on Quintus Smyrnaeus has long moved past the point where he is considered nothing more than an ‘artificial imitator of a bygone age’.Footnote 1 Rather, scholars generally recognize the dynamism of Quintus’ relation to Homer, as can be seen in the subtitles of two volumes on Quintus published in the past few years: Engaging Homer in Late Antiquity and Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic.Footnote 2 Even in passages that are clearly modelled on passages in Homer, Quintus is no longer seen as slavishly imitating but as creatively rereading and re-imagining his works. Calum Maciver, perhaps Quintus’ most vocal champion, sums this approach up nicely, arguing that ‘Quintus imitates, manipulates, comments on, differs from, in sum reads, Homer’, and describing the epic as ‘a demanding text with intricate possibilities for interpretation’.Footnote 3 And Maciver is hardly alone in this; various studies in recent years have shown that Quintus’ use of Homer reflects his own values and preoccupations, and those of his society.Footnote 4

One aspect of the Posthomerica that has received relatively little attention, however, is its battle narratives.Footnote 5 These, as I will show, are fertile ground for developing an understanding of the distinctiveness of Quintus’ poetics, his multifaceted relationship with Homer and the aesthetics and values of his contemporary world. Specifically, I will consider Quintus’ representations of slaughter in the epic, arguing that he highlights the spectacular quality of the deaths he narrates over and above their emotional or thematic significance. In so doing, I will suggest, he is following the norms of his own society, but in a way that is distinctly inflected through his insistent adherence to the forms received from the Homeric epics.

That Quintus should make his descriptions of death and slaughter spectacular is in one sense quite unsurprising, given the literary milieu in which he is working. Poetics in later antiquity are notoriously interested in the spectacular, striving to dazzle the reader with striking images,Footnote 6 and this naturally carries over into descriptions of war and violence found in narratives of this era. Consider, for instance, this description from Ammianus’ account of the Battle of Strasburg (Amm. Marc. 16.12.53, 57):

iacebant itaque plurimi transfixi letaliter, remedia mortis compendio postulantes, alii semineces, labente iam spiritu, lucis usuram oculis morientibus inquirebant, quorundam capita discissa trabalibus telis, et pendentia iugulis cohaerebant, pars per limosum et lubricum solum, in sociorum cruore relapsi, intactis ferro corporibus, aceruis superruentium obruti necabantur … . et uelut in quodam theatrali spectaculo, aulaeis miranda monstrantibus multa, licebat iam sine metu uidere …Footnote 7

And so many were lying mortally wounded, begging the speedy relief of death; others, half-dead, their spirit already slipping away, sought the enjoyment of the light with dying eyes; the heads of others, cut by beam-like spears and dangling, clung to their throats; others were dying, though their own bodies were uninjured by any weapon, when they slipped in the gore of their companions on that muddy, bloody ground, and were buried by the heaps of the corpses rushing over them … . And just as in some theatrical show, when the curtains reveal many marvels, it was now possible to behold without fear …

The death of countless men in many and sundry ways is described in this scene, using a technique that Michael Roberts terms leptologia:Footnote 8 a large-scale event is broken down into its constituent parts, presented to the reader in small and visually interesting (and here rather grotesque) images. The reader, moreover, is explicitly invited to conceive of the images presented to her as a performance, a spectacle (theatrali spectaculo) designed to pique her interest. This aesthetic is quite common in accounts of battles in poetry and prose alike, nowhere more, perhaps, than in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca.Footnote 9

But Quintus does not fit all that neatly with any conception of a ‘late antique aesthetic’.Footnote 10 What differentiates him, above all, is his desire to follow Homer as closely as possible. As Silvio Bär has argued, the Posthomerica seems designed to create the impression that it is a continuation of the Iliad, both in plot and in style.Footnote 11 Indeed, Quintus’ strict preference for forms and language derived from the archaic epics has led James to remark that he is sometimes ‘more Homeric than Homer’.Footnote 12 So, although Quintus shares a sensibility that values the spectacular, his insistence on maintaining a Homeric ‘feel’ constrains his ability to render the death in his poem spectacular in the same way that other narratives might. Rather than using leptologia in the extravagant and baroque manner favoured by other late antique authors such as Nonnus,Footnote 13 he must imbue his scenes of slaughter with a spectacular quality while adhering to Homeric narrative-forms.

In what follows, I will trace the way in which Quintus achieves this, showing how his scenes of death are constructed on Homeric patterns—especially biographies attached to individuals at the moment of death, and similes used to describe killing on a larger scale—but alter and extend those patterns in subtle but significant ways, making them marvellous and spectacular while at the same time (and as a consequence) stripping them of some of their emotional resonance. Rather than attributing this, as a scholar of another generation might have done, to Quintus’ lack of human feeling, I take it as evidence of his ability to reshape the tradition to reflect the values and meet the expectations of his contemporary audience.

DEATH AND TOURISM

The first relevant point in our examination of Quintus’ treatment of slaughter is the distinctive use he makes of biographies for his minor warriors. In the Iliad, Homer famously pauses to provide biographical details about the warriors slain in the course of the battle, even when they play no role in the battle itself: they simply appear, are killed and are described at the moment of death.Footnote 14 The attention lavished on these minor characters is often singled out as a high point of Homer's artistry,Footnote 15 and the biographies have often been taken as evidence of the deep humanity of the poet,Footnote 16 who is seen to regret the loss of every man, Achaean and Trojan alike,Footnote 17 memorializing and mourningFootnote 18 those killed, whom other traditions would leave anonymous and unknown. Such interpretations are by no means universally accepted, of course, and others have emphasized how the biographies of the fallen serve to bring glory and prestige to the men who kill them, by providing them with fully realized and socially embedded enemies to conquer.Footnote 19 However one interprets them, the biographies lend the battle scenes a striking and memorable note of pathos, slowing down the narrative and shining the spotlight on the victim of war rather than on the victor,Footnote 20 often using markedly emotional language.Footnote 21

Quintus, too, often employs biographies for the minor warriors in his epic; he uses them, in fact, somewhat more often than his predecessor.Footnote 22 But though superficially quite similar to those of the Iliad, Quintus’ biographies are on the whole much less pathetic. A few of them certainly point up the sorrow caused by an individual's death, as in a biography for a pair of twins slain by Neoptolemus, who were born on the same day and died on the same day.Footnote 23 But the majority are short and rely on the repetition of a few stock motifs, to a much greater extent than Homer's.Footnote 24

More important for our purposes, though, are the handful of biographies that Quintus does develop at length, which show his own particular concerns. Consider, for instance, one of the longest biographies in the epic (1.291–307), which is longer than any comparable passage in the Iliad:Footnote 25

Δρησαῖον δ’ ἐδάμασσεν ἀρηίφιλος Πολυποίτης
τὸν τέκε δῖα Νέαιρα περίφρονι Θειοδάμαντι
μιχθεῖσ’ ἐν λεχέεσσιν ὑπαὶ Σιπύλῳ νιφόεντι,
ἧχι θεοὶ Νιόβην λᾶαν θέσαν, ἧς ἔτι δάκρυ
πουλὺ μάλα στυφελῆς καταλείβεται ὑψόθε πέτρης,
καὶ οἱ συστοναχοῦσι ῥοαὶ πολυηχέος Ἕρμου
καὶ κορυφαὶ Σιπύλου περιμήκεες ὧν καθύπερθεν
ἐχθρὴ μηλονόμοισιν ἀεὶ περιπέπτατ’ ὀμίχλη·
ἣ δὲ πέλει μέγα θαῦμα παρεσσυμένοισι βροτοῖσιν,
οὕνεκ’ ἔοικε γυναικὶ πολυστόνῳ ἥ τ’ ἐπὶ λυγρῷ
πένθεϊ μυρομένη μάλα μυρία δάκρυα χεύει·
καὶ τὸ μὲν ἀτρεκέως φῂς ἔμμεναι, ὁππότ’ ἄρ’ αὐτὴν
τηλόθεν ἀθρήσειας· ἐπὴν δέ οἱ ἐγγὺς ἵκηαι,
φαίνεται αἰπήεσσα πέτρη Σιπύλοιό τ’ ἀπορρώξ.
ἀλλ’ ἣ μὲν μακάρων ὀλοὸν χόλον ἐκτελέουσα
μύρεται ἐν πέτρῃσιν ἔτ’ ἀχνυμένῃ εἰκυῖα.
ἄλλοι δ’ ἀμφ’ ἄλλοισι φόνον καὶ κῆρ’ ἐτίθεντο.Footnote 26
The war god's favorite Polypoites killed Dresaios,
Whom divine Neaira bore to wise Theiodamas,
Whose bed she shared at the foot of snowy Sipylos,
Where the gods turned Niobe to stone, whose tears
Forever flow profusely from a rocky height,
While Hermos’ sounding streams murmur in sympathy,
As do the lofty peaks of Sipylos, on which
A mist, the shepherds’ enemy, is always spread.
This is indeed a wonder to all who pass that way,
Because it looks like a sorrowing woman who weeps
In abject grief with endless flow of tears.
You think it is truly so whenever from afar
You catch a view of her, but when you come up close
It's clearly a vertical rock, a fragment of Sipylos.
And yet the gods’ destructive wrath is fulfilled in her
As she weeps among the rocks, appearing still to grieve.
And one inflicted doom and death upon another …

The motif that starts this off is familiar from the Iliad: we are told of the location of the birth of the man who is slain. But where Iliadic biographies of this type elaborate on the circumstances of the birth or on the effect of the man's death on his family,Footnote 27 the Quintean version instead offers a long excursus on a particular geographical feature, the Niobe Rock. There is little if any pathos here, and the slain man does not remain in the narrative spotlight for very long; he seems rather wholly forgotten, and the narrative never returns to him, as per the usual Homeric practice.Footnote 28

But, for all its lack of interest in Dresaios or the tragedy of his death, this biography is full of its own distinctively Quintean interest, which we might call touristic. We are told that the rock is a great wonder (μέγα θαῦμα, 299) to passers-by. And then, in a curious and complicated set of clauses which employ three second-person verbs, the reader is invited to imagine the spectacle for himself (302–4). Our attention is diverted far from the battlefield, from the suffering of the dying man or the potential grief of his family, and directed instead to another, very different scene. Such details are common in Quintus’ biographies. Some describe other places with mythical connections—a cave of the nymphs (6.469–91), the cave where Endymion slept (10.128–37), a river formed by Leto (11.21–6), and the rock of Hephaestus (11.92–8)—while others still confine themselves to real-world geography (for example the topography of a region, 3.232–6, 11.92–8; the confluence of rivers, 10.141–6). In describing these features, Quintus mentions the perspective of a traveller at several points, as in the passage quoted above: we hear that people even now go to visit the cave of the nymphs (οἱ δέ νυ φῶτες, 10.133), and the reader's response to this landmark is again evoked (φαίης, 10.134); other locations are also presented as spectacles (θαῦμα … βροτοῖσιν, 6.482; 11.93–4).

This interest in geography within the biographies, with the connections to the present that go with it, is in marked contrast with Homeric practice. The biographies in the Iliad sometimes include passing references to the homeland of those slain,Footnote 29 while more lavish descriptions are found only in the pointedly spectacular catalogue of ships. Scholars have sometimes taken Quintus’ attention to such details as evidence of his own travels around Asia Minor, in the vicinity of his (putatively) native Smyrna.Footnote 30 Others, however, have read it in more literary terms, noting his reliance in these passages on geographersFootnote 31 and his intertextual engagement with other poets.Footnote 32 We might also note similarities in his general practice with the poetics of Apollonius, whose Argonautica is studded with geographical details and mythological aetia.Footnote 33 Rather than larding his text with extraneous details or showing off his command of obscure lore, Quintus is engaging with the tradition, as he often does, in some highly sophisticated ways.Footnote 34 What is significant for this investigation, though, is the way in which this interest is attached to, and overshadows, narratives of individuals’ deaths. Death scenes, in his treatment, often become the starting point for a kind of tourism, in which the reader is expected to envision the strange and dazzling sights that the poet presents for him.Footnote 35

A related phenomenon can be seen in Quintus’ physical descriptions of violence and death. Consider one particularly vivid detail in the death of an anonymous Achaean who is struck with an axe on the arm while riding his horse (11.190–200):

βίῃ δ’ ὑπόειξε σιδήρου
ὀστέον οὐταμένοιο βραχίονος· ἀμφὶ δὲ νεῦρα
ῥηιδίως ἤμησε· φλέβες δ’ ὑπερέβλυσαν αἷμα.
ἀμφεχύθη δ’ ἵπποιο κατ’ αὐχένος, αἶψα δ’ ἄρ’ αὐτὸς
κάππεσεν ἀμφὶ νέκυσσι· λίπεν δ’ ἄρα χεῖρα κραταιὴν
στερρὸν ἔτ’ ἐμπεφυυῖαν ἐυγνάμπτοιο χαλινοῦ,
οἷον ὅτε ζώοντος ἔην· μέγα δ’ ἔπλετο θαῦμα,
οὕνεκα δὴ ῥυτῆρος ἀπεκρέμαθ’ αἱματόεσσα,
Ἄρεος ἐννεσίῃσι φόβον δηίοισι φέρουσα·
φαίης κεν χατέουσαν ἔθ’ ἱππασίης πονέεσθαι·
σῆμα δέ μιν φέρεν ἵππος ἀποκταμένοιο ἄνακτος.
To the force of the steel
The bone of the wounded arm yielded; the sinews were severed
Easily and blood came spurting from the veins.
Collapsing over the horse's neck, his body fell
Straight down among the dead, but he left the powerful arm
With fingers firmly gripping still the pliant reins,
As when it was part of the living man. It was a wonder,
When it hung there, bloody, from the strap,
Bringing fear to the enemies by the commands of the war god.
You would say it was working out of a longing for horsemanship.
The horse thus bore a memento of its murdered master.

Now, scenes of spectacular violence are familiar enough from Homer's epics—one need only think of Deucalion, one of Achilles’ victims, whose marrow spurts from his neck after he is decapitated.Footnote 36 Quintus’ description is distinctive not for its gruesomeness but for the detached way in which it is presented. The severed arm of this man, which moves and seems purposive,Footnote 37 is a marvel (θαῦμα) to behold, and the reader's response to this paradoxical sight is imagined (φαίης, 199).Footnote 38 This makes the wound like the Niobe Rock, which was described in much the same way: both are offered to the reader as spectacles rather than as emotionally wrought or shocking scenes of pain and loss, as is often the impression given by the Iliadic accounts. It is something, that is, to be seen and appreciated for its creativity and particularity,Footnote 39 not unlike the engravings on Quintus’ version of Achilles’ shield, which he calls a θαῦμα three times (5.40, 7.200, 7.204). Like the shield, the wound may bring fear to the other combatants, but it is offered to the reader as a work of art, a grand and striking display of violence and wonder.

THE PLEASURES OF KILLING

My analysis so far has focussed solely on scenes in which specific individuals are killed in battle, but we must also consider the many passages in Quintus’ epic in which multiple people are said to be killed at once. In this, Quintus is not without Homeric precedent, but he takes this to a new level, describing such large-scale slaughter extremely frequently, in exaggerated terms, and with vivid and suggestive similes.Footnote 40 This emphasis on the sheer scale of death in the epic, I argue, is of a piece with the features we have seen thus far: Quintus presents the death of warriors as something curious rather than pathetic, and he is accordingly keen to present it on a spectacular scale.

To establish the distinctiveness of Quintus’ approach, we must first consider the presence of large-scale killing in the Iliad. By my count, the death of a collective group of warriors is narrated thirty-four times in the course of the epic. In most of these cases, this is put in the most generic terms, with phrases like πῖπτε δὲ λαός,Footnote 41 ἀλλήλους ἐνάριζονFootnote 42 or πολλοὶ δὲ δάμεν.Footnote 43 Such expressions offer a sort of panoramic view of the battles that unfold in the epic,Footnote 44 but the vast majority of the Iliad’s battle narrative focusses in on individual duels and on the men who die as a result of them. Only occasionally do we hear of a single individual killing a large number of foes at once. Perhaps the most striking case of this is when Hector is said to kill a multitude (τοὺς ἄρ’ ὅ γ’ ἡγεμόνας Δαναῶν ἕλεν, αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα | πληθύν, 11.304–5). Incidents like this tend to be clustered in a few notable battle-sequences, especially the aristeiai of Agamemnon and Achilles.Footnote 45

In the Posthomerica, however, mass slaughter is narrated often. Throughout the battle scenes, it occurs a total of eighty times. Considered in proportion to the number of named kills in each epic, the difference appears more pronounced still. In the Iliad, individual duels and narratives of individual deaths predominate, with mass slaughter narrated only once for every seven individual deaths, while in the Posthomerica named deaths are only twice as common as slaughter scenes. More strikingly still, Quintus often shows us scenes of slaughter in which a single champion is described as killing a group of enemies single-handedly. This occurs in the Iliad only thirteen times, compared to fifty-three times in the Posthomerica (see Table 1). Sometimes, indeed, these generalized killings come to dominate Quintus’ battle narrative, and individual deaths hardly occur at all.Footnote 46 In the lengthy battle-sequence in Book 1, most of which focusses on Penthesilea's aristeia, the first ninety-two lines contain twenty-three individual deaths, a fairly high concentration. But after this listing, the poet turns exclusively to more general descriptions of killing; the rest of the sequence, which lasts some two-hundred lines, contains no individual deaths whatsoever but seven notices of multiple killings. As Penthesilea goes on the rampage, all her particular victims fade from view, and her actions become hyperbolic. She turns into a sort of killing machine.Footnote 47

Table 1

Beyond this quantitative difference, we can also note some marked qualitative differences between slaughter in the two epics. In the Posthomerica, the killing takes on enormous proportions, and we hear again and again of the vast quantities of people being killed. Five times, for instance, we are told that a ‘great crowd’ (πουλὺν ὅμιλον) is mown down;Footnote 48 at other times it is ‘thousandfold’ or ‘countless’ hordes (μυρία | ἀάσπετα φῦλα),Footnote 49 or great armies (πουλὺς στρατός)Footnote 50 that are wiped out by the action of a single hero. The frequent repetition of such incidents creates the impression that the victims the poet does mention by name represent only a fraction of the total number of men and women killed in the course of the epic. This, I suggest, is an aspect of the Quintean aesthetic, which is among other things an aesthetic of magnitude, which stresses not that individual people are dying but that many people are.

The distinctiveness of Quintus’ presentation of slaughter becomes more noticeable when we pay attention to the similes he uses to describe it. In the Iliad, scenes of large-scale killing are usually compared to some destructive act, like a forest fire, a strong wind or a ravening beast, and Quintus uses similes of this type often in his epic.Footnote 51 But there is also a substantial body of similes, ten in all, which compare slaughter to some kind of productive activity (see Table 2).

Table 2

In each of these comparisons, animals die or plants fall, and this provides the immediate point of correspondence with the slaughter described. This much is unsurprising. But in every case it is a human agent that cuts or kills, not a predatory animal or a natural force. And in every case the human is engaged in the activity to bring some kind of benefit upon himself, usually to produce a comestible good like meat or grain. The heroes who go around cutting down thousands of enemies are not seen only as ravening lions and blazing fires—things perhaps admirable but also fearful and unsettling—but as master technicians, whose work we can marvel rather than shudder at.

This is not, of course, wholly new. Homer also sometimes compares killing to a productive activity, especially the felling of a tree by a woodcutter. In several Iliadic similes, we are even told that a fallen tree will be made into some cultural artefact, such as the wheels of a chariot.Footnote 52 A few compare men killed in battles to animals killed by humans.Footnote 53 But those scenes involve single individuals, and the similes slow the narrative down, focussing in on them in their last moment, rendering their deaths beautiful, pathetic, heroic, tragic or grotesque, depending on the context and the interpretation.Footnote 54 By contrast the similes that Quintus applies to collective slaughter necessarily ignore the individual warriors killed, lumping them together into an anonymous mass. The focus is instead on the act of destruction itself, on the power and the technique of the men who are doing the killing.Footnote 55 This is something quite unhomeric,Footnote 56 and I take it as a key point of Quintus’ innovation in his presentation of battle narrative.

Perhaps more significant still is the fact that several of these similes include connotations of pleasure. Consider simile 2, which comes at the end of the battle in Book 3, when Ajax has just killed a large number of Trojans in revenge for the death of Achilles (3.372–8):

κεῖτο γὰρ εὐρὺς ὅμιλος ἀπειρεσίῃ ἐπὶ γαίῃ
ἄχρις ἐφ’ Ἑλλήσποντον ἀπ’ εὐρυχόροιο πόληος
αἰζηῶν κταμένων ὁπόσους λάχε Δαίμονος Αἶσα.
ὡς δ’ ὅτε λήιον αὖον ὑπ’ ἀμητῆρσι πέσῃσι
πυκνὸν ἐόν, τὰ δὲ πολλὰ κατ’ αὐτόθι δράγματα κεῖται
βριθόμενα σταχύεσσι, γέγηθε δὲ θυμὸς ἐπ’ ἔργῳ
ἀνέρος εἰσορόωντος, ὅ τις κλυτὸν οὖδας ἔχῃσιν.
There lay a great host across the wide expanse
From Troy's broad streets right down to the Hellespont,
Of strong dead men, all whom the doom of heaven took.
As when a close-packed field of ripened grain
Falls to the reapers; on the ground lie many sheaves
Heavy with their seed, and the heart of the man looking on
Rejoices in the work, the man who owns the splendid land.

Here we see a huge mass of slain men, spread over the entire plain before Troy, and the poet supplies the image of a field with all its grain cut down in thick sheaves. The basic picture comes from a famous simile in the Iliad, at the beginning of the battle in Book 11, which is in fact the only simile in that epic that compares slaughter to a productive activity (Il. 11.67–71):

οἳ δ’, ὥς τ’ ἀμητῆρες ἐναντίοι ἀλλήλοισιν
ὄγμον ἐλαύνωσιν ἀνδρὸς μάκαρος κατ’ ἄρουραν
πυρῶν ἢ κριθῶν: τὰ δὲ δράγματα ταρφέα πίπτει:
ὣς Τρῶες καὶ Ἀχαιοὶ ἐπ’ ἀλλήλοισι θορόντες
δῄουν …Footnote 57
And the men, like two lines of reapers who, facing each other,
drive their course all down the field of wheat or of barley
for a man blessed in substance, and the cut swathes drop showering,
so Trojans and Achaeans driving in against one another
cut men down …

The agricultural situation is the same, but each simile focusses on a different point of the harvest, Homer's on the actual reaping, Quintus’ on the result, the field covered with fallen grain. There are some interesting intertextual dynamics at play here,Footnote 58 but the most significant for this investigation is the final comment in Quintus’ simile, which is without parallel in Homer's: we are told that the owner of the farmland rejoices to look upon his mown field. Though this is a perfectly reasonable response for a farmer in such a situation, it seems hard to imagine how it might fit in with the narrative. Who would enjoy beholding such carnage?Footnote 59

Now we might dismiss this last comment as decorative, an element in the simile that does not correspond to anything in the narrative,Footnote 60 except that we can find very similar notices in other similes describing death on a large scale. The slaughtering Neoptolemus is at one point compared to a man killing fish with a trident, and the simile includes a statement that this man is delighted by his task (γάνυται δέ οἱ ἦτορ ἐπ’ ἄγρῃ, 7.575).Footnote 61 Similarly, when Deiphobus kills masses of men, he is likened to a woodcutter who finds enjoyment in his labour (9.166). More striking still is another simile for Neoptolemus (8.330–6):

ἐπὶ δ’ ἔκτανεν ἄλλον ἐπ’ ἄλλῳ.
ὡς δ’ ὅτε τις μυίῃσι περὶ γλάγος ἐρχομένῃσι
χεῖρα περιρρίψῃ κοῦρος νέος, αἳ δ’ ὑπὸ πληγῇ
τυτθῇ δαμνάμεναι σχεδὸν ἄγγεος ἄλλοθεν ἄλλαι
θυμὸν ἀποπνείουσι, πάις δ’ ἐπιτέρπεται ἔργῳ·
ὣς ἄρα φαίδιμος υἱὸς ἀμειλίκτου Ἀχιλῆος
γήθεεν ἀμφὶ νέκυσσι.
He killed one man after another.
As though flies that swarm around a pail of milk
A young boy sweeps his hand and by his feeble blow
The flies are slain; and here and there around the vessel they
Breathe their lives away, and the boy delights in the deed;
Thus the glorious son of merciless Achilles
Exulted over the corpses.

Here again, we see the pleasure of the individual in the simile, but this time it is explicitly linked with the surrounding narrative, as we are told that Neoptolemus himself, like the boy killing flies, exults in the carnage he creates. This detail shows that references to the rejoicing of characters within the similes are not accidental or ornamental, for slaughter can be a source of joy for Quintus’ heroes.Footnote 62 They should be taken, that is, as what de Jong calls ‘assimilated similes’, in which the emotion of the character described finds its way into the simile the narrator uses to describe him.Footnote 63

In four separate similes attached to acts of slaughter, then, we are given reason to think that the slayers find their work enjoyable, that it gladdens their hearts. Some scholars have taken this, in the case of the last simile considered, to be a negative reflection on the character doing the killing. Barbara Spinoula and Calum Maciver have read this simile as intended to highlight the monstrosity of war, or of Neoptolemus’ character. Both take it as functioning like the similes in the Iliad that compare awful events to pleasant ones, and use the discrepancy between tenor and vehicle for emotional effect, offering as a parallel the Homeric simile comparing Apollo destroying the Achaean walls to a boy kicking over sandcastles (Il. 15.361–6).Footnote 64 According to their reading, the contrast between the boy happily and innocently killing pesky flies and the young man delighting in the slaughter of other men is supposed to show that Neoptolemus is ‘a brutal, merciless killer’Footnote 65 and to offer ‘Quintus’ own picture of cruelty in war’.Footnote 66 This same line of thinking might also be extended to the other similes as well; the delight of these characters in killing might be seen as shocking, an illustration of how far war can drive people from normal ways of thinking.

While this interpretation is appealing, it is problematic. For one, it reads too much of the Iliad’s sensibility—or rather one controversial interpretation of itFootnote 67—into the Posthomerica. But this ethos is by no means central in Quintus’ epic, which, as we have seen, does not generally present the death of minor warriors as tragic or wasteful. Furthermore, as several scholars have observed, Quintus largely idealizes his characters,Footnote 68 making them seem noble and sensitive rather than cruel and unfeeling. Bellini Boyten has demonstrated that this applies in particular to Neoptolemus, who is distinguished in the epic from his father's bellicosity and shown as restrained in battle.Footnote 69 Though Neoptolemus is traditionally known for his cruelty during the sack, Boyten has observed that Quintus goes out of his way to skip over the more unsavoury elements of his career there; he does not kill Astyanax, and, although he does kill Priam, it is presented as an act of mercy rather than impiety.Footnote 70 It seems unlikely that the poet would be so careful to present a positive image of Neoptolemus, and then give him a simile that casts him in a negative light. That Neoptolemus takes pleasure in slaughter is not a problem, in the context of the poem as a whole; he does what heroes are supposed to do—and does it happily.

Regardless of what these mentions of pleasure may suggest about heroic psychology in the Posthomerica,Footnote 71 they help illuminate Quintus’ aesthetics of slaughter. The men who do the killing in his epic are efficient and tireless, and they are also pleasantly occupied by their work. The death of untold thousands is thus not presented as disturbing or appalling; it is joyous for the individuals doing the killing. The poet does not seem to question or problematize this joy, and we might well imagine that he shares it and expects his audience to do the same. Susanne Wofford has argued that the reference to a shepherd's delight in the famous watchfire simile in Iliad 8Footnote 72 should be seen as reflecting the perspective of the audience, who likewise take pleasure in the imagined spectacle of the innumerable fires.Footnote 73 The same, I think, applies in Quintus’ similes, except that it is corpses piling up at the hands of powerful warriors rather than glittering lights that evoke the feeling.

CONCLUSION

We have seen something distinctive about Quintus’ presentation of slaughter: the death of individuals is shown as a curiosity, the death of masses as a spectacle. At this point, an earlier reader of Quintus might have some criticism for his approach, suggesting perhaps that he lacked the humanity of Homer, imitating him ineptly, substituting marvellous and baroque details for sensitivity to suffering. But it is more interesting to note how Quintus has transformed Homer to speak to contemporary concerns and aesthetics. He has modified and expanded typical epic patterns, imbuing them with something of the spectacular quality so much appreciated in his own period, while still seeming quite Homeric in his presentation.

We might also go somewhat further and posit a correspondence between Quintus’ sensibility vis-à-vis slaughter and the reality of his contemporary world. For, in the context of third-century Asia Minor, where we imagine Quintus living,Footnote 74 the death of animals and humans was of course literally presented as a spectacle. And indeed, one Posthomeric slaughter-simile reminds us of this fact. In this scene, Menelaus and Agamemnon have become isolated from their companions and are surrounded by a mob of Trojans (6.531–7):

τοὶ δ’ ἐν μέσσοισιν ἐόντες
στρωφῶντ’, εὖτε σύες μέσῳ ἕρκεϊ ἠὲ λέοντες
ἤματι τῷ ὅτ’ ἄνακτες ἀολλίσσωσ’ ἀνθρώπους,
ἀργαλέως δ’ εἰλῶσι κακὸν τεύχοντες ὄλεθρον
θηρσὶν ὑπὸ κρατεροῖς, οἳ δ’ ἕρκεος ἐντὸς ἐόντες
δμῶας δαρδάπτουσιν, ὅ τίς σφισιν ἐγγὺς ἵκηται·
ὣς οἵ γ’ ἐν μέσσοισιν ἐπεσσυμένους ἐδάιζον.
Those two were caught in the middle,
Turning this way and that like boars or lions in an enclosure,
On a day when rulers gather people together
And cruelly shut them up, engineering a bad death
By savage beasts, which, penned up together
Tear apart any slave who comes close to them.
Enclosed like that they dealt death to their assailants.

In this description of what seems to be an arena spectacle where criminals are executed by means of beasts, we have one of the few cases of obvious anachronism in the Posthomerica, where we see the present intruding into the mythical past.Footnote 75 The two Greek leaders, in slaying untold numbers of Trojans, are likened to wild beasts that slay criminals as part of a display organized for the amusement of the public and for the expediency of the state—a situation, that is, where brutal violence is assigned a certain amount of cultural and aesthetic value. There are no grounds for conjecture about whether Quintus himself witnessed such spectacles, or what he may have thought of them if he did. But he inhabited a milieu in which the slaughter of human beings could be construed as entertainment, and the aesthetics of violence in his own poem seems to reflect this milieu. In describing slaughter in his epic, we might say, he has created something like an equivalent to the arena shows in literary form, using the death of individuals and masses to surprise and delight his audience, showing them wonders far different from those they might find in the epics of old.

Footnotes

A version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies in January 2015, and I am grateful for the helpful advice of my fellow panelists and the audience members there. My thanks are also due to Silvia Montiglio, and to the Editors and the anonymous reader at CQ.

References

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.