Quintus of Smyrna’s ’Posthomerica’

Silvio Bär is Professor of Classics at the University of Oslo. His research areas and interests include Greek hexameter poetry (especially of the imperial period), tragedy, lyric, the novel, mythology, rhetoric, the Second Sophistic, intertextuality, transtextuality, diachronic narratology, and the reception of antiquity in English literature and popular culture. He has published widely on Quintus of Smyrna's Posthomerica, on the genre 'epyllion', and on the character of Herakles in Greek epic and beyond.

Offers a literary and cultural-historical analysis of the Posthomerica This collection offers a new collaborative reading of Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica: a major, fascinating Greek epic written at the height of the Roman Empire. Building on the surge of interest in imperial Greek poetry seen in the past decades, this volume applies multiple approaches - literary, theoretical and historical - to ask new questions about this mysterious, challenging poet and to re-evaluate his role in the cultural history of his time. Bringing together experienced imperial epic scholars and new voices in this growing field, the chapters reveal Quintus' crucial place within the inherited epic tradition and his role in shaping the literary politics of Late Antique society. Silvio Bär is Professor of Classics at the University of Oslo. Emma Greensmith is Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John's College. Leyla Ozbek is Research Fellow of Greek Language and Literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa.