Fish in Battle? Quintus of Smyrna and the Halieutica of Oppian

Abstract

If Walcott’s twentieth-century Omeros recasts the figures of the Trojan War as fishermen, Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica features two battle-heroes compared in detail to fishermen spearing fish. Quintus has long been both loathed and admired for the similes of his fourteen-book epic – even critics far from effusive about this “schlechteste Dichter des Altertums”,1 often accord him some merit in his similes, which are certainly varied and prodigious.2 Yet all too often his similes are labelled inappropriate, or dismissed as hackneyed and derivative.3 This paper focuses on one of Quintus’ more unusual similes, that of Neoptolemus as a night-fisherman (Q.S. 7.569-575). Looking first at the importance of Neoptolemus as the son of Achilles, heir to his father’s greatness and newcomer to this war, the simile is then read through the lens of Oppian’s Halieutica, that