The Trojan War, New Edition: The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian

by R.M. Frazer (Translation), Timothy Arner (Preface), Dictys Cretensis

Imagine accounts of the Trojan War from those who actually fought there, long before Homer wrote The Iliad. Dictys's A Journal of the Trojan War and Dares's The Fall of Troy: A History tell in gritty detail the bloody siege of the fabled, doomed city. Intricate politics and memorable personalities, rather than the quarreling, intervening gods of Homer's epic, dominate these tales.





Archaeological discovery and subsequent scholarship have established that both accounts were originally written in Greek, probably during the first century AD. Their reimagined, godless Trojan War tales became important sources on the subject during the Middle Ages, greatly influencing such legendary works as Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. This new edition of the first English-language publication, translated by R. M. Frazer, brings together both narratives.

Genres: History

210 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1185

Reviews

[John Cairns · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chaucer cites Dares in his poem Troilus and Criseyde. Dictys’ text was originally composed in Greek, as probably, was Dares’, in the first century AD. Dictys was probably a typically Cretan liar. He is not without humour. The Trojan break into the council and threaten they had better not find anyone opposing their will. Aeneas the people thought was without doubt a diplomat of the very worst sort. When the Thracians saw our men advancing they were terrified and abandoning everything fled to the walls for safety. It was really pathetic. The humour gives some credence to the pretence Dictys is telling the story from his own experience of the Trojan War. Moreover, the narrator has a pro-Greek bias: Achilles was forced from the field treacherously wounded. The mutilation of Patroclus was the first instance of such a shameful and inhuman act, a thing the Greeks had never practised before. Nor did they then though Achilles shortly would, dragging Hector’s body, excused by his lasting grief. It’s a not uninteresting historical fiction.

I’ve no idea what ‘fight with the cestus’ entails, maybe engirdling both contestants. Helen was the occasion of the war, not the cause, which was who would rule the world. In fighting the Amazons, they cut down who couldn’t reach the gates before they closed but ‘we abstained from touching the women because of their sex.’ How? Weren’t they all women? A half-alive Penthesilea was to be thrown into the river to drown or to the dogs, ‘for she had transgressed the bounds of nature and her sex.’ Misogyny is rife. Androgyny too: Achilles has Troilus’ throat cut out of annoyance with Priam. Aeneas refuses to fight because of Alexander’s sacrilege. Alexander was polished off by Philoctetes. Ulysses had Ajax killed. The fall of Troy itself is especially effective and worth the price.

Dares is humorously succinct: ‘they departed from Phrygia. And set out for Colchis. And stole the fleece. And returned to their homeland.’ He continues with the unconscious humour: ‘for three days Peleus entertained him hospitably, and on the fourth asked him why he had come.’ ‘When Cassandra saw Helen, she began to prophesy, repeating what she’d already said, until Priam ordered her carried away and locked up.’ She knew the future, like me. Only from Dares do you get this insight: after two years, during which the Greeks debated who should command them, the war was resumed.’ ‘Palamedes granted a truce of one year.’ The council was ‘in favour of the Greek petition, and thus they granted a truce of six months.’ He totes up over seven years of truces in the ten year war.

Achilles’ soul rankled because the Greeks made Palamedes commander-in-chief instead of himself. Achilles, still moody, refused to budge from his decision to stay out of battle.

There were fifth columnists within Troy, Aeneas for one.

According to Dares the no of Greeks who fell was 866.000 and of Trojans 676,000. A historian of the Hittites says ‘the most we can say is that our Anatolian evidence provides evidence for a conflict or series of conflicts in which Mycenaean Greeks may have played some rôle against a north-western Anatolian kingdom towards the end of the Late Bronze Age.’ No one used the name ‘Homer’ to refer to an individual until c 500 BC Xenophanes and Heracleitus created him.

[Richard Seltzer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two ancient hoaxes -- accounts of the Trojan War purportedly written by participants, but in fact written more than a thousand years later, and not very well written.

Tell-tale anomalous signs:
cavalry p. 88. There was no such thing as cavalry at the time of the Trojan War. Chariots. No way to control a horse in battle without bit and other paraphenalia.
money (talents of gold and silver) p. 109

The brief introduction was far more interesting than the texts (by Dictys Cretensis and Dares the Phrygian), pointing out the influence these works had in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

[Lulu]

Dictys of Crete journal of trojan war (early?) 1st CE

Dictys of Crete was a legendary companion of Idomeneus during the Trojan War, and the purported author of a diary of its events, that deployed some of the same materials worked up by Homer for the Iliad. The story of his journal, an amusing fiction addressed to a knowledgeable Alexandrian audience, came to be taken literally during Late Antiquity.