274-89) describes how Helen came in the night with Deiphobus, and
stood by the Wooden Horse, and called to each of the hidden
warriors with the voice of his own wife. This thrilling scene
Quintus omits, and substitutes nothing of his own. Later on, he
makes Menelaus slay Deiphobus unresisting, "heavy with wine,"
whereas Homer ("Odyssey" viii. 517-20) makes him offer such a
magnificent resistance, that Odysseus and Menelaus together could
not kill him without the help of Athena. In fact, we may say
that, though there are echoes of the "Iliad" all through the
poem, yet, wherever Homer has, in the "Odyssey", given the
outline-sketch of an effective scene, Quintus has uniformly
neglected to develop it, has sometimes substituted something much
weaker -- as though he had not the "Odyssey" before him!

For this we have no satisfactory explanation to offer. He may
have set his own judgment above Homer -- a most unlikely
hypothesis: he may have been consistently following, in the
framework of his story, some original now lost to us: there may
be more, and longer, lacunae in the text than any editors have
ventured to indicate: but, whatever theory we adopt, it must be
based on mere conjecture.

The Greek text here given is that of Koechly (1850) with many of
Zimmermann's emendations, which are acknowledged in the notes.
Passages enclosed in square brackets are suggestions of Koechly
for supplying the general sense of lacunae. Where he has made no
such suggestion, or none that seemed to the editors to be
adequate, the lacuna has been indicated by asterisks, though here
too a few words have been added in the translation, sufficient to
connect the sense.