The later Greek epic Posthomerica is both intensely Homeric (particularly striking for a product of the Roman Empire) and at the same time distinctly un-Homeric. So goes one of the central claims of this monograph, revised from M.'s Ph.D. thesis of 2008. The poem is best known for hewing closely to Homeric language and style, qualities that earned it the dismissal of many twentieth-century critics. But M. brings out difference as well as complementarity to the original Homeric poems in his insightful intertextual analyses, in large part by arguing that Stoic ethical content simultaneously links the poem to its primary model, the Iliad, and distances it from that work. M. also makes a persuasive case for reading the Posthomerica as a deeply learned poem, imbued in the traditions of Alexandrian scholarship and intertextually linked to the Hellenistic reception of Homer.

In Chapter 1 M. lays out his methodology. He puts a heavy emphasis on reader-response theory in support of an anti-intentionalist conception of intertextuality. Yet he also seeks to recuperate the notion of allusion (and the intentionality it implies) by positing a Quintus that is all in the reader's head; this Quintus' intentions can be read, though we have no way of knowing if they coincide with the intentions of the historical Quintus (a line of thinking similar to A. Nehamas, ‘What an Author Is’, Journal of Philosophy 83.11 [1986], 685–91, expanded as ‘Writer, Text, Work, Author’, in A.J. Cascardi [ed.], Literature and the Question of Philosophy [1987], pp. 267–91, which are not cited). Developing a subtler understanding of intentions as they pertain to literary texts is an admirable undertaking. However, M.'s handling of the problem is ultimately unsatisfying because, like many Classical scholars influenced by reader-response theory, he accords exaggerated significance to the banal fact that we do not have perfect access to an author's intentions. Thus his return to intentionality at the level of the reader leaves open troubling questions: is M. inventing the intertexts he analyses or do they have an independent existence? Does a Stoic Quintus exist only in M.'s mind and if so why should we care?

This chapter also sets up one of the most important pillars of M.'s argument: Quintus' debt to the intellectual culture of Hellenistic Alexandria. At the same time he largely rejects the contextualisation of the poem in relation to the Second Sophistic, which he defines narrowly as the ‘movement’ described by Philostratus and characterised by rhetors composing display speeches in Attic-dialect prose. Yet, this archaising use of Attic is in many way analogous to Quintus' impeccable Homeric Greek, and there exist works we now loosely categorise as part of the Second Sophistic that play similar games with dialect (e.g. De Dea Syria or Arrian's Indica, with their Herodotean Ionic Greek). We do not have to accept that Quintus participated in such a self-conscious rhetorical movement (if one even existed) in order to consider Imperial Greek literary-rhetorical culture as part of the context for the Posthomerica (and in this I am more sympathetic to M. Baumbach and S. Bär, Quintus Smyrnaeus: Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic [2007], pp. 8–15 and S. Bär, ‘Quintus of Smyrna and the Second Sophistic’, HSPh 105 [2010], 287–316). Instead of thinking of Quintus in relation to the Second Sophistic, M. suggests, the Posthomerica can better be understood in terms of a ‘late antique aesthetic’, characterised by episodic structure, use of digression and an embracing of extremes, in line with other late large-scale epic projects (though an unexplored avenue is the poem's relation to long works of Imperial prose fiction, which display many similar qualities).

The chapter closes with close readings of the poem's opening, which notably lacks a proem, and the in-proem that appears before the catalogue of heroes in Book 12, an analysis that sets the tone for the rest of the study. M. takes a microscopic view of the text, while also drawing out intertextual relationships with the poem's most important model, Homer, as well as examining intertexts with Hesiod and Alexandrian poetry, to reveal the Homeric and slyly un-Homeric directions in which the poem gestures. Chapter 2 likewise applies this method of reading to the retold ekphrasis of the Shield of Achilles in Posthomerica 5. This scene poses a problem for Quintus in that he is not filling gaps in the Homeric narrative, but re-narrating (and changing) something that already exists in Homer. M. shows how Quintus cleverly places himself at the heart of the Homeric tradition while at the same time innovating within that tradition, by asserting that there are more scenes on the shield than he or Homer described. This chapter also examines the ethical content of the shield, arguing for the influence of Stoic philosophy.

Chapter 3 addresses the poem's gnomai, while Chapter 4 discusses epic similes, both of which have Homeric precedents but occur more frequently in the Posthomerica than in the Homeric poems. These features of the text are subjected to the same kinds of multidimensional inter- and intra-textual readings as those already discussed. It is in the gnomai in particular that the Stoic flavour of the poem becomes apparent. Despite the putative decline of Stoicism in the third century, M. argues for reading these elements as Stoic because ‘there are thematic indicators of a philosophy or system of ethics throughout the Posthomerica that bears a resemblance to Stoicism more than any other philosophical or ethical system’ (p. 107). But because Quintus reads Homer in a Stoic way, ‘this Stoic version of Homer does not purport to be anything other than Homeric’ (p. 125). Yet I sometimes found it difficult to take the Stoic content seriously, given the history of Homeric interpretation. To illustrate: when M. argues that Nestor stands as a Stoic sage and a figure for the poet, it is hard to put out of mind his ambiguous Homeric depiction as a wind-bag. Likewise, when Odysseus produces a Stoic-sounding gnome about controlling one's passions, the statement sounds suspiciously self-serving coming as it does after Ajax's suicide.

The discussion of epic similes in Chapter 4 distinguishes Quintus' similes from Homer's as more ‘mannered’ in the links they make with their context and one another. M. argues that this is so because the Posthomerica uses simile to provide structure to an otherwise episodic narrative, and makes a persuasive argument for the little noticed sophistication of the epic's structure. A close reading of the simile comparing Helen to Aphrodite (after the goddess was caught in flagrante with Ares, as sung by Demodocus in Odyssey 8) shows how Quintus fixes the moral content of a problematic Homeric passage, while other similes set up complex links between Neoptolemus and his father Achilles, in dialogue with other parts of the Posthomerica and with the Iliad.

The extended close analyses of intertexts (and intratexts) can become somewhat wearying for a reader less committed to this mode of interpretation, but M. always makes clear the specific contributions of each textual relationship not just to the Posthomerica scene currently under his microscope but also to the epic as a whole. M.'s readings bring out the multidimensional possibilities of intertextual interpretation, engaging as they do not just with Homer but also with Hellenistic and Imperial Greek (and sometimes Latin) poetry in their own receptions of Homer. Thus the project's breadth and depth of learning make a good case for the value of studying later Greek literature, both as something fruitful and enjoyable in itself and as a lens that refracts prior literary tradition.