This chapter treats love, desire and eroticism, arguing that eros and philotes serve as metapoetic structuring principles of epic narrative. It begins with a preliminary survey of the foundational texts, focusing on the scene of Helen at the loom as she weaves a tapestry of warriors in battle, essentially a figuration of the Iliad as an artistic product of sexual longing. The chapter then moves forward to consider how these same erotic structuring principles play out in imperial Greek epic, which absorbs Homer’s models through the filter of romantic fiction. Smith focuses on the first three books of Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica – the events surrounding Penthesileia, Memnon, and the death of Achilles – reading them as flirtatious manipulations that intensify readerly anticipation, and then turns to Nonnus’ Dionysiaca, specifically the tendril imagery in the Ampelos episode and its sequel, the romance of Calamus and Carpus. These episodes serve as exemplars of the regenerative powers of epic desire.

Sets out the book’s critical framework and methodology. Outlines the current scholarly consensus regarding the Posthomerica and its place within imperial Greek epic. Emphasises the strong relationship between these readings and the ‘supplementary’ poetics attached to Roman, and particularly silver Latin, poetry.It then demonstrates the ways in which this book will depart from these readings. Introduces the concept of the ‘poetics of the interval’ as the key aspect of this departure: Quintus’ new formative poetics. Sets this poetics within and against various relevant traditions: pseudoepigraphia, the epic cycle, Latin literature. And sets up the political and cultural implications of this new framework: shows Quintus’ politically engaged interaction with imperial Greek performance culture,declamation and rhetoric, and other imperial Greek epic. Ends by establishing the ‘terms of engagement’: the book’s approach to key concepts such as intertextuality, allusion, postmodernism and ‘metapoetics’.