Dares
Frieze-Dennison Vergil
- A boxer, Verg. A. 5, 369; 375: acc. Dareta, id. ib. 5, 460; 463 al; Daren, id. ib. 5, 456.—
- II Phrygius, the assumed name of an impostor whose pretended contemporary account of the Trojan war was received as an authority in the 7th century A. D. Cf. Teuffel, Röm. Lit. 464; F. Meister, über Dares von Phr., Breslau, 1871.
➳ acc. habituel Dareta Virg. En. 5, 460, etc., mais Daren Virg. En. 5, 456.
(Δάρης), was, according to the Iliad (5.9), a priest of Hephaestus at Troy. Works Daretis Phrygii de Excidio Trojae Historia
There existed in antiquity an Iliad or an account of the destruction of Troy, which was believed to be more ancient than the Homeric poems, and in fact to be the work of Dares, the priest of Hephaestus. (Ptolem. Hepihaest. l; Eustath. ad Hom. Od. 11.521.) Both these writers state, on the authority of Antipater of Acanthus, that Dares advised Hector not to kill Patroclus, and Eustathius adds, that Dares, after deserting to the Greeks, was killed by Odysseus, which event must have taken place after the fall of Troy, since Dares could not otherwise have written an account of the destruction of the city. In the time of Aelian ( Ael. VH 11.2; comp. Isidor. Orig, 1.41) the Iliad of Dares, which he calls Φρυγία Ἰλιάς, was still known to exist; he too mentions the belief that it was more ancient than Homer, and Isidorus states that it was written on palm-leaves. But no part or fragment of this ancient Iliad has come down to us, and it is therefore not easy to form a definite opinion upon the question. It is, however, of some interest to us, on account of a Latin work on the destruction or Troy, which has been handed down to us, and pretends to be a Latin translation of the ancient work of Dares. It bears the title Daretis Phrygii de Excidio Trojae Historia. It is written in prose, consists of 44 chapters, and is preceded by a letter purporting to be addressed by Corn. Nepos to Sallustius Crispus. The writer states, that during his residence at Athens he there met with a MS. of the ancient Iliad of Dares, written by the author himself, and that on perusing it, he was so much delighted, that he forthwith translated it into Latin. This letter, however, is a manifest forgery. No ancient writer mentions such a work of Corn. Nepos, and the language of the treatise is full of barbarisms, such as no person of education at the time of Nepos could have been guilty of. The name of Corn. Nepos does not occur in connexion with this alleged translation previous to the 14th century. These circumstances have led some critics to believe, that the Latin work bearing the name of Dares is an abridgment of the Latin epic of Josephus Iscanus (Joseph of Exeter, who lived in the 12th century), and there are indeed several expressions in the two works which would seem to favour the opinion, that the author of the one borrowed from the other; but the differences and discrepancies in the statements of the two works are so great, that they alone are sufficient to overthrow the hypothesis. Dederich, the last editor, is inclined to think that the author of our work was a real Roman of the 5th, 6th, or 7th century. The work itself is evidently the production of a person of little education and of bad taste : it seems to consist of a number of extracts made from several writers, and put together without any judgment; there is scarcely anything in the work that is striking or novel. Editions
But, notwithstanding all this, the work was very popular in the 15th and 16th centuries, like everything else referring to the war of Troy. Hence several editions and translations were made of it. It was then and is still usually printed together with the work of Dictys Cretensis. The first edition appeared at Cologne, in 1470; the first in which care was bestowed upon the text, is that of J. Mercerus. (Paris, 1618, and Amsterdam, 1631, 12mo.) The subsequent editions give the text of Mercerus, such as those of Anne Dacier (Paris, 1680, and Amsterdam, 1702, 4to.), U. Obrecht (Strassb. 1691, 8vo.), and others. The best and most recent edition is that of A. Dederich (Bonn, 1837, 8vo.), who has appended it to his edition of Dictys, and premised an interesting dissertation upon Dares and the work bearing his name. [L.S]
(Δάρης). (1) A Trojan priest, mentioned by Homer (Il. v. 9). It is absurdly pretended, by some of the ancient writers, that he wrote an Iliad, or history of the Trojan War, in prose; and Aelian (Var. Hist. xi. 2) assures us that it still existed in his day, without telling us, however, whether he himself had read it or not. There can, of course, be no doubt that Aelian was deceived, and that the work which he took for the production of Dares was the composition of some sophist of a much later age. However this may be, the Iliad of which Aelian speaks no longer exists; but we have a Latin work remaining, written in prose, which was for some time regarded as a translation from the Greek original, and was ascribed to Cornelius Nepos, though abounding with absurdities and solecisms. It is entitled Historia Excidii Troiae, or De Excidio Troiae. It professes to be dedicated to the historian
This work, together with that of Dictys Cretensis (q. v.) forms the original source of a famous romance of chivalry, which met with extraordinary success during the Middle Ages, and in the centuries immediately subsequent to the invention of printing. These works of Dares and Dictys having fallen into the hands of a Sicilian named Guido delle Colonne, a native of Messina, and a celebrated lawyer and poet of the thirteenth century, he conceived the idea of giving them that romantic air which would harmonize with the spirit of his age, when chivalry had acquired its greatest lustre. He consequently interpolated the narratives of the pretended poets of Phrygia and Crete with various adventures, suited to the taste of the time, such as tournaments, challenges, and single combats. His work having met with considerable success, he composed, in Latin prose, a romance of the war of Troy, into which he also introduced the war of the Seven against Thebes and the expedition of the Argonauts. He confounds together history and mythology, Greek and Oriental manners; his heroes are acquainted with alchemy and astronomy, and come into conflict with dragons, griffins, and other fabulous monsters. His romance was translated into almost every European language, and excited a general enthusiasm. Hence the desire which at that time seized the great families of Europe of claiming descent from one of the heroes of Trojan story; and hence the eagerness, on the part of the monks, to compose genealogies consisting of Greek and Roman names which had some analogy with the names of the sovereign princes of the Middle Ages. This same work of Dares Phrygius was the source whence Conrad of Würzburg, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, derived the materials of the poem which he composed in like manner on the war of Troy.
The oldest MS. of the Historia de Excidio Troiae is one at Paris, of the ninth century, and other MSS. are those of St. Gall, Bern, Bamberg, and Vienna. The work is at least as early as Isidorus, who mentions it (Orig. i. 41). The best edition is that by Meister (Leipzig, 1873). See Meister, De Daretis Phryg., etc. (Breslau, 1871); Dunger's treatise in the Programme of the Vitzthum Gymnasium (Dresden, 1869); and Körting, Dictys und Dares (Halle, 1874). On the language, see the Index Latinitatis, in Meister's edition.
(2) One of the companions of Aeneas, celebrated as a pugilist, though conquered in the funeral games of Anchises by the aged Entellus (Verg. Aen. v. 369 foll.). This Dares, or a Trojan of the same name, was slain by Turnus in Italy (Aen. xii. 363).