Dares Phrygius

▪ Trojan priest

      Trojan priest of Hephaestus who appears as one of the characters in Homer's Iliad, Book V, and is the reputed author of a lost pre-Homeric “eyewitness” account of the Trojan War. The Daretis Phrygii de Excidio Trojae historia, a Latin work purporting to be a translation of this, dates probably from the 5th century AD. (The Greek original may be dated to the 3rd century AD.) The influence of this pro-Trojan work in the Latin-speaking West from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance, a period when the works of Homer were known only by hearsay, was enormous. It was widely used as a source by medieval writers of Troy romances. See also Troy.

Additional Reading

Two essays by Stefan Merkle serve as a useful introduction: “The Truth and Nothing but the Truth: Dictys and Dares,” chapter 13B in Gareth Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World, rev. ed. (2003), pp. 563–580, and “News from the Past: Dictys and Dares on the Trojan War,” chapter 10 in Heinz Hofmann (ed.), Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context (1999), pp. 155–166.

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