The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fall of Troy, by Smyrnaeus Quintus

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Title: The Fall of Troy

Author: Smyrnaeus Quintus

Translator: Arthur Sanders Way

Posting Date: August 30, 2008 [EBook #658]
Release Date: September, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FALL OF TROY ***

Produced by Douglas B. Killings.

The Fall of Troy

by

Quintus Smyrnaeus

("Quintus of Smyrna")

Fl. 4th Century A.D.

Originally written in Greek, sometime about the middle of the 4th
Century A.D. Translation by A.S. Way, 1913.

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

ORIGINAL TEXT--

Way, A.S. (Ed. & Trans.): "Quintus Smyrnaeus: The Fall of Troy"
(Loeb Classics #19; Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA,
1913). Greek text with side-by-side English translation.

OTHER TRANSLATIONS--

Combellack, Frederick M. (Trans.): "The War at Troy: What Homer
Didn't Tell" (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK, 1968).

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 plac