Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Late Antique Accounts of the Trojan War: A Comparative Look at the Manuscript EvidenceThe story of Troy -its date, its location, the peoples involved, and its war with the Greeks -is certainly best known to modern generations through Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.Even though it is difficult to imagine Western literature or history without these two canonical works today, they did not circulate during the Latin Middle Ages, and it may even be argued that an anti-Homeric spirit dominated the European world especially during the late antique and early medieval periods.A number of other classical works in Latin that deal with the story of Troy, including Ovid's Metamorphoses, Vergil's Aeneid and the Ilias Latina, were in circulation of course, but it was three late antique accounts of the Trojan War that were exceptionally influential throughout the Middle Ages and beyond: the Ephemeridos belli Troiani attributed to Dictys of Crete, the De excidio Troiae historia attributed to Dares of Phrygia, and the anonymous Excidium Troie. 1 These three works, all of which are usually dated 1 For a more comprehensive analysis of the works and their manuscripts, see N. Kıvılcım Yavuz, 'Transmission and Adaptation of the Trojan Narrative in Frankish History between the Sixth and Tenth Centuries' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2015), available open access at <http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/12687>.Initially, the Ephemeridos belli Troiani and the De excidio Troiae historia were edited by Meister and published consecutively by Teubner in the second half of the nineteenth century: Dictys Cretensis.Ephemeridos belli Troiani.Libri sex, ed. by Ferdinand Meister, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana, Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1872, and Daretis Phrygii de excidio Troiae historia, ed. by Ferdinand Meister, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana, Leipzig: B. G. Teubner
Source: Pecia
Author: N. Kıvılcım Yavuz
Institution: University of Copenhagen
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2586746495