The Fall of Troy (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) [EPUB ebook] 

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.


 
The
Iliad ends in a cliffhanger. People in antiquity wanted to know exactly what had happened after the funeral of ‘Hector the breaker of horses’ and before the Greeks returned home in triumph.
Quintus of Smyrna undertook to tell the story anew in
The Fall of Troy.



Reinforcements bring hope to the beleaguered city of Troy, even as new champions arise for the besiegers. Amid the ferocity of the ensuing battles more than physical survival is at stake. The very definition of human heroism hangs in the balance. When the Greeks climb down from the wooden horse and fire the city, the flames illuminate something truly timeless: what gives meaning to mortal life within the constraints set by Fate and the divine.

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Passages from The Fall of Troy suggest Quintus was a native of Asia Minor who wrote toward the end of the third century CE. He describes himself as a youthful shepherd, and he may well have been a teacher with students for ‘sheep.’ His invocation of the Muses shows that Quintus viewed himself as the ambitious successor of Homer, Hesiod, and other poets whose literary challenges and accomplishments were enormous.