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The TROJAN WAR The TROJAN WAR The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete Indiana University Greek and Latin Classics and Dares the Phrygian TRANSLATED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY R. M. FRAZER, JR. Indiana University Press BLOOMINGTON & LONDON CONTENTS INTRODUCTION The Medieval Troy Story 3 The Anti-Homeric Tradition 5 Dictys 7 Dares 11 The Translation 15 A JOURNAL OF THE TROJAN WAR by Dictys of Crete Letter 19 Preface 20 Book One 23 Book Two 37 Book Three 70 Book Four 87 Book Five 103 Book Six 119 THE FALL OF TROY, A HISTORY by Dares the Phrygian [Letter] 133 Sections 1-44 133 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Copyright © 1966 by Indiana University Press BIBLIOGRAPHY 169 Library of Congress catalog card number: 65-19709 NOTES 170 Manufactured in the United States of America INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 180 v THE TROJAN WAR The Chronicles Adcnowledgments of Dictys of Crete The present volume brings together for the first time in En­ and Dares the Phrygian glish translation the accounts of Dictys and Dares about the Trojan War. These works deserve our careful attention as the principal sources of the medieval Troy story and as examples of the anti-Homeric literature of late antiquity. In the introduction I have briefly described the influence of our authors on later European literature, and have tried to show how our Latin texts depend on Greek originals. For the latter purpose I have found the scholarship of Nathaniel Edward Griffin especially rewarding for Dictys and that of Otmar Schissel von Fleschenberg for Dares. I have used the notes to comment on matters of form (how our Latin texts probably differ from their Greek originals), to point out difficulties and incon­ sistencies, and to cite some of the sources and parallel versions of the stories that Dictys and Dares tell. My grateful acknowledgment for kind advice and encourage­ ment goes first of all to Graydon W. Regenos. Many thanks are also due to Robert M. Lumiansky, Sanford G. Etheridge, Gardner B. Taplin, Ronald E. White, and Robert P. Sonkowsky, all of whom gave me their help in various ways. R.M.F. INTRODUCTION The Medieval Troy Story The works of Dictys and Dares are short prose narratives about the Trojan War. Though they were probably composed, in their original Greek forms, during the first century A.D., they claim to antedate Homer. Their authors are supposed to have actually fought at Troy and to have made first-hand reports of the War. · The longer and fuller work is that of Dictys which alone of the two describes how the Greeks returned to their homelands. Several writers of the Byzantine period based their accounts of the Trojan War on the original Dictys, but there is little trace­ able influence of Dares on later Greek literature. The reason for this is the fact that Dictys is written from the point of view of the Greeks, Dares from that of the Trojans.1 The Greek texts of both authors, with the exception of a small fragment of Dictys, have not survived. They were, however, during the early middle ages, translated, more or less completely, into Latin; and this is how we know them. The Latin Dictys and Dares exercised a major influence on the medieval Troy story. But now Dares was more popular than Dictys, for the Latin-speaking West had inherited a pro-Trojan bias from the Romans, who claimed descent from the Trojans. About 1160 A.D. Benoit de Sainte-Maure based his Le Roman de Troie upon our authors. His main source was Dares, but he also used Dictys, especially toward the end of his work where the former authority failed him. The most famous story contained in the Roman is that of 3 4 THE TROJAN WAR INTRODUCTION 5 Troilus and Briseida, which Benoit himself presumably created while in a temple at a yearly service. ( 2) Both, at first, have aloof on the basis of a few disconnected passages in Dares. Dares' con­ attitudes toward the women they see at the service. And (3) both, tributions to the Troilus romance can be summarized as follows:2 having returned to their homes, suffer the pangs of love and First, he describes the appearance of the main characters­ finally summon faithful friends to act as intermediaries. Although Troilus, Briseida, and Diomedes.3 Secondly, he relates that Benoit claims to be following only Dares here, he seems to have Troilus, in one of his fights, wounds Diomedes.4 And finally, he used Dictys too.13 reports that Calchas, the Trojan priest, meets Achilles at Delphi Boccaccio, supplemented by Benoit and probably by Guido, and joins the Greeks at the command of the oracle. s was the main source of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. 14 About Benoit's poem found many translators and imitators, and a third of the lines in Chaucer's poem are adaptations from the thus was largely responsible for spreading the accounts of Dictys Filostrato. 15 Nevertheless, the English work is much longer and and Dares throughout W estem Europe. The most influential of much more complex than its Italian model. Chaucer has trans­ Benoit's adapters was the thirteenth-century Sicilian judge Guido formed Boccaccio's characters into fuller, richer beings and has delle Colonne, who wrote his Historia Destructionis Troiae in touched the prevailing sadness of the story with his gentle humor. Latin prose. 6 Guido cites Dictys and Dares as his sources and Two other important English works which stand in the tra­ never so much as mentions Benoit. Nevertheless, the Historia has dition of the medieval Troy story are Robert Henryson's Testa­ been proved to be, for the most part, an abridging paraphrase of ment of Cresseid and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. Henry­ the Roman. 7 It offers a shortened and somewhat altered Troilus son's poem is a sequel to Chaucer's; it tells how Cresseid goes from and Briseida story. s bad to worse and ends her life as a beggar and leper. Shake­ In the Roman (and therefore in the Historia) the Troilus speare's play shows the influence of both Chaucer and Henryson; story must be pieced together from several different passages. but it was based primarily on William Caxton's Recuyell of the A unified version was first created by Boccaccio in his Il Filostrato Historyes of Troye, an English translation of a French translation ("The One Prostrated by Love"). Boccaccio's main source was of Guido.16 Benoit; he is probably indebted to Guido for only a few slight touches.9 The Filostrato expands the original version; it describes The Anti-Homeric Tradition how Troilo becomes enamored of Criseida (for thus the heroine is renamed) 10 and how he wins her love, and it adds the character Dictys and Dares frequently contradict Homer in spite of the of Pandaro.11 fact that he was obviously the ultimate source of much of what The description of Troilo's falling in love and the addition they report. They promise to give more accurate accounts than of the go-between were undoubtedly influenced by another story his. in the Roman, which told how Achilles fell under the spell of Both writers actually claim, as we. know, to have lived at Polyxena. Some of the striking similarities between this Troilo the time of the Trojan War, whereas Homer lived much later. The episode as told by Boccaccio and that of Achilles as told by one, designating himself Dictys (otherwise unknown), states that Benoit are as follows: 12 (1) Both men are stricken with love he is a follower of Idomeneus, the leader of the Cretans; the other 6 THE TROJAN WAR INTRODUCTION. 7 calls himself Dares the Phrygian (perhaps to be identified with Achilles becomes no better than Paris. In the traditional account the priest of Vulcan first mentioned in Iliad 5 .9), a follower of the an heroic Achilles meets his end while fiercely attacking the city Trojan Antenor. Thus, if we can believe our authors (who often of Troy.18 In Dictys and Dares an enamored Achilles is ambushed disagree with each other), they are primary sources for the events and killed in the temple of the Thymbraean Apollo, a neutral they describe, and Homer, wherever he fails to agree with them, zone, where he has come to bargain with the enemy for Polyxena's is wrong. The pro-Trojan Dares tends to be more anti-Homeric hand in marriage.19 than Dictys, perhaps because of the belief (false) that Homer had The middle ages were even more anti-Homeric than later favored the Greeks. antiquity. In Western Europe, the knowledge of Greek, and there­ Dictys and Dares were influenced by two criticisms which fore of Homer, died out. Medieval writers, as we have seen, based had been brought against Homer from very early times. First, their accounts on Dictys and Dares; furthering the anti-Homeric Homer was criticized for picturing the gods as thieves and adul­ tendencies they found in these sources, they created the romance terers and for showing them doing battle with mortals. Our of Troilus and Cressida.20 authors, on the other hand, present the gods as without human Belief in the truth of Dictys and Dares survived the Revival foibles and wholly worthy of worship. Furthermore, they use none of Learning. Not until the beginning of the eighteenth century did of the divine machinery typical of epic poetry, and they tend to Jacob Perizonius, once for all, prove that our authors were describe supernatural occurrences in rationalistic terms. Some­ forgers.21 times Dictys openly flouts the traditional account by offering the reader a choice between rational and supernatural explanations.17 Secondly, Homer was accused of playing favorites with cer­ Dictys tain heroes.
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