Posthomerica

I don't intend to stay in this world of classical warfare all summer, but after finishing with Statius' Thebaid, I started reading Quintus of Smyrna's Trojan Epic, often called Posthomerica because it picks up the story from the death of Hector at the conclusion of the Iliad and continues on to the fall of Troy and the departure of the Greeks, where the Odyssey will continue the story of Odysseus. I'm reading an excellent new translation by Alan James published by Johns Hopkins.

Quintus was a late third century Greek author who wrote in imitation of Homer, probably basing his poem on lost works from the Epic Cycle. The great library of Alexandria was destroyed in 272, and no copies of those other epic poems have come down to us, so the only narrative of that part of the Trojan story not by Homer (or Virgil) is preserved for us in this work by Quintus. I'd never read it before, but I'm really enjoying it in this very readable translation. Alan James provides excellent commentary and background to Quintus as well as to Homer and the Epic Cycle.