Dares Phrygius

Dares Phrygius(Ancient Greek:Δάρης), according toHomer,^[1]was aTrojanpriest ofHephaestus.He was later thought to have been the author of an account of the destruction of Troy.^[2]A work inLatin,purporting to be a translation of this, and entitledDaretis Phrygii de excidio Troiae historia,was much read in theMiddle Ages,and was then ascribed toCornelius Nepos,who is made to dedicate it toSallust;but the language better fits a period much later than the time of Nepos (probably the 5th century AD).

It is unknown whether the existing work is an abridgment of a larger Latin work or an adaptation of aGreekoriginal. Together with the similar work ofDictys Cretensis(with which it is generally printed), theDe excidioforms the chief source for the numerous medieval accounts of the Trojan legend, the so-calledMatter of Troy.Dares claimed 866,000 Greeks and 676,000 Trojans were killed in this war, but archaeology has uncovered nothing that suggests a war this large was ever fought on that site.^[3]

The work was a significant source forJoseph of Exeter'sDe bello Troiano.^[4]It was also completely reworked in the 8th century inMerovingian Gaulinto the work entitledHistoria de origine Francorum('History of the Origins of the Franks'), which purports to describe the descent of theFranksfrom the Trojans and is attributed to Dares.^[5]

References

^Homer.Iliad,5.9, 5.27.
^Claudius Aelianus.Var. Hist.Xl, 2.
^White, Matthew (2012).Atrocities: the 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History.New York: W. W. Norton. p. 556.ISBN 978-0-393-34523-0.
^Rigg, A. G."Joseph of Exeter: Iliad".Centre for Medieval Studies.Retrieved1 November2013.
^Nurgül Kıvılcım Yavuz,Transmission and Adaptation of the Trojan Narrative in Frankish History between the Sixth and Tenth Centuries,PhD diss. (University of Leeds, 2015), pp. 182–187.

Sources

This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911). "Dares Phrygius".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 829.
O.S. von Fleschenberg,Daresstudie,i, 1908.
Gudeman, Alfred (1894). "Literary Frauds among the Romans".Transactions of the American Philological Association.25:140–164.doi:10.2307/2935663.ISSN 0271-4442.JSTOR 2935663.
(fr) Louis Faivre d'Arcier,Histoire et géographie d’un mythe. La circulation des manuscrits du De excidio Troiae de Darès le Phrygien (VIIIe-XVe s.),Paris, 2006 (ISBN 2-900791-79-0).
(de) Andreas Beschorner,Untersuchungen zu Dares Phrygius-Narr,Tübingen, 1992 (ISBN 3-8233-4863-9).

External links

Daretis phrygii de excidio Troiae historia,Ferdinand Meister (ed.), Lipsiae, in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1873.
Full text at the Latin Library
The History of the Trojan Warby Dares Phrygiustranslated by Jason Colavito (2011)
Jonathan Cornil,Dares Phrygius' de excidio Trojae historia: philological commentary and translation.Scriptie voorgedragen tot het bekomen van de graad van Master in de Taal- en letterkunde (Latijn-Engels), 2011–2012, Universiteit Gent.
R. M. Frazer,The Trojan War. The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian,Indiana University Press, 1966.

[1] Homer.Iliad,5.9, 5.27.

[2] Claudius Aelianus.Var. Hist.Xl, 2.

[3] White, Matthew (2012).Atrocities: the 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History.New York: W. W. Norton. p. 556.ISBN 978-0-393-34523-0.

[4] Rigg, A. G."Joseph of Exeter: Iliad".Centre for Medieval Studies.Retrieved1 November2013.

[5] Nurgül Kıvılcım Yavuz,Transmission and Adaptation of the Trojan Narrative in Frankish History between the Sixth and Tenth Centuries,PhD diss. (University of Leeds, 2015), pp. 182–187.

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