Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Fall of Troy

Quintus — for we know him only by his first name — was a poet who lived at Smyrna some four hundred years after Christ. His work, in fourteen books, is a bold and generally underrated attempt in Homer’s style to complete the story of Troy from the point at which the Iliad closes. Quintus tells us the stories of Penthesilea, the Amazonian queen; Memnon, leader of the Ethiopians; the death of Achilles; the contest for Achilles’ arms between Ajax and Odysseus; the arrival of Philoctetes; and the making of the Wooden Horse. The poem ends with the departure of the Greeks and the great storm which by the wrath of heaven shattered their fleet.