RECOMMENDED READING --

Fitzgerald, Robert (Trans.): "Homer: The Iliad" (Viking Press,
New York, 1968).

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INTRODUCTION

Homer's "Iliad" begins towards the close of the last of the ten
years of the Trojan War: its incidents extend over some fifty
days only, and it ends with the burial of Hector. The things
which came before and after were told by other bards, who between
them narrated the whole "cycle" of the events of the war, and so
were called the Cyclic Poets. Of their works none have survived;
but the story of what befell between Hector's funeral and the
taking of Troy is told in detail, and well told, in a poem about
half as long as the "Iliad". Some four hundred years after
Christ there lived at Smyrna a poet of whom we know scarce
anything, save that his first name was Quintus. He had saturated
himself with the spirit of Homer, he had caught the ring of his
music, and he perhaps had before him the works of those Cyclic
Poets whose stars had paled before the sun.

We have practically no external evidence as to the date or place
of birth of Quintus of Smyrna, or for the sources whence he drew
his materials. His date is approximately settled by two passages
in the poem, viz. vi. 531 sqq., in which occurs an illustration
drawn from the man-and-beast fights of the amphitheatre, which