Reading Notes

Having to get creative now to figure out what the hell happens after The Iliad. Hello, Quintus, nice to meet you. Thus far I appreciate that the Greeks have returned and Rome with its vulgarity has learned to wait its goddamn turn. Zeus is here and Jove is nowhere to be seen. Very good.

I'd say I'm generally liking it thus far. I can tell that it's not Homer writing, but Quintus does a decent enough job emulating the overall style. He seems to use a lot more similes. And it's nice to get the blank section of the story filled in.

RIP Achilles, best of the Greeks. What a non-event his death is, though. The entire world comes together and weeps for Achilles and that's all nice and everything, but there's like no precipitating event. Apollo just comes out of nowhere, says "Fuck you!" Achilles rightfully responds with a middle finger and then he gets the big heel arrow. Feels very weird. Why at this point and not some other? He offs Hector, Penthesileia, Memnon and then just kinda falls over because too OP? Odd.

Menelaus just called Helen a bitch! Such vulgarity out of nowhere...I did enjoy my Greek son Diomedes saying if anyone tries leaving after all this he'd fucking behead them. That is my boy.

Not liking all the new people that have been happening in this one. It feels like we kill someone off and then the very next chapter, wouldn't ya know it? We got a godlike replacement.

Rather bullshit of the gods to make the war go on for 10 years and then we just resolve it with a totally different plan that is not the straightforward battle. Is the lesson we should have been clever all along? Can't just be a big strong Greek man, but you must be wily Odysseus as well? You would really think we would get bored of the back and forth going nowhere a bit quicker than 10 years. That is a big complaint I have against the Epic Cycle as a whole. At the very least any of the bits that dealt directly with the war. I know I've brought it up before, but it's really garbage how little development there is. We go back and forth, both sides slaughtering each other without end for 10 years. And yet...the war just continues? How? How have we not literally gone through all of our people? It don't make no sense.

Athena you dirty lil so-and-so! Yes, sure. Kill Ajax. He was a bastard to Cassandra. But what exactly do you have against the rest of the Argives? You've been supporting them for 10 years! Oh, how these gods are fickle...

Review

I liked Homer better. Wasn't bad, but I felt there was a decrease in quality all the same. Difficult to say if that's a genuine quality difference between the original works. Obviously both Homer's originals and Quintus' work have been translated and re-translated 1000 times. So is it something in the original work I'm not liking or just the translation? No real way of knowing. One demonstrable thing I can point to is I felt the similes got a bit tired in Posthomerica. Quintus uses them absolutely all the time and they're always rather direct. The Trojan was scared and ran away from the Greek like a farm animal that is scared of the farmer. Like...yeah I mean that holds up. It's not particularly inspired, though. And it feels like the simile always goes on longer than it needs to. Was just an odd thing I picked up on. Lots and lots of similes. Most of them weirdly direct and not all that additive. They're definitely present in the Homer epics, but it didn't stand out to me like it did here, so I have to assume a genuine difference in writing styles.

Good to actually have an epic that ended on an actual...ending? Something I railed against with the Iliad was it ended (and started) at a totally arbitrary point. Was very bothersome, because it just felt like little of substance had been accomplished. Makes the work less satisfying to read. I thought it was a bit odd to end on all the gods pissed at the Greeks, killing off a bunch of them. Why? We don't need like a super happy ending or whatever, it just seems like a strange way to close out an epic. "And then...they....DIED." Exuberant clapping from the audience