As acknowledged by the four editors in their introduction, the present volume represents the outcome of a conference held in Rome in 2016. The conference built on the current interest in two rather singular texts: the Ephemeris belli Troiani and the De excidio Troiae owe their specificity to the fact that the authors, Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius respectively, pretend to have been eye-witnesses to the Trojan war. The volume sets out to achieve two goals: mirror the new trends in studies dedicated to these texts, while making its own contribution to this specific field of research. Both these goals are certainly reached, as may also be seen in the volume's organisation.
The book is divided into four parts, each representing a different direction that can be explored when dealing with the two texts. In the first section, ‘Dall'originale greco alla ricezione bizantina’, the text of the two works is at the centre. Here the studies focus on the creative process that may have produced the works and attempt to define this constitutive moment. They either examine specific formal aspects of the transmitted works or analyse the content of the narratives. A. Ruta, in ‘I nuovi papiri greci di Ditti Cretese e la traduzione latina di Settimio: osservazioni su lingua, stile e “intenzione” letteraria’, discusses the Greek papyri on which parts of Dictys’ work were preserved and what the variants transmitted in these documents can tell us about the historical or cultural background in which the work was composed. In E. Gómez Peinado's contribution, ‘The Greek Ephemeris belli Troiani by Dictys Cretensis and its Latin and Byzantine testimonies’, the translation by Lucius Septimius is scrutinised and the practices of the translator studied, so that the importance of this intermediary witness between the first Greek version and the later reception is emphasised.
In the penultimate paper of this section, ‘Osservazioni sulle fonti e sulla cronologia di Darete Frigio’, G. Garbugino provides a stimulating study of Dares Phrygius, which shows, through analysis of the wording of the Latin text, that it is an independent work, although influenced by the literary project of his Greek predecessor. Finally, we turn once again to Dictys Cretensis in the fourth contribution, ‘Elements of internal cohesion in the Ephemeris belli Troiani: historiography, rhetoric and genealogy’, by M. Movellán Luis. Here the message of the work is studied, and the rhetorical means the author uses to convince the readers of his version of the Trojan war are highlighted.
Although this section focuses more on Dictys Cretensis, the rest of the volume maintains an intelligent distribution between studies on either of the two texts, which contributes to the success of the book. Moreover, all the contributions are evenly distributed between studies focusing on one of the two texts, seeing each of them as an individual literary production, and those dealing with both works together and analysing the phenomenon as a whole in response to other works that are either close in time or pursuing a similar goal.
To this latter topic, Section 2, ‘Testo e contesto’, is dedicated: it unites two studies focusing on the literary context in which the two works have to be placed. S. Bär, in ‘Diktys und Dares vor dem Hintergrund des zweitsophistischen Homerrevisionismus’, investigates how the two works contribute to a form of revisionism of Homer that developed within the Second Sophistic. V. Décloquement, in ‘Feintise ludique et non pas leurre. Lire Dictys de Crète à la lumière de la παιδεία’, uncovers the underlying code that authors and readers must have shared in order to understand the subtle allusions to Homeric questions that are found, for instance, in Dictys’ work.
Section 3, ‘Modelli, motivi, personaggi’, the longest section, deals with another facet of current research interests in these works. The studies approach the texts as an important intermediary stage in the long tradition of the commemoration of the Trojan war. The five chapters focus on traditional themes and/or protagonists from the Trojan legend and show how differently they were dealt with in the two narratives. In this effort, great attention is given to the love between Achilles and Polyxena, which also provides the link to the last section, as we shall see. The two contributions dedicated to this theme (G. Brescia, ‘La metamorfosi per amore dell'eroe in armis acerrimus. La fabula di Achille e Polissena in Darete Frigio’, and M. Lentano, ‘“Che con Amore al fine combatteo”. Achille e Polissena in Darete Frigio e Ditti Cretese’) highlight, each in its specific way, how this theme was treated in the two works and how each, according to a contemporary trend, advanced aims to degrade the heroic world of Homeric poetry to make it more fitting to a human level with all its flaws. Antenor (G. Scafoglio, ‘Antenore, il traditore’) and Neoptolemus (E. Langella, ‘Nuovi eroi nell'epica postomerica: il caso di Neottolemo’) are also analysed, and the contributions that the two works made to the complex history of reception and revalorisation of the two heroes are thematised. The section ends with another approach as V. Zanusso, in ‘Ditti di Creta e il dramma attico: il sacrificio di Ifigenia e la morte di Aiace’, focuses more specifically on Greek drama. Zanusso analyses how the Ephemeris belli Troiani revisits two mythological themes that were well known through the tragic adaptations made by Euripides and Sophocles. The focus is here on the figures of Iphigenia and Ajax and on how Dictys plays with the tradition for the pleasure of his reader.
The last section, ‘Fortuna medioevale e moderna’, looks at more recent times and deals with the two works as sources for later literary productions. T. Gärtner, in ‘Die Liebe Achills zu Polyxena in der mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Rezeption der Kriegstagebücher’, makes a good transition from antiquity to modern times and from Section 3 to Section 4, as he deals again with the theme of Achilles and Polyxena. By explaining how this theme was reworked in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance and in eighteenth-century drama, Gärtner underlines how the brevity and journal-like concision of the two ancient works paved the way for a whole range of innovative reworkings of the traditional material. The volume ends with V. Prosperi's paper, ‘Il Padiglione di Cassandra: miti troiani antichi e moderni nell'Orlando Furioso’, focusing more specifically on the fortune of the works during the Italian Renaissance. Taking as a case study the prestigious Este family from Ferrara, Prosperi reveals that in those days the Ephemeris belli Troiani and the De excidio Troiae were among the main sources, on the same level as for instance Virgil or Herodotus.
This collection provides a rich overview of the current research questions that the Ephemeris belli Troiani and the De excidio Troiae raise. At the same time, the papers exemplify what kind of results these different approaches may bring to our better understanding of these texts. However, there are two minor wishes that a reader who did not attend the conference may have: first, there could have been more links between the papers. This is highlighted as a positive outcome of the conference in the introduction, but does not come out as clearly as expected in the volume. Likewise, in some of the papers the introductory section does not outline with sufficient detail, at least for non-specialists, the wider research question to which the specific case study is related. Nonetheless, the volume accurately summarises the present state of research on these two fascinating works and effectively depicts the research environment in which the two works are studied. Finally, it is a refreshing and well-functioning mixture of contributions from early career researchers and senior scholars.
