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The TROJAN EPIC
 Quintus of Smyrna

The TROJAN EPIC

Posthomerica
Translated and edited by Alan James

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Baltimore and London
∫ ≤≠≠∂ The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published ≤≠≠∂
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Johns Hopkins Paperbacks edition, ≤≠≠π

Ω ∫ π ∏ ∑ ∂ ≥ ≤ ∞

The Johns Hopkins University Press

≤π∞∑ North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland ≤∞≤∞∫-∂≥∏≥
www.press.jhu.edu

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this book as follows:

Quintus, Smyrnaeus, ≥rd cent.

[Posthomerica. English]
The Trojan Epic : Posthomerica / Quintus of Smyrna ; translated and edited by Alan
James.
p. cm. — (Johns Hopkins new translations from antiquity)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN ≠-∫≠∞∫-πΩ∏∑-∑ (hardcover : alk. paper)
∞. Epic poetry, Greek—Translations into English. ≤. Troy (Extinct city)—Poetry.
≥. Trojan War—Poetry. I. James, Alan (Alan W.) II. Title. III. Series.
PA∂∂≠π.Q∑E∑ ≤≠≠∂
∫∫≥%.≠∞—dc≤≤ ≤≠≠≥≠≤∑Ω∂≠

ISBN ∞≠: ≠-∫≠∞∫-∫∏≥∑-X (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN ∞≥: Ωπ∫-≠-∫≠∞∫-∫∏≥∑-∑
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
 Contents

Preface vii
Introduction xi

The TROJAN EPIC

∞ Penthesileia 3
≤ Memnon 25
≥ The Death of Achilles 43
∂ The Funeral Games of Achilles 64
∑ The Contest for the Armor of Achilles 80
∏ The Arrival of Eurypylos 98
π The Arrival of Neoptolemos 116
∫ The Death of Eurypylos 135
Ω The Arrival of Philoktetes 149
∞≠ The Death of Paris 163
∞∞ The Defense of Troy 176
∞≤ The Wooden Horse 189
∞≥ The Sack of Troy 205
∞∂ The Departure of the Greeks 220

Critical Summary 239

Commentary 267
Index of Names 349
This page intentionally left blank
 Preface

The romantic legend of the Trojan War has exercised the imagination of
poets and artists and held a prominent place in the collective consciousness
of the Western world for more than three thousand years. Such promi-
nence is warranted because the war is the subject of the Iliad and the
Odyssey attributed to Homer, two of the world’s greatest epic poems and
works that mark the beginning of ancient Greek literature. Yet, despite the
opportunity to celebrate a whole war, these poems achieve their greatness
by focusing on small parts of the story. As a result, they refer only inciden-
tally to many of its main events. The consequent need to provide a full
narrative of these was met by several epics, part of the so-called Epic Cycle,
which influenced the classical period of Greek literature. Later neglect of
these Trojan epics led to their loss, probably in the third century a.d. They
were replaced in the second half of that century by the work of a learned
Greek poet named Quintus, who lived in the city of Smyrna on the west
coast of Asia Minor, one of the places that claimed Homer as its son. A
thousand years after the composition of the Homeric epics their meter and
archaic language were still in use and appealed to a cultivated readership.
This extraordinarily conservative tradition produced the Trojan Epic that is
presented here, and the tradition was revived often enough during the next
thousand years for Quintus’ work to survive to the fall of Constantinople
and the age of printing.
Printed editions of the Greek text and of translations have so far gener-
ated only very limited interest in Quintus’ epic, despite the intrinsic attrac-
tiveness of its subject matter not only to supplement the Homeric epics but
also for comparison with later versions of the legend. The work has tended
to be dismissed as a late imitation of Homer without any serious attempt to
assess its qualities. The following claim—‘‘The anaemic pastiche served up
by Quintus is utterly devoid of life’’*—o√ers an extreme example of the
prevailing prejudice against it. How far the main thrust of this critique is
justifiable can now be left for unprejudiced readers to judge for themselves.
Su≈ce it at this point to consider the applicability of the term pastiche. As a
synonym of cento—a patchwork of elements borrowed from other authors
—it is manifestly the wrong word. Only the alternative meaning—a work

*H. Lloyd-Jones, review of Combellack’s English prose translation, Classical Review 19

(1969): 101.

vii
viii PREFACE

that imitates the style of another author or period—applies to Quintus’

Trojan Epic, and that is true, in varying degrees, of many works of Greco-
Roman literature that are taken very seriously indeed. In fact the Trojan Epic
exhibits one of the most extensive and complex intertextual relationships
first and foremost with the Iliad, secondly with the Odyssey and the Argo-
nautika of Apollonios of Rhodes, and then occasionally with other works of
poetry, Latin as well as Greek. In this respect it is comparable with Virgil’s
Aeneid, the two epics being on a similar scale.
The commentary that accompanies this translation, in addition to its
function as a record of textual problems, is designed to present these inter-
textual relationships to nonspecialist readers, providing fairly full refer-
ences to ancient sources but none to modern scholarly literature, unlike the
general introduction with its notes and bibliography. Consequently it needs
to be stated here that the commentary’s greatest indebtedness, by far, is to
the one that accompanies Vian’s edition of the Greek text and French trans-
lation. It has been possible to improve on it at many points, but its wealth of
material has provided an indispensable foundation.
Renewed interest in Quintus’ epic has been reflected in three recent
publications, which are included in the select bibliography: the influence
on it of Apollonios’ Argonautika has been succinctly detailed by F. Vian; G.
Pompella’s critical edition of the Greek text has been reissued in one vol-
ume with very few changes, minus his Italian translation and textual notes;
M. Papathomopoulos’ concordance should facilitate linguistic and stylistic
research. Everything of relevance in the first two of these has been incorpo-
rated into my text.
The subject briefly outlined in the first part of my introduction has
received a thorough, scholarly review in Jonathan Burgess’ book The Tradi-
tion of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle, which, by happy coinci-
dence, was published in 2001 by the Johns Hopkins University Press and
became available to me immediately after completion of my manuscript. I
have only one important disagreement with his conclusions about the early
Greek epics, Homeric and Cyclic: I do not see how they can be identified
with the works known to us if their transmission was not controlled from
the start by written texts.

Quintus’ epic first impinged on my awareness in my final year as an under-

graduate at King’s College, Cambridge, and the Loeb edition of it accom-
panied my travels round Italy in the summer of 1960. The advice of others
diverted me from my intention to make it the object of serious research,
and for many years I made no more than occasional reference to it in
published work. The idea of translating it came to me by a circuitous route.
PREFACE ix

In the southern winter of 1980 I conceived the ambition of improving on

the host of English verse translations of the Iliad, first using a strict form of
blank verse and later the freer meter of the present translation. That oc-
cupied much of my spare time for more than a decade and was taken as far
as the end of book 13. Although it is unlikely to see the light of day, it was a
salutary exercise, indeed a necessary training.
My serious interest in Quintus was revived in 1993 by Kevin Lee, my
friend and colleague in the Classics Department at the University of Syd-
ney. He suggested our joint undertaking of a full-scale commentary on one
or two books of the epic, preferably ones in which use of sources would give
us scope for drawing on Kevin’s expertise in Greek tragedy. At first we
agreed to tackle books 5 and 14, but then we narrowed it down to book 5
alone, which resulted in the commentary listed in my bibliography. Quite
early in the period of our collaboration I became aware of the lack of an
adequate English translation, and my idea of applying to Quintus’ Trojan
Epic the fruits of my experience in translating the Iliad was warmly sup-
ported by Kevin. As soon as most of the work on our commentary was
finished and I was free from teaching, I embarked, in January 1999, on my
new task. The translation had just been completed when Kevin’s sudden
and unexpected death on 28 May 2001 removed the one who would have
been my ideal reviewer. Consequently it is to his memory that I dedicate
whatever of this may be worthy of him.

Conversion of my rough manuscript into word-processed typescript has

been largely the work of my son Conrad, who acquired the necessary skills
while bravely bearing the loss of so much through illness. Other technical
support has been given by my wife Theresa, whose support in less direct
ways cannot be adequately acknowledged.
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

Homer and the Epic Cycle

The Greek epic poem by Quintus of Smyrna is the only large-scale poetic
narrative of much of the traditional story of the Trojan War surviving from
antiquity. Written in the third century a.d. in close imitation of the lan-
guage and style of the Homeric epics, it is rather more than half the length
of the Iliad, 8,800 lines in fourteen books. It includes all the episodes of the
war between the end of the Iliad (the death of Hektor) and the beginning of
the Odyssey (the wanderings of Odysseus), and so it has usually been known
by the Latin title Posthomerica, Sequel to Homer. Henceforward, however, it
will be referred to by the more informative title the Trojan Epic. Its contents
are the same as those of four of the six Trojan constituents of the early
Greek Epic Cycle, a term that seems to have been first used by Alexandrian
scholars of the third century b.c. to denote a group of early epics containing
traditional heroic legends.∞ It was possibly the loss of those Cyclic epics not
long before the time of Quintus that was the main motive and justification
of his work, and also the reason for its preservation through the Byzantine
Middle Ages. Accordingly any attempt to understand it must begin with its
literary background, early Greek epic poetry and the distinctive character of
the Homeric epics, especially that of the Iliad, which was the overwhelm-
ingly dominant influence on Quintus.
The historical and literary indications are that the Homeric epics were
composed not earlier than the eighth century b.c. and not later than the
early seventh century, the Odyssey being later and almost certainly com-
posed with knowledge of the Iliad by either the same or a di√erent poet.
Their primary historical background was the destruction of the city of Troy,
in the northwest corner of Asia Minor, around 1200 b.c., and they preserve
substantial memories of the material culture of the Mycenaean Bronze
Age. Mixed with these, however, are many anachronistic elements reflect-
ing at least four centuries of later history, for most of which there is no
evidence of the use of writing in the Aegean region. Thus the memory of a
siege of Troy conducted by a Greek leader from Mykenai must have been
preserved by a long tradition of oral poetry. That the Iliad and the Odyssey
are in some sense the products of such a tradition is also indicated by their
language and style. Theirs is a peculiarly poetic form of Greek combining
features of di√erent regional dialects, mostly Ionic and Aeolic, preserved

xi
xii INTRODUCTION

and modified to suit the traditional meter of Greek epic, the dactylic hex-
ameter. Theirs, too, is a mode of expression that depends to an extraordi-
nary degree on the use of repeated combinations of words, or formulas, a
matter to which we shall return when considering the character of Quintus’
epic. Both these characteristics, particularly the formulaic expression, arise
from the demands of narrative poetry that is composed orally by bards who
have mastered traditional material and technique, as has been demon-
strated by study of living traditions of comparable heroic poetry.≤
Any doubt as to whether the legends of the Trojan War were actually pre-
served by a tradition of oral poetry down to the time of the Homeric epics is re-
moved by the descriptions of its practice in the Odyssey. The more elaborate of
these is the famous description in book 8 (43–5, 62–92, 471–531) of Demo-
dokos, the blind bard of Phaiakia, which obviously contributed to the legend of
Homer himself. Demodokos tells first an otherwise unknown story of a
quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus and later that of the wooden horse and
the sack of Troy. Ironically both recitals move the listening Odysseus to tears.
In book 1 (325–55) Phemios, the bard of Ithaka, recounts the disastrous return
of the Greeks from Troy, which Penelope finds too painful, while Telemachos
defends the right of bards to tell the latest and most popular stories.
Of the six lost Cyclic epics dealing with the Trojan War only a few short
quotations survive, but we know their titles and contents from summaries
preserved in the great Venetian manuscript of the Iliad.≥ The longest of
these, the Kypria in eleven books, began with the first cause of the war, the
dispute between the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite and the judg-
ment of Paris in favor of Aphrodite, which led to his abduction of Helen
from Sparta and the gathering of a Greek army. A long delay is caused by
misdirection of the army to Teuthrania before it reassembles at Aulis, from
where, after further delay caused by the anger of Artemis, it sails to Troy;
however, on route it has to abandon the wounded Philoktetes on Lemnos.
The subsequent military action at and near Troy was included in the Kypria,
down to the point where the Iliad begins.
The Aithiopis (five books) took up the narrative from the death of Hektor
at the end of the Iliad and recounted the killing by Achilles of first the
Amazon queen Penthesileia and then Memnon, the son of the dawn god-
dess, after Memnon had killed Antilochos. That was followed by the death
of Achilles through the joint action of Paris and Apollo, his mourning by
the Greeks, and the outbreak of a dispute between Telamonian Ajax and
Odysseus over his armor.
The Little Iliad (four books) began with the adjudging of Achilles’ armor
to Odysseus and the consequent madness and suicide of Ajax. Philoktetes
is brought from Lemnos and shoots Paris dead, after which Helen is mar-
INTRODUCTION xiii

ried to the Trojan Deiphobos. Achilles’ son Neoptolemos is brought from

Skyros and kills Eurypylos, the last of the Trojans’ powerful allies. During
the construction of the wooden horse Odysseus spies on Troy and, with
Diomedes, steals the sacred statue of Athena. The Little Iliad ended with the
misguided celebration of the Trojans after they had brought the wooden
horse through their walls.
In the Sack of Ilion (two books) after the admittance of the wooden horse
Laokoon and a son are killed by two snakes, and Aineias departs from Troy.
During the following night the Greeks from the wooden horse and those
who have returned by ship slaughter the Trojans, but they condemn the
violation of the prophetess Kassandra by Lokrian Ajax. The city is de-
stroyed, Polyxena is sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles, Hektor’s infant son
Astyanax is killed by Odysseus, and the spoil is divided, before the Greeks
sail away under threat of destruction by Athena.
The Returns (five books) included, most importantly, the safe returns of
Diomedes and Nestor, the voyage of Menelaos to Egypt, the warning of
Agamemnon at his departure by the ghost of Achilles, the wreck and death
of Lokrian Ajax, the overland return of Neoptolemos, the murder and sub-
sequent avenging of Agamemnon, and finally the return of Menelaos. Just
as the Aithiopis took up the narrative from the end of the Iliad, the last of
these Trojan epics, the Telegony (two books), did the same with the Odyssey,
beginning with the burial of the slain suitors of Penelope. The journey of
Odysseus to Thesprotis, prophesied in book 11 of the Odyssey, takes place
and leads to his marrying the local queen Kallidike and his involvement in
warfare before his return to Ithaka. There his son by Kirke, Telegonos,
lands and unknowingly kills him in a skirmish. After learning his mistake,
he takes Odysseus’ body with Penelope and Telemachos to the island of
Kirke, who makes them all immortal.
The partial correspondence of subject matter between these Trojan con-
stituents of the Epic Cycle and the bardic recitals described in the Odyssey
might encourage the conclusion that the former were composed earlier
than the two Homeric epics, or about the same time. In late antiquity that
was indeed believed to be true of some of them, notably of the Kypria, which
was attributed either to Homer himself or to his son-in-law Stasinos of
Kypros. Such attributions, however, are notoriously unreliable, indeed
partly contradictory. Also the linguistic evidence provided by quotations
from the Cyclic epics, although only small in quantity, points decisively to
substantially later composition than that of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Conse-
quently the fact that the summaries detailed here reveal narratives carefully
tailored to fit round those of the Homeric epics is most plausibly explained
as reflecting their authors’ respect for the status already achieved by Ho-
xiv INTRODUCTION

mer. Alternatively at least some of the Cyclic epics may have been altered to
achieve this result after their original composition. The likelihood that the
Cyclic epics did not achieve their final written forms until considerably later
than the Homeric epics, in some cases more than a century later, is fully
compatible with their classification, at least by the time of Aristotle in the
mid-fourth century b.c., in a common category of archaic epic. The ques-
tion of whether writing is likely to have played an essential role in their
composition is linked to the same question concerning the composition of
the Homeric epics, which will be considered later. One respect in which the
Cyclic epics can be regarded as actually more archaic, or primitive, than the
Homeric is their simple, episodic narration of events in chronological
order. Aristotle in his Poetics (1459b1 √.) makes the perceptive observation
that the Kypria and the Little Iliad completely lacked the dramatic concentra-
tion, or unity, of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which brings us to a consider-
ation of the extraordinarily sophisticated and atypical character of the latter.
The Iliad and the Odyssey, consisting respectively of about 15,600 and
12,000 lines,∂ are monumental by any standards, and they seem to have
been considerably longer than any other early Greek epics. That in itself,
however, would not necessarily have led to their being put into a class of
their own, for even some modern examples of orally composed epics far
exceed their length. What determined their unique status as unchallenged
classics, at least by the fifth century b.c., must have been a qualitative
assessment, part of which concerned the dramatic concentration recog-
nized by Aristotle. He saw that as something closely analogous to the
coherent plot of a successful stage drama, so that it must be essentially a
matter of the main story focusing on the action of a few characters, or
heroes, in a relatively short time span. That is something to which the story
of a protracted war does not lend itself, its narration being naturally epi-
sodic. That, however, is achieved to an astonishing degree by the subject
announced in the opening lines of the Iliad, the anger of Achilles and its
disastrous e√ect on the Greek army.
The whole story of the Iliad has a span of fifty-two days, but the action
recounted in books 2–22 occupies no more than four. The story is the
following brief episode in the tenth year of the war. The Greek commander
in chief Agamemnon refuses to accept a ransom for his captive concubine
from her father, the priest of Apollo, and thereby incurs the god’s punish-
ment, a plague that ravages the army. Finally forced to release his con-
cubine, Agamemnon insults the army’s greatest warrior Achilles by com-
mandeering his concubine as recompense. Achilles is so angry that he
publicly withdraws his support from the army and persuades his divine
mother, Thetis, to use her influence with the supreme god Zeus to inflict
INTRODUCTION xv

such a defeat on the Greek army that Agamemnon will bitterly regret his
folly. Zeus gives Agamemnon the false belief that he can take Troy without
Achilles, but Agamemnon’s initial testing of the army’s spirit almost causes
disaster. The first military setback induces Agamemnon to o√er Achilles
massive compensation, but it is scornfully rejected. In the resumed battle
several Greek champions are wounded, and when Achilles sends his com-
panion Patroklos to inquire about one of them, Nestor urges Patroklos to
obtain permission to lead Achilles’ forces into battle. Only after the Trojan
commander Hektor has stormed the Greek defenses and attempted to burn
their ships does Achilles accede to Patroklos’ request and lend him his own
armor to wear. Patroklos disregards Achilles’ counsel of restraint and is
killed by Hektor; his body is recovered, but the armor is lost. After obtain-
ing divine armor from his mother and being reconciled with Agamemnon,
Achilles enters battle and avenges Patroklos by killing Hektor. While Pa-
troklos is given funeral honors, Achilles outrages the body of Hektor, but
eventually accepts ransom for it from Hektor’s father, Priam.
This story is certainly recounted on a grand scale, but even so it only
accounts for somewhat less than two-thirds of the Iliad. For the curious fact is
that a total of about nine books is occupied with material not strictly relevant to
the story, and only made to appear so by poetic sleight of hand. The second half
of book 2 contains a long catalog of Greek forces originally composed for the
gathering of the ships at the beginning of the war, with little adjustment to its
present context. Book 3 also belongs logically to an early stage, with a duel
between the protagonists Paris and Menelaos designed to avoid a general
engagement. In books 4, 5, and 6 a review of the Greek forces leads into a
battle narrative dominated by the heroic deeds of Diomedes, during which the
required worsting of the Greek army is lost from sight. Likewise in book 7 the
inconclusive duel between Hektor and Ajax favors the Greek champion. The
promised intervention of Zeus in favor of Achilles only comes at the begin-
ning of book 8. Books 13, 14, and the first part of 15 also constitute a retardation
of the main story, with the intervention of Poseidon in support of the Greeks,
the heroic deeds of the Kretan leader Idomeneus, and diversion of Zeus by
Hera. The one other extraneous matter is book 10, a night adventure known as
the Doloneia, which was believed by some in antiquity to have been added to
the epic in the sixth century b.c. The author of the Iliad seems to have had two
distinct aims that were not strictly compatible. One was to construct an epic
round a gripping personal drama, and that was a stroke of pure genius. The
other was to incorporate as much traditional material as possible to create a
wider panorama of the Trojan War, even at the cost of some loss of overall
cohesion. That, however, is the justification for the title Iliad, from Ilion the
alternative name of Troy, rather than Achilleid.
xvi INTRODUCTION

The story of the Odyssey, the return of Odysseus from Troy to his native
Ithaka and his punishment of the suitors of his wife Penelope, also pre-
sented a problem of dramatic cohesion. Like the Trojan War the wanderings
and adventures of Odysseus, according to tradition, lasted ten years. The
narrative of the Odyssey, however, occupies a time span of just forty days,
and this is achieved by a simple and completely successful device. The
situation of Odysseus at the start of the narrative is that he is just about to be
released by divine intervention from his long confinement on the island of
the nymph Kalypso and to undergo one more brief adventure before reach-
ing Ithaka. But before this happens, Athena visits his son Telemachos in
Ithaka and helps him to seek news of Odysseus in Pylos and Sparta, a six-
day episode occupying books 1–4. Odysseus’ escape from Kalypso, his
shipwreck, and his arrival in Phaiakia account for twenty-five of the forty
days but occupy only book 5. In books 6–24, about three-quarters of the
epic, only nine days elapse, a dramatic concentration comparable with that
of the four-day time span of Iliad 2–22. But whereas the Iliad is filled out
with much extraneous matter, the Odyssey includes a full-scale narrative of
Odysseus’ previous ten-year absence, occupying books 9–12, given as a
flashback in the first person by Odysseus himself to his hosts at the end of
his adventure in Phaiakia, which is recounted in books 6–8. Nearly all the
second half of the Odyssey is occupied with a single line of action in Ithaka
lasting six days. The one substantial break from that is the account of
Telemachos’ return from Sparta to Ithaka, which occupies the greater part
of book 15. That involves the only noteworthy structural weakness in the
epic, the fact that Telemachos’ one-month stay in Sparta is unexpected and
unexplained.
While the Iliad is focused very largely on the principal concern of tradi-
tional epic poetry, heroic battle narrative, the Odyssey presents a wide spec-
trum of peaceful activities. It is particularly among such activities that we
may expect to find unconscious anachronism, parts of the poet’s contempo-
rary world featuring in the narrative, such as the description of a commer-
cial port (6.262–72) and the activities of Phoenician traders (15.415–83).
Commercial contacts between Greeks and Phoenicians in the eighth cen-
tury b.c. had one result of the greatest importance for Greek civilization in
general and for Greek epic poetry in particular, the adaptation of a West
Semitic syllabary to form the first truly alphabetic writing, of which evi-
dence is provided by a few contemporary Greek inscriptions. Consequently,
with the availability also of papyrus rolls, likewise through Phoenician
trade, the means of recording poetry with writing existed for the first time
precisely when the Homeric epics were composed.∑
The one mention of writing by Homer, at Iliad 6.168–9, ‘‘many baneful
INTRODUCTION xvii

signs written in a folded tablet,’’ is either an anachronistic reflection of the

poet’s acquaintance with contemporary practice or else a distant historical
memory of the long-lost literacy of the Mycenaean world. Few would now
deny that poems of the size and complexity of the Homeric epics could have
been preserved for long in recognizably the same form only with the con-
trol of a written text. More debatable is the question whether their original
composition is more plausible with or without the aid of writing. Dictation
to a scribe by an illiterate poet is one possibility, but the crudity of early
Greek script greatly reduces its likelihood. It has been argued, on the anal-
ogy of modern examples, that a literate poet could not have employed the
formulaic technique characteristic of oral composition as it is found in the
Iliad and the Odyssey. The best test of this is actually provided by Quintus’
late imitation of the Homeric style, and we shall return to the matter when
considering the character of his Trojan Epic.

The Epic Cycle and Quintus

Uncertainty over the date and authorship of the Homeric epics arose in the
first place because the conventional practice of early Greek heroic epic
required poets to exclude autobiographical material from their creations.
No doubt, also, poetic anonymity explains the similar uncertainty concern-
ing the lost works of the Epic Cycle. The first poet to break with this conven-
tion—and, consequently, to emerge as the first solidly historical person in
Greek literary history—was Hesiod. He employed the traditional language
and meter of epic for more purely informative and practical subject matter
and so began the tradition of didactic poetry. The autobiographical informa-
tion included in his two surviving works, Theogony (22–34) and Works and
Days (633–40, 650–60), identifies his home as Askra in Boiotia and his
date around 700 b.c. It is therefore curious that Quintus, writing as he was
in the Homeric and Cyclic tradition of heroic epic, included the following
ostensibly autobiographical passage at 12.306–13:

Muses, I ask you to tell me precisely, one by one,

The names of all who went inside the capacious horse.
You were the ones who filled my mind with poetry,
Even before the down was spread across my cheeks,
When I was tending my noble sheep in the land of Smyrna,
Three times as far as shouting distance from the Hermos,
Near Artemis’ temple, in the Garden of Liberty,
On a hill that is not particularly high or low.

Part of the passage’s point is a gesture of indebtedness to both Hesiod and

Homer. The primary model is the proem of Hesiod’s Theogony, 1–34, in
xviii INTRODUCTION

which the poet invokes the Muses and records his inspiration by them
while tending sheep at the foot of Mount Helikon. This had long been the
prototype of such claims, and Quintus’ allusion to it echoes that made by
the Hellenistic poet Kallimachos (Aitia 2.1–2). Also relevant is the invoca-
tion of the Muses at Iliad 2.484–92, because, like Quintus’ invocation, it
introduces a catalog, the so-called Catalog of Ships.
Quintus’ location at Smyrna does not have the appearance of a purely
literary element, even though Smyrna was famous for its claim to be the
birthplace of Homer. The insistent particularity of the topographic details
would seem to lack point other than as a factual record. They cannot be
verified, but they are at least compatible with the territory of Smyrna be-
tween the river Hermos and Mount Sipylos. Recently a purely symbolic
interpretation has been propounded for ‘‘a hill that is not particularly high
or low,’’ namely that Quintus claims to have written in a middle style,
neither sublime nor pedestrian,∏ although the point of such a claim with
reference to his epic is not at all obvious. Heroic poetry that seeks to be
morally edifying belongs to the upper end of the poetic spectrum. Quintus’
self-presentation as a shepherd, on the other hand, not only belongs to the
Hesiodic reference but is intrinsically implausible at a literal level. His
poetry was certainly the product of a thorough literary education, and that
suggests rather di√erent social circumstances. One plausible interpretation
is that Quintus was a schoolmaster using a conventional symbol for his
pupils. A further consideration is that the authenticity of Quintus’ Smyr-
naean background receives general support from the quite numerous pas-
sages in his epic that show detailed knowledge of western Asia Minor.
The manuscripts of the Trojan Epic simply give its author’s name as
‘‘Quintus,’’ without further information. The earliest datable references to
the work are made by two scholars of Constantinople in the twelfth century,
Eustathios in his commentaries on the Iliad and the Odyssey, and John
Tzetzes in various works, notably his own Posthomerica, a prosaic coverage
of Quintus’ subject matter in 780 faulty hexameters. In some of these
references ‘‘Quintus’’ is qualified by either ‘‘the poet’’ or ‘‘of Smyrna.’’ The
total lack, until very recently, of any earlier mention of Quintus or his work
in surviving literature has made their date a matter of speculation. One
certain deduction, however, can be made from the circumstance of an
educated Greek of Smyrna having a Latin personal name, namely that he
lived within the long period of Roman rule in Asia Minor.
If we examine Quintus’ work for indications of its period, we find that
there are hardly any, such was the success with which he reproduced the
archaic character of the Homeric epics and avoided anachronisms. Two
passages, however, locate it unmistakably in the Roman imperial period.
INTRODUCTION xix

One is a simile at 6.532–6, which describes the use of wild beasts for public
executions in an amphitheater. The other is a prophecy concerning Aineias
made by Kalchas at 13.336–41:

It is destined by the glorious will of the gods

That he shall go from the Xanthos to the broad-flowing Tiber,
To found a sacred city, an object of awe to future
Generations, and be the king of widely-scattered
People. The rule of the line descended from him shall later
Extend to the rising sun and its eternal setting.

This unqualified linking of the city of Rome with universal rule possibly
provides a terminus ante quem in that it is less likely to have been made
after the inauguration of Constantinople as a new seat of government in
330. At least consistent with this dating is a consideration from literary
history: Quintus’ work very probably influenced a short Greek epic by Tri-
phiodoros, The Capture of Ilion, which because of a papyrus fragmentπ is
known to have been written not later than the mid-fourth century a.d. In
691 lines it narrates the events from the making of the wooden horse to the
departure of the Greeks, to which Quintus devotes about 1,500 lines in
books 12, 13, and 14. Its stylistic links with the later epic of Nonnos suggest a
later date than Quintus. Another literary link provides a firm terminus post
quem, Quintus’ indebtedness to a didactic epic on fishing by Oppian, the
Halieutika. Twice in similes (7.569–75, 9.172–7) and once in a digression
on fishermen killed in battle (11.62–5) Quintus adapts material that is
germane to Oppian’s subject but purely incidental in the Trojan Epic. The
Halieutika can be precisely dated to the period 176–80 a.d. by its dedica-
tion to Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus as joint rulers. The consid-
erations adduced so far suggest that Quintus wrote within a period just a
little longer than the third century a.d.
As stated at the beginning of this introduction, the main motive and
justification of Quintus’ work is likely to have been replacement of the
recently lost Trojan constituents of the Epic Cycle. Accordingly the question
of Quintus’ date must be considered in relation to the evidence for the
period at which the Cyclic epics were lost. The only clear evidence is found
in a commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics by John Philoponos,
written in the early sixth century a.d. ∫ There it is stated that the epic of a
certain Peisandros fulfilled much the same function as the Epic Cycle in
providing an extensive chronological record of the events of Greek mythol-
ogy, and that consequently the earlier epics had been neglected and lost.
The work in question was the Heroikai Theogamiai in sixty books, said to
have been the longest poem of antiquity, by Peisandros of Laranda, who
xx INTRODUCTION

wrote in the reign of Alexander Severus, a.d. 222–35. Clearly it was be-
lieved to have been written before the loss of the Cyclic epics, and the same
could be true of Quintus’ Trojan Epic. But a strong argument against that
possibility is the fact that his narrative di√ers substantially from those of the
Little Iliad and the Sack of Ilion as known to us from their summaries.
Unlike the Little Iliad Quintus places the arrivals of Eurypylos and Neop-
tolemos before the return of Philoktetes and the death of Paris; unlike the
Sack of Ilion he places the intervention of Laokoon before the entry of the
wooden horse into Troy, and the departure of Aineias not immediately after
these but later, during the night of Troy’s destruction. It is arguably less
likely that Quintus would have departed so far from the epics he sought to
replace if they had been available to him. Relative chronology cannot be
firmly established on the basis of such considerations, but there is at least a
prima facie case for dating Quintus’ work no earlier than the second half of
the third century a.d. It is therefore tempting to see relevance in an event
that probably fell within his lifetime, the destruction of the great library and
the Mouseion at Alexandria in 272, which occurred during some civil disor-
der seemingly sparked o√ by the resistance of Zenobia to the emperor
Aurelian.Ω The event’s catastrophic implication for the survival of works of
literature that were no longer obtainable elsewhere would have been ob-
vious to the whole educated Greek world, and that could have influenced
Quintus in his undertaking.
New evidence for the date of Quintus came to light in a papyrus codex
that was first published in 1984.∞≠ It contains a Greek poem of about 360
hexameters, titled The Vision of Dorotheos and purporting to be an auto-
biographical record of a Christian’s vision in ‘‘the house of God.’’ Its story of
punishment for desertion and restoration to honor may reflect the subject’s
experience at a time of persecution. Its language is basically that of Greek
epic, many words and phrases being taken from Homer, but with an admix-
ture of nonpoetic words, and it is marred by frequent linguistic and metri-
cal errors. At line 300 the author names himself as ‘‘Dorotheos Kuntiades,’’
a slight corruption of ‘‘Quintiades,’’ which is a distinctively epic patronymic
meaning ‘‘son of Quintus.’’ Then at the end of the text there is the following
colophon: ‘‘the end of the vision of Dorotheos son of the poet Quintus.’’ In
the absence of any rival candidates and of any historical di≈culty it is
reasonable to conclude that the father in question is none other than our
poet. The editors of the text have noted some similarities between its poetic
diction and that of the Trojan Epic, though not such as to establish the latter
as anything more than one of a number of models. The most telling sim-
ilarity, perhaps amounting to a conscious echo, is the one between Dor-
otheos’ statement at 340–1 of his poetic inspiration, ‘‘he filled my breast
INTRODUCTION xxi

with poetry,’’ and that of Quintus in his autobiographical passage at 12.308.

The case for a father-son relationship is certainly not weakened by the great
di√erence of literary accomplishment, any more than it is by that between
the pagan subject matter of the one and the Christian of the other. The son’s
career can be dated precisely by his wholly convincing identification with a
Dorotheos mentioned several times in Eusebios’ Ecclesiastical History
(7.32.2–4, 8.1.4, 8.6.1–5), with whom Eusebios was personally acquainted.
He was made priest at Antioch about 290, was learned in Greek and
Hebrew, and enjoyed imperial favor until the persecution of Diocletian
(303–11), during which he was tortured to death. Accordingly the activ-
ity of Quintus can be securely dated in the second half of the third century
a.d.
Quintus’ epic was given to the modern world by the discovery of its
manuscript text in the Greek monastery of San Niccolò di Casoli near
Otranto in the Heel of Italy, some time between the fall of Constantinople
in 1453 and 1462. The discovery was made by Cardinal Bessarion, a Greek
émigré patron of learning, who presented his large collection of Greek
manuscripts to the senate of Venice in 1468. A record of the discovery was
made by another émigré scholar, Konstantine Laskaris, in the introduction
of a manuscript copy of the Trojan Epic made by himself and dated 13 June
1496 at Messina in Sicily.∞∞ This had the curious consequence that in all the
printed editions of the Trojan Epic down to the eighteenth century its author
is misnamed ‘‘Quintus of Calabria,’’ because in antiquity Calabria denoted
the Heel of Italy. Bessarion’s manuscript is lost, but numerous copies,
direct and indirect, survive. Only one complete manuscript of the Trojan
Epic is not derived from it; it once belonged to the scholar Giano Parrasio
and is preserved at Naples.∞≤ The first printed edition was the Aldine of
1505, and the first serious attempt at a critical text was made by L. Rhodo-
mann in his edition of 1604. Substantial textual improvements were made
in the editions of T. C. Tychsen (1807), F. S. Lehrs (1840), H. Koechly
(1850), and A. Zimmermann (1891), but too often at the cost of unnecessary
emendation. The first text securely based on thorough recension of the
manuscripts was that of F. Vian’s edition, to which some improvements
were made by the latest edition, that of G. Pompella.∞≥

The Character of the Trojan Epic

In considering the character of Quintus’ epic, we begin with the more
mechanical and technical aspects and proceed afterward to what may be
termed the imaginative and finally to the intellectual. Quintus’ use of
sources, which has been the object of more scholarly attention than any
other aspect of his work,∞∂ is left to the commentary.
xxii INTRODUCTION

The technical term for the traditional meter of Greek epic poetry, em-
ployed by Quintus, is the dactylic hexameter, which is misleading inas-
much as a line never actually consists of six dactyls. A dactyl is a foot, or
measure, consisting of a long, or heavy, syllable followed by two short, or
light, syllables. Ancient Greek meters always depend on the relative length
of syllables, never on word accents, which were originally a matter of rela-
tive pitch, not of stress, or emphasis. The dactyl was regarded as the domi-
nant, characteristic component of the hexameter, but all feet except the
sixth can be either a dactyl or a spondee, two long syllables, although a
dactyl is strongly favored in the fifth foot, so that great variety of rhythm is
obtainable. The sixth and last foot of the line is di√erentiated by being either
a spondee or a trochee, a long syllable followed by a short one, never a
dactyl. Quintus broadly follows the metrical practice of the Homeric epics,
ignoring some metrical refinements introduced in the third century b.c. by
Kallimachos. The most noticeable di√erence between his hexameters and
the Homeric is that his have a much greater preponderance of dactylic over
spondaic feet, which produces an unparalleled frequency of wholly dactylic
lines. Quintus’ practice largely follows the Homeric as regards the occur-
rence of sense breaks, or pauses, at the end of a line, so-called end stopping.
Monotony is avoided by frequent running over of sense units from one line
to the next, enjambment, often with a single emphatic word at the begin-
ning of a line before a break.
The language of the Homeric epics is the product of a long oral tradi-
tion of poetry and combines features of di√erent regional dialects. Because
it retained many words and forms that had disappeared from the vernacu-
lar, it required special familiarization on the part of performers as well as of
listeners, and later of readers. Its peculiarities were the product of the
combined demands of tradition—the expected ways of saying things, and of
a meter that was unusually complex for such poetry. Throughout the cen-
turies of literate culture down to the time of Quintus, ability to read the texts
of Homer was the staple of a basic literary education. Those who aspired to
produce original poetry in the required traditional language were neces-
sarily learned poets, intimately familiar not only with the Homeric epics
but also with the more notable later works in the epic genre. New epic
poetry had to be correct in terms of appropriate literary precedent, and at
the same time it was expected to display some linguistic originality, par-
ticularly in the coining of new compound words on the analogy of preexist-
ing ones. Such was the demanding literary culture to which Quintus be-
longed, and the first point that must be made about his achievement is that
no other extant poem on a comparable scale reproduces the language of its
models as closely as the Trojan Epic does that of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
INTRODUCTION xxiii

The closeness of Quintus’ epic to Homer’s in language and style is such

that it presents no serious di≈culty to any competent student of Homer,
unlike most earlier epic of the Hellenistic period or the later epic of Nonnos
and his followers. One way of measuring how far Quintus both reproduces
and departs from the language of Homer is to count the Homeric and non-
Homeric words used by him in a given category. This has been done for
adjectives,∞∑ and the totals of Homeric and non-Homeric are respectively
720 and 220, in which matter one must bear in mind that the greatest
scope for linguistic innovation was a√orded by compound adjectives. Par-
ticularly revealing for Quintus’ style is the frequency with which he uses
some Homeric adjectives, as many as 149 being used ten or more times. It
is a basic feature of Homer’s formulaic expression to use ornamental adjec-
tives with a frequency that seems grossly excessive to modern taste. A full
comparison with Quintus’ usage in this respect is made later. Su≈ce it to
note here that Quintus may be criticized for exaggerating the Homeric
manner. On the other hand he is hardly ever guilty of the learned obscurity
in which poets of the Hellenistic period too often indulge, in their liking for
rare or unique words of disputed meaning. Occasionally Quintus’ linguis-
tic usage di√ers from that of early epic poetry, showing the influence of
classical Attic and later prose, but this is very much the exception that
proves the rule. Quintus shares with Homer a tendency to fullness, even
redundancy, of expression in general, and he is not sensitive about repeti-
tion of words within short passages, although often enough this is skillfully
used for rhetorical e√ect. Sound e√ects—alliteration, assonance, and
rhyme—are not a prominent feature of Quintus’ style, but occasionally they
seem to be used for an intended expressive purpose.
The formulaic character of Homeric expression, its use of repeated
combinations of words, which can range from a name and single epithet to
a whole line and even a whole paragraph, has been mentioned both as proof
that early Greek epic was conditioned by the special demands of oral com-
position and also as prompting the question of whether such poetry could
have been composed with the aid of writing. The first rigorous analysis of
Homeric formulas was made by Milman Parry, whose work proved to be a
watershed in Homeric studies.∞∏ He revealed how large a proportion of
Homer’s total linguistic usage consists of formulas, as well as the extraordi-
nary e≈ciency with which a complex system of formulas meets the com-
bined demands of sentence structure and meter. Parry argued that such a
system could only belong to poetry composed orally by illiterate bards, and
he supported this partly by demonstrating (with others) the comparable
character of a living oral tradition of heroic poetry in former Yugoslavia, and
partly by contrasting the negligible role of formulas in the works of later
xxiv INTRODUCTION

ancient poets who were certainly literate, even of those, like Apollonios of
Rhodes, who used the same language and meter as Homer. Later, one
Homeric scholar called attention to the fact that Quintus’ Trojan Epic
seemed to be a case that challenged Parry’s argument, a large-scale epic by a
literate poet in which imitation of Homeric diction involves similar use of
name-epithet formulas, but he did not take the matter further.∞π Three
other studies contain some examination of Quintus’ use of formulas,∞∫ and
their findings include the following: precisely repeated formulas are mostly
very short, repetition of whole lines being exceptional; of all occurrences of
heroic names in Homer 55 percent are with an epithet, mostly of a fixed, or
traditional, kind, while in Quintus 37 percent are with such an epithet;
heroic epithets that occur frequently in Homer are hardly ever applied to
the same hero by Quintus.
In order to make meaningful comparison between individual formulaic
systems of heroic names combined with epithets by Homer and Quintus, it
is necessary to choose names that occur with su≈cient frequency in both
cases. Six such names have been analyzed—Agamemnon, Achilles, Aineias,
Ajax, Odysseus, and Priam, plus one frequent common noun, the usual
word for ‘‘ship,’’ naus.∞Ω In five of these seven examples Quintus’ noun-
epithet system is not greatly inferior to its Homeric counterpart in elabora-
tion, that is, in the number of di√erent combinations. The Homeric systems
di√er from those of Quintus most consistently in having a greater pro-
portion of combinations used with significant frequency. Very much less
marked is the superior economy, or e≈ciency, of the Homeric systems—that
is, their freedom from doublets, equivalent expressions identical in gram-
matical and metrical function. A very striking observation is that, for all the
general similarity of Quintus’ systems to their Homeric counterparts, the
proportion of combinations taken with little or no modification from Homer
is consistently small, never more than a quarter. A further point to be made
about these noun-epithet systems is that Quintus’ epithets, no less than
Homer’s, are overwhelmingly ornamental and traditional, not contextually
significant. Application of Parry’s argument to the language of Quintus
would lead to the conclusion that his poem was an oral composition. If by
oral composition we mean composition without the aid of writing, oral
composition of the Trojan Epic in the third century a.d. is completely ex-
cluded. That being the case, it is surely an inescapable conclusion that the
formulaic expression of the Homeric epics is fully compatible with composi-
tion aided by writing. Many scholars have argued for this conclusion,≤≠ but
the present comparison proves it more decisively than any others.
It is a natural progression from the mechanical to the imaginative to
note that Quintus follows Homeric technique to a considerable degree not
INTRODUCTION xxv

only in precisely repeated formulas but also in the much more flexible
repetition of traditional themes or motifs. This is particularly apparent in
the battle narratives, which occupy a large part of the Trojan Epic as well as
of the Iliad.≤∞ Monotony is avoided in these essentially through variation of
recurrent thematic elements with a very wide range of elaboration and
abbreviation. Closely akin are the more occasionally recurrent narrative
elements known as typical scenes—for example, arming, sacrificial feasts,
embassies, and funerals. Quintus’ technique in these, though analogous to
the Homeric, di√ers from it in his avoidance of precisely repeated lines.
The prominence of direct speech in the Trojan Epic should likewise be
seen primarily as a reflection of the same in the Homeric epics, the remark-
ably dramatic character of which was recognized by Aristotle (Poetics
1448b35). As much as 44 percent of the Iliad consists of speeches, and 56
percent of the Odyssey, including the long first-person narrative in books 9–
12. Quintus’ proportion of 24 percent is relatively modest, similar to the 29
percent of Apollonios’ Argonautika but substantially less than the 36 per-
cent of Nonnos’ later Dionysiaka.≤≤ Another significant measure is the aver-
age length of speeches: both Quintus and Apollonios have an average of
just under 12 lines, a little more than the Homeric average of 10.6 lines, but
much less than Nonnos’ 25 lines. This last di√erence may be seen as a
measure of the much less rhetorical character of Quintus’ epic than that of
most later Greek epic. It is also a measure of his success in reproducing the
Homeric manner. In this matter, however, it is di≈cult to make a clear
distinction, because the Homeric epics themselves have a strong element
of unselfconscious rhetoric, and types of speech almost inevitably common
to Homer and Quintus also constitute later rhetorical categories. The the-
matic categories of speech that belong distinctively to heroic epic are exhor-
tation to battle, challenges to single combat, abuse of the enemy, insulting
of a dead or dying enemy, and lamentation of the dead. In addition to these
the Trojan Epic has speeches in categories that are influenced in varying
degrees by the long tradition of formal rhetoric: deliberative and forensic
speeches (notably those of the contest between Ajax and Odysseus in book
5), eulogy, invective, and moral exhortation.
For anyone who comes to the Trojan Epic from the Iliad, one of the most
striking similarities is the abundance of more or less elaborated similes.≤≥ In
this Quintus follows the Iliad rather than the Odyssey, which has com-
paratively few similes, and actually outdoes his model, as with ornamental
epithets being more Homeric than Homer. With similes in every book, but
an unusual concentration in book 1 (35), his average frequency of one simile
every 39.5 lines is much higher than that of the Iliad, one every 76.2 lines. He
seems to have been influenced by the recent example of Oppian, whose
xxvi INTRODUCTION

didactic epic the Halieutika has a simile frequency of one every 36.9 lines.
Particularly noteworthy is Quintus’ liking for clusters, or accumulations, of
similes, having seven clusters of four similes (1.147√., 1.516√., 1.613√.,
3.170√., 7.455√., 7.530√., 13.44√.), two of five similes (11.362√., 14.33√.), six
of six similes (1.37√., 3.353√., 5.364√., 8.28√., 8.167√., 8.361√.), and one of
eight similes (2.194√.). This too is an exaggeration of simile usage in the
Iliad, in which the two largest clusters are of five similes (2.455√., 17.725√.).
Sources of Quintus’ similes, as also his sources in general, will be
recorded in the commentary. Here we shall confine ourselves to a few
general comments on his method of composition. The subject matter of his
similes is drawn very largely from recurrent themes in the Iliad’s similes,
notably wild and domestic animals and the forces of wind and water, with
occasional supplement from the similes of later epics. Usually he conflates
elements from two or more thematically related similes; the process tends
to become more complex as his work progresses, and he produces varia-
tions on his own earlier imitations. Only about 10 percent of his 222 similes
have subjects that are original as far as the evidence of extant earlier epic
goes. Among these are partial recovery from blindness (1.76–82), children
frightened by thunder (7.530–2), the manufacture of charcoal (9.162–6),
and the moving of sows to a di√erent sty (14.33–6). Despite this paucity of
fundamental originality, many similes have touches that strongly suggest
personal observation and a feel for nature, even something of what in a
contemporary author would be called environmental sensitivity.
Closely akin to Quintus’ similes are the scenes detailed in his long
description of the shield and armor of Achilles at 5.1–120, which introduces
the contest between Ajax and Odysseus. That belongs to a long literary
tradition of descriptions of works of art, known as ecphrasis,≤∂ going back to
the description of Achilles’ shield at Iliad 18.478–608, which was Quintus’
primary model. On a slightly smaller scale than the model, there are nine
scenes of warfare, peaceful activities, and mythology, as opposed to Ho-
mer’s ten scenes. There is close reflection of the model at several points,
but much of the content is di√erent, some of it attributable to other sources,
notably the somewhat longer pseudo-Hesiodic description of the shield of
Herakles. One striking touch of seeming originality is an allegorical de-
scription of personified Virtue (5.49–56). The Trojan Epic has two other
examples of ecphrasis, one of which is a precise counterpart of the first, a
description on the same scale of the shield of Eurypylos (6.198–293) with
eighteen scenes of the labors of Herakles. The third is a much shorter
description of the baldric and quiver of Philoktetes (10.180–205).
As regards the characters, or heroes, of the Trojan Epic,≤∑ Quintus ex-
hibits a strong tendency to idealize them, emphasizing their virtues and
INTRODUCTION xxvii

minimizing their faults. He does this more by selective use of the tradition
than by innovation, and this results in some loss of liveliness and individu-
ality, especially when compared with their Homeric counterparts, although
there is some compensation in the sensitivity with which shades of feeling
are sometimes expressed. Quintus adheres broadly to the Homeric practice
of presenting characters through a more or less even balance of speech and
narrative. Idealization of characters contributes to a pervasive sense in the
work of what we may term epic dignity. Though not in itself alien to the
spirit of the Homeric epics, it is perhaps taken too far, particularly in Quin-
tus’ tendency to moralize, which will be considered shortly. (Details of
individual characterization are given in the critical summary of the epic.)
Quintus’ undertaking to narrate the Trojan War in the Homeric man-
ner inevitably entailed some maintenance of the Homeric divine machin-
ery. One’s first impression of how deities intervene in the action of the Iliad
and the Trojan Epic is that there is little di√erence, and at least in quantita-
tive terms this is certainly correct. Quintus’ 91 occurrences of such inter-
vention constitute proportionally a larger total than the 142 in the Iliad,
although a much larger portion of those in the Trojan Epic can be classified
as brief and perfunctory. As regards the deities involved, the following
intervene a number of times in both epics—Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Posei-
don, Aphrodite, Ares, and Thetis. Just one Olympian conspicuous in the
Iliad, Hera, does not intervene in the Trojan Epic. Much more significant is
the fact that some agents of repeated intervention in the Trojan Epic—
personified Fate, several personifications of aspects of warfare, and un-
named deities—are relatively inconspicuous in the Iliad or wholly absent in
this capacity.
The aspect of divine intervention most important for its function in
combats is obviously the nature of its e√ect. In both the Iliad and the Trojan
Epic the most frequent e√ect is human decision or initiative. Appropriately
termed ‘‘double motivation,’’ this kind of intervention is most readily expli-
cable as an externalization of mental processes, even though the divine
agent’s objective reality is often undeniable. Undeniably miraculous ef-
fects, on the other hand, are physical rescue and resistance, which some-
times involve the guiding or deflecting of weapons, and these provide the
best means of measuring the di√erence between the Iliad and the Trojan
Epic. The following summary of relevant e√ects in combats of major impor-
tance reveals the pattern. In the Iliad, Aphrodite removes Paris in a mist
(3.374–82); Aphrodite attempts to rescue Aineias, and Apollo removes him
to Troy (5.311–453); Apollo removes Patroklos’ armor (16.788–804); Posei-
don blinds Achilles and removes Aineias to the edge of the battle (20.291–
342); Athena deflects Hektor’s spear, and Apollo removes him in a mist
xxviii INTRODUCTION

(20.438–44); Apollo removes Agenor in a mist (21.596–8); and Athena

disguises herself as Deiphobos (22.214–47) and returns Achilles’ spear
(22.276–7). These miraculous interventions at crucial points in the Iliad
may be seen as survivals of a naive taste that otherwise had yielded to a
more realistic presentation of events. In the Trojan Epic, Apollo fatally
wounds Achilles with an arrow (3.30–138); Apollo removes Deiphobos in a
mist (9.256–63); and Aphrodite removes Aineias in a mist (11.288–97).
These three are the only direct interventions by deities, the other major
combats involving the deaths of Penthesileia, Memnon, Eurypylos, and
Paris being entirely without intervention. Accordingly it is reasonable to
conclude that miraculous intervention in the action of human combatants
was one feature of the Homeric epics from which Quintus chose to depart
for the most part.
The personifications of warfare feature in a remarkable number of
passages (thirteen), and where there is descriptive elaboration, they are
capable of allegorical interpretation, as in at least one similar passage of the
Iliad (4.439–45). There is, however, a di√erence between these and the
fully developed moral allegory of personified Virtue that is one of the scenes
on Achilles’ shield (5.49–56), noted earlier. Essentially the same allegory is
developed further at 14.195–200, where its unexplained introduction im-
plies assumed knowledge of the earlier passage. Also the implied applica-
tion of the first description to the character of Achilles is confirmed by the
second, which is spoken by Achilles’ spirit to his son in a dream.
The moral awareness of Quintus and the probable influence on it of
Stoic philosophy has been the object of considerable comment,≤∏ some of it
unnecessarily negative. The many moral commonplaces, or maxims, in the
Trojan Epic (about ninety) have been criticized as exhibiting an uncomfort-
able mix of traditional epic paganism with Stoic doctrine, detracting from
the Homeric character of the poem. Certainly it is the aspect of the work
that amounts to some degree of modernization of Homeric epic. About
two-thirds of the maxims are spoken by characters, with a heavy concentra-
tion, as one might expect, in the speeches first of Nestor and second of
Odysseus, so that it is part of the general idealization of characters men-
tioned earlier, a way of making them morally edifying. Stoic beliefs are
apparent in the omnipotence of fate, which is more or less identified with
the will of Zeus, and in the manner of the survival of human souls after
death. A memorable expression of the latter occurs at 7.87–9:

There is, moreover, a saying among us

That to an eternal home in heaven go the souls
Of the good, but those of the bad to darkness.
INTRODUCTION xxix

This has been thought to show the influence of Christian belief, but there is
nothing that is not attributable to Greek philosophy, even though it is tempt-
ing to look for some link with the Christianity of Quintus’ son Dorotheos. It
is put in the mouth of Nestor, part of his consolation of Podaleirios over the
death of his brother Machaon (7.37–92), which contains several maxims
similar to some in Seneca’s Stoic treatise To Marcia on Consolation. The
moral allegory discussed previously is closely linked to the maxim of toil as a
necessary means to virtue or glory, which has its most elaborate expression
at 12.292–6:

Painful things are placed by the gods at the feet of men,

But good things far away, with toil set in between.
That is why the road to wretched ruin
Is an easy one for men, while that to glory is hard,
Where feet must tread through tedious toil at first.

The Structure of the Trojan Epic

The contents of Quintus’ narrative of the Trojan War from the end of the
Iliad to the beginning of the Odyssey were virtually dictated by tradition,
being more or less the same as those of the Aithiopis, the Little Iliad, and the
Sack of Ilion, which have been outlined in the first section. Because of this
essential character of Quintus’ undertaking, the prevailing assessment of
his achievement has been little more than application to it of Aristotle’s
negative judgment of the Cyclic epics as lacking the dramatic unity of the
Homeric. Although he is credited with considerable success in constructing
individual books and episodes, his work as a whole is usually dismissed as
merely episodic, and it has even been suggested that the idea of arranging
the books as a large-scale epic was an imperfectly realized afterthought.≤π
The following appraisal is an attempt to satisfy the first requisite of literary
criticism, freedom from prejudice.
The time span of the events of the Trojan Epic does not in itself present
an obvious problem for achieving dramatic concentration. It can be calcu-
lated because of the narrative’s faithfulness to the Homeric practice of
recording the passage of days and nights, with the exception of the period of
mourning for Achilles, vaguely stated to have lasted ‘‘many days’’ (3.667–
8), but that clearly refers to the account in the Odyssey, which specifies
seventeen days (Od. 24.63–4). The total is forty-four days, or forty-five if the
wreck of the fleet is counted as one more day at the end. In addition to the
seventeen days of mourning, there is a two-day truce for burying the dead
(7.151–68) and three days devoted to construction of the wooden horse
(12.117–50), which reduces the total to twenty-two days as far as the narra-
xxx INTRODUCTION

tive focus is concerned.≤∫ The temporal concentration of the Trojan Epic is

thus not greatly di√erent from that of the Iliad, with its main focus on four
days out of fifty-two, or from the focus of much of the Odyssey on nine days
out of forty. More significant is the Trojan Epic’s freedom from such devices
as the Iliad’s incorporation of material not strictly relevant to the main story
and the Odyssey’s four books of retrospective narrative.
Accordingly the crucial question for critical comparison of these three
epics is whether the Trojan Epic is unified by the dominance of a single
hero, as the Iliad is by that of Achilles and the Odyssey by that of Odysseus.
The traditional story did not make that possible. Instead it provided a
father-son succession of two principal Greek heroes, Achilles and Neop-
tolemos, and it is clear that Quintus constructed his poem with their domi-
nance in mind. Achilles dominates the first five books, with his last two
great victories over the would-be saviors of Troy, Penthesileia (book 1) and
Memnon (book 2); his death and funeral (book 3); the funeral games in his
honor (book 4); and the contest between Ajax and Odysseus for the prize of
his armor, which causes the death of Ajax, Achilles’ nearest rival as cham-
pion of the Greeks (book 5). Books 6, 7, and 8 are a closely knit narrative
unit, the story of how Achilles’ son Neoptolemos comes to Troy and
achieves his first and greatest victory: after their decision to send for Neop-
tolemos, the Greeks are defeated by Eurypylos, the last great ally to come to
the rescue of Troy (book 6); they are rescued from further defeat by the
arrival of Neoptolemos (book 7), who finally kills Eurypylos (book 8).
Quintus had to choose between two di√erent versions of the Trojan
legend, that followed by the Little Iliad, which placed Neoptolemos’ arrival
after that of Philoktetes and the death of Paris, and that followed by Soph-
okles in his tragedy Philoktetes, which placed it before them. His adoption of
the latter version has very clear advantages for the structure of his epic.
Presented as a direct consequence of his father’s death, Neoptolemos’ inter-
vention invites comparison between the two and produces a large-scale
narrative pattern that is dramatically e√ective, two sequences of heroic
achievement separated by death and near defeat. This arrangement also
maximizes the proportion of the epic in which Neoptolemos is the domi-
nant hero, for although his domination of the action continues only as far
as 9.323, his role is prominent up to the departure of the Greeks in book 14.
Another consequence of this sequence of events is that the relative lateness
of Philoktetes’ intervention and the death of Paris, which occupy the second
half of book 9 and all of book 10, brings these events as close as possible to
Troy’s destruction. This may well be deemed a dramatic advantage, but
their introduction at 9.323–32 is excessively brief and lacking in explicit
motivation, although it can be seen as a logical consequence of divine
INTRODUCTION xxxi

interventions in books 8 and 9, the last of which, that of Apollo, comes close
to causing the death of Neoptolemos. The last four books, 11–14, form
another closely knit narrative, focused on the final destruction of Troy:
unsuccessful in their assault on the walls of Troy (book 11), the Greeks
resort to the trick of the wooden horse (book 12) and sack the city overnight
(book 13), only to su√er the wreck of their fleet after their triumphal depar-
ture (book 14).
A few further comments relevant to the Trojan Epic’s overall structure
may be helpful. The claim that individual books constitute self-contained
episodes is not in itself an adverse criticism, unless it can be shown to entail
lack of coherence on a larger scale, and that has been refuted by the forego-
ing analysis. Even the claim itself is true only of the first five books domi-
nated by Achilles and his death; in contrast, the one more or less self-
contained episode on a similar scale later in the epic, that of Philoktetes and
the death of Paris, cuts across book divisions by starting in the middle of
book 9. The central episode of Neoptolemos and Eurypylos and the final
one of Troy’s destruction and its aftermath are closely integrated narratives
on the larger scales of, respectively, three books (6–8) and four books (11–
14). A second point of major critical importance is that, whereas the first
eight books are dominated successively by the heroes Achilles and Neop-
tolemos, the last part of the epic, arguably from book 9 but certainly from
book 11, is unified by its focus on the event of Troy’s destruction and its
immediate consequences. It could be claimed that the unity of this last part
is marred by an inorganic appendage, the wreck of the Greek fleet in the
second half of book 14. But this is surely better seen in the positive light of
an ironic coda: finally the Greeks su√er collectively for the o√ense of Lok-
rian Ajax no less than the Trojans for the o√ense of Paris. It was certainly no
afterthought, because as early as book 4 (56–61) it is said to be one of the
future events of which Zeus has foreknowledge.
As the last-named example shows, one device making for unity that the
Trojan Epic shares with the Iliad and the Odyssey is foreshadowing of later
events.≤Ω Quintus’ avoidance, for the most part, of divine agents for this
purpose is a much less important departure from Homeric practice than
his strong preference for vague foreshadowing rather than definite predic-
tion. This has been deemed to lessen the device’s unifying e√ect, which is
debatable. It certainly heightens suspense at times, as in the final buildup to
the sack of Troy in books 12 and 13. In places the e√ect of short-term
foreshadowing is weakened by its frequency, but generally there is a good
balance between its use for shorter and longer terms. The complementary
device of recapitulation is used very sparingly, but certainly to some unify-
ing e√ect. At the beginning of book 1 (8–14) the Trojans remember the
xxxii INTRODUCTION

deeds of Achilles down to the death of Hektor. Shortly after Achilles’ own
death an updated and more detailed summary of his deeds is put in the
mouth of Nestor (4.146–61). Finally, the Greeks at their victory feast are
appropriately entertained with a recital of the whole war from the army’s
gathering at Aulis to the present celebration (14.125–41).
A final point is that the Trojan Epic resembles the Iliad in its e√ective
use of dramatized scenes of deliberation in assembly or council at pivotal
points in the narrative.≥≠ Three of these scenes, each with five speeches, are
placed at the beginnings of books (2.9–99: Trojans on the conduct of the
war; 6.7–93: Greeks on sending for Neoptolemos; 12.3–103: Greeks on
building the wooden horse), while the fourth and most elaborate, with
seven speeches, follows soon after the third (12.218–305: Greeks on the use
of the horse).

The Translation
The text of the original Greek on which the present translation is based is
approximately that of F. Vian’s edition.≥∞ But wherever the text is uncertain
or obscure, careful comparison has been made with the only subsequent
edition, that of G. Pompella,≥≤ which is excessively conservative in its ad-
herence to the manuscript texts, but occasionally it provides a text superior
to Vian’s. All textual problems that a√ect the translation are stated briefly in
the commentary, without linguistic details. The line numbering is the same
in the translation as in Vian’s and Pompella’s editions, and one peculiarity
of it should be noted: occasionally a number is repeated once with the letter
‘‘a’’ added. This is because lines so numbered are missing from most of the
extant manuscripts and consequently from the earlier printed editions, and
later editors used this device to avoid changing all the subsequent line
numbers in a given book.
The general neglect of the Trojan Epic is reflected in the paucity of
complete published translations. Although the first Latin translation (by J.
Velaraeus) was published as early as 1539, there was none in a modern
language before the French of R. Tourlet in 1800, followed by the Italian of P.
Tarenghi in 1809 and the German of C. F. Platz in 1857–8. Of later transla-
tions in these languages there have been just two in Latin (L. Rhodomann in
1604 and [partly the same] F. S. Lehrs in 1840), two in French (E. A.
Berthault in 1884 and F. Vian in 1963–9), two in Italian (B. Baldi in 1828 and
G. Pompella in 1979–93), and one in German (J. J. C. Donner in 1866–7).
The first translation into English appeared as late as 1913, that of A. S. Way,
one of the earliest volumes of the Loeb Classical Library,≥≥ which for lack of
an adequate replacement has remained in print. Based on Koechly’s 1850
edition with some account taken of Zimmermann’s of 1891, it is in blank
INTRODUCTION xxxiii

verse, the traditional English meter for epic poetry, which has the disadvan-
tage of producing many more lines than the original Greek hexameters.
Although it is often far too free to be a reliable reflection of the Greek and its
style is marred by indulgence in pseudo-archaism, it is not without scholarly
and poetic merit. Not infrequently it conveys the right meaning in English
that cannot be bettered, and for that reason no translator can a√ord to ignore
it. The only English translation published subsequently is the prose one of
F. M. Combellack,≥∂ which has long been out of print. It has the merit of
being scholarly and reliable but su√ers from two serious defects. One is that
it is based on the now superseded text of Zimmermann’s edition, although
for the first four books only account is taken of the first volume of Vian’s
edition. The other defect is that, on the one hand, its literalness produces a
prose that is somewhat lifeless and, on the other, in the interest of prose
usage, it avoids such a prominent feature of the original as traditional
compound adjectives. The French prose translation that accompanies Vian’s
edition is both accurate and much truer to the idiom of modern prose than
Combellack’s English. Because of the frequent closeness of French to En-
glish idiom, it has been of constant use in preparing the present translation.
Occasional help has been obtained from the very literal line-for-line Italian
translation that accompanies Pompella’s edition.
The problem of translating Quintus’ Trojan Epic is essentially the same
as that of translating the Homeric epics, given its close similarity to them in
style and content. Despite their number, none of the English translations of
the Iliad and the Odyssey has achieved the status of an unrivaled classic, but
the classic formulation of the challenge of translating Homer is undoubt-
edly that of Matthew Arnold’s lectures On Translating Homer.≥∑ A funda-
mental question is the choice between verse and prose, and probably its
best discussion is that by Walter Shewring, who opted for prose in his
translation of the Odyssey.≥∏ The apparent freedom of prose is in fact il-
lusory, because, as exemplified by Combellack’s translation of the Trojan
Epic, any attempt to be true to the style of the original is harder to reconcile
with the requirements of natural prose usage. The heightening of language
by its subjection to poetic rhythm, or meter, actually enables a greater range
of stylistic options.
A problem regarding the choice of meter to represent the dactylic hex-
ameter of Greek epic is exemplified by Way’s translation of the Trojan Epic,
namely that English blank verse with its five iambic feet—a sequence of
single unstressed plus stressed syllables—is appreciably shorter, so that any
attempt to use it and keep to the same number of lines as the original is
extremely constraining and liable to cause omissions. The best alternative
would naturally seem to be a meter that approximates more closely to the
xxxiv INTRODUCTION

Greek hexameter, with the important di√erence that the line’s six feet
would consist of an alternation not of long and short syllables, to which
English does not lend itself, but of stressed and unstressed ones. Probably
the closest approximation of this kind is achieved by Smith and Miller’s
translation of the Iliad,≥π in which each line consists precisely of six feet that
are either dactyls, one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed, or
trochees, one stressed plus one unstressed syllable. Whether or not the
strictness of the meter is to blame, the general e√ect is decidedly stilted.
The opposite extreme among verse translations of the Iliad that make a
serious attempt to reflect the meter of the original is reached by that of
Robert Fagles,≥∫ which abandons line-for-line correspondence and uses as
its norm a loose five- or six-beat line, but allows occasional expansion to
seven beats and contraction to as few as three. The result is certainly lively
but rather far from the original. Close to the strict end of this metrical
spectrum stands the verse translation of the Iliad by Andrew and Oakley,≥Ω
the meter of which consists of five stressed syllables to the line, separated
from each other by one or two unstressed syllables. The line’s length and
flexibility are increased by allowing the first stress to be preceded by either
one or two unstressed syllables and the last stress to be followed by no more
that one unstressed syllable. Unstressed syllables at the beginning of a line
reverse the dactylic-trochaic rhythm, singles producing iambs and doubles
anapaests, so that monotony of rhythm is avoided without loss of clarity.
This is arguably the version of the Iliad that is the most successful of them
all in conveying the general metrical e√ect of the original, and perhaps the
only serious reason why it has not been widely recognized as a classic is a
use of archaisms that is no longer acceptable to most readers.
The meter of the present translation of the Trojan Epic di√ers from that
of Andrew and Oakley’s Iliad in the one important point that the number of
stressed syllables in each line is either five or six. The resulting variation of
line length is not noticeably di√erent from that between totals of syllables in
Greek hexameters that are wholly dactylic at one extreme and predomi-
nantly spondaic at the other. The greater flexibility thus provided makes it
easier to avoid the opposite evils of padding and compression while main-
taining a line-for-line correspondence with the original, even a close reflec-
tion of the arrangement of sense units in the Greek hexameters, as far as is
compatible with natural English expression. Occasionally, however, it has
been found helpful to make a paragraph break near the middle of a line.
The English is strictly contemporary in the sense that no use is made of any
word or expression that is inconsistent with modern usage. Any elevation
of style is a more or less unconscious product of meter and subject matter.
Rhyme is completely excluded, in agreement with the widely held view that
INTRODUCTION xxxv

it is inappropriate for English narrative poetry, to which one may add that it
was absent from all the meters of ancient Greek poetry. On the other hand,
assonance and alliteration are consciously cultivated wherever they arise
naturally. This does not reflect anything in the original Greek, in which
comparable e√ects are relatively rare, but is justifiable on the ground that
they are far richer and more natural sources of poetry in English than is
rhyme.

Proper Names
The question of how to spell Greek names in English is a vexed one, and
there is no generally accepted consistent practice. However, there has long
since been a prevailing preference for precisely transliterated Greek spell-
ings over latinized or anglicized forms, except that the last two are still often
preferred, at the cost of inconsistency, if they are considered to be su≈-
ciently familiar to readers. Clearly this is a very subjective matter, about
which di√erent judgments are legitimate, because it comes down to a per-
sonal feeling for style or taste. Accordingly no apology is made for reflect-
ing this state of a√airs. But at least some explanation of the practice fol-
lowed is due to the reader, with examples first of the rule of preferring
Greek spellings and then of the most important exceptions.
In accordance with the general rule, Menelaos is preferred to Menelaus,
Hektor to Hector, Lykia to Lycia, Patroklos to Patroclus, Aineias to Aeneas
and Teukros to Teucer. One slight inconsistency is that, whereas the Greek
letter kappa is represented by ‘‘k,’’ chi, which is an aspirated kappa, is
represented not by ‘‘kh’’ but, in deference to traditional English spelling, by
‘‘ch,’’ pronounced as in loch, thus not Antilokhos but Antilochos, and like-
wise Chimaira and Kalchas. Most names, like the preceding, that have
di√erences between their Greek and their Latin or English spellings present
no di≈culty of recognition, more radical di√erences, as between Greek
Hekabe and Latin Hecuba, Greek Odysseus and Latin Ulysses, being rare
exceptions. It is only for the principal Olympian deities that the Greek and
Latin names are completely di√erent: Greek Zeus = Jupiter or Jove, Hera =
Juno, Athena = Minerva, Ares = Mars, Aphrodite = Venus, Poseidon =
Neptune, Hephaistos = Vulcan. Naturally in all such cases the Greek name,
the first of each pair, is used. For three names that are important in the Trojan
Epic the general rule is broken because of the assumed familiarity of the
Latin-English form: thus not Achilleus, the Greek form, but Achilles, not
Aias but Ajax, not Alexandros but Alexander. In a few other cases radically
anglicized forms have been preferred for the same reason—Greece, Troy,
Helen, Priam.
One prominent feature of ancient Greek nomenclature that is repro-
xxxvi INTRODUCTION

duced in the translation is the custom of referring to people by the father’s

name, patronymic, usually without the personal name, which is assumed
to be familiar. Thus Zeus is simply ‘‘the son of Kronos,’’ Diomedes ‘‘son of
Tydeus,’’ Nestor ‘‘son of Neleus,’’ and Meges ‘‘son of Phyleus.’’ With the
brothers Agamemnon and Menelaos ambiguity can arise, since either of
them is called ‘‘son of Atreus,’’ whereas for the two heroes with the same
name Ajax it is avoided by calling one ‘‘son of Telamon,’’ or ‘‘Telamonian,’’
and the other ‘‘son of Oileus,’’ or ‘‘Lokrian’’ from the name of his home-
land. Achilles’ nomenclature is unusual in that he is called either ‘‘son of
Peleus’’ or ‘‘grandson of Aiakos,’’ and his son Neoptolemos can even be
called ‘‘son of Aiakos’ grandson.’’ A very frequent nomenclature in the
Trojan Epic that has been taken over from the Iliad as a distinctively epic
usage is that the Greeks are always referred to collectively as Achaians,
Argives, or Danaans, which are anglicized forms of Achaioi, Argeioi, and
Danaoi, the choice having no contextual significance, being determined by
metrical convenience. The usage is faithfully reproduced in the translation,
but not in the introduction, critical summary, and commentary, where
anything other than Greeks would be unnatural. The translation is also
literal as regards three pairs of alternative names that are contextually neu-
tral—Troy and Ilion; Paris and Alexander; and Skamandros and Xanthos, a
local river.
Greek nomenclature, especially in poetry, was a√ected by the very
strong mythological tendency to personify natural phenomena. This is re-
flected in the translation by the use of an initial capital wherever person-
ification is certain or probable—thus Sun, Moon, Earth, Dawn (Aurora in
Latin). Capitalized Ocean is not to be confused with its modern meaning,
being the river that was believed to flow round the flat disk of the earth.
Prominent in the Trojan Epic are personifications of aspects of warfare such
as Strife and Tumult, and of associated notions like Fate and Death. The
translation’s general practice of accurately reproducing the original Greek
nomenclature is departed from in only a very few cases, the most important
and frequent being ‘‘god of war’’ or ‘‘war god’’ for Ares and ‘‘goddess of war’’
for Enyo, which may be defended on the poetic ground that these para-
phrases contribute positively to the atmosphere of the epic. Similar are ‘‘fire
god’’ for Hephaistos, although the name itself is sometimes used, as is the
case with Ares and Enyo, ‘‘goddess of love’’ for Kythereia, a secondary name
for Aphrodite, and ‘‘spirits of vengeance’’ for Erinyes. In closing it should
be emphasized that all information concerning proper names is provided
in the index, not in the commentary, which is mostly concerned with mat-
ters of literary and textual interest.
INTRODUCTION xxxvii

Notes
All references in the abbreviated form of author’s surname and date are cited in full in
the following Select Bibliography.

1. For this and related matters, see M. Davies, The Greek Epic Cycle, 2nd ed. (Lon-
don, 2001), whose edition of the relevant texts, Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Göt-
tingen, 1988) is followed for fragment numbers of the Cyclic epics cited in the
commentary.
2. See C. M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry (London, 1952); A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales
(Cambridge, Mass., 1960); B. Hainsworth, introduction to The Iliad, a Commentary,
vol. 3, Books 9–12 (Cambridge, 1993).
3. Venetus Marcianus 822 (formerly 454).
4. Their division into twenty-four books each seems to have been made later
than their original composition, and not all of the book divisions correspond with dis-
tinct episodes.
5. See B. Powell, ‘‘Homer and Writing,’’ in I. Morris and B. Powell (eds.), A New
Companion to Homer, Mnemosyne Supplement 163 (Leiden, 1997), 3–32.
6. See Hopkinson 1994, 106, and Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996),
‘‘Quintus Smyrnaeus,’’ where he even queries the literal truth of Quintus’ origin in
Smyrna.
7. Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2946, vol. 41 (1972), 9–10. For details of Triphiodoros’
indebtedness to Quintus, see B. Gerlaud, Triphiodore, La Prise d’Ilion (Paris, 1982),
10–41.
8. Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca 13.3.156–7, ed. M. Wallies (Berlin, 1909).
9. See R. Barnes, ‘‘When Was the Library Destroyed?’’ in R. Macleod (ed.), The
Library of Alexandria (London and New York, 2000), 70–3.
10. Bodmer Papyrus 29, Vision de Dorothéos, ed. A. Hurst, O. Reverdin, and J.
Rudhardt (Cologny-Geneva, 1984). An improved text, with English translation and
commentary, was edited by A. H. M. Kessels and P. W. Van der Horst, ‘‘The Vision of
Dorotheus,’’ Vigiliae Christianae 41 (1987): 313–59.
11. The manuscript, Matritensis Graecus 4686, is preserved in the National Li-
brary at Madrid.
12. Neapolitanus Graecus II F10. For this and related matters, see Vian 1959a.
13. Vian 1963–9 and Pompella 1979–93, 2002.
14. The fullest treatment is that of Vian 1959b, 17–144. Some di√erent conclu-
sions are reached in the detailed survey by Keydell 1963.
15. See Vian 1959b, 182–92.
16. Originally published between 1928 and 1936, it is conveniently accessible in
A. Parry (ed.), The Making of Homeric Verse (Oxford, 1971).
17. A. Hoekstra, Homeric Modifications of Formulaic Prototypes (Amsterdam,
1965), 17.
18. Mansur 1940, 73–8; Vian 1959b, 178–201; E. Visser, Homerische Versifika-
tionstechnik (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 266–89.
xxxviii INTRODUCTION

19. See James and Lee 2000, 27–30.

20. For a cogent presentation, see B. Knox’s introduction to R. Fagles’ translation
of the Iliad (New York, 1990).
21. See B. Fenik, Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad (Wiesbaden, 1968), and Vian
1959b, 175–7.
22. For these figures and related analysis, see G. W. Elderkin, Aspects of the
Speech in the Later Greek Epic (Baltimore, 1906), and for categorization of speeches in
the Trojan Epic, see Vian 1963–9, 1: xxxviii–xl.
23. See Vian 1954 and T. Roberts, ‘‘A Study of the Similes in Late Greek Epic Po-
etry’’ (M.A. thesis, University of Sydney, 1986).
24. See P. Friedlaender, Johannes von Gaza und Paulus Silentiarius (Leipzig,
1912), 1–103, and J. A. W. He√ernan, Museum of Words, the Poetics of Ekphrasis from
Homer to Ashbery (Chicago, 1994).
25. See Mansur 1940.
26. See especially Vian 1963–9, 1: xvi–xviii, xxxv–xxxvii.
27. See Appel 1994.
28. For a chronological inconsistency, see the summary of book 7, and for the ex-
pressions used to describe dawn and nightfall see James 1978.
29. See Duckworth 1936.
30. See Schenk 1997.
31. Vian 1963–9.
32. Pompella 1979–93, 2002.
33. Way 1913.
34. Combellack 1968.
35. First published in 1861 and available in M. Arnold, Essays Literary and Critical,
Everyman’s Library (London and New York, 1906) and later reprinted.
36. W. Shewring, ‘‘Epilogue on Translation,’’ in Homer, the Odyssey, World’s Clas-
sics (Oxford, 1980).
37. W. B. Smith and W. Miller, The Iliad of Homer, a Line-for-line Translation in
Dactylic Hexameters (New York, 1944).
38. R. Fagles, Homer, the Iliad (New York, 1990).
39. S. O. Andrew and M. J. Oakley, Homer’s Iliad, Everyman’s Library (London
and New York, 1955).

Select Bibliography
Editions of the Greek Text
Pompella, G. 1979–93. Quinto Smirneo, Le Postomeriche. With Italian translation and
textual notes. Libri I–II, Naples, 1979. Libri III–VII, Cassino, 1987. Libri VIII–
XIV, Cassino, 1993.
————. 2002. Quinti Smyrnaei Posthomerica. Greek text only. Hildesheim.
Vian, F. 1963–9. Quintus de Smyrne, La Suite d’Homère. With French translation and
commentary. Livres I–IV, Paris, 1963. Livres V–IX, Paris, 1966. Livres X–XIV,
Paris, 1969.
INTRODUCTION xxxix

Dictionaries of the Greek Text

Papathomopoulos, M. 2002. Concordantia in Quinti Smyrnaei Posthomerica.
Hildesheim.
Pompella, G. 1981. Index in Quintum Smyrnaeum. Hildesheim.
Vian, F., and E. Battegay. 1984. Lexique de Quintus de Smyrne. Paris.

English Translations
Combellack, F. M. 1968. The War at Troy: What Homer Didn’t Tell, by Quintus of
Smyrna. Norman.
Way, A. S. 1913. Quintus Smyrnaeus, The Fall of Troy. Loeb Classical Library. Reprint
2000 with 1984 bibliography, London and New York.

Commentaries
Campbell, M. 1981. A Commentary on Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica XII.
Mnemosyne Supplement 71. Leiden.
Hopkinson, N. 1994. Greek Poetry of the Imperial Period, an Anthology. On short
extracts, book 10.259–331, 362–8, 411–89. Cambridge.
James, A., and K. Lee. 2000. A Commentary on Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica V.
Mnemosyne Supplement 208. Leiden.
Kakridis, P. I. 1962. Quintus of Smyrna, a General Study of the Posthomerica and Its
Poet (in Modern Greek). Athens. (Despite its title the greater part of it is a
commentary, the only modern commentary on the whole work apart from that in
Vian’s edition.)

Studies
Appel, W. 1994. ‘‘Grundsaetzliche Bemerkungen zu den Posthomerica und Quintus
Smyrnaeus.’’ Prometheus 20: 1–13.
Byre, C. S. 1982. ‘‘Per aspera (et arborem) ad astra: Ramifications of the Allegory of
Arete in Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica 5.49–68.’’ Hermes 110: 184–95.
Duckworth, G. E. 1936. ‘‘Foreshadowing and Suspense in the Posthomerica of
Quintus of Smyrna.’’ American Journal of Philology 57: 58–86.
Giangrande, G. 1986. ‘‘Osservazioni sul testo e sulla lingua di Quinto Smirneo.’’
Siculorum Gymnasium 39: 41–50.
James, A. W. 1978. ‘‘Night and Day in Epic Narrative from Homer to Quintus of
Smyrna.’’ Museum Philologum Londiniense 3: 153–83.
Keydell, R. 1963. ‘‘Quintus von Smyrna.’’ Paulys Real-Encyclopaedie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft 47: 1271–96.
Mansur, M. W. 1940. The Treatment of Homeric Characters by Quintus of Smyrna. New
York.
Paschal, G. W. 1904. A Study of Quintus of Smyrna. Chicago.
Schenk, P. 1997. ‘‘Handlungsstruktur und Komposition in den Posthomerica des
Quintus Smyrnaeus.’’ Rheinisches Museum 140: 363–85.
Schmidt, E. G. 1999. ‘‘Quintus von Smyrna—der schlechteste Dichter des
Altertums?’’ Phasis 1: 139–50.
xl INTRODUCTION

Schmiel, R. 1986. ‘‘The Amazon Queen: Quintus of Smyrna, Book I.’’ Phoenix 40:
185–94.
Vian, F. 1954. ‘‘Les comparaisons de Quintus de Smyrne.’’ Revue de Philologie 28: 30–
51, 235–43.
————. 1959a. Histoire de la tradition manuscrite de Quintus de Smyrne. Paris.
————. 1959b. Recherches sur les Posthomerica de Quintus de Smyrne. Paris.
————. 2001.‘‘Echoes and Imitations of Apollonius Rhodius in Late Greek Epic.’’ In T.
D. Papanghelis and A. Rengakos (eds.), A Companion to Apollonius Rhodius,
Mnemosyne Supplement 217, 285–308. Leiden.
The TROJAN EPIC
This page intentionally left blank
 book 1 Penthesileia

Hektor the equal of gods had been killed by the son of Peleus.
Consumed by the funeral pyre, his bones were under the ground.
The Trojans stayed inside the city of Priam,
Fearing the force of Aiakos’ dauntless grandson.
5 As cattle in a wood refuse to go
And face a fearsome lion, taking fright
They huddle together among the densest thickets,
So in their city the Trojans shrank from the man of might,
Mindful of those he had robbed of breath before,
10 Amok by the banks of Skamandros the river of Ida,
Of those he had slaughtered in flight below their lofty walls,
Of Hektor killed by him and dragged round the city,
Of those he had slain upon the restless sea,
The time he first brought death to the people of Troy.
15 All these memories made them stay in the city.
Over and around them hovered pain and sorrow,
As though already Troy on fire was groaning.

Just then from the river Thermodon’s broad-flowing waters

Came Penthesileia clothed in godlike beauty.
20 Two wishes she had—to share the hardship of war
And also to shun the shame of hostile talk,
Fearing hurtful reproaches made by her people
Concerning the sister for whom she felt a growing grief,
Hippolyte, whom she had killed with her powerful spear,
25 Not as she intended—her target was a stag.
Those were the reasons she came to the famous land of Troy.
A further thought possessed her warrior soul:
She might clear herself of the fearful stain of bloodshed,
Appeasing with sacrifice the dreaded spirits of vengeance,
30 Who in instant wrath for her sister were following her
Unseen. For constantly on the heels of o√enders
They move; no sinner can escape those powers.

With her were twelve companions, noble maidens all,

All of them eager for war and for brutal combat.

≥
 ∂ QUINTUS, THE TROJAN EPIC

35 They were her attendants; distinguished as they were,

They all were far surpassed by Penthesileia.
As in the sky’s expanse among the stars the moon
Goddess stands out conspicuous from them all,
When thunderclouds are torn apart to show the heavens,
40 And all the force of blustering winds has fallen asleep;
So she stood out from all her dashing followers.
Klonie was there, Polemousa and Derinoe,
Antandre and Euandre and divine Bremousa,
Also Hippothoe, dark-eyed Harmothoe,
45 Alkibie, Antibrote and Derimacheia,
And with them Thermodossa so proud of her spear.
All these escorted Penthesileia the warrior maiden.
As down from eternal Olympos Dawn descends,
Her heart delighting in her glittering steeds,
50 Amid the fair-tressed Seasons, from all of whom,
Flawless though they are, her splendid form stands out;
Such was Penthesileia approaching the city of Troy,
Outstanding from all the Amazons. Round them the Trojans,
Running from everywhere, were astounded at the sight
55 Of the tireless war god’s daughter in her long greaves,
Looking like one of the blessed immortals; in her face
There was a beauty that frightened and dazzled at once.
Her smile was ravishing, and from beneath her brows
Her love-enkindling eyes like sunbeams flashed.
60 Her cheeks were flushed with modesty, and over them
A wondrous grace was spread, all clothed with valor.

All around her the grief of the people changed into joy.
As from a hilltop countrymen catch sight
Of a rainbow rising from the sea’s expanse,
65 When they yearn for rain from the gods, because their lands
Are badly parched for want of Zeus’s gift of water;
At last the sky is clouded right across; they see
The promising sign of approaching wind and rain,
And they who groaned for their fields before are cheered;
70 Just so the sons of Troy, to see within their land
The dreaded Penthesileia eager for battle,
Were gladdened. When to the heart of man comes hope
Of blessing, the pain of su√ering is removed.
So even Priam, whose mind had many a cause to groan,
 BOOK ∞ ∑

75 Whose heart was greatly distressed, received a little comfort.

As a man who has su√ered much because of blindness
And longs for death if he cannot see the blessed light,
Either through some good doctor’s work or because a god
Has removed the mist from his eyes, now sees the light of day;
80 Not as well as before, but he’s comforted a little
After all his su√ering, though pangs of smarting pain
Linger beneath his eyelids; such was the sight
Of dreaded Penthesileia to Laomedon’s son.
He felt a little joy, though still outweighed by grief
85 For the deaths of his sons. He conducted the queen to his palace.
Eagerly he pressed her with honors, like a daughter
Back home from a distant land after twenty years.
He gave her a feast of every sort of food, the kind
Proud monarchs eat when, after destroying their foreign foes,
90 They hold a banquet to celebrate their victory.
He gave her fine and costly gifts, and many more
He promised in return for saving Troy from slaughter.

Her promise was a deed for which no mortal had hoped—

To kill Achilles, destroy the mighty host
95 Of Argos and toss their ships upon a fire.
The fool! She did not know how matchless was Achilles
Of the ashwood spear in man-destroying battle.
On hearing her, Eetion’s noble daughter
Andromache addressed such words as these to herself:
100 ‘‘Poor woman, why do you make such claims in your pride?
You haven’t the strength to fight the fearless son
Of Peleus; quick death and destruction he’ll deal to you.
Poor thing, what madness possesses you? Beside you
Stand the end of life and the doom of heaven.
105 Hektor was your better by far with the spear,
But for all his strength he was killed and grieved the Trojans;
All the city had looked to him as to a god.
He was my glory and his noble parents’ glory
While he lived. I wish the earth had been heaped on me
110 Before a spear thrust through his throat cost him his life.
And then unspeakable pain to me was the pitiful sight
Of him so cruelly dragged round the city by Achilles’
Fleet-foot horses. That man took my husband and made me
A widow, bitterly grieving all my days.’’
 ∏ QUINTUS, THE TROJAN EPIC

115 So Eetion’s fair-ankled daughter spoke in her heart,

Recalling her husband. Ever greater grows the grief
Of virtuous women for the death of a spouse.

The sun upon its swiftly spinning course

Now dipped below the depth of Ocean and ended the day.
120 When the goodly feast and drinking were concluded,
The serving maids prepared a welcome bed
In Priam’s palace for Penthesileia the brave.
She went to rest, and there sweet sleep enveloped her
And veiled her eyes. Then down from the sky above there came,
125 At Pallas’ prompting, a vivid and deceitful dream,
That seeing it she might become the ruin of Troy
And of herself in her zeal to join the battle lines.
Such were the thoughts of the warlike goddess Tritogeneia.
The baneful dream stood over her in the form of her father
130 Encouraging her to be bold and face in combat
Achilles the fleet of foot. On hearing this
Her heart was filled with joy, thinking she would perform
A mighty deed that day on the terrible field of battle.
A fool she was to trust a treacherous dream
135 Of early night, the mocking words of which
Beguile in bed the su√ering human race.
This one deceived her with encouragement for the task.

When rosy-ankled Dawn came up with a bound,

The heart of Penthesileia was filled with courage,
140 As from her bed she leapt and over her shoulders placed
Her armor finely wrought, the war god’s gift.
Firstly round her silver-white shins she put
Her greaves of gold, which were a perfect fit.
Next was her brilliant breastplate. Then over her shoulders
145 She proudly slung her massive sword, encased
In a sheath of silver and ivory finely wrought.
She took her splendid shield, which was shaped like the moon
As it rises over the depth of Ocean
At half its fullness and with curving horns.
150 Such was its brilliance, beyond description. On her head
She placed a helmet crested with golden hair.
So she dressed herself in armor beautifully wrought.
She shone like a flash of lightning shot from Olympos
 BOOK ∞ π

Down to earth by the never-tiring force of Zeus,

155 When he shows to mortal men the force of a roaring storm
Or the unabating blast of whistling winds.
At once, as she hurried on her way from the palace hall,
She took two spears in her shielded hand, and in her right
A two-edged battle-ax, bestowed by dreadful Strife
160 To be her great defense in the slaughter of battle.
That gave her delight, and soon she was outside the walls
Urging the Trojans to go and win glory in combat.

In rapid response their leading warriors gathered,

Even though before they had been unwilling
165 To stand and face Achilles, who slaughtered all around.
She was proud beyond all bounds, as she rode a horse
Both handsome and swift, a gift from the north wind’s wife,
Oreithyia, to her as a guest on a visit to Thrace.
It could hold its own against the speed of the Harpies.
170 On this, as she left the towering halls of the town,
Rode noble Penthesileia, spurred by the dismal Fates
To enter a battle both first and last for her.
Around her many a Trojan, on feet that would not return,
Followed that hardy maid to a pitiless battle
175 In throngs, like sheep behind a ram, which by the skill
Of the shepherd runs ahead of a flock and holds it together;
So then they followed her, all eager to show their strength,
Both sturdy Trojans and Amazons strong in spirit.
Like Tritonis when once she faced the Giants,
180 Or Strife as she speeds through an army stirring tumult,
Such among the Trojans was Penthesileia the swift.

Then to the son of Kronos hands that had su√ered much

Were raised by the noble son of rich Laomedon
In prayer, facing the splendid shrine of Zeus, the god
185 Of Ida and guard of Ilion with his constant watch.
‘‘Hear me, father, and grant that the host of Achaia fall
This day by the hands of the war god’s royal daughter,
And bring her safely back again to my home,
Out of respect for your own son Ares the mighty giant
190 And also for her; she has the look of a heavenly goddess,
Amazingly so, and is the o√spring of your line.
Consider all the evil that my heart has su√ered,
 ∫ QUINTUS, THE TROJAN EPIC

The deaths of my children, torn from me by the Fates

At the hands of the Argives on the battlefront.
195 Consider, while yet we few remain of the noble blood
Of Dardanos, our city still untouched, that we
From slaughter and from war may have some breathing space.’’
That was his passionate prayer. An eagle sharply screaming,
Holding in its talons a dove at the point of death,
200 Swiftly swooped on Priam’s left. He in his heart
Was struck with fear, concluding that he would never see
Penthesileia return from the battle alive.
Such in truth was the work to be done that very day
By Fates unseen, which broke the grieving heart of Priam.

205 Meanwhile the Argives were amazed to see from afar

Trojans advancing with Penthesileia the daughter of Ares.
The Trojans had the look of mountain beasts
That harrow fleecy flocks of sheep with slaughter,
While she was like the fury of fire that rushes
210 Through the withered bushes when whipped by wind.
This prompted the mustering men to comment thus:
‘‘Who has rallied the Trojans after the death of Hektor?
We never thought they would be keen to face us again.
All of a sudden a mighty urge for fighting speeds them,
215 And someone in their midst is spurring them to exertion.
You’d think it was a god with such a task in mind.
But come, let invincible boldness fill our breasts,
Nothing but thoughts of fighting bravely. We too
Can count on the gods in battling the Trojans today.’’
220 With these words spoken, dressed in shining armor
And cloaked in valor, they streamed out from their ships.
Like flesh-devouring beasts the armies engaged
In bloody battle, locking armor closely together,
Their breastplates and their spears, their good strong shields
225 And solid helmets. Hacking each other’s flesh with bronze
Relentlessly, they reddened the soil of Troy.

Penthesileia killed Molion, Persinoos,

Eilissos, and Antitheos and valiant Lernos,
Hippalmos, Haimonides, and mighty Elasippos.
230 Derinoe killed Laogonos and Klonie Menippos.
The last had come from Phylake with Protesilaos
 BOOK ∞ Ω

For the purpose of war against the strength of Troy.

The killing of Menippos stung the heart of Podarkes
Son of Iphiklos, for he was his closest comrade.
235 Quickly Podarkes struck the beauteous Klonie.
Right through her belly passed the heavy spear, and with it
Came at once a stream of blood and all her entrails.
Then in fury Penthesileia with her long spear
Pierced the solid muscle of Podarkes’ arm,
240 The right arm, cutting clean through the veins of blood,
So that from the open wound a stream of dark blood
Spurted. With a groan he leapt to the rear,
His spirit overcome by the agony.
His going was for the men of Phylake a loss
245 Unspeakable. Withdrawing a little way from the battle,
Very soon he died in his comrades’ arms.

Idomeneus struck down Bremousa with his long spear,

Close to the right breast, and stilled her heart at once.
She fell like an ash tree in the mountains, cut
250 By woodsmen because of its outstanding height;
With a screech of pain and a thud it crashes down.
So she moaned aloud as she fell, with all her joints
Unstrung by death, her spirit mingling with the breezes.
Meriones then killed Euandre and Thermodossa
255 As they charged at him amid the deadly fray,
Driving his spear into the heart of one and plunging
His sword in the other’s belly; life quickly left them both.
Derinoe was slain by Oileus’ powerful son,
Struck on the collarbone by the point of his spear.
260 From Alkibie and Derimacheia the son of Tydeus
Cut the two heads with his terrible sword, clean o√ at the shoulders
With their necks. They fell like a pair of heifers
Suddenly robbed of life, when with a heavy ax
A strong man cleaves the tendons of their necks.
265 So these two fell by the hands of Tydeus’ son
Out on the plain of Troy far away from their heads.

Beside them Sthenelos slew the mighty Kabeiros,

Who had come from Sestos eager to fight
The Argives, but was not to see his home again.
270 His killing filled with rage the heart of Paris,
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years even, he might serve with his own contemporaries or lead a younger
generation. Time would cool the blood of the Reformer, and the experience
of adversity might temper an impatience born of extraordinary success.
Little did they know how short was the span, or at what a cost in life and
strength the immense exertions of the struggle had been made. That frail
body, driven forward by its nervous energies, had all these last five years
been at the utmost strain. Good fortune had sustained it; but disaster,
obloquy and inaction now suddenly descended with crushing force, and the
hurt was mortal.
 CHAPTER XVIII

ECONOMY

When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat;

Yet, fool’d with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on and think to-morrow will repay.
To-morrow’s falser than the former day;
Lies worse; and while it says we shall be blessed
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage! none would live past years again;
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.
Dryden, Aurung-Zebe.

THE position of a Minister who has withdrawn from a Cabinet is always

difficult and peculiar. If for the sake of some principle which he considers
vital he is prepared openly to attempt to wreck the Government and inflict
upon the party a defeat at the polls, and if the issue is one which must soon
be decided, the course, however painful, is plain. He has only to drive
steadfastly on through the storm, like Lord Salisbury in 1867 or Lord
Hartington in 1886, careless of consequences so long as he does his duty,
disdainful of the anger of friends, if he holds them mistaken, and looking
for vindication to the calm, just judgments of the after-time. But if the
question on which he has separated from his colleagues is not paramount or
urgent, and if, while differing strongly from the Government, he is yet
determined not to injure the party from which that Government is drawn,
his position becomes impossible. The more powerful he has been, the more
powerless he becomes; the higher his office, the greater his fall.
From his place in Parliament he is bound, in common-sense and
consistency, to uphold and justify his immediate contention. It may be
economy; it may be Free Trade. Whenever that subject is raised he must be
in his place, alike for his own defence and for the sake of his cause, to show
that there was good reason for his action and that the public interest was at
stake. If he feels strongly, he will speak strongly. Convictions harden and
grow, and differences magnify and ossify as the controversy progresses. His
party and his former colleagues are embarrassed by his proceedings,
however legitimate or honest they may admit them to be. The more
effective his advocacy, and weighty his charges, the more they are resented.
The Opposition are naturally pleased. They take from the ex-Minister’s
statements whatever they may consider useful to themselves and they
employ his phrases and arguments to belabour in the House and in the
country the party and the Government they are seeking to overthrow. Thus
assailed, the Ministerial press and the party machine—with all its scribes,
agents, orators and small fry—retaliate after their kind. In a hundred
newspapers, from a hundred platforms, hitherto voluble in his praise, the
ex-Minister becomes the object of depreciation and censure, expressed in
varying degrees of vulgar and untruthful imputation. And all the while,
since he will not declare general war upon his party, he is prevented from
defeating calumny by vigorous action or answering malice by attack.
When Lord Randolph Churchill pressed his charges of extravagance and
inefficiency against the public departments, the party which happened to be
responsible at the time were themselves offended. When the ex-Chancellor
of the Exchequer urged the need of economy and spoke his mind, in all
courteous moderation, upon the financial policy of his successor, the
Government Whips whispered that it was only his jealousy and spite. If, on
the other hand, he had remained silent, the judgment of the nation on the
great question for which he had sacrificed so much would have gone by
default. To do nothing was to abandon his cause; to move was to quarrel
with his party.
These embarrassments are only aggravated when the resigning Minister
has been exercising in the Cabinet a general authority over the whole field
of policy. As Leader of the House of Commons Lord Randolph had become
acquainted with almost every question which was likely at that time to
come before Parliament. On many of these he had formed strong views of
his own. He knew exactly how he had intended to handle them when they
became subjects of debate. When therefore he heard them mishandled, or a
course adopted at variance with Cabinet decisions he had previously
obtained, it was natural that he should wish to criticise or demur. Such
conditions pointed inevitably, if the tension were prolonged, to a total
rupture between the most patient ex-Minister and the most generous
Government; and Lord Randolph was not the most patient of men, nor the
Government the most generous of Governments.
Looking back on the circumstances and events of those years in the light
of after-knowledge, there may be some who will find it easy to say what
Lord Randolph should have done after his resignation. He should have
stated the whole grounds of his difference with the Tory Cabinet,
minimising nothing, keeping nothing back. In two or three speeches in
Parliament and in the country he should broadly have outlined his general
political conception of the course the Conservative party should follow, and
then, unless he was prepared to wage relentless war upon the Government
for the purpose of compelling them to adopt that course, he should
forthwith have withdrawn himself entirely from public life. Leaving his
party in the place of power to which he had raised them, with all the
glamour of three years of cumulative and unexampled success still
untarnished, he might well have been content to stand for a season apart
from the floundering progress of the Administration, leaving to others to
muddle away the majority he had made. And he could have counted, not
without reason, upon the continued affection of the Conservative working
classes. The party press would have been silent or even conciliatory. The
relentless irritation of the machine would have been prevented. As the years
passed by and the discredit of the Government increased, the Tory
Democracy would have turned again to the lost leader by whom the
victories of the past had been won.
Lord Randolph Churchill chose otherwise. He did not lay deep or long
plans. His nature prompted him to speak as he felt, and to deal with the
incident of the hour as it occurred. He was solemnly in earnest about
economy and departmental mismanagement. He wanted to curb
expenditure; and, while at that business, he was not at all concerned with
his ‘prestige’ or his ‘career.’ Deeply injurious to himself and to his influence
with the Conservative party as his course ultimately proved, it was at any
rate perfectly simple and straightforward. He returned to England at the end
of March, and plunged at once into the vortex of politics. In three speeches
which he delivered during the month of April to public audiences at
Paddington (where he defended particularly his resignation), at
Birmingham, and at Nottingham, he made clear what his attitude towards
Lord Salisbury’s Government would be. He was entirely independent of
that Government. He had resigned from it on important grounds of
difference. He desired a liberal and progressive policy in domestic affairs,
and he was determined to wage war on extravagance and expenditure. But
in the main lines of their policy he was a supporter of the Government; and
to the cause of the Union, as to the large and permanent interests of the
Conservative party, he remained perfectly loyal. From these intentions he
never in any degree varied or departed in the years that followed. ‘You are
quite right,’ he wrote to FitzGibbon (November 5, 1887), ‘in supposing that
mere returning to office has never been in my mind. I fight for a policy and
not for place; and when I go back to office (if ever) I shall have secured my
policy.’ A Tory Democratic policy could only be furthered from within the
Conservative party, and to that party he faithfully adhered. Besides Mr.
Jennings, Lord Randolph had two good friends among the younger men in
the House of Commons—his brother-in-law, Lord Curzon, and Mr. Ernest
Beckett, the member for Whitby. These gentlemen stood by him, worked
with him, and rendered him many political services in the years that
followed his resignation, for which they were not extravagantly beloved in
the high places of their party.
With these three exceptions the late Leader of the House of Commons
was entirely alone. To do him justice he made no effort to increase his
following and discouraged several who would have willingly worked with
him. Profoundly as he disagreed with much that the Government did, and
disliked the temper that inspired it, fiercely as he resented the Lobby
slanders and the steady detraction of the party press, never in the five years
that followed—the last five years, as they were fated to be, of his physical
strength—did he contemplate alliance of any sort with the Liberal party or
seek to cause cave, clique or faction in the Conservative ranks.
The introduction of the Budget on April 21 afforded Lord Randolph his
first opportunity of opening his ‘economy’ campaign. Mr. Goschen’s
ingenious Budget differed widely from the ambitious proposals of his
predecessor. The reductions in the Estimates for which Lord Randolph had
fought were, indeed, maintained—and even increased. The result was a
surplus of 776,000l. This Mr. Goschen now increased by an addition to the
stamp duties, yielding 100,000l., and by a reduction of the Sinking Fund
and Debt Charge from 28 millions to 26 millions. The total sum, amounting
in the balance to a surplus of 2,779,000l., was to be expended in taking a
penny off the income-tax, at a cost of 1,560,000l.; in reducing the duties on
tobacco by 600,000l.; and by granting 330,000l. in aid of the local rates,
leaving a final estimated surplus of 289,000l.
The Budget was, on the whole, applauded. The Conservative party,
whose consciences were a little uneasy on financial questions, were
delighted. The very questionable resort to the Sinking Fund—not for any
special emergency nor general scheme of fiscal revision, but simply for the
purpose of courting popularity by inconsiderable reductions of taxation—
was sustained by Mr. Goschen’s financial record. ‘Great,’ exclaimed Lord
Randolph Churchill, ‘is the worldly worth of a reputation!’ In complete
good-humour, albeit with a sharp edge, he rallied the Chancellor of the
Exchequer—‘the canonised saint of the financial purists’—on his lapse
from the austere principles he had formerly professed; and both on the night
of the Budget’s introduction and four days later when he spoke next after
Mr. Gladstone, he addressed to the Government and to the Conservative
party earnest counsels of retrenchment and departmental reform. He added:
—
It is not necessary to touch the Sinking Fund. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has
ample resources at his disposal. If he leaves the Sinking Fund alone, and remits a penny of
the income-tax, he will still have a balance of 400,000l. If he does not reduce the income-
tax, and prefers to take off the tobacco duty, he will have a balance of 800,000l. If he
touches neither of these, and relieves the rates, he will have a balance of 300,000l. He can
do any of these things if he will only leave the Sinking Fund alone; and he is touching it for
a purpose so paltry and frivolous that I fail to understand why it entered his mind. I pray
the Chancellor of the Exchequer to believe that I only make these remarks because of my
intense and earnest desire that the present Government—whose career, I hope, is going to
be a long one—may enter upon the paths of financial stability.

On this Mr. Gladstone enters in his diary: ‘R. Churchill excellent.’

The Parliamentary Committee on Army and Navy Estimates, for which
Lord Randolph had asked at the beginning of the year, had been promised
by the Government in reply to a question, put during his absence, by Lord
Curzon. But weeks and even months were allowed to slip by without the
necessary motion being made. When at length it was put on the paper it was
immediately blocked; and thus it would have probably remained. But one
day, when the first business happened to be the vote for the decoration of
Westminster Abbey, Lord Randolph asked abruptly if the Government
really meant to say that they considered the decoration of Westminster
Abbey more important than a Parliamentary inquiry into the naval and
military expenditure. After this the motion was put down at a reasonable
hour, and it passed by general consent. On May 14 Mr. Smith wrote:—
10 Downing Street, Whitehall: May 14, 1887.
My dear R. C.,—Before we proceed to nominate the Committee on Army and Navy
Estimates I should be glad to know if you would take a leading place upon it.
I cannot, of course, nominate the Chairman; but, so far as I am concerned, I should be
very glad indeed if you would take the Chair, and I should say so to my friends, as I have
complete confidence that your influence would be exercised with absolute impartiality and
for the good of the public service.
Believe me
Yours very sincerely,
W. H. Smith.

Lord Randolph replied at once in the affirmative; but the delay in

nominating the members continued, and his patience broke again:—
2 Connaught Place, W.: May 24, 1887.
My dear Smith,—I must ask you to excuse me from having the honour of dining with
you to-night. The dinner is, of course, an official one, and the names of the guests will be
in the papers, and it will be assumed by the public that those who dine with the Leader of
the House are thoroughly satisfied with the policy and conduct of the Government.
As far as I am concerned such an assumption would be entirely unfounded. I have
watched a great deal in the action of the Government which I deplore more than I can say;
but I cannot pass over without notice your neglect to nominate the Army and Navy
Estimates Committee last night, or rather this morning, and your postponing of that most
important matter till after Whitsuntide. The delay in appointing that Committee is
scandalous and inexcusable. It might long ago have commenced its work had the
Government been in earnest about the matter; but last night you gave me a positive
promise that you would nominate it without further delay, and, relying on that, I spent the
evening till 12.30 in examination of the Estimates with two other gentlemen, and, being
then very tired, did not return to the House. I dare say you are all right in thinking that you
can afford to indulge in this kind of treatment of one of your supporters, but you cannot
expect me to show publicly pleasure or satisfaction. Hodie tibi, cras mihi.
Yours very truly,
Randolph S. Churchill.

Smith replied softly:—

3 Grosvenor Place, London, S.W.: May 24, 1887.
My Dear R. C.,—I am very sorry you do not dine with me this evening, and still more
for the cause.
 At half-past five this morning I moved that the Committee be nominated, but I was met
by cries from the other side of the House that it was opposed, and by murmurs from our
own benches, and I felt it was impossible to proceed further at that hour with a jaded and
heated house.
I am sure you would have done as I did if you had been in my place.
Yours very sincerely,
W. H. Smith.

But the Committee was appointed without further delay.

Meanwhile Lord Randolph had been industriously preparing his general
indictment of War Office and Admiralty maladministration. To the intricate
and detailed information which he had acquired at the Treasury, he added a
mass of material accumulated with the greatest care and trouble by Mr.
Jennings and amplified and checked by various expert authorities, with
whom he was in communication. Basing himself on this and on the papers
presented to Parliament he formulated his charges at Wolverhampton on
June 3. He seems to have believed sincerely that it would be possible for
him to effect a large reduction in the cost of government. He recalled to his
mind the fact that the Government of 1860 was determined on a
retrenchment policy, and the Army and Navy Estimates were in five years
reduced from 27½ millions to 22½ millions; and that whereas in 1868 the
estimates were 25 millions, by 1871 they had been reduced to 21 millions.
Such examples may prove the possibility of retrenchment, but they were the
achievements of a giant Minister working year by year from inside the
Cabinet, and using the whole leverage of the great department over which
he presided; and we have since learned from Mr. Morley’s pages that even
in Liberal Cabinets elected on the famous watchwords of ‘Peace,
Retrenchment and Reform’ Mr. Gladstone had to fight for his economies at
the constant peril of his official life.
It is instructive to study the course of an agitation for naval and military
economy directed by anyone outside the circle of the Government of the
day and without the aid of the machinery of State. It may begin in all
undivided earnestness in a simple demand for a reduction of expenditure.
The Government and its official advisers will reply that they, too, are the
zealous advocates of such a policy, if only they can be shown how to effect
it; and they invite suggestions of a specific character. That is the first stage.
Thus challenged, the economist leaves for the moment the enunciation of
great principles of finance and national policy and descends to grapple with
masses of technical details. He discovers a quantity of muddles and jobs,
and arrays imposing instances of waste and inefficiency. His statements are,
of course, contradicted, and his charges are wrangled over seriatim. Expert
is set against expert, and assertion against assertion. The reformer is
accused—not, generally, without some justice—of exaggeration; and he is
in part and in detail inevitably betrayed into inaccuracy. But in the issue
enough is proved to awaken public anxiety and even indignation. Certain
main facts of discreditable and disquieting character are clearly established.
Many weaknesses, neglects, incompetencies are revealed. There are guns
without ammunition. There are fortresses without provisions. There are
regiments without reserves. There are ships imperfectly constructed. There
are weapons which are obsolete or bad. But in the process of the
controversy the movement has been insensibly and irresistibly deflected
from its original object. It began in a cry for economy; it has become a cry
for efficiency. That is the second stage. The Government and their official
advisers at the proper moment now shift their ground with an adroitness
born of past experience. They admit the damaging facts which can no
longer be denied. The politicians explain that they arise from the neglect or
incapacity of their predecessors. They recognise the public demand for
more perfect instruments of war. They declare that they will not flinch from
their plain duty (whatever others may have done); they will repair the
deficiencies which clearly exist; they will correct the abuses which have
been exposed; and in due course they will send in the bill to the Chancellor
of the Exchequer. So that the third stage of an unofficial agitation in favour
of a reduction of expenditure and a more modest establishment becomes an
agitation in favour of an increase of expenditure and a more lavish
establishment.
All this happened exactly in the case of Lord Randolph Churchill. In his
earlier speeches since his resignation he had confined himself to the need of
retrenchment, and this had been the ground on which he had fought in the
Cabinet. But at Wolverhampton he sought to show that, in spite of the great
and increasing expenditure, the services were in a wholly unsatisfactory and
even dangerous condition. And in this he was beyond all question brilliantly
successful. In a fierce speech of an hour and forty minutes he unfolded a
comprehensive catalogue of follies. His audience, consisting of about 4,000
persons—mainly Conservative working men—at first doubtful and
apathetic, were gradually raised, as the newspaper reports testify, to a state
of indignation. With a display of feeling unusual even at a partisan meeting,
and still more remarkable when the currents of ordinary partisanship were
running against the speaker, they interrupted him repeatedly with cries of
anger, and he ended amid a perfect tumult of assent.
It is not necessary to this account to examine the details of his charges.
Each generation has its own jobs and scandals to confront. The
administrative follies of 1887 have passed away. Some survived, to be
dwarfed by more astonishing successors; others were corrected, but not
extirpated. All have produced a prosperous progeny, nourished in richer
pastures, and attaining proportions of which their ancestors could hardly
have dreamed. The main outlines of the indictment must, however, be
placed on record. The condition of the British Army and Navy in the year
1887 was, in sober truth, a serious public danger. Mr. Gladstone’s
Government of 1880 had had, during their tenure of office, to deal with all
kinds of military and Colonial enterprises for the effective execution of
which a Liberal Administration is not naturally fitted. They detested their
work heartily; they executed it very badly. In truth the Cabinet, distracted
by the violence of Egyptian and Irish affairs and the gravity of the Eastern
situation, torn by the increasing demands of Radicalism, and harassed by a
relentless Opposition, was incapable of giving to naval and military matters
adequate consideration. There had followed upon all this the two years of
political revolution with which this story has been largely concerned. It was
natural, it was inevitable, that in the interval which had elapsed since the
great Army Reform Parliament of 1868 much waste and inefficiency should
have crept into the military system; and in the same period, from
considerations altogether outside the course of British politics, an enormous
extension and complexity had affected the responsibilities and functions of
the Navy.
Lord Randolph alleged in respect of the Army that not a single fortress
was properly armed; that no reserve of heavy guns existed; that the artillery,
both horse and field, was obsolete; that the rifle of the infantry was
defective; that the swords and bayonets broke and bent under the required
tests; and that, notwithstanding these deficiencies, the cost of the land
service had increased in twelve years by over four millions a year. He
charged the Admiralty with such waste as exporting Australian tinned meat
to Australia, rum and sugar to Jamaica, flour to Hong Kong, and rice to
India; with making improvident contracts for ships, engines, and materials
of various kinds; with disarming the Spithead and Portsmouth forts in order
to arm warships. He asserted that the whole of the 43-ton guns designed by
the Ordnance Department, on which 200,000l. had been spent, were
worthless and liable to burst even with reduced charges; that the Ordnance
officials had been told beforehand by the principal experts of Messrs.
Armstrong that this type of gun was imperfect; that they persisted in
making them; that one of the guns had already burst; that the others had
been condemned; but that they were nevertheless to be employed on her
Majesty’s ships. The most serious count, however, dealt with various
classes of ships which had in important particulars failed to realise the
expectations of the designers and were in consequence unfit for active
service.
He instanced especially the Ajax and the Agamemnon, the battleships of
the Admiral class and the Australia class of cruisers. Of the armoured
cruiser Impérieuse he declared that she drew four feet more water than was
expected, with the result that the armour which should have been above
water was now below water, and in consequence the ship was actually
unprotected. ‘The result of all this is that in the last twelve or thirteen years
eighteen ships have been either completed or designed by the Admiralty to
fulfil certain purposes, and on the strength of the Admiralty statements
Parliament has faithfully voted ... about ten millions, and it is now
discovered and officially acknowledged that in respect of the purposes for
which these ships were designed, the whole of the money has been
absolutely misapplied, utterly wasted and thrown away.’ The foundation for
this somewhat sweeping statement was supplied by the explanatory
memorandum to the Navy Estimates, 1887. ‘In one important particular,’ so
this document affirmed, ‘there is a discrepancy between ... the original
design and its result which, in the case of the Impérieuse and her sister ship
the Warspite, attracted some attention, and which is likely to recur in the
case of the belted cruisers, seven in number, the Warspite and the armoured
vessels of the Admiral class.... If the whole of the 900 tons [of coal] ... be
placed on board [the Impérieuse] the top of the belt will, on the ship’s first
going to sea, be six inches below the water.’
The Wolverhampton speech made a considerable stir. In spite of the
pressure of Irish affairs and the general instability of the political situation,
it was for some days the principal topic of public discussion. The powerful
interests assailed, retorted at once, and the newspapers were filled with
censure and contradiction. Even those which, like the Times, were forced to
acknowledge Lord Randolph Churchill ‘right in his main contention,’
rebuked him ponderously for extravagance of statement and violence of
language. His strictures on naval construction brought Sir Nathaniel
Barnaby, the late chief constructor to the Admiralty—to whom Lord
Randolph had personally alluded—into voluminous protest in the columns
of the Times, and an acrimonious correspondence ensued. Sir Nathaniel
denied that he had been ‘dismissed’ from his post and pointed in disproof to
his having been made a Knight Commander of the Bath. Lord Randolph
replied acidly ‘that K.C.B.’s and official testimonials were the usual manner
in which the country requited long service when the intentions had been
honest, no matter how deplorably defective might have been the capacity’;
and expressed himself willing to substitute the phrase ‘allowed to retire’ for
the word ‘dismissed.’ On the main question Sir Nathaniel appealed to Lord
George Hamilton; and Lord Randolph brought up Sir Edward Reed, a rival
constructor of great repute, who confirmed and even aggravated most of his
statements. Both parties fell back upon official records, memoranda and
Blue Books; and a battle royal developed, around the outskirts of which
naval authorities of every rank and description cruised, seeking to
intervene, on the one side or the other, with masses of highly technical
information couched in highly controversial terms.
Lord Randolph’s contention that the Ajax and the Agamemnon were
failures was not seriously disputed, Sir Nathaniel Barnaby himself
admitting (Times, June 7) that he was ‘thankful they were the only
approximately circular and shallow sea-going ships we built.’ The fiercest
strife raged around the cruiser Impérieuse. Sir Nathaniel Barnaby met the
assertion that the money spent upon her was ‘absolutely misapplied, utterly
wasted and thrown away,’ by quoting a later Admiralty memorandum which
declared her to be, ‘if not actually the most powerful, one of the most
powerful ironclad cruisers afloat of her tonnage.’ But Sir Edward Reed was
able to show that this was not extravagant eulogy, for that there was only
one other ‘ironclad cruiser of her tonnage’ in existence. He also showed
that, to lighten her, she had already been deprived of her masts and
consequently of her intended sailing powers; and that even so, to bring her
to her intended draught, it was necessary to take out the whole of her coal.
When the smoke had at length a little lifted, it was generally held that,
although Lord Randolph Churchill’s charges were sustained on almost
every substantial point, he had injured his case by over-stating it. Full marks
were also awarded to the ‘distinguished ex-public servant cruelly assailed in
his professional character.’
Lord Randolph Churchill was duly elected Chairman of the Army and
Navy Committee. Mr. Jennings, who was also a member, laboured
indefatigably to collect, sift and arrange material. The Committee met
without delay, and collected much valuable and startling evidence. They
discovered, for instance, that one branch of the War Office cost 5,000l. a
year in supervising an expenditure of 250l. a year. ‘Would it have been
possible,’ the Accountant-General was asked, ‘for any private member to
have ascertained from the Estimates laid before Parliament from 1870 to the
present year that the total increase of net ordinary Army expenditure
amounted to almost nine millions of money?—A. ‘It would have been
extremely difficult.’ Q. ’ ...or that since 1875 there had been an increase of
about five millions?’—A. ‘I do not think it would.’ ‘Up to now,’ Lord
Randolph suggested, ‘Parliament has never had the smallest idea of what
was the total cost of the services?’—‘Taking the whole of the services,’
replied Mr. Knox, ‘it has not.’ It would be easy to multiply these specimens
of the evidence collected by the Select Committee. Day by day, as it was
published, it was commented on by the press, and public and Parliamentary
scrutiny was increasingly directed towards the Estimates of the two
services.
Here is a note which it is pleasant to transcribe:—
One odd effect of your Committee: [wrote Jennings July 27]. Bradlaugh came to me
this afternoon—said he had been reading the evidence—was immensely struck with it—
thought you had done enormous service already. I told him a little more about it. He said:
‘He has done so much good that I really think I must close up my account against him.’
‘Well, surely,’ I said, ‘there is no use in keeping it open any longer. It only looks like
vindictiveness.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think I will close the ledger.’

It will be convenient to follow Lord Randolph’s economy campaign to

its conclusion. As it gradually became directed to efficiency rather than
simple economy it enlisted an increasing measure of professional support.
By May 1888, public opinion had become so vigilant that, following upon
some outspoken and not very temperate statements by Lord Wolseley, then
Adjutant-General, the Government determined—momentous resolve!—to
appoint a Royal Commission with Lord Hartington at its head. Mr. Smith
invited Lord Randolph Churchill to join it:—
10 Downing Street, Whitehall: May 18, 1888.
My dear R. C.,—You will render great service to the administrative reform of the two
great departments if you will join the Royal Commission over which Lord Hartington will
preside.
Mr. Gladstone has asked Mr. Campbell-Bannerman to represent the Opposition; I am to
go on, on behalf of the Government; and you would represent those who believe that
efficiency and economy may result from a change of system. General Brackenbury will
join as a soldier, and Sir F. Richards, who has just returned from sea, as the sailor. Two
civilians with extensive knowledge of large business transactions are to be added, and Sir
Richard Temple will also be asked as a capable and successful Indian Administrator. These
are the people with whom you would be associated in the effort to improve our system, and
I hope most sincerely that you will not refuse your help.
Believe me
Yours very truly,
W. H. Smith.
I enclose a copy of the reference.
‘To inquire into the civil and professional administration of the Naval and Military
Departments and the relation of those Departments to each other and to the Treasury; and
to report what changes in their existing system would tend to the efficiency and the
economy of the Public Service.’

Lord Randolph, however, knowing a good deal of the ways of such

bodies, declined. He was persuaded by Lord Hartington, who wrote:—
Hôtel du Rhin, 4 Place Vendôme: May 26, 1888.
My dear Churchill,—Smith has sent me your letter declining to serve on the Army and
Navy Commission. I hope very much that if you have not absolutely made up your mind
you may be induced to reconsider your decision, as we are both very anxious to have your
assistance.
I think that your Committee has taken some very valuable evidence which shows the
inefficiency and defects of the present system. But I should doubt whether you will effect
much more by the examination of minor officials or by investigating the details of the
separate votes; and I should think it might be possible for you to leave the inquiry to be
finished by some one else. My own opinion is that we shall never get either efficiency or
economy until we can find some way of giving the professional men more power and at the
same time more responsibility; but how this can be done in combination with our
Parliamentary system is a very difficult problem which requires bold and original
treatment.
 If we cannot suggest a more efficient and intelligent system of superior administration,
I think that we shall do very little good by exposing details of maladministration in minor
matters; and as the subject-matter of our inquiry is to be the real centre of the whole
question of administrative reform, I cannot help thinking that you would find our inquiry
more interesting and important than any which you can take up or continue on other
branches of the same question.
I remain

Yours sincerely,
Hartington.

The Commission appointed on June 17, 1888, did not report till March,
1890. Lord Randolph’s separate memorandum, which will be found in the
Appendix, is well known. Its sweeping proposals were not adopted by the
majority of the Commissioners; but it has been so often quoted, and bears
so closely upon modern controversies, that the reader who is interested in
these subjects should not neglect to study it. The indirect results of his
agitation were, perhaps, more fruitful. Lord George Hamilton, with whom
he so often engaged in sharp argument when Navy Estimates recurred,
bears a generous tribute to the unseen influence which severe public
criticism exerts upon the workings of a great department. It would seem that
Lord Randolph Churchill’s belief that considerable economies were
possible on the establishments of 1886 was not without foundation.
Lord George Hamilton writes, October 4, 1904:—
During my tenure of office at the Admiralty great changes were made, and in the
foremost rank of these reforms was the reorganisation and renovation of the Royal
dockyards. These establishments had been allowed to grow and develop without a
sufficient regard to the revolution in shipbuilding which the substitution of iron and steel
for wood had caused. Laxity in supervision, connivance at practices neither economical nor
efficient, dawdling over work, obsolete machinery and ill-adjusted establishments,
associated with Estimates framed for political exigence rather than naval needs, all
combined to bring these great national building yards into disrepute. The personnel was
first-rate both in ability and integrity and the material used as good as money could obtain.
All that was required was a thorough readjustment of the establishments to the work they
were called upon to do, by the reduction of the redundant and superfluous workmen, by the
dismissal of the incompetent, and an increase to the numbers working in steel and iron.
Changes such as these, if associated with the introduction of the methods and checks in
force in the best private yards, were quite sufficient to put our dockyards in the first rank of
building establishments. But whoever undertook the task would be subject to much
obloquy, both local and Parliamentary. The stern suppression of long-standing
malpractices, the dismissal of a large number of unnecessary and indifferent workmen, if
enforced on a large scale, required a strong current of public opinion behind it for its
consummation. This assistance I obtained from Lord Randolph Churchill’s crusade on
economy. He and I differed on many questions of naval administration, but we were at one
as to the necessity of dockyard reform. Many economists who, though agreeing in the
abstract with Lord Randolph’s views, hesitated to cut down the effective fighting forces of
the Army and Navy, were delighted to co-operate with him in so non-contentious an
improvement. The Labour party was not then as well organised or represented in
Parliament as they have since become, and their opposition to dockyard dismissals was less
strenuous than it would be now.
I was thus enabled, after two years of continuous labour and trouble, to organise the
dockyards from top to bottom, to put down establishments that were not required, to
dismiss the loiterers, and to establish, modelled on the practice of the best private yards, a
completely new system of supervision, check, and control. The effect was electrical. The
dockyards at once became the cheapest and most economical builders of warships in the
world. The largest ironclad ever designed, up to 1889, was built, completed and
commissioned ready for sea in two years and eight months from the date of the laying
down of its keel. No large ironclad had been previously completed within five years. Up to
1886 the average cost of the big ships building in these yards was 40 per cent. above their
original estimate; since then the estimates have rarely been exceeded. In the first year of
the new system there was an instantaneous saving of 400,000l. The continuous and
satisfactory progress of our vast and annually increasing building programme is mainly due
to those changes, and Lord Randolph could, I think, fairly claim that, though his name was
not publicly associated with the great national gain thus achieved, it was the public opinion
which he aroused, which largely contributed to the consummation of dockyard reform.

Lord Randolph Churchill addressed five meetings in the autumn and

winter of 1887—two at Whitby and Stockport respectively for his two
friends, Mr. Beckett and Mr. Jennings; and three in the North. The Whitby
meeting in September afforded an opportunity for a display of the hostility
with which he was regarded by the dominant section of the Conservative
party, for several prominent local worthies publicly refused to attend—a
proceeding which even the Times was compelled to censure. The 7,000
persons who gathered upon the sands and around the slopes of a kind of
natural amphitheatre under the west cliff gave him a very different
welcome, and listened with delighted attention during that beautiful
afternoon to a spirited and ingenious defence of the miserable session
through which the Government had shuffled. In Yorkshire and Lancashire,
as in the earlier meetings of the year, and later in the North, his popularity
with the Conservative masses was still undimmed. He was greeted
everywhere by immense crowds. The largest halls were much too small.
Paddington was loyal and contented. His Birmingham supporters asked no
better than to fight for him at once. At Nottingham, long before his arrival,
the streets were thronged; and all the way from the station to the Albert Hall
he passed through continuous lines of cheering people.[64] Similar scenes
took place at Wolverhampton, and the Conservative Association of that
borough passed a formal resolution supporting his policy of economy. In
the North he made a regular progress. He visited three important centres in
a single week and made a ‘trilogy of speeches’—no light task for a speaker
whose every word is reported and examined. He spoke on the afternoon of
October 20 at Sunderland, at great length, in reply to a previous speech of
Mr. Gladstone, covering the whole field of domestic policy and defining the
immediate limits of the Tory Democratic programme. These proved
sufficiently comprehensive to include Free Education, Local Option in the
sale of drink, a compulsory Employer’s Liability Act, the abolition of the
power of entailing land upon unborn lives, ‘One man, one vote,’ and
Parliamentary registration at the cost of local bodies. At Newcastle, two
days later, he spoke in defence of the Union, justified the Government
policy in Ireland, and vehemently attacked Mr. Gladstone for the
countenance which he showed towards lawlessness and disorder.
On the Monday he spoke at Stockton, and here he turned aside to deal
with another subject which had been thrust much upon him of late. Mr.
Jennings, like Lord Dunraven, was, as the reader is aware, a Fair Trader,
and throughout the year—from the very beginning of their association—he
had laboured tactfully, but persistently, to win Lord Randolph to his views.
He knew that although the cry of ‘Less waste and no jobbery’ might appeal
to many, ‘Economy’ was not in itself a popular cause to submit to a
Democratic electorate, and was, moreover, foreign to the instincts and
traditions of Toryism. ‘Fair Trade,’ on the contrary, touched a very tender
spot in a Conservative breast; and, quite apart from this consideration, Mr.
Jennings was an enthusiast. He had examined the question both from an
American and a British point of view. He possessed a large and well-stored
arsenal of fact and argument. On such subjects as ‘One-sided Free Trade,’
‘Our Ruined Industries,’ ‘The Dumping of Sweated Goods,’ ‘The
Commercial Union of the Empire’ or ‘Our Dwindling Exports’ he could
write, as his frequent letters show, with force and feeling. Scarcely since St.
Anthony had there been such a temptation on the one hand or such austerity
on the other.
 ‘The main reason,’ Lord Randolph had said at Sunderland, ‘why I do not
join myself with the Protectionists is that I believe that low prices in the
necessaries of life and political stability in a democratic Constitution are
practically inseparable, and that high prices in the necessaries of life and
political instability in a democratic Constitution are also practically
inseparable.’ And this having drawn upon him the wrath of Mr. Chaplin, he
proceeded at Stockport to make his case good. He used no economic
arguments. He pointed to the supremacy of the Conservative party as a
proof of political stability under low food-prices. He pointed to the
conversion of Sir Robert Peel as a proof of political instability, under high
food-prices. To make wheat-farming profitable a duty was required which
would raise the price of corn from 28s. a quarter to something between 40s.
and 45s. a quarter. Would anyone propose a sufficient tax on imported corn
to make it worth while for the rural voter to pay the higher prices which
Fair Trade would secure for the manufactures of the urban voter? How did
the Fair Traders propose to deal with India? How did they propose to deal
with Ireland? Could they prove that France, Austria and Germany were
more prosperous than Great Britain? ‘It is no use saying to me, "Go to
America or New South Wales." I will not go to America, and I will not go to
New South Wales. There is not the smallest analogy between those
countries and England. America is a self-contained country and almost
everything she requires for her people she can produce in abundance. We
cannot. We have more people than we can feed; and not only for food, but
for our manufactures, we depend upon raw material imported from abroad.
Therefore I decline to go to America or New South Wales; but I would go to
European countries—to France, Austria and Germany—and I want to know
whether the Fair Traders can prove that the people of those countries are
more prosperous than ours.’
This Stockton speech was naturally a great disappointment to Jennings.
‘I cannot deny,’ he wrote, ‘that you gave many of your followers a bitter pill
to swallow. I think I could give you satisfactory grounds for admitting that
your objections to "Fair Trade" will not stand much investigation; but, of
course, the real difficulty is that in many of our constituencies the question
is popular. We have been partly elected on the strength of it; and when you
attack it, you fire a broadside into your own supporters and give the
Radicals in our boroughs a stick to beat us with. It is hard for us to fight
against your authority, especially when we have been drilling into the minds
of the people that yours are the views they should adopt. If you ever had
half an hour to spare, I wish you would allow me to put the facts before
you. You would soon see, for example,....’ And then follow pages of tersely
stated arguments of a kind with which most people are now only too
familiar.
They produced no effect upon Lord Randolph. ‘The policy which you
advocate,’ he replied (October 30), ‘of duties on foreign imports for revenue
purposes, much attracted me at one time; but I came to the conclusion that,
although such a policy would gain the adhesion of the manufacturing
towns, it is open to such fearful attack from the Radicals among the country
population that we should lose more than we should gain. I cannot see how
you can persuade yourself that the country population would accept a
method of raising revenue which would directly benefit the manufacturing
population at their expense. The election of ‘85 made a great impression
upon me. Then the defection of the rural vote completely neutralised our
great successes in the English boroughs.’ And again on November 3, after
the discussions at the conference of Conservative Associations: ‘Do you see
how the Fair Traders have been wrangling and disputing with each other—
everyone going in a different direction—confirming all that I said at
Stockton about their not knowing their own minds?’ Late in November
came an invitation from the ‘British Union,’ a Protectionist Association
having its headquarters in Manchester—of all places—to which Lord
Randolph replied as follows:—
2 Connaught Place, W.: November 26, 1887.
I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 25th inst. I understand that your
Committee are good enough to do me the honour of asking me to preside at a meeting to be
held on January 24 in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, in favour of Fair Trade.
You allude to the recent vote of the Conservative National Union bearing upon this
subject, and inquire as to what effect that vote has had upon my mind. I may reply: ‘None
whatever, except to confirm me in the opinions I expressed at Stockton in the course of last
month.’ Both at the Fair Trade Conference recently held, as well as at the conference of the
delegates of the National Union, I observed that the sentence which would best characterise
those discussions was quot homines tot sententiæ. There is not among those who desire
extensive fiscal reform the slightest approach to real agreement either as to objects or to
methods. I must also point out that the delegates of the National Union do not appear to
have had any instructions from those whom they were supposed to represent to debate and
to decide on the question of Fair Trade, neither did they in any way specially represent
trade interests. Their decision in favour of Fair Trade, therefore, is not more weighty than
their decision in favour of ‘Women’s Suffrage,’ which latter would certainly not be
accepted by the Tory party as a whole.
Under these circumstances you will see that it is not possible for me to depart in any
way from the views I have recently expressed on Fair Trade; nor could I, as you kindly
invite me to do, ‘take the helm of a movement’ which up to the present remains altogether
vague and undefined.

So far as I have been able to discover, this was, with one exception, his
last public word on the subject.[65] His objections to Fair Trade were not
based on principle. They were entirely practical. He cared little for theory.
He hated what he used to call ‘chopping logic.’ He was not at all concerned
to vindicate Mr. Cobden, and he mocked at ‘professors’ of all kinds. But he
thought that as a financial expedient a complicated tariff would not work,
and he was sure that as a party manœuvre it would not pay. He saw no way
by which the conflicting interests of the counties and the boroughs could be
reconciled and he believed that without such reconciliation the movement
would prove disastrous to the Conservative cause. He was, no doubt,
strengthened in his views by his desire so far as possible to work in
harmony with Mr. Chamberlain and so to combine and fuse together all the
Democratic forces which supported the Union. Yet Fair Trade had much to
offer to a Conservative statesman. To him, above all other Tory leaders, the
prospect was alluring. That section of Tory Democracy which had received
the gospel of Mr. Farrer Ecroyd—and it was already important—would
have followed a Fair Trade champion through thick and thin. In every town
he would have secured faithful and active supporters. His earlier speeches
had prepared the way. His own immediate allies in Parliament, his best
friends in the press, were ardent Fair Traders. Hardly a day passed, as he
said at Stockton, without his receiving letters from all classes of people
imploring him to come forward as a Fair Trader. He had only to raise the
standard to obtain a following of his own strong enough to defy the party
machine. The National Union might still afford the necessary organisation.
And had he been, as it was the fashion to say, willing to advance his
personal position regardless of the interests of the Conservative party, there
lay ready to his hand a weapon with which he might have torn the heart out
of Lord Salisbury’s Government.
 CHAPTER XIX

THE NATIONAL PARTY

‘Love as if you should hereafter hate; and hate as if you should hereafter love.’—Bias
(quoted by Aristotle).

‘ALL the politics of the moment,’ said Lord Salisbury on March 5, 1887, to
the members of the National Conservative Club, ‘are summarised in the
word "Ireland."’ The fierce struggle in the English constituencies was over.
The Home Rulers had been totally defeated. Mr. Gladstone had been driven
from office. A Conservative Government, strong in its own resources of
discipline and class, strengthened by most of the forces of wealth and
authority which had hitherto been at the service of the Liberal party, and
supported by the energetic multitudes of Tory Democracy, sat in the place
of power. Among the ranks of the Opposition, fortified in their midst, with
leaders of their own upon their Front Bench, was a solid band of seventy
gentlemen of unusual ability actively engaged in preventing the return of
their neighbours to office. Such was the grim aspect of the field upon the
morrow of the great battle. Such was the change of fortune which a year of
Irish policy had brought to the Liberal party. But, although the relative
forces of the combatants in the political arena had been so surprisingly
altered, the question in dispute remained utterly unsettled and ‘Ireland’ was
still the vital and dominant factor in the political situation.
So long as the Liberal Unionists adhered to Lord Salisbury’s
Government it was, of course, unshakable; for it enjoyed the double
advantage of their support and of the cleavage which they caused in the
Opposition. But the conditions under which Liberal-Unionist support would
be continued could not be definitely known; and its withdrawal meant the
immediate fall of the Administration. Forced thus to live from day to day
upon the goodwill of its allies, with few means of knowing and not always a
right to inquire when that goodwill might be impaired, the Government was
apparently deficient in real stability or power. Nor could it be said to make
up in talent what it lacked in strength. The retirement of Sir Michael Hicks-
Beach deprived the Treasury Bench of its sole remaining Conservative
Parliamentarian; Mr. Goschen’s position was, at any rate for the first year,
difficult and peculiar; Mr. Balfour had yet his name to make; and the choice
of Mr. Smith for the leadership of the House of Commons, however
justified by his courage and his character, so far as the distinction of debate
was concerned, only revealed the nakedness of the land.
In all these circumstances it was with no little anxiety that the
Conservative party watched the progress of the negotiations which attended
the Round Table Conference and endeavoured to estimate the effect upon
those negotiations and upon the general attitude of the Liberal-Unionist
party of the growing tension of Irish affairs. Mr. Chamberlain’s intentions
were especially uncertain. His effective co-operation with the Conservatives
had been largely facilitated by his good relations with Lord Randolph
Churchill and the very considerable agreement in political matters which
existed between them. But Lord Randolph Churchill had now left the
Government; and how could a Radical support a policy from which a
progressive Tory had been forced to separate? Moreover, Mr. Chamberlain
was closely associated with Sir George Trevelyan. They had resigned
together from the Home Rule Cabinet. They fought side by side in the
election which followed. They were the joint representatives of Liberal
Unionism at the Round Table Conference. On January 22, 1886, while the
issue of that conference was still undetermined, Mr. Chamberlain was the
chief speaker at a demonstration at Hawick in Sir George Trevelyan’s
honour; and Sir George Trevelyan was all the time known to be earnestly
and eagerly labouring for the reunion of the Liberal party. ‘It is because I
believe,’ said Mr. Chamberlain on this occasion, ‘that at all events a great
approximation to peace, if not a complete agreement, may be attained
without a betrayal of the trust which has been reposed in us that I ask you to
await with hope and confidence the result of our further deliberations.’ Lord
Hartington took, indeed, no part in these negotiations. ‘Some one,’ he said,
characteristically, ‘must stay at home to look after the camp;’ but he
proceeded to wish the Conference ‘every measure of success,’ and he was
careful not to destroy by any words of his the prospects of reconciliation.
The whole situation—already delicate, uncertain and seemingly critical
—could not fail to be profoundly influenced by the course of events in
Ireland. The winter of 1886 was accompanied by a widespread, though by
no means general, refusal or inability to pay rents. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach
had never been too enthusiastic in his sympathy with the Irish landowner,
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