It has always irritated me that the narrative of the final days of Troy wasn't actually in the Iliad or the Odyssey. I was a mass-market-mythology lover who didn't want to take that extra step of taking classics courses or learning Greek or Latin. Due to the loss of several Trojan Cycle manuscripts (the Little Iliad, Aithiopis, etc.), audiences never got to see Helen and Menelaos reconcile. The death of Achilles? The death of Paris? The wooden horse? Nope. And champions like Memnon, Penthesilea, and Neoptolemos were relegated to a couple of paragraphs here and there in English-language collections of the myths. (Hat tip to Robert Graves' "The Greek Myths," Gustav Schwab's "Gods and Heroes," and David Kravitz's "Who's Who In Greek and Roman Mythology," which were all excellent starting points and found in superstores during my early adulthood.)

Wait no more. Quintus of Smyrna, who lived several centuries later than Homer and his contemporaries, put together an epic poem based on who-knows-what manuscripts that have not survived. Alan James and the Johns Hopkins University Press have published a sweet volume with the text of the epic, and a lengthy commentary section that proves quite useful. Quintus has a habit of using epithets of characters rather than their given names, so if you aren't sure which goddess "Tritogenia" is, it's possible to refer to the commentary as if it were endnotes and figure out the majority of references. (Tritogenia, "thrice-born," is Athena.)

So what do we get as the content of the epic? A battle-axe-wielding Amazon. An Ethiopian demigod born of the rosy Dawn. The madness of Great Ajax. Heracles' son killing scores of Greeks (including their doctor!) before facing Achilles' son who has come to avenge his father. Philoctetes, Heracles' ally, wounding Paris with an arrow dipped in the blood of the Hydra, and Paris's attempt to reconcile with his former lover Oenone before the poison works. The horse gambit (complete with a bizarre appearance by two sea serpents that roam right into town to eat Laocoon's kids… really, they couldn't have done that on the beach?). Lastly, it's got the sack of Troy and Aeneas's escape before one final word from Athena to Lesser Ajax, communicated via thunderbolt.

So for content, this volume delivers. The only story I can think of from this period of the war that the Posthomerica doesn't have in detail is the theft of the Palladium. Obviously, that's no fault of the translator. As for whether the poetics carry the same heft as Homer… probably not. There's only fourteen books, not twenty-four, and one can feel the difference. Deaths are more sudden; stories of heroic angst less rich in detail. Deiphobos claiming Helen just before the fall of the city is barely a footnote. But in keeping with the spirit of the subject matter, I suggest the mythology buffs fall upon this book as wolves fall upon the sheep-fold, their jaws drawing blood while the shepherd, tired from day-long toil, sleeps in his bed, unaware of the violent work that…

...uh, sorry. Got carried away. But if you don't mind a lot of extended similes like that, the Posthomerica is the volume for you.

 

 

Mit „Rubbel die Katz – oder wie man Wasser biegt“ legt Aeneas Rooch (Heyne Verlag) ein tolles und vor allem wahnsinnig informatives Buch vor, in dem er manch physikalischem Phänomen auf die Spur geht. Mit dem Untertitel „Die wunderbare Welt der Alltagsphysik“ wird der Inhalt eigentlich auch schon auf den Punkt gebracht. Der Autor beschreibt in seiner Sammlung die Hintergründe so mancher bekannten Alltagserscheinung, über deren Entstehung man sich vielleicht sogar selber schon irgendwann einmal den Kopf zerbrochen hat. Neben der Frage, wie sich Wasser biegen lässt, geht es z.B. auch darum, warum der Himmel blau erscheint, sich Smartphones mit einer Bockwurst bedienen lassen, Sekt „perlt“ und Schnee immer weiß und nicht bunt ist.. Zu jedem Phänomen wird im Buch ein Beispiel, die entsprechende physikalischen Herleitung oder Grundlage samt ausführlicher Erklärung geliefert. Die eigentlichen Erläuterungen sind dabei gut verständlich und recht konkret, manchmal zum besseren Verständnis mit leicht ausschweifenden Beschreibungen versehen. In thematische Kapitel unterteilt, bietet das Buch außerdem immer die Möglichkeit, alle Phänomene selbst noch einmal experimentell nachzustellen und selber auszuprobieren! Teils wirklich überraschend, manches Mal auch ganz schlicht, aber letztlich doch immer witzig! Das dürfte selbst Kindern und Jugendlichen gut gefallen, ist aber definitiv auch für jeden Erwachsenen ein sehr interessantes Detail. Mir gefielen die Inhalte eigentlich durchweg sehr gut und ich habe alle Kapitel neugierig durchforstet, wenn auch manchmal das eine mehr als das andere. Doch durch den eingängigen und lockeren Schreibstil „arbeitet“ man sich mit viel Spaß durch dieses Buch und ist vielleicht sogar enttäuscht, wenn man am Ende angelangt ist! Mir hat das Gesamtpaket absolut gut gefallen, deshalb 5 Sterne.

A very enjoyable read mostly because of:A Beautiful description of the Australian bush"For a moment we waited, spellbound in the brilliant sunshine; then the dogs running down to the water's edge, the gallahs and cockatoos rose with gorgeous sunrise effect: a floating gray-and-pink cloud, backed by sunlit flashing white. Direct to the forest trees they floated and, settling there in their myriads, as by a miracle the gaunt, gnarled old giants of the bush all over blossomed with garlands of grey, and pink, and white, and gold.""The Reach always slept; for nearly twelve miles it lay, a swaying garland of heliotrope and purple waterlilies, gleaming through a graceful fringe of palms and rushes and scented shrubs, touched here and there with shafts of sunlight, and murmuring and rustling with an attendant host of gorgeous butterflies and flitting bird and insects." And... Very Quaint and /or Rustic feel of life"There's one fairly steady, good-sized table at least it doesn't fall over, unless some one leans on it; then there's a bed with a wire mattress, but nothing else on it; and there's a chair or two up to your weight (the boss'll either have to stand up or lie down), and I don't know that there's much else exceptiong plenty of cups and plates - they're enamel, fortunately, so you won't have much trouble with the servant breaking things...""...walls sprouted with corner shelves and brackets - three wooden kerosene cases became a handy series of pigeonholes for magazines and papers..."The book was very entertaining despite the feel that nothing ever happened, to my city-chic's mind anyway;""Whatever do you do with your time?" ask the townsfolk, sure that life out-bush is stagnation, but forgetting that life is life wherever it may be lived."Life out-bush was hard and what was very very obvious from this book was that humour was their mainstay. Life, then, definitely do not sound 'down' at all.I couldn't help myself that I kept picturing scenes of 'Australia' (movie) whilst reading this book. However, I do realise that bushmen were most probably not as hot as Hugh Jackman, LOL.