Bamberger Studien zu Literatur, 29 Kultur und Medien 13 Posthomerica A Commentary on Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 13 Stephan Renker A Commentary on Quintus of Smyrna, A Commentary 29 Bamberger Studien zu Literatur, Kultur und Medien Bamberger Studien zu Literatur, Kultur und Medien hg. von Andrea Bartl, Hans-Peter Ecker, Jörn Glasenapp, Iris Hermann, Christoph Houswitschka, Friedhelm Marx Band 29 2020 A Commentary on Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 13 Stephan Renker 2020 Bibliographische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deut- schen Nationalbibliographie; detaillierte bibliographische Informationen sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Stephan Renker is a DAAD Lecturer at Shanghai International Studies University. Dissertation zur Erlangung des Grades des Doktors der Philosophie an der Fakultät für Geisteswissenschaften der Universität Hamburg in Griechischer Philologie vor- gelegt von Stephan Renker. Hamburg, 2020. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Christian Brockmann (Universität Hamburg) Gutachterin: Prof. Dr. Sabine Vogt (Universität Bamberg) Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 12.02.2020 Dieses Werk ist als freie Onlineversion über das Forschungsinformationssys- tem (FIS; https://fs.uni-bamberg.de) der Universität Bamberg erreichbar. Das Werk – ausgenommen Cover, Zitate und Abbildungen – steht unter der CC- Lizenz CC-BY. Lizenzvertrag: Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Herstellung und Druck: Digital Print Group, Nürnberg Umschlaggestaltung: University of Bamberg Press Umschlagbild: Hand Stamped Pattern 29/red and white © Helen Merrin University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2020 http://www.uni-bamberg.de/ubp ISSN: 2192-7901 ISBN: 978-3-86309-739-4 (Druckausgabe) eISBN: 978-3-86309-740-0 (Online-Ausgabe) URN: urn:nbn:de:bvb:473-irb-478372 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20378/irb-47837 Zerpflücke eine Rose, und jedes Blatt ist schön. (Brecht 1967, 393) Contents Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 11 Preliminaries 11 Note on Abbreviations and Transliterations 13 The Posthomerica, Quintus, and his Time 13 Quintus Scholarship, Commentaries, and Book 13 15 Book 13: General Design 16 Commentary 21 Bibliography 303 Abbreviations 303 Text Editions 304 Secondary Literature 309 Acknowledgments This study was made possible by a three year Ph.D. grant (2015–8) from the Doktorandenkolleg Geisteswissenschaften at the University of Hamburg. Funding from this grant allowed for conference presentations in Leeds, Oxford, Shanghai, and Vancouver, along with a stay as a Visiting Doc- toral Researcher at the University of Oxford in fall 2017. I would like to express my gratitude to all those who facilitated these opportunities for me to grow both as a scholar and as a person. I am entirely grateful to my advisors, Christian Brockmann (University of Hamburg) and Sabine Vogt (University of Bamberg). My dissertation benefited greatly from working under their tutelage, and I am most thankful for the academic freedom and circumspect guidance they have given me throughout these past years. I would also like to thank Marc Föcking and Claudia Schindler for their support during my time at the University of Hamburg and Fiona Macintosh for her invitation to Ox- ford. Furthermore, I am most grateful again to Sabine Vogt and the Classics Department at Bamberg for a generous allowance supporting the publication of this book. Finally, I thank Andrea Bartl and her fellow editors for accepting my study for this series, Christine van Eickels and Barbara Ziegler for their help in all technical aspects of the publication, and the University of Bamberg Press for their vision in supporting Open Access. Bamberg, April 2020 11 Introduction Preliminaries Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, in an engaging essay on the philological prac- tice of commentary writing, pointed to the promising, yet disappointing, nature of this academic genre. He rightfully ascribes to every commen- tary an “ancillary function,” insofar as it aids to mediate “between the contexts shared by the text’s author and a primary readership and, on the other side, the context constituted by those readers who belong to later historical times or to different cultures” (Gumbrecht 1999, 443). He thus sees the commentary as an indispensable tool vital for every interpreta- tive endeavor. However promising this may sound, Gumbrecht doesn’t fail to address the constitutively disappointing potential of every com- mentary, since it “will never be able to anticipate what exactly will have to be explained to the readers by the next generation” (Gumbrecht 1999, 444). As a result, for the producer, the task of writing a commentary re- mains forever unfinishable, and consequently every commentary unfin- ished. Tongue in cheek, Gumbrecht raises the question of whether “any given commentary offers all kinds of interesting bits and pieces of knowledge – except that one information which you really need […]” (Gumbrecht 1999, 444; see also Sprang 2019). In order to minimize this potential disappointment, I would like to lay out what this commentary aims to achieve and what kind of information the reader can expect from it. Structurally, I have separated book 13 of Quintus’ Posthomerica into narrative units (see chapter “General Design” below). At the beginning of each unit, I give a short summary, accompanied by a further subcate- gorization. By doing so, I aim to give the reader a better orientation to- ward the literal sense of the passage and how I understand its internal structure. Any reader with a certain degree of familiarity with the Iliad and the Odyssey is likely to agree that Quintus owes his diction (among other aspects covered below) to Homer. Wherever Quintus positions himself as decidedly Homeric or wherever he chooses to depart from a consider- 12 ate Homeric use, I aim to explain with the help of quantitative material and statistics. In addition, I aim to explain difficult grammatical and lexical phenomena. I assume that the reader is familiar with the Posthomerica’s central characters and their names from their reading of the Iliad and the Odys- sey. Nevertheless, I always try to give concise background information for every name appearing throughout this book and point to further literature both in the narrower context of the Posthomerica and in the wider context of the Homeric epics and beyond. I aim to explain the poem in the context of its intertextually relevant genre- or content-specific predecessors and its (suspected) contemporar- ies as well as successors. That includes (in tentative chronological order) in particular the Homeric epics Iliad and Odyssey, Hesiod, the Epic Cy- cle, the Homeric hymns, Euripides’ Trojan Women and Hecuba, Apollo- nius of Rhodes, Hyginus’ Fabulae, Virgil’s Aeneid (esp. book 2), Ovid’s Metamorphoses (esp. book 13.404–622), Seneca’s Trojan Women, Apol- lodorus (esp. Epitome 5.21–25), Triphiodorus, the two Oppians, Dictys Cretensis, Dares Phrygius, Pausanias (esp. 10), Nonnus of Panopolis, and Tzetzes’ Posthomerica If a word or a formula appears in a noteworthy manner (i.e. signifi- cantly more often or very infrequently), I try to point to it. I also try to quote the original lines as frequently as possible. I try to sum up or point to research that has been conducted on the respective passages as often and as thoroughly as possible. I also aim to address further relevant literature on linguistic, literal, historical or fur- ther cultural phenomena that appear in the respective passage, wherever and whenever I feel it is helpful for the understanding of the passage. In addition, I selectively give my own interpretations, including of matters of intertextuality, narratology, diction, genre, tradition, poetic self-awareness, and aesthetics. I also deal with matters of grammar, textual criticism, and realia. My guiding principle here is the seminal theories of modern literary criticism, claiming that Quintus is to be viewed as a poeta doctus who summons his predecessors’ work in order to give the lector doctus the opportunity to appreciate the arte allusiva at play (see esp. Conte 1986, Fowler 1997, and Hinds 1998; see also Bär 2009, 42–3). 13 In light of the existence of four English translations (Way 1913, Combellack 1968, James 2004, and Hopkinson 2018), I have decided not to contribute what would have been a fifth. Note on Abbreviations and Transliterations The works of ancient Greek authors are cited according to the abbrevia- tions used in the LSJ. For Latin authors, I follow the OLD. Wherever I deemed abbreviations not precise enough, I took the liberty of departing from them (e.g. for clarity in the case of the Homeric Hymns, where I follow Allen et al. 1936, whenever I do not, I refer to h.Ap., h.Bacch., h.Cer., h.Mart, h.Merc, h.Pan, or h.Ven.). There are various systems for the transliteration of Greek names. In this commentary, I follow the spelling of Neil Hopkinson’s Loeb edition (Hopkinson 2018). I have thus used a Latinate method of transliterating (thus, “Calchas” instead of “Kalkhas,” for instance) and at times angliciz- ing (e.g. “Priam” rather than “Priamus”) Greek names. For names that do not appear in the Posthomerica and are consequently not in Hopkin- son’s translation, I follow the OCD. See also Anthony Verity’s pragmatic comment on his translation of the Iliad in Verity 2012, 451. The Posthomerica, Quintus, and his Time I believe that there is little need for a further detailed introduction to Quintus and the Posthomerica, nor is this the place