The First Pagan Historian: The Fortunes of a Fraud from Antiquity to the Enlightenment 0190492309, 9780190492304

Citation preview

i

The First Pagan Historian

ii

iii

The First Pagan Historian The Fortunes of a Fraud from Antiquity to the Enlightenment

z FREDERIC CLARK

1

iv

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Frederic Clark 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Clark, Frederic, 1985– author. Title: The first pagan historian : the fortunes of a fraud from antiquity to the Enlightenment / Frederic Clark. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020015575 (print) | LCCN 2020015576 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190492304 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197540725 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Dares, Phrygius. | Daretis Phrygii de excidio Troiae historia. | Rome—Historiography. | Latin philology, Medieval and modern. | Latin literature, Medieval and modern—History and criticism. Classification: LCC PA8310. D353 C535 2020 (print) | LCC PA8310. D353 (ebook) | DDC 873/.03—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015575 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015576 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

v

Contents

List of Illustrations/​Credits

vii

Citations and Conventions

ix

Introduction: Dares Phrygius, First Pagan Historian

1

1. Dares Forged: Histories Real and Imagined in the Classical and Late Antique Worlds

43

2. Dares Compiled: From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

77

3. Dares Translated: Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

117

4. Dares Attacked: Early Modern Criticism and the Formation of an Ancient Canon

169

5. Dares Printed and Philologized: The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

211

6. Dares Survives: Webs of Misattribution and the Persistence of the Distant Past

251

Conclusion—The Perennial Quarrel: Dares between Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

305

Acknowledgments

337

Index

343

vi

vi

List of Illustrations/​Credits

I.1 Agamemnon in an early printed edition of Dares. Houghton Library, Harvard University. 2.1 The beginning of Dares in what is likely the oldest extant manuscript of the text. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France. 2.2 William of Malmesbury’s copy of Dares. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. 3.1 An early manuscript of Joseph of Exeter. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. 4.1 John Dee’s annotations in his copy of Dares. © Royal College of Physicians. 4.2 Giambattista Della Porta’s discussion of Helen of Troy. The Wellcome Library. 5.1 Jean Bodin’s mention of Dares and Dictys. Bibliothèque nationale de France. 6.1 The title page of Albanus Torinus’ edition of Joseph of Exeter. Folger Shakespeare Library. 6.2 A reader corrects a copy of Joseph of Exeter. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. 6.3 The title page of John More’s edition of Joseph of Exeter. The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. 7.1 Thomas Jefferson’s note in his copy of Thomas Blackwell. Jefferson Collection, Library of Congress.

14 90 97 144 206 208 220 261 262 302 332

vi

ix

Citations and Conventions

For citations of ancient texts, I  have followed the abbreviations found in the 4th edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary. For works without OCD abbreviations—​ especially medieval and early modern Latin works—​ I have included full editorial information and pagination for any modern editions cited. For transcriptions of material in medieval manuscripts and early modern printed editions, I have left the text as close to the original as possible (e.g., reproducing u or v, i or j as written, and leaving ae as e if rendered thus), although I have expanded all scribal abbreviations. I have also standardized the capitalization of proper names to accord with modern conventions, and have in some cases modernized punctuation to facilitate clearer reading.

x

1

Introduction Dares Phrygius, First Pagan Historian “While curiously pursuing many studies at Athens, I found the history of Dares Phrygius, written in his own hand as the title indicates . . .” —​P seudo-​C ornelius Nepos to Pseudo-​S allust

The history of modern encounters with the ancient—​and thus the birth of both classical and historical studies in the form we know those disciplines today—​ has often been narrated as a heroic quest for truth and authenticity. Granted, the histories of all disciplines are histories of defining and debating forms of truth. But such issues have proven especially salient—​and especially thorny—​when studying antiquity, whether Greco-​Roman or otherwise. After all, “antiquity” is an object of analysis whose very name signals its alien status: a period of time defined by an almost insurmountable remoteness from its latter-​day interpreters. Both the truth about antiquity, and what the ancients considered true, seem very distant, and perhaps very different, from the present. The modern study of antiquity has often traced its origins to the humanist scholars of early modern Europe. And it is hardly insignificant that “early modernity” is itself a rather oxymoronic name for a period: the product of twentieth-​ century attempts to define an epoch imagined as close—​but not identical—​to modernity. These humanists, who played a leading role in European letters from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, constantly proclaimed their desire to return ad fontes, “to the sources.” We should not reflexively dismiss such sentiments as hyperbole. In many cases, through both dogged and creative feats of historical and philological ingenuity, they did get back to these sources. In fact, the very fact that we can even use such ancient texts as sources reflects the achievements of early modern humanistic scholarship. Modern students of antiquity cannot help but stand upon their shoulders. While this book will trace both the triumphs and the blunders of scholars past, humanists included, and will show that certain kinds of errors persisted longer than we might suppose, it is not our The First Pagan Historian. Frederic Clark, Oxford University Press (2020). © Frederic Clark. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190492304.001.0001.

2

2

In t roduct ion

task to pass judgment upon their conclusions. Rather, we must recover how our own approaches to debates over truth and authenticity are products of a long history of scholarly engagement with—​and sometimes misunderstanding of—​the ancient past. According to many early modern humanists, the cultural products of the Greco-​Roman past had been obscured by latter encrustations of text that rendered its authentic originals lost or inaccessible. They dismissed these extra layers as ill-​conceived shortcuts, and so they inveighed against commentaries, glosses, epitomes, abridgements, and the like. For instance, they argued that Livy had been nearly lost to time when it became easier to read his epitomizer Florus. Likewise, they bemoaned that the original Aristotle had been swallowed up, engulfed, and adulterated by the glosses of scholastic theologians, rendered in a Latin they dismissed as barbarous. These might strike us as dull or pedantic targets of invective—​the product of academic turf wars whose causes seem remote today. But many of these same scholars also attacked other types of shortcuts to antiquity, which may strike us—​provided we have a taste for skullduggery and detective-​work—​as the very opposite of dull. These are what we now refer to under the umbrella term of forgeries, although that term has been applied to many forms of falsehood whose status as “forgery” is uncertain. Scholars have used the term to describe frauds, fakes, spuria, or other texts that ended up deceiving their readers and receivers, whether or not their original authors intended said deceit. No age has a monopoly on the production, or the acceptance, of such forged texts; nor have we escaped their dangers in the present moment. Such continuities may seem either comforting or sobering. But either way, we are in crowded company: we are heirs to a long history of deceiving and being deceived. Textual deceptions of this nature could—​and still can—​take many forms. But one of the most frequent of ruses was the false claim that a text was far older than it really was. The easiest shortcut to antiquity was simply to fake antiquity. If a text did not exist, or existed no longer, one had simply to invent it. This book is the history of one such invention—​a Latin text titled De excidio Troiae historia or the History of the Destruction of Troy. It was supposedly written by a certain Dares, a native of Phrygia. This Dares Phrygius claimed to have been an eyewitness to the Trojan War. Since there were no firsthand records of that legendary conflict between Greeks and Trojans—​a remote event of contested veracity that stood uneasily between myth and history, fact and fiction—​Dares’ little book filled what seemed a gaping hole in the historical record. We still do not know who the actual author behind the mask of “Dares” was. And the intentions of this actual author still elude us. Just how literally or earnestly did “Dares” seek to deceive? Did he lie, full stop? Or did he lie with a wink, with his tongue in his cheek? Even if they sometimes disagreed on these details, beginning in the Renaissance the

3

Introduction

3

critics who attacked the Destruction of Troy agreed that Dares lacked the proper credentials to command belief. They dismissed his text as one of the many layers of falsehood and corruption that separated true antiquity from their own world. For them, the study of antiquity ipso facto meant peeling back these layers and recovering the really real. Their attacks on texts like Dares’ Destruction of Troy show us that the links between perceptions of antiquity and notions of authenticity possessed a complex and tangled history. Investigating these links is key to understanding everything from the development of criticism, classicism, and canon formation to debates over the very nature of historical truth. For many of these critics, the downfall of Dares was part and parcel of a heroic narrative of reclaiming authenticity. Yet there was a far more somber flipside to this tale, and it is just as important to the history of forgery and criticism alike. This was a tragic narrative of antiquity as a site of irreversible loss. As humanist scholars recovered the fragments of ancient sculptures, coins, and inscriptions, they became painfully aware of the fact that these physical traces of antiquity possessed few analogs in the realm of ancient books. Here they pushed up against the natural limitations that temporal distance had imposed upon the survival of ancient sources. Aside from papyrological finds and some surviving late antique codices (copies of Virgil like the so-​called Vergilius Vaticanus and Vergilius Romanus, for example), the earliest remaining physical copies of the vast majority of ancient texts were medieval exemplars, produced centuries—​if not more than a millennium—​after their original authors had lived. And these texts were the lucky ones. Humanist scholars also knew that a multitude of ancient books had not survived what they sometimes plaintively referred to as iniuria temporum or the “injury of times.” Their awareness of loss helped fuel their vitriolic denunciation of forgeries and other such shortcuts to antiquity. Yet ironically, loss itself was also one of the factors that encouraged the production of forgeries in the first place. Heroic recoveries of hitherto lost texts have always been darkened by the specter of textual loss. Hard-​nosed scholarship was not the only response to said loss. On the contrary, many indulged remarkable flights of fancy to surmount such difficulties and fill in antiquity’s inevitable lacunae. The Destruction of Troy presented Dares himself as one such heroically recovered object. This move—​of faking not only a text’s contents, but also its finding—​was integral to forgery’s logic. The ironies inherent in these fictive accounts of lost books found again remain with us today, not least in the multiple connotations of the Latin term inventio. Tales like Dares’ were not only tales of invention in our sense of fabrication—​ the opposite of antiquity as authentic—​but they also quite literally reflected the original sense of inventio as an act of discovery or “finding.” To find and to fabricate were conveniently elided, yet each presupposed a fundamentally similar

4

4

In t roduct ion

approach to the distant past. Whether the books in question were real or forged, their “invention” promised to bring a lost and distant antiquity back to life again. The history of forgery is tragicomic, and Dares’ history is no exception. It reveals that criticism—​that art of interpretation often hailed as one of the highest achievements of human rationality—​has never strayed far from error. The human faculties that stimulated the criticism of antiquity not only stimulated the production of forgeries as well, but also sustained them—​and hence false visions of that same antiquity—​long after such forgeries were first fabricated. But we should not study forgeries merely for defensive purposes: they are far more than a means of inoculating ourselves against future errors. Instead, forgeries afford us a unique opportunity to comprehend all the rich complexity—​and sometimes the instability—​inherent in the concept of antiquity itself. Forgeries show us that antiquity has always been a moving chronological target—​by definition, after all, it is a relative measure of time. Anxieties about authenticity and truth have inhered in every attempt to define it, from the Greco-​Roman world itself, to the Middle Ages, to early modern Europe, to today. These anxieties still shape our own approaches to the distant past, whether or not we choose to label such pasts “ancient.” They were present already in the Greco-​Roman world, lurking in assessments of the past qua past in sources ranging from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus, Livy, and Varro, to name just a few of many.1 These debates continued throughout the Middle Ages and early modernity, and they survived (albeit expressed in very different idioms) in disputes over historical truth and method from the Enlightenment onward. On the one hand, the more ancient something was, the more authoritative it was, and hence the truer it was. Yet on the other hand, something ancient, by virtue of its very status as antiquity, seemed incapable of yielding certain truth, especially as it grew ever more distant from the present. Antiquity was simultaneously a criterion for affirming and for suspecting a text’s veracity. Dares and his Destruction of Troy proved central to this paradox, from late antiquity to the eighteenth century. In this sense, this book is also a history of criticism, and an account of the many paradoxes that criticism could engender, especially when antiquity was its object. It argues that the persistence of forgery ought to caution us against those triumphalist narratives that critics—​whether early modern humanists or their equivalents today—​tell about themselves. However, though caution may be necessary, it is not sufficient: it is all too easy to debunk a triumphalist narrative, but far more salutary to understand what we can learn from such debunking.

1. For Livy, see Chapter 1, 51–52; for Varro, see Chapter 4, 189–​90; for Diodorus, see Chapter 5, 229–30.

5

Introduction

5

We do not mean merely to point out that forgery proves criticism never enjoyed complete “success.” When it comes to criticism, this is not just a study of ends, but also of means. At many points in Dares’ afterlife, both his champions and critics framed their arguments in moralizing language that morphed easily into personal polemic. Either the Phrygian was true, and rival accounts of Troy were pernicious falsehoods that would corrupt their readers, or he was false, and thus his ignorance proved the intellectual benightedness of those daft enough to fall for him. What might the presence of moralizing polemic tell us about criticism, or scholarship writ large for that matter? We might suppose that criticism requires, or at least idealizes, a dispassionate objectivity on the part of the critic—​a coolly clinical disposition, we might say. Yet as Carlo Ginzburg has shown in his study of Lorenzo Valla’s debunking of the Donation of Constantine, the long history of rhetoric sometimes suggests otherwise.2 Valla launched an ad hominem attack against the forger of the Donation that required inventing an identity for him. And as Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison have shown in their wide-​ranging study Objectivity, objectivity itself is far from some timeless ideal but is rather a particular “epistemic virtue” with a particular history.3 More generally, and as the afterlife of Dares confirms, moral rhetoric is perhaps constitutive of the very operation of criticism; it remains present in the polysemous nature of the word critical in its ordinary usage today. The term can simultaneously connote an absence or an excess of personal animus. This study suggests that one reason for this is the inherently comparative nature of criticism itself (and oftentimes forgery as well, for that matter). Criticism is premised upon discrimination—​between the authentic and the fake, a good versus bad reading, a sound versus unsound interpretation, etc. And discrimination often implies connoisseurship: those who discriminate profess to “know it when they see it,” and their claims of self-​evidence easily lend themselves to circular reasoning. Indeed, it may surprise us just how frequently the critics of Dares examined in this book inverted the maxim that teachers of composition always impart to their students: when “proving” Dares false, they decided to tell, but not to show. Critics-​as-​connoisseurs also create what we might call in-​groups: those who “get it” seek to distinguish themselves from those who do not. They do not just

2. Carlo Ginzburg, “Lorenzo Valla on the ‘Donation of Constantine,’” in History, Rhetoric, and Proof (Hanover, 1999), 54–​70. On Valla, see Chapter 4, 174–​75. 3. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York, 2007). As they put it at p. 17, “[t]‌o be objective is to aspire to knowledge that bears no trace of the knower—​knowledge unmarked by prejudice or skill, fantasy or judgment, wishing or striving. Objectivity is blind sight, seeing without inference, interpretation, or intelligence.” Many of Dares’ critics aspired to the exact opposite.

6

6

In t roduct ion

discriminate between real and fake texts or objects, but they also discriminate between those who do and do not succeed at noticing the difference between the two. Yet ironically, as the afterlife of Dares attests, many critics of forged texts laced their debunkings with the very invective that forgers themselves, and their champions, used to defend the truth claims of their falsehoods. Genealogies of the history of criticism must also take this history of invective seriously, even if the lack of scholarly comity it reveals is not the most comforting tale. Comforting or not, the polemics of forgers and critics alike offer important insights into the history of scholarship and the sociology of knowledge. But if works of forged antiquity enjoyed such ubiquity, why did Dares play an outsized role in these debates? The answer is that the Destruction of Troy was not just any forged ancient history. Instead, for much of its afterlife, it was considered one of the first and oldest works of history ever to be written. This book takes its title from an assertion of the seventh-​century encyclopedist Isidore of Seville, with whom Chapter  1 will begin:  Isidore claimed that Dares Phrygius had been the first of the pagans to write history, just as Moses, by composing the Book of Genesis, had been the first “among us” to write sacred history.4 In order to understand how the ancient pagans wrote history—​and how they conceived of the truth of their own antiquity—​one had to read Dares. If one believed the Phrygian, he constituted the perfect source—​a faithfully mimetic record of antiquity itself, and proof of when and how the ancients had invented historiography. Yet if one attacked him as a forger, as many humanist scholars would later do, the brazenness of his claim to temporal priority made him all the more worthy of censure and contempt. This is why so many debates about him were conducted in ethically charged language. Forgery—​and the deceit it seemed to require—​was personal. Nor was Dares just any first. Instead, he was deemed the first of the pagans to write history, and he had written about what many considered the first properly “historical” event of pagan history, the Trojan War.5 This was not just a specification, but also a qualification. It is significant that affirmations of Dares’ status as the first pagan historian—​and later, debunkings of that same status—​were voiced by Christians, even if their versions of Christianity differed profoundly from one another, and sometimes made them dire religious enemies. Opinions on Dares hardly broke down along clear confessional lines. Some Catholics, Protestants, and heterodox thinkers believed in Dares, and some Catholics, Protestants, and

4. Isidore and his characterization of Dares are discussed in detail in Chapter 1, 43–​46. 5.  On the Trojan War’s status as one of the first “historical” events of pagan antiquity, see Chapter 1, 53–54 and Chapter 5, 226–​27.

7

Introduction

7

heterodox thinkers rejected him. Unlike a spurious text such as the Donation of Constantine, for instance, whose claims regarding papal power meant that many Catholics defended it and many Protestants attacked it, Dares furnished no clear confessional imperatives for defending or rejecting him. Nevertheless, the history of Dares deserves a chapter, or at least an extended footnote, in the history of Christianity. For it sheds new light on the history of a parallelism, and a contrast that Dares’ readers could not help but make explicit: that between the “pagan” past on the one hand and the biblical, Judeo-​Christian past on the other. In other words, Dares proved integral to how Christianity created the category of paganism—​and how it used this category as a foil to define itself, from late antiquity to early modernity.6 As we will see at many points throughout this book, meditations on the nature of paganism stimulated complex debates about the nature of truth and falsehood writ large. There is a fitting irony to this:  while we have no way of knowing for sure, the likely date of the Destruction of Troy’s composition suggests that whoever actually wrote this supposed Ur-​text of pagan antiquity may very well have been a Christian in some sense of the term.7 Statements such as the previous sentence require a word about the narrative conventions employed here. In some cases this book will invoke the “real” or “actual” author of the Destruction of Troy. But in many other cases it will prove impossible to avoid use of the briefer alternative “Dares”—​even when what we mean, to be painstakingly precise, is something like “he who purported to be Dares.” Doing so is necessary for purposes of narrative economy, but this usage is also more than just a matter of convenience. For many of the people we will examine in this book, the author of the Destruction of Troy simply was Dares, without any further qualification. Who he purported to be was identical with who he was. And because he purported to be a direct eyewitness observer of the phenomena he recorded, his word and his identity were taken as truth, sometimes in axiomatic fashion. Therefore, whether we speak simply of Dares or rather some “real” author lurking behind the pseudonym, we must acknowledge that while both are equally problematic constructions, they are also equally faithful representations of vastly different worldviews. In this sense we too have had to forge. We have

6.  This in itself is a vast topic. For wide-​ranging explorations of Christian constructions of paganism, see for instance, Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford, 2011); Anthony Ossa-​Richardson, The Devil’s Tabernacle:  The Pagan Oracles in Early Modern Thought (Princeton, 2013); Christopher P. Jones, Between Pagan and Christian (Cambridge, MA, 2014); and John Marenbon, Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz (Princeton, 2015). 7. Debates over the date and circumstances of the text’s composition are discussed in further detail in Chapter 1, 54–​55.

8

8

In t roduct ion

had to create an identity for Dares—​a biographical fiction, perhaps—​in order to make his reception legible. If Dares presents such difficulties, so does the term forgery itself. It has become the default term to describe spurious or otherwise false texts, and in some cases such texts were indisputably forged, for manifestly deceitful purposes. Often in these cases the political or economic benefits of such forging are clear. Yet in other cases, including that of Dares, the forger’s motivations prove inscrutable. The term forgery is hardly a one-​size-​fits-​all label, and modern scholarship employs a range of terms to describe texts that are less than wholly genuine: for instance, spuria, apocrypha, and pseudepigrapha are also common labels whose frequency of use differs across fields.8 Sometimes we will find Dares’ critics using terms closely related to forgery to describe the Destruction of Troy. One early modern scholar charged the author of the text with being a falsarius or “forger”; another deemed him an “impostor.” But others who rejected the text did not describe its author in this way. They dismissed the Destruction of Troy as a kind of fiction. They described it as a fable (fabula) or figment (figmentum), even of an extremely foolish or inept sort, but they were silent concerning its author’s motivations, and whether they were duplicitous. Even when we refer to the Destruction of Troy as a “forged text,” we must be mindful of the fact that, in the end, we cannot ascertain whether its author consciously intended to deceive. Granted, things like authorial intent present a Pandora’s box of hermeneutic difficulties even when it comes to manifestly genuine or authentic texts—​i.e., those whose authors actually were who they said they were. Such problems are only multiplied when it comes to forgeries. Still, even when we use the term (and we will do so many times throughout this book), we need not accept all of its pejorative connotations. Nor should we suppose that there is always a clear line between genuine and forged works, and that only the former are worth reading. In the end, we cannot definitively answer the question as to whether the Destruction of Troy merits the designation of forgery in any abstract, categorical sense. Perhaps historical fiction, or even parody, is a better label. Perhaps, as it all too common in literary history, the text’s immediate readers took it one way, and later readers took it another. Yet even if we cannot answer it, we can show that this question had a history. As argued throughout this book, this history concerns the very relationship between antiquity and truth: how a millennium of scholars, readers, and other interpreters used evolving conceptions of the former

8. On the use of such categories in biblical scholarship, see Bruce Metzger, “Literary Forgeries and Canonical Pseudepigrapha,” Journal of Biblical Literature 91 (1972):  3–​24, and Bart D. Ehrman, Forgery and Counter-​Forgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (Oxford, 2013).

9

Introduction

9

to define the nature and parameters of the latter. In telling this history we must navigate between the Scylla of hypercriticism and the Charybdis of facile relativism.9 Showing that something like criticism had a history—​and that criticism produced vastly different judgments about historical truth and textual authenticity at different times and in different places—​does not mean denying the normative validity of its techniques. Nor should highlighting the vast gray area between the genuine and the forged imply that other cases are not more black and white. Studies of forgery have proliferated in recent years, and now we can speak of something like “forgery studies” as a distinctive enterprise that cuts across fields and disciplines.10 In the realm closest to the world of Dares himself—​or rather the real author behind Dares—​recent studies of fakery, forgery, and plagiarism by Scott McGill and Irene Peirano have shed new light on Latin literature, and how it defined notions of authorship, canonicity, and intellectual property.11 In biblical studies, Bart Erhman has shown just how vital forgeries were to the polemical battles of early Christianity, especially those over the New Testament canon.12 And classicists like Christopher Jones have also situated twenty-​first-​century controversies—​such as the unmasking of the so-​called “Jesus’ Wife” papyrus as a hoax—​within a longue durée history of forgery.13 Scholars of antiquity have 9. An illuminating example of this approach is offered in Daston and Galison, Objectivity. For meditations on the nature of criticism, especially in the modern cultural sciences, see Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Facts to Matters of Concern,” Critical Inquiry 30 (2004): 225–​48. 10.  A  foundational study on forgery in antiquity remains that of Wolfgang Speyer, Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum:  Ein Versuch ihrer Deutung (Munich, 1971). On the place of forgery in the Middle Ages, see for example the essays collected in Fälschungen im Mittelalter: Internationaler Kongress der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München, September 16–​19, 1986, ed. Detlev Jasper (Hanover, 1988); Giles Constable, “Forgery and Plagiarism in the Middle Ages,” Archiv für Diplomatik 29 (1983): 1–​41; and Alfred Hiatt, The Making of Medieval Forgeries:  False Documents in Fifteenth-​Century England (London, 2004). Notions of forgery in Renaissance art history are explored in Christopher S. Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art (Chicago, 2008). Examples of wide-​ranging forgery studies that cut across periods are found in Ian Haywood, Faking It: Art and the Politics of Forgery (New York, 1987), and the Bibliotheca Fictiva collection at Johns Hopkins University. See Fakes, Lies, and Forgeries:  Rare Books and Manuscripts from the Arthur and Janet Freeman Bibliotheca Fictiva Collection, ed. Earle A. Havens and Walter Stephens (Baltimore, 2014), and Arthur Freeman, Bibliotheca Fictiva: A Collection of Books and Manuscripts Relating to Literary Forgery 400 BC–​AD 2000 (London, 2014). 11.  Scott McGill, Plagiarism in Latin Literature (Cambridge, 2012), and Irene Peirano, The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake: Latin Pseudepigrapha in Context (Cambridge, 2012). 12. See Ehrman, Forgery and Counter-​Forgery. 13.  Christopher P. Jones, “A ‘Syntax’ of Forgery,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 160 (2016): 26–​36, and Christopher P. Jones, “The ‘Jesus’ Wife’ Papyrus in the History of Forgery,” New Testament Studies 61 (2015): 368–​78.

10

10

In t roduct ion

shown that, across geographies and religious traditions, the ancient world not only produced a diverse array of texts that were in some way false, but also sophisticated ways of categorizing and evaluating them.14 These studies have drawn upon important developments that, in the final decades of the last century, have changed our approaches to the nature and value of forgery. Perhaps no work of this period made a more programmatic case for why the history of forgery must matter to the practice of the history of scholarship than Anthony Grafton’s 1990 Forgers and Critics.15 Grafton explored how forgery and criticism have always existed in a dialectical relationship, whether in the ancient Mediterranean or the twentieth century. No single period—​whether ancient or modern—​has had a monopoly on one or the other. In arguing for the universality of such phenomena, Grafton challenged the old triumphalist tale about early modern humanism—​particularly the claim that, by going ad fontes, humanist scholars recovered a true understanding of antiquity, which once and for all banished forgeries and falsehoods from the canon. He summed up this appealing—​though oversimplified—​narrative of humanist heroism through a memorable analogy: The image conjured up [by this narrative] is of a train in which Greeks and Latins, spurious and genuine authorities sit side by side until they reach a stop marked “Renaissance.” Then grim-​faced humanists climb aboard, check tickets, and expel fakes in hordes through doors and windows alike. Their revised destination, of course, is Oblivion—​the wrecking-​yard to which History and Humanism consign all fakes. Only humanists and genuine classics will remain on board to wind up as part of the canon.16

14.  See Glen Bowersock’s Sather Lectures, published as Fiction as History:  Nero to Julian (Berkeley, 1994). For work from the last several years, see Fakes and Forgers of Classical Literature: Ergo decipiatur!, ed. Javier Martínez (Leiden, 2014), and Carolyn Higbie, Collectors, Scholars, and Forgers in the Ancient World: Object Lessons (Oxford, 2017). 15.  Anthony Grafton, Forgers and Critics:  Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton, 1990). A second edition appeared in 2019. 16. Grafton, Forgers and Critics, 102–​3. More recent studies of early modern forgery and scholarly criticism that build upon Grafton’s work include Ingrid Rowland, The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance Forgery (Chicago, 2004); Kristine Haugen, Richard Bentley:  Poetry and Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA, 2011); Katrina B. Olds, Forging the Past: Invented Histories in Counter-​Reformation Spain (New Haven, 2015); and Paula Findlen, “Inventing the Middle Ages:  An Early Modern Forgery Hiding in Plain Sight,” in For the Sake of Learning, Vol. II: Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton, ed. Ann Blair and Anja-​Silvia Goeing (Leiden, 2016), 871–​96. See also the illuminating review article on Olds’ book by Ines G. Županov, “Forgery and the Specter of Philology,” History and Theory 56 (2017): 146–​59.

1

Introduction

11

Grafton and others showed that, far from securing a definitive triumph in the battle between forgery and criticism, truth and falsehood, the humanists of the Renaissance did not successfully expel all fakes from the train. As we will see, the ancient canon in early modernity remained a motley assortment of genuine and spurious works. Some sneaked back on the train at the next stop after the humanists had kicked them off. And sometimes, as Grafton and others have shown in the case of Annius of Viterbo’s forged Antiquities (whose many links to Dares we will detail in Chapter 4), humanists even allowed new fakes to board with impunity. Worse still, some of them even allowed Annius—​whose forgeries offered systematic rules for judging the credibility of texts—​to check tickets! Many humanists also allowed Dares Phrygius to remain on the train, and they employed him as a ticket checker as well, for much longer than we might be comfortable supposing. If early modernity had trouble distinguishing between the genuine and the spurious, more recent times have not necessarily achieved any greater clarity on such matters. Those who have attempted to theorize forgery have come to recognize the methodological limits of the task. For defining and identifying forgery depends upon satisfactorily defining its antitheses—​categories like authenticity, originality, or authorship—​and definitions of these categories often prove elusive. Thirty years ago, Umberto Eco drew upon his work in semiotics to offer a taxonomy of different types of forgery and different ways to reveal them.17 As Eco pointed out, these all supposed some imperfection on the part of the forger; one could also imagine a “perfect forgery,” which “defies any given philological criterion” for unmasking it as such.18 This exposed a circularity of argument, which we will encounter numerous times throughout this book. As Eco put it, “the current notion of fake presupposes a ‘true’ original with which the fake should be compared. But we have seen that every criterion for ascertaining whether something is the fake of an original coincides with the criteria for ascertaining whether the original is authentic.”19 In Eco’s conclusion, forgeries offered a cautionary illustration of criticism’s own logical poverty: they revealed “how much such concepts as Truth and Falsity, Authentic and Fake, Identity and Difference circularly define each other.”20

17. Umberto Eco, “Fakes and Forgeries,” in The Limits of Interpretation (Bloomington, 1990), 174–​202. See also Carlo Ginzburg, “Checking the Evidence: The Judge and the Historian,” Critical Inquiry 18 (1991): 79–​92. 18. Eco, “Fakes and Forgeries,” 197. 19. Eco, “Fakes and Forgeries,” 199. 20. Eco, “Fakes and Forgeries,” 201.

12

12

In t roduct ion

If authenticity has proven to be a difficult concept, so too has authorship. We cannot define what makes a forger without some agreement over what makes an author. For instance, if we call “Dares” a forger because we maintain that of course no real historical Trojan jotted down eyewitness missives from Troy, would he become a proper author if and only if we could prove that such a historical personage did in fact exist? This brings us back to the problem raised previously: by what name should we call that unknown person who wrote the Destruction of Troy? Before we wade into these waters, we must recognize just how much ancient, medieval, or even early modern notions of authorship differed not only from our own, but also from each other. We will encounter numerous illustrations of these differences throughout this book, including some instances in which one period’s misunderstandings of another’s view of authorship stymied the task of criticism. The question of authorship is now most famous for its role in twentieth-​ century literary theory, immortalized in essays like Roland Barthes’ “Death of the Author” and Michel Foucault’s “What Is an Author?” Yet ancient exegetes and medieval commentators debated this question long before it became central to the critiques of poststructuralism and postmodernity. Some ancient and medieval theorists considered an author’s intentio or “intention” when reading a work, even a patently fictional one, while others treated such intent as irrelevant and allegorized the work with impunity. This problem became even more pronounced when the writer of a given work disavowed his very status as its “author” or auctor: as we will see in Chapter 3, some medieval poets wrote elaborate poems based upon Dares’ prose, all while insisting that Dares himself, and not they, remained the auctor of them—​even if Dares was anything but a poet. We are perhaps most familiar with twentieth-​century interventions in these quandaries, especially Foucault’s theorization of the so-​called “author function.” As Foucault concluded, the modern development of the author function worked to block the dangerous proliferation of meanings with which fiction tempted its readers. “How can one reduce the great peril, the great danger with which fiction threatens our world?” he asked: “The answer is: one can reduce it with the author.”21 In this fashion Foucault reversed the typical relationship between authors and their texts: “the author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses; in short, by which

21.  Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?” in Textual Strategies:  Perspectives in Post-​ Structuralist Criticism, ed. Josué V. Harari (Ithaca, 1979), 158. Ironically enough, these closing lines are found in only one version of Foucault’s original lecture. For instance, they do not appear in the version of “What Is an Author?” printed in Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-​ Memory, Practice, ed. Donald F. Bouchard and trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, 1977), 113–​38.

13

Introduction

13

one impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition, and recomposition of fiction.”22 But what happened when the authors themselves were false? That is the underlying question of this book. As argued here, forgery offered a means of both claiming authorship and circumventing its requirements. If the author served as a mediator or border guard between the world of fiction and its real historical counterpart, then faking authorship itself was one way of permitting the dangers of the former to sneak undetected into the latter. This process grew still more complex in the case of false authors like Dares. For Dares produced a species of fiction that not only masqueraded as true history but also attacked other works of fiction that seemed to contradict his account. Whatever our own views on the contested nature of authorship, it will suffice to observe that forgery offers yet another layer of complication to debates over its meaning and status, much as it also complicates our notions of authenticity, originality, and historical truth.

The Truth and Nothing but the Truth: Dares’ Destruction of Troy So what exactly did Dares Phrygius forge, and how did he make the case that he was a true and genuine author? Dares proclaimed himself an eyewitness to the Trojan War itself, who kept daily records of that celebrated conflict.23 Unlike Homer, Virgil, or the many other ancients who memorialized the events of Troy, he claimed to have seen Odysseus, Aeneas, Priam, Agamemnon, and other heroes in the flesh. (For an example of how one early modern edition of the text sought to visualize Dares’ eyewitnessing, see Figure I.1). By such autoptic authority, in the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of the Destruction of Troy, Dares compiled a collection of character portraits of the principal Greeks and Trojans. For instance, he proclaimed that Aeneas was not only eloquent, pious, and charming, but also

22. Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?” 159. 23.  Dares Phrygius, De excidio Troiae historia, ed. Ferdinand Meister (Leipzig, 1873). All citations that follow are to Meister’s Teubner edition. English translations include those of R.M. Frazer and A.G. Rigg: see The Trojan War: The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian, trans. R.M. Frazer (Bloomington, 1966), and the full citation of Rigg (whose English Dares is appended to his verse translation of Joseph of Exeter’s Iliad) in Chapter 3, 143–44. A French translation is found in Gérard Fry, Récits inédits sur la guerre de Troie (Paris, 1998), and a German translation in Andreas Beschorner, Untersuchungen zu Dares Phrygius (Tübingen, 1992), 12–​63.

14

Figure I.1  “Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks.” A woodcut found among the front matter of a 1513 edition of Dares’ Destruction of Troy. For further discussion of this edition, see Chapter 6, 271. Historia Daretis Phrygii de excidio Troie (Wittenberg, 1513), now Harvard Houghton Library Typ 520 13.317, sig. A iv recto.

15

Introduction

15

“ruddy” in appearance, with “lively and dark eyes.”24 Nestor was not only a “prudent counselor,” but also possessed a “long hooked nose.”25 Dares wrote up the war in dry, bare bones, quasi-​journalistic prose; rejecting poetic flourishes, he promised to deliver the truth and nothing but the truth. His battlefield reports included precise casualty figures, and the squabbling gods of Homer’s Iliad were wholly absent from his dispatches. Details abounded: the conclusion of the text reported that, according to the Phrygian’s daily records (acta diurna), the war took ten years, six months, and twelve days, and that during this interval 886,000 Greeks and 676,000 Trojans perished.26 In another attempt at aping the conventions of veracity, Dares presented his account as the Trojan antecedent of a recognizable—​and recognizably laconic—​ancient genre:  the Roman acta diurna or daily records of official government-​sanctioned news.27 Despite its taste for quantitative detail, the text itself—​as perhaps befits a collection of acta diurna—​is rather brief: it is divided into forty-​four chapters, some a mere paragraph in length, and fills just fifty-​two pages in its nineteenth-​century Teubner edition. Nonetheless, it managed to cover quite a bit of ground. Drawing on another set of ancient mythographic traditions, it began with an older conflict between Greeks and Trojans that preceded the Trojan War: it recorded how Hercules, angry with the Trojan king Laomedon (Priam’s father), rounded up an army of Greeks and attacked Troy.28 Hercules and his companions defeated the Trojans, killed Laomedon, and abducted his daughter, Hesione.29 Hence, when Paris and his followers later seized a “not unwilling” Helen, Dares reported that the Trojans supported her abduction in the hopes that she would become a bargaining tool to secure Hesione’s return.30 Yet one of the text’s boldest claims came

24. Dares, De excidio Troiae 12, ed. Meister, 15: “Aeneam rufum quadratum facundum affabilem fortem cum consilio pium venustum oculis hilaribus et nigris.” 25. Dares, De excidio Troiae 13, ed. Meister, 16: “Nestorem magnum naso obunco longo latum candidum consiliarium prudentem.” 26. Dares Phrygius, De Excidio 44, ed. Meister, 52: “Pugnatum est annis decem mensibus sex diebus duodecim ad Troiam. Ruerunt ex Argivis, sicut acta diurna indicant quae Dares descripsit, hominum milia DCCCLXXXVI et ex Troianis ruerunt usque ad oppidum proditum hominum milia DCLXXVI.” 27. For the potential forgery of Roman acta diurna by the humanist scholar Juan Luis Vives—​a critic of Dares we will meet in Chapter 4—​see Andrew Lintott, “Acta Antiquissima: A Week in the History of the Roman Republic,” Papers of the British School at Rome 54 (1986): 213–​28. 28. For Hercules’ sack, see for instance Hom. Il. 5.641. 29. Dares, De excidio Troiae 1–​3, ed. Meister, 2–​5. For another version of this story of Hercules and Hesione, see Apollod. Bibl. 2.5.9. 30. Dares, De excidio Troiae 10, ed. Meister, 12: “Helenam non invitam eripiunt . . .”

16

16

In t roduct ion

near its end:  as we will discuss in Chapter  1 and throughout this book, Dares blamed Troy’s fall on Trojan treason, particularly the treachery of none other than Aeneas himself. Dares repeatedly rationalized mythological details, presenting them instead as purely human history. Deities as active agents were conspicuously absent from his account. For instance, instead of relating that Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite actually vied with each other for Paris’ favor, Dares recorded the Judgment of Paris as a dream, which he heard of only because Paris subsequently recounted it to his fellow Trojans.31 Importantly, Dares himself did not confirm that Paris had Aphrodite’s backing, or that divine intervention of this sort was even possible. He accomplished his demythologizing in very subtle ways: a single word could achieve the needed distancing effect. For instance—​in a passage we will discuss in Chapter 3—​Dares mentioned how the twins Castor and Pollux set off in pursuit of their sister Helen but were shipwrecked. Subsequently, he added, they were said to have become immortal; Dares the rationalizer did not personally vouch for their presence as deities in the sky.32 Though Dares presumably had written in some form of Greek, his text circulated in Latin. This Latin conveyed the feel of a straightforward war diary: it generally avoided subordinate clauses or participial constructions and instead favored simple, repetitious syntax, along with a rather limited vocabulary. For instance, it managed transitions by beginning its chapters with formulaic constructions like “the time for fighting arrived” (tempus pugnae supervenit).33 Indeed, many of Dares’ humanist critics inveighed against the inelegance of this prose, which they labeled inept or “barbarous”—​the very antithesis of what they came to judge as classical purity. But regardless of its literary merits or lack thereof, the text begged a crucial question: namely, how did the war diary of a purported Phrygian eyewitness end up extant in Latin? This incongruity possessed a convenient explanation—​found in a letter that told the story of the text’s dramatic discovery. Dares’ history began with a prefatory epistle written by its supposed “translator,” who claimed to be none other than the first-​century-​B CE biographer and chronicler Cornelius Nepos. Moreover, this letter from Nepos was addressed to no less eminent a figure than the Roman historian Sallust! Of course, just as Dares’ history was a fake, so the real Nepos and the real Sallust had never set eyes upon such a book. Yet this spurious epistle did its best to make the

31. Dares, De excidio Troiae 7, ed. Meister, 9. Cf. Hom. Il. 24.25–​30. 32. Dares, De excidio Troiae 11, ed. Meister, 14: “postea dictum est eos immortales factos . . .” 33. See for instance Dares, De excidio Troiae 31, ed. Meister, 37.

17

Introduction

17

book’s discovery convincing, and link said discovery to some of the most authoritative names in Roman historiography. “Nepos” wrote to “Sallust” with exciting news. He had been in Athens, busily engaged in scholarly work. This learned sojourn was plausible enough given the real Nepos’ reputed philhellenism.34 While at Athens he had come upon Dares Phrygius’ hitherto lost book, although he did not elaborate upon exactly where or how he had found it. He did include one tantalizing detail: the history he discovered was an autograph manuscript, “written in the hand of Dares himself ” (ipsius manu scriptam). Here was a tangible relic of a distant past already considered ancient in the first century BCE. Pseudo-​Nepos then explained to pseudo-​Sallust that he had neither added nor subtracted anything, lest it seem his own and not Dares’ work. Instead, he claimed to have translated Dares “literally” or ad verbum into Latin, just as Dares himself had written “truly and simply” (vere et simpliciter). Many of Dares’ subsequent readers would trumpet the importance of writing vere et simpliciter. They would make writing in this fashion the very definition of historiography itself. But how did pseudo-​Nepos know that Dares was true? That was easy. According to the preface of the supposed Roman historian, Dares had actually been there, observing the hic et nunc of wartime Troy: “he lived and fought at that time when Greeks fought Trojans.” Thus, his credentials far surpassed those of the ancient world’s most famous source on matters Troy—​Homer himself. Pseudo-​Nepos dismissively explained that the poet had been “born many years after the Trojan War was waged.”35 And so he invited pseudo-​Sallust to consider which author—​Homer or Dares—​was more believable, although he made crystal clear what he thought the right answer to be. In so doing he claimed some important corroboration: he closed his epistle by stating that the Athenians had once rendered judgment on Homer’s probity and had concluded that the bard was “insane” for depicting human beings at war with the gods.36 By implication, Dares was far more credible precisely because he had avoided such flagrantly

34. On Nepos’ scholarship, see Chapter 1, 60–​63. 35.  Dares, De excidio Troiae, “Cornelius Nepos Sallustio Crispo suo salutem,” ed. Meister, 1: “Cum multa ago Athenis curiose, inveni historiam Daretis Phrygii, ipsius manu scriptam, ut titulus indicat, quam de Graecis et Troianis memoriae mandavit. Quam ego summo amore conplexus continuo transtuli. Cui nihil adiciendum vel diminuendum rei reformandae causa putavi, alioquin mea posset videri. Optimum ergo duxi ita ut fuit vere et simpliciter perscripta, sic eam ad verbum in latinitatem transvertere, ut legentes cognoscere possent, quomodo res gestae essent: utrum verum magis esse existiment, quod Dares Phrygius memoriae commendavit, qui per id ipsum tempus vixit et militavit, cum Graeci Troianos obpugnarent, anne Homero credendum, qui post multos annos natus est, quam bellum hoc gestum est.” 36. Dares, De excidio Troiae, “Cornelius Nepos Sallustio Crispo suo salutem,” ed. Meister, 1: “De qua re Athenis iudicium fuit, cum pro insano haberetur, quod deos cum hominibus belligerasse

18

18

In t roduct ion

mythological content. The gods had not intervened in Dares’ Troy. Here, just when things started getting interesting, pseudo-​Nepos ended his epistle abruptly. “But [I will go] as far as these things,” he told pseudo-​Sallust, before beginning the translation proper: “Now let us return to what I have promised.”37 Dares’ little forged book operated according to some classic protocols of fakery.38 It claimed association with real and venerable authors like Sallust and Cornelius Nepos. It presented both its author and its translator as decidedly passive agents: Dares wrote only of what he had seen, and “Nepos” translated only what he had read. It played with a paradoxical relationship between closeness and distance. It offered direct, unmediated access to a distant Trojan past, but it simultaneously sequestered any material proof of this past in some obscure Athenian archive, knowable only to pseudo-​Nepos himself. It offered no independent means of verifying the existence of Dares’ original book. Nor was the Destruction of Troy alone in this game. The trope of the lost book found again was all too common in antiquity, and often skillfully exploited by literary tricksters. In fact, another ostensibly eyewitness account of the Trojan War, often read alongside Dares’ Destruction of Troy in medieval manuscripts and early modern printed editions, deployed this trope with far more outlandishness and bravado. We will also encounter this history—​the so-​called Ephemeris belli Troiani or

scripserit.” On the trope of Homer as liar, see for instance Max J. Wolff, “Der Lügner Homer,” Germanisch-​Romanische Monatsschrift 20 (1932): 53–​65. 37.  Dares, De excidio Troiae, “Cornelius Nepos Sallustio Crispo suo salutem,” ed. Meister, 1: “Sed hactenus ista: nunc ad pollicitum revertamur.” 38. For a selection of studies on the Destruction of Troy, from the early twentieth century until today, see Nathaniel E. Griffin, Dares and Dictys:  An Introduction to the Study of Medieval Versions of the Story of Troy (Baltimore, 1907); Otmar Schissel von Fleschenberg, Dares-​Studien (Halle, 1908); Isabelle Johnson-​Moser, Index criticus verborum Daretis Phrygii (Nashville, 1938); Willy Schetter, “Dares und Dracontius über die Vorgeschichte des Trojanischen Krieges,” Hermes 115 (1987): 211–​31; Beschorner, Untersuchungen zu Dares Phrygius; Annamaria Pavano, “Contributo allo studio della tradizione manoscritta della De excidio Troiae di Darete Frigio,” Sileno 19 (1993): 525–​32; Annamaria Pavano, “A proposito di una presunta seconda redazione della De excidio Troiae historia di Darete Frigio,” Sileno 19 (1993): 229–​75; Kurt Usener, “Dictys und Dares über den Troischen Krieg: Homer in der Rezeptionskrise?” Eranos 92 (1994): 102–​ 20; Louis Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire et géographie d’un mythe: la circulation des manuscrits du De excidio Troiae de Darès le Phrygien (VIIIe–​XVe siècles) (Paris, 2006); Jonathan Cornil, “Dares Phrygius’ De excidio Trojae historia: Philological Commentary and Translation,” MA Thesis, University of Ghent, 2012; Valentina Prosperi, Omero sconfitto:  ricerche sul mito di Troia dall'antichità al Rinascimento (Rome, 2013); and most recently, Graziana Brescia, Mario Lentano, Giampiero Scafoglio, and Valentina Zanusso, eds., Revival and Revision of the Trojan Myth: Studies on Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius (Hildesheim, 2018). Many other works dealing with both the specifics of the text and its reception history are cited in Chapter 1 and elsewhere.

19

Introduction

19

Journal of the Trojan War—​at many points throughout this book. It claimed as its author one Dictys Cretensis (Dictys of Crete), supposedly a participant in the war on the Greek side. Dictys’ history also contained a preface, featuring a tale of bookish discovery that made Nepos’ Athenian sojourn seem positively dull by comparison. As it explained, Dictys, a companion of the Cretan king Idomeneus, accompanied his monarch to the Trojan War. There he wrote an eyewitness account of the conflict, on linden tablets and in “Phoenician” letters.39 He returned to Crete after the war, and when he died he was buried at Knossos along with his book. More than a millennium later, during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, there was an earthquake at Knossos. When the ground shook, Dictys’ hitherto unknown book surfaced amid the ruins of his tomb. Luckily, some Cretan shepherds happened to be wandering by: they rescued the book and brought it to their master, Eupraxides. Eupraxides showed the book to the island’s governor, Rutilius Rufus, who then sent it along to Nero himself. Amazed at their discovery, Nero ordered the book translated from these ancient Phoenician letters into Greek.40 Like Dares’ Destruction of Troy, however, Dictys’ text is extant in Latin. A separate prefatory epistle—​which we will discuss in Chapter 1—​also explained how the Journal of the Trojan War was subsequently translated into Latin from the Greek. Some have speculated that whoever wrote the Destruction of Troy might have used Dictys Cretensis and his own attempts at fakery—​whether earnest or ironic—​as a model. And modern discoveries concerning Dictys have in turn influenced theories about the origins of the Phrygian. In 1899, a third-​century-​ CE papyrus fragment of a Greek version of Dictys was found at Tebtunis, and other witnesses have surfaced more recently.41 Given such finds, and based upon the manifest similarities between Dictys and Dares, some scholars have conjectured that the Destruction of Troy was also based in some form upon a lost Greek text. However, others have expressed doubts about this hypothesis, and barring some future papyrological find, the question is likely to remain unanswered. Even if we do not believe that pseudo-​Nepos (let alone the real Nepos!) executed a literal, word-​for-​word translation of a lost Greek text, perhaps there was some kernel of truth in his claim to be a translator.

39. Dictys Cretensis, Ephemeridos belli Troiani libri, Prologus, ed. Werner Eisenhut (Leipzig, 1973), 2: “Hic [i.e., Dictys] fuit socius Idomenei, Deucalionis filii, et Merionis ex Molo, qui duces cum exercitu contra Ilium venerant, a quibus ordinatus est, ut annales belli Troiani conscriberet. Igitur de toto bello novem volumina in tilias digessit Phoeniceis litteris.” 40. Dictys, Ephemeris, Prologus, ed. Eisenhut, 2–​3. 41. Modern scholarship on Dictys is discussed at Chapter 1, 56–​58.

20

20

In t roduct ion

The ancient world offers some tantalizing—​though ultimately inconclusive—​ pieces of evidence on this question. The link between the name “Dares” and writings on Trojan matters existed long before the composition of the Latin Destruction of Troy in the final centuries of antiquity. For instance, the Varia historia of the second-​century miscellanist Aelian recorded that a certain Dares Phrygius had written an Iliad before Homer, and that as far as he knew it was still extant.42 Perhaps whoever forged—​in the sense of either making or deceiving—​ the Destruction of Troy meant Dares to be this Dares. Yet Aelian’s grab bag of mythographic anecdotes was not necessarily a trustworthy source; moreover, his reference to a pre-​Homeric Iliad seemed to suggest a poetic work, not a prose history. Besides, although he claimed this Dares had preceded Homer, he made no mention of exactly how old he was, and said nothing about his having been a contemporary eyewitness to the war. Yet others—​in fact no less than Homer and Virgil—​did include a Dares at Troy. In the fifth book of the Iliad, Homer mentioned a rich and blameless Trojan priest of Hephaestus by the name of Dares.43 And in the fifth book of the Aeneid, Virgil numbered a Dares among the Trojan comrades of Aeneas. This Dares was defeated by Entellus in a boxing match during Aeneas’ games in Sicily.44 An odd combination of these two claims—​i.e., presence at the events of Troy and composition of an Iliad—​is found in still another ancient source, albeit one rather dubious and preserved secondhand. When the Byzantine encyclopedist Photius excerpted and summarized material from the mysterious second-​century-​CE author Ptolemaeus Chennus or “Ptolemy the Quail,” he reported that Ptolemy had cited a still more mysterious figure named Antipater of Acanthus (perhaps a product of Ptolemy’s own fertile imagination). As Ptolemy claimed, this Antipater had invoked a certain Dares, the monitor of Hector, who also wrote an Iliad before Homer.45 Perhaps these associations, and their claims concerning the

42.  Ael. VH 11.2:  “καὶ τὸν Φρύγα δὲ Δάρητα, οὗ Φρυγίαν Ἰλιάδα ἔτι καὶ νῦν ἀποσῳζομένην οἶδα, πρὸ Ὁμήρου καὶ τοῦτον γενέσθαι λέγουσι.” On Aelian, see Katerina Oikonomopoulou, “Miscellanies,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic, ed. Daniel S. Richter and William A. Johnson (New York, 2017), 447–​62. On the claims of Aelian, see Lawrence Kim, Homer between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature (Cambridge, 2010), 179–​80. 43. Hom. Il. 5.9–​10: “῏Ην δέ τις ἐν Τρώεσσι Δάρης, ἀφνειὸς ἀμύμων,/​ἱρεὺς Ἡφαίστοιο . . .” 44. Verg. Aen. 5.362–​484. See Matthew M. McGowan, “On the Etymology and Inflection of ‘Dares’ in Vergil’s Boxing Match, Aeneid 5.362–​484,” Classical Philology 97 (2002): 80–​88, and Roberto Sammartano, “Per una rilettura della gara del pugilato nel V libro dell’Eneide,” Parola del passato 53 (1998): 115–​30. 45. Phot. Bibl. 190, 147a 26–​29: “Ἀντίπατρος δέ φησιν ὁ Ἀκάνθιος Δάρητα, πρὸ Ὁμήρου γράψαντα τὴν Ἰλιάδα, μνήμονα γενέσθαι Ἕκτορος ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ ἀνελεῖν ἑταῖρον Ἀχιλλέως.”

21

Introduction

21

priority of “Dares” over Homer, were known to whoever wrote the Destruction of Troy—​though we cannot be certain. We can also glean clues about the intellectual inheritance of the author of the Destruction of Troy from pseudo-​Nepos’ prefatory epistle. Pseudo–​Cornelius Nepos was hardly alone among the ancients in indicting Homer. As one seventeenth-​century scholar we will discuss in the Conclusion would point out, he was not wholly wrong that a judgment against Homer had been rendered at Athens. Plato famously critiqued poetry in general and Homer in particular, and in his Republic he proposed banishing poets from his ideal city.46 Space does not permit a full survey of that vast quarrel between poetry and philosophy, but it will suffice to note that if we assume he was writing in the fifth or sixth century CE, then pseudo-​Nepos joined a polemic that was already a millennium old. And anti-​Homeric critiques grew still more intense in a period slightly closer to pseudo-​Nepos’ own. This was the world of Greek letters of the Roman Imperial age, from roughly the first to the third century CE, commonly referred to as the Second Sophistic.47 Some of the most famous works of that period either attacked Homer directly or else ironically subverted his and other canonical accounts of the Trojan War. Perhaps the boldest of these was the Eleventh Oration of the first-​century-​CE rhetorician Dio Chrysostom, whose own seventeenth-​century entanglements with Dares we will examine in Chapter  6. Dio claimed that he had obtained the true story of the Trojan War from a mysterious Egyptian priest.48 He called Homer a liar and deemed the Egyptians more credible than the Greeks because the Egyptians supposedly did not indulge in verse.49 Most remarkable is the bold revisionism of his story:  Dio (following his supposed Egyptian source) claimed that Helen and Paris were lawfully wed, and that Menelaus, her spurned suitor, unjustly incited the war. Ultimately the Greeks withdrew and agreed to a

46. For Plato on Homer, see Pl. Resp. 10, esp. 595a–​607e. 47. For a selection of the vast literature on the Second Sophistic and its literary culture, see Kim, Homer between History and Fiction; Tim Whitmarsh, Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel: Returning Romance (Cambridge, 2011); Daniel S. Richter, Cosmopolis: Imagining Community in Late Classical Athens and the Early Roman Empire (New  York, 2011); Tim Whitmarsh, Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism (Berkeley, 2013); and most recently, The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic, ed. Richter and Johnson. 48. Dio Chrys. Or. 11.37–​39. For Dio and Homer, see Jan Fredrik Kindstrand, Homer in der Zweiten Sophistik:  Studien zu der Homerlektüre und dem Homerbild bei Dion von Prusa, Maximos von Tyros und Ailios Aristeides (Uppsala, 1973), esp. 27–​44. On diverse aspects of his corpus, see the essays collected in Simon Swain, ed., Dio Chrysostom: Politics, Letters, and Philosophy (Oxford, 2000). 49. Dio Chrys. Or. 11.42.

2

22

In t roduct ion

truce: Troy never fell, the Greeks never captured the city, and Priam and Hector went on to enjoy life in postwar Troy.50 Although no one else quite matched the bravado of his claim that Troy had not fallen, Dio was not alone in this game. The second-​century satirist Lucian of Samosata similarly played with the Homeric corpus throughout his works.51 So too did the third-​century sophist Philostratus. And just as Dio conjured his Egyptian priest, so Philostratus conjured a still better author: his Trojan source spoke from the dead! In his Heroicus, Philostratus composed a dialogue between a Phoenician merchant and a vinedresser. The vinedresser explained to the merchant that he knew the reincarnation of Protesilaus, a Greek hero who had perished at Troy. Protesilaus offered a more spectacular version of contemporary “eyewitness” narrating, which enabled Philostratus to correct Homer’s errors.52 Scholars have long debated the relationship between irony and anti-​ Homericism in the Second Sophistic, and how seriously we should read the attempts of Dio and Philostratus and others to rewrite Homer. But as we shall see, more than a millennium later, some early moderns would take Dio’s claims both seriously and literally—​in a manner that implicated the Phrygian.53 This was likewise the case with both Dares and Dictys. Indeed, many postclassical readers took the latter at face value, notwithstanding the seeming outlandishness of his tale of a Cretan earthquake. Moreover, both the nature of this literary device and the fact that a Greek version of Dictys existed suggest that it may have been the work of someone familiar—​either specifically or just generally—​with works like those of Dio. As Tim Whitmarsh has suggested, the literary devices employed by Dictys, Dio, and Philostratus reveal a “trend towards pseudo-​documentarism”—​ that is, a literary culture that challenged canonical authorities like Homer by appeals to supposedly documentary or eyewitness evidence. Yet Whitmarsh identifies a tension in such documentary rhetoric, and this tension makes it difficult for us, as retrospective observers, to ascertain precisely how or even if contemporary readers believed such accounts. In his words, “at the same time as it purports to authenticate the narrative it buttresses, however, pseudo-​documentarism also

50. Dio Chrys. Or. 11.43ff. 51.  See Karen ní Mheallaigh, Reading Fiction with Lucian:  Fakes, Freaks and Hyperreality (Cambridge, 2014). 52. Philostr. Her. 2.6–​11. It is worth noting that Philostratus advances several critiques of Homer that pseudo-​Nepos would also raise: he charges the poet with being temporally removed from the Trojan War at Her. 7.5 and castigates him for mixing gods and humans at Her. 25.10. On Philostratus and Dares and the “pretence of writing before Homer,” see Kim, Homer between History and Fiction, 188–​89. 53. See Chapter 6, 290.

23

Introduction

23

ironizes it . . . it simply multiplies and relativizes the sources of narrative authority, and thus militates against the possibility of any final truth.”54 Perhaps readers confronted not only with Homer but also with Dictys, Dio, and their ilk might have simply thrown up their hands in confusion and concluded that no truth about Troy could be known with certainty. And perhaps they even would have enjoyed a laugh in the process. As discussed in Chapter  1, the question of just how directly Dares can be traced back to this world is an open one. Its solution hinges, in part, upon whether there ever existed a Greek version of the Destruction of Troy.55 But whether or not pseudo–​Cornelius Nepos executed a “translation” of some sort, it is clear that his anti-​Homeric sentiments—​and the complex set of debates over the relationship between literature and truth that they betokened—​knew a lengthy history in Greco-​Roman literary culture. Thanks to its participation in this tradition, the Destruction of Troy would play a crucial role in the aftershocks of these debates, from the Middle Ages all the way until the eighteenth-​century Enlightenment. The authors of the Second Sophistic were themselves engaged in the reception of a distant past. Their response to such temporally remote phenomena as the Homeric canon or the Trojan War would in turn condition patterns of reception for centuries, if not millennia, after the end of the ancient world—​even among medieval or early modern readers who did not read any Second Sophistic authors or even know who they were. Many of these readers never encountered the likes of Dio and Philostratus, but they were intimately acquainted with Dares Phrygius, who may have been acquainted in some fashion with them. As a result, although the ultimate origins of Dares’ history may always elude us, documenting its post-​antique afterlife promises to shed new light on some key questions in classical studies—​including nothing less than how the ancients constructed their own antiquity.

Dares at the Crossroads: Myth and History, Rhetoric and Fiction Dares Phrygius stood at the intersection between truth and falsehood, history and myth. He—​or more precisely pseudo-​Nepos, his purported translator—​ presented the Destruction of Troy as an attempt to cleanse history of myth.

54. Whitmarsh, Narrative and Identity, 86. 55. Whitmarsh, for instance, distances Dares from this milieu, writing that “I have not included Dares in this list, since I am not convinced that (despite the claim in the prologue) a Greek original lies behind the extant Latin.” See Whitmarsh, Narrative and Identity, 86 n.80.

24

24

In t roduct ion

A millennium later, those who rejected the Destruction of Troy would also present themselves as purging history of myth, albeit myth of a different sort. Both Dares and his critics attempted to banish forms of fiction from the province of true history. Dares expelled Homer’s gods from the Trojan War, and Dares’ critics banished forgery and spuria from the ancient canon. But how exactly did one banish these intruders? And how exactly did one define their intrusions? For the last century or so, many have understood the purging of myth from history—​and hence nothing less than the seeming triumph of reason over superstition—​as a process of disenchantment, a notion derived in part from Max Weber’s concept of the “disenchantment of the world.” As Weber famously argued, the modern world was no longer enchanted: science had rendered almost all phenomena at least theoretically legible, and formerly “mysterious, unpredictable forces,” which pre-​modern societies once endowed with supernatural power, had been demolished because they could now be explained away and intellectualized.56 The last hundred years have also seen frequent challenges to this Weberian thesis. Did magical thinking really disappear from the modern world? Or are those who profess themselves disenchanted perhaps more enchanted with “mysterious, unpredictable forces” than they claim, or even know? This is a vast topic, of concern to everyone from philosophers to sociologists of religion, and one far beyond the scope of this book.57 Yet it will suffice to note that it also necessarily concerns historians and classicists. Although Weber did not address the topic directly, the discourse of disenchantment has shaped how modernity has assessed antiquity and its truth-​value. It colored how one read not only ancient religious texts like the Bible, but also ancient “pagan” poets like Homer and Virgil. In other words, if one dismissed the supernatural and mythical contents of such works as the products of a credulous past and rejected the underlying possibility of the “mysterious, unpredictable forces” they memorialized, how then did one read them? Could myth be read as myth, or did it lose its power as soon as it was unmasked as such? Did its efficacy depend upon its capacity to masquerade as history?

56. Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, ed. David Owen and Tracy B. Strong, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Indianapolis, 2004), esp. 12–​13. On this topic see for instance Jason A. Josephson-​Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment:  Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (Chicago, 2017). For an analysis of Weber’s applicability to ancient Greek thought, see Jan Bremmer, “Rationalization and Disenchantment in Ancient Greece: Max Weber among the Pythagoreans and Orphics?,” in From Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek Thought, ed. Richard Buxton (Oxford, 1999), 71–​83. 57. In the realm of religion, see Marcel Gauchet, Le désenchantement du monde (Paris, 1985).

25

Introduction

25

This vexed relationship between history and myth is what makes Dares’ Destruction of Troy so difficult, yet also so useful, a source. The Phrygian played central—​albeit very different, and perhaps even opposite—​roles in two macro-​ narratives that we moderns have told about ourselves: the first was the triumph of criticism over forgery and falsification, and the second was the triumph of a disenchanted form of history over myth and fable. We might think of these narratives as of a piece, or at least allied, but Dares demonstrates a fundamental tension between the two. After all, Dares strenuously attacked myth: the world he depicted, devoid of Homer’s gods, might strike us modern readers as a disenchanted one. He formed a response—​whether earnest or ironic is another question—​to the long history of so-​called Euhemerism: the ancient interpretative tradition that read myths, especially concerning deities, as exaggerated reflections of human, historical phenomena.58 Perhaps the actual author of Dares was a committed Euhemerist or at least understood that proffered Euhemerism would augment the fides of his fake. Or perhaps, if he meant his work to be taken in ludic or ironic fashion, he was making fun of those very interpretative techniques that sought to rationalize away the gods and tether them to human history. Of course, such questions are at best hypotheticals. All we can go on is what later readers of the Destruction of Troy had to say about the text. The critics who attacked Dares in early modernity and thereafter charged that he had merely replaced one form of myth and fiction with another. Even if Homer and the poets told lies, Dares’ lies were worse. When we reach these critics, we might initially feel the comfort of imagined similarity. We might suppose that they possessed a kind of disenchantment: a disenchanted worldview that applied philology and something like historicism to the reading of texts and therefore exposed Dares’ history for the fiction that it was. But on closer inspection, we might be surprised to discover their otherwise “enchanted” views. Sometimes their commitment to forms of enchantment actually aided their demolishment of Dares. We often assume that historico-​philological acumen requires disenchantment in the modern Weberian sense, and vice versa. Yet the past is replete with people who practiced one and not the other, including many of those who rejected Dares Phrygius. This is not to deny their achievements, or to suggest that our age is any more “critical” than theirs. Rather, it is to point out that what strikes us as a disjunction between worldviews and methods highlights the contingencies of both their assumptions and our own. As argued here, our inability to grasp these complexities—​of the varieties of enchantments and disenchantments 58.  On Euhemerism, see Marek Winiarczyk, The “Sacred History” of Euhemerus of Messene, trans. Witold Zbirohowski-​Koscia (Berlin, 2013), and Nickolas P. Roubekas, An Ancient Theory of Religion: Euhemerism from Antiquity to the Present (London, 2017).

26

26

In t roduct ion

past—​explains the cognitive dissonance we still experience when speaking of Troy and similarly remote phenomena from the distant past. A simple thought experiment illustrates this point. How would we—​ostensibly disenchanted moderns—​prove the falsehood of a text like the Destruction of Troy? Rather than simply exclaim, “Oh but of course!,” how would we explain why we know the text to be untrue? If pressed, we might fall back upon the claim that Dares committed a fundamental category error: he tried to pass off a mythical event as historical. We might explain, with an obligatory series of qualifications and provisos, that the late second millennium BCE saw a military conflict or series of military conflicts in northwest Asia Minor that presumably somehow formed the basis for the mythological event we know as the Trojan War of literary tradition, but that it was impossible that someone like Dares could have written an eyewitness history of said conflict. The events he narrated had never happened in the manner he had described, we disenchanted critics might argue, and the characters he portrayed had never existed in the forms he had given them. For instance, even if Dares presented himself as a rationalizer by denying the reality of the goddess Aphrodite’s support for Paris, and instead depicting the Judgment of Paris as a dream that—​as an eyewitness—​he had merely heard Paris describe to his fellow Trojans, his underlying claims would still strike us as irrational. We would protest that no historical Paris ever existed, at least in the form we know this “Paris” from the literary tradition, and that this Paris had never precipitated a historical war over a historical Helen in the manner in which that tradition recounted it. Yet arguments of this sort are of surprisingly recent vintage. In the millennium between the likely composition of the Destruction of Troy and the beginning of the Enlightenment, virtually none of Dares’ critics made this argument explicit. As we will see, it was not necessarily out of credulity: instead, some rejected Dares by invoking the mendacity of the Greeks, some rejected him by arguing that no pagans—​as opposed to biblical writers—​had invented the historical craft so early, and others dismissed him by positing that poetry antedated prose. A few even rejected Dares by citing the superior fides of Dictys Cretensis! The distant past definitely elicited their skepticism, and any good humanist scholar knew well that the passage of time made certain knowledge difficult, but they rarely translated these objections into a systematic critique of antiquity qua antiquity. Such a move would have been alien to their worldviews. Although the subjects of this book engaged in complex, nuanced, and sophisticated forms of criticism, this line of criticism was rarely one that they pursued. It is only at the end of Chapter  6 and in the Conclusion that we will encounter scholars who began to launch such large-​scale skeptical attacks. And even then, in the early decades of the Enlightenment, it may surprise us what else these skeptics still believed.

27

Introduction

27

And what of that real author behind Dares Phrygius himself ? It would be anachronistic to suppose him some Weberian modern avant la lettre. Yet this does not mean that the ancient world—​or the medieval or early modern world, for that matter—​lacked powerful resources for critiquing myth. We must disabuse ourselves of the notion that modern disenchantment ipso facto implies premodern credulity. Rather, this book chronicles a perennial quarrel between historia and fabula, history and fable: it describes how many from antiquity to the Enlightenment used the former to attack what they took as the pernicious nature of the latter. It is possible that whoever wrote the Destruction of Troy meant to have a laugh not only at myth itself, but also at some of these hermeneutic strategies. So how exactly did one go about dismantling myths before the emergence of modern weapons like disenchantment? Perhaps no one has explored this topic more programmatically than the French classical scholar Paul Veyne. In his extended essay Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?, Veyne analyzed ancient approaches to belief and disbelief.59 Veyne began with the following conundrum. For instance, many of the ancients did not believe that Minos had actually become a judge in the Underworld, or that Theseus had actually fought the Minotaur, a half-​human, half-​bull creature. Nonetheless, many appear to have believed in the literal existence of a historical Minos and a historical Theseus—​kernels of truth that they extracted from underneath such myths. Veyne described such extraction as an ancient discourse of purifying myth via logos. As he argued, this ancient discourse strikes us moderns as strange, not only because it fails to conform to modern tales of the triumph of rationality, but also because it stops just short of what moderns might consider a self-​evident conclusion: The purification of myth by logos is not another episode in the eternal struggle between superstition and reason  .  .  .  far from being a triumph of reason, the purification of myth by logos is an ancient program whose absurdity surprises us today. Why did the Greeks go to the trouble of 59. Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination, trans. Paula Wissing (Chicago, 1988). For a wide-​ranging study of the relationship between myth and history in both antiquity and beyond, see Peter G. Bietenholz, Historia and Fabula: Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age (Leiden, 1994). For more recent work on the topic, which includes a reassessment of Veyne, see Greta Hawes, Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity (Oxford, 2014), particularly 178–​85. The ancient approach to myth is itself a vast field, whose full elucidation is beyond the scope of this study. For a selection of the literature on this topic, see for instance Paule Demats, Fabula:  trois études de mythographie antique et médiévale (Geneva, 1973); the essays collected in From Myth to Reason?, ed. Buxton; and Thomas Cole, Ovidius Mythistoricus:  Legendary Time in the Metamorphoses (Frankfurt, 2008).

28

28

In t roduct ion

wishing to separate the wheat from the chaff in myth when they could easily have rejected both Theseus and the Minotaur, as well as the very existence of a certain Minos and the improbable stories tradition gave him? We see the extent of the problem when we realize that this attitude toward myth lasted for over two millennia.60 This study of Dares also demonstrates the “extent of the problem.” He was accepted for a millennium, precisely because he had banished the Homeric gods from Troy and rationalized away the many myths about the war. He posed as one of Veyne’s logos-​wielding purifiers, and that approach to myth flourished for longer than we might suppose. Veyne illustrated its persistence by citing a figure from the world in which this book will end—​the seventeenth-​century bishop Jacques-​Bénigne Bossuet. Bossuet was an associate of Louis XIV, a firm apologist for Catholic orthodoxy, and the author of a universal sacred history, which continued a historical tradition inaugurated by early Christian scholars like Eusebius of Caesarea.61 Like many of his predecessors both pagan and Christian, Bossuet still believed—​or at least purported to believe—​in the historicity of figures and events that we would deem mythical. As a result, so Veyne pointed out, Bossuet’s universal history assigned precise dates to figures including Hercules and Jupiter’s son Sarpedon.62 Surely someone like Bossuet did not accept the divinity of Jupiter, so how exactly did he believe in the likes of Hercules and Sarpedon? That is a question our study of Dares seeks to answer. We can apply Veyne’s conundrum to Dares as follows: many found it possible to doubt that Dares Phrygius was the first pagan historian, present at the Trojan War. They attacked his account by characterizing it as an absurd fiction or frivolous legend. But they did not necessarily consider the text’s underlying premise—​ i.e., that a Trojan eyewitness could have been a real person who observed a real historical event he then wrote up as real narrative history—​as ipso facto beyond the pale of acceptable belief. Or if they did, they did not say so. In fact, many of their critiques of his text—​even those that we would consider undeniably historically or philologically acute—​had precious little to do with this underlying premise. Instead, they concerned other things, like the quality (or lack thereof )

60. Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?, 1. 61. Eusebius is discussed extensively throughout this book, beginning at Chapter 1, 52–​54. 62. Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?, 1–​2. For Bossuet’s invocations of Hercules and Sarpedon, see for instance Jacques-​Bénigne Bossuet, Discours sur l’histoire universelle (Paris, 1681), 22.

29

Introduction

29

of Dares’ Latin, the seeming errors he made about specific Greek and Trojan heroes, and the discrepancies between him and Dictys. Moreover, by the time premises like Dares’ began to be questioned—​by those who would unblinkingly consign Hercules, Sarpedon, and Troy itself to the realm of myth—​Dares himself had already begun his long slide into obscurity. Those who, to use Veyne’s formulation, ultimately rejected both Theseus and the Minotaur, never took the time to reject Dares himself in programmatic fashion, perhaps because he was no longer worth the effort. Therefore, Dares’ history is also a history of silence—​or what we, accustomed to a “disenchanted” approach to myth—​retrospectively, and maybe anachronistically, read as silence. Granted, not everyone in Bossuet’s world shared his acceptance of the pagan past. But even some of those aforementioned skeptics of his age expressed their doubts via alternative hypotheses that might seem equally inconceivable to us. One of Bossuet’s contemporaries, whom we will meet again in the Conclusion, had a very different view of antiquity’s truth-​value. This was the French Jesuit scholar Jean Hardouin. In the final years of the seventeenth century, Hardouin came to a startling conclusion:  he deemed almost the entire extant corpus of ancient Greco-​Roman texts to be forgeries, with the lucky exceptions of Cicero, Horace, Pliny’s Natural History, Virgil’s Georgics, and—​as we will discuss at length—​Homer. He took the triumphs of humanist philology to their logical—​ or illogical—​extreme. He came to his baffling conclusion because he began to notice inconsistencies between ancient texts and the material traces of antiquity, such as Roman coins. But rather than ascribe such inconsistences to human fallibility, the vagaries of transmission, or the historical record’s inevitable imperfections, his mind turned more conspiratorial. The Jesuit Hardouin, a partisan of Catholicism’s internecine battles, posited that nearly every “ancient” text had actually been forged by a devious cabal of medieval Benedictine monks.63 While Hardouin’s theory might seem outlandish to us, his contemporaries did not deem it ipso facto beyond the pale. In fact, many seventeenth-​century scholars took Hardouin’s theory as a real threat, and critiqued it with the same degree of seriousness with which the Jesuit championed it.64 To us, the notion that all of ancient literature was forged in the Middle Ages might seem a form of magical thinking as improbable as Bossuet’s assignment of precise dates to a real flesh-​and-​blood Hercules or Sarpedon. Yet Hardouin and Bossuet, for all their differences, actually shared some assumptions: they both believed that antiquity

63. Hardouin is discussed in the Conclusion at 306–07, 309–​10, and 324–​25. 64.  On Hardouin and responses to his theory, see Anthony Grafton, “Jean Hardouin:  The Antiquary as Pariah,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 62 (1999): 241–​67.

30

30

In t roduct ion

should possess a certain truth and consistency. When Hardouin began to notice cracks in the edifice, conspiracy theories proved easier than acquiescence to a sense of disenchantment with the past. Both Hardouin and Bossuet exemplify the sort of thinking that kept the Phrygian alive for much longer than we might suppose—​even in an age when many scholars had already consigned him to the ranks of the forged. In other words, if only Dares had been a slightly better forger, he might very well have enjoyed an even longer afterlife. History versus myth is one way of figuring the opposition at the heart of Dares’ reception, and that of so many other ancient texts. We often speak of discrediting myths (quite literally removing their capacity to command belief ), much as we speak of discrediting forgeries. And when doing so perhaps we suppose, much as Jean Hardouin or Dares Phrygius claimed to do, that we are acting in the name of history. It is hence no accident that we often assign the term myth a pejorative connotation, while we treat history as an unalloyed good. But many of the figures surveyed in this book adopted a very different perspective, and they too have their heirs and allies today. Instead of arguing that myth and fiction needed the corrective force of history, they argued that history was deficient; hence, it required assistance from some sort of fictional or rhetorical invention in order to achieve narrative coherence, and even palatability. According to this view, history, that banal record of “what happened,” was neither an exciting nor an enlightening read. And so it begged for something else—​the pleasures of poetic verse, the embellishments of fiction, the universalizing propositions of philosophy, or the techniques of rhetorical artifice—​to capture the imaginations of its readers, and convey the lessons of the past to the present. Many throughout antiquity, the Middle Ages, and early modernity subscribed to an exemplar theory of history, and—​the claims of ostensibly disinterested historicism notwithstanding—​it has by no means disappeared today. History did not just furnish a record of the past, but also exempla, whether moral or otherwise, for the present. And it could not do so unless it co-​opted some of the techniques of its antagonists, fable and fiction:  hence why Dares—​as discussed in Chapter  3—​inspired so much poetry, even if his actual text was premised upon an attack against poetry. So how exactly did one augment history, without giving in outright to fiction’s falsehoods? An example from the ancient canon will here suffice. Throughout this book we will encounter humanists and others who praised history by reciting a famous passage from Cicero’s De oratore or On the Orator, in which Cicero extolled history as the “witness of the ages, the light of truth (lux veritatis), the life of memory, the teacher of life (magistra vitae), and the messenger of antiquity.” History was both truth (lux veritatis) and persuasion (magistra vitae). But the humanists who tirelessly recycled these truisms did not always cite Cicero’s original quotation in full. For Cicero had praised history in the context of heaping

31

Introduction

31

praise upon oratory: “By what other voice,” he had asked, “is history entrusted to immortality, besides that of the orator?”65 Rome’s great rhetorician maintained that historical writing could not do without assistance from the art of rhetoric; only rhetoric could transmit the veracity and utility of history across time. As Dares demonstrates, history and rhetoric possessed a complex and often contradictory relationship. While Dares—​or more precisely pseudo-​Nepos—​claimed to disavow rhetorical artifice, and to convey everything vere et simpliciter, in reality he deployed an elaborate rhetoric of anti-​rhetoric. He lauded Dares’ humble prose and condemned Homer’s insanity; suffice it to say, the Destruction of Troy shorn of this explicit editorializing would have been a very different text. This rhetorical strategy of disavowing rhetoric—​and attacking poetic fiction—​was key to the text’s claim of authenticity. Not everyone agreed with pseudo-​Nepos. In Chapter 5, for instance, we will examine a Renaissance literary critic who famously deemed fiction superior to history and argued that fiction was better suited for conveying exemplary truths to its readers—​even if its contents were literally false. Whereas history needed some measure of fiction, perhaps fiction could flourish despite—​or rather because of—​its violation of the laws of history? Although this book will document many polemical critiques of what the ancients termed fabula, fiction was never without its apologists, whether in antiquity or the Renaissance. Pseudo-​Nepos’ attack against Homer was a familiar one, but the poet always had his defenders, and it would be no exaggeration to declare him the victor:  Homer remains a household name today, nearly synonymous with antiquity itself, while Dares Phrygius languishes in obscurity, rarely read even by specialists. As will become clearer in Chapter  1, the history of Dares’ afterlife is also a history of the afterlives of Homer and Virgil, two of antiquity’s most canonical poets. Perhaps no one better summed up their endurance—​and their victory in a war that Dares and his ilk ultimately lost—​than Erich Auerbach, writing in his seminal study of realism, Mimesis. In Auerbach’s words, “the oft-​repeated reproach that Homer is a liar takes nothing from his effectiveness, he does not need to base his story on historical reality, his reality is powerful enough in itself; it ensnares us, weaving its web

65. Cic. De or. 2.9.36: “Historia vero testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuntia vetustatis, qua voce alia, nisi oratoris, immortalitati commendatur?” See the important discussion of this Ciceronian dictum in Reinhart Koselleck, “Historia Magistra Vitae: The Dissolution of the Topos into the Perspective of a Modernized Historical Process,” in his Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (New York, 2004). The significance of this passage to Cicero’s conception of oratory is addressed by Henriette van der Blom, Cicero’s Role Models: The Political Strategy of a Newcomer (Oxford, 2010), 87. On exemplary history in the early modern world, see George H. Nadel, “Philosophy of History before Historicism,” History and Theory 3 (1964): 291–​315.

32

32

In t roduct ion

around us, and that suffices him. And this ‘real’ world into which we are lured, exists for itself, [it] contains nothing but itself . . .”66 In other words, Homer had accomplished the seemingly impossible: realism without historicity. Auerbach here contrasted Homer’s ahistorical reality with the Bible’s claims to historical reality, but his formulation applies equally well to the contrast between Homer and Dares. In Auerbach’s judgment, Homer could survive both ancient and modern attacks against myth because his power was not predicated upon the historical reality of his narrative. One could dwell in his reality, and savor it, regardless of its historicity or lack thereof. In contrast, Dares’ very raison d’être was to yoke that world of which Homer and the poets had sung to an underlying history. And so Dares lost his power as soon as it became clear he could not deliver on this promise. He called Homer a liar only to be found a liar himself, and once he lost his fides, he could no longer ensnare anyone. Yet even if the winners usually get to narrate such struggles, the losers deserve a hearing as well: not necessarily because we wish to rehabilitate their (in this case, false) claims but, rather, because the story of how and why they lost demands recovery. That story is central to those fundamental antinomies—​between myth and history, fact and fiction—​that still define, and often bedevil, our study of antiquity.

Dares and the Reception of Antiquity:  A Note on Method But how should we tell this story of Dares—​of the war he waged and eventually lost? In a practical sense, this book tells it as a reception study. It examines how a motley assortment of readers received, copied, appropriated, and judged the Destruction of Troy, from our first attestations of the text in the early Middle Ages to the last of those readers who found it worth mentioning in the Enlightenment. We will stop there, exactly in the year 1800, because—​while Dares remained a subject of academic study in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—​almost no one found his underlying claim to historical veracity worth defending, or attacking, anymore. Such questions seemed largely settled. Yet the proliferation of reception studies in recent decades—​both within and beyond the discipline of Classics—​has not only stimulated new interest in how post-​antique readers received ancient texts but also furnished us with new theories and tools with

66. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, 1953), 13.

3

Introduction

33

which to study such texts and readers.67 It has made the present moment a propitious time to reassess the legacy of Dares Phrygius. The field of classical reception has taken inspiration from important mid-​ twentieth-​century developments in literary studies, particularly Hans Robert Jauss’ development of the notion of an “aesthetics of reception,” conditioned by a given reader’s “horizon of expectations.”68 We will encounter many shifts in the horizon of expectations concerning Dares, some dramatic, others slow. Jauss and others helped stimulate a larger change of scholarly focus from authors to readers, from the producers to the consumers of text. In more recent decades, developments in the field of book history have also furnished us with new methods for recovering these readerly horizons. Reading takes many forms, and evidence for it is found in far more places than just critical editions and finished, printed texts. We are now more aware of the material traces of reading, from the way it shaped the scribal copying of manuscripts in the Middle Ages to the kind of annotations it inspired in the margins of early modern printed books. From the eighth century to the eighteenth, from a codex produced at the Carolingian monastery of Lorsch to the notes that Thomas Jefferson scrawled in the books of his Virginia library, our study draws extensively upon manuscripts and marginalia. It deploys this evidence to reconstruct how diverse readers—​some famous and others anonymous—​approached the Destruction of Troy. In this fashion, it combines reception studies with the study of material texts. It is worth mentioning two developments—​in two of the post-​antique periods that occupy the bulk of this book—​that have drawn new attention to the status of texts as physical, material objects, and whose methods this book uses extensively. The first concerns the study of medieval manuscripts, and the second

67. For but a few examples of works from this vast field, see Charles Martindale, Redeeming the Text:  Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge, 1993); Classics and the Uses of Reception, ed. Charles Martindale and Richard F. Thomas (Malden, MA, 2006); A Companion to the Classical Tradition, ed. Craig W. Kallendorf (Malden, MA, 2007); A Companion to Classical Receptions, ed. Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray (Malden, 2011); Classical Pasts:  The Classical Tradition of Greece and Rome, ed. James I. Porter (Princeton, 2005); and Constanze Güthenke, “Shop Talk:  Reception Studies and Recent Work in the History of Scholarship,” Classical Receptions Journal 1 (2009): 104–​15. For studies of the reception of specific classical authors, see for instance Julia Haig Gaisser, The Fortunes of Apuleius and the Golden Ass: A Study in Transmission and Reception (Princeton, 2008); Christopher B. Krebs, A Most Dangerous Book:  Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich (New  York, 2011); Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve:  How the World Became Modern (New York, 2011); and Ada Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, 2014). Additional works are cited throughout this book. 68.  Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis, 1982).

34

34

In t roduct ion

the study of early modern print. First, in recent decades medieval scholars have explored what codicology—​that is, the study of the physical properties of the codex qua codex—​can teach us about reception. In particular, they have shown that one important set of clues to how medieval readers read and interpreted a given text can be found in the choice of other texts that appeared alongside it in a physical manuscript.69 As we will see in Chapter 2, the medieval Dares took on new meanings thanks to the other texts that accompanied, and sometimes continued, him in codices. Second, the rise of the history of reading has also changed our approach to early modern print. We now appreciate that a sizeable quantity of the text present in early modern printed books was in fact not printed. Rather, with a frequency not seen in their modern counterparts, early modern books were often augmented—​sometimes even flooded—​with the manuscript notes of their readers. Such annotations—​often termed marginalia due to their frequent placement in the margins of a page—​offer us direct and immediate evidence of reception.70 As we will see from Chapter 4 onward, they offer us vital clues to how early modern readers understood Dares Phrygius and related works. The advent of reception studies and the rise of the history of reading are relatively recent phenomena, but the work they do and the activity they describe are very old. Medieval and early modern readers developed their own language to reflect upon what we now call reception. We encounter this language in everything from the medieval vision of translatio studii or the “translation of learning” and the aforementioned Renaissance notion of returning ad fontes to the so-​called querelle des anciens et des modernes or quarrel of the ancients and the moderns, which shook the world of Bossuet and Hardouin. And reception was practiced already in antiquity, as the Homeric encounters of the Second Sophistic so richly demonstrate. In this sense, this book is not just a reception history of a specific text. Rather, it is also a history of how readers both ancient and post-​ antique theorized the activity of reception itself, long before the term became an actor’s category. Whether one accepted or rejected the Phrygian’s status as first pagan historian, reading his text often stimulated second-​order reflections upon how the ancients themselves had read history and antiquity alike. Hence, this

69. See for instance the approach adopted in Rosamond McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004), and Mary A. Rouse and Richard H. Rouse, Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame, 1991). 70. See, for instance, Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, “‘Studied for Action’: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy,” Past and Present 129 (1990):  30–​78, and William H. Sherman, Used Books:  Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia, 2008). For a recent study that combines book history and classical reception, see Craig Kallendorf, The Protean Virgil: Material Form and the Reception of the Classics (Oxford, 2015).

35

Introduction

35

study draws upon the approach that Jonas Grethlein and Christopher Krebs have articulated for investigating what they term the “plupast” in ancient historiography. They define the “plupast” of a given historical text as “a past completed prior to the past that the narrator focuses on.” And they suggest that study of such second-​order constructions of pastness can help us look beyond the limitations inherent in concepts like intertextuality and exemplarity to explain more fully “the temporal complexity of ancient historical narratives.”71 For many of the readers both ancient and post-​antique examined in this book, Troy was the plupast par excellence. The importance of these second-​order reflections is another reason why Dares still matters. The present study also draws inspiration from the recent volume Deep Classics: Rethinking Classical Reception. Its editor, Shane Butler, notes that scholars of the postclassical afterlife of the classical world often describe their subject as either “classical reception” or “the classical tradition.” Butler proposes instead what he deems a tertium quid between these two poles—​namely, the study of “deep classics.”72 Classical studies are “deep” precisely because they probe the distantness of the distant past. This basic operation—​of attempting to bridge an almost insurmountable temporal gap—​is ipso facto worthy of study and investigation, whatever the cultural capital we assign to any specific aspect of the Greco-​Roman world. In Butler’s words, “what is ‘antiquity’—​the thing classicists say they work on, via things they call ‘antiquities’—​if not precisely a word for a depth of time?”73 Following this program, the First Pagan Historian offers a twofold attempt to illuminate that tertium quid. First, it aims to understand how the ancients themselves—​including forgers like Dares—​understood the “depth of time” when reflecting upon, and sometimes inventing, their own pasts. Second, it traces how these reflections were received in various post-​antique worlds and therefore still influence our own perceptions of temporal difference. Given these questions, it is no surprise that much of reception studies concerns the history of philology—​particularly the history of how postclassical readers and scholars defined the relationship between language and its ancient

71.  See Jonas Grethlein and Christopher B. Krebs, eds., Time and Narrative in Ancient Historiography: The “Plupast” from Herodotus to Appian (Cambridge, 2012), 1. 72. Shane Butler, “Introduction: On the Origins of ‘Deep Classics’,” in Deep Classics: Rethinking Classical Reception, ed. Shane Butler (London, 2016), 3. See also the essays collected in Patrick Baker, Johannes Helmrath, and Craig Kallendorf, eds., Beyond Reception: Renaissance Humanism and the Transformation of Classical Antiquity (Berlin, 2019). For a wide-​ranging study of temporalities ancient and modern, see François Hartog, Régimes d’historicité: Présentisme et expériences du temps (Paris, 2003). 73. Butler, “Introduction,” 4–​5.

36

36

In t roduct ion

historico-​cultural contexts. This subject was front and center in Dares’ afterlife. The rise and eventual fall of the Destruction of Troy is also the story of Latinity—​ the construction of its periods and phases, and its supposed rise, fall, and rebirth—​ in miniature. As hinted at earlier, many who rejected the Destruction of Troy did so not because its author claimed to be a Trojan eyewitness of the twelfth century BCE but rather because its translator claimed to be an eminent Roman historian of the first century BCE—​and thus a denizen of what came to be considered Latinity’s Golden Age. As we will see in later chapters, it was pseudo-​Nepos’ prefatory epistle, originally designed to buttress Dares’ authority, which did more than anything else to get Dares caught. The Renaissance program of going ad fontes demanded the recovery of “correct” classical Latin—​and more often than not, humanists started to identify the apex of Latinity with first-​century-​B CE Rome, especially the works of Cornelius Nepos’ famous friend, Cicero. As a result, they began to scoff at the notion that the “barbarous” Latin of the Destruction of Troy could belong to Nepos’ oeuvre; this incongruity proved the text a fake. Such acts of philological discrimination proved key to another set of debates over time and distantness. These did not pertain to the difference between mythic and historical time but rather concerned a much shorter timescale—​i.e., what we now define as the difference between the classical age per se and late antiquity, and the relative worth we assign to each. These questions have dominated classical studies for the last half-​century, particularly as “late antiquity” emerged as a corrective to the old Gibbonian paradigm of Rome’s “decline and fall.”74 Although early modern scholars did not use these precise terms, the story of how they decided that the Destruction of Troy was not a “classical” text, but instead somehow “late antique,” is key to how we define and periodize antiquity and its literary productions today.75 The prestige accorded Latinity—​by humanist ideology and other sources—​proved integral to this process. As W. Martin Bloomer put it in his study of the cultural uses of the Latin language, “Latinity has by definition and by its history, then, a double pose: it is both the medium of culture and culture itself.”76 In this spirit, The First Pagan Historian aims to contribute 74. As accomplished most programmatically by Peter Brown: see Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, 1978). On this transformation, see Glen W. Bowersock, “The Vanishing Paradigm of the Fall of Rome,” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 49 (1996): 29–​43. 75. For an overview of the genealogy of the term classical, and discussion of the rare early modern uses of that term, see Salvatore Settis, “Classical,” in The Classical Tradition, ed. Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis (Cambridge, MA, 2010), 205–​6. 76. W. Martin Bloomer, Latinity and Literary Society at Rome (Philadelphia, 1997), 1. For the long history of Latinity’s status as such, see Françoise Waquet, Le Latin ou ou l'empire d'un signe, XVIe–​XXe siècle (Paris, 1998), Joseph Farrell, Latin Language and Latin Culture: From

37

Introduction

37

something to the question of how Latinity, and more specifically a certain kind or phase of Latinity, became synonymous with both elite “learned” culture and the linguistic conventions used to perpetuate it. This is itself an underappreciated component of that aforementioned dialectic between antiquity and modernity. If the survival of Dares illustrates the persistence of certain notions regarding myth, his slow downfall simultaneously illustrates the imperatives of canon formation that this elite culture promoted. Dares became a threat to the nascent classical canon as soon as some humanists determined that he was faking his connection to the so-​called Golden Age. Hence, they condemned him in the name of the Golden Age they claimed to have revived. Along these lines, The First Pagan Historian aims to integrate reception studies into a longue durée view of cultural and intellectual history. Since this book is a reception study, it is a record of readings and responses to Dares and the texts and authors associated with him. And as the vast majority of these responses derive from medieval and early modern Europe, it is also a cultural and intellectual history of medieval and early modern Europe. But it is not a history of these periods alone; instead, it constantly moves back and forth between them and their ancient predecessors. The First Pagan Historian is thus also a study of Latin literature and historiography in both the classical and late antique Roman worlds: i.e., the world from which the Latin Destruction of Troy claimed to derive, and the world from which it actually derived. Nor does it examine these two worlds merely as passive objects that the medieval or early modern subjects of our reception study received. Rather, it seeks to shed new light on classical and late antique Roman culture precisely by recovering Dares’ post-​antique reception.77 Even—​or especially—​the reception of a forgery promises to enrich our understanding of how antiquity conceived of notions of truth, history, and authority. We might term this method reception in reverse: we are concerned not only with what post-​ antique responses to ancient texts can teach us about the cultural worlds of the responders, but also what said post-​antique responses—​some of which are now as temporally distant from us as they were from the ancients—​can teach us about the cultures of antiquity itself.

Ancient to Modern Times (Cambridge, 2001); Jürgen Leonhardt, Latin:  Story of a World Language, trans. Kenneth Kronenberg (Cambridge, MA, 2013); and Stephen Harrison, Victorian Horace: Classics and Class (London, 2017). 77.  On the importance of this approach, see Lorna Hardwick, Reception Studies (Oxford, 2003), 4: “. . . they [i.e., reception studies] also focus critical attention back towards the ancient source and sometimes frame new questions or retrieve aspects of the source which have been marginalized or forgotten.”

38

38

In t roduct ion

In this spirit, although this book (as its subtitle indicates) moves in roughly chronological order from antiquity to the Enlightenment, it does not always follow this chronology inflexibly: sometimes it moves backward in time even if its overall temporal thrust is forward-​looking. This Janus-​faced perspective is fitting for a study of debates over the efficacy—​and the authenticity—​of historiography and its temporal reckonings. However, even if this technique might seem unconventional, in other respects this book belongs to one of the most conventional or traditional of genres within reception studies: accounts of the Nachleben of a specific ancient author. Such studies knew a lengthy history, and they formed a rich body of scholarship long before reception came into vogue. For instance, a classic example we will encounter in Chapter  3—​Domenico Comparetti’s pioneering survey Vergil in the Middle Ages—​was first published in 1872.78 But at the same time, we have augmented this approach with new methods, particularly those derived from the growing field of book history. Here we follow the approach adopted by Ann Blair in her study of the sixteenth-​century French scholar Jean Bodin’s Theatrum universae naturae (incidentally, Chapter 5 covers Bodin’s own strange encounter with Dares).79 Blair describes her study as an histoire totale of Bodin’s Theatrum, “from its origins in the printshop  .  .  .  and in the commonplace books of the author, to its resting point in the notes and citations of its readers.”80 While we are not lucky enough to possess the same degree of material evidence about Dares’ composition, we are able to enrich our understanding of his Nachleben by drawing upon largely unpublished evidence that his readers left behind in copies of the Destruction of Troy and related works. This study does not restrict itself to direct readings of Dares’ Destruction of Troy. Rather, we range widely across texts associated with him, whether in manuscript, print, or even the minds of his champions and critics. We create a web of reception histories, woven outward from Dares’ center: we examine the reception of texts that imitated him, traveled with him, translated him (both across genres and languages), and even challenged him. By doing so we seek to move beyond the limitations inherent in traditional models of doing reception: i.e., studies of author X in period Y, or even studies of author X across periods Y and Z. In a volume devoted to debates over the place of reception within Classics, Ralph Hexter eloquently addressed these methodological limitations. He asks, “Where do we

78. See Chapter 3, 130–31. 79. See Chapter 5, 218–​19. 80. Ann Blair, The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (Princeton, 1997), 9.

39

Introduction

39

draw the line?”81 In other words, how do studies of an author’s Nachleben know where to stop, insofar as endless quantities of material are theoretically germane to how readers of said author formed their “horizons of expectation?” Simon Goldhill has recently explored this problem by tying it to our long-​standing methodological preference for case studies and exemplarity.82 This raises another methodological question, perceptively addressed in recent work by Marco Formisano on the relationship between canonicity and marginality. Namely, how do we determine which authors are lucky enough to get their receptions memorialized? As Formisano asks, even if many reception studies seek to challenge the canon, especially by highlighting the sheer multiplicity of ways that ancient texts were read across time and space, do they actually end up solidifying a more restrictive version of that canon? After all, by definition our most canonical of authors—​our Virgils and Homers, for instance—​possess the greatest volume of raw materials for reception studies, by virtue of their very canonicity.83 While we do not pretend to have any final answer to these quandaries, the study of authors like Dares Phrygius offers one productive way forward. In other words, by studying an author who was once canonical but is now marginal—​and whose very reception history is a story of both struggle and compromise with authors, like Virgil and Homer, who remain canonical today—​we can shed new light on exactly how, and why, the ancient canon has evolved over the centuries. Moreover, we can unravel how dueling notions of canonicity itself have shaped the fraught relationship between antiquity and modernity. Finally, the First Pagan Historian argues that forgery has an essential role to play in studying this question. Far from constituting a mere false shortcut to antiquity, as many early modern humanists complained, forged texts offer an unusually clear mirror upon the ancient world, which their genuine counterparts, inevitably smudged with the complexities of true history, cannot always supply as readily. After all, there are few better ways of ascertaining how (at least some of ) the ancients perceived their own antiquity than seeing how they faked it.

81. Ralph Hexter, “Literary History as a Provocation to Reception Studies,” in Classics and the Uses of Reception, ed. Martindale and Thomas, 23–​31, esp. 27. Hexter also mentions Comparetti and other older examples of the genre at p. 26. 82. Simon Goldhill, “The Limits of the Case Study: Exemplarity and the Reception of Classical Literature,” New Literary History 48 (2017): 415–​35. 83.  See Marco Formisano, “Introduction I:  Marginality and the Classics:  Exemplary Extraneousness,” in Marginality, Canonicity, Passion, ed. Marco Formisano and Christina Shuttleworth Kraus (Oxford, 2018), esp. 1–​3. See also Constanze Güthenke and Brooke Holmes, “Hyperinclusivity, Hypercanonicity, and the Future of the Field,” in the same volume,  57–​73.

40

40

In t roduct ion

And there are few better ways of ascertaining how post-​antique worlds perceived said antiquity than seeing if they fell for such fakery or wised up to the ruse. This model of reception does not see antiquity as passive or monolithic but rather as a site of perennial problems or fissures that post-​antique readers have constantly attempted either to solve or exacerbate, oftentimes in an unconscious fashion. At numerous points in this book, we will find antagonists in the Middle Ages and early modernity rehashing ancient debates, without even knowing they were doing so. This model allows for another kind of histoire totale through Dares—​a bizarre and now neglected supporting actor in a play with much brighter stars. The story of Dares forces us to see these stars—​not only prominent authors from the classical canon, but also famous names from various vernacular literatures, and even leading authorities in fields as diverse as political philosophy and medicine—​in new and unexpected lights. To cite just a few names out of many, in the following pages we will encounter not only Homer, Virgil, Cicero, and Sallust, but also Petrarch, Chaucer, Andreas Vesalius, John Locke, and Thomas Jefferson. Yet we will encounter them from Dares’ perspective, and so we will meet them on an equal plane alongside the other actors in this play: a whole host of now obscure figures, from medieval scribes and poets to early modern humanists, printers, and occultists, some of whom have received almost no modern scholarly attention whatsoever. This book consists of six chapters, followed by an extended Conclusion. Chapter 1 begins with Isidore of Seville, who christened Dares Phrygius the first pagan historian. It then moves back in time to consider the likely origins of the Destruction of Troy, and how both its actual and supposed milieux of composition (i.e., classical Rome and late antiquity) defined the nature of historical writing. It discusses authors whom Dares co-​opted, such as his ostensible translator, Cornelius Nepos, and those whom he challenged, such as Virgil. Chapter 2 surveys the dissemination of manuscripts of the text in the Middle Ages. It traces how the Destruction of Troy morphed from an ancient history into a medieval genealogy and buttressed the claims of medieval peoples that they, like the Romans, were descended from an illustrious Trojan pedigree. Chapter 3 turns to Dares’ place in medieval debates between history and fiction and examines what might strike us as an oddity: the production of medieval poems based on Dares, by poets who attacked the ancient art of poetry for its mendacity. Chapter 4 brings us to a very different assault against mendacity: it begins in the early Renaissance, with some of the earliest attacks against Dares’ authenticity. It then surveys how these debates over his authenticity spread across early modern scholarship, and how many readers—​humanist critiques notwithstanding—​ blithely went on believing him. Chapter 5 looks in closer depth at just why Dares

41

Introduction

41

remained a source of debate in early modern Europe: it examines how the new culture of print and the new achievements of humanism perpetuated the authority of the Phrygian, and how the increasingly professionalized world of philological scholarship responded to this perpetuation of his longevity with renewed attacks. Chapter  6 moves both forward in time and outward in scope. It traces Dares’ afterlife well into the seventeenth century, but in doing so it moves beyond treatments of the text in isolation. Instead, it examines the afterlives of Dares’ “fellow travelers”—​i.e., texts that circulated with him both in manuscript and print—​and reconstructs how together they wove webs of error and confusion that kept Dares alive for longer than we might have thought possible. The Conclusion brings us to the Enlightenment, and Dares’ neglected role in one of its headline cultural battles: the so-​called quarrel of the ancients and the moderns. We close there—​ in the eighteenth century—​by considering readings of Dares at a moment often deemed the beginning of modern classical scholarship. What do these readings reveal about paradoxes that still define classical scholarship today, and our own notions of antiquity? In the words of pseudo-​Nepos, addressed to pseudo-​Sallust, we will go as far as this. Now we will return to what we promised and relate the history of the first pagan historian.

42

43

1

Dares Forged Histories Real and Imagined in the Classical and Late Antique Worlds “Among the pagans, Dares Phrygius first brought forth a history, on the Greeks and Trojans.” —​I sidore of Seville

Isidore of Seville was either one of the last scholars of antiquity, or one of the first and most influential scholars of the Middle Ages. He lived from the late sixth to the early seventh century, served as archbishop of Seville, and died in 636. He wrote histories, biographies, and theological treatises. But he was best known for his Etymologiae or Etymologies, a massive catalog of erudition on almost every imaginable topic. Throughout the medieval world, and even far into the early modern period, to be an encyclopedist meant to follow his example. Isidore was both encyclopedist and etymologist. Examination of anything, he pithily declared, could be made clearer by discovering its etymology.1 Isidore’s concept of origins applied to both words and things, verba and res. In fact, his work sometimes bore the title Origins. In this spirit, Isidore, like Pliny the Elder and other ancients before him, proved an indefatigable cataloger of firsts. This concept of a first, and its authority as an interpretive tool, is a theme we will return to multiple times throughout this book, whether in 700 or 1700. If one wanted to understand a discipline, art, or branch of learning, one needed to know who invented it and first practiced it. The Greeks had invented rhetoric, and among them its founders, so Isidore claimed, were Gorgias, Aristotle, and Hermagoras.2 The work of unfolding genealogies of the arts and sciences was no easy task, and Isidore often had to reconcile competing traditions. Sometimes pagan and Judeo-​Christian narratives were at odds. Isidore noted that Moses 1. Isid. Etym. 1.29.2: “Omnis enim rei inspectio etymologia cognita planior est.” 2. Isid. Etym. 2.2.1. The First Pagan Historian. Frederic Clark, Oxford University Press (2020). © Frederic Clark. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190492304.001.0001.

4

44

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

named Tubal the inventor of music, whereas the Greeks reserved that honor for Pythagoras.3 And different societies had different firsts:  when it came to the invention of lawgiving, Moses had first expounded divine law to the Jews, Phoroneus had first legislated for the Greeks, and Hermes Trismegistus had first given laws to the Egyptians.4 Isidore’s Etymologies was a massive project. It contained some twenty books and covered everything from syllables to precious gems, metrical feet to plants. Isidore lived in the early centuries of a new post-​Roman world, and, in the words of one twentieth-​century scholar, his encyclopedism represented a veritable “literary Noah’s ark” for a shrinking classical inheritance.5 While this view might accord more with the nostalgia of early modern humanists than with Isidore’s own motivations, much medieval knowledge of the Greco-​Roman past was mediated through his Etymologies, which remained popular throughout the Middle Ages.6 At many points throughout his work, he invoked the so-​called veteres or “ancients.” Just who were these ancients? He cited Virgil more than any other, some 190 times in the text. Cicero appeared some 50 times.7 Many of these citations were secondhand. Unsurprisingly, given their closer proximity to his own world, Isidore relied greatly upon late antique sources—​themselves receivers and mediators of classical authors—​including Solinus, Cassiodorus, and the late fourth-​/​early fifth-​century Virgilian commentator Servius. However, whereas he frequently mentioned Virgil and other veteres, he almost never cited these less ancient authors by name.8 Isidore judged precedents apud veteres or “among the ancients” of paramount importance. And ancient precedent proved especially important for defining the art of history itself. As the encyclopedist explained near the end of the first book of his Etymologies:

3. Isid. Etym. 3.16.1. 4. Isid. Etym. 5.1.1–​2. 5. For Isidore as Noah’s ark, see Heinz Koeppler, “De Viris Illustribus and Isidore of Seville,” Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1936): 32, discussed in Rouse and Rouse, “Bibliography before Print: The Medieval De Viris Illustribus,” in Authentic Witnesses, 135–​36. 6. On the Etymologies see Jacques Fontaine, Isidore de Séville: genèse et originalité de la culture hispanique au temps des Wisigoths (Turnhout, 2000); John Henderson, The Medieval World of Isidore of Seville: Truth from Words (Cambridge, 2007); and Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: “Grammatica” and Literary Theory, 350–​1100 (Cambridge, 1994), 209–​43. 7. These figures are cited by Barney et al. in their introduction to Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge, 2006), 15. 8. On Isidore’s largely silent use of late antique authors, see Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, trans. Barney et al., 15.

45



Histories Real and Imagined

45

History is a narration of deeds (narratio rei gestae), through which things done in the past are discerned. History is so called in Greek from the term historein, that is, from “seeing” or from “knowing.” Indeed, among the ancients (apud veteres), no one wrote history unless he had been present and seen those things to be recorded. For we understand better what we apprehend through our eyes than what we collect through hearing. Things that are seen are presented without lying (sine mendacio).9 After defining history, Isidore identified its first practitioners, just as he would for law, music, rhetoric, and so many other disciplines. Predictably, he declared that “among us (apud nos), Moses first composed a history, on the beginning of the world.” Fittingly, the first history was an account of Genesis: it treated the origins and beginning of the world itself. Isidore’s pagan first was less expected: “among the pagans (apud gentiles), Dares Phrygius first brought forth a history, concerning Greeks and Trojans, which they say was written by him on leaves of palm.”10 Just as Moses was the first sacred historian, so Dares Phrygius was the first pagan historian. This appellation would define the Phrygian’s reception for more than a millennium. It is unclear just where Isidore found this enticing detail about Dares writing his history on palm leaves. After Dares or post Daretem, Isidore explained, Herodotus was thought to have written history.11 And after Herodotus came Pherecydes, who flourished in Greece, so he pointed out, around the time of the biblical Ezra.12 Indeed, while Herodotus—​long considered the father of history—​was also known derisively as the father of lies, perhaps such a moniker

9. Isid. Etym. 1.41.1: “Historia est narratio rei gestae, per quam ea, quae in praeterito facta sunt, dinoscuntur. Dicta autem Graece historia ἀπὸ τοῦ ἱστορεῖν, id est a videre vel cognoscere. Apud veteres enim nemo conscribebat historiam, nisi is qui interfuisset, et ea quae conscribenda essent vidisset. Melius enim oculis quae fiunt deprehendimus, quam quae auditione colligimus. Quae enim videntur sine mendacio proferuntur.” The English translation used here is taken with modifications from Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, trans. Barney et al., 67. For discussion of Isidore’s definition and its implications for late antique historiography (including Isidore’s own historical writings), see A.H. Merrills, History and Geography in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2005), 172–​73. 10. Isid. Etym. 1.42.1: “De primis auctoribus historiarum: Historiam autem apud nos primus Moyses de initio mundi conscripsit. Apud gentiles vero primus Dares Phrygius de Graecis et Troianis historiam edidit, quam in foliis palmarum ab eo conscriptam esse ferunt.” See Isidore, Etymologies, trans. Barney et al., 67. For discussion of Isidore’s invocation of Moses and Dares, see Fontaine, Isidore de Séville, 218. 11. Isid. Etym. 1.42.2: “Post Daretem autem in Graecia Herodotus historiam primus habitus est.” 12.  Isid. Etym. 1.42.2:  “Post quem Pherecydes claruit his temporibus quibus Esdras legem scripsit.” For this synchronism between Pherecydes and Ezra, see Eusebius-​Jerome, Chronici canones, ed. J.K. Fotheringham (London, 1923), 193.

46

46

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

would have suited Dares better. To many of the people we will encounter in this book, all of ancient pagan history, no matter how canonical or celebrated, had been written post Daretem. After he established its first practitioners, the encyclopedist distinguished history from other types of narrative. Here he attempted, as many ancient theorists had before him, to draw categorical distinctions between truth and fiction. For Isidore, Dares illustrated the difference between the two, as he would for so many others all the way up to the eighteenth century. This book examines the history of that distinction, and the Phrygian’s neglected place in it. Dares allowed his readers to draw a line in the sand between veracity and fictionality, whether one equated him with the former or dismissed him as the latter. Isidore drew this line as follows: History, argumentum, and fable differ from one another. Histories (historiae) are true deeds that have happened, argumenta are things that, even if they have not happened, nevertheless could happen, and fables (fabulae) are things that have not happened and cannot happen, because they are contrary to nature (contra naturam).13 Isidore derived much of his erudition, albeit without attribution, from the Virgilian commentator Servius. His definition of history and its opposites—​that foundational distinction between historia and fabula at the heart of this study—​ shared much in common with that expounded by the late antique grammarian. Servius played a key role throughout Dares’ afterlife: we will return to him multiple times in both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. At the heart of Servius’ project was an attempt, however different it might seem from our understanding of the term, to historicize. The commentator, like many other ancient grammarians, sought to identify the actual historia that lurked behind a patently fabulous poem.14 According to David Dietz, the term historia appeared some 118 times in

13. Isidore, Etymologiae 1.44.5: “Item inter historiam et argumentum et fabulam interesse. Nam historiae sunt res verae quae factae sunt; argumenta sunt quae etsi facta non sunt, fieri tamen possunt; fabulae vero sunt quae nec factae sunt nec fieri possunt, quia contra naturam sunt.” Argumentum is difficult to render precisely into English, and thus I have chosen to leave it in the original. Barney et al. translate it as “plausible narration,” which aptly captures the spirit of the term. 14.  On this aspect of the commentator’s task, see Kathy Eden, Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and Its Humanist Reception (New Haven, 1997),  20–​40.

47



Histories Real and Imagined

47

his commentaries.15 Expounding it was one of Servius’ most common exegetical strategies. Servius first defined his favored term when glossing Virgil’s reference to the Romans’ descent from the “restored bloodline of Teucer” (revocato a sanguine Teucri) at Aeneid 1.235. Servius’ definition was a bit different from Isidore’s, and it has long puzzled scholars.16 Although the commentator mentioned argumentum, as Isidore himself would do, he subsequently seemed to sweep it up with historia into a single, and far more capacious, category: A fable is something said contrary to nature (contra naturam), whether it happened or did not happen, such as that of Pasiphaë; a history is whatever is said according to nature (secundum naturam), whether it happened or did not happen (sive factum sive non factum), such as that of Phaedra.17 Pasiphaë was the Cretan queen who gave birth to the Minotaur after sleeping with Poseidon’s bull; hence, this account was a fabula patently contra naturam. Phaedra, in contrast, was Pasiphaë’s daughter by Minos, who fell in love with her stepson Hippolytus; whether or not this had actually occurred, it was possible and hence secundum naturam. For Servius, a historia did not need to be rooted in actual, literal fact. It was either something that happened or something that could have happened. Therefore, historia could be used to rationalize myth in the manner that Paul Veyne has described.18 Isidore would take a subtly different approach: although he copied Servius’ contention that fabula was explicitly contra naturam, he restricted historia to things that had happened in actuality and consigned the merely possible to the domain of argumentum. Both Isidore and Servius addressed a problem inherent in historia itself. This problem would reverberate throughout the Middle Ages and early modernity, and it explains many of the seeming paradoxes of Dares’ afterlife. To put it in 15.  David B. Dietz, “Historia in the Commentary of Servius,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 125 (1995):  61–​97, esp.  63. Yet even this emphasis was dwarfed by the sheer volume of Servius’ glosses on linguistic topics and correct Latin usage, reflecting the pedagogical aims of his commentary. On this point see Robert A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1988), 169–​97, esp. 170. 16. See Caterina Lazzarini, “Historia/​fabula: forme della costruzione poetica virgiliana nel commento di Servio all’Eneide,” Materiali e discussione per l’analisi dei testi classici 12 (1984): 117–​44. 17.  Serv. Aen. 1.235:  “Et sciendum est, inter fabulam et argumentum, hoc est historiam, hoc interesse, quod fabula est dicta res contra naturam, sive facta sive non facta, ut de Pasiphae, historia est quicquid secundum naturam dicitur, sive factum sive non factum, ut de Phaedra.” See discussion in Dietz, “Historia,” 63–​68, and Lazzarini, “Historia/​Fabula,” 121–​26. 18. See Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?, cited in the Introduction on 27.

48

48

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

the simplest terms, did history have to be true? And was empirical truth—​in the most quotidian, banal sense of “what happened”—​the best criterion for defining and judging it? Dares, the eyewitness who reported just the facts, certainly seemed to say so, but not all his readers, even friendly ones, would agree. Isidore’s explicitly tripartite model of historia, argumentum, and fabula harked back to earlier classical authorities from the Latin rhetorical tradition, especially Cicero and Quintilian. Perhaps Cicero’s most famous definition of history was the one—​discussed in the Introduction—​he offered in his De oratore. There he praised historia in encomiastic terms as lux veritatis, magistra vitae, and the like.19 But he had likewise defined history in one of his first works, his rhetorical treatise De inventione. And it was here that he explicitly differentiated historia from fabula and argumentum, drawing distinctions that Isidore would rehash centuries later: That which is placed in the exposition of events has three parts:  fable, history, and argumentum. A fable is that in which are contained things neither true nor similar to truth (nec verae nec veri similes res) . . . a history is a thing that occurred, remote from the memory of our age . . . an argumentum is a fictive thing, which nonetheless could have occurred.20 Cicero supplied examples of all three: for fabula he cited a line from the tragic poet Pacuvius, for historia a line from Ennius’ historical epic about early Rome, the Annales, and for argumentum a line from Terence’s Andria. Broadly speaking, therefore, he linked his tripartite division to a threefold distinction among genres: namely, tragedy, history, and comedy. And in so doing he placed a critical temporal restriction on his second category: a historia counted as such not only because of the facticity of its contents, but also because of the distance of said contents from the present. It was a narrative of something, like Ennius’ account of early Rome, “remote from the memory of our age” (ab aetatis nostrae memoria remota). More than a century and a half after Cicero’s De inventione, Quintilian proposed a similar tripartite division in his own rhetorical manual, the Institutio oratoria. Quintilian linked his terms even more explicitly to their corresponding genres. Fabula, used by “tragedies and poems” (tragoediis atque carminibus), was

19. Cic. De or. 2.9.36. 20. Cic. Inv. rhet. 1.19.27: “Ea quae in negotiorum expositione posita est tres habet partes: fabulam, historiam, argumentum. Fabula est in qua nec verae nec veri similes res continentur . . . historia est gesta res, ab aetatis nostrae memoria remota . . . argumentum est ficta res, quae tamen fieri potuit.” A nearly identical passage appears in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, a rhetorical treatise that many in the Middle Ages and Renaissance attributed to Cicero. See Rhet. Her. 1.13.

49



Histories Real and Imagined

49

“remote not only from the truth (a veritate) but also from the form of truth (a forma veritatis)”; argumentum, employed by comedies, was “false but similar to the truth” (falsum sed vero simile); and finally, historia was an “exposition of something that occurred” (gestae rei expositio).21 These distinctions, even if not always observed in practice, proved to be foundational features of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and exegesis. And they survived, thanks to the likes of Servius and Isidore, not only into the medieval curriculum, but also far beyond. In one form or another, they supplied the assumptions—​the mental furniture—​for nearly all the debates we will examine in the subsequent pages. These definitions seemed tailor-​made for Dares—​or, more likely, Dares had been tailor-​made for them. To many who read him, it seemed obvious that—​ to invert Quintilian’s characterization of fable—​Dares was not only true but had also adhered to the form of truth. He was veritas and forma veritatis. As an eyewitness, he literally and directly recorded “what happened,” and by eschewing the supernatural and the mythical, he had kept to veracity’s form. As pseudo-​Nepos’ epistle made strenuously clear, there was nothing in his narrative contra naturam, such as mortals speaking and fighting with deities, or apples of discord precipitating wars. Everything he said both could have occurred and had occurred. Yet these definitions, taken together, were far from neat and tidy. Rather, they raised interpretive problems. Two directly influenced Dares’ fortunes. First, if verisimilitude were necessary, but not sufficient, for veracity, how did one establish the latter, especially in the absence of anything—​such as narratives contra naturam—​that would violate the former? How did one distinguish the actual from the merely probable, historia from mere argumentum? Genre and form provided clues, and many who would read Dares’ simple prose took prose and simplicity alike as indices of veracity. Yet no less an authority than Cicero, citing a line from the poet Ennius as an example of historia, showed that these definitions were about more than just genre.22 More than four centuries later, Servius provided one possible solution:  maybe history did not need empirical veracity, but just verisimilitude? Not everyone agreed with him, however, including Isidore.

21. Quint. Inst. 2.4.2: “Et quia narrationum, excepta qua in causis utimur, tres accepimus species, fabulam, quae versatur in tragoediis et carminibus, non a veritate modo sed etiam a forma veritatis remota; argumentum, quod falsum sed vero simile comoediae fingunt; historiam, in qua est gestae rei expositio.” 22.  On Ennius, see most recently Martine Chassignet, “L’‘archéologie’ de Rome dans les Annales d’Ennius:  poetica fabula ou annalium monumentum?” in Omnium Annalium Monumenta: Historical Writing and Historical Evidence in Republican Rome, ed. Kaj Sandberg and Christopher Smith (Leiden, 2018), 66–​89.

50

50

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Second, whether or not history actually happened, when precisely did its narrations begin and end? Dares wrote about that most distant of pasts, a time “remote from the memory of our age” if ever there was one. It was remote from Cicero in the classical world, and even more remote from Isidore in late antiquity. But of course—​if one believed he had been a genuine eyewitness—​then the Trojan War had been anything but remote for Dares himself. Instead, it was his present. And if autopsy alone guaranteed historical veracity, as Isidore implied, did it thereby restrict history to the hic et nunc of the historian’s own world? Was history remote only from the age of its readers, and not from the age of its authors? Isidore did not just distinguish history from fiction. Instead, he also tried to answer the question raised previously—​namely, was history about the present or the past? Did it become about the past only in retrospect? Or could historians write about pasts that were already past to them? Isidore’s two oldest historians—​ Moses and the Phrygian—​had written of some very remote worlds. But it goes without saying that Dares’ supposed temporal relation to Troy was rather different from Moses’ supposed temporal relation to the Creation. Though Isidore would have accorded the Hebrew prophet and lawgiver the added benefit of divine inspiration, he did not regard Moses as personally present in the Garden of Eden, of course. Dares, in contrast, wrote of Troy not because any gods or muses had inspired him but rather because he had really been there. This was not simply a difference that the Christian Isidore imposed in post hoc fashion between Judeo-​Christian and pagan historiography. Rather, as we saw, ambiguity over the historian’s relationship to the past and present existed apud gentiles as well.23 When Cicero defined history as “remote from the memory of our age,” did he mean that something written by a contemporary became history when read by a later age? Or could a historian write about the past when it was already past? Cicero’s choice of Ennius underscored this ambiguity. The archaic Latin poet had flourished from the late third to the early second century BCE: he was remote from Cicero’s age, but his Annales also dealt with matters remote from his own age. Which species of remoteness made him historical? In practice, both did:  historians and poets alike, including some of Cicero’s contemporaries, often wrote of both their past and their present without supposing

23. On traditions of ancient historiography focused on contemporary phenomena, see Arnaldo Momigliano, “Tradition and the Classical Historian,” History and Theory 11 (1972): 279–​93. See also the analyses of ancient historiography in John Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997), and T.P. Wiseman, Clio’s Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-​Roman Literature (Leicester, 1979).

51



Histories Real and Imagined

51

incongruity between the two endeavors. Isidore agreed: as he acknowledged, not every narratio rei gestae was pure autopsy. Right before he distinguished historia from argumentum and fabula, the encyclopedist drew a distinction, silently cribbed from another of Servius’ glosses, between histories (historiae) and annals (annales). Isidore had begun this section of his encyclopedia by asserting that, apud veteres, no one wrote history unless present for it. Following Servius, he thereafter declared that history concerned “those times that we have seen,” whereas annals—​records of wars, kings, consuls, and the like, meticulously divided into yearly increments—​concerned those distant years that “our age does not know” (aetas nostra non novit).24 The Roman Republic possessed a long and venerable tradition of annalistic writing. Yet Isidore had restricted history, purportedly the product of sight, to the historian’s present. Here the encyclopedist echoed a point debated several centuries earlier by the Roman miscellanist Aulus Gellius. In his Noctes Atticae or Attic Nights, Gellius discussed the difference between history and annals: while some regarded each as a “narration of things that occurred” (rerum gestarum narratio), they deemed a history more restrictive; it was a narration in which “the one who narrates was present for the things that occurred.”25 Isidore also highlighted the ambiguity inherent in these terms. While the encyclopedist noted that Sallust, the late Republican author of the Roman Republic’s decline, had written straightforward history, he simultaneously acknowledged that other writers—​he named Livy, Eusebius, and Jerome—​had mixed historia and annales together.26 Sallust—​the supposed recipient of pseudo-​Nepos’ prefatory epistle, incidentally—​was just slightly older than Livy. Both Sallust and Livy had flourished in the first century BCE; hence, Isidore recognized the coexistence

24. Isid. Etym. 1.44.4: “Inter historiam autem et annales hoc interest, quod historia est eorum temporum quae vidimus, annales vero sunt eorum annorum quos aetas nostra non novit.” Cf. Serv. Aen. 1.373: “ANNALES: inter historiam et annales hoc interest: historia est eorum temporum quae vel vidimus vel videre potuimus, dicta ἀπὸ τοῦ ἱστορεῖν, id est videre; annales vero sunt eorum temporum, quae aetas nostra non novit: unde Livius ex annalibus et historia constat.” 25. Gell. NA 5.18.1: “Historiam ab annalibus quidam differre eo putant, quod, cum utrumque sit rerum gestarum narratio, earum tamen proprie rerum sit historia, quibus rebus gerendis interfuerit is, qui narret.” On Gellius’ project, see Erik Gunderson, Nox Philologiae:  Aulus Gellius and the Fantasy of the Roman Library (Madison, 2009); Leofranc Holford-​Strevens, Aulus Gellius:  An Antonine Scholar and His Achievement, Revised Edition (Oxford, 2003); and Joseph A. Howley, Aulus Gellius and Roman Reading Culture: Text, Presence, and Imperial Knowledge in the Noctes Atticae (Cambridge, 2018). On his distinction between historiae and annales, see Holford-​Strevens, Aulus Gellius, 247. 26. Isid. Etym. 1.44.4: “Unde Sallustius ex historia, Livius, Eusebius et Hieronymus ex annalibus et historia constant.”

52

52

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

of very different forms of historiography in classical Rome. Unlike Sallust, who confined himself to events either in his own lifetime (the Catiline Conspiracy) or the recent past (the Jugurthine War), Livy had begun his history of Rome ab urbe condita or “from the founding of the city”—​i.e., some seven centuries before those times that he had seen. And in so doing he had had to reckon with still deeper pasts that preceded Rome’s founding. History of this nature and scope pushed up against the boundaries of myth. As Livy acknowledged in his preface, some of this early material smacked more of “poetic fables” (poeticis fabulis) than “the uncorrupted records of deeds” (incorruptis rerum gestarum monumentis).27 In other words, time and method alike imposed inevitable limits upon the historian’s purview; as one receded into the distant past, historiae morphed either into annales or fabulae. As will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 4, there was a long tradition, attested to by the Roman antiquary Varro and others, of explicitly periodizing historical time according to the difference between myth and true history.28 The transformations—​as much historiographical as historical—​of late antiquity added another layer of complexity. Alongside his references to Sallust and Livy, Isidore had also invoked Eusebius and Jerome. In so doing, he pointed to a very different world of historical writing, one much closer to his own in both time and outlook. Sallust and Livy exemplified the varieties of historiography apud gentiles, but Eusebius and Jerome were Christians. The church father Eusebius of Caesarea, also the author of an ecclesiastical history and a life of Constantine, among other works, had written a universal chronicle in Greek.29 Rather than begin with the origins of any particular city or people, à la Livy, he adopted a wider frame. And in doing so he amplified another pagan tradition of venerable antiquity: the technical science of chronology. Chronology had formed an important branch of learning in the Hellenistic world, practiced by scholars like the Alexandrian librarian Eratosthenes and the Athenian Apollodorus. It was later taken up in earnest by Romans of the first century BCE—​including (as we will discuss momentarily) none other than Cornelius Nepos.30 Eratosthenes and Apollodorus had attempted to impose order upon the messy uncertainty of the Greek past. For example, they perfected such techniques as the dating of time

27. Liv. Ab urbe condita 1.pr.6. 28. See Chapter 4, 189–​90. 29. On Eusebius, see Timothy D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA, 1981). 30.  Denis Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar:  Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History (Berkeley, 2007).

53



Histories Real and Imagined

53

by Olympiads and sought to reconcile Athenian and Spartan chronologies.31 Centuries later, Eusebius took the fruits of their labors and expanded them in new directions. In an elaborate series of parallel tables, he strung together chronologies not only from the Greeks, but also from the Jews, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, and others. And he then carried this timeline down to his present (i.e., the early fourth century). In so doing he sought to synchronize different timelines both biblical and pagan, and unite them all into the macro-​narrative of Christian salvation.32 The church father Jerome, most famous for his Latin translation of the Bible, translated Eusebius’ chronicle into Latin, added a wealth of Roman material, and continued its entries up to the emperor Valens in 378.33 While he claimed that the first section of the work was a pure translation of Eusebius, he explained that—​from Troy onward, intriguingly enough—​he had begun to augment Eusebius with content of his own.34 Both Eratosthenes and Apollodorus assigned particular significance to the fall of Troy; they regarded it as one of the first events that could be dated with chronological precision, and hence their researches helped canonize it as a moment of transition between what we might characterize as pre-​history and history proper.35 Dating Troy was a favorite pastime of the ancient chronographers, and they often disagreed among themselves over when exactly the city had succumbed to the Greeks.36 Following this centuries-​old tradition, Eusebius and Jerome kept the fall of Troy as a key turning point in their broader narrative of universal history; thanks to them it also won an enduring place in Christian historical consciousness. In this fashion they too recycled and re-​appropriated

31. See Alden Mosshammer, The Chronicle of Eusebius and the Greek Chronographical Tradition (Lewisburg, PA, 1979). 32.  Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge, MA, 2006). 33. See Eusebius Werke, VII: Die Chronik des Hieronymus, ed. Rudolf Helm (Berlin, 1956), and Jerome, Chronique: continuation de la Chronique d’Eusèbe, années 326–​378, ed. Benoît Jeanjean and Bertrand Lançon (Rennes, 2004). 34. See Eusebius-​Jerome, Chronici canones, ed. Fotheringham, 5. 35. On the reluctance of Eratosthenes and Apollodorus to date events before Troy, see Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar, 80. 36. On debates over the fall of Troy in ancient Greek chronological writings, see Pamela-​Jane Shaw, Discrepancies in Olympiad Dating and Chronological Problems of Archaic Peloponnesian History (Stuttgart, 2003), and Astrid Möller, “Epoch-​Making Eratosthenes,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 45 (2005):  245–​260, esp. 248–​50, following Walter Burkert, “Lydia between East and West or How to Date the Trojan War: A Study in Herodotus,” in The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule, ed. Jane B. Carter and Sarah P. Morris (Austin, 1995), 139–​48.

54

54

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

pagan erudition about the “ancients,” much as Isidore of Seville would do a few centuries later. And their emphasis upon the Trojan War proved of paramount importance to Dares’ afterlife, as we will see throughout this book. For these early Christian scholars, Troy possessed world historical significance, along with such other key events as the Abrahamic Covenant, the Exodus, the founding of Rome, and even the birth of Christ. As the pagan Greek chronographers had done, they also used Troy to mark off an epoch, and keep time: from it the ages of different peoples and traditions could be synchronized.37 This took on visual significance in manuscripts of Jerome’s chronicle, where the prominent phrase Troia capta or “Troy captured” united hitherto disparate timelines.38 Troy, based on the testimony of the pagans themselves, became a kind of Ur-​moment for pagan antiquity. Isidore’s pairing of Dares and Moses—​an attempt at drawing parallels and correspondences between persons and events in the biblical and pagan pasts—​ reflected Eusebius’ and Jerome’s own privileging of Troy and their own approaches to history writ large. This is significant not only for what it tells us about Isidore and his medieval readers, but also because Eusebius and Jerome’s world—​rather than that of ancient gentiles like Sallust and Livy—​was actually much closer to the probable milieu of the real author of the Destruction of Troy. Granted, we cannot be sure precisely from what world the Latin Destruction of Troy derived. We do not know the exact religious commitments of its author, or anything about where he may have lived. The evidence is simply lacking. But it was a world that creatively reconfigured the relationship between annales and historia, past and present. And Troy remained key to balancing this difficult equation.39

Historiae Past and Present: Dares, Dictys, and Cornelius Nepos So what exactly can we say about the date and circumstances of Dares’ composition? Isidore’s testimony is the earliest surviving record we possess of someone

37.  Eusebius-​Jerome, Chronici canones, ed. Fotheringham, 98:  “Troia capta:  colligitur omne tempus usque in praesentem diem . . .” 38. On the visual significance of Troia capta to the chronicle, see Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar, 83. On the importance of mise-​en-​page to Eusebius’ and Jerome’s innovations, see Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, esp. 136. 39. For an overview of chronicle writing that spans the two periods discussed here, see Richard W. Burgess and Michael Kulikowski, eds., Mosaics of Time:  The Latin Chronicle Traditions from the First Century BC to the Sixth Century AD: Volume I, A Historical Introduction to the Chronicle Genre from Its Origins to the High Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2013).

5



Histories Real and Imagined

55

named Dares writing a history.40 Although we do not know whether Isidore referred to the extant Latin text, and if so, whether he had actually read it, most scholars agree that the version of the Destruction of Troy we possess today was probably written just a century or two before Isidore compiled his seventh-​ century Etymologies. Willy Schetter suggested that echoes of Dares’ narrative in the De raptu Helenae of Dracontius, a Christian poet who seemed to have flourished in late fifth-​/e​ arly sixth-​century North Africa, provide the terminus ante quem for its composition, but the exact nature of the relationship between the two texts remains a subject of debate.41 Establishing a firm terminus post quem has proven even more difficult, although Dares’ Latinity—​and the possibility that he may have used the Latin Dictys as a model—​make a date much earlier than the fifth century seem unlikely. But even here the evidence is murky: aside from the question of whether Dares possessed a Greek original, some have suggested that perhaps the extant Destruction of Troy is itself a redaction or epitome of a larger and now lost Latin text.42 Definitive answers to these questions have been made difficult by the absence of a new critical edition since Ferdinand Meister’s 1873 Tuebner, itself based upon a small number of manuscript witnesses. However, more recent work by Annamaria Pavano and Louis Faivre D’Arcier has proven invaluable to our understanding of the text’s transmission.43 Whatever its precise date, the Destruction of Troy was the product of a changing world—​often depicted as antiquity’s last act. To put it in the parlance of our times, its author engaged in the reception of some very different layers of the past. These were at least three in number: first, the world of Priam, Aeneas, and the Trojan War itself; second, the world of Homer and his purported Athenian detractors; and third, the world of Dares’ purported Latin translator and recipient, Cornelius Nepos and Sallust. From the Troy of the second millennium BCE to the Rome of the first century BCE, the Destruction of Troy invoked a plurality

40. Aelian had not referred to his Dares as a historian. See 20 in the Introduction. 41. Willy Schetter, “Dares und Dracontius über die Vorgeschichte des Trojanischen Krieges,” Hermes 115 (1987): 211–​31. See Dracontius, De raptu Helenae, ed. and trans. Katharina Pohl (Stuttgart, 2019), and Pohl’s summary of debates concerning the text’s relationship to Dares at pp. 62–​63. 42. See Pavano, “A proposito di una presunta seconda redazione,” esp. 272–​74. On the redaction thesis, see also Willy Schetter, “Beobachtungen zum Dares Latinus,” Hermes 116 (1988): 94–​ 109, and Dennis R. Bradley, “Troy Revisited,” Hermes 119 (1991): 232–​46. 43. See citations in the Introduction, 18. Faivre D’Arcier’s study of the text’s medieval transmission, which includes an exhaustive catalog of extant manuscripts, is cited extensively throughout this book.

56

56

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

of pasts now distant. To someone writing in the fifth or sixth century, they were now all worlds that—​to use Isidore’s formulation—​“our age does not know.” How would late antique readers have linked these distant and disparate worlds to one another? In a moment we will discuss how the aforementioned chronographic tradition provided one such resource for synthesis. But first it is important to note that the Latin Dictys—​of which we do possess fragments of a Greek analog—​offers valuable evidence of how these pasts could be layered atop each other.44 Dictys’ paratexts were still more convoluted, as they included not one purported translation but two. The first—​discussed in the Introduction—​was ostensibly precipitated by seismic activity in Crete: at Nero’s command, so the preface claimed, expert scholars translated Dictys’ original Phoenician script into Greek and then deposited the new text “into the Greek library” (in Graecam bibliothecam).45 Like Dares’ epistle, Dictys’ preface conjured a specific strain of Roman cultural history—​i.e., its engagement with Greek scholarship and history. The real Nepos and the real Nero were both known for their philhellenism. Depending on just how ironic Dares’ and Dictys’ actual texts were meant to be, we can only wonder whether there is a hint of satire in their depictions of Roman approaches to Greek antiquity, or the Roman reception of the deep past writ large.46 But this was just half the story: the Journal of the Trojan War presented itself as a translation of a translation. Its second paratextual frame—​an epistle from one Lucius Septimius to a Quintus Aradius Rufinus—​explained how Dictys, having gotten from Phoenician to Attic letters, thence made it into Latin. In this letter, Septimius explained how, when Dictys’ book came by chance into his hands, the desire seized him—​as one “eager for true history” (avidos verae

44. For fragments of the Greek Dictys, see Dictys, Ephemeris, ed. Walter Eisenhut, 134–​40, and most recently, Alessio Ruta, “I nuovi papiri greci di Ditti Cretese (P. Oxy. LXXIII 4943–​ 4944) e la traduzione latina di Settimio: osservazioni su lingua, stile e ‘intenzione’ letteraria,” in Revival and Revision, ed. Brescia, Lentano, Scafoglio, and Zanusso, 23–​51. Versions and mentions of Dictys also appeared in Byzantine sources, including the chroniclers Malalas and Cedrenus, among others. See, for instance, Georgius Cedrenus, Compendium historiarum: Vol. I, ed. Immanuel Bekker (Bonn, 1838), 223. For seventeenth-​century debates over the Greek Dictys, see Chapter 6, 281–82 and 283–84. 45. Dictys, Ephemeris, “Prologus,” ed. Eisenhut, 3: “Cumque Nero cognosset antiqui viri, qui apud Ilium fuerat, haec esse monumenta, iussit in Graecum sermonem ista transferri, e quibus Troiani belli verior textus cunctis innotuit . . . Annales vero nomine Dictys inscriptos in Graecam bibliothecam recepit, quorum seriem, qui sequitur, textus ostendit.” 46. See Nicholas Horsfall, “Dictys’s Ephemeris and the Parody of Scholarship,” Illinois Classical Studies 33–​34 (2008–​9): 41–​63.

57



Histories Real and Imagined

57

historiae)—​to translate it into Latin. He filled his hours of otium with the task.47 Septimius and Rufinus were not marquee names like Sallust and Cornelius Nepos. Scholars are not sure precisely when the Latin Dictys appeared. Yet as Walter Eisenhut, the editor of the Teubner Dictys, noted, comparison of the Latin with the surviving fragments of the Greek suggests that “Septimius” executed a largely faithful, if not exactly verbatim, translation.48 Although we have no way of verifying the precise particulars of this letter, its comparative plausibility—​ unlike, say, Dares’ conjuring of Nepos and Sallust—​has stimulated interest in when exactly this Septimius might have written. Eisenhut himself posited a fourth-​century date.49 Stefan Merkle, reading both the Phrygian and the Cretan from the perspective of the ancient novel, linked the Latin Dictys to a “growing and widespread interest in historical topics” in the fourth century—​visible in sources as diverse as the brief epitomes of Festus and Eutropius and that curious mélange of history and fiction, the Historia Augusta.50 Alan Cameron suggested that the text might be earlier still, and that the “Septimius” of the epistle might be the poet Septimius Serenus, who likely flourished in the third century or perhaps even the late second.51 Cameron linked the style of Septimius’ prose to Serenus’ archaizing tendencies and suggested that the Journal of the Trojan War seems reminiscent of someone like the second-​century grammarian Fronto. Whatever his exact milieu, it is clear that Septimius engaged with a much earlier Latin tradition. He looked back to a historian that both Dares and Isidore would variously invoke, the former as the recipient of pseudo-​Nepos’ letter, and the latter as an example of pure historia—​i.e., Sallust. The text contains many echoes of the late Republican historian and shared some of the moralizing features of his work.52

47. Dictys, Ephemeris, “Epistula,” ed. Eisenhut, 1: “Nobis cum in manus forte libelli venissent, avidos verae historiae cupido incessit ea, uti erant, Latine disserere, non magis confisi ingenio, quam ut otiosi animi desidiam discuteremus.” 48. See Eisenhut, “Praefatio,” in Dictys, Ephemeris, vii. 49. Eisenhut, “Praefatio,” in Dictys, Ephemeris, viii. 50. See Stefan Merkle, “News from the Past: Dictys and Dares on the Trojan War,” in Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context, ed. Heinz Hofmann (London, 1999), 155–​66, and Stefan Merkle, “The Truth and Nothing but the Truth: Dictys and Dares,” in The Novel in the Ancient World, ed. Gareth Schmeling (Leiden, 1996), 564–​80. 51. Alan Cameron, “Poetae Novelli,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 84 (1980): 127–​75, esp. 172–​75. 52. For discussion of Sallustian echoes, see Merkle, “News from the Past,” 158–​62 with accompanying references.

58

58

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

For Dictys, as for many other sources we will encounter throughout this book, Troy served exemplary purposes. As we will see in Chapter 6, debates over the date and context of Dictys would begin as early as the seventeenth century. Seventeenth-​century philologists, like their modern counterparts, often framed these debates in terms of the seeming contrast between Dictys and Dares. For instance, as many early modern humanists did, Merkle has pointed to a certain disparity between their respective Latin translators (or pseudo-​translators). “Septimius,” in his words, “had a somewhat more educated and critical reader in mind than ‘Nepos.’ ”53 What, if anything, can we deduce about the intentions of these “translators,” and the critical acumen of their likely readers?54 And how would they have understood these texts in light of the definitions (and restrictions) that ancient sources attached to a concept like historia? As discussed in the Introduction, Dictys and his readership are often linked to the Second Sophistic. The case of Dares is murkier, not least because, unlike Dictys, we possess no direct evidence of any Greek version of his book, and scholarship has long been divided on the probability of its existence.55 But even if we will never know exactly where or when the Destruction of Troy was written, and to what extent, if any, the Latin text was a “translation” from the Greek, the production of such a text as late as the fifth or sixth century is itself significant. It suggests how features of the literary culture we associate with the Second Sophistic extended much further into the world of late Latin antiquity, and perhaps even beyond. Thomas Habinek described how late antique intellectuals like Symmachus and Ausonius, responding to the cultural dislocations of their own world in a manner akin to how Greek intellectuals did previously in the Second Sophistic, evince a sense of “belated belatedness.”56 If the Second Sophistic was belated, then its late Latin counterpart was doubly so. The Latin Dares demonstrates the temporal extent of this phenomenon, as do a number of later, definitively medieval texts that played a role in Dares’ subsequent fortunes. Consider but one example here. The fanciful Cosmographia of pseudo-​ Aethicus Ister, probably written in the eighth century and present in some early

53. Merkle, “News from the Past,” 163. 54. On Roman reading communities, see William A. Johnson, Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities (Oxford, 2010). 55. See discussion in Beschorner, Untersuchungen zu Dares Phrygius, 231–​43, and the literature cited in the Introduction, 18. 56. See Thomas N. Habinek, “Was There a Latin Second Sophistic?” in The Oxford Handbook to the Second Sophistic, ed. Richter and Johnson, 25–​37, esp. 32–​34.

59



Histories Real and Imagined

59

manuscripts of Dares, would surely have made writers of the Second Sophistic like Lucian or Philostratus proud. This Cosmographia, which recounted the wanderings of an Istrian sophist and spun tales about Alexander the Great, claimed to have been edited and translated by none other than Jerome. A giant of early Christian scholarship came to fill the role that Dares had assigned Nepos and Dictys had assigned Nero. Dares was most likely known to the real author of “Aethicus.” Hence, Isidore’s first pagan historian helped extend far into the Middle Ages a tradition that combined ludic narrative, pseudo-​translation, and specious claims to deep antiquity.57 As we will see in the next chapter, Aethicus was hardly the last to combine these elements. Such claims perhaps worked best when readers felt a simultaneous closeness to, and distance from, the ancient intermediaries that a text conjured. Just how much would Dares’ world—​the hypothetical fifth-​or sixth-​century audience of the Destruction of Troy’s immediate readers, that is—​have been familiar with the likes of Cornelius Nepos and Sallust? Were they close enough to elicit recognition, but distant enough to command authority? Sallust was likely known thanks to his role in the late antique curriculum, but just how easily a name like Nepos would have rolled off the tongue is less certain.58 One of Dares’ potential near-​contemporaries sheds indirect light on this question. In his Variae, the sixth-​ century Italian statesman and scholar Cassiodorus quoted Tacitus’ Germania. When he did so, he referred to Tacitus as “a certain Cornelius” (quidam Cornelius)—​a formulation that captures the simultaneous closeness and distance between late antiquity and ancient Roman authorities.59 Granted, expressions of this sort, especially when voiced by Christian writers of late antiquity, are not necessarily evidence of literal ignorance. Sometimes they suggested an act of distancing oneself from pagan sources for rhetorical effect, as when Augustine famously recalled how he had come upon “the book of a certain Cicero” or librum cuiusdam Ciceronis.60 But the passage in question here is devoid of such rhetoric. Perhaps it suggests that Cassiodorus himself had read Tacitus, or at least had come across his

57.  Aethicus Ister, Cosmographia, ed. and trans. Michael W. Herren (Turnhout, 2011). See Frederic Clark, “Forgery, Misattribution, and a Case of Secondary Pseudonymity: Aethicus Ister’s Cosmographia and Its Early Modern Multiplications,” in Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, 1450–​1800, ed. Walter Stephens and Earle A. Havens (Baltimore, 2018), 74–​98. 58. On knowledge of Sallust in late antiquity, see Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire,  10–​11. 59.  Cassiod. Var. 5.2. For discussion of this passage, see Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Berkeley, 1990), 120. 60. August. Conf. 3.4.

60

60

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

book somehow, but could not be sure that others had. Unlike a Cicero or a Virgil, this “certain Cornelius” was not a household name but required an introduction. Would Nepos have required a similar introduction? Cornelius Nepos was an ingenious choice for Dares’ translator. Much of what we know about Nepos comes from the testimony of others, and his connection to figures who are today more famous than he. He was an associate and correspondent of Cicero. One of his best-​known works is his vita of Titus Pomponius Atticus, a prominent member of Cicero’s literary circle. According to Aulus Gellius, he also wrote a vita of Cicero himself.61 And in a letter to Atticus, Cicero memorably characterized Nepos as “immortal” (ἄμβροτος), thanks to his literary skills.62 Perhaps the most famous of all invocations of Nepos is the opening dedication of Catullus 1. Here Catullus, referring to him as “Cornelius,” gave Nepos his “charming new little book” (lepidum novum libellum) of poems, declaring: “you were accustomed to think my trifles worth something.”63 The Veronese poet conveyed his gratitude to his elder compatriot, himself born not far from Verona, for discerning the true literary value of his trifles or nugae. Even if his would not have been a household name, Nepos’ fame extended into late antiquity. In the fifth century the calligrapher Aemilius Probus compiled a collection of Nepos’ vitae, particularly some of his Excellentium imperatorum vitae or Lives of Eminent Generals, which he dedicated to the emperor Theodosius II.64 These vitae, which included biographies of Themistocles, Alcibiades, and Hannibal, among others, were but one component of Nepos’ once comprehensive De viris illustribus, most of which does not survive. As we will see in Chapter 5, Probus’ volume would later cause considerable confusion:  some Renaissance scholars not only assumed that its dedicatee was Theodosius I, grandfather of Theodosius II, but also thought that Probus—​and hence not Nepos—​was the

61. Gell. NA 15.28.1–​2. 62. Cic. Att. 16.5.5. However, Cicero’s precise meaning is a bit unclear, as he contends in the same passage that Nepos did not think some of Cicero’s own works worth reading—​although Cicero may also have meant such a statement ironically or in jest. 63.  Catull. 1.1–​4. For a summary of modern scholarship on Catullus’ dedication to Nepos, see Rex Stem, The Political Biographies of Cornelius Nepos (Ann Arbor, 2012), 1–​11. Although most scholars have agreed that Catullus’ “Cornelius” is Nepos, for an opposing hypothesis, see Christopher Simpson, “The Identity of Catullus’s Addressee,” Revue Belge de philologie et d’histoire 70 (1992): 53–​61. 64.  See Cornelius Nepos, Vitae cum fragmentis, ed. Peter K. Marshall (Leipzig, 1977), and Peter K. Marshall, The Manuscript Tradition of Cornelius Nepos (London, 1977). On Nepos and Probus, see Stem, Political Biographies,  12–​13.

61



Histories Real and Imagined

61

author of these vitae, rather than their editor or copyist.65 This misattribution contributed to the sense that Nepos’ oeuvre was largely lost. Nepos was not only a biographer. As alluded to previously, he was also a chronicler who recorded distant pasts that “our age does not know.” He wrote his Chronica modeled upon that of the aforementioned Apollodorus.66 Nepos not only Latinized a Greek genre but also incorporated his own world, including the distant past of the Italian peninsula, into a historical record that now stretched far beyond the Eastern Mediterranean. He followed Apollodorus in dating by Olympiads, but he also measured events ab urbe condita or from the founding of the city of Rome.67 Nepos’ Chronica is now lost, unfortunately, and what we know of it comes solely from fragments and later attestations. A number of these attestations are late antique, and thus they shed light on whether and how worlds closer to Dares may have interpreted Nepos’ chronological scholarship. For example, the fourth-​century Gallo-​Roman poet Ausonius possessed a copy of the Chronica, which he sent to the Roman aristocrat and politician Sextus Petronius Probus, explaining that it would be helpful for Probus’ son’s education.68 Another late antique author, whom Isidore would single out for combining historiae and annales, also made use of Nepos’ Chronica. In his version of Eusebius, Jerome cited Nepos on Homer of all people, recording that Nepos had dated the poet to one hundred years before the First Olympiad (i.e., some three centuries after the Trojan War itself ). This is rather fitting: in his prefatory letter to “Sallust,” pseudo-​Nepos had polemically insisted that Homer, unlike Dares, had lived “many years” (multos annos) after Troy. Jerome’s citation suggests that the real Nepos would have agreed.69

65.  For the persistence into modern scholarship of confusions about the identity of both Probus and Theodosius, see Cameron, Last Pagans, 365–​66. 66. For Apollodorus’ chronological scholarship, see Mosshammer, The Chronicle of Eusebius, 113–​27, building upon Felix Jacoby, Apollodors Chronik:  Eine Sammlung der Fragmente (Berlin, 1902). 67. Here see Mosshammer, The Chronicle of Eusebius, 160 and 215. On the absence of any dating of the founding of Rome in Apollodorus and the ideological implications of this omission, see Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar, 93. 68. Auson. Epistula 12. 69. Eusebius-​Jerome, Chronici canones, ed. Fotheringham, 131: “In Latina historia haec ad uerbum scripta repperimus: Agrippa apud Latinos regnante Homerus poeta in Graecia claruit, ut testantur Apollodorus grammaticus et Euforbus historicus ante urbem Romam conditam an. CXXIIII, et ut ait Cornelius Nepos ante Olympiadem primam an. C.” Approximately two centuries earlier, Gellius had also cited Nepos’ Chronica on the age of Homer, recording that Nepos dated Homer to some 160 years before the founding of Rome. See Gell. NA 17.21.5.

62

62

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Nor was this the only place where Jerome invoked Nepos. The early Christian scholar also augmented his chronicle with entries for Latin poets, orators, historians, and the like; in this fashion he helped make historia universalis into a form of Latin literary history.70 Among these he included an entry for Nepos, which recorded that this scriptor historicus or “historical writer” had flourished around the 185th Olympiad.71 Hence, even if Dares’ real author had possessed only a passing familiarity with Nepos’ other works, Jerome and the tradition of historia universalis he spawned might have been sufficient material for fashioning pseudo-​ Nepos’ literary persona.72 Nepos was a scriptor historicus after all, who knew the chronology of the distant past and had even fixed the true date of Homer. Nepos was also renowned for his Chronica in his own day. In fact, in his dedicatory verses, Catullus did not refer to Nepos’ vitae or letters but to his chronicle. The poet lauded him as “the only one of the Italians” (unus Italorum) who dared to explicate every age (omne aevum) in three scrolls—​learned, O Jupiter, and laborious.”73 Nepos was not literally alone in this enterprise (Varro and Atticus, for instance, also produced important chronological scholarship), but Catullus’ description, however hyperbolic, underscores the innovative nature of his dedicatee’s work. In Isidorian terms, Nepos had combined the “times that we have seen” with the times that “our age does not know,” and in so doing he had achieved a kind of universality: a record of nothing less than omne aevum distilled down to a mere three scrolls.74

70.  On Jerome’s chronicle as Latin literary history, see Mark Vessey, “Literary History:  A Fourth-​ Century Roman Invention?” in Literature and Society in the Fourth Century AD: Performing Paideia, Constructing the Present, Presenting the Self, ed. Lieve Van Hoof and Peter Van Nuffelen (Leiden, 2015), 16–​30. 71. Eusebius-​Jerome, Chronici canones, ed. Fotheringham, 241: “Cornelius Nepos scriptor historicus clarus habetur.” In the preface to his collection of bio-​bibliographies, De viris illustribus, Jerome cited Nepos, along with Suetonius and others, as one of his predecessors in the genre. See Jer. De vir. ill. Praef.: “Apud Latinos autem Varro, Santra, Nepos, Hyginus, et, ad cuius nos exemplum provocas, Tranquillus.” 72. Of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that the actual author of Dares, or other readers as late as he, had access to a complete or at least fuller version of Nepos’ chronicle itself. It is also worth noting that Jerome included an entry for the death of Sallust—​the supposed recipient of pseudo-​Nepos’ epistle—​in the very next Olympiad after his entry for Nepos. See Eusebius-​Jerome, Chronici canones, ed. Fotheringham, 241: “Sallustius diem obiit quadriennio ante Actiacum bellum.” 73. Catull. 1.5–​7: “Iam tum cum ausus es unus Italorum/​omne aevum tribus explicare cartis/​ doctis Iuppiter et laboriosis.” 74. On universalizing aims in Roman historiography, especially the annalistic tradition, see Tim Cornell, “Universal History and the Early Roman Historians,” in Historiae Mundi: Studies in Universal History, ed. Peter Liddel and Andrew Fear (London, 2010), 102–​15.

63



Histories Real and Imagined

63

In this sense Nepos as a chronicler of the distant past—​Troy included—​made him a perfect figure for finding Dares’ manuscript and sending it to a historical authority like Sallust. Unfortunately, Nepos’ innovative explication of “every age” did not enjoy a moment of miraculous rediscovery like that which pseudo-​Nepos claimed for the autograph manuscript he found of the Phrygian.75 The versatile Nepos could simultaneously write the biography of a contemporary, his friend Atticus, and ascertain the chronological relationship between remote events like Homer’s life and Rome’s founding. According to Aulus Gellius, Nepos was known for his erudition: he was “not negligent of history” (rerum memoriae non indiligens).76 No wonder pseudo-​Nepos proclaimed to pseudo-​Sallust that he had been studiously at work at Athens—​not unlike Apollodorus, the Athenian chronologer upon whom he modeled his own Chronica. This book is as much a reception history of Cornelius Nepos as it is of Dares, and in this sense it is as much a reception history of unknown or fragmentary texts as known and extant ones:  it is about diverse perceptions of what antiquity might have been, rather than mere dueling interpretations of what scholars already knew it was. Many postclassical scholars and readers constructed vivid portraits—​fantasies, perhaps—​of just who Nepos would have been, had only more of his corpus survived the injuries of time. This reception of the unknown, predicated upon an awareness of just how many ancient texts had vanished, was a constant element of antiquity’s afterlife—​and a powerful stimulant to forgery. Whoever he was, the real author of the Destruction of Troy had also engaged in wishful or fantastical thinking of this nature. When he gave Cornelius Nepos the honor of translating the Phrygian, he engaged in a long-​standing pattern of reception. The history of Latin literature was a voluminous record of engagement with Nepos’ specific slice of the past: the late Republican and Augustan world was both valorized and refracted by figures ranging from Aulus Gellius in the second century to Ausonius in the fourth, Servius and Macrobius in the fifth,

75.  On Nepos’ chronicle, see Wiseman, Clio’s Cosmetics, 157–​58; Thomas N. Habinek, The Politics of Latin Literature: Writing, Identity, and Empire in Ancient Rome (Princeton, 1998), 94–​96; Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar, 21–​23; and Claudia Maotti, The Birth of Critical Thinking in Republican Rome, trans. Janet Lloyd (Cambridge, 2015), 68–​76. For surviving fragments, see Historicorum Romanorum reliquiae:  Vol. II, ed. Hermann Peter (Leipzig, 1906), xl–​lvi, and Cornelius Nepos, Chronica, in The Fragments of the Roman Historians, Vol. 2: Texts and Translations, ed. T.J. Cornell et al. (Oxford, 2013), 806–​12. For a translation of selected fragments, see Cornelius Nepos: A Selection, Including the Lives of Cato and Atticus, trans. Nicholas Horsfall (Oxford, 1989), 31–​32. 76. Gell. NA 15.28.1: “Cornelius Nepos et rerum memoriae non indiligens et M. Ciceronis ut qui maxime amicus familiaris fuit.”

64

64

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

and even Boethius in the sixth.77 Servius’ commentaries underscore the importance of this world to late antique learning and pedagogy. Moreover, appropriation of the classical literary past crossed religious lines: the Christian apologist Lactantius mimicked Cicero, and Jerome famously claimed an angel had berated him for being more a Ciceronian than a Christian.78 The world of the first century BCE, Nepos included, offered late antique authors a wealth of material for imitatio. Ausonius parroted Catullus’ dedication to Nepos when he composed a poem to his friend, the panegyrist Pacatus Drepanius: “to whom do I give my new charming little book? /​the Veronese poet once asked /​and having found Nepos, he immediately gave it to him.”79 For Ausonius, Drepanius was a latter-​ day Nepos, just as he himself was a latter-​day Catullus. The Destruction of Troy did not pull off its appeal to Nepos with quite the same subtlety or finesse, but it reveals another species of the same impulse. The classical Roman past furnished late antique readers with historiae and annales alike. Yet even if a single author could write both genres, historiae and annales had very different means of guaranteeing their own authority: whereas histories—​like Dares’ text—​could claim direct eyewitnesses, annals were necessarily secondhand and indirect; without recourse to autopsy, they spoke imperfectly across the gulf that separated past from present. Perhaps this very absence of direct evidence made them more akin to fabulae or argumenta than actual records of res gestae. Livy had acknowledged the nature of this problem in the preface to his Ab urbe condita. Strikingly, Ausonius also seemed to intimate something along these lines when he gave Nepos’ Chronica to Probus. He had sent him Nepos along with a collection of Apologi or Fairy Tales by a certain Titianus, and he allowed that the two works were actually quite similar despite their differences in genre: Nepos’ annals were “like other fairy tales (alios apologos), for they are also of the form of fables (instar fabularum).”80 We have no way of ascertaining how exactly Ausonius considered Nepos’ chronicle to be fabulous. It was not necessarily contra naturam, but it dealt with early times that were more often the domain of myth than of true history. Ausonius’ aside confirms just how muddied those neat distinctions of Cicero, 77. For discussion of the history of such archaizing tendencies in Latin literature, see Cameron, Last Pagans, particularly 251–​52, 389, and 399–​405. 78. Jer. Ep. 22.30. 79.  Auson. Eclogae 1.1–​3:  “Cui dono lepidum novum libellum?/​Veronensis ait poeta quondam/​inventoque dedit statim Nepoti.” 80. Auson. Epistula 12: “Apologos Titiani et Nepotis chronica quasi alios apologos (nam et ipsa instar sunt fabularum) ad nobilitatem tuam misi.”

65



Histories Real and Imagined

65

Quintilian, Servius, Isidore, and the like could prove when applied to actual texts. Nepos was an eminent author of both historiae and annales, equally adept at memorializing his distant past and his present, but he also related things akin to fabulae, or at least phenomena that possessed the form or image (instar) of fiction. Although pseudo-​Nepos presented Dares as the truth and nothing but the truth, he too promulgated something akin to fabula, as some of the critics we will meet later in this book began to realize. Nepos proved to be the perfect vehicle for translating Dares, not only across languages—​i.e., from Greek into Latin—​ but also across genres. Over the course of the Middle Ages, Dares’ historia became both a component of annales and the source material for fabulae. Paradoxically, these transformations not only perpetuated his authority—​and that of ancient historiography more generally—​but also revealed his limitations.

Origins and Betrayals: Dares between Troy and Rome Definitions of historia and the like, extracted from the exegetical tradition, might seem rather abstract and academic. Yet like so much else in the history of hermeneutics, they were anything but: rather, both their promulgation and their application were coextensive with complex political and religious concerns. We now turn to a consideration of these concerns, and examination of what reading Dares as historia meant for both the world of Roman politics and its postclassical successors. Based upon a definition of history derived from classical authorities, Isidore of Seville made Dares into something like the archetypal historian. More pointedly, he christened him the first of all the pagans to write history. This vaunted status was hardly lost on Dares’ postclassical readers, especially as they negotiated the legacy of the classical world and sought to harness it for their own ends. The first pagan historian did not merely satisfy antiquarian interest in an increasingly alien past. He also offered a reliable narrative of a moment that, however remote, remained highly relevant to the present—​whether that present was Isidore’s own world or any other world in the millennium that followed. As discussed previously, Troy proved significant to the broader schema of Christian universal history. But why was it important to establish the precise details of how and why Greeks and Trojans had done battle on the shores of Asia Minor in what Eusebius had dated to the twelfth century BCE? In the most literal sense of the phrase, it answered the question of “how we got here.” To many in antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Trojan past was not only history, but also genealogy. Whether in the first century BCE or the thirteenth century CE, Romans, Franks, Britons, and many others claimed that they were directly

6

66

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

descended from Trojan exiles who had fled their fallen city. The most famous account of this process, of course, was found in Virgil’s Aeneid. But Aeneas was not alone in having been accorded the honor of founding new nations and new cities. He was part of a larger Trojan diaspora, which was thought to have spread far across Europe and the Mediterranean. Belief in this diaspora would help secure Dares a privileged place in the medieval canon. As a trusted eyewitness to Troy’s demise, Dares narrated those events that precipitated these migrations. Even if its author had not intended it as such, the Destruction of Troy soon became an authoritative prologue to accounts of origines gentium or the “origins of peoples.” The Romans had been among the most powerful of peoples to claim such origins. As Virgil and others made clear, and as the author of the Destruction of Troy surely understood, the fall of Troy was a necessary prologue to the early history of Rome. This mattered not only to those—​presumably like the Dares author—​who may have lived under some form of the late antique Empire, but also to those—​ like his first known readers—​who inhabited the various post-​Roman successor states of Western Europe. But for reasons that will soon become clear, the Destruction of Troy was not your typical Roman history. Hence, it proved to be an ideal historia for those who co-​opted Roman identity while simultaneously undercutting its primacy and legitimacy. The Destruction of Troy managed to challenge two towering figures in the ancient canon at once, even if the text attacked only one of these authors by name. Dares’ challenge to Homer was apparent from the outset, beginning with pseudo-​Nepos’ allegation that the bard had been judged insane. Yet Homer was not the only poet whom the Phrygian contradicted. Rather, whether or not this was his specific intent, he also struck against Rome’s origin narrative, especially as recorded by Virgil. As mentioned in the Introduction, Dares denigrated the character of Aeneas. He alleged that Aeneas—​along with his co-​conspirator Antenor and other disgruntled Trojans—​betrayed Troy to the Greeks. Aeneas committed crimes that were the very opposite of the pietas Virgil had accorded him. In other words, Troy fell because Aeneas made it fall. As a Trojan “eyewitness” who supposedly flourished centuries before Rome came into existence, Dares did not directly address the implications of this treachery for Roman politics. But his text lent credence to the notion that Rome’s founding was predicated upon an original sin of treason and betrayal. According to Dares’ version of events, realizing that the conflict was not going in Troy’s favor, a group of Trojans—​including Aeneas, Antenor, and Polydamas—​had Priam assemble the city’s war council. Here they urged Priam to return Helen and sue for peace. When Priam’s son Amphimachus angrily opposed them, Aeneas responded to his objections, so Dares recorded, with “smooth and soothing words” (lenibus mitibusque dictis). But Priam was not convinced by such

67



Histories Real and Imagined

67

clever talk, and instead he accused Aeneas of hypocrisy, noting it was a rich irony for him to advocate peace, seeing that he had helped Paris abduct Helen in the first place. Thereafter, the Trojan king not only rejected Aeneas’ proposal, but fearing that Aeneas and his allies would betray the city, he also hatched a plan to kill them.81 Priam’s suspicions proved correct, for Aeneas, Antenor, and others immediately formed a cabal to do precisely that. They sent Polydamas to the Greek camp to negotiate a secret deal with Agamemnon and the other Greek leaders: if Aeneas and his conspirators opened Troy’s gates to them, they would be permitted to keep their property and gain safe passage out of Troy once the Greeks captured the city.82 During the night, Aeneas, Antenor, and their fellow traitors opened Troy’s Scaean Gate to the Greek forces. The Greeks went straight to the palace, killed Priam, slaughtered a multitude of other Trojans, and carted off many spoils.83 Thus Troy fell—​thanks to Trojan treason. Dares attributed Aeneas’ survival of the war not to heroic pietas but rather to calculated treachery. In multiple instances he used variations on proditio or “treason” to describe the actions of Aeneas and his fellow conspirators. As a result, he made no mention of the Trojan horse, which Virgil’s Aeneas, telling his tale to Dido in Aeneid II, had famously blamed for Troy’s fall. Yet in a move consistent with his aim of rationalizing away the trappings of fabula and myth, Dares dropped a telling hint of it. When describing the Scaean Gate, which the conspirators opened to the Greeks, he casually observed that “the head of a horse (caput equi) was carved on its exterior.”84 We seem to catch Dares winking here. The Phrygian’s depiction of Aeneas was not entirely negative:  for instance, when the Greeks stormed the city, Dares had Aeneas attempt to save Polyxena from the ensuing slaughter. In fact, according to Dares, this was why he ended up having to leave Troy. The Greeks ultimately discovered that Aeneas was hiding Polyxena:  on Agamemnon’s orders they killed her, and angry with Aeneas for violating the terms of their pact, they expelled him and his followers from the city.85 The Phrygian’s ambiguous treatment of Aeneas was evident already in his catalog of characters, where—​as we saw—​he had described the Trojan with

81. Dares, De excidio Troiae 37–​38, ed. Meister, 44–​47. 82. Dares, De excidio Troiae 39–​40, ed. Meister, 47–​49. 83. Dares, De excidio Troiae 41, ed. Meister, 49–​50. 84. Dares, De excidio Troiae 40, ed. Meister, 48–​49: “Hoc pacto confirmato et iureiurando adstricto suadet Polydamas noctu exercitum ad portam Scaeam adducant, ubi extrinsecus caput equi sculptum est . . .” 85. Dares, De excidio Troiae 41–​43, ed. Meister, 49–​51.

68

68

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

that curiously Virgilian epithet pius.86 Nor was Dares alone or original in charging Aeneas with treason: on the contrary, he was rather late to the game. Dictys offered a similar account of Aeneas’ and Antenor’s treachery.87 However, his differed in key respects from the Phrygian’s. For instance, he had Antenor steal the Palladium and give it to Ulysses.88 He was also slightly less radical in his rationalizing efforts: unlike Dares, he still included a Trojan horse in his narrative, although instead of filling it with Greek soldiers, he simply reported that it was so large that the Trojans foolishly dismantled their walls to receive it, thereby allowing the Greeks to breach the city unimpeded.89 Second, he added more details about what befell Aeneas after Troy’s fall. As in so much else, Dares was rather laconic on this score: he recorded merely that Aeneas sailed off with twenty-​two ships—​ the same ships Paris had used when he went to Greece and abducted Helen—​and 3,400 followers of all ages, but he did not report to where.90 Antenor, meanwhile, stayed in the city. Perhaps this link between Aeneas and Paris constituted another kind of winking commentary, although its precise purpose is unclear. The Cretan, in contrast, related how after Troy’s fall Aeneas tried to betray Antenor as well and attempted to wrest the city from his former co-​conspirator. But Antenor successfully stopped him, and Aeneas was forced to depart. He sailed in the direction of the Adriatic Sea, where he established a city named Corcyra Melaena (presumably on modern-​day Corfu).91 Therefore Dictys, unlike Dares, seemed to rule out the possibility that Aeneas could have reached Latium. If Aeneas passed the rest of his days on Corfu, presumably he could not have been the ancestor of the Romans.

86. Dares, De excidio Troiae 12, ed. Meister, 15. 87. Dictys, Ephemeris 4.18–​5.17, ed. Eisenhut, 95–​119. It should be noted that Dictys also treated the treachery in an ambiguous fashion. As a supposed Greek partisan, he showed a certain sympathy for the Trojan traitors who helped his army take the city. Hence, when Antenor came to rule postwar Troy, Dictys noted that he enjoyed the love (amor) of his subjects. See Dictys, Ephemeris 5.17, ed. Eisenhut, 119. For an important discussion of Aeneas’ treason in both Dares and Dictys, see Sarah Spence, “Felix Casus: The Dares and Dictys Legends of Aeneas,” in A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and Its Tradition, ed. Joseph Farrell and Michael C.J. Putnam (Malden, MA, 2010), 133–​46. 88. Dictys, Ephemeris 5.8, ed. Eisenhut, 108–​9. 89. Dictys, Ephemeris 5.11, ed. Eisenhut, 111–​12. 90. Dares, De excidio 44, ed. Meister, 52: “Aeneas navibus profectus est, in quibus Alexander in Graeciam ierat, numero viginti duabus: quem omnis aetas hominum secuta est in milibus tribus et quadringentis.” 91. Dictys, Ephemeris 5.17, ed. Eisenhut, 118–​19: “Ita coactus cum omni patrimonio ab Troia navigat devenitque ad mare Hadriaticum multas interim gentes barbaras praevectus. Ibi cum his, qui secum navigaverant, civitatem condit appellatam Corcyram Melaenam.”

69



Histories Real and Imagined

69

There were ample precedents for these depictions of Aeneas as a traitor or proditor, which long predated both the Phrygian’s and the Cretan’s books.92 They predated even the narrative of Aeneas’ pietas that Virgil had sketched in the Aeneid. The clearest evidence for the longevity of these treasonous tales comes from an extensive discussion of the matter in the Ρωμαϊκὴ ἀρχαιολογία or Roman Antiquities of the first-​century-​B CE historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus.93 Dionysius ultimately judged Aeneas innocent of the charge. But he was more than willing to discuss the matter openly, declaring that on such delicate matters he would let his readers weigh the evidence. When it came to the question of just how Aeneas managed to survive the bloody end of the Trojan War, Dionysius averred that he found the fifth-​century-​B CE historian Hellanicus of Lesbos “most believable” (πιστότατος).94 According to Dionysius’ summary, Hellanicus held that Aeneas and his followers managed to evade the Greek capture of Troy by holing themselves up in Pergamus, the Trojan citadel, and later escaping to Mount Ida. But Dionysius was not silent about alternatives. He also recapitulated a narrative—​which he attributed to the fourth-​century-​B CE historian Menecrates of Xanthos—​of how Aeneas had betrayed Troy because of his long-​ standing animosity toward Paris and the Priamidae.95 Responses to Virgil also influenced assessments of Aeneas’ character and probity, especially when it came to the question of the Trojan’s conduct at his city’s fall. In the Heroides, Ovid’s Dido condemned Aeneas by declaring:  “you lie about all things (omnia mentiris). Nor did your tongue begin to deceive with me, and I am not the first to be punished.”96 Whom else had Aeneas deceived? Although Dido spoke here of Aeneas’ abandonment of his wife Creusa, it is an open question as to just what other lies this all-​encompassing omnia contained. Just a few lines earlier, Dido had also decried “the perjuries of your false tongue” (falsae periuria linguae) and lamented her impending death by “Phrygian fraud”

92. Meyer Reinhold, “The Unhero Aeneas,” Classica et Mediaevalia 27 (1966): 195–​207. For analysis of pre-​Virgilian attestations of the treacherous Aeneas tradition, see G. Karl Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome (Princeton, 1969). 93. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.46.1–​48.4. 94. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.48.1: “ Ὁ μὲν οὖν πιστότατος τῶν λόγων, ᾧ κέχρηται τῶν παλαιῶν συγγραφέων Ἑλλάνικος ἐν τοῖς Τρωικοῖς, περὶ τῆς Αἰνείου φυγῆς τοιόσδε ἐστίν.” 95.  Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.48.3. On Menecrates’ account of Aeneas’ treason, see Erich S. Gruen, Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome (Ithaca, 1992), 43–​44. 96. Ov. Her. 7.81–​82: “Omnia mentiris, neque enim tua fallere lingua/​incipit a nobis, primaque plector ego.”

70

70

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

(Phrygia fraude).97 Again, Ovid said nothing explicit here about Aeneas’ treason, but it is worth recalling (as some of the medieval exegetes we will meet in Chapter 3 would point out) that Virgil’s account of Aeneas’ actions at Troy took the form of a speech that Aeneas delivered to Dido.98 And it was such speech that Ovid’s Dido characterized as perjurious and fraudulent. Even Virgil’s own Dido voiced vague traces of this suspicion. At Aeneid 4.596, the Carthaginian queen exclaimed “O unhappy Dido, do impious deeds (facta impia) now touch you?” Such facta impia were the very opposite of Aeneas’ purported piety. As Sergio Casali has hypothesized, these “impious deeds” may have included the Trojan’s treason.99 A few centuries later, Christian apologists also seized upon legends of Aeneas as a proditor or traitor—​one of many ways in which Troy entered into Christian critiques of pagan antiquity. In his early third-​century Ad nationes, the North African church father Tertullian launched a broad attack against early Roman history. For Tertullian, the perfidy of Rome’s forefather helped prove Roman iniquity both past and present:  “Just like Antenor,” he contended, “Aeneas is found to be a betrayer of his country (proditor patriae).” And even if he could not prove such treason definitively, he labored to point out that the alternative was not all that flattering either. At the very least, Aeneas was a coward who fled his country and left his comrades behind.100 Debates over Aeneas’ possible treachery continued into late antiquity. They coincided with both newfound interest in Virgil and newfound challenges to the poet’s authority. The anonymous Origo gentis Romanae or Origins of the Roman People, compiled in the fourth century, traced the distant Roman past from Saturn to Romulus and utilized now otherwise lost Republican-​era historiography in the process. Much of the Origo functioned as a de facto commentary on the Aeneid: it examined Virgil’s account of early Roman history and compared it with other sources. One of these other sources was the annals of a certain Lutatius, sometimes thought to be Quintus Lutatius Catulus, who served as consul in 102

97.  Ov. Her. 7.67–​68:  “Protinus occurrent falsae periuria linguae/​et Phrygia Dido fraude coacta mori.” 98. See Chapter 3, 133–34. 99. Verg. Aen. 4.596: “Infelix Dido, nunc te facta impia tangunt?” See Sergio Casali, “Facta impia (Virgil, Aeneid, 4.596–​99),” Classical Quarterly 49 (1999): 203–​11. 100. Tert. Ad nat. 2.9.12: “Sed et proditor patriae Aeneas invenitur, tam Aeneas quam Antenor. Ac si hoc verum nolunt, Aeneas certe patria flagrante dereliquit socios . . .”

71



Histories Real and Imagined

71

BCE.101 As the Origo recorded, Catulus had judged not only Antenor, but also Aeneas, to be “a betrayer of his country” (proditiorem patriae).102 At least one late antique Virgil commentator seems to have spun something positive out of the tradition of Aeneas’ treason. Tiberius Claudius Donatus, who flourished in the late fourth and early fifth century, compiled his Interpretationes Vergilianae or Virgilian Interpretations as a rhetorical handbook of sorts.103 The Aeneid, in Donatus’ view, was an ideal teacher of the art of eloquence. Hence, he celebrated Virgil’s ability to deflect and whitewash potentially unsavory aspects of Aeneas’ biography; it was an example of the poet’s rhetorical prowess. At the beginning of his Interpretationes Vergilianae he marveled at how “he [i.e., Virgil] openly states the things that could not be denied, eliminates the accusation, and then turns it into praise, in order to make Aeneas in numerous ways outstanding for the very reasons which could give rise to his detraction.”104 What exactly were these things that could not be denied? Perhaps the very fact that Aeneas had managed to escape from Troy in the first place. Aeneas’ survival—​the very condition of possibility necessary for Rome’s founding—​was also dangerous; it threatened to infect and damn Roman history itself, as critics such as Tertullian had shrewdly realized. Donatus did not say precisely what he considered the truth-​value of the “things that could not be denied.” To use the parlance of his times, did he consider them to be historiae? Servius, whose definition of history would prove so important to Dares’ readers, took up the question most explicitly, and in the greatest detail. At the beginning of his commentary, he had already pronounced that Virgil’s intentio or intention in writing the Aeneid was not only to imitate Homer, but also

101.  According to Alan Cameron, its author may have been Catulus’ freedman, Lutatius Daphnis. See Alan Cameron, Greek Mythography in the Roman World (Oxford, 2004), 333. 102.  Pseudo-​Sextus Aurelius Victor, Origo gentis Romanae, 9.2–​4, ed. Francis Pichlmayr (Leipzig, 1911), 11: “At uero Lutatius non modo Antenorem, sed etiam ipsum Aeneam proditorem patriae fuisse tradit.” 103. On Tiberius Claudius Donatus (not to be confused with Servius’ teacher, the grammarian Aelius Donatus), see Jan M. Ziolkowski and Michael C.J. Putnam, eds., The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years (New Haven, 2008), 644. 104. Tiberius Claudius Donatus, Interpretationes Vergilianae, ed. Heinrich Georges (Leipzig, 1905), 3: “Purgat ergo haec mira arte Vergilius, et non tantum collecta in primis versibus, ut mox apparebit, verum etiam sparsa per omnis libros excusabili adsertione, et, quod est summi oratoris, confitetur ista quae negari non poterant et summotam criminationem convertit in laudem, ut inde Aenean multiplici ratione praecipuum redderet unde in ipsum posset obtrectatio convenire.” For the translation used here, and a discussion of Donatus’ views, see Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome, 51.

72

72

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

to praise Augustus via his ancestors.105 And so he devoted particular attention to those charges that could besmirch the reputation of Rome’s forefather and Augustus’ supposed ancestor. He did so when glossing Aeneid 1.242, where Virgil mentioned how “Antenor, having escaped into the midst of the Achaeans, was able to penetrate the Illyrican bays.”106 Why had Virgil singled out Antenor, he asked, when so many other Trojans had also escaped Troy and founded new colonies? Capys had reached Campania, and Helenus had reached Macedonia, and they had generated not a peep from the poet. The reason, Servius posited, was because accounts of Antenor’s and Aeneas’ treachery had yoked the two together. Remarkably, he then explained that Livy, Horace, and even Virgil himself—​albeit in very different ways—​had all alluded to this act of treason.107 In an example of the kind of misreading that could accrue over four centuries, Servius contended that Livy had charged both Trojans with this crime. However, this was not exactly the case: in the first chapter of the first book of his Ab urbe condita, not long after he acknowledged that aspects of the distant Roman past were more poetical than historical in nature, Livy declared that the Greeks spared Antenor and Aeneas because they had always argued for peace and the return of Helen.108 Even if he intimated that Rome’s founder had not wholly supported the Trojan cause, Livy did not go so far as to deem him a traitor. Horace, in Servius’ view, had taken the opposite approach:  he excused the charge. Here the commentator quoted Horace’s Carmen saeculare, where the poet mentioned how Aeneas had escaped from a “Troy burning without fraud”

105.  Serv. Aen. Praef.:  “Intentio Vergilii haec est, Homerum imitari et Augustum laudare a parentibus.” See the perceptive discussion in Robert A. Kaster, “Honor Culture, Praise, and Servius’ Aeneid,” in Reception and the Classics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Classical Tradition, ed. William Brockliss, Pramit Chaudhuri, Ayelet Haimson Lushkov, and Katherine Wasdin (Cambridge, 2012), 45–​56 106. Verg. Aen. 1.242–​43: “Antenor potuit mediis elapsus Achivis/​Illyricos penetrare sinus . . .” 107.  Serv. Aen. 1.242:  “Non sine causa Antenoris posuit exemplum, cum multi evaserint Troianorum periculum, ut Capys qui Campaniam tenuit, ut Helenus qui Macedoniam, ut alii qui Sardiniam secundum Sallustium; sed propter hoc, ne forte illud occurreret, iure hunc vexari tamquam proditorem patriae. Elegit ergo similem personam; hi enim duo Troiam prodidisse dicuntur secundum Livium, quod et Vergilius per transitum tangit, ubi ait ‘se quoque principibus permixtum agnovit Achivis,’ et excusat Horatius dicens ‘ardentem sine fraude Troiam,’ hoc est sine proditione: quae quidem excusatio non vacat; nemo enim excusat nisi rem plenam suspicionis.” See discussion of this gloss in Richard F. Thomas, Virgil and the Augustan Reception (Cambridge, 2001), 72–​73. 108. Liv. Ab urbe condita 1.1: “Iam primum omnium satis constat Troia capta in ceteros saevitum esse Troianos; duobus, Aeneae Antenorique, et vetusti iure hospitii, et quia pacis reddendaeque Helenae, semper auctores fuerunt, omne ius belli Achivos abstinuisse.”

73



Histories Real and Imagined

73

(ardentem sine fraude Troiam).109 Servius glossed sine fraude as sine proditione—​ that is, “without treachery.” In other words, he read Horace as implying that Aeneas was not involved in any treason against Troy. But the commentator was not convinced: it seemed Horace did protest too much. “Indeed, the excuse is not idle; for no one excuses something unless it is full of suspicion (nisi rem plenam suspicionis).” Most intriguingly, Servius raised the possibility that even Virgil himself had alluded—​albeit “in passing” (per transitum)—​to the treachery of his supposedly pius hero. Virgil recounted how, when Aeneas first came to Carthage, he encountered depictions of the Trojan War in the temple of Juno. Among these, “Aeneas also recognized himself, mixed (permixtum) with the Achaean princes.”110 In exactly what way was Aeneas permixtus with the Greeks? Was he merely fighting in their midst, or, rather, had he gone over to their side? Had he become an Achaean quite literally? Although Servius offered readings of Livy, Horace, and Virgil on the matter, he did not explicitly state his own views on the underlying truth of Aeneas’ treason. Was his betrayal of Troy an example of historia, and if so, was it a historia that (to use his own formulation) had or had not occurred? There was nothing inherently contra naturam, after all, about the claim that Aeneas had survived the fall of Troy by enabling that fall. The commentator entertained the notion that this Roman original sin was not merely probable, but perhaps also factual. Servius’ and Donatus’ statements reveal a certain ambiguity in late antique responses to authoritative ancient texts like Virgil’s Aeneid. For modern readers, this ambiguity might seem difficult to explain. How could one revere a text and help cement its place at the very center of the educational system, as Servius and Donatus manifestly did, while also openly entertaining (and perhaps even accepting) a counter-​narrative that would seem to strike at the heart of its authority—​ and hence at Rome’s own foundation narrative? That ambiguity hinged not only on whether one considered the anti-​Virgilian counter-​narrative historical, but also on just what status or value one assigned to historical truth itself. For Servius and his fellow late antique commentators, to ascertain the historia that lurked behind a fabula was not necessarily to critique said fabula—​even if it would be so for some of the poets and exegetes we will encounter later, particularly in Chapter 3. After all, deviation from literal historical truth was intrinsic to a fable’s very nature. Yet even if Servius was ultimately uncertain about Aeneas’ treachery, he was certain about the historicity of its larger background: there had, indeed,

109.  Hor. Carm. saec. 41–​43:  “Cui per ardentem sine fraude Troiam/​castus Aeneas patriae superstes/​liberum munivit iter . . .” 110. Verg. Aen. 1.488: “Se quoque principibus permixtum agnovit Achivis.”

74

74

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

been a Trojan diaspora following the Trojan War, and many of these Trojans—​ from the relatively obscure Capys to the famous Aeneas—​had founded new cities and countries across the Mediterranean world. Claims to Trojan origins knew a lengthy history. They had long played a role, along with other claims to mythic forebears, in so-​called kinship diplomacy.111 Nor was Rome alone in having Aeneas as its ancestor:  many Greek cities did so as well.112 Stories of the Trojan roots of Rome seem to have stretched back to the third or fourth century BCE.113 Trojan roots also allowed Roman aristocratic families to cement their prestige and cultural capital; for instance, the Roman antiquary Varro is known to have written a book De familiis Troianis or On Trojan Families, which traced such derivations.114 The most consequential of these genealogies was that of the Julian gens; it traced itself back to Venus, the mother of Aeneas. Anchises, Aeneas’ father, possessed an equally impressive lineage: it included Tros, Troy’s eponymous founder, his grandfather Dardanus, and Dardanus’ father, Jupiter himself.115 With the ultimate triumph of the Julian gens in the person of Augustus, the story of Aeneas—​memorialized by Virgil—​ grew all the more significant.116 As Virgil had explained, Dardanus was originally Italian; hence, when Aeneas and his Trojans came to Italy, they were returning to what had originally been their ancestral land.117 Dardanus’ genealogy, and the many ways it was contorted well into the Renaissance, will reappear throughout this book. The Franks were among the first in the Middle Ages to follow the Roman example and claim that they too were descended from Trojan exiles.118 This

111. Christopher P. Jones, Kinship Diplomacy in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA, 1999), esp. 82–​83, and Andrew Erskine, Troy between Greece and Rome: Local Tradition and Imperial Power (Oxford, 2001). 112.  See here James G. Farrow, “Aeneas and Rome:  Pseudepigrapha and Politics,” Classical Journal 87 (1992): 339–​59. 113. See Maotti, Birth of Critical Thinking, 275. 114.  T.P. Wiseman, “Legendary Genealogies in Late-​Republican Rome,” Greece & Rome 21 (1974): 153–​64. 115. Wiseman, “Legendary Genealogies.” 116. Arnaldo Momigliano, “How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans,” in On Pagans, Jews, and Christians (Middletown, CT, 1987), 264–​88. 117. Verg. Aen. 3.161–​68. 118. For a selection of the extensive literature that touches upon legends of Trojan origins in the Middle Ages, see Bernard Guenée, Histoire et culture historique dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris, 1980); Werner Eisenhut, “Spätantike Troja-​Erzählungen—​mit einem Ausblick auf die mittelalterliche Troja-​Literatur,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 18 (1983): 1–​28; Susan Reynolds,

75



Histories Real and Imagined

75

strategy was not uncommon among Rome’s successor states, which often tried to insert themselves into the dusty annals of the Greco-​Roman past. The Trojan War and its consequent disruptions proved ideal points of entry. In his Getica, the sixth-​century Gothic historian Jordanes described the Goths as both relatives and wartime allies of the Trojans. He described how Eurypylus, whom he identified as an ancient Gothic king and a nephew of Priam, had fought alongside his Trojan kinfolk during the war.119 But Trojan connections seem to have been cultivated the longest in areas that would become the Frankish kingdom, where they may have helped legitimize the Gallo-​Roman aristocracy.120 As early as the fourth century, the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus reported that, according to some, Gaul had first been settled by Trojans who fled the Greeks after the destruction of their city.121 These claims functioned not unlike ancient kinship diplomacy; they allowed peoples on the periphery of the Greco-​Roman world to share consanguinity with Rome itself. Later, particularly after Charlemagne was crowned Roman emperor in 800, they would also help support the rhetoric of translatio imperii or the so-​called “translation of empire.” If the Franks were now the new custodians of Roman imperium, it was all the more important that they also be Trojans. Thus, the Franks and others perpetuated a dynamic already established in antiquity. With respect to Rome and Greece, Arnaldo Momigliano described this dynamic as follows: “to have been founded by Aeneas meant, for Latins, not to be Greeks, while keeping some of the glory of being related to the Trojan War. It was a proclamation of noble origins combined with the recognition of diversity from the Greeks.”122 By attaching themselves to Troy, the Romans could partake of a venerable antiquity while separating themselves from Greek antiquity; they could have their cake and eat it too. Keep Troy but substitute Rome for Greece in this “Medieval Origines Gentium and the Community of the Realm,” History 68 (1983): 375–​90; Richard Waswo, “Our Ancestors, the Trojans: Inventing Cultural Identity in the Middle Ages,” Exemplaria 7 (1995):  269–​90; Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations:  The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, 2002); and Marilynn Desmond, “Trojan Itineraries and the Matter of Troy,” in The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, Vol. I: 800–​1558, ed. Rita Copeland (Oxford, 2016), 251–​68. 119. Jord. Get. 9.60. 120. See Matthew Innes, “Teutons or Trojans? The Carolingians and the Germanic Past,” in The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes (Cambridge, 2000), 227–​49. 121. Amm. Marc. 15.9.5: “Aiunt quidam paucos post excidium Troiae fugitantes Graecos ubique dispersos loca haec occupasse tunc vacua.” On this passage see Helmut Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity (Cambridge, 2015), 84–​86. 122. See Momigliano, On Pagans, Jews, and Christians, 273.

76

76

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

formulation, and one has an apt characterization of how post-​Roman peoples deployed their own assertions of Trojan ancestry. Being Trojan allowed the Franks and others to claim both affinity with Rome and difference from it. It gave them independent recourse to a venerable antiquity, much as it had given Rome itself recourse to such a past. As others, like the British, followed in the Franks’ footsteps and claimed their own descent from Troy, the process was repeated almost ad infinitum, throughout the Middle Ages and into early modernity. The following chapter will reconstruct the neglected role of Dares’ Destruction of Troy—​itself an ideal tool for claiming and subverting Roman identity—​in this endless process of translatio. It will take us from the Frankish kingdoms of the early Middle Ages to late medieval England, with stops in locales as far away as Hungary along the way. Dares would find himself at the very center of this cycle and hence at the very center of much of medieval politics: he helped claim the ancient past for the medieval present and helped subvert antiquity while doing so. In the process, those seemingly tidy and confident definitions of historia—​voiced by the likes of Cicero, Quintilian, Servius, and even Isidore—​found themselves upended and transformed, by no less than the “first pagan historian” himself.

7

2

Dares Compiled From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy “Here ends the deeds of the Trojans. Here begins the deeds of the Franks.” —​A Carolingian scribe, combining Dares’ Destruction of Troy with Frankish history

In his Metalogicon, John of Salisbury recalled a saying he attributed to his former teacher Bernard of Chartres. Long before the querelle des anciens et des modernes in the years around 1700, this twelfth-​century classical scholar defined his own era as one of self-​conscious differentiation between ancients and moderns, antiqui and moderni. This book will end with that more famous quarrel, but we cannot understand it—​and Dares’ place in it—​without grasping its medieval antecedents. “Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs, sitting upon the shoulders of giants,” John of Salisbury reminisced, “hence we are able to see more things—​and more distantly—​than they, certainly not by the acuity of our own vision or the towering nature of our own bodies, but because we are conveyed to the heights and lifted up by the giants’ magnitude.”1 The giants were the ancients, and the dwarfs the moderns—​John, Bernard, and their contemporaries. The moderns could surpass the ancient texts they so revered, precisely because the former were engaged in the reception—​and reuse—​of the latter. This was a definition of reception avant la lettre. John of Salisbury was speaking of philosophy, not of historical writing; the author he was discussing was the ancient philosopher par excellence, Aristotle. But his observations apply equally well to poetry, historiography, or any other

1. John of Salisbury, Metalogicon 3.4, ed. J.A. Giles (Leipzig, 1969), 131: “Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis, nos esse quasi nanos, gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea.” For a classic meditation on the metaphor, see Robert K. Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript (Chicago, 1993). The First Pagan Historian. Frederic Clark, Oxford University Press (2020). © Frederic Clark. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190492304.001.0001.

78

78

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

field in which medieval learned culture both followed and contended with ancient models. John’s evocative image of dwarfs and giants, today famous thanks to its use by Isaac Newton, at once acknowledged a paradox and worked to solve it. By the twelfth century, there existed a robust discourse about the nature of auctoritas or “authority.” This included debates over the authority of Latinity itself—​especially as it contended with the rise of various vernacular literatures. Many in the Middle Ages assigned new uses to ancient texts precisely by embracing their authority and the language in which such authority was conveyed. Dares was the ultimate ancient, the first historian of the pagans, and so in many respects he was the ultimate authority. Nevertheless, medieval scribes and scholars kept on claiming to see further than he had, whether through time or across space. This chapter explores just how these scribes, scholars, and compilers refashioned Dares’ Destruction of Troy, transforming it into something that the first pagan historian himself could scarcely have imagined. This transformation would culminate in the twelfth century—​John of Salisbury’s own world—​but first we must trace the travels of the Phrygian through the chronicles and compilations of the early Middle Ages, in a world not far from Isidore of Seville.

Medieval Codices: The Transmission and Transformation of Ancient Texts Medieval scribes could not refashion Dares Phrygius on his own; rather, to do so his history required expansion via other texts. Several things made Dares ripe for such expansion. As noted earlier, Dares was expanded into both annales and fabulae. The next chapter examines the latter: how the brevity and simplicity of the Destruction of Troy’s prose motivated the production of poems that were significantly longer and more rhetorically polished than the original history they versified. This chapter focuses on the former way Dares was expanded—​i.e., how he was continued by other texts in manuscripts. The Destruction of Troy was transformed from a stand-​alone text into a prologue: an ancient history became an introduction to many a new medieval genealogy. Like so many other ancient texts transmitted via medieval manuscripts, the Destruction of Troy rarely circulated by itself. It was, after all, a short text, and far too short to fill out an entire codex of parchment or vellum. On the contrary, it frequently appeared as but one small component of a compilation: embedded within a material book heterogeneous in nature, replete with disparate works by diverse authors, and united through widely varying degrees of logical order or editorial intervention. Modern interpreters often find it difficult to ascertain whether the appearance of two texts in the same codex was the result of a conscious editorial project, or simply reflected

79



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

79

mere chance—​a product of the ad hoc, even random nature of scribal copying.2 Yet common themes do emerge from the manuscripts that contained Dares. Many were genealogical in their contents; they located the origins of medieval peoples in the distant past, whether Roman, Trojan, biblical, or some combination thereof. As varied in their sources as they were expansive in their chronologies, these de facto anthologies stitched together continuous histories from ancient Troy to the medieval present. The resultant histories they formed were never wholly new; instead, the very structure of the medieval codex made new narratives from old texts. The codex—​which gathered diverse texts and authors into a single book—​not only fused hitherto-​distinct traditions but also combined hitherto-​disparate means of establishing authority and veracity. For instance, Isidore of Seville had drawn a distinction between histories and annals. But a single manuscript could fuse historiae and annales together within its folios, as happened (as we will see shortly) when scribes incorporated Dares into copies of Jerome’s chronicle. Within such manuscripts, a historian’s firsthand account of his supposed “present” could appear within a chronicler’s reconstruction of his distant past. These compilations merged—​and blurred—​distinctive ancient genres. In so doing, they brought together a chorus of claims to authority greater than the sum of its parts. Dares and Jerome had vouched for the fides of their respective works in vastly different ways, but now the two authors were brought together as a single continuous narrative. This phenomenon is but one of many in antiquity’s afterlife where the basic material realities of book production and transmission set—​to use Hans Robert Jauss’ formulation—​the “horizon of expectations” available to recipients of the ancient past.3 This point is often taken as a given, but far less frequently analyzed in practice. However, discussion of antiquity’s reception in the Middle Ages must begin with this material reality: the vast percentage of ancient texts read and received in the medieval world were transmitted via multi-​text, multi-​author codices. It was only the advent of print, centuries later, that ultimately gave rise to the one-​text/​one-​book world—​digital developments notwithstanding—​we 2.  On this point see the pioneering and still-​essential study of E.P. Goldschmidt, Medieval Texts and Their First Appearance in Print (London, 1943), especially his examples at 23–​27 and  94–​97. 3. Cf. Jauss, Aesthetics of Reception, discussed in the Introduction at 33. For analyses of how late antique historical thought and literary history were shaped by innovations in codices and their layout, see Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, and Mark Vessey, “The History of the Book: Augustine’s City of God and Post-​Roman Cultural Memory,” in Augustine’s City of God:  A Critical Guide, ed. James Wetzel (Cambridge, 2012),  14–​32.

80

80

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

still inhabit. When we open a book today, our default assumption is that it will contain a single text, neither more nor less. Of course, this is not always the case, and so we have developed special conventions for signaling when a book does not meet said default expectations. We might list editors instead of authors on the cover, thereby conveying that the book is actually a multi-​authored collection of smaller text-​units, or we might augment the title with “Vol. I” or “Part II,” thereby communicating that the text itself is too large to fit within a single book. These qualifications would not have been necessary in medieval textual culture, because these defaults did not yet exist. The material conditions of textual transmission suggest another—​perhaps more unsettling—​reality about reception. Transmission and reception are co-​ determinative; they have always existed in a feedback loop with one another. Barring what we can reconstruct directly from archeology, papyrology, and epigraphy, we can read and interpret only the ancient texts that medieval scribes chose to copy, and such scribes could only copy what had survived to their day thanks to prior acts of reading and interpretation. There is nothing particularly novel about stating this point explicitly, but its implications deserve closer consideration. It also highlights the vast differences between what texts constituted the Middle Ages’ picture of antiquity, and what texts constitute our own. Take Dares, for instance. The Phrygian survived the Middle Ages in a remarkably high number of manuscripts—​approximately 200—​but is mostly neglected today.4 Conversely, texts that are today considered far more famous or canonical made it through the Middle Ages just barely. The cases of Livy and Sallust, whom Isidore mentioned together, perfectly illustrate this point. Sallust survived in spades; Livy survived almost not at all. The same went for Tacitus, about whom Cassiodorus, writing in the sixth century, already seemed uncertain.5 As Christopher Krebs has put it in his study of Tacitus’ Germania, the history of textual transmission can be likened to an hourglass—​with the narrow neck between the two bulbs corresponding to the early Middle Ages, roughly the period between Cassiodorus and the Carolingians.6 Many texts did not make it through these narrows, and remain forever lost and inaccessible to us. This fragility of transmission inflected all subsequent moments of classical reception, whether in the learned circles around Charlemagne or, centuries later,

4. Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 19. On Dares’ medieval diffusion, see also Birger Munk Olsen, I classici nel canone scolastico altomedievale (Spoleto, 1991), esp. 92–​94 and 119. 5. See “Livy,” “Sallust,” and “Tacitus,” in Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, ed. L.D. Reynolds (Oxford, 1983), 205–​14, 341–​49, and 406–​11. 6. Krebs, A Most Dangerous Book,  59–​60.

81



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

81

among Renaissance humanists. It highlights the contingency of what in later periods came to constitute the classical canon. As discussed in the Introduction, so much of how we still think about antiquity—​and so much of what motivated the production of forgeries—​was predicated upon an acute awareness of this fragility. Scholars have long recognized that many ancient texts sadly did not make it through the neck of the medieval hourglass. We would do well to remember this contingency as we continue to debate the nature and merits of the canons we have formed from those texts that did survive. The story of Dares is also a story of what might have been; like Dares’ own account of Aeneas’ treason, it formed a counter-​narrative to texts and traditions that might strike us as more “mainstream.” Yet despite its obscurity today, this counter-​narrative left its traces not only on what came to be considered the ancient canon, but also on the very definition of the ancient itself.

Dares’ Trojans beyond Rome: The Franks While Isidore offered the first explicit medieval reference to Dares Phrygius’ account of the Trojan War, it is unclear what, if any, version of the Destruction of Troy he knew. After Isidore’s pronouncement, no trace of Dares survives until the eighth century, when he began to appear in manuscripts that advanced Frankish claims to Trojan ancestry. These legends were by no means new. Ammianus Marcellinus had mentioned them already in the fourth century.7 But the oldest surviving assertion by a Frankish source of the Franks’ own Trojan origins did not appear until the seventh century, in the so-​called Chronicle of Fredegar.8 “Fredegar” was not actually his name; the actual author is unknown, although scholars think he may have hailed from Burgundy. Whoever he was, his work was one of a multitude of medieval chronicles that continued and augmented Jerome’s own continuation of Eusebius. Just as Eusebius and Jerome had integrated so many gentes or peoples into the larger story of universal history, so Fredegar added another gens—​i.e., the Franks—​into this ever-​expandable narrative. Eusebius and Jerome, as we saw, had made the fall of Troy a key event in

7.  On the Frankish Troy legend, see for example Innes, “Teutons or Trojans?” in The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Hen and Innes, 227–​49; Ian Wood, “Defining the Franks: Frankish Origins in Early Medieval Historiography,” in Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. Simon Forde, Lesley Johnson, and Alan V. Murray (Leeds, 1995), 47–​57; Reimitz, History; and Rosamond McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Notre Dame, 2006). 8. For instance, Gregory of Tours did not advance a narrative of Trojan origins for the Franks. On this point, see Reimitz, History, esp. 52–​55.

82

82

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

world history, and Fredegar used this moment in the chronicle to explain how Troy’s fall also marked the start of Frankish history. Dares—​or at least a very strange version of him—​would eventually help the Fredegar Chronicle make its case. As the passages cited in the footnotes will make clear, some of this strangeness concerned Latinity itself. Readers more familiar with classical Latin will find that we have entered a very different world, with sometimes confounding, ungrammatical results.9 According to Fredegar, at the conclusion of the Trojan War the followers of Priam split into two groups: the first settled in Macedonia and became the ancestors of Alexander the Great. The second group wandered far through the forests of Central Europe, and finally founded a settlement somewhere between the Danube and Rhine. Led by the appropriately eponymous Francio, these Trojan exiles became the Franks.10 As Isidore had suggested, everything was made clearer by etymology, and here was a convenient etymological derivation of the Frankish name. If origins supplied explanations, then Francio made perfect sense as the first Frank.11 Francio also furnished the Franks with illustrious relatives:  not only did they enjoy kinship with the Romans, but they were also related to none other than Alexander’s Macedonians. In some manuscripts of Fredegar, this account grew more detailed. The eighth century saw the production of several continuations to Fredegar’s Chronicle. By their very nature, chronicles always demanded continuation as time passed, and they were often revised and reworked in the process. These material realities of book production afforded new opportunities for historiographical revision. Fredegar’s continuators, also anonymous, not only added new yearly entries to extend Fredegar’s coverage up to the present, but they also simultaneously modified the original contents of his seventh-​century text.12 One of these continuations, dated to 751 and produced under the direction of the Frankish aristocrat

9. On the evolution of Latinity in the Middle Ages, see Leonhardt, Latin, 122–​78. 10.  Fredegar, Chronicarum libri IV 2.4–​ 6, ed. Bruno Krusch. Monumenta Germaniae Historica:  Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum II (Hanover, 1888), 45–​46. A  somewhat different account of the Franks’ Trojan origins, which rather oddly invokes Virgil, is given at Fredegar, Chronicarum libri IV 3.2, ed. Krusch, 93. 11. Fredegar, Chronicarum libri IV 2.5, ed. Krusch, 46: “Electum a se regi Francione nomen, per quem Franci vocantur.” Incidentally, Isidore himself had suggested that the name of the Franks derived from one of their rulers. See Isid. Etym. 9.2.101. 12. On Fredegar and its Continuations, see The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar with Its Continuations, trans. J.M. Wallace-​Hadrill (Oxford, 1960), and McKitterick, History and Memory,  36–​39.

83



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

83

Childebrand, made use of the Phrygian when doing so.13 As the brother of Charlemagne’s grandfather, Charles Martel, Childebrand was firmly allied with the Carolingians in their power struggles against the waning Merovingian dynasty.14 Eventually the Carolingians would win and replace the Merovingians as monarchs. The only extant manuscripts of this combination of Fredegar and Dares date from the ninth century, long after this political upset, and there is nothing overtly pro-​Carolingian in their version of the Phrygian. Still, they demonstrate how the first pagan historian played a small but important role in the historical propaganda that facilitated the Carolingian dynasty’s rise. The version of Dares found in these codices featured an odd title: Historia Daretis Frigii de origine Francorum or The History of Dares Phrygius on the Origins of the Franks. It did not explain how or why Dares, supposedly a Trojan eyewitness, had also written some Frankish history. As discussed above, the original Fredegar was a continuation of Jerome’s Chronicle. These manuscripts perpetuated this process: they inserted Dares squarely within Jerome’s text, at the very point where Jerome recorded Troy’s capture.15 But whereas Jerome himself had simply declared, “Troy was captured” (Troia capta), the History of Dares on the Franks’ Origins explained in detail just how Troy had fallen to the Greeks, and just what befell the Trojans after their defeat. Essentially, it functioned as an extended gloss upon Jerome. Hence, one of the earliest medieval versions of Dares amplified Jerome’s own synthesis of sacred and secular history, augmenting one of the many sparse entries in the latter’s chronicle. Much as Isidore himself had paired Dares and Moses, these Frankish compilers paired Dares and Jerome: Isidore’s first pagan historian became a constituent part of Christian salvation history. Rather than reject pagan antiquity, the Frankish chroniclers, not unlike their late antique predecessors, decided to co-​opt it. Fredegar’s version of the text differed profoundly from the standard version of the Destruction of Troy. Wholly absent, for instance, was the paratext that would appear in virtually all other manuscripts—​i.e., the epistle from Nepos to Sallust. But what it lacked at the beginning it made up for at the end. Whereas Dares himself had concluded with Troy’s fall, this version then launched into a history of the post-​Troy diaspora that included both Aeneas’ founding of Rome

13. See Wallace-​Hadrill, Fredegar, xxv–​xxvi, and Roger Collins, “Fredegar” in Historical and Religious Writers of the Latin West, ed. Patrick Geary (Aldershot, 1996), 112–​13. 14. See Collins, “Fredegar,” 113–​15. 15. See discussion in Marc-​René Jung, “L’histoire grecque: Darès et les suites,” in Entre fiction et histoire: Troie et Rome au moyen-​âge, ed. Emmanuèle Baumgartner and Laurence Harf-​Lancner (Paris, 1997), 186–​87.

84

84

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

and Francio’s founding of the Frankish gens.16 Furthermore, before it even got to these migrations, it delivered a very odd recounting of the Trojan War itself. The nineteenth-​century French medievalist Gaston Paris, who surmised that its scribe had copied (and often miscopied) a fuller version of Dares from memory, documented numerous confusions in the text. To name but a few, the History of Dares on the Franks’ Origins referred to Menelaus as Memnon, named Jason and his Argonauts as participants in the Trojan War, reported that Aeneas departed Troy with Cassandra,17 and replaced mentions of the Trojan Antenor with the Greek Odysseus.18 The last mix-​up produced a confounding result. Instead of having Aeneas and Antenor betray Troy to the Greeks, Fredegar’s Dares charged the unlikely combination of Aeneas and Odysseus with the deed. Still, its account of Troy’s betrayal shared key details with the standard text, including the telling presence of that horse’s head carved upon the gate.19 But it also included echoes of sources that an ancient pagan—​much less the first historian of said pagans—​simply could not have known. In the space of but several lines, Fredegar’s Dares had Achilles urge on his fellow Greeks with a phrase seemingly borrowed from the Frankish historian Gregory of Tours and proclaim his love for Polyxena with words culled from the Vulgate translation of Genesis.20 As Achilles informed Polyxena’s mother Hecuba, “my soul has been bound (conglutinata est . . . anima mea) in beholding your daughter.” These were exactly the words used in the Vulgate, when Shechem

16. Historia Daretis Frigii de origine Francorum, ed. Bruno Krusch. Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum II (Hanover, 1888), 199–​200. For nineteenth-​ century discussions of the text, see Gaston Paris, “Historia Daretis Frigii de origine Francorum,” Romania 3 (1874): 129–​44, and A. Joly, Benoît de Sainte-​More et le Roman de Troie: tome second (Paris, 1871), 172 n.3. More recent analyses are found in Roger Collins, Die Fredegar-​Chroniken (Hannover, 2007), 83–​88, Jung, “L’histoire grecque, 185–​206, esp.  190–​91, and Reimitz, History, 312. 17.  The Destruction of Troy records that Cassandra departed from Troy with her brother Helenus and sister Andromacha, and that together they sailed to Chersonesos. See Dares, De excidio Troiae 44, ed. Meister, 51–​52. 18. Historia Daretis Frigii, ed. Krusch, 196–​99. Cf. Paris, “Historia Daretis,” 130–​31. 19. Historia Daretis Frigii, ed. Krusch, 199: “Nocte media, fraude facto Olixe et Aeneae, signum inauditum et excogitatum in similitudine capitis aequi super murum apparuit; et, apertas portas urbis, inruerunt super Priamum et liberos eius pepercerunt ullam animam ex eis.” 20. Historia Daretis Frigii, 197, ed. Krusch, 197: “Alioquin, en, moriar, donec mortem parentum meorum ulciscar, qui interfecti sunt.” Cf. Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri X 9.19, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison. Monumenta Germaniae Historica:  Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum I (Hanover, 1951), 433: “Haec ille audiens, amaro suscepit animo dicta Sichari dixitque in corde suo: ‘Nisi ulciscar interitum parentum meorum, amittere nomen viri debeo et mulier infirma vocare.’ ”

85



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

85

seized Jacob’s daughter Dinah.21 In the judgment of another nineteenth-​century French scholar, Aristide Joly, Fredegar’s Dares seemed the work of one “more familiar with the Vulgate than with classical authors.”22 Perhaps unconsciously, its author Christianized ancient pagan history, if not in content then at least in style and form. Once it reached the end of the war, the text used Jerome’s subsequent entries on Aeneas and his successors to offer an excursus on early Roman history. Here, in ways that Jerome himself had not, Fredegar’s Dares denigrated the character of Aeneas. Having just named him a traitor against his old land, it then cast him as an impious warmonger in his new land. When describing Aeneas’ actions against the native inhabitants of Italy, it characterized him as a “most fierce belligerent” (sevissimus belligerator), both “proud” and “cruel.” He “kindled such great impiety” (tantam impietatem exarsit) in this pride, and he spared neither the poor nor the orphaned nor the widowed. Whereas Virgil had famously named Aeneas pius, Fredegar’s Dares denounced him as the very opposite—​he demonstrated “such great impiety” or tantam impietatem.23 And while we cannot be sure how deliberately it aimed to do so, the text damned Aeneas still further by rearranging—​and misconstruing—​the contents of Jerome’s original entries. Whereas Jerome had reported that one of Aeneas’ successors, the early Alban king Aremulus Silvius, was struck by lightning “on account of such great impiety” or ob tantam impietatem, Fredegar’s Dares reassigned this unhappy fate to Aeneas himself. And it expanded upon Jerome’s brief mention of this incident to make clear that the lightning strike was a direct case of divine intervention: Aeneas had been “struck by God” (a Deo percussus) as punishment for his impiety.24 Tellingly, the phrase a Deo percussus is found multiple times in the Vulgate. While we cannot be sure of whether this was deliberate anti-​Virgilianism, in the next chapter

21. Historia Daretis Frigii, ed. Krusch, 197: “Conglutinata est enim anima mea in aspectu filiae tuae Polixinae.” Cf. Genesis 34.3: “Et conglutinata est anima eius cum ea tristemque blanditiis delinivit.” See Paris, “Historia Daretis,” 130. 22. Joly, Benoît, 172 n.3: “Le reste du manuscrit semble l’oeuvre d’un homme plus familier avec la Vulgate qu’avec les auteurs classiques.” 23. Historia Daretis Frigii, 199: “Eneas vero cum Casandra, filia Priamo, et omne familia sua veniens Albanorum fines, et habitaverunt ibi. Famosissimus, gignarus namque nec non et sevissimus belligerator, nimirum enim superbus hac crudelis, praesidium Albanorum, ubi nunc magna Roma urbis est, posuit. Qui tantam impietatem exarsit in superbiam, ut nullus proximi parentis aut indigene vel orfani seu viduae praeter liberos aut crudelissimos consiliarios umquam pepercit.” 24. Historia Daretis Frigii, 199: “Qui ob tantam impietatem a Deo percussus ictum fulminis interiit.”

86

86

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

we will encounter medieval texts in which Dares was made to attack Virgil both deliberately and vociferously. It was only after this denunciatory Roman digression that the text, as its title advertised, turned to the origins of the Franks. Here it also diverged from the narrative offered by Fredegar himself. Whereas Fredegar had focused on the eponymous Francio, Fredegar’s Dares began with a certain Pherecides. Presumably an older Frigio, not mentioned here, had preceded Pherecides, for his son was “another Frigio,” the appropriately named “Frigio junior.” The junior Frigio then had two sons, the “most elegant boys” Francus and Vassus.25 Like Aeneas, these descendants of the Trojans also engaged in battles, but the text treated their martial exploits a bit differently from those of their proto-​Roman kin. Frigio, like his Roman counterpart, was also a belligerator who fought all the way to the borders of Dalmatia. But instead of condemning this belligerence as a source of impious pride, Fredegar’s Dares praised Frigio as “most adroit in martial strength” or solertissimus in robore armatoria. Proto-​Frankish history proceeded in parallel with its proto-​Roman counterpart, but the former was a far more commendable record. The Franks were as old as the Romans, but perhaps better. Their leader had not betrayed his city, terrorized his new land, and been assassinated by God himself in a burst of lightning. This curious continuation of Dares by an eighth-​century Frankish chronicler shows not only how Troy remained useful centuries after antiquity’s end, but also how it offered a pretext for rewriting the history of Rome. Fredegar himself had not tarried in Latium but rather traveled straight from Troy to the banks of the Rhine. However, at least one of his continuations deemed it necessary to deal with early Rome as well. It was not alone. Another Frankish narrative of Trojan ancestry also dealt at length with the Romans—​and depicted them as adversaries of the Franks. As we will see shortly, this narrative—​an eighth-​century text known as the Liber historiae Francorum or Book of the History of the Franks—​also possessed a link to Dares. Its version of the Frankish Troy story differed so markedly from Fredegar’s that scholars have surmised that its anonymous author was entirely unfamiliar with Fredegar’s chronicle.26 Different forms of Trojan origins proliferated in the Frankish world. 25. Historia Daretis Frigii, ed. Krusch, 199: “Pherecides genuit alium Frigionem. Idem Frigio solertissimus in robore armatoria extetit, annos 63 principatum gentis suae rexit. Belligerator valedissimus cum vicinis regionibus demicans, usque Dalmaciae fines proeliando vastavit. Qui Frigio genuit Franco et Vasso elegantissimis pueris adque efficaces.” Francus and Vassus also appear in the Cosmographia of Aethicus Ister. See Aethicus, Cosmographia 102–​103a, ed. and trans. Herren, 202–​5. 26. See Richard A. Gerberding, The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum (Oxford, 1987), 17–​18, and Wood, “Defining the Franks,” 51.

87



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

87

Like Fredegar’s Dares, the Book of the History of the Franks rewrote both Trojan and Roman history in a remarkably confused—​or better yet, remarkably creative—​fashion. In some respects, it did so even more radically than Fredegar’s Dares had done. Whereas the History of Dares on the Franks’ Origins had at least confirmed that the Trojan War began on account of Helen, the Book of the History of the Franks made no mention whatsoever of that commonly accepted casus belli. Nor did it seem to accept that Priam had been Troy’s ruler. Instead, it began its account of Frankish history by describing the Trojan War as a conflict between the Greeks and Aeneas, who reigned over “a city called Ilium.”27 The kings of the Greeks rose up against Aeneas, and they fought against him for ten years. The text is extant in two recensions, and on this detail they reveal an important distinction: although the second version simply styled Aeneas the Trojans’ “king” or rex, the first version labeled him as a “tyrant” or tyrannus. In Rosamond McKitterick’s formulation, via this pejorative designation the Book of the History of the Franks conveyed “a sense of Frankish superiority even over the early Romans.”28 The text did not explain exactly why the Greeks had fought Aeneas, but it offered an intriguing explanation for why he sought Italian shores after they defeated him:  “with the city itself conquered, the tyrant Aeneas fled to Italy to settle peoples for fighting.” After Aeneas’ ignominious departure, two other Trojans—​none other than Priam and Antenor, the latter of whom Fredegar’s Dares had entirely omitted from Trojan history—​took the remainder of the Trojan army and departed the city with 12,000 followers.29 Eventually they reached the Danube and established a new settlement in Pannonia, which they named Sicambria. Their Trojan remnant “lived there for many years and grew into a great people” (gentem magnam).30 The next phase in this narrative grew more bizarre. It did not enumerate the exact number of “many years” it took for Priam’s and Antenor’s Trojans to become a gens magna, but the very next lines of the text moved without warning from the time of the Trojan War to the late Roman era—​describing events that, although

27. Liber historiae Francorum 1, ed. Bruno Krusch. Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum (Hanover, 1888), 241: “Est autem in Asia oppidum Troianorum, ubi est civitas quae Illium dicitur, ubi regnavit Aeneas.” Citations here are to the “A Recension” of the Liber historiae Francorum (as labeled by Krusch). 28. McKitterick, History and Memory,  10–​11. 29. Liber historiae Francorum 1, ed. Krusch, 241–​42: “Ipsa enim civitate subacta, fugiit Aeneas tyrannus in Italia locare gentes ad pugnandum. Alii quoque ex principibus, Priamus videlicet et Antenor, cum reliquo exercitu Troianorum duodecim milia intrantes in navibus, abscesserunt et venerunt usque ripas Tanais fluminis.” 30. Liber historiae Francorum 1, ed. Krusch, 242.

8

88

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

the author did not seem to realize it, would have occurred just three or four centuries prior to the present. Rather jarringly, it now explained how “in that time” (eo tempore) the Alans revolted against the Roman emperor Valentinian.31 The Trojans, in exchange for a ten-​year exemption from paying their normal tribute to Rome, successfully squashed the rebellion on the emperor’s behalf. Impressed, Valentinian gave them the name of “Franks,” derived, so the text claimed, from ferus or “fierce.” Hence, just as Fredegar had made sure to provide the Frankish gens with a convenient etymology, so, too, did the Book of the History of the Franks. When these ten years had passed, Valentinian sent representatives from the Roman Senate to extract the usual tribute as scheduled. But the now fierce Franks refused: “we shall not give tribute to the Romans,” they exclaimed, “and we shall be perpetually free (iugiter liberi).”32 Unfortunately, although they did ultimately gain their freedom, in the short term they proved too confident in their ferocity. An irate Valentinian sent an army against the Franks and defeated them. Strangely, in a sign that perhaps not much time had really passed since Troy’s fall, none other than “the bravest of them, Priam” (Priamus eorum fortissimus) perished in this battle!33 Exiles once more, the Franks fled Pannonia and eventually founded a new homeland in Germany along the Rhine. Here they were ruled by Marcomir, the son of Priam, and Sumo, the son of Antenor.34 In remarkable fashion, the Book of the History of the Franks collapsed both time and space to rewrite the ancient past. Not only did it assign wholly new roles to such figures as Aeneas, Priam, and Antenor, but it also made them contemporaries or near-​contemporaries of Valentinian:  somehow the fall of Troy had occurred in late antiquity, or somehow a late Roman emperor had actually lived shortly after the fall of Troy. We have no way of knowing whether this chronological revisionism was deliberate or accidental. But we can be certain of at least one of its effects: in ways that would have been impossible with a more conventional chronology, the Book of the History of the Franks made the Franks and Romans counterparts, contemporaries, and rivals. Just as the first phase of Frankish diaspora was predicated upon a break with Aeneas, so its second phase

31. Liber historiae Francorum 2, ed. Krusch, 242: “Eo itidem tempore gens Alanorum prava ac pessima rebellaverunt contra Valentinianum imperatorem Romanorum ac gentium.” The text does not offer any other details about this Valentinian, so we cannot be sure whether it meant to refer to Valentinian I, II, or III, or if it even knew the differences among them. 32. Liber historiae Francorum 3, ed. Krusch, 243: “. . . Et non demus Romanis tributa et erimus nos iugiter liberi.” 33. Liber historiae Francorum 4, ed. Krusch, 243–​44. 34. Liber historiae Francorum 4, ed. Krusch, 244.

89



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

89

was predicated upon a break with Valentinian.35 These themes also made the Book of the History of the Franks an ideal traveling companion for a text that might actually have been written in an age close to one of the real Valentinians—​i.e., the Destruction of Troy. What is likely the oldest extant copy of Dares Phrygius’ Destruction of Troy is found in a late eighth-​century manuscript.36 Here Dares was followed by what is also likely the oldest extant copy of the Book of the History of the Franks.37 Our earliest witness to Dares inaugurated a trend: so many other manuscripts of the Destruction of Troy, copied over the course of the next seven centuries, also featured histories that claimed Trojan ancestry. This codex, now held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, was likely compiled sometime in the 780s at the monastery of Lorsch, located just east of the Rhine in what is today the German state of Hesse. Lorsch was known not only for its close ties to the Carolingian dynasty, but also for collecting and copying ancient texts, including those of Livy, Virgil, Juvenal, and many others.38 In the Lorsch manuscript Dares appeared much as he would in later copies, complete with the prefatory epistle from Cornelius Nepos to Sallust. Yet when invoking Nepos, its scribe made a telling slip. (See Figure 2.1.) It described Dares’ text “on the ravaging of Troy” (de vastatione Troiae) as having been translated into Latin not a Cornelio Nepote or “by Cornelius Nepos” but rather a Cornilione poete: something like “by Cornelio the poet.”39 35. Yet as McKitterick notes, this sense of superiority does not necessarily imply that the author always depicted the Franks in the right and the Romans in the wrong. For instance, while Valentinian kept his word about the tribute, the Franks did not. See McKitterick, History and Memory, 11. 36. See Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 226. Although the Historia Daretis Frigii de origine Francorum was most likely written before this manuscript was copied, these originals are lost, and the text is extant only in later ninth-​century codices that postdate this copy of the standard Dares. 37. See Richard A. Gerberding, “Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Latin 7906: An Unnoticed Very Early Fragment of the Liber historiae Francorum,” Traditio 43 (1987): 381–​86. As Gerberding notes, this copy of the Liber historiae Francorum is incomplete, as it ends at Chapter 17. On this manuscript see also Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 67–​8; McKitterick, History and Memory, 14–​15 and 196–​210; and Helmut Reimitz, “Transformations of Late Antiquity: The Writing and Re-​ Writing of Church History at the Monastery of Lorsch, c. 800,” in The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Clemens Gantner, Rosamond McKitterick, and Sven Meeder (Cambridge, 2015), esp. 274–​78. 38. On Lorsch as a center for classical texts, see Bernhard Bischoff, Die Abtei Lorsch im Spiegel ihrer Handschriften (Lorsch, 1989); L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, Fourth Edition (Oxford, 2013), 99–​ 100; and McKitterick, History and Memory, esp. 196–​201. 39. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7906, fol. 69v: “Daretis Frigii historia de vastatione Troiae a Cornilione poete in Latinum sermonem translata nunc prologus.”

90

90

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Figure  2.1  The beginning of Dares’ Destruction of Troy in what is likely the oldest extant manuscript of the text. The name of Cornelius Nepos is erroneously rendered as “Cornilione poete.” Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7906, fol. 69v.

Perhaps this error suggested ignorance of Nepos in Carolingian Francia, much as Cassiodorus’ use of the phrase quidam Cornelius suggested unfamiliarity with Tacitus in sixth-​century Italy. Unaware of the real Nepos whom the real author of the Destruction of Troy had sought to impersonate, perhaps the scribe did his best with a difficult name and rendered it as Cornilione poete—​a sensible guess to be sure even if not exactly grammatical. Or perhaps this corruption was already present in whatever lost exemplar he had copied. As discussed previously, the composition of the Destruction of Troy—​whenever and wherever that occurred exactly—​seems to reveal a simultaneous closeness and distance between

91



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

91

late antiquity and the classical Roman past. A few centuries later, the oldest material trace of that text reveals just how far those scales had tipped toward distance. It also reveals just how creatively that distance could be used to rewrite and reimagine antiquity. Ironically, as we will see in the following chapters, this was not the last time that someone mistook Cornelius Nepos for a poet. The Lorsch manuscript did something equally creative when linking Dares to the Book of the History of the Franks. Differences in script suggest that different scribes wrote the two texts. But whoever copied the Book of the History of the Franks appears to have made a conscious effort to repackage the Phrygian as a prologue to Frankish history.40 Dares’ scribe, before confusing Nepos for a poet, had titled the work an account “of the ravaging of Troy” (de vastatione Troiae). Yet the scribe who copied the Book of the History of the Franks chose a new and slightly different title for the first pagan historian. He also added an explicit or close for Dares, just a line before beginning the Book of the History of the Franks. “Here ends the deeds of the Trojans (explicit gesta Troianorum),” he announced, before declaring “here begins the deeds of the Franks (incipit gesta Francorum).”41 Lorsch is also known to have possessed a copy of Fredegar that featured Fredegar’s Dares, so perhaps this scribe was familiar with that prior attempt at incorporating the Phrygian into the Frankish Troy story.42 Our earliest surviving copy of the standard Destruction of Troy posited a clear link between gesta Troianorum and gesta Francorum: the former flowed seamlessly into the latter. And (as long as one ignored inconvenient details like Dares’ account of Priam’s death) this made perfect sense. The Book of the History of the Franks picked up right where Dares had left off, as its opening lines featured Aeneas, Priam, and Antenor. In the ninth century, Carolingian historical writers continued to incorporate gesta Troianorum into gesta Francorum. Sometime around 830, Frechulf, the Bishop of Lisieux, completed another universal chronicle. He presented it to the Carolingian empress Judith, as a gift intended for the education of the young Charles the Bald, grandson of Charlemagne.43 Frechulf made clear that

40. On this codex and interests at Lorsch in history, see McKitterick, History and Memory, 14–​15 and 196–​210, and Reimitz, “Transformations,” 274–​78. 41. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7906, fol. 81r. 42. See Reimitz, “Transformations,” 277–​78. Reimitz notes that this Lorsch manuscript probably served as the exemplar for one of the extant ninth-​century copies of the Historia Daretis Frigii de origine Francorum. 43. On the origins and context of Frechulf ’s Chronicon, see Michael I. Allen, History in the Carolingian Renewal: Frechulf of Lisieux ( fl. 830), His Work and Influence (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1994), and Rosamond McKitterick, “Charles the Bald (823–​877) and His Library: The Patronage of Learning,” English Historical Review 95 (1980): 28–​47.

92

92

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

the past offered the present numerous exempla of vice and virtue. Like Fredegar and others before him, the bishop blended universal history—​of the sort derived from Eusebius and Jerome—​with the specific history of the Franks. In doing so he offered an obligatory summary of their Trojan roots. When he reached the moment when Jerome recorded the Trojan War, he announced, “we read that it happened thus in the history of Dares and others (historia Daretis et aliorum).”44 Dares was in fact Fredegar’s Dares, whom Frechulf followed almost verbatim, and these unnamed others included the original Fredegar, from whom Frechulf culled additional information about Francio and the like.45 He did not follow this historia Daretis verbatim, yet he kept its stranger details, such as Aeneas’ death by lightning as punishment for his impiety.46 But when Frechulf got to the latter half of Fredegar’s Dares, he grew less certain of its accuracy. Perhaps Dares—​or the historian Frechulf thought was Dares, since of course the actual Dares had not written anything about Frankish history—​had gotten the Franks’ ancestry wrong. Some “suppose” (opinantur), Frechulf explained, that the Franks were of Trojan stock. But “others affirm that the Franks had their beginning from the island of Scanza, which is the womb of peoples, from where the Goths and other Germanic nations issued.” He added some crucial evidence for this hypothesis: “The idiom of their language (idioma linguae eorum) bears witness to it. For there is a region on the same island [i.e., Scanza], which, as they say, is still called Francia.”47 Perhaps the Franks had not come northward from Troy, via Pannonia and the Danube but southward from Scandinavia, along with other Germanic gentes. Although we do not know why Frechulf included this caveat, he lived in a world where Trojan ancestry may have seemed less vital than before. The Carolingians were now self-​proclaimed imperatores, heirs to Rome who advanced their own rhetoric of universal Christian

44.  Frechulf of Lisieux, Historiarum libri XII, 1.2.26.29–​30, ed. Michael I.  Allen, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 169A (Turnhout, 2002), 142: “Quod ita contigisse in historia Daretis atque aliorum legimus.” 45.  Frechulf, Historiarum libri XII 1.2.26.27–​174, ed. Allen, 142–​48. For documentation of Frechulf ’s sources, see Allen, Frechulfi Lexoviensis episcopi opera omnia: Prolegomena et indices, 206. For fuller discussion of Dares and Frechulf, see Jung, “L’histoire grecque, 191–​92. 46. Frechulf, Historiarum libri XII 1.2.26.150–​52, ed. Allen, 147. On Frechulf ’s use of this passage, see Spence, “The Dares and Dictys Legends,” 139–​40. 47. Frechulf, Historiarum libri XII 1.2.26.168–​73, ed. Allen, 148: “Haec quidam ita se habere de origine Francorum opinantur. Alii uero affirmant eos de Scanza insula, quae uaginae gentium est, exordium habuisse, de qua Gotthi et ceterae nationes Theotistae exierunt, quod et idioma linguae eorum testatur. Est enim in eadem insula regio quae, ut ferunt, adhuc Francia nuncupatur.”

93



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

93

empire.48 Maybe it did not matter as much whether they were descended from Priam or Antenor, Francio or Frigio. Or maybe, based upon linguistic and geographic evidence, some simply found these tales of Trojan diaspora improbable: Troy to Rome may have been credible, but Troy to the Rhine a bit too much. Frechulf ’s aside suggests that, theoretically at least, not everyone trusted the Phrygian. He did not name these “others” or alii, nor did he overtly ally himself with them. Dares had entered medieval historiography as a means of bolstering Frankish claims to Troy. But Frechulf suggested that maybe Dares, or that new hybrid of Trojan and Frankish history that seemed to be Dares, was not historia after all but rather closer to fabula.

Historia Troiana: Dares’ Continuators from Carolingian Francia to Anglo-​Norman England The Franks were hardly alone in claiming descent from Troy, and using Dares to support their assertions. Like Fredegar and Frechulf, others began to assert their own Trojan ancestry. The ninth-​century Historia Brittonum or History of the Britons of Nennius claimed that the British were descended from a hitherto unattested Trojan—​Aeneas’ supposed great-​grandson Brutus. In a manner akin to Fredegar’s use of Jerome, Nennius wove Trojan and biblical history together: elsewhere in his book he posited that Brutus descended ultimately from Japheth, one of the sons of Noah.49 The eleventh-​century historian Dudo of Saint-​Quentin traced the origins of the Normans to the Trojan Antenor. Seemingly confusing Greeks and Trojans, Dudo concocted the perfect false etymology:  Antenor’s Danai eventually became the Danes or Dani, the Danish forebears of the Normans.50 A bit more plausibly, Italian cities like Venice and Padua also claimed descent from Antenor—​a move in keeping with what Virgil and Servius had suggested about Antenor’s post-​Troy flight.51 These accounts persisted into the early

48. For Frechulf ’s emphasis on a kind of Christian universalism, see Graeme Ward, “Lessons in Leadership: Constantine and Theodosius in Frechulf of Lisieux’s Histories,” in The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Gantner, McKitterick, and Meeder, 70–​73. 49.  Nennius, Historia Brittonum 3:  The “Vatican” Recension 3–​7, ed. David N. Dumville (Cambridge, 1985), 62–​73. 50. Dudo of St. Quentin, De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum 1.3, ed. Jules Lair (Caen, 1865), 130. 51.  See Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity:  The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven, 1996), esp. 25.

94

94

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

modern period, and the so-​called Tomb of Antenor remains a tourist attraction in Padua to this day. From the Adriatic to the North Sea, Aeneas’ comrade and—​ if Dares were to be believed—​traitorous co-​conspirator had gone everywhere in Europe. Helen may have launched a multitude of ships, but Antenor launched a multitude of new cities and gentes. Some of these Troy stories possessed links with Dares. For instance, later in the eleventh century William of Jumièges wrote the Gesta Normannorum ducum or Deeds of the Dukes of the Normans, a continuation of Dudo’s history. William also claimed that the Normans were descended from Antenor. And although he did not cite him, he clearly drew upon the Phrygian when elaborating upon Dudo:  not only did he explicitly acknowledge Antenor’s betrayal of Troy (an awkward detail, to be sure, about the founder of one’s gens), but like the Destruction of Troy he also stated that Antenor had 2,500 followers.52 Dares also appeared in manuscripts with several of these medieval histories that claimed Trojan roots. Thanks to the painstaking and erudite work of Louis Faivre D’Arcier, who has cataloged the extant manuscripts of the Destruction of Troy and traced the diffusion of the text through the Middle Ages, we now have a much better sense of these associations. For instance, the Destruction of Troy appeared in copies of Jordanes, Frechulf of Lisieux, Dudo of St. Quentin, and Nennius, to cite just a few examples.53 Many Dares manuscripts also contained genealogies that stretched back to Troy: two copies featured a Genealogia Anglorum regum or Genealogy of the English Kings, three a Genealogia regum Franciae or Genealogy of the Kings of France, and two a curiously named Genealogia virorum ab Adam usque ad Brutum or Genealogy of Men from Adam up to Brutus.54 As Dares took on these new uses, he also retained that status he had acquired centuries earlier from Isidore of Seville—​i.e., that of the first pagan historian. Sometime around 1128 the theologian Hugh of St. Victor cataloged Dares among the inventors of the liberal arts. He did so in his Didascalicon, itself a tabulation of firsts in the spirit of Isidore’s Etymologies. When discussing the inventors of historical writing, Hugh repeated Isidore’s formulation nearly verbatim. Yet he modified it ever so slightly and therefore seemed to posit a still more direct parallelism between Dares and Moses—​not unlike the parallelism that the Lorsch 52. See William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum ducum 1.3, ed. and trans. Elisabeth M.C. Van Houts (Oxford, 1992), 14–​17: “Iactant enim Troianos ex sua stirpe processisse, Antenoremque ab urbis exterminio cum duobus milibus militum et quingentis viris ob proditionem illius ab eo perpetratem evasisse.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 44, ed. Meister, 52: “Antenorem secuti sunt duo milia quingenti.” 53. Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 527, 530, 531. 54. Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 528.

95



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

95

manuscript had established between gesta Troianorum and gesta Francorum. According to Hugh, Moses was the first to write “divine history” (divinam historiam), and Dares was the first to bring forth “Trojan history” (Troianam historiam).55 The formulations apud gentiles and apud nos—​Isidore’s “among the pagans” and “among us”—​became Troiana historia and divina historia, Trojan and divine history, respectively. The former seemed to stand in for pagan history writ large. As Lee Patterson put it, surveying the ubiquity and longevity of Trojan origin claims, “for virtually all medieval historians, Troy represented an originary moment analogous to the biblical moment of Genesis.”56 Hugh’s Didascalicon confirms that even those who did not explicitly advance such genealogies could not avoid affirming Troy’s originary status, much as Eusebius and Jerome had done centuries before. One could still read Dares, and even accept his status as a first, without necessarily swallowing these new Trojan genealogies. Frechulf ’s hypothesis of the Franks’ Scandinavian origins suggests that not everyone bought into a Trojan diaspora to the northwest corners of Europe. Three centuries after Frechulf, the Benedictine monk William of Malmesbury seems to have reached a similar conclusion. William was one of twelfth-​century England’s most eminent historians. And he was also a gifted classical scholar: as Robert Kaster has recently shown, he produced a radically emended version of Suetonius’ lives of the Caesars.57 William did not embrace medieval claims to Trojan origins. His histories made no mention of any British descent from Troy, and in his Gesta regum Anglorum or History of the Kings of the English he explicitly discredited Frankish claims of this sort: “I wish to supply the truth about the line of the Frankish kings, about which antiquity makes up many stories (multa fabulatur antiquitas).”58 For William, these narratives were not historiae, but rather fabulae. When explicating the Frankish line he followed an account ultimately derived from the Book of the 55.  Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon de studio legendi 3.2, ed. C.H. Buttimer (Washington, 1939), 52: “Divinam historiam primus Moyses scripsit. Apud gentiles primus Dares Phrygius Troianam historiam edidit, quam in foliis palmarum ab eo scriptam esse ferunt.” 56. Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison, 1991), 91. For discussion of the importance of Dares and Troy to medieval historiography, see Guenée, Histoire et culture historique, esp. 132, 140, and 275–​76. 57. Robert A. Kaster, “Making Sense of Suetonius in the Twelfth Century,” in Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices, ed. Anthony Grafton and Glenn W. Most (Cambridge, 2016), 110–​35. 58.  William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum 1.67, ed. R.A.B. Mynors, Rodney M. Thomson, and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998), 98: “Volo de linea regum Francorum, de qua multa fabulatur antiquitas, ueritatem subtexere.” On this passage and William’s disavowal of Trojan lineages, see Rodney M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2003), 151–​53.

96

96

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

History of the Franks, though tellingly he did not begin at its beginning. Instead, he started with the “fierce” Franks defeating the Alans and defying Valentinian, omitting any mention of their Trojan antecedents. And like Frechulf, he even pointed out that the Frankish language and English were similar, “because both peoples sprouted forth from Germany.”59 But this skepticism did not mean that he had no taste for Dares. In fact, like the medieval genealogists, he too read Dares as a prologue—​albeit to the history of Rome. Sometime around 1130, William compiled a manuscript of Roman history—​which later belonged to the early modern English polymath John Selden and is now in Oxford’s Bodleian Library—​that began in the distant ancient past and stretched all the way to the contemporary Holy Roman Empire. He wrote it in a beautiful italic script, with bold green and red initials. William assembled this Roman history by copying out otherwise disparate texts, and stringing them together with everything from rubrics and prologues to well-​placed marginal annotations. His anthology consisted primarily of late antique sources, including Orosius’ Historia adversus paganos or History against the Pagans, Eutropius’ Breviarium, Jordanes’ Romana, and portions of Justin’s epitome of Pompeius Trogus.60 But William assumed that the very first text he copied—​the Destruction of Troy—​had been written in a far more ancient world. At the very top of the first folio of his codex, in the first of several such prologues he composed in the manuscript, William explained just how old its author was (see Figure 2.2): From the first book of Isidore’s Etymologies:  “among the pagans Dares Phrygius first brought forth a history, concerning Greeks and Trojans, which they say was written by him on leaves of palm.” Cornelius Nepos, who translated it from Greek into Latin, was a most celebrated author in the time of Augustus. Thus says Pliny in his Natural History.61

59.  William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum 1.68, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, 98:  “Naturalis ergo lingua Francorum communicat cum Anglis, quod de Germania gentes ambae germinauerint.” 60. See Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 65, and Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 27–​28, 66, and 91. The compilation is also touched upon in Lars Boje Mortensen, “The Texts and Contexts of Ancient Roman History in Twelfth-​Century Western Scholarship,” in The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-​Century Europe, ed. Paul Magdalino (London, 1992), 101. 61.  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden B.16, fol. 1r:  “Ex libro i Isidori ethimologiarum: apud gentiles primus Dares Phrygius de Grecis et Troianis historiam edidit, quam in foliis palmarum ab eo conscriptam esse ferunt. Eam Cornelius Nepos de Greco in Latinam transtulit qui fuit tempore Augusti auctor celeberrimus. Sicut Plinius in naturali historia dicit.” Cf. Plin. HN 9.137: “Cornelius Nepos, qui divi Augusti principatu obiit . . .” Pliny goes on to quote from Nepos on the Roman use of the color purple.

97



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

97

Figure  2.2  William of Malmesbury’s autograph copy of Dares’ Destruction of Troy. William prefaces his version of Dares by transcribing Isidore of Seville’s claim that Dares was the first pagan historian. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden B.16, fol. 1r.

William used other authorities to vouch for the antiquity and authority of the text’s author and translator. Isidore had claimed that Dares was the first pagan to write history, and the Elder Pliny showed that Nepos was a “most celebrated author” (auctor celeberrimus) who flourished in the Augustan age. William showed he had done his due diligence. Yet his citation of Pliny perhaps suggests that he too may have been a bit uncertain about Nepos, even if he had a better sense of his identity than did the Lorsch compiler. William’s Dares is one of the oldest extant British copies of the text. Was Dares the first place where William had encountered Nepos the auctor celeberrimus? But once he had copied out the final lines of the Destruction of Troy, the twelfth-​century monk made it into something more than the first pagan history, translated by a celebrated Latin author.62 He could not let the text stand on its own but instead appended a Trojan genealogy to it, which reached back in time 62. William’s few marginal notes in the text focused on the details of the war, recording the deaths of such figures as Hector at fol. 4v, Palamedes at fol. 5r, Troilus at fol. 5v, and Achilles at fol. 6r.

98

98

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

to a world still older than Dares. This family tree began with the Trojans’ progenitor Dardanus, son of Jupiter by Atlas’ daughter Electra. Much as Virgil had asserted, it explained that Dardanus was originally from Italy.63 He eventually came to Phrygia, which “he named Dardania from his own name” (a suo nomine nominauit). Then his son Tros named his city Troy in order to make “the memory of his name eternal.” Tros had two sons, who produced two lines central to both the Trojan War and the diaspora that followed it. Ilus was the eldest; he ruled the city and named it Ilium. His son was Laomedon, father of Priam, “under whom,” William added, “Troy was captured, just as Dares wrote.” But Tros also had a younger son, Assaracus, whose descendants included Anchises and his son Aeneas.64 From Dardanus to Aeneas and Priam, this short family tree traced the Trojans from the founding of their gens to the destruction of their city. And it demonstrated, through derivations that would have made Isidore proud, that fundamental linkage between people and places, names and memory. From Dardanus’ Dardania to Tros’ Troy and Ilus’ Ilium, the genealogy made everything clearer through etymology. Although numerous ancient sources had stated these details, where exactly William discovered this genealogy is unclear. It first appeared with the Destruction of Troy in a tenth-​century codex.65 It also appeared in several Carolingian manuscripts, where it bore the title Origo Troianorum or the Origins of the Trojans.66 And Nennius unfolded a very similar family tree in his History of the Britons. Whatever its actual source, William was impressed by its seeming antiquity, just as he was swayed by the seeming antiquity of Dares himself. And so he fell into an error. After declaring, “here ends the

63. Cf. Verg. Aen. 3.161–​68 and Chapter 1, 74. 64.  Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden B.16, fol. 7r:  “Dardanus ex Iove et Electra filia Athlantis ab Italia ex reponsis locum mutans Samotrachiam insulam delatus est. Et hinc Frigiam deuenit quam Dardaniam a suo nomine nominauit. Ex quo Erictonius natus est qui iisdem locis regnauit. Ex Erictonio Trous qui iusticia et pietate laudabilis fuit. Isque ut memoriam nominis sui faceret eternam Troiam appellari iussit. Duos filios habuit Ilum Assaracumque. Ilus qui maior natu erat regnauit et Ilium Troiam uocari iussit. Assaracus priuatus decessit et genuit Capen filium ex quo Anchises natus est pater Enee. Ilo Laomedon fuit filius pater Priami sub quo Troia capta est a Graecis sicut Dares scripsit.” 65. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm. 601, fol. 2r: “ORIGO TROIANORUM.” Here the genealogy directly precedes the text of Dares, which begins at the bottom of fol. 2r with pseudo-​Nepos’ prefatory epistle. See discussion at Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire,  57–​58. 66. See John J. Contreni, Codex Laudunensis 468: A Ninth-​Century Guide to Virgil, Sedulius, and the Liberal Arts (Turnhout, 1984), 17 and fol. 4r–​4v. See discussion at Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 57.

9



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

99

history of Dares,” he immediately added, “here begins an excerpt from Cato’s book On Origins.”67 This was a clever guess. Cato the Elder, Roman senator of the third and second century BCE, was famous for his austere moralism and his bellicose rallying cry Carthago delenda est or “Carthage must be destroyed.” He was also regarded as one of the most ancient of Latin historians, the author of a book, titled De Originibus or On Origins, on the history of early Rome and other Italian cities. Unfortunately, it survived only in fragments.68 As Rodney Thomson has posited, William had likely heard of Cato’s On Origins, perhaps from references to it by Servius or Macrobius, and so when he somehow came upon a snippet of Trojan origines or “origins” related to Rome, he naturally assumed he had discovered a trace of Cato’s lost history.69 Like Dares, Cato was an appropriately ancient pagan who had written of times still more ancient than his own. William’s conjuring of this lost Roman history demonstrates how errors often piled upon one another. Works of spurious antiquity were drawn, magnet-​like, to still more cases of misattribution: the names of ancient authors easily glommed onto texts they had never written. What did William place after Dares and “Cato”? For the Benedictine scholar, like Fredegar’s continuator or the Lorsch compiler, the ending of the Destruction of Troy must have seemed a tantalizing cliffhanger. Having recorded the fall of Troy, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands on both sides, its very last lines enumerated those Trojans lucky enough to have sailed away. But it said nothing about what befell them afterwards. After all, Dares was an eyewitness who remained at Troy: by Isidore’s rules of historia he could relate only what he had seen. Accordingly, his book seemed to beg for some kind of sequel. William’s pseudo-​Cato had ended with Priam and Aeneas, two central characters in Dares’ narrative. Hence, using their family tree as a kind of bridge, he continued Dares by documenting what happened to the Trojans after them. “Antenor,

67. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden B.16, fol. 7r: “Explicit historia Daretis. Incipit excerptum ex libro Catonis de originibus.” 68.  See Wilt Aden Schröder, M. Porcius Cato, das erste Buch der Origines:  Ausgabe und Erklärung der Fragmente (Meisenheim, 1971), 29–​46, and Les Origines ( fragments), ed. Martine Chassignet (Paris, 1986), 1–​56. 69.  Thomson, William of Malmesbury, 57. On William’s passion for fragments, see A.C. Dionisotti, “On Fragments in Classical Scholarship,” in Collecting Fragments—​Fragmente sammeln, ed. Glenn W. Most (Göttingen, 1997), 1–​33, esp. 5–​8.

10

100

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

the standard-​bearer of treason (proditionis signifer), remained in the ruins of his country,” he explained, “but the sons of Hector, with the aid of Helenus, expelled him and his offspring.”70 This doleful image of Antenor the traitor presiding over the wreckage of the very country he betrayed was William’s own: an evocative rendering of the prosaic Dares. But he took the second half of this statement from the chronicle tradition of Eusebius and Jerome.71 Although Jerome’s Chronicle made no explicit mention of Antenor’s (or Aeneas’) treachery, one of its post-​Troy entries recorded that the sons of Hector retook Troy from the sons of Antenor. This is not the last time we will encounter this befuddling detail about Troy’s recapture. William next turned from Antenor to Aeneas, announcing: “hereafter [we examine] how Aeneas came to Italy, who succeeded him, and how his successors founded Rome.”72 The arc of the story was now clear. William then copied out excerpts related to Rome from Justin’s epitome of Trogus, before beginning Orosius a few folios later. By forging bonds between texts and gentes alike, a twelfth-​century scholar linked Dares’ history to the great drama of Rome’s rise, and the persistence of its imperium—​in however different a guise—​until his own day. William’s decisions as a compiler outlived him and took on appearances that he himself had not intended. The Origins of the Trojans soon became a popular coda to Dares: it is preserved in some fourteen manuscripts of the Destruction of Troy.73 As we will see in Chapter 5, it survived all the way into early modern print. Its fortunes show how obscure and fragmentary snippets of text—​frequently of unstable attribution and sandwiched between incipits and explicits as prefaces or codas—​circulated within the penumbra of frequently copied works. Longer or more authoritative texts often absorbed and engulfed shorter and less stable ones, and thus many errors in assigning authorship were not deliberate but instead accidental. This happened to the Origins of the Trojans; Dares soon became its de facto author. Although William ascribed the genealogy to Cato, distinguishing it from 70. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden B.16, fol. 7v: “Remansit autem in ruinis patriae Antenor proditionis signifer sed expulerunt eum et posteros eius filii Hectoris adiuuante Heleno.” 71. Eusebius-​Jerome, Chronici canones, ed. Fotheringham, 103: “Hectoris filii Ilium receperunt expulsis Antenoris posteris Heleno sibi subsidium ferente.” William did not necessarily lift this passage directly from Jerome, as it also appeared in Bede and other intervening sources. See Bede, De temporum ratione 66.74, ed. C.W. Jones. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 73B (Turnhout, 1977), 475. 72. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden B.16, fol. 7v: “Porro quomodo Eneas uenerit Italiam et qui successerint ei, et quomodo successores eius Romam condiderint.” 73. Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 165. However, these were not all necessarily derived from William himself.

10



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

101

Dares with a double-​lined rubric, subsequent copies lacked any sign of William’s attribution. Instead, the Origins of the Trojans became part of the Destruction of Troy itself, a perfect concluding flourish to the text. For instance, a late twelfth-​century manuscript produced at the Augustinian priory of Kirkham wholly incorporated the Origins of the Trojans into Dares’ own text. It included no marker of differentiation between Dares’ history and the genealogy that followed, save a single rubricated initial, all but identical to the alternating red and green capitals used throughout for section divisions within the Destruction of Troy itself.74 The genealogy occupied twelve lines of the concluding folio, at which point its scribe remarked finit or “it ends” and left blank the remainder of the page. Similarly, a late twelfth-​century manuscript from the Cistercian house of Rievaulx followed the Destruction of Troy and the Origins of the Trojans with a concluding rubric that read “here ends the history of Dares Phrygius concerning the Trojan War.”75 Not only did the explicit shift downward to engulf the Origins of the Trojans, but an introductory table of contents, entered at the beginning of Dares, counted the genealogy as the fiftieth and final section of the text, titling it Genealogia Priami et Enee a Iove deducta or The Genealogy of Priam and Aeneas Derived from Jove.76 Within the text itself, this Genealogia Priami was introduced by a large colored initial and rubricated Roman numeral fifty, now presented as the last component of the Phrygian’s narrative.77 By the late twelfth century, Dares had become a Trojan genealogist in the most literal sense of the term. As we will see, by this time he had also become an unwitting accomplice to one of the Middle Ages’ most widespread—​and notorious—​of forged genealogical histories.

A Marriage of Two Forgers: Geoffrey of Monmouth and Dares Phrygius Just a few years after William of Malmesbury compiled his Roman anthology, and a few decades before John of Salisbury would evocatively analogize the

74.  London, British Library, MS Burney 216, fol. 93v. See The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons, ed. Teresa Webber and A.G. Watson (London, 1998), 32, and Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 50. 75. London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius C VIII, fol. 6v: “Explicit historia Daretis Frigii de bello TROIANO.” See The Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, ed. David N. Bell (London, 1992), 107, and Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire,  52–​53. 76. London, British Library, MS Royal 6 C VIII, fol. 123r. 77. London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius C VIII, fol. 6v.

102

102

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

ancients and the moderns, Dares the ancient giant met a new medieval dwarf. This was the Historia regum Britanniae or History of the Kings of Britain of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey was a cleric active at Oxford, later named Bishop of St. Asaph. He completed his history sometime in the 1130s. In so doing, he ignited one of the most notorious controversies in the annals of historiography. Debates over his veracity would continue as far as the sixteenth century and beyond. Geoffrey wrote precisely when Dares first began to circulate in England.78 Although we cannot know for sure, it has been suggested that the Phrygian was one of his sources. Perhaps Geoffrey, like Fredegar or William of Malmesbury, imagined his own History of the Kings of Britain as a continuation of the Destruction of Troy.79 Whatever Geoffrey’s ultimate intent, scribes and compilers quickly began to join the two works in manuscript. And so they linked an ancient account of the Trojan War to a sprawling history of early Britain, which memorialized the deeds of such legendary figures as Arthur and Merlin. In fact, among the surviving manuscripts of Geoffrey, Dares is the single other author we are most likely to find. Some twenty-​eight—​or slightly more than ten percent—​ of the 217 extant copies of the History of the Kings of Britain likewise contain the Destruction of Troy; in many cases the latter directly precedes the former.80 Like his predecessors, Geoffrey proposed yet another take on what happened after the fall of Troy: specifically, his Trojans became the Britons. Geoffrey did not claim to have composed this history himself. Rather, in a prologue that shared uncanny similarities with pseudo-​Nepos’ preface to Dares, he claimed only to have translated it. He began by lamenting the dearth of information on Britain’s distant past. One day, however, he fortuitously solved this problem. Walter, the archdeacon of Oxford and a man “skilled in the art of oratory and in foreign histories,” came to him with a remarkable discovery: he gave him a “very ancient book (librum vetustissimum) in the British tongue.” This very ancient book extended “from Brutus, the first king of the Britons to Cadwalader [i.e., a seventh-​century Welsh monarch].” It supplied a continuous historical record of the very past that Geoffrey had hitherto considered terra incognita. “Content with a rustic style (agresti stilo) and my own reed pipe,” Geoffrey

78. On the dating of Geoffrey’s text, see Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae, ed. Michael D. Reeve, trans. Neil Wright (Woodbridge, 2007), xii–​xv. For the hypothesis that Chaucer may have regarded the combination of Dares and Geoffrey as a single work by the latter, see Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History, 150 n.144. 79. Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 418 n.49. 80. For these figures, see Julia Crick, The Historia Regum Britanniae IV: Dissemination and Reception in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989), 37–​39, and Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 151–​53.

103



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

103

translated this liber vetustissimus from “British” into Latin. Just as pseudo-​Nepos had claimed to translate Dares “truly and simply” or vere et simpliciter, Geoffrey made a similar show of disavowing rhetorical ornament:  he chose this rustic style because he did not want his readers expending more energy in “expounding my words (in exponendis verbis) than in “understanding my history (in historia intelligenda).”81 With the requisite false modesty, he drew a distinction between pure, unadorned historia and the verba used to convey it—​exactly how Dares had sought to distinguish himself from the ancient poets. While scholars have debated exactly what game Geoffrey was playing, this elaborate rhetoric of anti-​rhetoric was part of his game. We might say that Geoffrey became the unwitting heir of the Second Sophistic. He proved an ideal latter-​day sophist to latter-​day sophists, even if he did not know it. He made adroit use of the lost book trope that Dares, Dictys, and other ancient spuria had exploited. Much as pseudo-​Nepos had claimed to translate Dares’ hitherto inaccessible Greek into Latin, so Geoffrey claimed to translate Walter’s “British”—​a conveniently unspecified language of remote antiquity—​into Latin. As Christopher Baswell has noted, Geoffrey played with the nature and priority of Latinity. In a culture where Latin—​and, for that matter, writing itself—​was quickly assuming new degrees of authority, he used the authoritative nature of Latinate historiography to subvert its very primacy.82 His Latin, so he proffered, was but a translation of a liber vetustissimus in the “British tongue”—​the product of an older, and potentially more authoritative, pre-​Latinate world. As we will see, this role reversal also informed the relationship he posited between Rome and Trojan-​British antiquity. Geoffrey was not the first to claim Trojan ancestry for the British. Such claims stretched back to the aforementioned ninth-​century Nennius, and Geoffrey expanded considerably upon Nennius’ genealogy of the Trojan Brutus. By doing so, he began exactly where Dares had left off.83 His very first sentence proclaimed 81.  Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae, Prologus, ed. Reeve, trans. Wright, 4–​5: “. . . optulit Walterus Oxenefordensis archidiaconus, uir in oratoria arte atque in exoticis hystoriis eruditus, quendam Britannici sermonis librum uetustissimum qui a Bruto primo rege Britonum usque ad Cadualadrum filium Caduallonis actus omnium continue et ex ordine perpulcris orationibus proponebat. Rogatu itaque illius ductus, tametsi infra alienos ortulos falerata uerba non collegerim, agresti tamen stilo propriisque calamis contentus codicem illum in Latinum sermonem transferre curaui; nam si ampullosis dictionibus paginam illinissem, taedium legentibus ingererem, dum magis in exponendis uerbis quam in historia intelligenda ipsos commorari oporteret.” I have followed Wright’s translation with slight modifications. 82. Christopher Baswell, “Latinitas,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge, 1999), 132–​33. 83.  Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 1.6, ed. Reeve, trans. Wright, 6–​ 7: “Aeneas post Troianum bellum excidium urbis cum Ascanio filio diffugiens Italiam nauigio adiuit.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 44, ed. Meister, 52.

104

104

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

that “after the Trojan War, Aeneas fled the devastated city with his son Ascanius and sailed to Italy.” A bit later he recounted the birth and upbringing of Ascanius’ grandson (and Aeneas’ great-​grandson), Brutus. Brutus was exiled to Greece after he accidently killed his father with an arrow while hunting.84 In Greece, he met the descendants of other Trojan refugees, who were suffering under the cruel rule of the Greek king Pandrasus. Brutus led these Trojans in a successful revolt. Then, after the goddess Diana revealed to him that he was destined to found a new kingdom in the west, he and his new Trojan followers sailed off in search of their promised land.85 En route, Brutus encountered none other than the descendants of Antenor, who had settled on the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea and were now ruled by a certain Corineus.86 Brutus’ Trojans joined forces with Corineus’ band, and together they eventually reached the island Diana had promised. In one of his many false etymologies, Geoffrey stated that Antenor’s Trojans, taking their name from Corineus, became the Cornish.87 A  bit later, much as the Franks took their name from Francio, or Dardanus gave his name to Dardania, Geoffrey recorded that Brutus did the same thing, with that noble aim of winning eternal memory via etymology: Then Brutus named the island Britain and his comrades Britons, from his own name (de suo nomine). For he wished to gain everlasting memory from the derivation of the name [i.e., of Britain] (ex diriuatione nominis). Hence afterwards the speech of his people, previously called Trojan or crooked Greek (curvum Graecum), was called British.88 Finally, having memorialized his own name, Brutus also memorialized the place from which his forebears had come. Along the River Thames he founded a city 84. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 1.6, ed. Reeve, 6–​9. 85. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 1.7–​17, ed. Reeve, 8–​21. 86. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 1.17, ed. Reeve, 20–​21. 87. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 1.17, ed. Reeve, 20–​21. 88.  Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 1.21, ed. Reeve, trans. Wright, 28–​ 29:  “Denique Brutus de nomine suo insulam Britanniam appellat sociosque suos Britones. Volebat enim ex diriuatione nominis memoriam habere perpetuam. Unde postmodum loquela gentis, quae prius Troiana sive curuum Graecum nuncupabatur, dicta fuit Britannica.” The translation used here follows Wright with slight modifications. On the use of “false etymology” as a characteristic of genealogical history, see R.  Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago, 1983), 82–​83. On Geoffrey’s importance to medieval genealogical history, see Francis Ingledew, “The Book of Troy and the Genealogical Construction of History:  The Case of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae,” Speculum 69 (1994): 665–​704.

105



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

105

that many years later would become London. He gave it a fitting name:  Troia Nova or “New Troy.”89 Closing out the first book of his history, Geoffrey made sure to anchor his historical revisionism within the long tradition of universal history expounded by Eusebius and Jerome:  not only did he date Brutus to when the Philistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant, but he also reported, just as William of Malmesbury had, that the sons of Hector were then ruling at Troy, having retaken the city from the descendants of Antenor (this explained why Brutus had encountered Antenor’s Trojans in exile!).90 In this fashion, the Oxford cleric created a powerful new myth of nationhood. In the words of R. Howard Bloch, his History of the Kings of Britain revealed “a deep, though historically determined, mental structure that assumed power to be legitimated through recourse to origins.”91 Much as they had for Isidore, these origins consisted of words and things, verba and res. If London could become New Troy, and Britain could take its name from Brutus, then it only made sense that the British language—​the same tongue, presumably, in which Geoffrey claimed his liber vetustissimus had been written—​ could derive from a Trojan dialect of Greek, older and more august than Latin. This genealogy required some revisionist linguistic history as well.92 In conjunction with this new genealogy, Geoffrey adopted an anti-​Roman perspective, not unlike the Frankish chroniclers. He made Brutus a double exile: first from Troy itself, and then from those Trojans who would found Rome. Spurned by Aeneas’ line, Brutus embraced an older, purer Trojan identity, thereby plunging his descendants into competition and rivalry with the Romans. Nowhere is this rivalry clearer than in the goddess Diana’s prophecy. Ignoring the fact that Brutus’ ancestors had already established their own New Troy in Latium, the goddess exhorted him to found “another Troy” (altera Troia) in Britain. This other Troy would also grow into nothing less than a universal empire: “here kings will be born from your offspring,” she told Brutus, “and the circle of the whole world will submit to them.”93 Such words echoed—​and transferred to Britain—​what 89.  Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae, 1.22, ed. Reeve, 30–​31. “Condidit itaque ciuitatem ibidem eamque Troiam Nouam uocavit.” 90.  Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae, 1.22, ed. Reeve, 30–​1.:  “Regnabant etiam in Troia filii Hectoris, expulsis posteris Antenoris.” 91. Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies, 82. See also Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “Genealogy: Form and Function in Medieval Historical Narrative,” History and Theory 22 (1983): 43–​53. 92. See Sara Harris, The Linguistic Past in Twelfth-​Century Britain (Cambridge, 2017). 93.  Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 1.16, ed. Reeve, trans. Wright, 20–​ 21: “Hanc pete; namque tibi sedes erit illa perhennis./​Hic fiet natis altera Troia tuis./​Hic de prole tua reges nascentur, et ipsis/​Tocius terrae subditus orbis erit.”

106

106

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Jupiter had said in Virgil’s Aeneid about Rome. There the god had declared that he would place neither spatial nor temporal boundaries upon the rule of Aeneas’ descendants but instead grant them “empire without end” (imperium sine fine). Through clever redeployment of classical prophecy, Geoffrey challenged the Virgilian vision of Roman manifest destiny by transferring it to Brutus’ heirs.94 The remainder of the History of the Kings of Britain bore this out: from Belinus and Brennius to the struggle with Julius Caesar to the hero of Geoffrey’s book, Arthur himself, the Britons continually defied Rome.95 They proved better latter-​ day Trojans than did the Romans. Not everyone believed the new narrative. The late twelfth-​century historian William of Newburgh indicted Geoffrey—​and his decision to write in Latin—​by singling out a nomen he had wrongly usurped: historia. “Having gathered fables (fabulas) about Arthur from the ancient figments (figmentis) of the Britons . . . Geoffrey disguised them in the honorable name of history (honesto historiae nomine) through the color of Latin speech.”96 William appealed to the ancient distinction between historia and fabula, charging Geoffrey with a brazen attempt at passing off the latter as the former. But many of Geoffrey’s readers and compilers did not share this skepticism. Instead, they embraced Geoffrey’s newfangled etymologies and genealogies, especially when they appeared alongside an ancient Latin author that unquestionably bore the honorable name of history—​ Dares Phrygius. A  late twelfth-​century manuscript now at the Cambridge University Library was among the first codices to pair the Destruction of Troy with the History of the Kings of Britain.97 Marginalia in its text of the latter reveal how readers focused on what Bloch termed Geoffrey’s “false etymologies.”98 Its

94.  Cf. Verg. Aen. 1.278–​79:  “His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono:/​imperium sine fine dedi.” 95. For Belinus and Brennius, whom Geoffrey credited with having led armies against Rome, see Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 3.43–​44, ed. Reeve, 56–​59. For Julius Caesar, see Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 4.54–​63, ed. Reeve, 68–​81. For Arthur’s conflict with Rome, see Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 9.158–​76, ed. Reeve, 214–​49. 96.  William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, Prooemium, ed. Hans Claude Hamilton (London, 1856), 4: “Gaufridus hic dictus est agnomen habens Arturi, pro eo quod fabulas de Arturo ex priscis Britonum figmentis sumptas et ex proprio auctas per superductum Latini sermonis colorem honesto historiae nomine palliavit.” On William of Newburgh, see Monika Otter, Inventiones: Fiction and Referentiality in Twelfth-​Century Historical Writing (Chapel Hill, 1996). 97.  For dating and contents, see Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 41, and Julia Crick, The Historia Regum Britanniae III: A Summary Catalogue of the Manuscripts (Cambridge, 1985), 86–​89. 98. Bloch, Etymologies,  83–​87.

107



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

107

annotator recorded that “England was first named Albion, then Britain from Brutus,” and then he repeated this crucial derivation just a few lines below, remarking again that “Britain is named from Brutus.”99 On the following folio, he cited another of Geoffrey’s bold new names: “the city of London,” he affirmed, “was called New Troy by Brutus.”100 Dares and Geoffrey also traveled with genealogies of more universal scope. One of the most expansive of these appeared in a late twelfth-​or early thirteenth-​ century manuscript thought to have belonged to Wells Cathedral in Somerset. In it the History of the Kings of Britain immediately followed the Destruction of Troy. In turn, its scribe followed the History of the Kings of Britain with a family tree, not unlike how William of Malmesbury had continued Dares with the family tree of Dardanus. Yet this genealogy, ultimately derived from Nennius’ History of the Britons, stretched all the way back to the wanderings of Noah’s sons after the Flood—​an apt precedent or parallel to the Trojan diaspora charted by Dares and Geoffrey.101 Like Eusebius and Jerome, it blended the biblical and pagan pasts; however, it did so by positing some convenient etymologies. It described how Noah’s son Japheth traveled to Europe, and how he had four great-​grandchildren—​the appropriately named Francus, Romanus, Alemannus, and Britto.102 Predictably, from these eponymous founders arose four “peoples” or gentes: the Franks, Latins, Germans, and Britons.”103 It is not clear whether this genealogy constituted an alternative—​or merely a prehistory—​to Dares’ Troy and Geoffrey’s New Troy. Regardless, it yoked the two forgers—​the one ancient and the other medieval—​to a new account of European origins, itself an extra-​ biblical “continuation” of biblical history.

99. Cambridge, University Library, MS Mm.5.29, fol. 29r: the annotator writes “Anglia primo Albion nominabatur, deinde Britannia a Bruto” and then “Britannia a Bruto nominatur.” Cf. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae, 1.21, ed. Reeve, 28–​29. 100.  Cambridge, University Library, MS Mm.5.29, fol. 30r:  the annotator writes “Ciuitas Londoniarum per Brutum uocabatur noua Troia.” Cf. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 1.22, ed. Reeve, 30–​31. 101. Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 39, and N.R. Ker and A.G. Watson, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, Supplement to the Second Edition (London, 1987), 67. For further analysis of this genealogy, found alongside several other copies of Geoffrey, see Crick, Summary Catalogue,  57–​59. 102. Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, MS 75, fol. 177v: “Primus uero genere Iapheth uenit ad Europam. Alanius cum iii sibi filiis suis quorum nomina sunt hec Ysicion, Armenion, Aegilo. Ysicion habuit iiii filios, scilicet Francus, Romanus, Alemannus, et Brito.” 103.  Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, MS 75, fol. 177v:  “Ab Ysicione primogenito Alanii orte sunt iiii gentes: Franci, Latini, Alemanni, et Briti.” Cf. Nennius, Historia Britonnum 7, ed. Dumville,  71–​72.

108

108

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

The fusion of Dares and Geoffrey did not just create new histories, but in at least one instance it also created a new Latin poem, the traditional domain of fabula. This was an anonymous poem titled Brutus, composed sometime in the middle decades of the twelfth century and dedicated to Hugh Puiset, Bishop of Durham.104 The Brutus offers direct contemporary evidence of how Dares’ Trojan history and Geoffrey’s history of early Britain could become a single, continuous narrative. As noted by its editor, P.G. Schmidt, this 654-​line poem was composed of three parts: the first thirty-​five lines were prefatory in nature, the next sixty-​five or so, which recounted the Trojan War, followed Dares, and the remainder followed the early portions of Geoffrey.105 Though he invoked neither historian by name, perhaps the Brutus poet treated both his sources as one because he found them as one, united in a single codex. In fewer than ten lines, the poem moved seamlessly from Aeneas’ betrayal of Troy (“Aeneas prepares traps, he calls the Greeks . . .”) to his arrival in Italy. And in doing so it repeated some telltale details from the Phrygian, including Aeneas’ departure from Troy with twenty-​two ships.106 From here it was but another fifty lines to the birth of his great-​grandson, Brutus. The Brutus portrayed Aeneas and its eponymous protagonist in rather different lights. For instance, with a hint of the anti-​Virgilianism we will explore in far greater detail in the following chapter, it expressed astonishment that Lavinia could have preferred Aeneas to Turnus, since the latter was equal to the gods, and the former was not only “inferior in virtue” but also “an exile, touched by blemishes (nevis).”107 The poem did not elaborate on what exactly these blemishes were, but perhaps they included the very fact that Aeneas had gotten to Italy only via treachery, as it had detailed a few lines before. But when describing Brutus, its praise was unreserved: Aeneas’ great-​grandson combined the best of those who had come before him and hence proved better than them all. In elegiac couplets,

104. P.G. Schmidt, “Brutus: eine metrische Paraphrase der ‘Historia regum britanniae’ für den Durhamer Bischof Hugo de Puiset,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 11(1976): 201–​23. See discussion in A.G. Rigg, A History of Anglo-​Latin Literature, 1066–​1422 (Cambridge, 1992), 98–​99. The Brutus is preserved in a single manuscript, formerly owned by the Elizabethan scholar John Dee (whose encounter with Dares we will discuss in Chapter 4) and now London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian A X, fol. 45v–​fol. 52r. 105. Schmidt, “Brutus,”  201–​2. 106. Brutus, lines 93–​103, ed. Schmidt, 207: “Convenit Eneas Priamum, pacem movet, armis/​ abdicat; obpropriis afficit ille virum./​Hic parat insidias, vocat Argos, fedus initur;/​Signat iter, signat tempora, signat ubi . . . Exulat Eneas et navigat exule maior/​Namque bis undenis navibus equor arat./​Itur in Ytalia, petitur Lavinia . . . ” 107.  Brutus, lines 113–​14, ed. Schmidt, 207:  “Phrix erat inferior virtute, remotior evo,/​Rege minor, nevis tactus et exul erat.”

109



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

109

it marveled at how “a boy is born equal to Mars, greater than Achilles . . . He was Aeneas in manners, Hector in battle, Diomedes in renown, Paris in appearance, and Brutus by name (nomine Brutus).”108 Like the Destruction of Troy, it treated Aeneas with ambiguity: he was a traitor, and blemished, but also somehow exemplary in his mores. And like the History of the Kings of Britain, it highlighted the act of naming. It accorded pride of place to Geoffrey’s own “false etymologies,” recording how Britain obtained its nomen from Brutus, and how the future London, “a rival of Troy in walls, holds its name from the name of Troy (a Troie nomine nomen habet).”109 From the old Troy to the new, the Brutus united the histories of Dares and Geoffrey into a single poem of several hundred lines. It was hardly the last to render the Phrygian’s prose into verse.

Dares and Genealogy in the Later Middle Ages: From Hungary to the Franks Again Although this story has taken us from the Romans to the Franks to the Britons, Dares’ diffusion did not just proceed in a northwesterly direction. At the same time, he traveled to some very different locales, and here too he lent his authoritative name to the genealogical histories of non-​Roman peoples. He made a cameo in an anonymous early thirteenth-​century Hungarian chronicle, the so-​called Gesta Hungarorum or Deeds of the Hungarians. In a prefatory letter to an unknown friend, its author, who identified himself as a former notary to King Béla, declared that he did not just write Hungarian history. Before this, he explained, he had compiled into one volume a hystoria Troiana, “from the books of Dares Phrygius and other authors, just as I had heard from my teachers.” He did not cite these other authors—​or name these teachers—​and if he actually wrote this Trojan history, it unfortunately does not survive. But he made clear that this work established his bona fides as a historian. Just as he had once written of “Trojan history and the wars of the Greeks,” now he would write a “genealogy (genealogiam) of the kings of Hungary and its nobles.”110 He did not say whether

108.  Brutus, lines 151–​54, ed. Schmidt, 208:  “Nascitur ergo puer par Marti, maior Achille,/​ Dignus non redimi morte parentis erat./​Moribus Eneas, Hector pugna, Diomedes/​Laude, Paris facie, nomine Brutus erat.” 109. Brutus, lines 469–​70, ed. Schmidt, 217: “Dicitur a Bruto sortita Britannia nomen/​Dicitur et Bruti Brito fuisse genus,” and Brutus, lines 499–​500, ed. Schmidt, 218:  “Edificatur ibi metropolis, emula Troie/​menibus, a Troie nomine nomen habet.” Cf. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 1.21–​22, ed. Reeve, 28–​31. 110. Gesta Hungarorum, prologus, ed. and trans. Martyn Rady and László Veszprémy (Budapest, 2010), 2–​3: “Dum olim in scolari studio simul essemus et in hystoria Troiana, quam ego cum

10

110

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

he judged the Hungarians to be descendants of the Trojans, but he posited a clear correspondence between their histories: more than four centuries after the Lorsch compiler had linked Dares to the Book of the History of the Franks, here was that parallelism between gesta Troianorum and gesta Francorum all over again, now transferred to gesta Hungarorum. This was true not only in content, but also in form. The Hungarian chronicler’s preface was an imitation of, and homage to, pseudo-​Nepos’ prefatory epistle to Sallust. “Therefore I  thought it best,” he added, “that I  would write to you truly and simply (vere et simpliciter), so that those reading this might learn how the events occurred.”111 Just as Dares had written Trojan history—​and, for that matter, Geoffrey of Monmouth had written British history—​so this anonymous author would write Hungarian history vere et simpliciter. The rhetorical flourishes of verba would not distract him from the underlying res. In thirteenth-​century Hungary, Dares was not only read and recompiled, but he also offered an authoritative model for how to write a history—​whether about Troy itself or Hungarian genealogy. Many miles away from Hungary, the Phrygian was still being recompiled. Space permits us to discuss only a few examples of his reception and reuse in the later Middle Ages. Scholastics embraced Dares, as they incorporated universal history into still more exhaustive versions of Isidore’s encyclopedism. The thirteenth-​century encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais slotted an abbreviation of the first pagan historian into his massive world chronicle, the Speculum historiale or Historical Mirror, written across some three decades up to Vincent’s death in 1264. Like many other compilers, Vincent did not rely on the Phrygian directly. Instead, he adapted his epitome of Dares from another world chronicler, Hélinand of Froidmont. In a manner akin to Fredegar, Frechulf, and others, Vincent made Dares an accessory to universal history. This was a universal history exponentially expanded through a profusion of apparatuses and authorities. It would become the standard historical encyclopedia of the late medieval world. Given the scale of the Historical Mirror, Troy became something of a blip. And thus, Vincent announced at the start of the sixty-​second chapter of his second

summo amore complexus ex libris Darethis Frigii ceterorumque auctorum, sicut a magistris meis audiveram, in unum volumen proprio stilo compilaveram, pari voluntate legeremus, petisti a me, ut, sicut hystoriam Troianam bellaque Grecorum scripseram, ita et genealogiam regum Hungarie et nobilium suorum  .  .  .  tibi scriberem.” See discussion in Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 282. 111. Gesta Hungarorum, prologus, ed. and trans. Rady and Veszprémy, 4–​5: “Optimum ergo duxi, ut vere et simpliciter tibi scriberem, quod legentes possint agnoscere, quomodo res geste essent.” See discussion in Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 282.

1



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

111

book that “in this chapter, I will draw up with the greatest brevity (summa brevitate) a summa of the Trojan War from the history of Dares, which Cornelius Nepos translated for Sallust, and which he says he found at Athens, written in the hand of Dares himself.”112 Vincent accomplished the seemingly impossible: he made the sparse Dares still more sparse. Throughout this chapter, we have seen Dares recast as a prologue to tales of origins. This process continued into the later Middle Ages, and sometimes it involved the wholesale creation of new texts from old materials. Rather than merely place a genealogical history after Dares in a codex, some compilers took a more active, interventionist approach: they no longer treated Dares as distinct from these other sources, but—​not unlike the Brutus—​they made him into a constituent part of a single larger narrative. In doing so, they created comparative histories of Trojan ancestry, divided neither by rubrics nor incipits nor explicits. Nowhere is this process clearer than in two late thirteenth-​or fourteenth-​century English manuscripts—​the former of unknown origin and the latter likely from Christ Church, Canterbury. The Christ Church codex gave this text an apposite title: Historia Troianorum et Grecorum or History of the Trojans and Greeks.113 This History of the Trojans and Greeks was actually a seamless combination of Dares, Servius, and Frechulf of Lisieux, whose universal history had utilized Fredegar’s version of the Phrygian. Elements of the earliest medieval version of Dares, mixed with extracts of late antique exegesis, reappeared in unexpected new combinations in the final centuries of the Middle Ages. Although it did not explicitly mention its diverse sources, this history wove together Dares’ account of the war itself, Servius’ discussions of Trojan dispersal in the Mediterranean, and Frechulf ’s sketch of the Trojan roots of both Romans and Franks. The first portion of the text, which chronicled the Trojan War, used both Dares and Frechulf.114 However, Dares’ usual conclusion became a launching point for

112. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale 2.62 (Douai, 1624), 66: “Summam belli Troyani ex historia Daretis, quam transtulit Cornelius Nepos ad Salustium Crispum quam se inuenisse dicit Athenis scriptam manu ipsius Daretis, summa breuitate in hoc capitulo perstringam.” 113. London, British Library, MS Additional 45103, fol. 1r and London, British Library, MS Harley 3969, fol. 164r. Harley 3969 titled the text Historia Troianorum. See Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. N.R. Ker (London, 1964), 35. Given its divergences from the standard Dares, Faivre D’Arcier has printed an extract from the text’s final folios in Harley 3969. See Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 271–​72. In Additional 45103, the portraits from the standard Dares appear as an appendix at fol. 9r–​10r. The Trojans contain no rubric, but the Greeks have one at fol.10v, which reads, “De formis quorumdam Grecorum.” 114. London, British Library, MS Additional 45103, fol. 1r–​8v, and Frechulf, Historiarum libri XII 1.2.26.27–​174, ed. Allen, 142–​48. On this recension’s association with Frechulf, see Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 409.

12

112

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

the establishment of various New Troys across Europe and the Mediterranean. As we saw earlier, Servius had taken up the question at Aeneid 1.242 of why Virgil had singled out Antenor, when so many other Trojans had likewise sailed away from Troy and founded new colonies. The answer, Servius posited, had to do with Antenor’s alleged treason. When explaining this point, he had mentioned some of these other Trojans, and where they went. Servius’ aside proved useful to the compiler of the History of the Trojans and Greeks, who then copied it to catalog new Trojan settlements: “Helenus possessed Macedonia, Capys—​a certain leader who similarly escaped Trojan danger—​possessed Campania, and others among the Trojans held Sardinia.”115 Immediately thereafter, he turned to Antenor himself: “Antenor, however, came with his [followers] not to Italy, but to Cisalpine Gaul, where Venice is.” This was a verbatim reproduction of part of another Servian gloss—​in fact, the commentator’s gloss upon the very first line of the Aeneid. Servius had tried to explain why Aeneas merited the primus in Aeneid 1.1–​3 (Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris /​Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit /​litora . . .), particularly when Virgil would mention several hundred lines later that Antenor had preceded him. The answer, Servius ingeniously explained, was that Antenor had established himself in northern regions not yet technically Italian.116 The History of the Trojans and Greeks then plucked this line, extracted from its original context, and used it to catalog another element of the Trojan diaspora. The text finally returned to Dares to document the itinerary of Aeneas himself. It followed the Destruction of Troy almost verbatim in reporting that Aeneas left Troy with twenty-​two ships and 3,400 followers.117 But since the eyewitness Dares had stopped here, it took its following lines, describing his arrival in Italy, from Frechulf ’s chronicle. Thereafter it copied Frechulf ’s chronology of

115.  London, British Library, MS Additional 45103, fol. 8v:  “Helenus tenuit Macedoniam. Capis princeps quidam qui similiter Troianum euasit periculum tenuit Campaniam aliique Troianorum tenuerunt Sardiniam.” Cf. Serv. Aen. 1.242:  “Non sine causa Antenoris posuit exemplum, cum multi evaserint Troianorum periculum, ut Capys qui Campaniam tenuit, ut Helenus qui Macedonium, ut alii qui Sardiniam secundum Sallustium.” See discussion of this Servian gloss at Chapter 1, 71–72. Subsequent folio references are to MS Additional 45103; for corresponding text in MS Harley 3969, see Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 272. 116. London, British Library, MS Additional 45103, fol. 8v: “Antenor autem uenit cum suis non ad Italiam sed ad Galliam Cisalpinam in qua Venetia est.” Cf. Serv. Aen. 1.1: “Unde apparet Antenorem non ad Italiam venisse, sed ad Galliam Cisalpinam, in qua Venetia est.” 117. London, British Library, MS Additional 45103, fol. 8v: “Porro Eneas profectus nauibus ducentis in quibus Alexander in Greciam ierat quem Eneam omnis etas hominum secuta est in nubibus [sic] tribus et quadringentis.”

13



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

113

early Roman history, touching upon such figures as Ascanius, Silvius, and Iulus, “from whom the Julian family was born.”118 Interestingly, it omitted discussion of Aeneas’ impiety and death by lightning. Yet in a sign of how universal history could persist through various iterations across the centuries, it kept the core of the Roman chronology that Frechulf himself had copied from Fredegar’s Dares, and which Fredegar’s Dares had absorbed from Jerome’s Chronicle.119 Following Frechulf, it turned thereafter from the Romans to the Franks, recording how the latter settled between the Rhine and Danube and “out of their own chose for themselves a king—​Francio—​from whose name they are called Franks, because Francio himself was most brave in war.”120 From Helenus and Antenor to Aeneas and Francio, and from Venice and Sardinia to the Rhine, the history of Europe became a history of Trojan diaspora and resettlement. And that history began with the first historian of the pagans, even if he had now been transformed into a sprawling collection of genealogies that he himself—​had he actually existed—​ could never have known. What does all this suggest about the nature of historia, and how it changed as the first pagan historian made his way from the ancient world to the Middle Ages? How did the medieval dwarfs see further than one of their favored ancient giants? Servius had said with confidence what history was: unlike fable, which violated nature itself, it was a narrative secundum naturam. The author of Dares, whether or not he actually knew Servius, had agreed: pseudo-​Nepos made clear that Dares had written only of what he saw, and that this by definition precluded the fabulous. But did this still hold more than half a millennium later? That strange combination of Dares, Servius, and Frechulf we have just examined did something that none of its sources—​a pseudo-​autoptic history, a poetic

118. London, British Library, MS Additional 45103, fol. 8v: “Post Eneam Ascanius filius eius derelicto nouerce sue Lauine regno Albam longam condidit et Siluium postumium fratrem suum Enee ex Lauina filium cum summa pietate educauit. Ascanio autem qui et Iulus filius procreatus est Iulus a quo familia Iuliorum est orta.” Cf. Frechulf, Historiarum libri XII, 1.2.26.154–​58, ed. Allen, 156–​57. 119. Cf. Historia Daretis Frigii, ed. Krusch, 200, and Eusebius-​Jerome, Chronici canones, ed. Fotheringham, 104. 120.  London, British Library, MS Additional 45103, fol. 9r:  “Elegerunt sibi regem ex se Francionem nomine a quo Franci uocantur eo quod fortissimus ipse Francio fuerit in bello. Is postquam cum gentibus plurimis pugnauit in Europam deuenit inter Renum et Danubium con[s]‌edit.” Cf. Frechulf, Historiarum libri XII 1.2.26.160–​65, ed. Allen, 146–​47. A  marginal note at MS Harley 3969, fol. 167r, emphasized this etymology:  “Nota Francos uocari a Francione rege.” This text also preserved Frechulf ’s caveat about the Franks’ Trojan origins, stating that perhaps they were derived from Scandinavia instead.

14

114

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

commentary, and a universal chronicle, respectively—​could have accomplished individually. How might one classify the History of the Trojans and Greeks—​or the History of the Kings of Britain or the Book of the History of the Franks for that matter? By weaving tales of far-​flung Trojan diaspora, they promulgated what many would dismiss as fabulae—​the very opposite of history. But at least according to Servius’ definition, there was nothing inherently anti-​historical about these tales, even if skeptics such as William of Malmesbury and William of Newburgh rejected them as fables. If Aeneas had made it to Latium, and Antenor had made it to Padua, why was it contra naturam that Francio, whoever he was, had established the Frankish gens between the Danube and the Rhine, or that Brutus had founded London as Troia Nova? If the first two accounts were plausible, why were the latter two not? We will see these debates play out across the Middle Ages and early modernity. Regardless of its truth-​value, what was new about something like the History of the Trojans and Greeks, and did signal that the dwarfs could see further than the giants, was the manner in which it combined and scrambled hitherto distinct projects within a single codex—​or even a single text-​unit. Servius had discussed the itineraries of Antenor, Capys, and Helenus when making a specific point in glossing Virgil, but whoever wrote the History of the Trojans and Greeks reimagined these isolated glosses as something else entirely—​continuations of a history that, at least in its original form, had claimed to be an eyewitness record of events that supposedly preceded Servius by more than a millennium. And in doing so these continuations also became part of what Servius (and Isidore and many others) would have understood not as historiae but more specifically as annales—​ those records of events remote from the age of their recorders. All of these now became part of a genealogy, a record of the origins of peoples and the derivation of their names. Isidore had declared that all things were made clearer by knowing their origins, and the medieval compilers examined here practiced what the encyclopedist had preached. Cicero, Servius, Isidore, and many others had tried to define what history was by decisively distinguishing it from what it was not. It was not fiction, because unlike fabula it did not violate the laws of nature. And it was not the stuff of chronicles or annals, because it was best told by those who had actually lived it in the present moment, instead of tabulating it in retrospect. Dares fit these specifications perfectly—​perhaps a bit too perfectly. Much as exegetes acknowledged that some texts mixed histories and annals together, or that there existed a middle ground of probable verisimilitude between historia and fabula, so medieval compilers showed that Dares’ Destruction of Troy—​that most ancient and exemplary

15



From Ancient History to Medieval Genealogy

115

of histories—​could never quite exist on its own. Just as medieval peoples claimed the ancient past for their own political ends, radically subverting Rome’s hegemony in the process, so new medieval texts claimed Dares’ historical exemplarity, while insisting that they could see further than the first pagan historian by perching upon his shoulders.

16

17

3

Dares Translated Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction “Since I invent nothing, I must not be called a poet.” —​A nonymous versification of Dares’ Destruction of Troy

Prologue: Dares, the Sibyl, and a Pseudonymous Verse Coda The previous chapter explored how reading the Destruction of Troy as genealogy necessitated continuing the text in the most literal sense of the term, with everything from a coda of several lines to entire books like Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. Within a manuscript codex, the text rarely stood by itself; instead, it was but a unit in a larger story. Dares’ cliffhanger of a conclusion invited such continuation. The Trojan exiles departed their ruined city, but Dares, who ostensibly remained at Troy, had nothing to say about what befell them after they sailed off. Thus, many read Dares for what followed him. He was necessary, but not sufficient, especially if one wished to claim the Trojan past for the medieval present. Not all codas and continuations followed this pattern. Others read the Phrygian for a different present end. Dares could relate the present to the past in a genealogical sense, but he could also link the two for moral purposes. Dares’ Troy was a warning—​about war, misfortune, sin, and human depravity. It was a history not to be repeated. Whereas William of Malmesbury finished off Dares with a Trojan genealogy he mistakenly assumed was from Cato the Elder’s On Origins, a near contemporary English manuscript of Dares finished off the Destruction of Troy with a poem on ethical and spiritual themes. This manuscript shows how

The First Pagan Historian. Frederic Clark, Oxford University Press (2020). © Frederic Clark. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190492304.001.0001.

18

118

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

the first pagan historian, whose work attacked the merits of poetry, nevertheless could inspire his own verses. This was just one of many ways in which Dares blurred the lines between history and poetry. Together with William’s anthology, this manuscript—​likely produced at the Benedictine monastic house of Christ Church, Canterbury, sometime in the 1120s—​is among the oldest extant copies of the Destruction of Troy from the British Isles.1 We do not know when exactly Dares crossed the Channel, but these two manuscripts are among the earliest witnesses to how he was read when he first arrived in England. Unlike William’s elaborate anthology, united around the theme of Roman history, the contents of this Christ Church codex seem more disparate. In addition to geographical and historical texts, it also contained eschatological materials, ranging from a list of fifteen signs presaging the Day of Judgment to the apocalyptic prophecies of the Tiburtine Sibyl.2 After Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Tiburtine Sibyl was one of the texts most likely to appear in codices with Dares.3 In it, the Sibyl Tiburtina interpreted a series of dreams had by Roman senators under the emperor Trajan. She read them as an account of the ages of the world. The final age contained the world’s end: a drama involving the so-​called Last Emperor, the Antichrist, Gog and Magog, and Michael the archangel.4 The medieval dissemination of the text of the Tiburtine Sibyl has been studied extensively by Anke Holdenreid, and thanks to her work we can grasp the extent of the links between the Sibyl and the Phrygian. Holdenreid has argued that the Christ Church codex, “although on the face of it a historico-​ ethnographical compilation,” actually functioned as a “devotional manuscript for reflection on sin and punishment.” History was a lamentable record of the effects of sin upon a fallen world, and it would culminate in Apocalypse. The Trojan War was a particularly striking reminder of such sins. A  formerly great city had been eviscerated, and wrongs on both sides of the conflict had brought about this miserable end. The Greeks had abducted Hesione, Helen had betrayed

1. For discussion of the Christ Church manuscript, see Teresa Webber, “Script and Manuscript Production at Christ Church, Canterbury after the Norman Conquest,” in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints and Scholars, 1066–​1109, ed. Richard Eales and Richard Sharpe (London, 1995), 145–​58. 2. London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B XXV. Dares appears at fol. 98v–​117r. The prefatory epistle begins thus at fol. 98r: “Incipit epistula Cornelii ad Salustium Crispum in Troianorum hystoria, quae in Greco a Darete hystoriographo facta est.” Note that its incipit emphasizes Dares’ status as a historiographer. For descriptions of the manuscript, see Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 52, and Anke Holdenried, The Sibyl and Her Scribes:  Manuscripts and Interpretation of the Latin Sibylla Tiburtina, 1050–​1500 (Aldershot, 2006), 98, 186, and 203–​5. 3. On Dares and the Sibyl, see Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, esp. 141 and 156. 4. Holdenreid, Sibyl and Her Scribes, xx–​xxi. See Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen, ed. Ernst Sackur (Halle, 1898).

19



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

119

her husband Menelaus, and Aeneas and Antenor had committed treason against their own city.5 From this perspective, perhaps Dares’ Destruction of Troy functioned as what Holdenreid has termed an “implicit exemplum” for the Christ Church codex as a whole. The manuscript yields some rare firsthand evidence of its reception, which confirms that at least one of Dares’ readers took this view of Troy’s negative exemplarity. Someone from the early twelfth century also “corrected” this manuscript: a hand different from that of its original scribe revised certain lines of text and filled the codex’s blank spaces with samplings of verse. These verses belonged to the medieval genre of contemptus mundi or “contempt of the world.”6 As Holdenreid documented, the corrector scribe inserted a contemptus mundi poem, perhaps authored by the Bishop Hildebert of Le Mans, directly after the end of the Sibyl.7 However, the Sibyl was not the only text that the corrector scribe augmented with verses. Although it is not discussed by Holdenreid, he also added a poetic coda to Dares. Directly below the conclusion to the Destruction of Troy, here augmented with a list of which Trojans killed which Greeks and vice versa, the same hand that had copied Hildebert’s verses wrote out a short poem.8 It began with a lament: “Our mind does not know how to keep a fixed course” (Nescit mens nostra fixum seruare tenorem).9 And it continued thus: We are willing and unwilling: we do not always love one thing. What was pleasing before is displeasing, and what we once dreaded pleases us. Now we follow the right course, now we hold depravity in our heart. Now we are holy and chaste, now we cherish harlots. Now sober hearts are strong, now intoxicated hearts grow feeble. Our hearts are spun around always in a fickle course . . .

5. Within the manuscript, a prominently capitalized rubric announces Paris’ seizure of Helen. See London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B XXV, fol. 103r:  “UBI HELENAM RAPIT.” 6. For paleographical analysis of this hand, see Holdenried, Sibyl and Her Scribes, 103. 7.  London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B XXV, fol. 123r. See Holdenried, Sibyl and Her Scribes, 103, and Hans Walther, Proverbia sententiaeque Latinitatis medii aevi IV (Göttingen, 1966), 32. 8. On these casualty lists, which appeared frequently in medieval manuscripts of Dares, see Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 30–​31, 157–​64, and 476–​79. 9. London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B XXV, fol. 117r: “Nescit mens nostra fixum seruare tenorem./​Nolumus et uolumus: non unum semper amamus./​Displicet ante placens, atque olim complacet horrens./​Nunc rectum sequimur, nunc prauum corde tenemus./​Nunc sancti castique sumus, nunc scorta fouemus./​Nunc pollent sobria, nunc marcent ebria corda./​ Semper in ambiguo uoluuntur pectora cursu./​Quid iam plura loquar? Quot lucent sidera caeli./​Quot punctis horae currunt, quot saecla momentis/​Tot nostras facies mutat sententia formis.”

120

120

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Dares’ Trojan history furnished ample exempla of such inconstancy, and its concluding words flowed seamlessly into this poem. There is no blank line between the two works. Instead, a two-​line rubric, relegated to the right-​hand margin, is all that flags the transition between the end of the Destruction of Troy and the following verses, recording “Explicit historia Daretis” or “Here ends the history of Dares” and then “B. Ieronimus” or simply, “Saint Jerome.” Hence, the scribe attributed these verses to none other than Jerome, whose translation of Eusebius’ chronicle had served as the conduit for incorporating the Phrygian into Frankish history. Yet these verses were not actually the work of the church father. The poem beginning “Nescit mens nostra” is actually a work typically entitled De mentis humanae mutabilitate or On the Mutability of the Human Mind, ascribed to the seventh-​century Spanish poet Eugenius of Toledo.10 Whatever its actual provenance, it was most certainly not a genuine specimen of the interior life of one of the giants of patristic antiquity. Just as William of Malmesbury had mistakenly ascribed his Dares coda to Cato the Elder, so the Christ Church corrector scribe mistakenly attributed his coda to Jerome. Dares multiplied instances of pseudonymity:  two of his oldest English witnesses contained small nuggets of misattributed text. Nor was this the last time he would prompt new misattributions. This fluidity helped promote new experiments at the boundaries between history and poetry—​with sometimes confounding results.

A Medieval Sophistic? Historia, Fabula, Morality, and Play Despite its misattribution, Nescit mens nostra reveals what medieval readers regarded as the utility of ancient pagan history. Here—​as he does in so many other cases—​Isidore of Seville offers us helpful guidance. Right after Isidore named Dares the first pagan historian, he devoted a section of his Etymologies to the utility (utilitas) of historiae gentium or “histories of the pagans.” In his words, “pagan histories are no impediment to those who wish to read useful works, for many wise people have imparted the past deeds (praeterita gesta) of humankind

10.  See Eugenius of Toledo, Libellus carminum, 3:  “De mentis humanae mutabilitate,” in Opera omnia, ed. Paulo Farmhouse Alberto, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 114 (Turnhout, 2005), 209. See also Initia carminum Latinorum saeculo undecimo antiquiorum:  Bibliographisches Repertorium für die lateinische Dichtung der Antike und des früheren Mittelalters, ed. Dieter Schaller and Ewald Könsgen (Göttingen, 1977), no. 10177, p. 454.

12



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

121

in histories, for the instruction of those in the present (praesentium).”11 Such histories possessed utilitas; for Isidore and the scribe who added Nescit mens nostra to the Destruction of Troy, the pagan dead furnished wisdom to the Christian living. Their paganism was no impediment to their usefulness, even if all they provided—​like the Dickensian Office of Circumlocution—​were implicit exempla of “how not to do it.” Several twelfth-​century writers—​rough contemporaries of the Nescit mens nostra scribe—​agreed that the pagan Dares furnished the kind of utility that Isidore of Seville had endorsed. One of the Anglo-​Norman world’s most famous universal chroniclers, the Benedictine monk Orderic Vitalis, confirmed Isidore’s claims concerning historiae gentium. Orderic composed his Historia ecclesiastica or Ecclesiastical History in the early decades of the twelfth century—​at around the same time that William of Malmesbury and the Christ Church scribe copied out their versions of Dares. And he began his text with a discussion of exemplarity that singled out the Phrygian. Orderic cited Dares along with the Roman historian Pompeius Trogus as two “historians of the pagans” (gentilium historiographi) whose accounts of human error and misfortune constituted worthwhile exempla for future generations.12 As Orderic explained, pagan history, sacred history, and the Bible all illustrated this point with one voice: Our predecessors in their wisdom have studied all the ages of the erring world from the earliest times, have recorded the good and evil fortunes of mortal men as a warning to others, and, in their constant eagerness to profit future generations, have added their own writings to those of the past. This was achieved by Moses and Daniel and other writers of the Hagiographa; this we find in Dares Phrygius and Pompeius Trogus and other historians of the gentiles, this too we perceive in Eusebius and the De Ormesta mundi of Orosius and Bede the Englishman and Paul of Monte Cassino and other ecclesiastical writers.

11. Isid. Etym. 1.43: “Historiae gentium non inpediunt legentibus in his quae utilia dixerunt. Multi enim sapientes praeterita hominum gesta ad institutionem praesentium historiis indiderunt.” Translation taken, with modifications, from The Etymologies, trans. Barney et al., 67. 12.  Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica, Prologue, 1.1–​2, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford, 1980), 130–​31: “Anteriores nostri ab antiquis temporibus labentis seculi excursus prudenter inspexerunt, et bona seu mala mortalibus contingentia pro cautela hominum notauerunt, et futuris semper prodesse uolentes scripta scriptis accumulauerunt. Hoc nimirum uidemus a Moyse et Danihele factum aliisque agiographis, hoc in Darete Phrigio et Pompeio Trogo comperimus aliisque gentilium historiographis, hoc etiam aduertimus in Eusebio et Orosio de Ormesta mundi anglicoque Beda et Paulo Cassiniensi aliisque scriptoribus aecclesiasticis.” See also Marjorie Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford, 1984).

12

122

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

The world was full of error, but negative examples from the past could profit the present and perhaps save future generations from repeating history’s unfortunate episodes. Perhaps reading Dares would forestall the fall of future Troys. Someone else who voiced this argument via Troy and Dares was the twelfth-​ century chronicler Otto von Freising. A Cistercian monk who became a bishop, Otto was close to the court of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. His Chronica de duabus civitatibus—​a universal history based on Augustine’s distinction between the city of God and its earthly antithesis—​extended from Creation to the year 1146. Echoing language used by Orosius, Otto described how the capture of Helen and the alliance of the Greeks resulted in ten years of war and thence the “infamous fall of Troy” or the famosum Troiae excidium. Orosius had alluded to the poetic fame of such events, and so Otto, following him, remarked that those who wished to know more about Troy should read Homer or Virgil. Yet when doing so he used the Phrygian to strike against the Virgilian tradition: “Virgil writes that the Roman people derived their origin from Aeneas, an exile, and as he flatteringly reports, a brave man. But as others report he was a traitor to his country (patriae proditore) and a necromancer, who sacrificed his own wife to his gods.”13 In addition to alleging still more damning charges, Otto alluded to the tradition of the treacherous Aeneas attested by Dares. Perhaps Rome’s founding was not occasioned by the exploits of a pious exile but rather achieved via violence, cruelty, and betrayal. Otto then described Aeneas’ arrival in Italy, and his resultant war with Turnus, noting how bloodshed had transformed the Golden Age into an age of iron. Virgil had set this all out “in his most beautiful series of verses” (pulcherrimo versuum ordine). However, it was not clear whether Virgil had written these verses “truthfully, or—​with the disguise of adulation—​deceitfully.” The history

13. Otto von Freising, Chronica de duabus civitatibus 1.25, ed. Walther Lammers (Darmstadt, 1980), 90–​91: “Anno ab imperio Nini DCCCLXX raptam fuisse Helenam coniurationemque factam adversus Troiam ferunt. Hinc decennalis obsidio famosumque sequitur Troiae excidium. Quod qui scire desiderat, legat Homerum eiusque imitatorem Pindarum seu Virgilium. Hinc Romanorum gentem duxisse originem ab Enea profugo et, ut ipse adulatur, viro forti—​ut vero ab aliis traditur, patriae proditore ac nicromantico, utpote qui etiam uxorem suam diis suis immolaverit—​, scribit Virgilius.” The translation used here is taken with modifications from Otto von Freising, The Two Cities:  A Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146 AD, trans. Charles Christopher Mierow (New York, 2002), 143. Otto’s invocation of Pindar alongside Homer and Virgil stemmed from another bizarre case of misattribution, which was likewise intimately related to Dares Phrygius. It is examined in detail in Chapter 6, 269–​72. Otto’s description closely followed Orosius. See Oros. 1.17.1: “At uero ante urbem conditam CCCCXXX anno raptus Helenae, coniuratio Graecorum et concursus mille nauium, dehinc decennis obsidio ac postremo famosum Troiae excidium praedicatur. in quo bello per decem annos cruentissime gesto quas nationes quantosque populos idem turbo inuoluerit atque adflixerit, Homerus poeta in primis clarus luculentissimo carmine palam fecit . . .”

123



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

123

of Troy’s downfall and the events it precipitated—​not to mention the proper lessons to derive from them—​could not be gleaned from Virgil’s beautiful verses alone.14 It was the responsibility of the universal chronicler, in contrast, to point out that the founder of Rome was not necessarily brave or pious. Perhaps the Roman poet who had sung of him had lied, distorting the truth of history for propagandistic purposes. This reading was hardly original to Otto. As we saw in Chapter 1, Servius had explained that Virgil had written the Aeneid in order to flatter Augustus.15 As Robert Kaster has suggested, Servius’ use of Virgil’s desire to praise Augustus as an all-​encompassing hermeneutic reflected the assumptions of Roman honor culture. For Servius it made perfect sense that a poet would attempt to praise a great man like the emperor, even if it meant bending the truth. The commentator’s uncovering of these intentions was a method of criticism, understood in its widest sense as interpretation, but it was by no means an act of adversarial or polemical critique. Yet in an example of how medieval sources could appropriate ancient exegesis for new ends, Servius’ interpretation could assume more pejorative connotations, as seen in Otto’s suggestion that perhaps Virgil had written deceitfully (fallaciter) for the purpose of adulation. These critiques of Virgil would grow stronger across the twelfth century and beyond. Even if the chronicler raised doubts about Virgil’s veracity, he was convinced of the historicity—​and thus, in Isidorian terms, the exemplary utility—​of Troy. Like Orderic, he then mused upon the exempla that could be extracted from this sorry episode in pagan history. And like the scribe who added Nescit mens nostra to the Christ Church Dares, he read the war as a testament to the profound inconstancy of human things. The victors, Otto elaborated, had fared just as badly as the vanquished. Not only did the Greeks suffer numerous losses during the war, but their leaders also endured postwar travails that rivaled those of Aeneas and his fellow Trojans. Here Otto invoked the Phrygian explicitly, citing the casualty figures listed at the end of the Destruction of Troy. “But such great disasters pursued the victors [i.e., the Greeks] that in connection with so pitiful a revolution of fortune there is room for doubt as to which side succumbed to a more evil fate. For to say nothing of those who met death in the long conflict

14. Otto von Freising, Chronica 1.26, ed. Lammers, 92–​93: “Eneas enim in Italiam navibus ex Frigia transvectus Latini regis filiam accepit, gravique inter ipsum et Turnum ob hoc bellorum orto discrimine humano cruore aurea secula in ferrum commutari docuit. Quod Virgilius, utrum veraciter vel adulationis fuco fallaciter, pulcherrimo versuum ordine prosequitur. Haec de Troianorum profugis dicta sufficiant.” Otto’s invocation of the end of the Golden Age alludes to Evander’s speech at Verg. Aen. 8.314–​36. For the translation used here with modifications, see Otto von Freising, The Two Cities, trans. Mierow, 145. 15. See Kaster, “Honor Culture,” 45–​56.

124

124

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

(the Phrygian Dares declares that the slain numbered 883,000 of the Argives and 666,000 of the Trojans) how great were the perils of Ulysses, how great the vexations of his long wanderings!”16 Otto’s statements revealed an ambiguous approach to the truth-​value, and the ethical efficacy, of the pulcherrimus versuum ordo of Virgil. While he acknowledged Virgil’s manifest aesthetic value, each time he cited the poet he issued a qualification, either by alluding to the counter-​narratives of unnamed others (ab aliis traditur) or openly suggesting that Virgil wrote fallaciter. Nevertheless, somehow this messy mixture of history and fable, fact and fiction, possessed enough value to illustrate the unforgiving rotation of fortune (fortunae rotatus), from Golden Ages that became Iron to victors who were nearly vanquished. But was it possible to reconcile Virgil and those—​like the Phrygian—​who countered him? And when it came to extracting utility from the pagan past, did it matter that Virgil had not written a historia? Here Isidore furnishes guidance again. As we saw, after Isidore defined history and Dares’ privileged role in it, he drew a sharp distinction between history and fable, itself based upon classical precedent. But later, in Book VIII of his Etymologies he blurred the lines between the two, thereby opening up greater space for other genres to furnish historical utilitas. The encyclopedist explained that poets took “things which have truthfully (vere) occurred” and then transformed them “into other types” (in alias species). They accomplished their alchemy by using eloquent style and “oblique figures” (obliquis figurationibus).17 Poetry took the raw material of history—​that which had happened truthfully or vere—​and through language both elegant and oblique presented it as something else. Thus, the origins of fabulae were in some way rooted in their seeming antitheses, historiae. But as Isidore hastened to add, some poets just stuck to truth, full stop. Here he cited the example of the first-​century-​CE Roman poet Lucan, best known for his Pharsalia—​an account of the conflict between Pompey and Julius 16. Otto von Freising, Chronica 1.26, ed. Lammers, 92–​95: “Victores vero eius tanta secuntur discrimina, ut non inmerito, qui in tam miserrimo fortunae rotatu noxio magis subcubuerint fato, dubitetur. Ut enim de his, qui in congressu diutino occubuerant, quos tamen Dares Frigius ex Argivis DCCCLXXXIII milia, ex Troianis DCLXVI milia fuisse memorat, taceamus, quanta fuere Ulixis pericula, longorum circuituum tedia?” For the translation used here with modifications, see Otto von Freising, The Two Cities, trans. Mierow, 145. For what it is worth, Otto’s casualty figures diverge slightly from those found in the standard text of Dares, which claims that 886,000 Greeks perished, and 676,000 Trojans. See Dares, De excidio Troiae 44, ed. Meister, 52. 17. Isid. Etym. 8.7.10: “Officium autem poetae in eo est ut ea, quae vere gesta sunt, in alias species obliquis figurationibus cum decore aliquo conversa transducant. Unde et Lucanus ideo in numero poetarum non ponitur, quia videtur historias composuisse, non poema.” See discussion of Lucan’s status in medieval exegesis in Peter von Moos, Entre histoire et littérature: communication et culture au Moyen Âge (Florence, 2005), 89–​204. Isidore copied these words concerning Lucan from Servius, who offered them when defending Virgil’s departures from

125



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

125

Caesar. “Lucan therefore is not placed among the number of the poets,” Isidore asserted, using a formulation he had copied from the Virgilian commentator Servius, “because he seems to have composed histories, not poetry.” Some who wrote in verse, in fact, merited the title of historian. Perhaps Servius had meant this as a reproach—​had Lucan failed at poetry’s proper office?—​but to Isidore, maybe it constituted praise. This chapter is centered upon a group of poets who believed that they too deserved the title of historian and hence merited praise. They claimed to correct the problem that Otto von Freising had identified with Virgil, and eliminate any suspicion that they themselves had written fallaciter. These poets—​including Joseph of Exeter, Benoît de Sainte-​Maure, Albert von Stade, and the anonymous author of the Historia Troyana—​rendered the Destruction of Troy into verse, despite the fact that Dares’ prose had challenged two of the ancient world’s most canonical of poets. As a result, anxious that their chosen medium was inherently mendacious, these poets deployed Dares to launch surprisingly bold and polemical attacks against fictionality itself. Perhaps they feared that others would attack them in the manner that they attacked Homer and Virgil? They installed the Phrygian as an unlikely pre-​modern enforcer of Foucault’s “author-​function,” calling upon him to police the boundaries of fiction and inoculate readers against its myriad dangers. And so they used a medium usually associated with fabula to defend Dares’ historia, especially in the ethically charged terms suggested by Nescit mens nostra. But, to use Isidore’s formulation, what exactly imbued history with utilitas? Did the events of which an author wrote have to accord with past events that had occurred in an empirical reality outside the text in order for readers in the present day to derive usefulness—​whether moral or otherwise—​from them? In other words, did something have to be true—​not just in some abstract universal sense, but also in its precise, historical particulars—​in order to be exemplary?18 For instance, were readers more likely to accept that the mind could not hew to a fixed course if they believed that a real historical Aeneas, and not an Aeneas concocted from poetic figments, had committed treachery, and that this treachery had had disastrous consequences for a real historical Troy? The Dares poets answered with a resounding “yes.”

historical truth. See Serv. Aen. 1.382, and the discussion in E.R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, 1953), 454–​55. 18. For a rather different answer to this question, based upon the sixteenth-​century revival of Aristotle’s Poetics, see Chapter 5, 211–​14.

126

126

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Verse might strike us as an odd medium for these sentiments, and maybe it seemed odd to Dares’ medieval readers as well. It was the very opposite of how Dares himself had supposedly written history—​that is, “truly and simply” or vere et simpliciter. William of Newburgh complained of how Geoffrey of Monmouth had hidden fictions under the honorable title of history. Part of Geoffrey’s strategy, like that of Dares himself, had been to disavow rhetorical artifice and literary ornament. But things got infinitely more complicated when one went from history to poetry—​an enterprise defined by the very kinds of ornamentation that Geoffrey and Dares both claimed to reject. How exactly did the Middle Ages understand the relationship between writing in verse and disregarding facticity, especially if—​as Isidore had suggested—​one could compose poetry and still count as a historian? The ancient sources we discussed in Chapter 1 had hinted at this ambiguity: they did not explicitly define historia and fabula according to categories of genre and form, but they did suggest that a text’s truthfulness (or lack thereof ) was in some way connected to these formal characteristics. Quintilian, for instance, had proclaimed that fabulae were found in “tragedies and poems” (tragoediis atque carminibus). This raises a more difficult question: if we take their proffered commitments to historia at face value, why had the Dares poets felt compelled to write poetry in the first place? In one sense, writing poetry based on Dares was another case of the medieval dwarfs claiming to see beyond the ancient giants. We do not know what kind of ethical exemplarity—​if any—​the actual author of Dares had meant to convey, but we do know that medieval writers, centuries later, used Dares to bolster an avowedly Christian conception of morality. The Christian Middle Ages’ refashioning of the products of pagan antiquity is a well-​known story. But as argued here, the place of Dares in this story is actually much more surprising. As a result, it offers us a useful case of reverse reception: medieval approaches to truth, fiction, and the moral status of each give us (albeit indirect) interpretative leverage to reconstruct how ancient readers may have navigated these nebulous themes—​especially when they encountered the traditions from which Dares may have sprung. First, the texts of the medieval Dares poets shed light on the vexed relationship between history and another favored means of extracting moral or otherwise useful content from fabulae: i.e., allegory. Allegorical reading was hardly a Christian invention, even if Christian readers practiced it with newfound avidity. Instead, it possessed rich ancient antecedents—​perhaps exemplified most famously by the Homeric critics of Hellenistic Alexandria.19 The text of Homer—​already

19. On allegorical readings of Homer in antiquity, see David Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley, 1992), and Robert Lamberton and John J. Keaney, eds., Homer’s Ancient Readers:  The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes (Princeton, 1992).

127



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

127

then the product of a seemingly remote and alien world—​could be made to yield more sublime truths if read beyond its literal sense. For instance, perhaps Homer’s squabbling deities were really representations of interactions between different elements in the cosmos. In a moment we will discuss how some twelfth-​ century Christian exegetes read the text of Virgil in similarly allegorical fashion, even if they were not directly aware of the ancient Homeric precedents for their practices. But allegory was not the only resource available to Christian readers. The Introduction cited Erich Auerbach’s discussion of how Homer managed to elude the frequent charge that he was a liar: for Auerbach, the poet conjured an ensnaring reality independent of historical truth. Here Auerbach drew a contrast between disbelief in Homer and belief in the Bible: to a committed Christian, the biblical texts presumably lost their force as soon as one doubted their historicity. More broadly, Auerbach distinguished allegorical interpretation—​of the sort that could extract meaning from Homer even while doubting his historicity—​ from the kinds of figural interpretations that Christian exegetes extracted from the Hebrew Bible. In the latter mode of interpretation, an event in the Old Testament quite literally “figured” its fulfillment via another event in the New; for instance, perhaps Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac stood for the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Even if this strategy might strike modern readers as decontextualized or ahistorical, it was actually premised upon the primacy accorded history, in a manner that other forms of allegorical reading were not. In his famous essay “Figurae,” Auerbach put it succinctly: “since in figural interpretation one thing stands for another, since one thing represents and signifies the other, figural interpretation is ‘allegorical’ in the widest sense. But it differs from most of the allegorical forms known to us by the historicity both of the sign and what it signifies.”20 We might think of these figural interpretations as the opposite of the euhemeristic impulse: instead of reducing mythical and supernatural phenomena to mere history, they combined hitherto distinct moments in history into a transcendental narrative, whose force was nonetheless still premised upon the historicity of its contents. How does Dares fit into this scheme? He scrambled this neat dichotomy between pagan and Christian exegesis. According to Auerbach, “one can perfectly well entertain historical doubts on the subject of the Trojan War or of Odysseus’ wanderings, and still, when reading Homer, feel precisely the effects he

20. See Erich Auerbach, “Figura,” in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (Minneapolis, 1984), 11–​76, esp. 54. See also Carlo Ginzburg, “The Letter Kills: On Some Implications of 2 Corinthians 3:6,” History and Theory (2010): 71–​89.

128

128

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

sought to produce; but without believing in Abraham’s sacrifice, it is impossible to put the narrative of it to the use for which it was written.”21 This might have been true of many post-​medieval readers, especially those who de-​enchanted the pagan past but not Judeo-​Christianity, yet it was not true for the medieval readers we will encounter here. To them the historicity of Troy mattered, just as, or perhaps even because, the historicity of the Bible mattered. Eusebius, Jerome, and their medieval continuators had made this parallelism explicit. And not unlike Auerbach, Isidore had paired Dares and Moses, Troy and Genesis. Rather than highlight any difference in their historicity, the encyclopedist had affirmed their commensurability, especially in the domain of historiography. Both Moses and Dares had been the first in their respective worlds to take up the honorable pursuit of historical writing, even if the former had done so via divine inspiration and the latter via autopsy. Hence another reason why Dares proved so popular in the Middle Ages: he had taken a knife to those myriad allegorical elaborations of ancient fabulae. Instead of trying to extract deeper meanings from Homer (or Virgil) and their endless tales of pagan gods and heroes, he had simply bypassed them. If some in the ancient world responded to such fabulae via allegory, others responded via a more convenient shortcut: history. Far better simply to remove the gods entirely than explain away their presence via some hidden deeper meaning. By the time the Destruction of Troy traveled to the medieval readers we will encounter here, perhaps Dares’ historical approach seemed congenial to Christians who were used to a biblical hermeneutics—​and a vision of moral exemplarity—​that was premised upon the historicity of the texts involved. Perhaps medieval Christian exegetes could not have found a more perfect “pagan” history. And so they used its very historicity to make the text into something it was not, much as they remade the Old Testament via reference to the New. Just as the scribes and compilers of the previous chapter transformed Dares’ text into a genealogy of their supposed ancestors, so the poets of this chapter transformed Dares into a better, truer version of Homer and Virgil:  poetry made safe for history, which could convey utilitas from past to present. Yet anyone who reads these poems might object that this was a category mistake. Did not these poets’ very act of translation across genres do violence to Dares’ history? For one, even the length of their poems belied the poets’ claim that they had simply followed the brief and laconic Dares. Moreover, their inclusion of explicitly moralizing content injected an editorial voice that was wholly absent

21. Auerbach, Mimesis, 14.

129



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

129

from Dares’ “just the facts” approach. Finally, some of them even reintroduced material related to the pagan gods, precisely the kind of contents that Dares had rationalized away, and that Christian readers had claimed to disavow. Were they really being earnest when they claimed to follow Dares and only Dares? Perhaps more importantly, did readers take their claims seriously? We might object that these poets behaved not like pseudo-​Nepos the faithful translator, even if they co-​opted his rhetoric of historicity, but rather like pseudo-​Nepos the forger. In other words, their platitudes about historiae veritas notwithstanding, they actually added still more falsifications to Dares’ original forgery. Yet as suggested here, it is far more productive to see their engagement with Dares—​whether truthful or deceitful, earnest or playful, poetical or historical—​ as an unexpected continuation, albeit with some very new assumptions, of that ancient quarrel between history and fiction. Perhaps these medieval champions of Dares treated the Phrygian ambiguously because the Phrygian himself had treated these concepts with an ambiguous wink, much as had writers of the Second Sophistic. We hinted at this problem already when discussing whether Geoffrey of Monmouth was being ludic or serious. The Dares poets raise the question of whether, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we find ourselves in something of a Fourth—​or perhaps a Fifth!—​Sophistic. What precisely did these poets mean when they invoked Dares and claimed to follow nothing but his truth? Many of the authors examined in this chapter employed formulaic language. Some of the most influential surveys of medieval literary culture have highlighted the pervasiveness of literary topoi; they have explicated the highly formal, conventional language in which the Middle Ages received and responded to classical antiquity. Medieval authors, whether poets or prose writers, operated in a culture where imitatio—​especially classical imitatio—​ reigned supreme. The Dares poets were no exception to this rule. They sometimes seemed to wink at their readers lucky enough to “get it,” much as Dares himself may have winked at his readers through such details as the wooden horse’s head atop Troy’s gate. The Dares poets’ elaborate games of imitatio and classical allusion might make us question the earnestness—​or genuineness—​of their otherwise anticlassical bombast, much as we might question the earnestness of the Homeric revisionism conveyed by Dio, Philostratus, Dictys, or even Dares Phrygius himself. Thus, did these medieval poets really mean that they believed in Dares Phrygius and because of him rejected a canonical authority like Virgil (as some of them said in nakedly explicit terms)? Or were they merely playing? Perhaps the problem underlying this question is not the reality of this play but rather our modern tendency to describe these ludic exercises with a limiting modifier such as “just” or “merely.” The Dares poets were not just playing; their play was deadly

130

130

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

serious, as their insistence upon moral exemplarity reveals. Poets and exegetes alike mounted a robust defense of historical truth, and they did so in part because of what they perceived as the ethical stakes involved. And so we might be baffled to find them also doing things that would seem to violate their very definitions of historiae veritas.

Historians versus Poets: Commentary and Conflict The ancient quarrel between history and poetry was often framed as a quarrel over Homer, as pseudo-​Nepos’ epistle and the many texts of the Second Sophistic make clear. Yet as everything from the Liber historiae Francorum to Otto von Freising’s Chronica illustrates, in the Middle Ages this Homeric quarrel morphed into a struggle over Virgil. After all, Homer was a mere name to most readers in the medieval West; ignorant of Greek, their knowledge of the Homeric tradition was primarily limited to the so-​called Ilias Latina, a Latin epitome of the Iliad.22 Instead, when it came to ancient poetic treatments of Troy, medieval readers thought of Virgil. But just how was Virgil read, centuries after his death? In the Middle Ages, Virgil held pride of place among classical authors: just as Aristotle—​the subject of John of Salisbury’s dwarf and giant formulation—​was often referred to as “the philosopher,” so Virgil was sometimes known simply as “the poet.”23 Hence, perhaps no conflict better reflects the relative fortunes of historiae and fabulae in the Middle Ages than that waged between the first pagan historian and the medieval West’s preeminent pagan poet. Unlike other classical authors who nearly disappeared in the Middle Ages, and survived in but several copies, Virgil enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the fifteen hundred years between the reign of Augustus and the emergence of Renaissance print.24 As Christopher Baswell has described it in his study of medieval Virgilianism, the poet had always possessed a commanding reputation: “Virgil acquired a tremendous degree of literary authority within his own lifetime: his work almost

22. On the Ilias Latina and Dares, see Chapter 6, 269–​72. 23. Gervase of Melkley, Ars poetica, ed. Hans-​Jürgen Gräbener, 68. This passage is discussed in Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer (Cambridge, 1995), 4. 24. See Domenico Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages, trans. E.F.M. Benecke (Princeton, 1997); Francine Mora-​Lebrun, L’Enéide médiévale et la naissance du roman (Paris, 1994); and Ziolkowski and Putnam, eds., The Virgilian Tradition. On early modern Virgilianism, see Craig Kallendorf, The Other Virgil:  Pessimistic Readings of the Aeneid in Early Modern Culture (Oxford, 2007), and David Scott Wilson-​ Okamura, Virgil in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 2010).

13



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

131

immediately became the object of reverential academic study and literary imitation.”25 As late antique sources like Orosius and Augustine show us, this popularity derived in great measure from Virgil’s ubiquity in the curriculum.26 At the same time, Virgil transcended his role as a curricular staple. He also became the subject of Christian appropriation. Augustine had used the analogy of the spoliation of the Egyptians—​it was licit, he argued, for the Israelites to have absconded with Egyptian wealth during the Exodus—​to explain how Christians could capture the fruits of pagan culture for their own ends.27 Virgil proved to be an especially prized spoil. Exegetes began to read Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue as a messianic prophecy of Christ’s birth.28 Poets like the fourth-​century Proba used lines of Virgil to retell the Gospels in hexameter verse.29 Christian co-​optation of Virgilianism remained popular throughout the Middle Ages. However, the period also witnessed significant challenges to Virgil, especially his epic Aeneid. As Otto’s evaluation suggests, if there were one species of authority that Virgil did not possess, that authority was historical. Such skepticism possessed late antique antecedents:  sources such as Macrobius and Augustine, for instance, had cast doubt upon Virgil’s historical truth-​value. Although neither invoked the counter-​narrative of Aeneas’ treason, they highlighted other episodes that they asserted did not pass the smell test: for example, they both made clear that Virgil’s account of Aeneas’ encounter with Dido lacked historical accuracy.30 One of Otto’s near contemporaries voiced this skepticism in programmatic terms, while simultaneously absolving the poet of any culpability for it. According to the accessus or introduction to Virgil of “Master Anselm” (sometimes thought to be the twelfth-​century theologian Anselm of Laon), it made perfect sense that

25. Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England, 17. The following pages, and this chapter in whole, are greatly indebted to Baswell’s study. 26.  See Oros. 1.18.1, and August. Conf. 1.13. On Augustine’s ambiguous relationship with Virgil, see Sabine MacCormack, The Shadows of Poetry:  Vergil in the Mind of Augustine (Berkeley, 1998). 27.  See August. De doctrina Christiana 2.40.60–​61. On Augustine’s notion of spoliation, see Catherine Chin, Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World (Philadelphia, 2008),  88–​93. 28.  On Virgil’s status as a prophet of the coming of Christ due to his so-​called messianic Eclogue, see Ziolkowski and Putnam, eds., The Virgilian Tradition, 487–​503. 29. On the Virgilian cento, see Scott McGill, Virgil Recomposed: The Mythological and Secular Centos in Antiquity (Oxford, 2005). 30. See August. Conf. 1.13, and Macrob. Sat. 5.17.5. On readings of Dido, see Marilynn Desmond, Reading Dido: Gender, Textuality, and the Medieval Aeneid (Minneapolis, 1994), and Marjorie Curry Woods, Weeping for Dido: The Classics in the Medieval Curriculum (Princeton, 2019).

132

132

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Virgil had not told the truth. Following Servius, Anselm noted that Virgil had written the Aeneid to praise Augustus, and that he “therefore quite appropriately (competenter) added certain fictions in the manner of poets (poetice quedam figmenta), concealing many things concerning the truth of history (de veritate historie multa reticendo).” Anselm did not elaborate on just what unflattering historical truths Virgil had concealed in order to burnish the emperor’s image, but he did stress that in doing so the poet had acted competenter or appropriately. Anselm then justified this via the language of self-​evidence. “If [Virgil] had followed the truth of history (historiae veritatem), he would have seemed not so much a poet (poeta) as a historiographer (historiographus).”31 It went without saying that these were two distinct offices; the standards of one could not be applied to the other. Allegory was another resource for solving these conundrums, and here Dares proved handy. One of the most intriguing of twelfth-​century encounters between Virgil and the Phrygian is preserved in the Commentum super sex libros Eneidos or Commentary on the [First] Six Books of the Aeneid written by pseudo-​ Bernardus Silvestris. Pseudo-​Bernardus’ hermeneutics resembled the allegorical methods propagated in the twelfth century by the so-​called School of Chartres.32 According to these interpretations, pagan writings—​especially pagan fabulae—​ came wrapped in an integumentum or a covering.33 If properly unwrapped by a skilled exegete, such writings could yield otherwise concealed philosophical or spiritual meaning.34 Hence, pseudo-​Bernardus read Virgil in ways that Virgil himself could scarcely have imagined. This twelfth-​century scholar interpreted the first six books of Virgil’s epic as a meditation on the ages of man. In so doing, he followed the precedent set by the late antique allegorical commentator Fulgentius. According to Pseudo-​Bernardus, the Aeneid was replete with

31. See Christopher Baswell, “Master Anselm,” in The Virgilian Tradition, ed. Ziolkowski and Putnam, 719–​20: “Verum quia ad laudem Augusti scripsit, idcirco de veritate historie multa reticendo poetice quedam figmenta satis competenter apponit . . . Si tantummodo vero veritatem historie sequeretur non utique poeta sed historiographus videtur.” A transcription of the accessus is also provided in Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England, 313–​14. 32. Here see Winthrop Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres (Princeton, 1972); Brian Stock, Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Bernard Silvester (Princeton, 1972); and Anthony Ossa-​Richardson, “From Servius to Frazer: The Golden Bough and Its Transformations,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 2008 (15): 339–​68, esp. 348–​50 for pseudo-​Bernardus on Virgil’s depiction of the Golden Bough. 33. On these approaches to myth, see M.D. Chenu, “Involucrum: le mythe selon les théologiens médiévaux,” AHDL 30 (1955): 75–​79, and Peter Dronke, Fabula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism (Leiden, 1985). 34. See The Virgilian Tradition, ed. Ziolkowski and Putnam, 727.

13



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

133

metaphysical truths of the most sublime order:  Aeneas’ wanderings mirrored those of the soul in search of God. Each book of the Aeneid corresponded to a different step in this universal human story. Book I  signified infancy (prima aetas); Book II, childhood (pueritia); Book III, adolescence (adolescentia); Book IV, youth (iuventus); and Book V, manhood (virilis aetas). Book VI constituted the climax of the narrative. Aeneas’ descent into the underworld revealed how the soul could obtain wisdom and transcend its bodily form. Allegorical readings of this nature differed markedly from the historicizing approach Servius had adopted. However, unlike other allegorists, pseudo-​ Bernardus did not ignore the historicizing tradition; rather, he used it, however paradoxically, to enrich his allegory. If the allegorical Aeneid yielded esoteric truths, this did not mean that the literal, historical Virgil had intended them. Nor were the intentions of the historical poet disinterested. Following the point that Servius had made centuries before, and that Anselm and others had reiterated, pseudo-​Bernardus stated at the outset of his commentary that Virgil had written in order to please Augustus. As Servius had maintained, Virgil’s intentio or intention was to laud the emperor by heaping praise upon his ancestors. Pseudo-​Bernardus made this contention still more explicit: unlike Servius, he did not just stress Virgil’s partiality; he also revealed whom the reader should believe instead. “Virgil intends to set forth the fates and labors of Aeneas and the other wandering Trojans. He does this not according to the truth of history (historiae veritatem), which Dares Phrygius describes, but he exalts the deeds and flight of Aeneas through fictions (figmentis), in order to gain the favor of Augustus Caesar.”35 Pseudo-​Bernardus equated Virgil’s duplicity with politicized and propagandistic aims, while parenthetically accepting the Destruction of Troy as an authoritative source of genuine history. But Virgil’s lack of regard for historical truth was still useful. Pseudo-​Bernardus then incorporated the supposed historicity of Dares and the mendacity of Virgil into the very tissue of his allegorical reading. According to his schema, Book II of the Aeneid corresponded to the life of a child. The acquisition of speech, hitherto 35.  Pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris, Commentum super sex libros Eneidos Virgilii, lines 8–​11, ed. Julian Jones and Elizabeth Jones (Lincoln, 1977), 1: “Intendit itaque casus Enee aliorumque Troianorum errantium labores evolvere atque hoc non usque secundum historie veritatem, quod Frigius describit, sed utique ut Augusti Cesaris gratiam lucraretur, Enee facta fugamque figmentis extollit.” An English translation is available in Pseudo-​ Bernardus Silvestris, Commentary on the First Six Books of Virgil’s Aeneid, trans. Earl G. Schreiber and Thomas E. Maresca (Lincoln, 1979). See also the excerpts of Latin text and accompanying translation collected in Ziolkowski and Putnam, eds., The Virgilian Tradition, 726–​37. On pseudo-​ Bernardus’ equation of Dares with historiae veritas, see Alastair Minnis, A. Brian Scott, and David Wallace, eds., Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c.1100–​c.1375: The Commentary Tradition (Oxford, 1991), 116.

134

134

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

absent in infancy, was the characteristic property of childhood. Thus, it made perfect sense that Book II consisted of a speech—​i.e., that of Aeneas to Dido. In this speech, Virgil’s hero gave his accounting of both the fall of Troy and his post-​Troy wanderings, including a detailed description of how the Greeks had destroyed his city with the Trojan Horse. Pseudo-​Bernardus read this narrative as emblematic of language writ large: “Since some speech is true and some false, the mixture of the truth of history and the falsity of fables in [Aeneas’] narration follows this same pattern.” Here was the perfect example of truths and lies woven together in a single string of utterances! “It is history that the Greeks destroyed Troy, but the probity of Aeneas is fable. For Dares Phrygius narrates that Aeneas betrayed the city.” By recording Aeneas’ treachery, Dares proved the Trojan’s mendacity and hence lent credence to pseudo-​Bernardus’ ascription of deeper philosophical import to the Aeneid.36 By its very nature, allegory consisted of reading a text using extra-​textual resources. Interpreting the Fourth Eclogue as a prefiguration of Christ depended upon reading Virgil through the Gospels, despite the fact that the Augustan poet and the Evangelists could not be linked to one another in any rigorous historico-​ contextual sense. Allegory tethered Virgil to other texts that the poet himself had neither read nor known. There was nothing unusual about these readings in the twelfth century. But pseudo-​Bernardus’ use of Dares constituted a more extreme application of such exegetical techniques. For pseudo-​Bernardus, reading Aeneid II as an allegory for human speech meant reading Virgil through an avowedly anti-​Virgilian text. Whatever its original author’s intentions, Dares’ text subverted the very premise of the Virgilian narrative. Whereas other allegorical interpretations simply deemed the question of Virgil’s historical fides irrelevant, pseudo-​Bernardus’ allegory was actually facilitated by what he deemed Virgil’s lack of historicity. Virgil’s Aeneas was an Everyman: like all humans, he was prone to speaking truth and falsehood in equal measure. Reading him as such rendered him a strange mixture of Virgilian pietas and Dares’ treachery. Pseudo-​Bernardus suggested one way to incorporate the dueling claims of history and fable into a larger interpretive frame. Historia and fabula could perhaps even be reconciled in the process; their dissonance could be made consonant if

36.  Pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris, Commentum, lines 3–​7, ed. Jones and Jones, 15:  “Quoniam quidam sermo verus, quidam falsus, ideo in hac narratione per hoc quod veritati historie falsitas fabule admiscetur hoc idem figuratur. Est enim historia quod Greci Troiam devicerunt; quod vero Enee probitas enarratur fabula est. Narrat enim Frigius Eneam civitatem prodidisse.” The translation used here is modified from Pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris, Commentary, trans. Schreiber and Maresca, 16. On Aeneas’ mixture of truth and falsehood as an allegorical representation of struggle between the soul and the body, waged throughout the five ages of man, see Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry, 106.

135



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

135

only one knew the proper level upon which to read each. His commentary demonstrates the elaborate mental gymnastics necessary to maintain the authority of two authoritative texts: Dares could remain a trusted and canonical historian on the literal level, whereas on the allegorical level Virgil could reign supreme. Both could cultivate their acre of truth, and everyone could remain happy. Pseudo-​ Bernardus’ solution reveals a hermeneutics of synthesis not unlike what the twelfth-​century theologian Peter Abelard deployed in his famous Sic et non or Yes and No. Much as Abelard worked to reconcile and synthesize seeming disagreements or discrepancies in the Bible or patristic authors, so pseudo-​Bernardus performed a parallel program of reconciliation for the canon of pagan auctores. But synthesis did not always work. Others combined historia and fabula in a much more acrimonious and explosive manner; they used history to invade the form and domain of fable and attack it from within. As we saw in the prior chapter with the Brutus, some also rendered Dares directly into verse.37 Granted, there was nothing unusual about versifying a prose text in the Middle Ages. But, as outlined at the start of this chapter, this process proved inherently more complicated when it came to Dares: the raison d’être of the original Destruction of Troy had been to demonstrate the superiority of the most basic and uninspired of prose over the most canonical of poetic traditions. One of the shortest of these verse renderings of Dares was also among the most radical in rejecting the poetic craft. The anonymous Historia Troyana—​ likely written sometime around the middle of the twelfth century—​consisted of approximately 900 Latin hexameters. It hardly constituted an epic in its own right. We possess scant information concerning the date and circumstances of the Historia Troyana’s composition.38 We do not know who the Historia Troyana poet was, but we know who he claimed he was not: a poet. In a manner ludic, earnest, or somewhere in between, he denied his very office, and his very medium. In one sense such denials were but an extension of a commonplace rhetoric of anti-​rhetoric, present throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages.39 Geoffrey of

37. See Chapter 2, 108–​09. However, unlike the poems examined in this chapter, the Brutus did not make any comment upon this translation across genres; in fact, it did not even identify the Phrygian as its source. 38.  On parallels between the Roman de Troie and the Historia Troyana, see Anonymi Historia Troyana Daretis Frigii: Untersuchungen und kritische Ausgabe, ed. Jürgen Stohlmann (Wuppertal, 1968), 166–​72, and Joly, Benoît, 155–​56. 39. Instructive here is Erich Auerbach’s discussion of sermo humilis in Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton, 1993),  25–​66.

136

136

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Monmouth, for instance, had claimed to disavow the flowers of speech even as he skillfully deployed them. However, the author of the Historia Troyana took this disavowal of rhetorical artifice still further.40 “Poetic figments (figmenta poetica),” he exclaimed in his opening line, “disturb the history of Troy.” Like historians such as Otto von Freising, he had a duty to correct the record. He continued: Hence, although Fortune may be envious of great undertakings And my trumpet may not be worthy of such long battles, My mind has nonetheless grown hot to write of the Trojan War, By following the faithful footsteps (vestigia fida) of Dares Phrygius. Nor would he, or at least so he claimed, correct these figmenta poetica simply by writing another poem: But if anyone responds, I do not think that I must Arouse the god [i.e., Apollo] from his cave at Cirrha to my writings, Unequal in my judgment to the Ionian seers (Aoniis vatibus). But to whomever wondrous things (mira) seem more worthy of being sung than truths (vera), May he go to the horse’s spring [i.e., Hippocrene on Mount Helicon] to write, So that green ivies may encircle and adorn him as a poet. I, since I invent nothing (quoniam nil fingo), must not be called a poet.41 According to the author of the Historia Troyana, those who followed Virgil and company instead of Dares preferred wonders to truths—​mira to vera. They went to Mount Helicon in order to obtain divine inspiration for figmenta poetica.42 But since he had not trafficked in figments, he did not deserve the name of those who had. Despite his use of verses, he was not a poet. Perhaps he imagined

40. Historia Troyana, lines 1–​5, ed. Stohlmann, 267: “Historiam Troye figmenta poetica turbant;/​Unde licet magnis Fortuna sit invida ceptis/​Dignaque tam longis non sit michi buccina bellis,/​Mens tamen incaluit vestigia fida sequendo/​Daretis Frigii Troyanum scribere bellum.” 41.  Historia Troyana, lines 6–​12, ed. Stohlmann, 267:  “At michi Cyrreo, si quis respondet, ab antro/​Ad mea scripta deum non estimo sollicitandum,/​Scilicet Aoniis me iudice vatibus impar/​At cui mira magis quam vera canenda videntur,/​Ille caballinam scripturus vadat ad undam,/​Ut virides hedere cingant ornentque poetam./​Non ego sum, quoniam nil fingo, poeta vocandus.” See discussion in von Moos, Entre histoire et littérature, 109–​10. 42. See Jan M. Ziolkowski, “Classical Influences on Medieval Latin Views of Poetic Inspiration,” in Latin Poetry and the Classical Tradition: Essays in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ed. Peter Godman and Oswyn Murray (Oxford, 1990), 15–​38.

137



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

137

himself filling a role akin to that which Isidore of Seville had assigned to Lucan. According to his logic, the office of poeta did not ultimately depend upon the formal characteristics of the things one wrote, but rather upon the fabrication or invention of their underlying contents: his use of the verb fingere in the expression quoniam nil fingo, from which fiction is our most notable derivative, is telling. And so he was not a poet because he stuck to vera and eschewed mira. The Phrygian’s early modern critics would later attack Dares through this language of wonder and the fabulous—​in short, what we might understand as the language of fiction. They would accuse Dares of indulging in mira precisely as Dares’ followers claimed Virgil and Homer had. This role-​reversal is a peculiarity that deserves acknowledgment in the history of criticism. It is highly significant—​and by no means a given—​that critics would attack Dares by labeling him in pejorative terms as fiction. Fiction and forgery, after all, are not necessarily identical. But in the twelfth century, Dares allowed at least one of his medieval devotees to have his cake and eat it too (and perhaps even enjoy a good riddle or joke in the process!): he could honor the Phrygian with a poem and still not be a poet. The office of poet was not the only office that whoever wrote the Historia Troyana denied. He also denied his status as an author. As he explained in his prologue: Because when I composed the history of the Trojan War I kept to Dares Phrygius as the author (Daretem Frigium auctorem)—​despite the fact that I added certain things through preparation and ethopoeia that tell us information about people speaking—​I decided that this little work should be inscribed with his name.43 Dares remained the auctor of the work, since all that the “author” of the Historia Troyana claimed to have done was add some speeches and the like. Ethopoeia was a formal device from the rhetorical tradition, defined by Quintilian and others. As Quintilian understood it, it was a means of imitatio or imitation: if one put words

43. Historia Troyana Prologus, ed. Stohlmann, 266: “Quia vero in ordinata Troyani belli historia Daretem Frigium auctorem habui, additis tamen quibusdam per preparacionem et per etopoiiam, quod personarum loquencium informacionem dicunt, hoc opusculum illius nomine inscribendum esse statui.” On this prologue, see discussion in Douglas Kelly, The Conspiracy of Allusion: Description, Rewriting, and Authorship from Macrobius to Medieval Romance (Leiden, 1999), 147–​48, and Douglas Kelly, “Le patron et l’auteur dans l’invention romanesque,” in Théories et pratiques de l’écriture au Moyen Âge, ed. Emmanuèle Baumgartner and Christiane Marchello-​Nizia (Paris, 1988), esp. 34–​35.

138

138

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

into a character’s mouth, they had to be apposite.44 And there was a long tradition of including such speeches in ancient historiography, even if they were not literal factual records of what a historical personage had actually said. However, Dares—​ unlike, say, Thucydides—​had avoided lengthy amplifications of this sort. Still, even if medieval sources regarded ethopoeia as compatible with historia, it is striking to find the author of the Historia Troyana back away ever so slightly from his maximalist stance of having invented nothing. At least when compared with the poems we will examine subsequently, these denials of authorial intervention were not wholly off the mark. The Historia Troyana still bore traces of Dares’ rather formulaic transitions:  for example, it took Dares’ tempus pugnae supervenit and ever so slightly jazzed it up as ecce supervenit pugnandi tempus.45 Yet the poet also made more substantive additions. The very first lines after his bold denial of poetic status featured moralizing content that was not in Dares’ original text. He opened his narrative with a reading of Troy very similar to that conveyed by Nescit mens nostra and other exemplary interpretations. Here the avowed non-​poet sang a pointed condemnation of adultery: “The Trojan adulterer carried off his notorious mistress, disregarding reputation, duties, faithfulness, country, many profits, and his parents, in favor of—​O cruel madness (furor o crudelis)!—​disgraceful love.”46 Dares, who wrote with an exaggerated “just the facts” brevity, had had no time for editorializing about furor crudelis. The poet then returned to this theme through a rather abrupt and clumsy segue at the end of his poem. In his closing lines, he declared that if the Greeks had endured such great labors in order to teach a wife to obey her spurned husband, then it was fitting not to shirk from one’s own battles, and to return one’s mind to Christ.47 Though he claimed to be neither a poeta nor an auctor, whoever wrote these verses had created something very different from the original text of the first

44. Quint. Inst. 9.2.58: “Imitatio morum alienorum, quae ἠθοποιία vel, ut alii malunt, μίμησις dicitur, iam inter leniores adfectus numerari potest: est enim posita fere in eludendo, sed versatur et in factis et in dictis.” See Henrik Specht, “Ethopoeia or Impersonation: A Neglected Species of Medieval Characterization,” The Chaucer Review 21 (1986): 1–​15. 45. Historia Troyana, line 395, ed. Stohlmann, 293: “Ecce supervenit pugnandi tempus . . .” 46.  Historia Troyana, lines 13–​15, ed. Stohlmann, 268:  “Advexit notam Troyanus adulter amicam/​Famam, iura, fidem, patriam, bona multa, parentes/​Postponens turpi—​furor o crudelis—​amori.” 47.  Historia Troyana, lines 914–​18, ed. Stohlmann, 327:  “At si tam grandem Danai subiere laborem,/​disceret ut spreto coniunx parere marito,/​non nos continua pigeat confligere pugna,/​ quatenus ad Christum redeat mens nostra relictum,/​et, precor, ille mei sit consummacio cepti!”

139



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

139

pagan historian. Did such moralization itself become a species of invention—​a form of poetic license that went beyond Dares’ historiae veritas? Granted, editorializing statements of this sort were not contra naturam—​the criterion that Isidore and his classical predecessors had used to define fabula. But did moralizing content, and hence judgments about the motivations of Paris and the like that Dares himself had not bothered to render, make a sort of fable out of a hitherto banal historia? We will explore these questions as we turn to other poems based on Dares—​of far greater length and far more ambitious scope.

Benoît de Sainte-​Maure:  Dares Enters the Vernacular As the first pagan historian was incorporated into Christian allegory and translated into Latin verse, he was also translated across linguistic barriers and deployed by new forms of composition that transported him still further from his ancient origins. Although this book focuses primarily on Dares’ afterlife in Latin historiography, philology, and literature, no account of the Phrygian’s permutations would be complete without acknowledging his role in the rise of various European vernaculars.48 The tradition that Dares spawned inspired authors from Chaucer to Shakespeare. Moreover, medieval adaptions of Dares appeared in everything from Irish to Icelandic.49 If the twelfth century saw a proliferation of classicizing Latin works, it also saw new experiments in vernacular literature. One of the most important of these was the Old French Roman de Troie, written around 1165 by one Benoît de Sainte-​ Maure, perhaps in the milieu of the court of the Angevin monarch Henry II. It enjoyed great popularity and survives in some fifty-​eight copies.50 Benoît’s own prologue recapitulated Dares’ themes—​including his anti-​Homericism and anti-​ poetic sentiment—​yet it did so with a new twist. Expanding upon Dares’ opening jab against Homer, Benoît declared:

48. This is a vast topic that could equally merit a separate book of equal length and scope, across the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. 49. See Trójumanna Saga: The Dares Phrygius Version, ed. Jonna Louis-​Jensen (Copenhagen, 1981), and Leslie Diane Myrick, From the De Excidio Troiae Historia to the Togail Troí: Literary-​ Cultural Synthesis in a Medieval Irish Adaptation of Dares’ Troy Tale (Heidelberg, 1993). 50. Benoît de Sainte-​Maure, Le Roman de Troie, ed. Léopold Constans (Paris, 1904–​12). The translation used here is taken from Benoît de Sainte-​Maure, Roman de Troie, trans. Glyn S. Burgess and Douglas Kelly (Cambridge, 2017). For the manuscript dissemination of the Roman de Troie, see Roman de Troie, trans. Burgess and Kelly, 2, with citations of Marc-​René Jung, La légende de Troie en France au Moyen Age: analyse des versions françaises et bibliographie

140

140

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

But his book [i.e., Homer’s Iliad] does not tell the truth, for we know for certain and without doubt that he was not born until a hundred years after the expedition was assembled. No wonder he failed, for he was never present there and never witnessed anything that happened. When he had written his book and made it known in Athens, he met with strong opposition. They rightly wanted him to be condemned to death because he had shown the gods fighting with mortal men.51 Benoît, following Dares, went on to say that Homer was found mad. But his assertion that the Athenians wished to condemn Homer to die was absent from the original Destruction of Troy. In the quarrel between the historian and poet, Benoît raised the stakes considerably: it had now become a battle of life and death. Benoît’s prologue then moved from Greece to Rome. He introduced a “valiant man called Sallust,” both noble and wise. This Sallust, Benoît explained, had a nephew named Cornelius. Hence, Benoît took the cognomen “Nepos” as evidence that Dares’ translator was related to the historian Sallust, the recipient of his epistle. Cornelius was quite literally the nepos of Sallust. Perhaps Benoît was not aware of the historical Cornelius Nepos (or if he was, his feigned ignorance worked as an artful conceit). As that Carolingian manuscript of Dares that referred to “Cornelio the poet” confirms, Benoît was not the first to appear confused by Nepos’ name. Nor would he be the last. But whatever his grasp of the actual historical personages whose names Dares’ epistle had assumed, Benoît ended up crafting a much fuller account of how his “Cornelius” had discovered the Phrygian’s lost book. Perhaps Benoît’s very distance from antiquity and the Latin tradition facilitated his creative license. As discussed in Chapter 1, presumably many late antique readers of the original Latin Dares were aware of such names as Sallust and Nepos. It was precisely their imprimatur that lent credence to the tale (if, of course, it was meant to be taken at face value). Centuries later, in twelfth-​century France, Benoît claimed to write for those who lacked knowledge of the language and culture of the Roman past. His audience was not only clerical but also assumed a lay readership in the world of the

raisonnée des manuscrits (Basel, 1996). On the Roman de Troie and twelfth-​century approaches to history, see Dominique Boutet, Formes littéraires et conscience historique aux origines de la littérature française (1100–​1250) (Paris, 1999), esp. 60–​62. On issues of translation and literacy surrounding Benoît and the Roman de Troie, see David Rollo, Glamorous Sorcery: Magic and Literacy in the High Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 2000), esp. 57–​96. 51. Benoît de Sainte-​Maure, Le Roman de Troie: Vol. I, lines 51–​62 ed. Constans, 4. For the corresponding translation, see Roman de Troie, trans. Burgess and Kelly, 43–​44.

14



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

141

court, which did not necessarily possess the facility for Latinity that for instance pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris or the author of the Historia Troyana took for granted. This was a sociological shift of profound importance, although its precise nature is beyond the scope of this book. As a result, Benoît could engage in some invention of his own. Nepos sprang to life in fanciful detail: [Cornelius] had a great reputation and taught in Athens. One day, while looking for grammar books (livres de gramaire) in a book cupboard, he rummaged about so long that, among the other books, he came across the history that Dares had written, which was composed and recounted in Greek. This Dares you are hearing about was born and raised in Troy . . . numerous were his deeds of prowess in assault and in open combat. He was also a marvelous cleric, learned in the seven liberal arts (En lui aviet clerc merveillos /​E des set arz esciëntos).52 Benoît completely reimagined the original Destruction of Troy’s almost formulaic use of the lost book trope. In his prefatory epistle, pseudo-​Nepos had not offered any details about where or how he found Dares’ hitherto lost text in Athens; after all, the fewer details the better. Benoît filled in the gaps. Perhaps due to his very distance from the classical tradition, he assigned newfound importance to the supposed classical erudition of both Dares and “Cornelius.” The latter was a grammarian of great repute, and it was while engaged in the charmingly bookish task of searching a cupboard for more grammars that he had found Dares. Author and translator, source and discoverer, shared a certain kinship: like Nepos, Dares had also mastered the seven liberal arts, and he had managed to do so deep in the Trojan past to boot. For the original Destruction of Troy, Dares’ authority was exclusively mimetic: Dares had seen the war and written only of what he had seen, but the text did not enumerate any other personal attributes—​ other than his being in the right place at the right time—​that confirmed its author’s fides. For Benoît, on the contrary, Dares’ auctoritas derived as much from his bookish erudition and martial prowess as his eyewitnessing. Even if Benoît made his grammarian Cornelius quite different from Dares’ pseudo-​Nepos, he nonetheless described his own relationship to his purported source—​the Latin Destruction of Troy—​in a manner akin to how pseudo-​Nepos had proclaimed his fidelity to Dares’ supposed original. He perpetuated a chain of transmission—​ or pseudo-​ transmission—​ that pseudo-​ Nepos had begun

52. Benoît de Sainte-​Maure, Le Roman de Troie: Vol. I, lines 85–​100, ed. Constans, 6–​7. For the corresponding translation, see Roman de Troie, trans. Burgess and Kelly, 44.

142

142

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

centuries earlier. Benoît assured his readers: “I shall follow the text of the Latin version faithfully; I wish to add nothing to it but what I find written there.” This echoed pseudo-​Nepos’ claim that he had neither added nor removed anything from his source, lest the work seem to be his instead of Dares’. But Benoît immediately issued a telling caveat: “I do not say that this [i.e., his translation] will not include some clever additions (bon dit) of my own, if I am capable of doing so, but I  shall follow my source material.”53 Evidently Benoît held his capabilities in high regard. His “bons dits” swelled the Roman de Troie into a work of some 30,000 lines of octosyllabic couplets, altogether dwarfing Dares’ original prose. Perhaps he felt the pressure of creating an enticing plot, especially for a vernacular aristocratic audience that did not necessarily care for classical erudition per se. Most famous among his additions is the love story he crafted between Troilus and Briseis (here named Briseida), a subplot that would spawn a long tradition culminating in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Yet as we saw, he even included clever augmentations on a smaller scale in his prologue—​itself supposedly based upon pseudo-​Nepos’ brief epistle to “Sallust.” His prologue took up some 144 lines and included his aforementioned portrait of the grammarian Cornelius. Moreover, in the body of the poem itself, many of Benoît’s “bons dits” reintroduced elements of the Troy story that Dares, in his avowed zeal for historical veracity, had removed. Most importantly, many of the pagan gods—​banished by pseudo-​Nepos, and condemned by Benoît—​returned to the Roman de Troie. Even if one claimed to follow Dares faithfully, it proved impossible to keep adaptations of his work free of fabula.

Joseph of Exeter: Truth and Fiction between Ancients and Moderns We began this chapter by examining how writing down verses after the Destruction of Troy constituted one of the most direct of readerly responses to Dares’ history. The verses in the Christ Church codex were not the only verses to accompany copies of Dares. A late twelfth-​century Dares manuscript now at the Bibliothèque municipale in the northern French city of Douai features a curious poem entitled “Verses against Dares” or “Versus contra Daretem.” The Douai manuscript belongs to that sizeable group of codices that paired the Phrygian and Geoffrey of Monmouth, and in it the “Verses against Dares” appeared sandwiched between the end of the former and the beginning of the latter. These

53. Benoît de Sainte-​Maure, Le Roman de Troie: Vol. I, ed. Constans, lines 138–​44. For the corresponding translation, see Roman de Troie, trans. Burgess and Kelly, 44.

143



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

143

leonine verses—​characterized by catchy internal rhymes—​were written in the same hand that had written out Dares and Geoffrey; they constituted the scribe’s response to the very texts he copied. Elsewhere in the codex, this scribe actually took the time to add his name. He identified himself as Bernardus (not to be confused with the author of the Virgilian commentary discussed earlier). The scribe Bernardus did not mince words when responding to the first pagan historian. Addressing Dares by name, he weighed his historical accuracy: “Perhaps you would not have composed these things, unless you proved them true.” What were these problematic things of which the Phrygian had written? He had propagated the nota prodicionis or the “scandal of betrayal,” and Bernardus feared that these accusations would discredit the (appropriately rhymed) scripta Maronis or “writings of Virgil.”54 Presumably, nota prodicionis referred to Dares’ claim that Aeneas had betrayed Troy to the Greeks. Yet Bernardus conveyed the most surprising element of “Versus contra Daretem” through a single well-​chosen word. With a memorable rhyme and alliterative flair, he started his poem by addressing Dares as “you who are renowned in illustrious song” (Dares qui claro carmine clares). But whereas the Destruction of Troy was unquestionably regarded as a historia, and its author repeatedly labeled a historian, a carmen signaled a patently poetic work. Virgil, of course, had announced, “I sing (cano) of arms and a man”; Dares had treated those same arms and that same man in the most skeletal of prose. And Bernardus had just copied out Dares’ skeletal prose in the preceding folios. The Phrygian’s text was the very antithesis of a carmen. According to the author of the Historia Troyana, for instance, those who did not follow Dares were guilty of judging fictions “more worthy of being sung” (magis canenda) than truths. Yet according to Bernardus’ rhymes, Dares—​like Virgil—​had also achieved renown in the language of poetic carmina. Poets—​even those who denied their status as such—​had sung of Dares in carmina both Latin and vernacular. We can only speculate about whom precisely Bernardus meant by Dares. But the late twelfth-​century date of the Douai manuscript renders it contemporary with one of the most extensive of Latin verse 54. The poem was transcribed in 1931—​along with numerous other verses in the same codex—​ by Jacob Hammer, who edited Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. See Jacob Hammer, “Some Leonine Summaries of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae and Some Other Poems,” Speculum 6 (1931): 114–​23. “Versus contra Daretem” is found in Douai, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 880, fol.14r (see Hammer, “Some Leonine Summaries,” 123): “Scribens ista Dares, qui claro carmine clares/​non ea dictares forsan, nisi vera probares./​Non ita quam ponis valeat nota prodicionis,/​sensibus ut pronis reprobentur scripta Maronis.” For a description of the manuscript, see Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 42. See discussion of “Versus contra Daretem” in Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 386, and Munk Olsen, 93. The poem is also discussed by Ludwig Gompf in his introduction to Joseph of Exeter, Werke und Briefe, ed. Ludwig Gompf (Leiden, 1970), 17–​18.

14

144

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Figure  3.1  A  thirteenth-​century manuscript of Joseph of Exeter’s Troy poem, here titled The Iliad of Dares Phrygius and lacking any mention of Joseph himself. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 157, fol. 65r.

renderings of the Phrygian:  the Ylias Daretis Frigii or Iliad of Dares Phrygius written by Joseph of Exeter (see Figure 3.1). Perhaps Bernardus had read this Iliad, or another Dares poem like the Roman de Troie. Joseph was a cleric who enjoyed the patronage of Baldwin of Exeter, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1185 to 1190. Baldwin, who was Bishop of Worcester before ascending to Canterbury, may have been Joseph’s uncle. The poet seems to have written his Iliad during the 1180s, and to have completed it by 1190, the year in which Baldwin died after embarking on the Third Crusade.55 Joseph apparently accompanied him on this expedition. He also wrote a now-​lost crusading epic, his Antiocheis, which he advertised in his Iliad’s final lines. At the beginning of the Iliad, he included a flattering summary of Baldwin’s career to date and rosy predictions for its future course. Worchester remembered him, Canterbury knew him now, and perhaps Rome would know him soon—​in no less exalted a role than pope: “The shipwrecked skiff of Peter 55. For biographical details on Joseph and discussion of the date and circumstances of his poem’s composition, see A.G. Rigg, A History of Anglo-​Latin Literature 1066–​1422 (Cambridge, 1992), 99–​102, the introduction to Rigg’s verse translation, cited in this chapter, esp. viii–​ix, and Francine Mora-​Lebrun, “Joseph of Exeter:  Troy through Dictys and Dares,” in Brill’s Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epic, ed. Robert Simms (Leiden, 2018), 115–​33. The standard edition is Joseph of Exeter, Werke und Briefe, ed. Gompf, cited

145



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

145

expects a leader in the midst of storms.”56 Joseph then compared his patron to Thomas Becket, suggesting that he equaled Becket’s moral probity and would therefore make an ideal leader of the Church. Joseph’s poem represented the apex of twelfth-​century classicism.57 Its very first words, Yliadum lacrimas, echoed Juvenal’s tenth satire, in which Juvenal, arguing against those who yearned for old age and long life, imagined how much luckier Priam would have been had he died before the Trojan War began.58 Juvenal was not the only ancient to whom Joseph alluded. He embellished his verses with echoes of Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Propertius, Statius, Lucan, Persius, and many others. His commitment to classical models is evident even in such technical details as his use of elision. Self-​consciously modern critics in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries rejected elision as an unpalatable license of the ancients, but Joseph embraced the practice with enthusiasm.59 However, Joseph’s classical imitatio was by no means tantamount to flattery. Joseph explicitly invoked that opposition at the heart of both pseudo-​Bernardus’ in this chapter at 143. English translations include the prose translation by Gildas Roberts, published as Joseph of Exeter, The Iliad of Dares Phrygius, trans. Gildas Roberts (Cape Town, 1970); the prose translation of the first three books of the poem by A.K. Bate, published as Joseph of Exeter, Trojan War I–​III, ed. and trans. A.K. Bate (Warminster, 1986); and the verse translation of A.G. Rigg, which evocatively captures the spirit of Joseph’s Latin. It is available online through the University of Toronto’s Centre for Medieval Studies at http://​medieval. utoronto.ca/​ylias/​. There is also a French translation: L’Iliade: épopée du XIIe siècle sur la guerre de Troie, trans. Francine Mora (Turnhout, 2003). Throughout I have generally followed the spirit of Rigg’s rendering, with modifications. 56. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 1.33–​40, ed. Gompf, 78. “In numerum iam crescit honos, te tercia poscit/​infula:  iam meminit Wigornia, Cantia discit,/​Romanus meditatur apex et naufraga Petri/​Ductorem in mediis expectat cimba procellis./​Tu tamen occiduo degis contentus ovili/​ Tercius a Thoma Thomasque secundus et  alter/​Sol oriens, rebus successor, moribus heres.” There is also the possibility Joseph may have added these discussions of Baldwin at a later stage of composition. As we shall see in Chapter 6, the relationship between these passages and the remainder of the poem would matter immensely in the sixteenth century. 57. For Joseph’s poem as a possible adversarial response to Benoît’s writing for new vernacular audiences, see Francine Mora, “L’Ylias de Joseph d’Exeter: une réaction cléricale au Roman de Troie de Benoît de Sainte-​Maure,” in Progrès, réaction, décadence dans l’Occident médiéval, ed. Emmanuèle Baumgartner and Laurence Harf-​Lancner (Geneva, 2003), 199–​213. 58. Cf. Juv. 10.258–​65: “Incolumi Troia Priamus venisset ad umbras/​Assaraci magnis sollemnibus Hectore funus/​portante ac reliquis fratrum cervicibus inter/​Iliadum lacrimas, ut primos edere planctus/​Cassandra inciperet scissaque Polyxena palla,/​si foret extinctus diverso tempore, quo non/​coeperat audaces Paris aedificare carinas./​Longa dies igitur quid contulit?” 59.  In addition to the classical allusions documented by Gompf, see the analysis of Joseph’s classicizing style by Walter B. Sedgwick, “The Bellum Troianum of Joseph of Exeter,” Speculum 5 (1930): 49–​76. On Joseph’s use of elision, see Janet Martin, “Classicism and Style in Latin Literature,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable with Carol D. Lanham (Cambridge, 1982), 561–​63.

146

146

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

allegory and the verses in the Douai manuscript. In his opening lines, he took aim not only at Homer, but also at Virgil: “Shall I revere the old man Homer, or the Latin Maro, or the Phrygian seer (vatem Frigium)?” He then swore allegiance to the last option. The Phrygian, with “present eye” (presens oculus), was a “more certain witness” (certior index), who “explained the war that fable does not know (fabula nescit).”60 The Phrygian’s presens oculus refuted the fabulae of both Homer and Virgil. While the original Destruction of Troy had engaged only in implicit anti-​Virgilianism (in contrast to its explicit anti-​Homericism), Joseph made his rejection of Virgil equally manifest. When describing the conspiracy of Antenor and others, Joseph issued a lament, tinged with moral condemnation: “for the purpose of perfidy, perjurious faith (periura fides) is sworn, with Antenor bringing forth the horrible crime.” He then enumerated the other Trojans who swore this paradoxically perjurious oath to betray their city: Ucelagon, Amphidamas, Dolon, Polidamas. But he saved the most shocking member of this cabal for last:  “even Aeneas—​impious (impius)—​was in agreement with such audacious things.”61 Joseph thus made clear that the real Aeneas was the very opposite of the pius hero of Virgil’s epic. This passage is one of many clues that medieval Dares poetry can offer concerning reverse reception. If this was how Joseph, a classically erudite reader, reacted to Dares in the twelfth century, we can only imagine how a late antique reader (i.e., an approximate contemporary of the real author of the Destruction of Troy), equally steeped in the Virgilian tradition, would have reacted to the text’s damning accusations against Virgil’s hero. But why did Joseph trust Dares? He was not just any old eyewitness, but rather a seer or a vates.62 Medieval sources were aware that the term referred to poets as much as prophets, and Joseph elsewhere used it when condemning poetic figments.63 Yet here he deemed Dares a vates when claiming him as a superior alternative to poetry. Just as Benoît had proclaimed the Phrygian marvelously learned, so Joseph signaled that Dares was perhaps in possession of rarefied 60.  Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 1.24–​26, ed. Gompf, 78:  “Meoniumne senem mirer Latiumne Maronem/​An vatem Frigium, Martem cui certior index/​Explicuit presens oculus, quem fabula nescit?” 61. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 6.705–​11: “Interea questique diu bellumque perosi/​in fedus coiere Friges, iuratur in usum/​perfidie periura fides Anthenore dirum/​parturiente nefas; huius consulta secuti/​Ucalegon atque Amphidamas nec iustior ipso/​Polidamante Dolon, patrieque in dampna ruentis/​impius et tantis Eneas consonus ausis.” 62.  On this passage, see Minnis, Scott, and Wallace, eds., Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, 113–​14, and Mora-​Lebrun, “Joseph of Exeter,” in Brill’s Companion to Prequels, ed. Simms, 117–​18. 63. Cf. the discussion of the term vates in Isid. Etym. 7.12.15. For its ancient background, see John K. Newman, The Concept of Vates in Augustan Poetry (Brussels, 1967).

147



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

147

knowledge. He lauded the Phrygian in terms absent from pseudo-​Nepos’ original epistle. Dares was no longer just a passive vehicle for a mimetic account of the Trojan War; instead, he was a vates uniquely qualified to deliver that account. Thanks to him, Joseph was able to launch a Christianized critique of fabula. Just a few lines after praising Dares, he disavowed the traditional pagan invocation of deities as muses: “What gods shall I call to prayers?” he asked with a flourish. “My mind, conscious of truth (mens conscia veri), has banished far the poet playing with fictions (ludentem ficta poetam), lest the presumptuous lies and figments (mentita licentia et figmenta) of Cecrops’ land [i.e., Athens] offend you, father [i.e., Baldwin], under whose prelature Canterbury flourishes . . .”64 Joseph’s clever use of mens conscia veri, offered but four lines after his attack against “the Latin Maro,” echoed Virgil’s own phrase mens sibi conscia recti or “mind conscious of right,” which Aeneas had uttered when revealing himself to Dido.65 Joseph undercut Virgil, a “poet playing with fictions,” by turning his very own verses against him. Through these and other embellishments, did Joseph ipso facto violate his own—​ and Dares’—​ proffered commitment to eyewitnessing and mimesis? Dares’ contents (or lack thereof ) created a paradox for his imitators. The actual contents of Joseph’s Iliad belied his claim to have followed his Phrygian seer alone.66 Moreover, Joseph’s additions seemed to contradict pseudo-​Nepos’ stated commitment to rationalization. Much as Benoît had done, Joseph welcomed the pagan gods back to Troy, although the precise ontological status he assigned them proved ambiguous.67 For instance, he expanded the Judgment of Paris, which Dares had confined to Paris’ brief report of his dream, into an elaborate series of speeches by all three goddesses (albeit still narrated in the guise of a dream sequence). Their addresses to Paris occupied nearly four hundred lines of Book II of his Iliad.68 Even if Joseph and the other Dares poets might have defended 64. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 1.28–​32, ed. Gompf, 78: “Quos superos in vota vocem? Mens conscia veri/​Proscripsit longe ludentem ficta poetam./​Quin te Cicropii mentita licentia pagi/​et ledant figmenta, pater, quo presule floret/​Cantia et in priscas respirat leges.” 65. Cf. Verg. Aen. 1.603–​605: “Di tibi, si qua pios respectant numina, si quid/​usquam iustitia est et mens sibi conscia recti,/​praemia digna ferant.” 66. For instance, Joseph also borrowed materials from Dictys Cretensis. Strikingly, he followed Dictys in stating that Aeneas founded a city on the Adriatic. See Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 6.889–​ 93, ed. Gompf, 208. 67. See Hugh C. Parker, “The Pagan Gods in Joseph of Exeter’s De Bello Troiano,” Medium Aevum 64 (1995):  273–​78, and A.G. Rigg, “Joseph of Exeter:  Pagan Gods Again,” Medium Aevum 70 (2001): 19–​28. 68.  Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 2.237–​613, ed. Gompf, 106–​19. See discussion by Mora-​Lebrun, “Joseph of Exeter,” in Brill’s Companion to Prequels, ed. Simms, 123–​24.

148

148

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

such speeches as instances of ethopoeia, they were far more than innocent amplifications of Dares’ prose. Instead, Joseph’s ventriloquizing of Juno, Minerva, and Venus was rich in detail about squabbles between the deities—​precisely the kind of content that pseudo-​Nepos had dismissed as proof of Homer’s insanity. And the episode ended with an eroticizing detail that was not only wholly absent from Dares but also constituted exactly the kind of content that theoretically required moral sanitizing. In the closing lines of Book II, Paris reported that Venus had revealed not only her face, but also her naked breasts (pectora nuda) to him.69 However, in other places Joseph downplayed numinous interventions in Trojan affairs. And he did so in a fashion that emphasized the place of human agency—​and hence human culpability—​in Troy’s misfortunes. In Book I, the poet faulted the Trojans for not welcoming Hercules to their city and declared that they deserved the Greeks’ ensuing enmity: “Neither the harsh threads of the sisters [i.e., the Fates] nor the gods on high do wrong:/​the Trojan gens itself makes its fate./​Although the sky above spares them, Phrygia merits exile, swords, and fires.”70 A statement such as this was consonant with the ethically charged language of Nescit mens nostra: Joseph’s deployment of meretur or “deserves” hinted that Troy’s ultimate fall was a just punishment for Trojan misdeeds and hence could function as a negative exemplum for his readers. Yet Joseph did not always absolve the gods and fates. At the beginning of Book II, he had Allecto, one of the Furies, remind Priam of his sister Hesione’s abduction, and so he blamed the Fury for prodding the Trojans into another conflict with the Greeks. Now the sky above did not spare the Trojans. Ironically enough, this intervention was reminiscent of a scene in the work of Joseph’s ancient poetic rival: in Aeneid VII, Allecto, at Juno’s instigation, had goaded Turnus into fighting Aeneas’ Trojans.71 Joseph described Allecto’s anger at seeing Troy rebuilt and then used her anger to explain the ultimate origins of the Trojan War: “Allecto sees the citadels that she had broken enjoy a better fortune (fortuna meliore); she sees them, and burns with anger  .  .  .”72 Granted, perhaps this was mere personification—​a dramatization of Priam’s all too natural emotion when he recalled the violation of his

69. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 2.603–​4, ed. Gompf, 119: “Res agitur tractanda palam, iam pectora nuda/​pandimus,” and 2.607–​9: “Sic effata genas rapto depromit amictu/​nuda humeros, exerta sinus totoque diescit/​ore. Pudet divas Veneri cessisse triumphum.” 70. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 1.135–​38, ed. Gompf, 82: “Nil dura sororum licia, nil superi peccant, gens incola fatum/​ipsa facit, celo Frigius parcente meretur/​exilium, gladios, incendia.” 71. Cf. Verg. Aen. 7.415–​74. 72. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 2.4–​6, ed. Gompf, 98: “Videt Allecto, quas fregerat, arces/​fortuna meliore frui; videt, ardet et ydris/​irascens circumque genas et tempora crebris . . .”

149



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

149

sister. However, Joseph went a step further. A few lines below, he used Allecto’s intervention to launch a quasi-​theological digression on the very theme for which pseudo-​Nepos had lacerated Homer:  conflict between gods and mortals. “O father of men and gods,” he inquired, presumably addressing Jupiter, “if you care about divinities, why do your punish man?”73 Yet in what might strike us as a form of cognitive dissonance, the Joseph who penned this pagan content was also the Joseph who elsewhere advanced an explicitly Christian critique of pagan myth—​of the sort he had hinted at in his poem’s opening lines. And in so doing he added moralizing polemic to the pagan Dares’ own rationalizing techniques. As mentioned in the Introduction, Dares had distanced himself from tales of the catasterism of Castor and Pollux. At the end of Book III of his Iliad, Joseph amplified Dares’ muted skepticism into pointed condemnation. When describing how Castor and Pollux perished at sea after they set off in pursuit of Paris, he paused to indict those ancient myths that had granted the brothers of Helen immortality. Tellingly, he used the same phrase he had used before when addressing Baldwin: “Cease, deadly license of Cecrops’ land (Cicropii funesta licentia pagi), to generate polluted gods! Not fable, but unfeigned virtue (non fabula . . . sed virtus non ficta), will give one heaven.”74 Here Joseph revealed why fables were so dangerous. They promoted the very opposite of the exemplary theory of history that Orderic, Otto, and Nescit mens nostra had expounded. Rather than encourage virtue, and demonstrate its necessity for salvation, fables multiplied divinities and false shortcuts to heaven. Fabula was not just the opposite of historia; it was antithetical to virtus as well. Hence, by replacing the usual opposition between history and fiction with an opposition between virtue and fiction, Joseph implicitly endorsed an equivalence between moral virtue and historical truth. Unlike the allegorists, Joseph did not credit the pagan poets with some vague, imperfect approximation of Christian heaven, nor did he suggest that one could unearth hidden wisdom by peeling away these poets’ fabulous integuments. Instead, he condemned pagan fiction as fiction, full stop. And he did so by amplifying an ancient strategy for rationalizing myth that—​whatever the exact religious commitments of the actual Dares author—​was avowedly pre-​ Christian in origin. As ironic as it might seem, the first pagan historian helped fuel a Christian attack against pagan mendacity.

73. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 2.15–​16, ed. Gompf, 98: “O hominum superumque pater! Si numina curas,/​cur hominem plectis?” See Rigg’s incisive analysis of the perplexities of this passage, and his suggestion that they reflect Joseph’s crafting of a hybrid pagan–​Christian authorial persona, at Rigg, “Joseph of Exeter,” 26–​27. 74. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 3.454–​56, ed. Gompf, 137: “Desine, Cicropii funesta licentia pagi,/​ Incestos generare deos! Non fabula celum,/​Sed virtus non ficta dabit.”

150

150

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

This was not the only new element that Joseph added to the long-​standing conflict between history and fable. According to the English poet, the dueling claims of historia and fabula were intimately related to another, specifically temporal dispute, itself embedded in antiquity’s supposed privileging of the latter over the former. This was the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns. John of Salisbury had described the relationship between antiquity and modernity in ambiguous terms. His analogy of the giant and dwarf suggested a synthesis, or compromise, between the two. Yet Joseph—​with his mens conscia veri—​depicted their relationship as inevitably oppositional. He opened his Iliad with an apostrophe to the “sacred faithfulness of truth (veri sacra fides), banished by the ancient confusion of poets (antiquo vatum tumultu).” Here vates did not have the positive connotation it possessed in Joseph’s characterization of the Phrygian. Just because this antiquus tumultus had injured truth in the past did not mean that Joseph’s present age was bound to disregard veracity as well: “because you lie hidden, scorned and enraged by a former world, do you—​who must be known—​flee us as well?” The poet enjoined truth to accompany him and to make his “common trumpet” (plebeam tubam) worthy of song. This return of truth would guarantee triumph over the ancients: “And may sterile antiquity (sterilisque vetustas) blush when you [i.e., truth] arrive adorned, and when free, you lay bare your face.”75 Through this polemical opposition between antiquity and truth, Joseph inverted the language normally deployed in critiques of fable. Rather than figure ancient fabulae as dangerously ornamental and overwrought, he ventured the opposite. Antiquity—​vetustas or old age—​was quite literally dry and sterile, whereas truth, the darling of the moderns, was ornate, polished, and fecund. The revelation of truth’s adorned and liberated face assumed an erotic dimension—​not unlike the revelation of Venus’ nakedness that Joseph would sketch at the end of Book II. In the Conclusion to this book we will see that Dares enjoyed a cameo in a far more famous querelle des anciens et des modernes: that which played out among French academicians and English wits and dominated European intellectual life in the decades around 1700. But this quarrel was by no means restricted to the early decades of the Enlightenment; in reality, it was a continuous conflict, which broke out into open battles throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and beyond. One such moment of open conflict occurred during the classical revival of the twelfth century. In the words of E.R. Curtius, offered in his European

75.  Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 1.6–​13, ed. Gompf, 77:  “Utquid ab antiquo vatum proscripta tumultu,/​veri sacra fides, longum silvescis in evum?/​An, quia spreta lates mundoque infensa priori,/​Nos etiam noscenda fugis? Mecum, inclita, mecum/​Exorere et vultum ruga leviore resumens/​Plebeam dignare tubam sterilisque vetustas/​erubeat, dum culta venis, dum libera frontem/​Exeris!”

15



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

151

Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, twelfth-​century Latin writers demonstrated a “delight in intellectual warfare,” and they often waged such warfare against their rivals, the ancient auctores. This, in turn, spawned a paradox. Due to their “having to learn Latin as a literary language, the moderni of that period [were] so dependent upon schooling in antique models that they still imitate[d]‌ . . . even when they protest[ed].”76 Curtius cited Joseph as emblematic of this uneasy combination of imitatio and polemic. The twelfth-​century cleric launched his critique of ancient mendacity in the language of antiquity itself. And his antiquity consisted of traditions that were themselves in conflict, from the classical Latin poets to the first pagan historian, whose “ancient” translator had condemned poetry as a species of insanity. Joseph called upon Dares, purportedly one of the most ancient of the ancients, to serve an end that he defined as quintessentially modern—​i.e., truth’s restoration. Perhaps this might strike us as a species of disenchantment, of the sort sketched in the Introduction. Joseph co-​opted that long-​standing ancient program for rationalizing myth and fable, which he found modeled in Dares, and linked it to a stridently self-​conscious faith in his own modernity. His modern sensibility involved using historical truth to disabuse antiquity of its enchantments. He inveighed against those who “recall only the golden ages of Saturn” and, hence, accorded nothing to “recent virtue” (recentis virtutis). In contrast, modernity possessed virtues in abundance: “the first ages (tempora prima) certainly do not deny virtue, nor do the last ones (ultima) impart it. Since two-​faced age strives for diverse uses, the one is vigorous, the other lies in ruins, the one sprouts new growth, the other cracks and grows weak.”77 Yet as we will find so often in this book, just when we seem to encounter something approximating our definition of disenchantment, it eludes us, in a fashion that reveals the contingencies of our own categories. The actual contents of Joseph’s poem suggest that he was more enamored with the trappings of ancient fable than his polemical pronouncements would suggest: his simultaneous commitment to imitatio made it impossible for him to practice what he preached. Even more important, his source, his vates, was a very odd agent of disenchantment, given that it trafficked in another—​albeit very different—​species of mendacity. A polemic against the lies of one sort of fiction was bolstered by lies of another kind.

76. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 98. 77. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 1.15–​23, ed. Gompf, 77–​78: “Si nostris nil dolce novum, nil utile visum,/​Quod teneri pariunt anni, si secula tantum/​Aurea Saturni memorant et nulla recentis/​Gracia virtutis, aude tamen ardua, pubes!/​Mento canescant alii, nos mente; capillo,/​Nos animo; facie, nos pectore. Tempora certe/​Virtutem non prima negant, non ultima donant;/​ Cumque duplex etas varios contendat in usus,/​Hec viget, illa iacet, hec pullulat, illa fatiscit.”

152

152

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

If the moderns were to reject the “ancient confusion of poets,” what kind of literature were they to embrace instead? In the closing lines of the last book of his Iliad, Joseph offered an answer to this question—​in the form of an advertisement for his next piece. His next poem would leave the ancient past behind and treat an appropriately modern Christian theme. Hitherto, Joseph summarized, he had lamented the ruin of Troy: “I have explicated the confused compendia of ancient truth (veteris veri).” He reiterated that his own additions to such a truth were few: “and if I were ever the author, nonetheless it was rare.” Though he, like Benoît, had actually added a great deal more to his poem, he assured his readers one last time that he had followed Dares alone. But “now the wars of Antioch call,” and now he would write of “Christian battle lines.” This was the poem that would become the Antiocheis, his Crusade epic. Once more Joseph made a show of denying assistance from the muses: instead, “a more lofty Apollo comes from heaven to fill up the open jaw of my faithful mind.”78 At the very end of his Iliad, Joseph returned one last time to the dichotomy between the ancient and the modern he had raised in his opening lines. Still addressing Baldwin, he proclaimed that “this work plays (ludit) for you, a later age will succeed it. Graver things will follow that will be worthy of pure ears.”79 Here was a new and more ambiguous twist on the temporal conceit that governed his poem as a whole. An ancient pagan subject befitted the poet’s own youth, whereas a topic from the Christian present constituted a mature work proper to his mature years. Now that he was grown he would put away childish things. Significantly, Joseph judged this youthful work—​his now completed Iliad—​a ludic exercise; he had played at Troy, whereas of Antioch he would write in earnest. This introduced another layer of ambiguity to Joseph’s project. In so characterizing his work, he linked himself, at least implicitly, to the very poets he had banished when he pledged loyalty to Dares.

On tropes of youth and old age in medieval Latin poetry, see Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 98–​101. On Joseph’s rhetoric of truth in these introductory lines, see Mora-​Lebrun, “Joseph of Exeter,” in Brill's Companion to Prequels, ed. Simms, 122–​23. 78.  Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 6.959–​65, ed. Gompf, 210–​11:  “Hactenus Yliace questus lamenta ruine/​Confusa explicui veteris compendia veri/​Etsi quando auctor, rarus tamen. Altera sacre/​ Tendo fila lire. Plectro maiore canenda/​Antiochi nunc bella vocant, nunc dicere votum/​ Christicolas acies et nostre signa Sibille,/​Que virtus, que dona Crucis. Nec fundit hanela/​ Hos michi Cirra pedes, animi fidentis hiatum/​Celsior e celo venit impleturus Apollo.” Unfortunately Joseph’s Crusade poem is now lost, save for an excerpt that was discovered by the antiquary John Leland in the sixteenth century. See Joseph of Exeter, Werke und Briefe, ed. Gompf, 212. 79. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 6.968–​71, ed. Gompf, 211: “Tu quoque, magne pater, nostri fiducia cepti/​Altera, et in pelago pandes michi vela secundo./​Hoc tibi ludit opus, succedet serior etas,/​ Seria succedent aures meritura pudicas.”

153



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

153

He had condemned “the poet playing with fictions” (ludentem ficta poetam), but now he acknowledged that he too had been a poeta ludens of sorts, even if when playing he had claimed to follow the truth of history. Buried in here is an unanswerable question: did Joseph—​perhaps like Geoffrey of Monmouth—​think that Dares, his Phrygian vates, had likewise engaged in such play? And if so, did he suppose that such play amplified or subverted historiae veritas?

The Attack on Aeneas: Albert von Stade’s Troilus Joseph of Exeter had contradicted Virgil in explicit terms absent from Dares. Yet one of Joseph’s successors attacked the Roman poet with still more vitriol. Around half a century after the English cleric wrote his ludic opus, a German monk named Albert von Stade wrote what is the longest of medieval Latin poems based upon Dares, titled the Troilus. Albert served as abbot of the Benedictine house of St. John’s Friary in Stade in Lower Saxony and also wrote a universal chronicle. His Troilus detailed the exploits of its eponymous protagonist, one of the sons of Priam, and survives today in a single manuscript.80 Although barely mentioned by Homer, and described by Virgil as an “unhappy boy” or infelix puer slain by Achilles, Troilus played a starring role in the Destruction of Troy.81 Dares introduced him as the “the least [of Priam’s sons] by birth, no less brave than Hector.” In his catalog of combatants, the Phrygian lauded him as “great, most beautiful, valiant for his age, brave, and desirous of virtue.”82 He repeatedly mentioned his exploits in battle and depicted his death at the hands of Achilles as a decisive loss for the Trojan side. This elevation of otherwise minor characters was an important component of anti-​Homeric revisionism. Albert von Stade took this tendency still further, approximately a millennium after such artful deviation from tradition had flourished during the Second Sophistic. He also used his reworking of the Troy tale to launch one of the harshest condemnations yet of Virgil. Aeneas became a kind of antihero in the Troilus.

80.  See discussion of this manuscript, now Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Gudianus lat. 278, in Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 309–​13. The text was edited for the Teubner series in 1875: see Albert von Stade, Troilus, ed. Theodor Merzdorf (Leipzig, 1875), and more recently Markus Wesche, Studien zu Albert von Stade (Frankfurt, 1988), and Albert von Stade, Troilus, ed. Thomas Gärtner (Hildesheim, 2007). 81. Cf. Verg. Aen. 1.474–​75. 82.  See Dares, De excidio Troiae 7, ed. Meister, 9:  “Troilus minimus natu, non minus fortis quam Hector, bellum geri suadebat . . .,” and De excidio Troiae 12, ed. Meister, 15: “Troilum magnum, pulcherrimum, pro aetate valentem, fortem, cupidum virtutis.”

154

154

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Predictably, Albert began his poem in moralizing terms, proclaiming Troy a testament to human misery. And so he announced that he would eschew his subject’s preferred ancient poetic form. In the most literal sense of the term, Troy was not a heroic tale. Although the Trojan War might seem to require hexameters, the traditional meter for epic, Albert deemed another meter more appropriate. Horace in his Ars poetica had discussed which meters fit which topics. “Homer has revealed,” he explained, “the meter in which the deeds of both kings and chiefs and sorrowful wars can be written.”83 But Albert, after echoing and slightly modifying this Horatian passage, explained that he would reject Horace’s advice and switch to elegiacs: The deeds and warlike acts of kings and chiefs can be written In the meter that Homer has revealed—​namely epic (scilicet heroico). Perhaps it will be said that because they should have run with such a foot These verses will prove that it is not fitting To have written of the great battles of great men In meager elegies (exiguos elegos). Indeed I concede this, But I write of most wretched deeds (gesta miserrima), And the wretched slaughters of the wretched (strages miseras miserorum) . . . Therefore I resolved to write this wretched song (carmen miserum) In wretched elegiacs (miseros elegos).84 The history of Troy was an endlessly repetitious tale of misery. It was not worthy of celebration in hexameters; rather, Albert would mourn it in elegiac couplets. He would undercut Troy—​and the ancient poets who had sung of it—​by denying its status as epic. The Dares poets used meditations on literary form to meditate

83.  Hor. Ars P. 73–​74:  “Res gestae regumque ducumque et tristia bella/​quo scribi possent numero, monstrauit Homerus.” 84. Albert von Stade, Troilus, Prooemium 17–​34, ed. Merzdorf, 8–​9: “Res gestae regumque ducumque ferocia facta/​Quo scribi possent numero monstravit Homerus./​Scilicet heroico, dicetur forsitan; isti/​Currere versiculi quia deberent pede tali,/​Quodque per exiguos magnorum magna virorum/​Proelia non deceat elegos scripsisse, probabunt./​Sane concedo, sed gesta miserrima scribo/​Et strages miseras miserorum, qui misereri/​Noluerant sibi nec aliis sed morte metebant/​Se misera misere, misero stimulante furore./​Per miseros igitur elegos hoc ducere carmen/​Decrevi miserum.” Ironically enough, Albert rendered this rejection of hexameters in a hexameter prologue, before switching to elegaic verse in the poem proper. His invocation of “exiguos elegos” echoes Hor. Ars P. 77–​78: “Quis tamen exiguos elegos emiserit auctor/​grammatici certant et adhuc sub iudice lis est.” It is also worth observing that Augustine employed a similar repetition of miserus when discussing how he mourned Dido as a schoolboy. See August. Conf. 1.13: “Quid enim miserius misero non miserante se ipsum et flente Didonis mortem . . . ”

15



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

155

on the status and meaning of Troy, as their critiques of fabulae and figmenta make clear. Albert took this concern for form to a new extreme, as he argued over which type of metrical form Troy merited. According to Albert, the ancient poets had not only written of Troy in the wrong meter, but they had also distorted their subject by involving the gods and other fantastical phenomena. And so Albert, following Dares, launched the standard attack against Homer’s lies. But like Joseph, he soon expanded this critique beyond Homer and in doing so used the same damning phrase that the anonymous author of the Historia Troyana had employed: figmenta poetica. He then targeted Virgil explicitly: Poetic figments (figmenta poetica) also spun this material, Just like Virgil singing of arms and a man. But this book holds to the history of Dares, Who composes nothing except the truth (praeter verum). I follow him, sometimes adding the words of men, Which they either spoke or could have spoken.85 Like Joseph of Exeter, Albert undercut Virgil by parroting the poet’s own words, although it goes without saying that his use of arma virumque canens was a whole lot less subtle than Joseph’s mens conscia veri. By singing of arms and a man, Virgil had woven figments. In contrast, Dares had told the truth and nothing but the truth. Fair enough, but Dares’ scant prose had not told much of anything in general. The Phrygian had omitted much context and color. As a result, like Benoît de Sainte-​ Maure, Joseph of Exeter, and the anonymous author of the Historia Troyana, Albert acknowledged that he had also added materials—​but only, he hastened to clarify, spoken words consonant with Dares’ own account. Although he did not use the term explicitly, he basically claimed—​like the Historia Troyana—​that all he was “adding” (adiciens) were instances of ethopoeia. In contrast to Dares, he had not been there; nonetheless, he could use Dares’ bare autoptic record to imagine what Troilus and company could have said. But was his resultant work still history—​i.e., nothing

85. Albert von Stade, Troilus 3.237–​42, ed. Merzdorf, 78: “Hanc quoque materiam figmenta poetica nebant,/​Sicut Virgilius arma virumque canens./​Sed Phrygii tenet historiam liber iste Daretis/​Qui praeter verum scriptitat inde nihil./​Hunc sequor adiciens interdum verba virorum,/​Queve loquebantur vel potuere loqui.” For Albert’s other invocations of the Phrygian, see for example Troilus 2.13–​14, ed. Merzdorf, 39 (on Castor and Pollux), and Troilus 6.697–​ 700, ed. Merzdorf, 190: “Nulla poetarum posuit figmenta, Daretis/​Historiam soliti scribere, vera tenens./​Et Phrygius fuit iste Dares, et tempore belli/​Ipsa quidem miles proelia visa refert.” On parallels between the Historia Troyana and the Troilus, see Wesche, Studien zu Albert von Stade,  44–​48.

156

156

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

praeter verum? Much as Servius had maintained that something could count as a history “whether it happened or did not happen” (sive factum sive non factum), so Albert defined his historical poem as containing the words of characters “which they either spoke or could have spoken” (queve loquebantur vel potuere loqui). Perhaps for Albert, unlike Dares himself, history did not require literal accuracy. And perhaps he also sensed, like the medieval chroniclers in Chapter 2, that there was something incomplete about the bare narrative of the first pagan historian: it required either diachronic continuation or synchronic elaboration. The very qualities that buttressed Dares’ authority also made him vulnerable to revisions—​even radical ones. Just how radical were Albert’s revisions? His additions were more than just some necessary speeches. And his statements in support of Dares were more than just pledges of fidelity to his supposedly historical source. They likewise served polemical purposes, and he took this polemic further than the usual castigation of fanciful pagan gods intervening in the Trojan War.86 He attacked another poet—​namely Virgil—​for perpetuating a still more pernicious narrative. This was the story of pius Aeneas, clearly contradicted by Dares’ account of Aeneas’ treason. In so doing, the monk aimed his invective in equal measure at Virgil and Aeneas, poet and protagonist. Unlike pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris, he saw no way to sanitize them; their lies could not be explained away or rescued via allegory. When narrating how the Trojan conspirators plotted to betray their city, he addressed himself directly to Aeneas: Are you pious, Aeneas (so the poets have sung of you), Whose craft has produced such sin? Virgil’s muse colors many lies (mendacia multa), Singing of you not facts but rather fictions (non facta sed mage ficta). He calls you a man distinguished by piety (insignem pietate), He proclaims you just and often calls you pious (pium). But you are not pious, who—​handing over your own city to its enemies—​ Send all living things to a miserable death! With your face you make yourself a citizen, with your heart, an enemy. Impious poisons (impia venena) lie hidden under sweet honey.87

86. For Albert’s attack on Homer in this regard, see Albert von Stade, Troilus 3.229–​36, ed. Merzdorf, 78. 87. Albert von Stade, Troilus, 6.287–​96, ed. Merzdorf, 176: “Es pius Aenea? Sic cantavere poetae;/​cuius produxit fabrica tale nefas/​Virgilii musa mendacia multa colorat/​de te non facta sed mage ficta canens./​Insignem pietate virum te nominat, aequum/​praedicat et saepe clamitat esse pium./​Es ne pius, propriam qui tradens hostibus urbem/​in miseram mittis omnia viva necem!/​Cum facie civem, cum pectore te facis hostem,/​Impia sub dulci melle venena latent.”

157



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

157

By invoking Aeneas’ false piety and how poets had sung of it (cantavere poetae), Albert doubled down on his earlier dismissive reference to Virgil “singing of arms and a man.” Aeneas’ treachery became a pretext for a broader assault against Virgilian mendacity. Albert condemned Virgil and his mendacia multa for exactly the same sort of betrayal perpetrated by the poet’s ostensibly pius hero. Strange as it might seem, Albert apostrophized Aeneas to condemn Virgil. Unlike the accessus of Master Anselm, he pointedly refused to let Virgil off the hook for deviating from historiae veritas; he would not accept said deviations as a mere byproduct of form or genre. “Sweet honey” or dulce mel possessed an ambiguous referent. On the one hand, this dangerous sweetness represented the deceptions of Aeneas himself: he presented himself as a citizen or civis, making the case for peace—​as Dares himself had recorded—​with lenibus mitibusque dictis or “smooth and soothing words.”88 Yet “sweet honey” could not help but evoke Virgil’s own poetic deceptions, as Albert repeated pius and then contrasted the Virgilian epithet with “impious poisons” or impia venena. Hence, despite the fact that he relied upon a text we now know to be false, Albert engaged in what he took to be an act of criticism, as much moral as it was historical. And in a fashion akin to the many critics of Dares we will encounter in the second half of this book, he framed his criticism as a personal invective against an ancient literary rival. But why had Albert gone to such great lengths to lacerate Aeneas? He shared the concerns that Joseph of Exeter had voiced when demolishing the fable of Castor and Pollux. Albert claimed to write exemplary history in verse. Although he did not say so explicitly, it was clear that Virgil’s mendacia multa—​especially his fabula of pious Aeneas—​threatened to obscure the dire moral lesson that the historical treacherous Aeneas offered. Elsewhere, speaking in the third person, Albert revealed his intentions as follows: “Not on account of Troy did [the author] undertake to write of the Trojan War.” Rather, he wished to “restrain the corrupt, and protect the good.” And he illustrated the effectiveness of negative exempla through a biblical analogy: “Herod teaches us just as John the Baptist does./​The one educates the good, the other frightens the bad.”89 The antihero Aeneas could function as a

Albert’s pronouncement that “Virgil’s Muse colors many lies” echoes verbatim a line from the Anticlaudianus of the twelfth-​century poet and theologian Alan of Lille. Cf. Alan of Lille, Anticlaudianus 1.142–​43, ed. Robert Bossuat (Paris, 1955), 61: “Virgilii Musa mendacia multa colorat/​et facie ueri contexit pallia falso.” 88. Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 37, ed. Meister, 45. 89. Albert von Stade, Troilus 6.367–​74, ed. Merzdorf, 179: “Non propter Trojam, Trojanum scribere bellum/​Aut coepit Phrygum sollicitare stylum,/​Sed ductus meliore via compescere pravos/​Et servare dei vult in amore bonos./​ . . . Nos docet Herodes, sicut Baptista Johannes,/​ Erudit iste bonos, territat iste malos.”

158

158

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

pagan counterpart to a biblical type. He was not to be imitated but rather avoided. Such moral exemplarity, grounded in the ostensible truth of history, was a far cry from the allegorical reading of pagan literature promoted by exegetes like pseudo-​ Bernardus Silvestris. However, both Albert and the allegorical commentator were nevertheless engaged in a common project: both claimed to write of the Trojan War not for Troy itself, but for purposes that they had extracted—​much as Augustine had condoned despoiling the Egyptians—​from an unsuspecting ancient text.

Between Poetry and Prose: Dares’ Truth in the Later Middle Ages Pseudo-​Bernardus had made Dares an exegetical tool for commentary on an ancient poet, namely Virgil. But once Dares occasioned the composition of new poems, he also became an object of exegesis. Dares became a poet just as Lucan had become a historian. And so Dares’ poems required glossing, just as the ancient poetic auctores had been glossed. Much as it had in antiquity, commentary in the Middle Ages helped adjudicate the dueling claims of history and fiction. A thirteenth-​century manuscript of Joseph of Exeter, now Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fonds latin 15015, contains something unusual in its first eleven folios: a commentary on the poem that follows. The commentary is anonymous, and aside from an introduction it is primarily lexical in content—​suggesting that Joseph’s Iliad might have enjoyed some use as a school text. It treated Joseph in similarly anonymous fashion. A quick glance at its incipit would suggest that a modern commentator was simply glossing an ancient auctor:  it announced “here begins the commentary upon Dares Phrygius” (incipit commentarium super Darete Frigio).90 Describing Joseph in oblique terms as “the writer of the present work” (presentis scriptor voluminis), this commentator affirmed—​predictably enough—​that the unnamed scriptor had put forth “the true history of the fall of Troy” (veram eversionis Troie historiam). He then explained, in language reminiscent of Joseph’s modern polemic against the ancients, that this scriptor had felt compelled to write of Troy’s historiae veritas “because ancient poets (poetae veteres) confused its history, having either altered or intensified or diminished

90.  Geoffrey Riddehough included a transcription of the commentary as an appendix to his unpublished dissertation. The text utilized here follows this transcription. See Geoffrey B. Riddehough, “The Paris Commentary,” in The Text of Joseph of Exeter’s Bellum Troianum (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1951), 318 [Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fonds latin 15015, fol. 1r]: “Incipit commentarium super Darete Frigio.” On the commentary, see Jan M. Ziolkowski, “Cultures of Authority in the Long Twelfth Century,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 108 (2009): 421–​48, esp. 437.

159



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

159

it.” And Joseph had found this true history from the Phrygian, of course: “Dares Phrygius, who was one of the comrades in arms, and who—​by the testimony of Isidore of Seville—​was the first historiographer, copied out this history on papyrus with the stylus of truth.”91 Much like Joseph himself, his commentator did not derive the Phrygian’s auctoritas solely from eyewitnessing. Like William of Malmesbury, he cited Isidore’s endorsement of Dares’ status as the first pagan historian as further proof of his fides. And his evocative conjuring of the Phrygian’s stilus veritatis expanded upon Isidore’s own description; significantly, it trumpeted the veracity inherent in the trappings of textuality itself. The commentator next turned to Dares’ supposed translator. Joseph had never explained how his source, his Phrygian vates, had made it into Latin prose. He never mentioned Cornelius Nepos. But his commentator did, in a manner reminiscent of Benoît’s Roman de Troie. Like Benoît, he deemed “Cornelius” the nepos of Sallustius Crispus. The commentator described how this Cornelius, while engaged in study at Athens, translated the text of Dares, which he had discovered in the Attic archives.92 His description proved an odd mélange of source materials: he took the line cum post modum Athenis ageret curiose straight from pseudo-​Nepos’ original prefatory letter. Yet his description of the Phrygian’s book “discovered in Attic archives” (in archiuis Atticis repertum) echoed Benoît’s recounting of the clerk Cornelius’ scrounging for livres de gramaire. He augmented Joseph with anecdotes of a decidedly bookish nature, from his depiction of Athens’ archives, replete with lost texts, to his portrait of Dares himself, penning nothing save truth on papyrus. This too was an act of translation, executed across centuries. He took the ancient Trojan comrade-​in-​arms and his Roman translator and transformed them into figures legible to the academic world of the medieval schoolroom. Dares quite literally exchanged the sword for the pen.93

91. Riddehough, “Paris Commentary,” 318 [Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fonds latin 15015, fol. 1r]:  “Presentis igitur scriptor uoluminis ueram euersionis Troie historiam nonnullis propositam coniecturus eam produxit in populicum, presertim cum poete ueteres rerum gestarum seriem aut mutatam aut intensam aut diminutam confuderint. Dares autem Ph[r]‌igius, qui unus commilitantium extitit, qui et primus Ysidoro testante legitur fuisse historiographus, hanc historiam in papiris scriptam stilo ueritatis expressit.” 92. Riddehough, “Paris Commentary,” 318 [Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fonds latin 15015, fol. 1r]: “Cornelius uero, Salustii Crispi nepos, cum post modum Athenis ageret curiose Daretis scriptum in archiuis Atticis repertum transtulit, illud quoque stilo Latino prosaice pernotatum adminiculo suo destinauit.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae, “Cornelius Nepos Sallustio Crispo suo salutem,” ed. Meister, 1: “Cum multa ago Athenis curiose, inveni historiam Daretis Phrygii, ipsius manu scriptam . . .” 93. See here Alastair Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, Second Edition (Philadelphia, 2010).

160

160

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Cornelius’ rendering of Greek into Latin was not the only act of translation the commentator discussed. For Joseph had also translated Dares, not across languages but rather from prose into verse. Still leaving him unnamed, the commentator then invoked Joseph as “the third who wrote this work” (tercius qui hoc opus conscripsit): he was the final member of a triumvirate that also included Cornelius Nepos and the first pagan historian himself. Just as Nepos had rendered Dares “into Latin prose,” so this third writer had “rendered this work into meter, so that the truth of so eminent a history might be made more rousing in a more pleasing type of speech (gratiori loquendi genere).” Rather than oppose one another, prose and verse—​the language of historia and fabula respectively—​could work together for the same end, the promotion of truth. “For when it [i.e., truth] is said in verses, as if sung, it sounds more pleasantly to the ear, and is delivered more promptly to one’s memory.”94 The formal techniques of fabula made historia easier to digest and recall. As a result, perhaps they served exemplary purposes still more effectively than mere historia itself. Commentary could once again reconcile history and fiction, ancients and moderns. Yet ironically, it did so at the expense of effacing Joseph’s own identity. The commentator did for Joseph what the “author” of the Historia Troyana had done when he disavowed his very status as an author. As we will see later, this effacement would have immense consequences for one of the stranger chapters in Dares’ early modern afterlife. In the later Middle Ages, Dares did not just continue to inspire Latin works. He also inspired more experimentation in vernacular literature. And aspects of the Latin and vernacular Dares frequently bled into one another, as the Joseph commentator’s silent use of Benoît makes apparent. The growing tradition of medieval romance owed a great deal to the Phrygian. Even those sources that did not use him directly still made reference to his claims. For instance, the opening lines of the Arthurian Sir Gawain included a curious reference to Aeneas as “the warrior who wrought trammels of treason, notorious for his treachery.”95 In these words, the Gawain author alluded to the claim that Aeneas had betrayed Troy. But as the first pagan historian made his way into both poetry and the vernacular, he also found his way back into his original form—​i.e., Latin prose.

94. Riddehough, “Paris Commentary,” 319 [Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fonds latin 15015, fol. 1r]: “Tercius uero qui hoc opus conscripsit in metrum redegit propositum ut tam insignis historie ueritas gratiori loquendi genere suscitatior innotesceret. Quom enim uersibus tamquam modulatorie dicitur et auri sonat iocundius et presentius memorie redditur.” 95. Cf. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 1.1.3–​5, ed. and trans. Richard H. Osberg (New York, 1990), 2–​3: “The tulk that the trammes of tresoun there wroght/​was tried for his tricherye, the trewest on erthe,/​hit was Ennias the athel and his highe kinde.”

16



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

161

This act of reverse translation was thanks to Guido delle Colonne, a judge from Messina in Sicily who wrote his own Historia destructionis Troiae or History of the Destruction of Troy in 1287. Guido’s lengthy historia began with what was now the typical disavowal of poetic fable. “By playing poetically (poetice alludendo),” he declared, “some have already transformed the truth of this very history into inventions (figurata commenta), fashioned by means of certain fictions (quibusdam fictionibus), so that what they wrote seemed to those listening to have reported not truths (vera), but rather fabulous things (fabulosa).”96 Like Joseph, Guido characterized such enterprises as ludic; poets “played” with fictions and transformed truths into fables. Chief among the guilty was Homer, Guido explained, but then he also singled out Virgil. To remedy this state of affairs, Guido promised a different sort of account: he would write a history, so that “among Western peoples” (apud Occidentales) those who wished to study Trojan matters “may know to separate truth from falsehood.” He would follow not only Dares, but also Dictys: “at the time of the Trojan War they were continuously present in their armies, and they were the most faithful reporters of the things they saw.”97 However, Guido, like his predecessors, did not straightforwardly reproduce these autoptic records; instead, he added an intervening layer of fictionality. Although he claimed to follow both Dares and Dictys Cretensis directly, in fact, he used Benoît de Sainte-​Maure’s Old French Roman de Troie as his principal source, even though he never once invoked Benoît by name. Sensing perhaps that readers might notice the manifest difference of scale between his own work and his purported originals, Guido offered an explanation. In doing so he put into words what Joseph of Exeter, Benoît, and everyone else who expanded upon Dares had

96. Guido delle Colonne, Historia destructionis Troiae, prologus, ed. Nathaniel Edward Griffin (Cambridge, MA, 1936), 3–​4: “Nonnulli enim iam eius ystorie poetice alludendo ueritatem ipsius in figurata commenta quibusdam fictionibus transsumpserunt, ut non vera que scripserunt uiderentur audientibus perscripsisse sed pocius fabulosa.” For an English translation, used here with modifications, see Guido delle Colonne, Historia destructionis Troiae, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Bloomington, 1974). On Guido and Dares, see E.R. Truitt, "Marvelous History: Authority and Credibility in Medieval Histories of Troy," in Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, ed. Stephens and Havens, 99–​117. 97. Guido delle Colonne, Historia destructionis Troiae, prologus, ed. Griffin, 4: “Sed ut fidelium ipsius ystorie uero scribentium scripta apud occidentales omni tempore futuro uigeant successiue, in utilitatem eorum precipue qui gramaticam legunt, ut separare sciant uerum a falso de hiis que de dicta ystoria in libris gramaticalibus sunt descripta, ea que per Dytem Grecum et Frigium Daretem, qui tempore Troyani belli continue in eorum exercitibus fuere presentes et horum que uiderunt fuerunt fidelissimi relatores, in presentem libellum per me iudicem Guidonem de Columpna de Messana transsumpta legentur, prout in duobus libris eorum inscriptum quasi una uocis consonantia inuentum est in Athenis.”

162

162

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

done in practice, even if they had not dared to say it. Benoît had acknowledged that he had added some clever additions to the work of the learned “Cornelius.” Guido was the first to transform this additive impulse into an open critique of Nepos. In a description that revealed his clear debts to the Roman de Troie, he described how “a certain Roman, Cornelius by name, the nephew of the great Sallust,” had translated Dares (and Dictys too, curiously enough!), combining into one narrative two books he had found in Athens. Yet in Guido’s estimation, “for the sake of excessive brevity he unbecomingly omitted (indecenter obmisit) the particulars of the history itself (particularia ystorie ipsius), which are better able to attract the minds of listeners.” (Of course, this would seem to contradict Nepos’ claim that he had not subtracted anything from Dares.) Guido offered to put these particularia back again and thus deliver a truth not only more complete, but also more ethically exemplary, than Dares’ original.98 In other words, Guido—​like the Joseph commentator—​judged it necessary to expand upon the Phrygian in order to better stir his readers’ hearts and minds. What were these particularia? They did not only include the poetic elaborations of Benoît, but also the details of the genealogical histories discussed in Chapter 2. Guido’s particulars represent the fusion of the two additive impulses examined in this chapter and the previous. For instance, he transformed Dares’ description of the seizure of a “not unwilling” Helen into a misogynistic moralizing screed against feminine desire that, among other things, condemned dancing. He narrated in detail how Paris and Helen first caught sight of each other at dances in honor of Venus on Cythera and then added some prescriptive content: “May he die who first established dances between young women and unknown youths—​the manifest cause of much perpetrated shame!”99 A few lines later he proclaimed how much better things would have been if women like Helen had never left their homes: “O how welcome to women ought to be the boundaries of their houses, and the guarding of their honor’s ends and limits!”100 But Guido also included details of a very different sort that the historical Nepos never could have known, and that were also absent from the accounts

98. Guido delle Colonne, Historia destructionis Troiae, prologus, ed. Griffin, 4: “Quamquam autem hos libellos quidam Romanus, Cornelius nomine, Salustii magni nepos, in Latinam linguam transferre curauerit, tamen, dum laboraret nimium esse breuis, particularia ystorie ipsius que magis possunt allicere animos auditorum pro nimia breuitate indecenter obmisit.” 99. Guido delle Colonne, Historia destructionis Troiae 7, ed. Griffin, 70: “Pereat ille qui primus inuenit inter mulieres iuuenes et adolescentes ignotos instituisse coreas, que manifesta sunt causa multi perpetrati pudoris.” 100. Guido delle Colonne, Historia destructionis Troiae 7, ed. Griffin, 71: “O quam grati feminis esse debent earum domorum termini et honestatis earum fines et limites conseruare.”

163



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

163

of Joseph of Exeter or Albert von Stade. Guido judged the destruction of Troy a felix casus:  thanks to its fall, a multitude of new cities and new nations had risen, particularly apud Occidentales. First among these was Rome, of course, that “chief of cities,” founded by Aeneas. Yet Aeneas was not the only Trojan exile to have founded new cities and new gentes. As Guido noted, Brutus had established Britain, Francus had founded Francia, and Antenor had founded Venice, for instance. Even his native Sicily—​settled, as he claimed, by the Trojan Sicanus—​ boasted a Trojan pedigree.101 Guido’s new augmented version of the Phrygian proved popular.102 And like his proffered source, his history was also linked in manuscripts to tales of Trojan ancestry. As Julia Crick has documented, the Historia of the Destruction of Troy appears with Geoffrey’s History of the Kings of Britain in five manuscripts; the two texts are adjacent to each other in four of these.103 In one—​a fifteenth-​century English codex—​its scribe linked the two in unusually direct fashion. The explicit of Guido and the incipit of Geoffrey each referred to key events in the other text’s narrative, creating a seamless connection between the two.104 Guido’s explicit 101. Guido delle Colonne, Historia destructionis Troiae 2, ed. Griffin, 11–​12: “. . . Ut ipsa Troya deleta insurexerit, causa per quam Romana urbs, que caput est urbium, per Troyanos exules facta extitit uel promota, per Heneam scilicet et Ascanium natum eius, dictum Iulium. Et nonnulle alie propterea prouincie perpetuum ex Troyanis receperunt incolatum. Qualis est Anglia, que a Bruto Troyano, unde Britania dicta est, legitur habitata. Item qualis Francia, que post Troye a Franco rege, Henee socio, qui iuxta Renum magnam condidit urbem quam Franciam ex suo nomine necnon et totam eius prouinciam appellauit, habitata narratur. Et Veneciarum urbem inhabitauerit ille Troyanus Anthenor. Habitationis eciam huius Siciliam legimus non expertem, que primo a rege Sicano, qui in Siciliam a Troya peruenit, habitata describitur, unde Sicania dicta fuit.” 102. It soon made its way back into the vernacular, just as Guido had brought Benoît’s vernacular appropriation of Dares back into Latin. In England, John Lydgate wrote his Troy Book, itself based upon Guido’s History of the Destruction of Troy. See C. David Benson, The History of Troy in Middle English Literature:  Guido delle Colonne’s Historia destructionis Troiae in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1980), and James Simpson, “The Other Book of Troy: Guido delle Colonne’s Historia destructionis Troiae in Fourteenth-​and Fifteenth-​Century England,” Speculum 73 (1998): 397–​423. 103. See here Crick, Dissemination and Reception,  47–​49. 104.  London, British Library, MS Additional 35295, fol. 136v. The explicit to Guido reads: “Explicit bellum Troianum et historia obsidionis eiusdem ciuitatis secundum Guidonem de Columpna et sequitur historia de regno Britonum et aduentu eorum in hanc insulam et quomodo haec insula ante aduentum Bruti fuerat inhabitata et uocata in sequentibus legentibus liquebit.” The incipit to Geoffrey follows directly below:  “Incipit historia Britonum et quomodo Brutus primus rex Brutannie uenit in istam insulam cum gente sua post Troiam destructam fraude Antenor [sic] et Enee qui Eneas postmodum Turno rege ab ipso deuicto regnauit in Italia Lavinia ducta ab eo filia regis Litinorum [sic] de qua filium Siluium genuit ut patet in sequenti historia.” For dating and contents, and transcription of the incipit, see Crick, Summary Catalogue, 137–​38.

164

164

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

both summarized and foreshadowed: “Here ends the Trojan War and the history of the fall of Troy according to Guido delle Colonne, and here follows the history of the kingdom of Britain and the arrival of the Britons on this island.” The subsequent incipit to Geoffrey then made reference to a pivotal event in the preceding text: how Aeneas, Brutus’ most famous ancestor, had betrayed his city. As it announced, “here begins the history of the Britons and of how Brutus, the first king of Britain, came to that island with his people after Troy was destroyed by the deception of Antenor and Aeneas.” Perhaps Guido—​who unlike the Phrygian had actually made mention of Brutus—​could do a better job than Dares of filling in the genealogy that linked the Trojans with the Britons. Guido was not the only Italian of the latter Middle Ages who made use of Dares. He was read by one of Guido’s far more famous countrymen as well. This was Petrarch, the fourteenth-​century scholar, poet, and man of letters, who was later christened a founder of Renaissance humanism.105 Born in 1304 in Arezzo, he was crowned Poet Laureate at Rome in 1341. No history of classical reception can ignore Petrarch, particularly given the place he has won in narratives of the humanist recovery of classical antiquity—​the assumptions of which we will interrogate extensively in the next chapter. We do not know if Petrarch ever read Guido’s Historia, but we do know that he read Guido’s supposed sources, both Dares and Dictys. He made use of the Phrygian when planning his De viris illustribus, copying out material from him on Jason and Hercules.106 And he cited him—​albeit not by name—​in one of his anti-​scholastic treatises, his Invective against a Certain Physician.107 Written in 1353 in response to a doctor who, among other charges, had maligned the poetic arts, Petrarch’s Invective offered a systematic apology for ancient pagan poetry. In it we find the beginnings of what might seem a stereotypically humanist program: the defense of classical literature against scholastic theology. And in articulating this defense, Petrarch offered a response—​which may strike us as historicizing and credulous in equal measure—​to one of the principal topics of contention in the critiques of ancient fabulae discussed throughout this chapter: i.e., portrayals of the pagan gods. Was it really fair, he asked, to treat poetry and paganism as synonymous?

105. On Petrarch and Dares, see Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 282–​84. 106.  Petrarch, De viris illustribus ed. Guido Martellotti (Florence, 1964). See discussion in Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 282–​83. 107. On this passage, see Pierre de Nolhac, Pétrarque et l’humanisme: tome deuxième (Paris, 1907), 43, and Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 283.

165



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

165

Hitherto we have traced attacks against ancient poetry, even by poets who imitated ancient models. Petrarch reveals an opposite approach:  he launched an apology for poetry. Yet rather than defend Virgil and Homer by critiquing Dares’ prose, he defended them while accepting Dares’ fides, at least on some level. The Dares poets had inveighed against poetic fabulae for their paganism, especially their depictions of multiple deities intervening in the human world. Petrarch’s physician opponent raised this charge as well, arguing that poetry was contrary to the Christian faith. Petrarch responded that the ancient poets had actually known better. They had gotten as close as possible to Christian truth as their times permitted—​and in fact much closer than had the ancient philosophers. The ancient poets had not really believed in those multiple warring gods of whom they had sung. They secretly rejected the divinities whom the masses worshipped, and they refrained from dismissing them openly only out of fear or deference to societal norms. Petrarch posited a coterie of elite ancients who disavowed superstition, not unlike the virtuous pagans whom Dante had assigned to a rather pleasant abode in limbo. It was only the uneducated—​not unlike Petrarch’s scholastic opponent—​who were foolish enough to take the poets literally. Rather than merely allegorize, he also attempted to historicize by suggesting that the ancients themselves had been engaged in a species of allegory: whereas it was presumably immaterial to pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris what Virgil the historical author believed, for Petrarch it was paramount. To prove his point, Petrarch called upon a suitably ancient witness: “Homer and Virgil portrayed the gods as warring with each other, and Cornelius Nepos tells us that for this very reason the Athenians thought Homer was mad. I believe of course that the common people thought so. But learned men understand that, if many gods exist, there may be discord and warring among them.”108 According to Petrarch, the Athenians had been mistaken to condemn Homer for such follies, and hence (although he did not say it outright) pseudo-​Nepos had been mistaken in his polemic, since the poets had not literally believed their fabulae. Yet even if Petrarch did not accept the basis of pseudo-​Nepos’ critique, he did seem to accept his historical fides. He still automatically assumed that pseudo-​Nepos was the real Cornelius Nepos. Moreover, in so doing he demonstrated a familiarity with the Roman historian that others seemingly lacked—​whether William of

108. Petrarch, Invectivarum contra medicum quendam libri quatuor 3.138, in Invectives, ed. and trans. David Marsh (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 114–​17: “Belligerantes deos invicem Homerus et Virgilius fecerunt; propter quod Athenis Homerum pro insano habitum Cornelius Nepos refert. Credo nimirum apud vulgus; docti autem intelligunt, si plures sunt dii, et discordare illos et bella inter eos esse posse.”

16

166

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Malmesbury, who thought Nepos’ name required glossing, or Benoît and Guido, who mistook him for Sallust’s otherwise unknown nephew. The humanist’s aside also revealed a subtler shift in perspective. Unlike many of the figures examined previously, he did not celebrate Nepos’ translation as a triumph of historiae veritas against mendacious fabulae; rather, he sought to recuperate the very fables that Dares’ partisans so virulently critiqued. Our final example takes us once again from Italy to England. Just as Petrarch is often held up today as the most famous figure in fourteenth-​century Italian literature, so Geoffrey Chaucer is often accorded that distinction for fourteenth-​ century England. The English poet  also engaged with Dares. Chaucer drew widely upon the Troy legend, most famously in his Troilus and Criseyde. Around 1380, he wrote his House of Fame—​itself a meditation on, among other topics, the relationship between poetry and truth. In it, Chaucer conjured a pantheon of writers who had treated Troy. Fittingly enough, he had a vision of many of those whom we have discussed in the preceding pages, and so his Trojan pantheon constitutes a fitting conclusion to the present chapter. Chaucer saw Homer and Virgil, but he also saw Dares and Dictys, and Guido delle Colonne and Geoffrey of Monmouth.109 He described “the Latyn poete Virgile” as one who bore up “the fame of Pius Eneas.” All of these authors were “besye for to bere up Troye.” But Chaucer explained that “so hevy therof was the fame/​that for to bere hyt was no game.”110 Joseph of Exeter might have deemed himself a poeta ludens, yet Chaucer chose to underscore the seriousness of the topic. “Fame” and “game”—​joined in a rhyming pair—​were not commensurate with one another. He also realized that those who had engaged in the non-​ludic task of bearing Troy’s fame had not done so with one voice: “Betwex hem was a litel envye.”111 Although he did not mention him again by name, he seemed to identify the source of this envy with the Phrygian’s vitriol against Homeric mendacity:  “Oon seyde Omere made lyes,/​Feynynge in hys poetries,/​And was to Grekes favorable—​/​Therfor held he hyt but fable.”112 Who actually possessed historiae veritas was not clear. As we will see in the following chapter, such “envye”—​always accompanied by

109. Geoffrey Chaucer, The House of Fame 1464–​85, ed. Nick Havely (Toronto, 2013), 95–​96. 110. Chaucer, House of Fame 1472–​74, ed. Havely, 95. 111. Chaucer, House of Fame 1476, ed. Havely, 95. 112. Chaucer, House of Fame 1477–​80, ed. Havely, 95.

167



Historical Veracity and Poetic Fiction

167

moralizing polemic about truth—​would grow only stronger in the centuries that followed.

Conclusion: The Persistence of Fabula The Dares poets we have examined here aimed to reclaim a medium that they feared had been corrupted by its ancient practitioners. Yet they recognized, as Joseph’s commentator put it, that the truths of history grew more resounding when translated out of historia proper. They proclaimed their allegiance to historia even as they recognized its seeming weakness. Nonetheless, they articulated a distinction between fact and fiction that in many respects outlived any specific belief in the historicity of Dares Phrygius. And in so doing they linked historicity and morality in an almost axiomatic fashion. They emphasized the fundamentally ethical nature of that long-​standing discourse of truth versus falsity, even as their invective—​from Joseph’s critique of Castor and Pollux to Albert’s condemnation of pius Aeneas—​reveals a profound anxiety about the ensnaring quality of the underlying poetic content that generated such moralization. In this sense they speak to a far broader discourse about just what it meant to be an author—​an auctor in medieval Latin parlance. Everyone from the chroniclers in the previous chapter to the poets discussed in this chapter wrestled with the same underlying question about authorship: how did one continue one’s auctor, expand him, beautify him, or editorialize about him, especially when doing so challenged the spirit of his original? In fact, in one of the many ironies of Dares’ afterlife, those who would attack the Phrygian in early modernity would do so using a language that mirrored how the Dares poets had attacked Virgil, Homer, and their morally pernicious fictions. They too would critique the ridiculous trifles of fables and figments. But for these critics, Dares was the figment. In the next chapters we will see how their philological critiques—​which we have long associated with the rise of supposedly modern critical methods—​bear a surprising resemblance to a discourse that had been deployed for centuries for critiquing fabulae. But as this chapter established, even Dares’ medieval champions could not resist fabulae; they needed fabulae to augment Dares just as much as the would-​be genealogists in the previous chapter needed new historiae to augment Dares, whatever their actual truth-​value. Dares offers us a unique test case insofar as his text—​albeit at very different moments in its afterlife—​was one of the few that became both a tool and subject of this critique. If this chapter examined Dares in the former role—​i.e., Dares as a tool of criticism—​the subsequent chapters will examine worlds in which he increasingly became an object of criticism, as we will move gradually from 1400 to 1800. The

168

168

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

centuries examined here, from say, 1100 to 1400, arguably constituted the height of Dares’ influence and reputation. But these two phases had more in common than we might realize, and we can zoom out from Dares to reassess the assumptions that we have used to separate the Middle Ages from early modernity. Dares’ fortunes complicate the neat divisions we have drawn between the two. Far from signaling a transition from credulity to criticism, from enchantment to disenchantment, the mechanisms of belief and doubt remained very much the same, even as they began to facilitate different specific judgments about specific texts. Just as Dares, that blunt instrument of historiae veritas, could never quite vanquish the allure of fictionality, so this persistence of fabulae meant that critiques of the Phrygian for violating historiae veritas would never quite succeed.

169

4

Dares Attacked Early Modern Criticism and the Formation of an Ancient Canon “Dares and Dictys are the figments of those who desired to amuse themselves concerning that most famous war.” —​J uan Luis Vives

Despite over half a millennium of medieval preeminence, the first pagan historian would not remain unchallenged for long. Slightly over a century after the Sicilian judge Guido delle Colonne swore Dares was the unvarnished truth, and in fact just two decades after Geoffrey Chaucer invoked Dares in his House of Fame, cracks began to form in the Phrygian’s hitherto sterling reputation. Chaucer had pointed out dissent among those who had written on Troy, but he had not explicitly called into question the authenticity of anyone in his Trojan pantheon. This would soon change. This chapter and those following bring us to a new phase in Dares’ afterlife: attacks against his credibility that—​for the next three centuries—​constantly threatened his demise, even if they never succeeded in killing him off entirely. The year 1400 saw one of the first recorded challenges to the authenticity of Dares’ Destruction of Troy. This part of the story takes us back to Italy: not to Sicily but to Florence, and to another government official, like Guido the Messinan judge, with a passion for ancient texts. The Florentine Chancellor Coluccio Salutati was a leading figure in a moment that, rather vaguely, has often been termed the early Renaissance. Statesmen and scholars of Salutati’s ilk were thought to stand between two worlds, the one medieval and the other at least proto-​modern.1 As we will see, his encounter with Dares suggests just how difficult it is to draw any clean distinction between these

1. See, for instance, Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship: From 1300–​1850 (Oxford, 1976), esp. 25–​27, where Salutati appears at the beginning of a chapter titled “The Second and Third Generations,” following a first chapter on Petrarch and Boccaccio.

The First Pagan Historian. Frederic Clark, Oxford University Press (2020). © Frederic Clark. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190492304.001.0001.

170

170

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

period concepts, or assign fixed attributes to each when charting the history of criticism. The most famous literary depiction of Salutati is found in Leonardo Bruni’s Dialogi, in which Bruni had the Chancellor moderate a debate on whether Tuscany’s new lights—​Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio—​measured up to the ancients. Bruni praised Salutati as “easily the leading man of this age in wisdom and eloquence and integrity.”2 Salutati zealously hunted ancient texts and rediscovered lost works of Cicero. And amid this scholarly and cultural work, he played a leading role in the administration of the Florentine state. In 1400, the same year as Chaucer’s death, he tackled political issues in a treatise titled De tyranno or On the Tyrant. In it, Salutati responded to two questions posed by a student at Padua, one Antonio of Aquila. First, were Brutus and Cassius traitors for having assassinated Julius Caesar, and second, were Aeneas and Antenor traitors who betrayed Troy to the Greeks? These questions hinted at a telling parallelism: was Rome’s transition from Republic to Empire defined by violent betrayal, as much as Rome’s supposed origins had been a millennium earlier? Although Salutati was otherwise sympathetic to ancient republicanism, here he defended Caesar’s imperial prerogative and condemned Brutus and Cassius for their deed. It is unclear why Salutati adopted a more pro-​imperial position here. Perhaps his motivations were as much literary as political. He sought to defend the Florentine Dante, who had placed Brutus and Cassius in the lowest ring of hell alongside Judas.3 It was only at the very end of his treatise, almost as an afterthought or appendix, that Salutati entertained the question of political misdeeds in the far more distant Trojan past. By doing so, he ensured that Dares would continue to figure in ongoing debates over the origins and legitimacy of the Roman state. Salutati did what any good humanist was supposed to do: he introduced the relevant ancient sources and openly weighted the consequent discrepancies. The Florentine Chancellor began at the supposed beginning:  “the most ancient of historians (historicorum antiquissimi) who wrote Trojan history, Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, state in no doubtful terms but plainly and most clearly, that [Aeneas and Antenor] negotiated with the leaders of the Greeks to betray their country.” Thereafter he referred to Guido: “For this reason I cannot blame Guido

2. Leonardo Bruni, Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, ed. Stefano U. Baldassarri (Florence, 1994). For the translation used here, see Leonardo Bruni, Dialogues, in The Three Crowns of Florence:  Humanist Assessments of Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio, ed. and trans. David Thompson and Alan F. Nagel (New York, 1972), 20–​21. 3.  Coluccio Salutati, De tyranno 5.6, in Political Writings, ed. Stefano U. Baldassarri and trans. Rolf Bagemihl (Cambridge, MA, 2014), 140–​141. I follow this translation with slight modifications.

17



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

171

delle Colonne of Messina, who follows these authors, for branding both with the marks of treason.”4 But, Salutati noted, as the Romans rose to prominence, they began to protect the name of their founding father. Hence, the Roman annalist Sisenna accused only Antenor of treason, and Livy—​that “most venerable author” or nobilissimus auctor—​accused neither of them, arguing instead that the Greeks had spared Aeneas and Antenor because of the laws of hospitality and because the two Trojans had always lobbied for Helen’s return.5 The Italian humanist deemed this an “honorable excuse” (honesta excusatio) on Livy’s part: but why, he asked, was an excuse required only for Aeneas and Antenor, and not for the other Trojan leaders who had also successfully escaped Troy after its defeat? Was Livy’s invocation of hospitality and the like necessary to cover up some other misdeed? Having considered the evidence, Salutati outlined several options: one could either go with Dares and Dictys and call Aeneas a traitor, or one could defend his probity and dismiss Dares and Dictys as apocryphal. Salutati left the question ambiguous. But in so doing he became the first—​or at least the first we know of—​to suggest that one could place the Phrygian “among the apocrypha” (inter apocryphos).6

4. Salutati, De tyranno 5.7, ed. Baldassarri and trans. Bagemihl, 140–​141: “Principio quidem historicorum antiquissimi Dares Phrygius et Gnosius Dictys, qui Troianam scripserunt historiam, non ambigue sed plane clarissimeque testantur ipsos de prodenda patria cum Grecorum principibus pepigisse. Quo minus indignor Guidoni de Columna Messana, quod secutus hos auctores ambobos illis principibus notam proditionis inusserit.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae, 37–​41, ed. Meister, 44–​50, and Dictys, Ephemeris belli Troiani, 5.1–​17, ed. Eisenhut, 101–​19. See discussion of Salutati on Dares and Dictys in B.L. Ullman, The Humanism of Coluccio Salutati (Padua, 1963), 33 and 96–​97, and Ronald G. Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life, Works, and Thought of Coluccio Salutati (Durham, 1983), 244–​45. 5. Salutati, De tyranno 5.7, ed. Baldassarri and trans. Bagemihl, 142–​43: “Livius autem, nobilissimus auctor, utrosque duces illos excusat . . . ” See Liv. Ab urbe condita 1.1 and the discussion in Chapter 1, 71–72. 6. Salutati, De tyranno 5.7, ed. Baldassarri and trans. Bagemihl, 142–​43: “Potes ipsos cum Dicte Dareteque proditionis reos habere, si libet; potes, auctore Sisenna, liberare, si placet, Aeneam, vel ambos excusare cum Livio et Dictem Cretensem atque Daretem Phrygium inter apocryphos reputare.” However, Salutati was not the first to express some doubts or disquiet about Dares in general. Some eighty years earlier, the Italian historian Benzo d’Alessandria had taken note of divergences between Dares and Dictys in his Chronicon, while nonetheless labeling them both authentic. See Marco Petoletti, “Benzo d’Alessandria e le vicende della guerra Troiana appunti sulla diffusione della Ephemeris belli Troiani di Ditti Cretese,” Aevum (1999): 469–​91. Petoletti provides a transcript of the relevant passage at p. 490: “Horum igitur scriptorum, scilicet Dytis et Daretis, historias multa ego fide complexus, cum valde autenticos eos esse prefate testentur epistule, ut pote inibi existentes, ubi a se scripta gesta fuerunt, non mirari tamen non possum quod in eorum scriptis tanta tamque frequens dissonantia et diversitas reperitur, maxime de Palamedis, Hectoris, et Achillis nece.” See also the discussion of Benzo in Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 277–​79.

172

172

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Salutati did not present his doubt as news. The ease with which he made this statement perhaps suggests a hint of irony in his characterization of Dares and Dictys as “the most ancient of historians” or historicorum antiquissimi. So many of his predecessors had used this language of priority in a highly earnest fashion. However, Salutati did not dismiss Dares and Dictys entirely; instead, he acknowledged that they contained at least a kernel of truth.7 On the question of whether Aeneas and Antenor had in fact betrayed Troy, Salutati closed on a doubtful note, which seemed to contradict his earlier criticisms: “I do not believe that the precise truth can be ascertained from the books that I have read, especially since the tradition (fama) has lasted twenty-​five centuries, and fama does not ordinarily persist if its report is false.”8 With these words, Salutati the critic affirmed the veracity—​or at least the likelihood—​of historical traditions that had persisted through the longue durée. Yet his characterization of this tradition as fama—​a report or rumor—​hinted at his ambivalence concerning its truth-​value. While he seemed to prefer Livy and company to Dares and Dictys, he felt uncomfortable rejecting the rumors that the latter two had propagated, precisely because such rumors had survived from the time of the Trojan War all the way down to the year 1400. Implicitly at least, his reference to “twenty-​five centuries” acknowledged the possibility that Dictys and Dares might have in fact flourished around 1100 BCE. And if a claim had survived for this long, as Salutati supposed about the claim that Troy had fallen due to Trojan treachery, it did not befit a scholar to dismiss it lightly. In later centuries others would advance a diametrically opposed approach to the truth-​value of long-​standing historical tradition. Did the passage of twenty-​five centuries render historical phenomena more believable, or less? This was not the only time that Salutati labeled Dares and Dictys apocryphal, nor was it the most direct. A year later, in a letter of 1401 to the nobleman Malatesta di Pandolfo Malatesta, he analyzed another facet of Trojan history: the attributes and appearance of Hector. Salutati mentioned that Dares had briefly described the Trojan, and he then reproduced the description of Hector from the Phrygian’s catalog of characters. Thereafter, he noted that Guido delle Colonne had produced a history based upon the Phrygian and Dictys. According to Salutati, “Guido compiled a book, commonly called the Troianus, from those two histories, and he made a single work out of the two apocrypha (duobus

7. See here Valentina Prosperi, “Il paradosso del mentitore: ambigue fortune di Ditti e Darete,” in Homère à la Renaissance:  mythe et transfigurations, ed. Luisa Capodieci and Philip Ford (Rome, 2011), 41–​57, esp. 48. 8. Salutati, De tyranno 5.7, ed. Baldassarri and trans. Bagemihl, 142–​43: “Veritatem enim ad solidum non credo posse per ea quae legerim reperiri, stante praesertim vigintiquinque saeculorum fama, quae non solet, si falsum effuderit, permanere.”

173



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

173

apocryphis). All the scholars I know consider [Guido’s book] unimportant, insofar as it lacks both gravity and credibility.”9 Again Salutati did not frame his judgment of Guido as a discovery, just as he had not presented his assessment of Dares and Dictys in the De tyranno as news. Instead, he allied his criticism with a consensus—​albeit an unspecified and vague one—​of the erudite: everyone who knew anything knew that Guido’s history lacked fides. This critique went a step further than his previous year’s discussion. Now Salutati did not merely entertain the possibility that Dares and Dictys were apocryphal; he assumed it as fact. Still, he thought it worth citing Dares’ discussion of Hector, just as he had deemed it worthwhile to entertain the Phrygian’s and the Cretan’s allegations against Antenor and Aeneas. Salutati’s passing asides hardly constituted a manifesto against Dares and Dictys (who, from this point onward, would increasingly be evaluated as a pair, not unlike how Guido had claimed to combine them into a single text). Nor was the rest of Salutati’s argument original:  although he did not mention the late antique commentator by name, his discussion of Aeneas and Antenor’s potential treason was simply a rehashing of Servius’ gloss to Aeneid 1.242–​43. These were the lines in which Virgil had mentioned how Antenor, “having escaped into the midst of the Achaeans,” had been able to sail off into the Adriatic and eventually establish Padua.10 It was the very Servian gloss that the two fourteenth-​century manuscripts discussed at the end of Chapter 2 had used to link Dares to accounts of the Trojan origins of the Franks. Servius had also cited both Livy and Sisenna. Salutati’s question about Livy’s “honorable excuse” was simply a paraphrase of Servius’ own point, made nearly a millennium earlier, about Horace’s use of the phrase sine fraude or “without fraud.” Servius had wisely observed that this excuse was hardly idle; “for no one excuses a thing unless it is full of suspicion (plenam suspicionis).”11

9. Coluccio Salutati to Malatesta di Pandolfo Malatesta, in Epistolario, Vol. III, ed. Francesco Novati (Rome, 1896), 546:  “Aliud autem apud Latinos non memini me legisse, nisi penes Guidonem de Columna Messana, qui, Dictym Daretaque secutus, librum, qui Troianus vulgo dicitur, ex duabus illis hystoriis compilavit et ex duobus apocryphis unum fecit, quem omnes quos eruditos vidi floccifaciunt, utpote carentem tam gravitate quam fide.” On this letter, see Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 384; Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads, 244–​45; and Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (London, 1969), 55. 10. Verg. Aen. 1.242–​43: “Antenor potuit mediis elapsus Achivis/​Illyricos penetrare sinus . . .” 11.  Salutati, De tyranno 5.7, ed. Baldassarri and trans. Bagemihl, 142–​43:  “Honesta quidem excusatio, quae quoniam Capys, Helenus et alii plures, qui numquam sunt inter proditores reputati ab Troia, patientibus victoribus Graecis, incolumes evasere, necessaria non fuit Antenori vel Aeneae, nisi quod alio vitio laborabant.” Cf. Serv. Aen. 1.242: “Nemo enim excusat nisi rem plenam suspicionis.” See the discussion of this gloss in Chapter 1, 71–​72.

174

174

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Salutati and his contemporaries have often been assigned to what scholars depicted as a new phase in the history of criticism and the reception of antiquity.12 Salutati himself was an adept humanist critic, and he righted several cases of misattribution: for instance, he maintained that Julius Caesar, and not Julius Celsus, had actually written the Bellum Gallicum, and he correctly realized that the popular Distichs of Cato were not actually by Cato.13 Humanist scholarship of this sort spawned new approaches to the authenticity of texts that claimed venerable ancient origins. Salutati embodied this new spirit, even if he did not always demolish fakes with confidence or finality: by this logic, perhaps he seems the perfect case of “close, but not quite.” He flourished just several decades before another scholar—​later lionized as the humanist critic par excellence—​did demolish a supposedly “ancient” text with the confidence and detail of a manifesto. The Florentine Chancellor raised the prospect of Dares’ spuriousness approximately forty years before Lorenzo Valla produced what would later become the locus classicus of how to debunk a forgery. All histories of false texts must somehow reckon with Valla, or at least the importance posthumously assigned to his methods. As we shall see, the assumptions that Valla made—​specifically about the relationship between language and its historical, temporal contexts—​would play a defining role in early modern assessments of the Phrygian. Whereas Salutati treated Dares and Dictys to a few lines of discussion, at the end of a treatise devoted to weightier matters, Valla produced a lengthy polemical takedown of the so-​called Donation of Constantine, combing through the text nearly line by line. The Donation claimed to be a fourth-​century grant, written by the Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester, and giving the papacy temporal control over much of Western Europe. Of course, it was not an authentic late antique document but rather a medieval fabrication, likely written sometime in the eighth century. The Donation was a key source for buttressing papal claims to political power. Valla, writing for his patron, the papal antagonist Alfonso of Aragon, decided to prosecute a simple case. He needed to show that a text that claimed to have been written in the fourth century had been produced far later.14

12. See Burke, Renaissance Sense, esp. 55. 13. See Ullman, The Humanism of Coluccio Salutati,  97–​98. 14. The literature on Valla is extensive. See Salvatore Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla: Umanesimo e teologia (Florence, 1972); Giovanni Antonazzi, Lorenzo Valla e la polemica sulla donazione di Constantino (Rome, 1985); Carlo Ginzburg, “Lorenzo Valla on the ‘Donation of Constantine,’ ” in History, Rhetoric, Proof, 54–​70; Robert Black, “The Donation of Constantine:  A New Source for the Concept of the Renaissance,” in Language and Images of Medieval Italy, ed. Alison Brown (Oxford, 1995), 51–​85; Hiatt, The Making of Medieval Forgeries, esp. 136–​55; and discussion in Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship,  35–​41.

175



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

175

In so doing Valla provided others with a template for showing how a text might not be as old as it claimed to be. To Valla, the Latin of the Donation was barbarous, and hence he indicted its forger for having the temerity to attribute barbarous speech to an age of culture and learning.15 Valla attacked the Donation on many fronts—​he called out its political infeasibility, its geographic anachronisms and the like—​but he reserved some of his most pointed language for his philological critique. In his estimation, the fourth-​century world of Constantine was ipso facto still an age of erudition: “Does not that barbarous way of talking (loquendi barbaries) attest that this nonsense was concocted (confictam) not in the age of Constantine, but later?”16 Like Salutati, Valla also weighed contradictory testimonies. But he wielded such comparisons with newfound temporal precision. Salutati had spoken of how the “most venerable author Livy” told a very different story from Dares and Dictys, but he did not explicitly state whether he thought Livy was older or younger than the Phrygian and the Cretan. Even if the latter two were apocryphal and therefore not genuine eyewitnesses to the Trojan War, he did not say when he thought their actual authors had flourished. In exactly what way they were historicorum antiquissimi remained unclear. Valla, on the other hand, linked antiquity and historical veracity in the most explicit of terms, while contrasting both concepts with an unpalatably late “barbarism.” At one point in his treatise, after citing such ancient authorities as Jerome and Varro to debunk a medieval legend about Augustus and the Sibyl, Valla threw up his hands in disgust: “This single ignorant man wants his tract, written in barbarous language (barbare scripto), to be believed more than the most trustworthy histories of the most circumspect men of antiquity (fidelissimis veterum prudentissimorum hominum historiis)!”17 Much of Renaissance humanist criticism was predicated upon this straightforward, and stark, distinction—​between antiquity and truth on the one hand and barbarism and falsehood on the other. Rendering judgments between texts depended not only on the number and character of historical witnesses, but also on their age. Would one rather trust a single source, written barbarously and ineptly, or a consensus “of the most prudent ancients” (veterum prudentissimorum

15. Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione 53, trans. G.W. Bowersock (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 90–​91:  “Deus te perdat, improbissime mortalium, qui sermonem barbarum attribuis seculo erudito.” Valla also wrote a treatise on Latin style, his Elegantiae linguae Latinae. 16. Valla, De donatione 57, trans. Bowersock, 98–​99: “Quid, illa loquendi barbaries nonne testatur non seculo Constantini, sed posteriori cantilenam hanc esse confictam?” 17. Valla, De donatione 72, trans. Bowersock, 118–​19: “Et hic unus indoctus plus vult libello suo etiam barbare scripto credi quam fidelissimis veterum prudentissimorum hominum historiis.”

176

176

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

hominum)? How one established this consensus, and confirmed the antiquity of its members, proved a far more difficult matter in practice. It would prove especially difficult when judging a history that was not just labeled ancient but was rather thought to be the most ancient of them all. Some early modern critics would use variations upon Valla’s argument when debunking Dares. They would claim that the language of the Destruction of Troy was barbarous: hence, the text was not ancient, and not true. Perhaps this had been Salutati’s line of reasoning, even if he had not taken the time to explain why he thought Dares apocryphal. But overt explanations would have to wait. What is most remarkable about Salutati’s doubts is the silence that followed them—​for more than a century—​even as Valla and others began to topple spurious works once considered ancient. No one else in the vast world of fifteenth-​ century humanist scholarship appears to have raised a word of warning against the Phrygian. On the contrary, many still read him. He was a darling of the first decades of print, and we possess nine different incunabula printings of the Destruction of Troy.18 Dares appeared at both Cologne and Venice as early as 1472, just three years after the 1469 editio princeps of his old antagonist, Virgil. A first in so many other things, Dares also obtained the status of an enviable and more specific first in the history of moveable type. For it was likely at Ghent in 1473 that William Caxton published the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, his own English translation of the French cleric Raoul Lefèvre’s Recueil des histoires de Troie.19 Lefèvre’s Troy romance, written a decade before, was based upon Guido delle Colonne and Benoît de Sainte-​Maure. Caxton’s Recuyell is commonly considered the earliest book printed in the English language, and thus that first was also derived ultimately from a tradition inspired by the first pagan historian. Meanwhile, Dictys also enjoyed good fortunes, despite the fact that Salutati had critiqued him and the Phrygian as a pair. In fact, perhaps given the vogue for all things Greek among fifteenth-​century Italian humanists, the Cretan eyewitness now seemed to enjoy greater respect than he had commanded in the Middle Ages. Several incunabula printed Dictys and Dares together, inaugurating a trend that would continue throughout the early modern period. In 1498, the Sicilian scholar Franciscus Faragonius—​who hailed from Messina, Guido delle Colonne’s hometown—​published an edition of the Cretan and the Phrygian. In

18. For details on these nine printings before 1500, see the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, available at https://​data.cerl.org/​istc 19. Raoul Lefèvre, Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, trans. William Caxton (Ghent, 1473). See background in Lotte Hellinga, William Caxton and Early Printing in England (London, 2010).

17



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

177

his dedicatory epistle, addressed to the Messinan nobleman Bernardus Rictius, he mentioned (and enthusiastically praised) only the former. Dares now became an afterthought, an unacknowledged appendix to Dictys. Faragonius extolled the Cretan in terms that many medieval writers had used to celebrate the Phrygian. As an eyewitness, Dictys offered historiae veritas, free from the blandishments of poetic fable. And his history was exemplary, full of useful lessons for someone, like Rictius, engaged in civic life. However, the exact nature of these lessons had changed: rather than the negative exempla of moral turpitude highlighted by the likes of Nescit mens nostra or Albert von Stade, Faragonius located in Troy positive exempla of political, military, and rhetorical prowess—​precisely how so many humanists sold ancient texts to modern readers. If the last chapter found us in the world of the medieval schoolroom, we have now entered the realm of its early modern counterpart:  Renaissance pedagogy did not necessarily regard antiquity as a warning about the misfortunes of the “erring world” but also found in it practical, political utility, theoretically replicable in a fifteenth-​century Italian city-​state. Moreover, this utility was also historicist in nature: for Faragonius, Dictys promised antiquarian information about the customs and manners of deepest antiquity. Almost a century after Salutati expressed his doubts about Dictys’ and Dares’ status as historicorum antiquissimi, Faragonius went on as if nothing had happened. As he proclaimed to Rictius: Accept this little book with happy face and cheerful expression. If you read it at leisure, free from the duties of the state that constantly distract you, you will discover the wonderful sharpness and the eloquent density of its writer . . . he [i.e., Dictys] wrote of things he saw, things at which he was present, and things he did . . . If you seek cleverness in war, you have Ulysses; if you desire exceptional fortitude, consider Achilles; and if the gravity of public speeches is your wish, place Nestor before your eyes. And finally, will it not be most pleasant to gain a thorough knowledge of the vestiges and manners of that most ancient age (vestigia ac mores antiquissimi illius saeculi), and, having let go of poetic fables (omissis poeticis fabulis), to be instructed and restored by the truth of history (historiae veritate)?20 20. Iesus Maria. Dictys Cretensis de historia belli Troiani et Dares Phrygius de eadem historia Troiana, ed. Franciscus Faragonius (Messina, 1498), sig. a ii recto–​verso:  “Accipies interim laeta fronte: ac hilari uultu libellum, quem si a rei publicae muneribus (quibus iugiter distineris) feriatus perlegeris, mirum scriptoris acumen argutamque densitatem deprendes . . . scripsit enim ea quae uidit, quibus interfuit, quae gessit  .  .  .  Nam si astutiam in bello quaeris, habes Ulyxem: si praestantiam fortitudinemque desideras, intuere Achillem: Si contionandi

178

178

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Like his medieval predecessors, Faragonius drew a polemical distinction between poeticae fabulae and historiae veritas and endorsed the latter’s superior exemplarity. In one sense, nothing had changed from the days of Joseph of Exeter and Albert von Stade. Yet in another sense, Faragonius could not have diverged more sharply from the medieval Dares poets concerning the import and nature of these exempla. He did not single out Helen’s adultery and Aeneas’ treason but rather Achilles’ fortitude and Nestor’s eloquence. These were examples to be emulated, not avoided. However, where was the Phrygian in this talk of historiae veritas? Faragonius did not say a word about him to Rictius. Sadly, perhaps Dares could not remain a first in everything. In 1499, just a year after Faragonius’ edition, the Italian humanist Polydore Vergil published a new work in an old genre. A few years later Polydore would travel to England, where in the ensuing decades he famously attacked the Arthur legend and in doing so challenged the historicity of Brutus and the fides of Geoffrey of Monmouth.21 Though not as famous as his subsequent critique of Brutus and company, Polydore’s 1499 De rerum inventoribus or On the Inventors of Things also sheds important light on humanist approaches to the past. It offered a catalog of firsts, much in the manner of Isidore of Seville or Hugh of St. Victor, yet it did not include all the firsts they had prioritized. In this work, Polydore explored the invention of everything from marriage to writing, perfume to glass. Like Isidore, he included a section on the earliest writers of history. But unlike his predecessor, he made no mention whatsoever of Dares. Whereas Isidore had memorably paired Dares and Moses, Polydore argued that Moses alone was the first historian and therefore far more ancient than any pagan. He dismissed Pliny’s suggestion that the logographer Cadmus of Miletus was the first to write history. For Moses had lived far before this Cadmus. Polydore then quoted from Eusebius’ De praeparatione evangelica and declared that Moses, “the first of all the ancients to record the lives of the Hebrews,” had chronicled “their political and practical way of life in historical narrative.”22 He

grauitatem peroptas, Nestorem prae oculis pone. Nonne denique uestigia ac mores illius antiquissimi saeculi pernoscere, et omissis poeticis fabulis historiae ueritate imbui atque refici, iucundissimum erit?” 21. Polydore Vergil, Anglicae historiae libri XXVI (Basel, 1534). 22.  Polydore Vergil, De inventoribus rerum 1.12.1–​2, ed. and trans. Brian P.  Copenhaver (Cambridge, MA, 2002), 106–​9. This Cadmus must not be confused with the Cadmus believed to have carried Phoenician letters into Greece, whom we will discuss in Chapter 6. On Polydore’s sources, and the long traditions of such “invention” literature, see Brian P. Copenhaver, “The Historiography of Discovery in the Renaissance:  The Sources and Composition of Polydore Vergil’s De Inventoribus Rerum, I–​III,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 41 (1978): 192–​214.

179



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

179

also made extensive use of Eusebius’ Chronicle, and following its authority he explained that Pherecydes—​whom, incidentally, Isidore had explicitly placed after Dares—​was likewise not a first, since he too far postdated Moses. And Moses, based on Eusebius’ authoritative testimony, had made the “first history of all (primum omnium historiam).”23 Now it was clear that Cadmus and Pherecydes would have flourished centuries after the Trojan War. In other words, if Dares really were who he said he was, he would have been far older than both of them. However, Polydore simply ignored the Phrygian. And thus he vanished from a genre in which he once had been a star. Polydore bookended his discussion of historical firsts with meditations on history itself. Like many humanists, he cited Ciceronian commonplaces. He began by repeating Cicero’s contention that history alone was the “witness of ages, the light of truth, the life of memory, and the teacher of life.” And he closed by restating Cicero’s first two laws of history:  “one should never dare say anything false,” and “one should always dare tell the truth.”24 It is unclear whether Polydore’s silence about Dares reflected a conscious application of Cicero’s dicta. Perhaps Dares had merely slipped his mind, or maybe he was unfamiliar with him. Yet silence—​especially from a scholar who also discredited none other than Geoffrey of Monmouth—​seems telling. Perhaps others shared Salutati’s unease about the Destruction of Troy, even if they did not take the time to voice their doubts explicitly. Cicero’s declaration that history was the “light of truth” (lux veritatis) and the like was a favorite of humanists of all stripes. But like all such exempla and aphorisms, it proved far more complicated to follow in practice. As discussed at the start of this book, Cicero had praised history as lux veritatis when celebrating oratory: history needed oratory, he argued, because the orator’s rhetorical prowess was necessary to present and transmit its light. Naked truth alone did not suffice. But inviting rhetoric to work for history—​though perhaps unavoidable—​ constituted a Faustian bargain. Inherent in this arrangement was the capacity of the former to subvert and distort the latter. Granted, perhaps distortion was inevitable as soon as res gestae became narrationes rerum gestarum; in practical terms it is almost impossible to imagine the former without mediation by some form of the latter. When he proposed his laws of history, Cicero had been concerned with how otherwise genuine histories might maintain objectivity and impartiality. Yet these concerns seem like child’s play when compared with the challenge posed by someone like Dares, who relied upon rhetoric—​specifically, a rhetoric

23. Polydore Vergil, De inventoribus rerum 1.12.3, ed. Copenhaver, 108–​11. 24. Cf. Cic. De or. 2.9.36 and 2.15.62, cited in Copenhaver’s notes at 589–​91.

180

180

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

of anti-​rhetoric—​not only to distort history, but also to fake his very status as historical.25 Many in the Middle Ages not only assumed that Dares was lux veritatis, but they also used him to highlight the superiority of historical truth over other ways of claiming veracity. Ironically, a fake that masqueraded as lux veritatis furnished its readers with a ready-​made indictment of the dangers of fictionality and its attendant rhetorical inventions. Faragonius voiced a variation on this theme when praising Dictys. But in the sixteenth century, some began to condemn Dares (and Dictys, too) as the very opposite of this Ciceronian ideal. Some—​more than ever before, in fact—​but by no means all. These critics remained in the minority. Others still accepted him—​not just with a Salutati-​like nod to the inertia of tradition, but also with bold and affirmative declarations of his faithful embodiment of lux veritatis, magistra vitae, and the like. Many continued to ascribe nothing less than self-​evidence to his fides, exactly as pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris, Joseph of Exeter, and Albert von Stade had done several centuries prior. The humanists’ embrace of the Ciceronian marriage of history and rhetoric surely stimulated the art of criticism, as the career of someone like Polydore Vergil demonstrates. However, it also promoted what in retrospect might seem the very opposite of criticism, as Polydore’s contemporary Franciscus Faragonius attests. As much as they hastened his death, early modern visions of history also kept Dares alive. Hence, the story of Dares in early modern scholarship—​in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and even well into the seventeenth—​ought to challenge our easy distinctions between the Middle Ages and early modernity. Specifically, it cautions us against reading the latter period as the Ur-​moment of a modern classical scholarship that invented clear-​sighted philology and broke from its credulous or uncritical antecedents. We now read these heroic narratives with a grain of salt; in many respects the continuities between medieval and early modern scholarship now look clearer than the contrasts. Yet the old assumptions persist, in subtle and often tacit assumptions about what was and was not believable before and after the so-​called renewal of classical antiquity. This is not to discount the innovations of scholars like Lorenzo Valla or even Coluccio Salutati, not only as critics but also as what later centuries would call classicists. Rather, it is to suggest that the very categories they used when performing criticism—​antiquity, autopsy, tradition, origins, historia, fabula, and the like—​were just as liable to promote the “first pagan historian” as challenge him, precisely because of his proffered status as 25. On Renaissance approaches to rhetoric, see for instance Nancy S. Struever, The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in Florentine Humanism (Princeton, 1970). On the importance of Cicero, see Virginia Cox and John O. Ward, eds., The Rhetoric of Cicero in Its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition (Leiden, 2006).

18



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

181

a first, a pagan, and last but not least, a historian. Indeed, the critical lexicon they used was not so different from that of Isidore, Servius, or even Cicero himself. Salutati’s silent copying of an entire Servian gloss, which at first glance might seem an “original” act of criticism, is a case in point. What was new, and what was not, in the critical discourses examined here? Rather than replace an old medieval paradigm, critics from Salutati and Lorenzo Valla to Dares’ sixteenth-​century detractors instead built upon ancient and medieval foundations. They added another evaluative category—​the question of genuineness versus spuriousness—​to the hermeneutic repertoire we have found deployed in the prior chapters. As argued here, they still operated according to a set of binaries. They still evaluated texts for their ethical utility (or lack thereof ), reading them for positive or negative exempla. They still compulsively compared history and poetry, historia and fabula. And when they described those who fabricated the texts they demolished as spurious, they often could not resist condemning these “forgers” in the moralizing, personalized language that the medieval Dares poets had used to damn the likes of Homer and Virgil. Valla’s scathing portrayal of “this single ignorant man” or hic unus indoctus, daring to challenge all antiquity, is telling. Many of the critics we will encounter here heaped the same kind of abuse upon the actual author of the Destruction of Troy. They flaunted their knowledge of antiquity by boasting that they were learned enough to grasp Dares’ ignorance and ineptitude. They transformed the morally tinged judgments that the Dares poets had inflicted upon the likes of Helen and Aeneas into moral judgments of Dares himself—​or rather the actual person behind the mask. They still deemed authorship a personal matter, even in an era we often identify with the rise of philology as impersonal science. What does the persistence of these binaries tell us about humanist conceptions of historical truth itself—​history as lux veritatis? They suggest that arriving at historical truth about the ancient past—​much as arriving at philological truth or ethical truth about said past—​remained a product of comparison.26 This comparative impulse guaranteed a deep strand of continuity beneath surface-​ level changes. Many of the humanist scholars we will encounter here continued to think in the either/​or terms we saw at work in the previous chapter: they still

26. On methods of comparison in early modern scholarship and beyond, see Peter N. Miller, “The Antiquary’s Art of Comparison: Peiresc and Abraxas,” in Philologie und Erkenntnis: Beiträge zu Begriff und Problem frühneuzeitlicher “Philologie,” ed. Ralph Häfner (Tübingen, 2001), 57–​94, and Anthony Grafton, “Christianity’s Jewish Origins Rediscovered: The Roles of Comparison in Early Modern Ecclesiastical Scholarship,” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 1 (2016): 13–​ 42, and the essays collected in Renaud Gagné, Simon Goldhill, and Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd, eds., Regimes of Comparatism:  Frameworks of Comparison in History, Religion and Anthropology (Leiden, 2019).

182

182

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

assumed that a given text either did or did not reveal useful truth about Troy, and that such truth was not only ethically charged, but also ultimately discoverable. Philology—​itself premised upon reading a text in light of other texts—​did not explode these comparisons, but rather perpetuated them. In the following chapters we will examine a very different, and perhaps unexpected, outcome of the comparative impulse: Dares found himself compared, whether positively or negatively, to the other texts that circulated with him in print and manuscript. Sometimes the sheer number of comparisons available to critics made certain truth—​especially about so distant a past as the Trojan one—​seem difficult or impossible. Comparison was and is that most basic of critical operations. But sometimes the configurations of texts and traditions that presented themselves to critics, thanks to the accidents of transmission, stymied the critic’s task. And because of this, Dares survived far longer than we might expect. Throughout early modern Europe, from Rome to Basel to Leiden, philologists, bibliographers, classical scholars, and literati spanning geographical and confessional boundaries commented in varying forms upon Dares’ contested authenticity. And for nearly every source that followed Salutati and questioned his reliability, others implicitly or explicitly reaffirmed his authority. Almost without exception, those who defended Dares did so without the slightest reference to the pseudo-​author’s critics. From the prefaces of printed editions to the vitae of encyclopedic compendia, Dares remained a canonical first in the history of history—​at least to some. Granted, forgeries—​even those dramatically denounced like the Donation of Constantine—​never perished in an instant. But the Phrygian’s uneven fortunes reflected far more than the slow, ad hoc nature of criticism. Rather, the coexistence of criticism and seeming credulity he fostered reflected all the rich contradictions imbedded in that ancient notion of history as lux veritatis. We will explore how these contradictions unfolded in the following pages.

Forgery and Criticism Ancient and Modern:  Dares, Annius, and Their Opponents Meanwhile, new forms of falsehood began to thrive. In 1498, right when Dictys and Dares were printed at Messina, the Antiquities of Annius of Viterbo were printed at Rome. Annius was a Dominican friar from Viterbo, who was later appointed Master of the Sacred Palace, a high-​ranking Vatican post, by Pope Alexander VI. He died but a few years later in 1502, perhaps—​if we believe one of the many legends about him—​due to a poisoning administered by Cesare Borgia, the pope’s son. The full title of his book was deceptively simple: Commentaria super opera diversorum auctorum de antiquitatibus loquentium or Commentaries

183



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

183

upon the Works of Diverse Authors Discussing Antiquities. The “diverse authors” included such figures as the Babylonian astronomer Berosus, the Egyptian priest Manetho, the Persian historian Metasthenes, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, the Greek historian Xenophon, and the Roman annalists Cato and Fabius Pictor, among others.27 Several of these authors were known to have written books now lost. Berosus, for instance, had written a lost history of Babylonia during the Seleucid age, and Cato the Elder (as we saw in Chapter 2) had composed a lost book on Roman origins. Annius claimed to have rediscovered this whole swath of lost works—​which he aptly described as Antiquities—​and published them along with his own commentaries. Taken together, they presented a new total vision of antiquity, produced from an amalgamation of biblical, Egyptian, Celtic, and Etruscan lore. At the heart of Annius’ project was a bold claim, elaborated from various medieval tales: the biblical Noah—​for whom the Roman god Janus was merely another, later name—​had migrated to Italy after the Flood and settled along the Tiber. There he had founded a flourishing ancient civilization, which became that of the Etruscans.28 Despite the outlandish nature of Annius’ claims, he asserted the fides of his texts in sober fashion. This strategy was apparent already in his preface, where, in an allusion to Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, he explained how he had ordered his books in “the Plinian manner,” each with impressive lists of the ancient auctoritates cited therein. In the Antiquities themselves, he outlined systematic rules of historical criticism. He claimed, just as Dio Chrysostom and others had claimed

27. Giovanni Nanni [Annius of Viterbo], Commentaria super opera diversorum auctorum de antiquitatibus loquentium (Rome, 1498). Citations that follow are taken from the 1515 Paris edition. 28. For a selection of the extensive literature related to Annius and his afterlife, see Werner Goez, “Die Anfänge der historischen Methoden-​Reflexion im italienischen Humanismus,” in Geschichte in der Gegenwart:  Festschrift für Kurt Kluxen, ed. Ernst Heinen and Hans Julius Schoeps (Paderborn, 1972), 3–​ 21; Walter Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus:  Counterfeit and Fictive Editors of the Early Sixteenth Century (Ph.D. Dissertation, Cornell University, 1979); Christopher R. Ligota, “Annius of Viterbo and Historical Method,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987): 44–​56; Walter Stephens, Giants in Those Days: Folklore, Ancient History, and Nationalism (Lincoln, 1989); Anthony Grafton, “Invention of Traditions and Traditions of Invention in Renaissance Europe: The Strange Case of Annius of Viterbo,” in The Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Grafton and Ann Blair (Philadelphia, 1990), 8–​38; Ann Moyer, “Historians and Antiquarians in Sixteenth-​Century Florence,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): 177–​93; Walter Stephens, “When Pope Noah Ruled the Etruscans:  Annius of Viterbo and His Forged ‘Antiquities’,” MLN 119 (2004):  201–​23; Ingrid D. Rowland, The Scarith of Scornello:  A Tale of Renaissance Forgery (Chicago, 2004); and Brian Curran, The Egyptian Renaissance: The Afterlife of Ancient Egypt in Early Modern Italy (Chicago, 2007).

184

184

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

so long ago, that one could not trust the histories produced by “lying Greece” or Graecia mendax—​a pejorative appellation extracted from Juvenal’s tenth Satire. The Egyptians, Babylonians, and Persians (i.e., his Berosus, Manetho, and others) were far more credible, since they, unlike those mendacious Greeks, had written their histories from libraries and archives.29 Annius also produced memorable historical aphorisms, such as his claim that the histories written by a people themselves were considered more credible than those composed by outsiders.30 Most daringly, he suggested that his Berosus and Manetho had had access to a fuller history of the world than even what Moses had recorded in the Pentateuch. Annius’ motivations for constructing so bizarre a work are unclear. But within decades of its publication, the Antiquities had occasioned a mix of enthusiastic acceptance and polemical critique. These critiques not only demolished Annius himself but also stimulated newfound meditations on historical method, just as Annius had meditated on such topics in his commentaries. As Anthony Grafton has observed, “in the Renaissance, even more than in previous periods, forger and critic marched in lockstep.”31 A feedback loop between the two gained strength. The learned humanist culture that had produced Lorenzo Valla also produced Annius of Viterbo. And, in turn, it produced many who rejected Annius with the same combination of erudition and vitriol that Valla had aimed against the Donation. Some of these critics did not stop with Annius. Rather, they incorporated their denunciations of the Antiquities into a broader critique of the many types of falsehoods that had infected, and continued to infect, the ostensibly ancient canon. Not surprisingly, several of these attacks against Annius also engulfed Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis. We cannot know for certain why some of the most pointed attacks against Dares to date emerged from Annius’ first and most vocal critics. Perhaps their association in the history of criticism stemmed from the similarity between how the Phrygian and the Dominican sought to pass off their works as true and genuine. As analyzed in depth by Walter Stephens, Annius used that device honed by Dares, Dictys, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and many others—​namely, he too asserted the fortuitous rediscovery of a hitherto lost book.32 Dares, once bolstered 29. See Ligota, “Annius,” 47–​49, and Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus, 43–​44. For Annius’ notion of Graecia mendax, see Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus, esp.  110. Cf. Juv. 10.174–​75:  “quidquid Graecia mendax/​audet in historia.” 30. Annius of Viterbo, Antiquitatum variarum volumina XVII (Paris, 1515), fol. 53v. On this point, see Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus, 39. 31. Grafton, Forgers and Critics, 31. 32.  On the similarities among Dictys, Dares, Geoffrey, and Annius, see Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus, 141–​43.

185



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

185

by association with Geoffrey’s history, was later attacked by association, however indirect, with another text very similar to Geoffrey’s. Annius also conjured a liber vetustissimus. He claimed he found many of his texts in a book assembled by one William of Mantua, just as Geoffrey had attributed the provenance of his history to Walter, archdeacon of Oxford (although at least Walter, unlike Annius’ Mantuan, had actually existed!).33 Annius first invoked his William when introducing what he claimed were some fragments of Cato’s On Origins. This was the same venerable Roman source that William of Malmesbury thought he had appended to Dares Phrygius. Annius spoke with an affected casualness about how he had stumbled upon this fictitious book. “Whoever this Cato might have been who wrote On Origins, I  have not been able to possess him in whole, except for disorderly fragments in the ancient collections (Collectaneis vetustis) of a certain teacher, William of Mantua.” Annius mentioned this mysterious Mantuan again at the beginning of his commentary on another of his fabricated ancient texts—​purportedly the Itinerary of the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius. Here he added more details, specifying in an equally offhand fashion that William had assembled his anthology in the year 1315.34 Hence, Annius presented himself as a secondhand compiler: he had merely discovered—​and lightly edited—​the lost book of someone who had himself discovered lost books approximately two centuries before. This early modern forger did not just fabricate a collection of forged ancient texts; in the process he also produced a pseudo-​history of medieval compilation. He asserted that his imagined “William of Mantua” had done something quite similar to what so many medieval scribes and compilers had done when they joined together Dares, Geoffrey, and other genealogical narratives in their manuscripts. Although many of Annius’ specific claims were novel, his larger project belonged to a tradition with deep late antique and medieval precedent.35 In

33. However, Annius did not attribute all his texts to William’s miscellany; he also credited his Berosus and Manetho to an Armenian friar. See Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus, 149–​51. 34. Annius of Viterbo, Antiquitatum variarum volumina XVII, fol. 57r: “Porro quisquis fuerit iste Cato qui de originibus scripsit: non potui eum integrum habere: nisi fragmenta et quidem inordinata in Collectaneis vetustis cuiusdam magistri Guilielmi Mantuani.” And at fol. 72v, the beginning of his commentary on what he claimed was the itinerary of Antoninus Pius, Annius provided more detail on just when William had compiled his anthology: “Argumento sunt duo fragmenta q[uae] apud me sunt ex collectaneis magistri Guillelmi:  collecta anno Salutis MCCCXV.” Cf. Stephens, Berosus Chaldaeus, 147–​48, and Stephens, “Complex Pseudonymity,” 699. 35.  On the medieval, monastic character of Annius’ project, see Grafton, Forgers and Critics,  48–​49.

186

186

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Grafton’s words, the Antiquities represented yet another incarnation of that long-​ held impulse “to enfold in a single encyclopedic history the origins of society and culture,” much as Eusebius or Isidore of Seville had aimed to do a millennium earlier.36 Fredegar, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Hugh of St. Victor, Vincent of Beauvais, and others produced variations on this theme throughout the Middle Ages. As we saw, the continuators of the Fredegar Chronicle wove both Dares and the Franks into Eusebius’ reckoning of Troy. Geoffrey incorporated Eusebian details into his History of the Kings of Britain, as he attempted to establish synchronicity between biblical history and his imagined British past. Annius too participated in this ongoing project, begun in the waning days of the ancient world and continued throughout the Middle Ages, to order the textual products (whether genuine or forged) of an otherwise alien antiquity. Naturally, his particular encyclopedic vision of antiquity aroused the ire of those who held quite different views of the distant past and its truth-​value. One of the first to attack Annius was the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives, a follower of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. Vives’ life followed an eventful sixteenth-​ century humanist itinerary:  he was born at Valencia, studied at Paris, taught at Louvain, and eventually went to England where he tutored the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, the future Queen Mary. Vives left England and settled in Bruges after he opposed Henry’s divorce from Catherine and spent much of his career critiquing scholasticism. At the urging of Erasmus, he wrote a monumental commentary on Augustine’s City of God. In 1531, he published a pedagogical treatise, his De tradendis disciplinis or On Teaching the Disciplines.37 In it, he outlined a hypothetical curriculum for pupils, opining on what books students should read and what they should avoid. In so doing, Vives indicted the Antiquities, while also attacking Dares and Dictys in the process.38 In Book V of his De tradendis disciplinis, Vives discussed history. He began, like Polydore Vergil, by attempting to establish firsts. Different people, he noted, celebrated different authors as the most ancient historians. The Egyptians claimed their priests, and the Greeks claimed Cadmus. But it was far more certain that Abraham had left behind a history before all of these pagans. Vives went

36. Grafton, “Invention,” 16. 37. On Vives, see Valerio Del Nero, “The De Disciplinis as a Model of a Humanistic Text,” in A Companion to Juan Luis Vives, ed. Charles Fantazzi (Leiden, 2008), 177–​226, and Karl Kohut, “Literaturtheorie und Literaturkritik bei Juan Luis Vives,” in Juan Luis Vives, ed. August Buck (Hamburg, 1981), 35–​47. 38. On Vives and Annius, see Stephens, “Pope Noah,” 206, and Grafton, “Invention,” 24.

187



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

187

a step further than Polydore, Isidore, and the like, who had begun the history of history with Moses. Moses, so Vives explained, had obtained his account of the “origins of the heavens and the earth” from Abraham, and Abraham had received it, in turn, from the sons of Adam and Eve’s son Seth. History had begun at the beginning: “It is clear that the use of history (historiae usum) began almost with humankind itself, and hence it was without doubt expedient for the human race.”39 Having established history’s august pedigree, a few lines later Vives repeated that “Moses handed down the origins of the world (mundi origines) in a book, which for this reason is titled Genesis.” Yet in the very same breath, Vives attacked a false upstart who had also dared opine on the world’s origins. “On the same subject a little book is published under the name of Berosus the Babylonian, but it is a fabrication (commentum), wonderfully pleasing to unlearned and lazy men.”40 Annius’ spurious Babylonian priest was an attack on the rightful priority of Moses and Abraham. After demolishing Berosus, Vives condemned other items in Annius’ corpus. Cato, Fabius Pictor, and the like, “strung together in the same book by Annius of Viterbo,” were also stuffed with ridiculous lies. “The very body of the history has been fabricated,” he concluded.41 Vives then returned to safe books, and proper biblical history:  having recommended reading Genesis—​and not Annius—​he enumerated Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, and Judges. Again he warned that comparable pagan accounts of the distant past could not be trusted, and in doing so he offered a vision of Graecia mendax not all that different from Annius’ own. As the Spanish humanist informed his hypothetical pupils, “Greek history is most fabulous (fabulosissima) up to the Olympiads, nor would it have separated truths (vera) from falsehoods (falsis).” More alarmingly, historical veracity did not emerge triumphant even after this early age of Greek fable: “Neither is the history that follows free of lies, even if it is a little more redolent of truth.” For instance,

39. Juan Luis Vives, De tradendis disciplinis (Antwerp, 1531), fol.127r: “Authores rerum gestarum vetustissimi alii ab aliis celebrantur. Aegyptii sacerdotes suos nobis ingerunt. Graeci Cadmum Agenoris filium. Sed Abraamum Urensem priorem illis omnibus historiam reliquisse multo est certius, ex qua sunt origines caeli et terrae apud Mosen, atque eam ipsam historiam Abraamus ex filiis Sethi accepit . . . quo apparet historiae usum cum ipsis pene hominibus coepisse, nimirum sic expediebat humani generi.” The translation used here is taken with modifications from Juan Luis Vives, On Education, trans. Foster Watson (Cambridge, 1913), 237. 40. Vives, De tradendis disciplinis, fol.127r: “Mundi origines Moses tradit libro, qui ea de caussa genesis inscribitur. Libellus circunfertur Berosi Babylonii titulo de eadem re, sed commentum est: quod indoctis et ociosis hominibus mire allubescit.” See Vives, On Education, trans. Watson, 238. 41. Vives, De tradendis disciplinis, fol.127v: “Sed ipsum historiae corpus commentitium est, nec illius, cuius titulum mentitur.” See Vives, On Education, trans. Watson, 238–​39.

18

188

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

although Homer contained some historical truth, Vives maintained that, “almost all things in his work are clothed in fables.” Immediately after launching this critique of Homeric fabulae, Vives turned around and attacked Homer’s ostensibly historicizing antagonists. One sentence later, he condemned both Dares’ and Dictys’ accounts of Troy as “the figments (figmenta) of those who desired to amuse themselves (voluerunt ludere) with that most famous war.”42 Unlike Coluccio Salutati, Vives did not hedge: there was no doubting that Dares and Dictys were fiction. Having attacked Dares and Dictys, Vives continued his attacks against both Homer and anti-​Homeric revisionism. Dio Chrysostom “babbles on that Troy was not captured,” and Philostratus “corrects the great lies of Homer with greater lies.”43 Although he did not say explicitly when he thought they had written their figmenta, Vives seemed to identify both the Phrygian and the Cretan with the spirit of the Second Sophistic, mentioning them in the same breath as Dio Chrysostom and Philostratus. He even detected something of the parodic in their intentions, as seen in his telling use of the verb ludere. Dares and Dictys had “played with fictions,” not unlike those mendacious poets whom Joseph of Exeter had banished from his Iliad. For Vives, there was no opposition between “historians” like Dares and Dictys and poets like Homer; rather, they were both part of a larger problem. Their works were all antithetical to historiae veritas. The former did not correct the mendacity of the latter but rather augmented it. And Annius’ recent experiment in mendacity had only exacerbated this long-​standing problem. Vives was the first to link the untruth of the Destruction of Troy to the murky historicity of the distant past writ large. Because the distant past was fabulous, Dares and Dictys, Manetho and Berosus, Homer and Dio were all ipso facto suspect. Yet this insistence on the dubious nature of deep antiquity was not necessarily some prescient harbinger of modern disenchantment. First, Vives’ attack against the deep pagan past reinforced the orthodox Christian position on the priority of biblical history, as seen in his parallel treatment of figures like Abraham or Moses. Second, Vives’ skepticism about this past reflected his 42.  Vives, De tradendis disciplinis, fol.127v:  “Graeca historia fabulosissima est usque ad Olympiades, nec quisquam vera a falsis discreuerit: sed nec quae deinceps sequitur mendaciis caret, licet paulo verecundior: ad eam nonnihil adiumenti Homerus adfert in utroque poemate, etsi convestiuntur in eo fabulis pene omnia. Dares Phrygius, et Dictis Cretensis, figmenta sunt eorum, qui de bello famosissimo voluerunt ludere.” See Vives, On Education, trans. Watson, 239. See discussion of this passage at Prosperi, “Il paradosso,” 49. 43. Vives, De tradendis disciplinis, fol.127v: “Dion Piusiensis [sic] Troiam non fuisse captam argutatur. Philostratus in Heroicis magna Homeri mendacia maioribus mendaciis corrigit.” See Vives, On Education, trans. Watson, 239.

189



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

189

faithful application of historical principles voiced by ancient texts themselves. After all, the untrustworthy nature of early Greek history was a well-​known ancient trope; it had informed the anti-​Homeric sentiments of Dio Chrysostom and Philostratus, even if Vives found those authors of the Second Sophistic to be just as untrustworthy as Homer itself. And Graecia mendax had recently been given renewed life by a Dominican monk, Annius himself. Vives also echoed the spirit of a more specific ancient method for drawing a temporal line in the sand between myth and history. His observation that history before the Olympiads was fabulous reflected that ancient schema of the Roman antiquary Varro. As the third-​century Roman miscellanist Censorinus reported, Varro had divided all of time into three neat phases, cleaved according to the degree and type of knowledge attainable about them. The first he named “unknown” (ἄδηλον); the second, “mythical” (μυθικόν); and the third, “historical” (ἱστορικόν).44 The events of Troy belonged to this middle epoch, a period that merited the status of mythical because it contained “many fabulous things” (multa fabulosa). As Varro calculated, it consisted of about 1600 years: four hundred years from the Cataclysm of Ogygius to the reign of Inachus, eight hundred years from Inachus to the Trojan War, and then a final four hundred years to the First Olympiad. These final four hundred years of mythic time possessed properties in common with the properly verifiable history that followed: “These years alone, although the final years of mythic time, some have wished to define more certainly (certius), because they are nearest from the memory of writers (memoria scriptorum).”45 Troy possessed a strange indeterminacy: it belonged to a period primarily knowable via myth, but it was late enough in this murky epoch to be close to memoria scriptorum and hence share properties with the more reliable historical age that followed. Yet only Varro’s third and final phase, the period from the First Olympiad to the present, actually merited the name of historical, since it alone could be found in “true histories” (veris historiis). Whereas Varro had allowed some shade of history to extend back into the age of myth, Vives worried that myth had

44. Censorinus, DN 21.1: “Nunc vero id intervallum temporis tractabo, quod ἱστορικόν Varro appellat. Hic enim tria discrimina temporum esse tradit: primum ab hominum principio ad cataclysmum priorem, quod propter ignorantiam vocatur ἄδηλον, secundum a cataclysmo priore ad olympiadem primam, quod, quia multa in eo fabulosa referuntur, μυθικόν nominatur, tertium a prima olympiade ad nos, quod dicitur ἱστορικόν quia res in eo gestae veris historiis continentur.” 45. Censorinus, DN 21.2: “Hinc [i.e., Troy’s fall] ad olympiadem primam paulo plus quadringentos; quos solos, quamvis mythici temporis postremos, tamen, quia a memoria scriptorum proximos, quidam certius definere voluerunt.” On Varro’s periodization and the importance of Troy to it, see Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar,  81–​86.

190

190

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

trickled down into the age of history. Not even these post-​Olympiad historiae, so he claimed, were entirely verae. In arguing thus, Vives implied that although Dares and Dictys claimed to derive from the fabulous age, they were actually post-​Homeric: they were ludic exercises concocted in a historical age that was not yet “free of lies.” After all, any history that purported to date from the time of Troy could not be true, since history then had been nothing but fabulosissima. For Vives, an ancient periodizing schema functioned as a tool of higher criticism. Unlike Salutati, who took the very antiquity of tradition as a reason not to doubt it, the Spanish humanist found antiquity ipso facto suspect due to its very distance from the present. Perhaps Vives, who likewise attacked the authenticity of works of hagiography and ecclesiastical history, sought to show that he was not singling out the Christian past but rather critiquing pagan mendacity as well. Though this sedulous concern for authenticity had hardly sprung up ex nihilo in the early decades of the sixteenth century, it owed much to a program spearheaded by Vives’ model, Erasmus. Erasmus had, in turn, been inspired by Lorenzo Valla: he discovered and published Valla’s notes on the New Testament, suggesting how philological criticism could be applied even to Holy Writ.46 Throughout his career, Erasmus probed problems of forgery and spuria. He launched his most systematic treatment of these issues in his preface to the second volume of his edition of Jerome, published in 1516. This volume contained works that Erasmus judged were not genuine products of the church father. Its preface morphed into a mini-​treatise of sorts on forgeries and spuria. This important document in the history of criticism is essential to understanding Dares’ subsequent fortunes, as will become clear in the pages that follow. Erasmus explained that Jerome was hardly alone in suffering from such falsifications, whether accidental or deliberate. On the contrary, “the writer does not exist who has not had something falsely ascribed to him.”47 Although Erasmus did not mention Dares, Dictys, or Annius, he rattled off a litany of false texts, and his treatment of them sheds important light on how other critics would later evaluate both the Phrygian and the Annian corpus. Fittingly enough, the first author he tackled was Homer: “among the Greeks, nothing is older than Homer.” Despite, or perhaps because of, Homer’s status as a first, many spurious passages

46. Jerry H. Bentley, “Erasmus’ Annotationes in Novum Testamentum and the Textual Criticism of the Gospels,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 67 (1976): 33–​53. See also Grafton, Forgers and Critics, 43–​44, and Burke, Renaissance Sense,  58–​60. 47. Jerome, Opera omnia: tomus secundus, ed. Desiderius Erasmus (Basel, 1516), fol. 2v: “. . . cum alioqui nullus sit omnino scriptor, cui non aliquid falso fuerit inscriptum.” For an English translation, see the Collected Works of Erasmus:  Patristic Scholarship:  The Edition of Saint Jerome, ed. and trans. James F. Brady and John C. Olin (Toronto, 1992), 72.

19



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

191

had crept into his poems. And so the Alexandrian grammarian Aristarchus had cleansed the Homeric corpus: the most ancient of poets had helped spawn the ancient art of criticism, of which Erasmus saw both Jerome and himself as heirs.48 After discussing other spuria in the Greek canon, Erasmus then turned to the Latin. Citing an anecdote from Aulus Gellius, he repeated how Varro had deemed only twenty-​one of the many comedies that circulated under the name of Plautus as “genuine and of indubitable origin” (germanas et originis indubitatae); according to Gellius, these lucky few came to bear the title of Varronian.49 In rapid succession, Erasmus then indicted works erroneously attributed to Cicero, Virgil, Quintilian, and Seneca.50 From ancient Roman spuria, he turned to forgeries and misattributions in the Judeo-​Christian tradition, from books of the Bible to patristic authors like Jerome himself. In fact, “this kind of false attribution of books was not only more common but also more shameless among Christians than it was among pagans.”51 As we shall see, this parallelism between pagan and Christian falsehoods would motivate some later assessments of the Phrygian. Erasmus, Vives, and others saw forgery as nothing less than a universal affliction, cutting across languages, periods, and belief systems. Erasmus devoted the second half of his preface to the question of how these false texts gained acceptance in the first place. Here he combined criticism with consideration of real, physical books. The instability of authorship and attribution stemmed from centuries of readers’ interactions with material texts. Codices were always prone to swallowing up heterogeneous works into an imagined textual or authorial unity. If one picked up a manuscript and skimmed it quickly, its multiple works by multiple authors could easily seem the single work of a single author. This engulfing effect is something that we saw at work in Chapter 2, especially with William of Malmesbury’s pseudo-​Cato. As we will discuss in detail in Chapter 6, these problems continued to color Dares’ fortunes well into the seventeenth century. Finally, having outlined both the prevalence and origins of spuria, Erasmus tackled how to unmask them. Successful criticism required far more than

48. Jerome, Opera, ed. Erasmus, fol. 2v. See Collected Works, ed. Brady and Olin, 71. 49. Jerome, Opera, ed. Erasmus, fol. 2v: “Inter tam multas comoedias quae Plautini nominis habebant inscriptionem, unam tantum et viginti, veluti germanas et originis indubitatae recipit M. Varro, uir undecumque doctissimus, quas ob eam rem Varronianas fuisse uocatas, testis est Aulus Gellius.” Cf. Gell. NA 3.3.1–​4. 50. Jerome, Opera, ed. Erasmus, fol. 2v. 51. Jerome, Opera, ed. Erasmus, fol. 3r: “. . . et reperiet hoc genus falsas librorum inscriptiones apud Christianos fuisse, tum crebriores, tunc impudentiores, quam fuerint apud ethnicos.” See Collected Works, ed. and trans. Brady and Olin, 73.

192

192

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

spotting internal inconsistencies or anachronisms, or understanding the material properties of texts. A skilled forger could easily master all these things. Rather, he proposed a disarmingly simple test, which numerous critics would apply to the Phrygian over the course of the next two centuries. In language imbued with ethical judgment, he declared that the “clearest index” or certissimus index of a text’s authorship was whether it revealed the “character and quality of speech” (character orationis et habitus) of its purported author: “As each individual has his own appearance, his own voice, his own character and disposition, so each has his own appearance.”52 If one were intimate enough with the character and habitus of an author, by such connoisseurship one could ascertain whether or not a given text was actually their work. Erasmus claimed he simply knew it when he saw it. Citing Gellius again, he explained how Varro had followed this rule. So had Aristarchus and Jerome himself, the latter of whom was not only Erasmus’ object of study, but also his model of scholarship.53 Granted, Erasmus’ rule proved far easier in precept than in practice. It raised a problem of method, a classic hermeneutic circle: one needed a text that everyone agreed was genuine to compare it with one that was potentially doubtful or forged. One had to see the former to see the latter. The discernment of style as an index of authorship was not only an ethical judgment of character, but it was also a form of eyewitnessing, predicated upon autopsy. After all, this was precisely the language that Joseph of Exeter had used to describe Dares: the Phrygian was a certior index or a “more certain witness” to the Trojan War than those poets who had had the audacity to write of what they had not seen. But we cannot take leave of Erasmus without noting that he also pursued a more conspiratorial line of reasoning. Like so many of the other critics examined here, from Lorenzo Valla to those who would attack the Phrygian, he could not resist rendering criticism into an ad hominem affair. He did not only identify those works attributed to Jerome that were in fact spurious, but he also even went so far as to conjure a single forger responsible for them. He too transformed the task of criticism into the moral condemnation of a specific individual, even if he did not know his name. According to his theory, this figure had forged works not only of

52. Jerome, Opera, ed. Erasmus, fol. 3v: “Certissimus index, et uere lydius, ut aiunt, lapis est, character orationis et habitus. Ut sua cuique facies, ut sua cuique uox, ut suus cuique mos et genius, ita suus cuique stilus.” See Collected Works, ed. and trans. Brady and Olin, 76. For discussion of this criterion, see Eugene F. Rice, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore, 1988), 125–​26, and Jill Kraye, “Erasmus and the Canonization of Aristotle: The Letter to John More,” in England and the Continental Renaissance: Essays in Honour of J.B. Trapp, ed. Edward Chaney and Peter Mack (Woodbridge, 1990), esp. 45. 53. Jerome, Opera, ed. Erasmus, fol. 3v.

193



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

193

Jerome, but also of Ambrose and Augustine. In lurid language, he announced that “he [i.e., the forger] had a prodigious lust (prodigiosa libido), so to speak, or rather a mad desire, to defile in every way all the works of Jerome . . . just as one might defile a noble wine with urine or vinegar beyond any possibility of restoring it.”54 Later in his edition, the humanist proposed a specific historical identity for “that impostor” (impostor ille). Erasmus deemed him a garrulous and unlearned Augustinian monk, who lived some two centuries before in an age clouded by ignorance—​i.e., in what we would call the later Middle Ages.55 Indeed, it is striking to observe resonances between Erasmus’ seemingly reasonable hypothesis and the far more outlandish conspiracy theory of Jean Hardouin, who—​as we will discuss extensively in the Conclusion—​likewise charged medieval monks with the systematic forgery of ancient texts. Criticism could not always stay sober. The Portuguese humanist Gaspar Barreiros would put Erasmian principles into action against the Phrygian, approximately three decades after Vives’ De tradendis. In 1565 Barreiros published his Censure against a Certain Author Circulated under the False Title of Berosus the Chaldean, one of the most intricate attacks penned against Annius of Viterbo.56 He had originally written his Censure in his native Portuguese but then, after traveling to Rome, published a revised version in Latin. Latinity was of paramount important to Barreiros, as he made clear in his dedicatory epistle to the Italian cardinal Marcantonio Amulio. As Walter Stephens has discussed, Barreiros viewed the modern vernaculars as dangerous threats to Latin’s hegemony, and he deplored the recent canonization of Italian writers like Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto as worthy rivals to the ancients. Perhaps he saw Annius’ work as yet another tasteless modern attempt to rival true antiquity.57 Not unlike Joseph of Exeter and his twelfth-​century colleagues, the

54.  Jerome, Opera, ed. Erasmus, fol. 3r:  “Ipse plurimis et manifestis argumentis deprehendi, quendam fuisse, cui praecipuum studium fuerit, ut coccycis in morem, suas naenias alienis operibus insereret, potissimum Ambrosii, Augustini, et Hieronymi. Nam stilus palam arguit eundem fuisse. Huic prodigiosa quaedam fuit libido, uel insania potius, omneis Hieronymianas lucubrationes modis omnibus conspurcare . . . quasi si generosum uinum lotio uities aut aceto, ne quis mederi queat.” See Collected Works, ed. and trans. Brady and Olin, 74–​75. 55. Jerome, Opera, ed. Erasmus, fol. 189r–​191v. See Collected Works, ed. and trans. Brady and Olin, 83–​84 and 87–​91. 56. Gaspar Barreiros, Censura, in quendam auctorem, qui sub falsa inscriptione Berosi Chaldaei circunfertur (Rome, 1565). The fullest treatment of Barreiros’ text is found in Walter Stephens, “Exposing the Archforger: Annius of Viterbo’s First Master Critic,” in Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, ed. Stephens and Havens, 170–​90. See also Giuseppe Marcocci, “Contro i falsari: Gaspar Barreiros censore di Annio da Viterbo,” Rinascimento 50 (2010): 343–​59. 57. Here see Stephens, “Exposing the Archforger,” in Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, ed. Stephens and Havens, 184–​85.

194

194

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Portuguese humanist contributed to yet another iteration of the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns. Before he turned to pseudo-​Berosus, he outlined a brief history of how Latin had degenerated from its classical heights, and in doing so he expressed sentiments akin to those that Valla had voiced a century prior: “Not only has the iniquity of time annihilated innumerable writings of the wisest men, but it has also destroyed that ancient eloquence of Latin speech, and entirely extinguished every light of eloquence.”58 Even in antiquity itself, Latinity had started to degenerate from the apex of “that golden age of Cicero.” It had begun to lose its dignity, and its “true and genuine image” (veram atque germanam effigiem).59 Barreiros—​like Valla before him—​based his criticism in part on this chronology of Latinity’s lapse into barbarism. Such criticism depended upon assumptions about the “true and genuine image” or vera atque germana effigies of either a particular author or an entire language. Barreiros’ phrase was yet another variation on that formulation both Erasmus and Gellius had used for separating the wheat from the chaff, and genuine works from their spurious counterparts. Yet much had also changed in the intervening century between Valla and Barreiros. Although a complete survey of the intricacies of these Latin “language wars” is beyond this book’s scope, it will suffice to note that Cicero’s stock had risen considerably between the fifteenth century and the sixteenth. In many corners of the humanist world, he had gone from one canonical author among others to the veritable gold standard of proper Latin style.60 None other than Erasmus had lampooned the excesses of such Ciceronian imitatio in his mock dialogue, the Ciceronianus. And even many who were not paid up Ciceronians still used him as a model for their own Latin compositions, thanks in part to works such

58. Barreiros, Censura, 2: “Nec uero scripta tantum innumerabilia sapientissimorum uirorum temporis iniquitas deleuit: sed antiquam illam latini sermonis elegantiam, omneque prorsus etiam eloquentiae lumen extinxit.” 59. Barreiros, Censura, 3: “Et tamen iam inde latina eloquentia, quam aurea illa Ciceronis aetas in altissimo paulo ante uiderat gradu collocatam, naturaleque illud, et non fucatum sermonis genus, coepit a summo nitore, et a diuino illo orationis genere deflectere, eoque passim deduci, ut omnem prorsus ornatum, dignitatemque amiserit, et ueram atque germanam effigiem, quemadmodum aut non bene constitutum, aut iam senio confectum corpus, omnino mutauerit.” 60. On various aspects of Ciceronianism and debates over the Latin canon in early modern scholarship, see Carlo Dionisotti, Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana (Turin, 1967); G.W. Pigman III, “Imitation and the Renaissance Sense of the Past: The Reception of Erasmus’ Ciceronianus,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9 (1979): 155–​77; John F. D’Amico, “The Progress of Renaissance Latin Prose: The Case of Apuleianism,” Renaissance Quarterly 37 (1984): 351–​92; and Martin McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo (Oxford, 1995). See also Leonhardt, Latin, esp. 186–​89.

195



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

195

as the edition and commentary of Piero Vettori and the Cicero thesaurus of Marius Nizolius. Barreiros’ own experience forms an intriguing footnote to this larger story, mentioned in the Introduction, of Latinity as a tool of elite self-​ formation. Perhaps the Portuguese humanist’s vehement concern for linguistic purity stemmed from his own sociocultural anxieties, especially as a scholar from the periphery of the Latinate world who, upon arrival in Rome, gave up his own native tongue in favor of Cicero’s golden Latinity. Like Erasmus, Barreiros described forgery as a global problem. With a heavy dose of moralizing polemic, he compared it to a sickness. His analogy not only explained the motivations of forgers but also characterized the manner in which they spread their creations, contagion-​like, throughout genuine canons and corpora. Pseudo-​Berosus possessed clear precedents: Before I proceed to this disputation, I must admonish those who are about to read my [words] to remember that, just as in every age people have repeatedly been found who—​driven by an excessive desire for riches—​ have very brazenly counterfeited most precious gems, herbal medicines, and wills, documents, their seals, and also coins, so [every age] has not lacked those who, driven by a certain persistence, or whatever other sickness (morbo) of the mind, either contaminated the books of others with their own writings, like moles sprinkled upon [the skin] (tanquam naevis inspersis), or inscribed them with the names of the wisest men.61 As a preliminary to his takedown of Annius’ Berosus, Barreiros offered examples of this sickness from every age. Among the first two he cited were Dares and Dictys. The actual author of these Trojan histories, “whoever he was,” had “concocted falsehood” (mendacium confinxit), masking his fiction (figmentum) under the “appearance of truth” (ueritatis speciem).62 Like Vives, Barreiros classified the Destruction of Troy as a figment, and like Erasmus’ conjuring of the Jerome forger,

61. Barreiros, Censura, 18–​19: “Ac, priusquam ad hanc disputationem aggredior, uisum est faciendum eos admonere, qui haec nostra sunt lecturi, ut meminerint, quemadmodum in omnibus saeculis inuenti saepenumero sint, qui, nimia inducti diuitiarum cupiditate, gemmas pretiosissimas, herbarumque medicinas, ac testamentarias tabulas, chirographa, eorumque signa, et nummos etiam audacissime adulterauerint; ita non defuisse, qui, quadam importunitate, seu quouis alio animi morbo ducti, uel alienos libros scriptis suis, tanquam naeuis inspersis, contaminauerint, uel sapientissimorum uirorum nominibus inscripserint . . .” 62. Barreiros, Censura, 19: “Simile mendacium confinxit, quisquis ille fuit, qui de bello Troiano duo uolumina confecit, quorum alterum Dicti Cretensi, alterum Dareti Phrygio adscripsit: utque quandam ueritatis speciem praeseferret figmentum . . .”

196

196

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

he could not help but mount his critique as an ad hominem polemic, even if he did not know the name or identity of “whoever he was.” But whereas medieval authors from pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris to Albert von Stade had invoked Dares’ veritas as a corrective to the figmenta of ancient poets, the Portuguese humanist indicted Dares for masking figments under a false veneer of historical veracity. Confingere, as we saw, was the same verb that Valla had used to describe the forging of the Donation of Constantine. And it was a compound form of precisely what the Historia Troyana poet claimed he had not done when he declared nil fingo.63 But how did Barreiros know that that Destruction of Troy had been forged or concocted? Because the very ruse the forger had used to hide his work under the appearance of truth and imbue it with ancient authority—​namely, its association with Cornelius Nepos and Sallust—​had given him away. Barreiros lampooned the forger’s ineptitude in having “the most noble historian” Nepos dedicate his translation to Sallust, “as if he were sending some miraculous gift to him according to the law of friendship.” This was a crucial misstep. “It is clearly remarkable,” Barreiros declared with mock wonder, “how different he [i.e., Dares’ pseudo-​Nepos] is from that Nepos, that most celebrated writer of Roman histories, from whose monuments of such great and especial talent, only the Life of Atticus, which he wrote diligently and elegantly, has survived the injury of time.”64 Just as the “iniquity of time” had destroyed so many works of Latin eloquence, so it had almost obliterated Nepos’ corpus. Almost, but not entirely. Only one of the works of that “noble Roman historian” had survived, but it let Barreiros—​with some Erasmian connoisseurship—​sever Dares from any association with him. Barreiros had his certissimus index: it was self-​evident that the Destruction of Troy did not possess the character and habitus of Nepos, which anyone could ascertain from the Roman author’s “elegantly” written Life of Atticus.

63. Like Guido delle Colonne and others, it seems Barreiros may have likewise mistaken Dares and Dictys for the work of a single author—​a supposition not unlike Erasmus’ conjuring of his medieval Augustinian forger. At p. 19, after declaring both Dares and Dictys to be spurious, he went on to describe how the forger, “whoever he was” (quisquis ille fuit), had likewise concocted a spurious paratext for Dictys, though unlike Guido, he correctly linked the Nepos preface solely to Dares. 64.  Barreiros, Censura, 20:  “Fecit praeterea Cornelium Nepotem nobilissimum historicum, C. Crispo Sallustio scribentem, quo pacto liber autographus Daretis Phrygii de bello Troiano Athenis inuentus esset, quem, a se ex Graecis conuersum, illi, tamquam munus quoddam mirificum, pro iure amicitiae mitteret. Sed mirum plane, qualis hic Cornelius est, et quantum mutatus ab illo Nepote, Romanarum historiarum celeberrimo scriptore; ex cuius tanti et praeclari ingenii monumentis, sola T. Pomponii Attici uita, quam diligenter, et eleganter scripsit, temporis iniuriae superfuit.” On Barreiros and Dares and Dictys, see Stephens, “Pope Noah,” 212.

197



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

197

With poetic justice for the anti-​Virgilian Dares, Barreiros also made this difference clear through a clever Virgilian allusion. Much as he had in the Middle Ages, Dares still inspired invidious comparison with his ancient poetic rival. Barreiros distinguished between Dares and the real Nepos with the words Virgil had used to describe the apparition of the shade of Hector in Book II of the Aeneid. He changed Virgil’s “how different from that Hector” (quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore) into “how different from that Nepos” (quantum mutatus ab illo Nepote). Like the living Hector and his ghost, the real Nepos and his forged counterpart were very different indeed.65 And although he did not say so explicitly here, Barreiros’ connoisseur-​like invocation of the scent of the genuine Nepos depended upon the chronology of Latinity’s Golden Age he had sketched at the beginning of his Censure. The Nepos of the first century BCE, a friend of that golden Cicero, embodied the vera et germana effigies of Latinity itself. Pseudo-​ Nepos, “whoever he was,” altogether paled in comparison. Barreiros was just getting started. Next he noted the presence of fakes in the Aristotelian corpus. Then, like Erasmus, he cited Aulus Gellius’ anecdote about Plautus, relating that Varro judged only twenty-​one of the plays circulated under the name of Plautus as bearing the “true and genuine image of that comic playwright” (veram et germanam illius Comici effigiem).66 He offered a slight but telling variation on Erasmus’ phrasing: whereas Erasmus had characterized these Plautine plays as germanae et originis indubitatae, Barreiros redeployed the exact same phrase (vera et germana effigies) he had earlier applied to Latinity itself. Finally, like Erasmus, he drew parallels not only between pagan and Christian forgeries, but also between pagan and Christian methods of criticism. Immediately after discussing Varro, he invoked the so-​called Decretum Gelasianum, supposedly issued by Pope Gelasius “concerning books to be accepted and rejected” (de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis). “Gelasius” became a latter-​day Varro of sorts, separating genuine and orthodox books from their apocryphal and heretical counterparts.67 Barreiros offered a lengthy excerpt from the Decretum Gelasianum, in order to show how “the wrong-​headed natures of

65. Cf. Verg. Aen. 2.274–​75: “Ei mihi, qualis erat, quantum mutatus ab illo/​Hectore qui redit exuuias indutus Achilli.” 66.  Barreiros, Censura, 20:  “Notissimum quoque id est, quod refert A.  Gellius in Noctibus Atticis, ex centum et xx. Comoediis, quae sub Plauti nomine uulgo ferebantur, unam et uiginti dumtaxat, quae ueram et germanam illius Comici effigiem retulissent, a M. Varrone selectas, eaque de causa Varronianas appellatas:  ceteras autem tamquam e doctorum uirorum scena explosas, et exsibilatas esse.” 67.  Decretum Gelasianum de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis, ed. Ernst von Dobschütz (Leipzig, 1912).

198

198

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

men take delight in bogus and fallacious arts of this sort,” and how the church had always attempted to counter them.68 But in a fitting irony that Annius and Barreiros’ other targets would have surely enjoyed, the Decretum Gelasianum did not reflect the “true and genuine image” of Pope Gelasius himself. Instead, it was a pseudepigraphal work, traditionally—​but wrongly—​attributed to the pontiff. Even Barreiros, who subjected so many texts to withering critique, could not get it right all the time. Barreiros and Juan Luis Vives raised some of the first outright challenges to the Phrygian. Neither attacked Dares and Dictys in isolation. In the midst of their polemics against Annius, they demolished the Phrygian and the Cretan in the company of others they charged with various species of mendacity, including Dio, Philostratus, Homer, and even those plays erroneously attributed to Plautus. However, the “smoking guns” they invoked to prove Dares’ deceit differed strikingly from one another. Vives’ proof depended upon antiquity being unknowable, whereas Barreiros’ depended on it being knowable. The former had argued from absence, the latter from presence. These arguments were not mutually exclusive, but they do speak to that paradox, outlined in the Introduction, embedded in post-​antique assessments of antiquity’s authority and truth-​value. Vives had declared Dares’ falsehood by starting from the premise that lux veritatis could not shine upon deep pagan antiquity. Far from offering an authoritative canon of texts, it offered figmenta and fabulae of dubious origin and validity. By claiming things that by definition could not be claimed about the distant past, the forger of Dares had made a category error and unmasked himself as a post hoc attempt to feign true antiquity. Barreiros’ proof, in contrast, depended upon a very different temporal phase of antiquity, one that, even if less ancient, he nevertheless judged more authoritative. He did not opine on the question of whether it would have been possible to write history at the time of the Trojan War, though he certainly had no sympathy for pseudo-​Berosus’ claim to have used distant records of that nature. Instead, when it came to debunking Dares, he assigned both certainty and canonicity to a specific sliver of antiquity—​around a mere century at most—​that he and many other humanists now celebrated in Vallan fashion as a Golden Age. This was not the Golden Age of primeval antiquity, before the supposed degeneration

68. Barreiros, Censura, 21: “. . . uir sanctissimus Gelasius, Pontifex Maximus, libros huiusmodi, quos falsos et commenticios iudicauerat, lege scripta curauit ab omnibus bibliothecis extrudendos. Quam legem hic duximus subiiciendam, ut melius intelligatur, quantum praepostera hominum ingenia fallacibus huiusmodi, et fucosis artibus delectentur . . .”

19



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

199

of humankind into wickedness but rather that much later Golden Age of Rome’s and Latinity’s triumph, before the supposed degeneration of language and culture into barbarism. Unlike that mythical Golden Age, a moment of prelapsarian perfection followed by inevitable devolution, this happy epoch was the product of historical evolution—​the evolution of Latin language and literary culture that Cicero, for instance, had charted in self-​conscious fashion in works like his Brutus. Hence, for Barreiros, Dares was false not because of the murky historicity of twelfth-​century-​B CE Troy but rather because of the verifiable historicity of first-​century-​B CE Rome. In Erasmian fashion, Barreiros assumed that the certissimus index of this Golden Age was the language of its surviving texts, such as the genuine Nepos’ Life of Atticus. Like Erasmus and Valla, he claimed to know true antiquity when he saw it. These two divergent responses would shape reactions to the Phrygian over the course of the next century. Moreover, the inherent tension between them may help explain Dares’ unexpected longevity—​i.e., how he managed to survive the early modern period wounded yet alive.69 Vives’ and Barreiros’ analyses depended upon two macro-​narratives about antiquity that would prove incredibly influential in early modern scholarship: the first concerned the distinction between mythic and historical time, and the second concerned the distinction between a literary Golden Age and barbarism. Moreover, both narratives were derived from antiquity itself. Varro, Censorinus, and others had sketched the former, whereas the actual forger of Dares’ decision to impersonate Nepos and Sallust in his epistle highlights the existence of some variety of the latter. Ancient valorization of the Roman literary past is also attested by archaizing sources like Aulus Gellius; not only did his assessment of Plautus inspire Erasmus and Barreiros, but his very use of the term scriptor classicus or classical writer also furnished early modern humanism with a new way of delimiting antiquity’s canonical portions.70 Even if these macro-​narratives excluded sources like Dares—​who faked his connections to both the age of myth and the age of canonical classicism—​they highlighted some fundamental quandaries about how antiquity was knowable, and if so, what antiquity even was. These quandaries—​much like those embedded in the Ciceronian notion of lux veritatis—​kept the first pagan historian alive long after Vives’ and Barreiros’ complaints.

69. See the discussion in Deep Classics, ed. Butler, cited in the Introduction at 35. 70. For Gellius’ use of the term classicus, see Gell. NA 19.8.15.

20

200

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Advocating Authenticity: Affirmations of Dares from Trithemius to Della Porta Vives’ and Barreiros’ critiques would fuel damning attacks against the Phrygian over the next two centuries. But they did not mark a decisive change of course, at least not yet. Or rather they did not stop others in the sixteenth century—​if indeed they had even read or knew of them—​to affirm once more that the Phrygian was the first pagan historian and an eyewitness to the Trojan War. Moreover, even if some of Annius’ critics had reason to doubt Dares and Dictys, sixteenth-​century scholarship was hardly universal in condemning the Dominican forger. In fact, some of Annius’ fellow confabulators were quick to co-​opt the Phrygian and the Cretan. The German Benedictine Johannes Trithemius deserves a place next to Annius in the pantheon of Renaissance forgers. Trithemius was an avid bibliographer, historiographer, and occultist, who not only preserved and cataloged innumerable real texts but also concocted fake ones. He forged a history of the Franks, which he attributed to an imaginary Scythian historian he named Hunibald.71 Not unlike Fredegar and the other sources discussed in Chapter 2, “Hunibald” recorded the Franks’ Trojan ancestry. In other works, Trithemius incorporated the Trojan past into a still deeper, more universal frame. In his appropriately styled Chronologia mystica or Mystical Chronology, dedicated to the Emperor Maximilian, Trithemius divided time from Creation to the present into neatly defined periods of 354 years each. He assigned each period to a different angel, and linked each angel to a corresponding planet. In Trithemius’ twelfth age, which started on the second day of the month of October of the year 3,892 after Creation, Samael, the angel of Mars, took the helm.72 Many memorable events happened during his reign, the most important of which was “the most famous fall of Troy” (famosissimum excidium Troianum). As we saw, this phrase derived ultimately from Orosius’ universal history and had been repeated by medieval chroniclers such as Otto von Freising. Trithemius then described how this period around the Trojan War was a revolutionary one:  it saw everything from the

71.  See Johannes Trithemius, Compendium siue breuiarium  .  .  . de origine regum et gentis Francorum (Mainz, 1515). 72. Johannes Trithemius, Chronologia mystica 12, in Primae partis opera historica (Frankfurt, 1601), sig. ** 5 recto. For an overview of his scholarship, see Klaus Arnold, Johannes Trithemius (1462–​1516), 2nd ed. (Würzburg, 1991). For Trithemius’ use of Annius, see Grafton, “Invention,” 24. On the details and framework of his Chronologia mystica, see L. Noel Brann, The Abbot Trithemius, 1462–​1516: The Renaissance of Monastic Humanism (Leiden, 1981), esp. 94.

201



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

201

“mutation of many kingdoms” and the “foundation of many cities” to the “greatest wars and battles of kings and peoples.”73 Amid such talk of transformations and beginnings, Trithemius also addressed the issue of Trojan origin myths. Like Annius, who imbued his own forgeries with critical pronouncements, Trithemius made a show of his critical chops, lashing out against claims to Trojan origins among other European peoples. Such assertions of antiquity and nobility were “frivolous,” as they assumed “there were no peoples in Europe before the destruction of the Trojans, and there was no one ignoble among the Trojans themselves.”74 Though he had no problem asserting such illustrious origins for the Franks, he was quick to debunk such claims by others. And he did so by assigning a kind of historical status to Europe’s distant, pre-​Trojan past. Ironically, Trithemius raised this objection to the profusion of Trojan origin myths right before he affirmed the eyewitness status of the Phrygian. He then noted important writers who had described this period: they included Homer, the “Greek poet of Trojan destruction,” and also Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, “who were present for the destruction itself, and similarly described it.”75 For at least one sixteenth-​century universal chronologer, Dares and Dictys remained unproblematic eyewitnesses to a moment that Eusebius, Jerome, and the medieval chroniclers had named a key inflection point in world history. Trithemius was not alone. Affirmations of Dares’ authenticity, or at least acknowledgment of the fact that someone named Dares claimed to be very old, continued unabated throughout the sixteenth century. Johannes Maria Catanaeus, who published a commentary on the epistles of the Younger Pliny, used Pliny’s mention of Nepos to state that, among other works, the Roman author had also translated Dares Phrygius into

73. Trithemius, Chronologia mystica 12, sig. ** 5 recto–​verso: “Sub cuius regimine fuit magnum illud ac famosissimum excidium Troianum in Asia minore, factaque est Monarchiae multorumque Regnorum admiranda mutatio et multarum de nouo ciuitatum institutio . . . Maxima fuerunt his temporibus in toto mundo bella et praelia Regum et gentium, variaeque mutationes Imperiorum.” 74. Trithemius, Chronologia mystica 12, sig. ** 5 verso: “Et notandum, quod et aliae nationes plurimae tam in Europa quam in Asia suam praetendunt originem se sumpsisse a Troianis, quibus tantum accommodare fidei duxi, quantum ipsi veritatis mihi sufficienti testimonio poterunt persuadere. Friuola sunt quae afferunt de sua nobilitate et antiquitate, volentes palam gloriari: quasi non fuerint in Europa gentes, ante Troianorum excidium, nullusque inter ipsos Troianos ignobilis.” See Grafton, Forgers and Critics, 23. 75. Johannes Trithemius, Chronologia mystica 12, in Primae partis opera historica (Frankfurt, 1601), sig. ** 5 verso: “Homerus Poeta Graecus Troiani scriptor excidii, Dares Phrygius, Dictis Cretensis, qui excidio ipsi interfuerunt, et similiter descripserunt, fuisse leguntur his temporibus in humanis.”

20

202

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Latin.76 When the Swiss historical theorist Christophe Milieu outlined a proposal for a universal history of letters, he, like Trithemius, noted that “Trojan times” or Troica tempora were busy ones, not only in the military and civil realm, but also for literature. With slightly more circumspection than the German Benedictine, Milieu recorded that both Dictys and Dares wrote of the Trojan War, at which they “are believed” (creduntur) to have been present.77 And when Julius Caesar Scaliger (whose son Joseph would later critique the Destruction of Troy) wrote his Poetics, a wide-​ranging exposition of Aristotelian literary theory published posthumously in 1561, he began by discussing the earliest writers of poetry. Although he did not mention the extant Latin prose Destruction of Troy, he repeated the claim from Aelian’s Varia historia that a certain Dares had written an Iliad before Homer.78 Others were less decisive. When the Bordeaux scholar Elias Vinetus described Cornelius Nepos in his commentary on the late Roman poet Ausonius, he refused to touch the question of whether the Latin Destruction of Troy was actually by Nepos, although he seemed to take Aelian at his word about the original Dares. “Nor does anyone dare to assert anything,” he explained, “about translations of Dares Phrygius, a writer older than Homer, mentioned by Aelian in the beginning of the eleventh book of the Varia historia.”79 But other than Vives and Barreiros, few lodged any outright complaints against the Phrygian. If this is how Dares was being mentioned, how exactly was he being read? There is a difference between passing asides—​almost perfunctory acknowledgments—​ and sustained engagement with a text. We cannot be sure how closely, if at all, someone like Trithemius or Milieu read the Destruction of Troy. We do not know how, or even if, they evaluated the book’s merits for themselves. Dares was a well-​ known name, a famous first, and perhaps that is all he was for those who still accepted him. But thankfully we possess one particularly copious record of an actual reading, made at a moment when different opinions of the Phrygian still 76. Pliny the Younger, Epistolarum libri novem, ed. Johannes Maria Catanaeus (Venice, 1510), 82:  “Cor. Nepotis:  hic vir sanctus Ciceroni familiaris et amicus  .  .  .  ac Daretem Phrygium Latinitate donauit.” Cf. Plin. Ep. 4.28. 77.  Christophe Milieu, De scribenda universitatis rerum historia libri quinque (Basel, 1551), 248–​49:  “Res autem eo bello gestas, Dictys Cretensis, et Dares Phrygius, qui actis creduntur interfuisse, conscripserunt.” On Milieu, see Donald R. Kelley, “Writing Cultural History in Early Modern Europe:  Christophe Milieu and His Project,” Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): 342–​65. 78. Julius Caesar Scaliger, Poetices libri septem (Lyon, 1561), 5. 79. Ausonius, Opera omnia, ed. Elias Vinetus (Bordeaux, 1580), sig. LI 4 verso: “Nec audet quisquam asserere quippiam de Daretis Phrygii versionibus scriptoris Homero antiquioris, Aeliano memorati in principio undecimi variae historiae.”

203



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

203

flourished. One of Dares’ most enthusiastic readers was the English scholar John Dee. Like Trithemius, he also embraced occult philosophy. Dee was an alchemist and a political advisor to Queen Elizabeth, who traveled across Europe and later become notorious for his claims to communicate with the spirit realm. He was also a dedicated bibliophile who amassed one of the largest libraries in England and frequently annotated his books.80 Among them was a 1573 printing of Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis. Dee’s notes show how one of the sixteenth century’s most famous readers understood Dictys’ and Dares’ lux veritatis. He offered his first judgment on this score in the opening pages of Dictys, where the Cretan suddenly broke the fourth wall with a first-​person description of his sources and methods. When mentioning Idomeneus and Meriones, Dictys placed himself in the action: “I followed their retinue, and having learned from Ulysses the things that happened before at Troy, I recorded them as diligently as possible.” Then Dictys pulled the autopsy card: “I will set forth the rest of the events that followed thereafter as truthfully as I can, because I was present for them.” This was enough to convince Dee, who underlined these words and then remarked in the margin on the “certain truth of this history” (veritas huius historiae certa).81 He repeated this affirmation when he reached the start of Book VI of the Journal of the Trojan War. Here Dictys, having finished telling of the fall of Troy, began to narrate the returns of the various Greek heroes. He would no longer speak of events that he had directly witnessed, but he assured his readers he had other sources. For instance, “I have committed to memory those things I learned from Neoptolemus, having been invited by him when he had married Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus.” In other words, Dictys was still doing historical research even while attending a wedding party! Dee underlined Dictys’ first-​person ego, and duly flagged the “certitude of this history” (certitudo huius historiae).82 80.  See William Sherman, John Dee:  The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst, 1995), and John Dee’s Library Catalogue, ed. R.J. Roberts and A.G. Watson (London, 1990). 81.  Belli Troiani scriptores praecipui:  Dictys Cretensis, Dares Phrygius et Homerus (Basel, 1573), now Royal College of Physicians, 20cD139/​7, 9959, 10: Dee underlines Dictys as follows: “Eorum ego secutus comitatum, ea quidem quae ante apud Troiam gesta sunt ab Ulysse, cognita quam diligentissime retuli: et reliqua quae deinceps insecuta sunt: quoniam ipse interfui, quam verissime potero, exponam.” He notes in the margin “veritas huius historiae certa.” Cf. Dictys, Ephemeris 1.13, ed. Eisenhut, 11. On this annotation and Dee’s reading of Dictys, see Anthony Grafton, What Was History: The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2007), 62–​63. For a description of Dee’s copy, see John Dee’s Library Catalogue, ed. Roberts and Watson, 92. 82. Belli Troiani scriptores, 146: Dee underlines Dictys as follows: “Haec ego a Neoptolemo cognita, memoriae mandaui, accitus ab eo qua tempestate Hermionem Menelai in matrimonium

204

204

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Dee did not include such direct affirmations of the Phrygian’s fides, but he seems to have judged him credible as well. When he read Dares’ prefatory letter, he underlined pseudo-​Nepos’ assertion that he had found the text written “in the hand of Dares Phrygius himself ” and had neither added nor subtracted anything from this autograph. Dee likewise took note of Dares’ eyewitness credentials: he also underlined pseudo-​Nepos’ contention that the Phrygian “lived and fought when Greeks fought Trojans,” before paraphrasing the following line’s anti-​Homeric jab. As Dee repeated in the margin: “Homer must not be believed in the least.”83 Dee seemed to accept assertions of autopsy as indices of veritas certa or “certain truth.” Nor did he neglect the rationalizing nature of Dares’ and Dictys’ narratives. For instance, when Dares related his demythologized version of the Judgment of Paris, Dee noted that it had taken place in Paris’ head, writing “the dream of Paris concerning Juno, Venus, and Minerva.”84 The Phrygian and the Cretan conformed to all the requirements of historia. If Dee accepted the fides of Dictys and Dares, what truths did he take from their histories? The Elizabethan scholar mined both texts for information concerning deep antiquity. When the Cretan related how the Greeks had chosen Agamemnon as the leader of their expedition, since he possessed more wealth and power than the other Greek monarchs, Dee underlined caeteros Graeciae reges and declared, “Note, at this time (hoc tempore) there were very many kings of Greece.”85 When Dares had Priam inform his war council that he would send an army to Greece, “lest the Greeks should hold the barbarians in contempt,” this unusual self-​identification piqued Dee’s curiosity:  “the Trojans recognize themselves as barbarians,” he jotted down.86 Several lines later, when Dares’ Priam warned his fellow Trojans that “Europe possesses warlike men, whereas Asia had always cultivated life in idleness, and on account of this has no navy,” Dee drew a susceperat.” He then remarks, “certitudo huius historiae.” Cf. Dictys, Ephemeris 6.10, ed. Eisenhut, 128. 83. Belli Troiani scriptores, 153: Dee underlines “. . . qui per id tempus uixit et militauit, quo Graeci Troianos oppugnarent.” Copying a line found directly below, he notes, “Minime Homero credendum.” The text of the prefatory epistle here differs slightly from that found in Meister’s edition. Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae historia, “Cornelius Nepos Sallustio Crispo suo salutem,” ed. Meister, 1. 84. Belli Troiani scriptores, 161: Dee writes “Paridis somnium de Iunone, Venere, Minerva.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 7, ed. Meister, 9. 85.  Belli Troiani scriptores, 12:  Dee underlines “praeter caeteros Graeciae reges” and writes “Nota plurimos hoc tempore fuisse Greciae reges.” Cf. Dictys, Ephemeris 1.16, ed. Eisenhut, 13. 86. Belli Troiani scriptores, 160: Dee underlines “. . . ne Barbaros Greci haberent in risu” and writes notes in margin, “Barbaros se agnoscunt Troiani.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 6, ed. Meister, 8.

205



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

205

logical inference about the still deeper antiquity that preceded Dares’ narrative. He extrapolated that, according to Priam, “the Europeans were bellicose before the Trojan Wars (ante Troiana bella).”87 If Dares’ testimony could be trusted, one could use his statements to reconstruct a still earlier past: clues to the prevailing geopolitics of a world that everyone from ancients like Varro to moderns like Vives had deemed uncertain and mythical. Dee could learn something about those peoples who, as Trithemius had described, had populated the European continent before the fall of Troy. Another aspect of Trojan politics aroused Dee’s interest. He took repeated note of Dares’ account of the conspiracy of Aeneas and Antenor, writing variations of proditio or “treason” several times in his copy.88 He also extracted political lessons from it: when Dares reported that the Greeks discussed whether to honor their pledges to Aeneas and Antenor after the fall of Troy, Dee noted the question in the margin: “whether faith must be kept with a traitor to one’s country.”89 He also documented how this account of treachery differentiated Dares from other canonical accounts of the Trojan War. When Dares described how the Greeks entered Troy via the Scaean Gate, adorned with its appropriately rationalizing detail of an equine head, Dee recognized what was missing. In a moment of head scratching, he exclaimed, “nothing here about the Trojan horse.”90 For Dee and others in the closing decades of the sixteenth century, the Destruction of Troy could still challenge the probity of poets like Virgil. It was still a historia that could correct fabulae. (See Figure 4.1.) At around the same time, Dares also proved useful—​and believable—​to a scholar in a very different corner of the European world. In 1586 the Neapolitan natural philosopher Giambattista Della Porta, best known for his Natural Magic, published his De humana physiognomonia or On Human Physiognomy. In a preface heavily stuffed with references to classical authorities, including Cicero, Seneca, Horace, and others, he explained that physiognomy scrutinized the

87. Belli Troiani scriptores, 160: Dee notes at the bottom of the page, “Europaeos bellicosos fuisse ante Troiana bella.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 6, ed. Meister, 8:  “Multos adiutores Graeciae futuros, Europam bellicosos homines habere, Asiam semper in desidia vitam exercuisse et ob id classem non habere.” 88. Belli Troiani scriptores, 196: At Dares’ discussion of the planned conspiracy, Dee writes both “Proditio Troiae” and “Proditionis Pacta.” 89. Belli Troiani scriptores, 197: Dee writes “An proditori patriae servanda fides.” 90. Belli Troiani scriptores, 196: Dee underlines “. . . ubi extrinsecus caput equi sculptum est . . .” At the bottom of the page, he notes, “Nihil hic de equo Troiano.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 40, ed. Meister, 48–​49:  “Hoc pacto confirmato et iureiurando adstricto suadet Polydamas noctu exercitum ad portam Scaeam adducant, ubi extrinsecus caput equi sculptum est . . .”

206

206

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Figure 4.1  John Dee’s copy of Dares’ Destruction of Troy. Dee remarks in the margin “Nothing here concerning the Trojan Horse.” Belli Troiani scriptores praecipui: Dictys Cretensis, Dares Phrygius et Homerus (Basel, 1573), now Royal College of Physicians, 20cD139/​7, 9959, p. 196.

“outward signs seen in the bodies of men” for clues to “men’s natures, manners, and plans.” It penetrated nothing less than “the inmost recesses of the mind” and “the deepest places of the heart.”91 It rendered hidden and occult phenomena visible. Not unlike Erasmus, Della Porta also claimed to practice a type of discernment premised upon character and habitus. Outward appearances, if properly interpreted, were the clearest indices of inner states; physical characteristics offered insights into mental, moral, and spiritual ones. Della Porta mined antiquity for examples of these correspondences, and in doing so he found Dares’ portraits an unparalleled resource. For Dares had not only described the physical appearances of various Trojans and Greeks, but also some of their corresponding personality

91.  Giambattista della Porta, De humana physiognomonia libri IIII (Vico Equense, 1586), 1: “Haec nanque ab extimis, quae in hominum corporibus conspiciuntur signis, ita eorum naturas, mores, et consilia demonstrat, ut intimos animi recessus ac, ut ita dicam, penitissima cordis loca penetrare videatur.” Interestingly, Dee also referred to Dares’ catalog as physiognomy. At Belli Troiani scriptores, 166–​67, he wrote the following running title of sorts across both pages: “Physiog-​nomiae aliquot Graecorum et Troianorum.”

207



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

207

traits. As he said, Aeneas not only had auburn hair and a stocky frame, but also eloquence, charm, and piety. Like Dares’ medieval readers, Della Porta also read the Destruction of Troy for a kind of moral exemplarity. And Dares remained a useful vehicle for such exemplarity because he had been there:  he offered particular historical confirmation of a purportedly universal set of correspondences between physical phenomena on the one hand and ethical truths on the other. For instance, the Neapolitan natural philosopher claimed that those who were warlike and virile possessed large mouths. Small mouths, in contrast, signaled effeminacy. To prove his point, he cited Dares’ portrait of Helen. “Helen was beautiful,” the Phrygian had declared, “and charming, with an unaffected spirit, the finest legs, a beauty mark between her eyebrows, and a small mouth.” Della Porta believed that Helen was quite literally the picture of idealized femininity, and he knew this to be the case because Dares had actually seen her. “Dares recalls that Helen was of tiny mouth,” he explained.92 (See Figure 4.2.) Similarly, when discussing the qualities of a venerabilis vultus or “venerable face,” Della Porta started by citing Dares on Hector. Hector was “venerable in face and mind, and with marked strengths both merciful and worthy.”93 The venerability of his visage reflected his worthiness and mercy. Interestingly, in the same paragraph Della Porta also assigned Charlemagne a venerabilis vultus: “Charles, the king of the Franks, called Great (Magnus) on account of the magnitude of his deeds, possessed an expression full of majesty, an august face, and venerable white hair.”94 By grouping the Trojan prince and the Frankish king together in this manner, Della Porta accorded them equal historicity. It was possible to obtain autoptic knowledge about both and to use these visual, historical records as clues to their inner lives. As late as 1586, the first pagan historian still promised reliable knowledge about so distant an event as the Trojan War. Because the Phrygian had witnessed it, he could furnish information about the outer and inner lives of Greeks

92.  Della Porta, De humana physiognomonia, 111:  “Paruum os.] Pusillum os effoeminatum ostendit . . . Helenam pusillo ore fuisse memorat Dares.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 12, ed. Meister, 14: “Helenam similem illis [i.e., to Castor and Pollux] formosam animi simplicis blandam cruribus optimis notam inter duo supercilia habentem ore pusillo.” 93. Della Porta, De humana physiognomonia, 86: “Venerabilis vultus.] Hector venerabili fuit vultu, et animo, et viribus insignis, clemens, et dignus, ut ex Darete Phrygio.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 12, ed. Meister, 15: “Hectorem blaesum candidum crispum strabum pernicibus membris vultu venerabili barbatum decentem bellicosum animo magno in civibus clementem dignum amore aptum.” Della Porta also cited Dares’ depictions of Diomedes and Polixena. See Della Porta, De humana physiognomonia, 86 and 173. 94. Della Porta, De humana physiognomonia, 86: “Carolus Francorum Rex a gestarum rerum magnitudine Magnus vocitatus, vultu fuit maiestatis pleno, augusta facie, canitie reuerenda.”

208

208

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Figure 4.2  Giambattista della Porta cites Dares Phrygius’ description of Helen of Troy when discussing facial features. Giambattista della Porta, De humana physiognomonia libri IIII (Vico Equense, 1586), now Wellcome Library, Closed stores EPB/​D 5196/​D, p. 111.

and Trojans as reliable as information that post-​antique sources could provide about Charlemagne. The Frankish king, of course, was an undeniably historical figure, who had lived fewer than eight centuries before Della Porta. A latter-​day Varro might have contrasted the ways in which a Hector and a Charlemagne were

209



Early Modern Criticism and an Ancient Canon

209

knowable: the former was a denizen of the mythic age, and hence so precise a description of him could only be fable, whereas knowledge about the latter was preserved in “true histories” (historiis veris). But unlike Vives and others, Della Porta saw no qualitative difference between those two temporal spaces. Dares remained capable of autopsy, and the autoptic insights he provided into seemingly universal, immutable properties of body and soul remained exemplary, even in the present. Much had changed between 1400, when Coluccio Salutati wrote his De tyranno, and 1586, when Giambattista della Porta published his De humana physiognomonia. Salutati, Vives, and Barreiros launched attacks against the Phrygian that were unlike anything he had yet experienced. The latter two were spurred on by the need to demolish a new addition to the canon of fakes in which Dares, Dictys, and Geoffrey of Monmouth belonged:  namely, Annius of Viterbo’s Antiquities. Meanwhile, critics like Valla and Erasmus developed a new lexicon—​ which combined philology and polemic in equal measure—​with which to identify and unmask spurious texts. Whereas Salutati and Vives did not explain in detail why they considered Dares to be apocryphal or fabulous, Barreiros applied this new critical language with gusto to the Destruction of Troy. He compared the text to the known extant work of the genuine Cornelius Nepos and found that it was wholly lacking in any sign of the Roman historian’s character and habitus. Still, as had Salutati and Vives, he did not so much show, as tell. He did not provide any detailed analysis of Nepos’ syntax or diction; instead, he stated in almost axiomatic terms that Nepos’ style was good, and Dares’ style bad. Even the most philologically informed of Dares’ sixteenth-​century critics could not resist morally charged binaries, and as a result they allowed him to escape final condemnation. Although the new critical lexicon could be unleashed against fakes like Dares, it did not challenge—​but rather in some cases even defended—​the old categories that made historia into lux veritatis, and that Dares the forger had managed to co-​ opt. From Faragonius to Dee to Della Porta, claims to autopsy remained a solid guarantor of historical truth, even if others disputed the specific claims of specific texts to autopsy. These truths continued to shed light upon a deep antiquity that was otherwise shrouded in myth: it allowed Dee to know that Europe had been warlike before the Trojan War, and it allowed Della Porta to know that Hector bore resemblance to Charlemagne. And such truth could become magistra vitae too, especially for those who wished to apply the lessons of the past to contemporary politics. In the following chapter we will examine what other phenomena kept Dares alive—​including some of the most seemingly “modern” of developments in early modern culture—​even as a new group of philologists and critics continued the attacks that Salutati, Vives, and Barreiros had begun.

210

21

5

Dares Printed and Philologized The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes “Puppies smell one way, pigs another.” —​G .J. Vossius, channeling Plautus’ Epidicus, on the difference between Dares and the genuine Cornelius Nepos

At around the same time that Dee produced his marginalia and Della Porta his physiognomy, Philip Sidney—​one of the former’s more famous fellow Elizabethans—​affirmed the historical truth of the Phrygian. Sidney was active in Elizabethan court politics, a friend of Edmund Spenser, and the author of literary works in both poetry and prose, most famously his Arcadia. He died in 1586 in Holland, fighting the Spanish. He invoked Dares in his Defense of Poesy, written sometime in the 1580s but published posthumously in 1595. Ironically, the Phrygian’s supposed historicity helped Sidney launch one of early modernity’s most innovative contributions to literary theory:  a systematic defense of poetry and fable. We have perhaps grown accustomed to the opposite dynamic, as sketched in previous chapters: in the Middle Ages Dares had fueled attacks against fictionality, especially by poets anxious that their medium was inherently mendacious. Only Petrarch bucked this trend, invoking pseudo-​Nepos while defending pagan poetry. Yet perhaps Sidney was just making explicit those tensions that Joseph of Exeter, Albert von Stade, and others had sought to efface when they had claimed to write history in verse. History did not always offer the best raw material, as the commentator on Joseph’s Iliad recognized when he maintained that Joseph had translated Dares’ history into a “more resounding” genre. Sidney took this claim a step further and argued that fictional invention was necessary because of defects inherent in historia itself. Hewing to historiae veritas threatened a text’s exemplarity; the simple, literal truth alone could not always edify readers. Sidney’s argument depended upon an important advance in early modern scholarship, and as such it adumbrates a theme we will explore more systematically in this chapter. Some of the most innovative developments in early modern The First Pagan Historian. Frederic Clark, Oxford University Press (2020). © Frederic Clark. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190492304.001.0001.

21

212

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

learned culture—​long taken as signs of intellectual progress that distinguished early modernity from the Middle Ages and made it (at least almost) modern—​ did not stimulate criticism of false texts like Dares’ Destruction of Troy but, rather, bolstered their fides and extended their afterlives. These developments included, among others, the recovery of ancient Greek texts, the advent of print and its associated bibliographic technologies, and the rhetoric of empiricism that inspired the so-​called Scientific Revolution. In at least some cases, these seemingly progressive phenomena affirmed the logic of Dares’ underlying claims, keeping a forgery alive for much longer than we might otherwise expect. The place of Dares in these developments underscores how we must disabuse ourselves of narratives of disenchantment, or at least appreciate how forms of enchantment and disenchantment could flourish simultaneously, especially during moments of intense intellectual flux. Sidney’s project was inspired by the first development cited. His Defense of Poesy was the product of a significant moment in early modernity’s encounter with Greek antiquity. This was the recovery of Aristotle’s Poetics, a component of the Aristotelian corpus largely neglected in the Middle Ages.1 As mentioned in the previous chapter, Julius Caesar Scaliger had produced a lengthy work modeled upon this Aristotelian text, and Sidney was also inspired by Scaliger and other Italian humanist engagements with Aristotle the literary theorist. Most importantly for our purposes, Sidney affirmed and expanded upon Aristotle’s assertion that poetry, by virtue of its universality, was philosophically superior to history, limited by definition to particular phenomena.2 Hence, Sidney’s defense of poetry rested upon a simple premise: one could learn more from poetry not despite the fact that but rather because, unlike history, it was not chained to the actual course of human events. Following Aristotle, he also did not restrict poetry or “poesy” merely to that written in verse; as we will see, some of the texts he extolled as belonging to this category had been written in prose. Sidney mocked the historian’s claim to exemplarity and dismissed him as a pedant: “better acquainted with a thousande yeeres a goe, then with the present age,” the historian was a “wonder to young folkes and a tyrant in table talke,” who

1.  On Sidney and Aristotle, see for instance Kathy Eden, Poetic and Legal Fiction in the Aristotelian Tradition (Princeton, 1986). For Aristotelianism in the sixteenth century, including Sidney’s engagement with the Poetics, see Micha Lazarus, “Aristotelian Criticism in Sixteenth–​Century England,” in Oxford Handbooks Online (Oxford, 2016). 2. Phillip Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie (London, 1595), sig. E recto. For a modern edition, see Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesy, ed. Geoffrey Shepherd (London, 1965). Cf. Arist. Poet. 9.3: “διὸ καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον ποίησις ἱστορίας ἐστίν· ἡ μὲν γὰρ ποίησις μᾶλλον τὰ καθόλου, ἡ δ᾽ ἱστορία τὰ καθ᾽ἕκαστον λέγει.”

213



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

213

puffed himself up by repeating Cicero’s dictum that historia was lux and magistra and the like.3 History was not the best teacher of life, since it had to follow the whims of nature. “Onely the poet,” Sidney explained, “lifted up with the vigor of his owne invention, dooth growe in effect another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite a newe formes such as never were in nature.”4 Like Isidore of Seville a millennium earlier, the Elizabethan critic recognized poetry as inherently contra naturam. The poetic imagination bested nature: one could not find in nature itself “so right a prince as Xenophon’s Cyrus” or “so excellent a man every way, as Virgil’s Aeneas.”5 Virgil’s creation of pius Aeneas demonstrated just how powerfully poetry could transcend its historical raw materials. All things being equal, Sidney did not deny the importance of historical truth: “if the question were whether it were better to have a perticular acte truly or falsly set down, there is no doubt which is to be chosen.” Yet the choice of historia or fabula depended upon what a given reader wished to gain from a given text. It was in this context that Sidney invoked the Phrygian. “But if the question be for your owne use and learning, whether it be better to have it set downe as it should be, or as it was, then certainely is more doctrinable the fained Cyrus in Xenophon then the true Cyrus in Iustine, and the fayned Aeneas in Virgil, then the right Aeneas in Dares Phrigius.”6 Xenophon’s Cyropaedia—​written not in poesy’s typical medium, verse, but rather in prose—​depicted the Persian king Cyrus the Great as the ideal ruler; the text had influenced Machiavelli’s discussion of statecraft in The Prince. This “feigned Cyrus,” as Sidney realized, clearly differed from the historical “true Cyrus” sketched in Justin’s epitome of the first-​century-​B CE historian Pompeius Trogus. There was nothing wrong with knowing about the real Cyrus, but, if one wished to know how to rule a realm, his fictional counterpart would prove more “doctrinable.” So also for Aeneas. Virgil’s “feigned” Aeneas was a man excellent in every way, whereas—​although Sidney did not make this fact explicit—​Dares’ “right”

3.  Phillip Sidney, An Apologie, sig D verso. However, while Sidney’s hyperbolic defense of poetry prompted him to critique history, elsewhere he showed himself far more amenable to the usual humanist lauding of history as Cicero’s magistra vitae. For his advice to his brother Robert concerning the utility of reading history, and Robert’s embrace of this admonition, see Robert Shephard, “The Political Commonplace Books of Sir Robert Sidney,” Sidney Journal 21 (2003): 1–​30, and Joel Davis, “Robert Sidney’s Marginal Comments on Tacitus and the English Campaigns in the Low Countries,” Sidney Journal 24 (2006): 1–​19. 4. Sidney, An Apologie, sig. C verso. 5. Sidney, An Apologie, sig. C verso–​C 2 recto. 6. Sidney, An Apologie, sig. E recto–​verso.

214

214

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Aeneas was a traitor to his country, anything but excellent. Hence, the poetical work of Virgil, despite its literal mendacity, was more doctrinable than Dares’ history. Unlike the medieval Dares poets, Sidney did not consider the Phrygian’s account of Aeneas’ treachery to be a negative exemplum; rather, he found Virgil’s celebration of the Trojan prince’s piety more useful. Yet the usefulness of Virgil’s Aeneas was not predicated upon his being accurate or true. In fact, his status as “doctrinable” depended on his very untruth. Unlike Albert von Stade, Sidney regarded Virgil’s pius hero not as an impious poison hidden beneath sweet honey but as sweet honey alone. It is difficult to ascertain from this single isolated passage precisely how Sidney considered Dares “right.” Unlike his contemporary Dee, the Elizabethan critic did not dwell upon what made the Destruction of Troy a proper history. In fact, if taken literally, the opening portions of the Defense of Poesy would seem to negate what made Dares true—​namely, his claim to autopsy and antiquity. In arguing for the superior utility of poetry, Sidney started by asserting its temporal priority. “[I]‌n the noblest nations and languages that are knowne,” he claimed, poetry was the “first light-​giver to ignorance, and first Nurse, whose milk by little and little enabled them to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges.”7 Presumably these tougher subjects included history, philosophy, and the like. They were inferior to poetry because they were younger, derivative enterprises. Sidney made this timeline clear: “Let learned Greece in any of her manifold Sciences, be able to shew me one booke before Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiodus, all three nothing els but Poets.” He then grew bolder: “Nay, let any historie be brought, that can say any Writers were there before them . . .”8 This view accorded with Varro’s conception of the mythic age, and Vives’ belief that early Greek history had been mired in fable. Unlike Vives, however, Sidney saw the fact that fiction preceded history as cause for celebration, not caution and critique. Still, his chronology raised problems. For Homer and company had flourished long after the events of which they sang. If one believed Dares’ history to be true, presumably one had to accept his anteriority to Homer. Dares knew the “right Aeneas” because he had actually been at Troy. Did that not imply that “learned Greece” could in fact produce a history that preceded all her poets? And was this not the work of the first pagan historian himself ? Perhaps Sidney, carried away by his own hyperbole, did not consider this chronological issue an inconsistency, if he even considered it at all. Yet in whatever way he meant it, Sidney’s endorsement of the Phrygian’s “rightness” shows that—​as late as the final

7. Sidney, An Apologie, sig. B 2 recto. 8. Sidney, An Apologie, sig. B 2 recto.

215



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

215

decades of the sixteenth century—​a prominent, politically connected intellectual and indirect beneficiary of new advances in Greek scholarship could still accept the first pagan historian as truth.

The First of the Eyewitnesses: Dares Cataloged According to long-​standing narratives of the triumphs of early modern scholarship and criticism, the belief in Dares that informed Sidney’s project—​or those of John Dee and Giambattista Della Porta for that matter—​would have resided far outside the mainstream of respectable opinion. After the work of Valla and Erasmus, after all, how could any scholar worth his salt still accept the authenticity of a patent falsehood such as the Destruction of Troy? Yet Dee, Della Porta, and Sidney not only failed to raise even a sliver of doubt about the Phrygian (as figures like Christophe Milieu and Elias Vinetus had done), but they also made his historiae veritas central to their intellectual assumptions. Precisely how was it possible still to believe Dares? As argued here, this was not just a product of inertia. Rather, new powerful forces in sixteenth-​century learned culture extended Dares’ authority, even as others began to challenge the pseudo-​author’s claims. We just saw how Sidney’s classification of Dares as “right” depended, albeit indirectly, upon the revival of hitherto neglected Greek texts by Renaissance humanists. Now we will consider how print and its associated new information technologies likewise proved friendly to the Phrygian. Such phenomena were long read as catalysts for criticism, and in many cases they were.9 Yet sometimes they had the opposite effect; they extended the afterlives of spurious texts that had been accepted in the Middle Ages, and they helped ensure they were read and believed in the Renaissance as well. Dares was one of these lucky authors. As we saw in the prior chapter, he was a favorite of the incunabular era. And the printers and compilers and encyclopedists of the sixteenth century continued to celebrate his attainments—​especially as an ancient and an eyewitness. As Ann Blair and others have shown, the advent of print helped stimulate the production of reference works that could organize and catalog the consequent proliferation of textual matter.10 The sixteenth century became a golden age of bibliographies and bibliothecae. And few fields proved more in need of organization

9. For this view, see Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe:  Vol. I (Cambridge, 1979), esp. “A Classical Revival Reoriented: The Two Phases of the Renaissance,” 163–​302. 10. Ann Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven, 2010).

216

216

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

than history. Encyclopedists and bibliographers attempted to impose order on the proliferation of histories, both ancient and modern, now available in print. Sometimes they organized them by genre, sometimes by the places and peoples they discussed, and sometimes chronologically. For instance, the Swiss encyclopedist Theodor Zwinger produced a lengthy section on historians in his Theatrum humanae vitae or Theater of Human Life. Within this class he also included biographers, especially compilers of collections “concerning illustrious men” or de viris illustribus. After documenting late antique authors of this genre like Isidore of Seville, Zwinger leapt by nearly a millennium to record the encyclopedia of the Italian humanist and theologian Raffaello Volterrano. Volterrano had been a prominent early sixteenth-​century scholar who enjoyed close connections to the papal court. In 1506, he published a massive encyclopedia in some thirty-​eight books, divided into three sections on geographia, anthropologia, and philologia. The Anthropologia consisted of thousands of alphabetically ordered biographies. According to Zwinger, it was an exhaustive compilation “concerning illustrious men of all peoples.”11 In this fashion, Zwinger linked contemporary biobibliography to the encyclopedic cataloging begun centuries earlier by Isidore. Zwinger saw their two projects, the one by the Spanish saint and the other by an Italian humanist, as of a piece. Granted, late antique compilations had responded to prerogatives vastly different from those that motivated Volterrano and his successors. Whereas Isidorian encyclopedism has been characterized as a response to a shrinking classical inheritance, Renaissance compilers sought instead to order a surfeit of texts—​what Helmut Zedelmaier has linked to the dream of a universal library or bibliotheca universalis and Blair has traced as a response to a sense of “information overload.”12 Nevertheless, despite its patently dissimilar aims, late antique encyclopedism served not only as an abstract inspiration for a Renaissance genre, but also as an authoritative guide to the specifics of the canon. Both the practical and programmatic example of late antique compilation still mattered in early modern Europe.

11. Theodor Zwinger, Theatrum humanae vitae (Basel, 1586), 1587: “RAPHAEL Volaterranus scripsit de Claris viris omnium gentium.” On Zwinger’s conception of history, see Ann Blair, “Historia in Zwinger’s Theatrum humanae vitae,” in Historia:  Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe, ed. Gianna Pomata and Nancy G. Siraisi (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 269–​96. 12. Ann Blair, Too Much to Know; Ann Blair, “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550–​1700,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003):  11–​28; and Helmut Zedelmaier, Bibliotheca Universalis und Bibliotheca Selecta:  Das Problem der Ordnung des gelehrten Wissens in der frühen Neuzeit (Cologne, 1992).

217



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

217

Zwinger offers a striking example of early modern debts to these precedents. Among its many subcategories, his catalog of historians also included a section on Historici Troianorum or “historians of the Trojans.” Zwinger’s brief vita for Dares featured absolutely nothing akin to the critiques of Salutati, Vives, or Barreiros. Instead, not only did he invoke Isidore, but he also copied his entry for Dares almost verbatim from Volterrano’s Anthropologia, Isidore’s first Renaissance heir.13 In the Anthropologia, where Dares was nestled alphabetically among such luminaries as the legendary bucolic poet Daphnis, the prophet Daniel, and the Roman Decius, Volterrano had described the Phrygian as follows, without any doubts or hesitations: The historian Dares Phrygius wrote in Greek of the Trojan War, in which he himself fought. As Isidore declared, he was nearly the first of the historians. He remained with Antenor’s faction when Troy was captured, as Cornelius Nepos writes, who translated his work into six books from the Greek, and dedicated [them] to Sallust.14 Like Zwinger in his wake, Volterrano had bypassed thorny questions of authenticity and ascription. He cited other authorities when affirming Dares’ authority, appealing to Isidore while executing a project manifestly Isidorian in nature. Dares was still an eyewitness to the Trojan War, who had fought in the very conflict he memorialized, and Isidore was still a preeminent compiler of ancient learning. Volterrano’s acceptance of Dares is striking given that he was one of the first scholars—​less than a decade after their publication, in fact—​to cast doubts upon Annius’ Antiquities.15 Nor was Zwinger the only sixteenth-​century bibliographer to co-​opt Volterrano’s entry for Dares. Several decades earlier, the Swiss bibliographer and polymath Conrad Gessner had inserted an identical entry for the Phrygian into his massive 1545 Bibliotheca universalis or Universal Library,

13. Zwinger, Theatrum, 1584. 14.  Raffaello Volterrano, Commentariorum urbanorum XXXVIII libri (Rome, 1506), fol. 206r: “Dares Phrygius Historicus scripsit bellum troianum grece in quo ipse militauit, ut ait Isidorus primus fere historicorum qui tandem capto Ilio cum Antenoris factione remansit ut scribit Cor. Nepos. Qui opus eius in Sex libros e greco conuertit dicauitque Crispo Sallustio.” For pseudo-​Nepos’ claim that Dares remained at Troy with Antenor's faction, see Dares, De excidio Troiae 44, ed. Meister, 52: “Hactenus Dares Phrygius mandavit litteris, nam is ibidem cum Antenoris factione remansit.” 15.  For his doubts about Annius’ Berosus, see Volterrano, Commentariorum urbanorum XXXVIII libri, fol. 193v.

218

218

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

which stretched to over 1,200 pages and claimed to compile descriptions of all works ever written in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.16 When the Zurich scholar and theologian Josias Simler published a revised edition of Gessner’s Bibliotheca, he added many critical comments about issues of authenticity. In his entry for Berosus, for instance, he remarked that most of the erudite did not consider Annius’ text to be genuine but rather dismissed it as the work of “some unknown confabulator.”17 Yet he did not question Dares’ authenticity: instead, he even expanded upon Gessner’s original vita, calculating that, as an eyewitness to Troy, Dares must have flourished 2,840 years after Creation and 1,123 before Christ.18 Moreover, in their entries for Cornelius Nepos, both Gessner and Simler credited the Roman historian with translating the Destruction of Troy.19 In a similar fashion, when the German humanist Johannes Glandorp compiled the Onomasticon historiae Romanae, an exhaustive Roman prosopography, his entry for Cornelius Nepos recorded that the Roman historian and friend of Cicero had “translated Dares Phrygius.”20 Even Jean Bodin’s 1566 Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem or Method for the Easy Comprehension of Histories unhesitatingly accepted Dares in a manner akin to the encyclopedists. Bodin’s Method was a pioneering work in the early modern genre of the ars historica or “art of history.”21 The French jurist

16.  Conrad Gessner, Bibliotheca universalis (Zurich, 1545), fol. 193r. On Gessner’s scholarly practices, see Blair, Too Much to Know, esp. 162–​63; Ann Blair, “The Capacious Bibliographical Practice of Conrad Gessner,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 111 (2017): 445–​ 68; and Urs B. Leu, Conrad Gessner (1516–​1565):  Universalgelehrter und Naturforscher der Renaissance (Zurich, 2016). For his debts to Jerome and Gennadius, see Zedelmaier, Bibliotheca Universalis, 26–​27. On his citation of Dares, see Louis Faivre D’Arcier, “Josias Mercier, éditeur de Darès le Phrygien,” in Jean (c.1525–​1570) et Josias (c.1560–​1626) Mercier: l’amour de la philologie à la Renaissance et au début de l’âge classique, ed. François. Roudaut (Paris, 2006), 195. 17. Josias Simler, Bibliotheca instituta et collecta primum a Conrado Gesnero, deinde in Epitomen redacta et nouorum librorum accessione locupletata, iam vero postremo recognita, et in duplum post priores editiones aucta (Zurich, 1574), 100: “Extant nostra aetate quinque libri antiquitatum Beroso inscripti, in quos commentarios scripsit Ioannes Annius Viterbiensis: verum eruditiores quique iudicant hos non esse Berosi, sed a nescio quo fabulatore confictos et illius nomine editos.” On Simler’s approach to spuria, particularly Berosus, see Clark, “Forgery, Misattribution, and a Case of Secondary Pseudonymity,” in Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, ed. Stephens and Havens, 74–​98, esp. 87–​88. 18. Simler, Bibliotheca instituta, 156: “Claruit anno a creatione mundi 2840 ante Christum 1123.” 19. See Gessner, Bibliotheca universalis, fol. 188r, and Simler, Bibliotheca instituta, 148. 20. Johannes Glandorp, Onomasticon historiae Romanae (Frankfurt, 1589), 280: “CORNELIUS NEPOS, Historicus, Ciceronis amicus, scripsit Chronica, vitam Ciceronis et Attici . . .Vertit Daretem Phrygium.” 21. On the early modern ars historica, see Grafton, What Was History?

219



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

219

offered rules for assessing the veracity of historians (which he took in part from none other than Annius of Viterbo) and distinguished between what we would term primary and secondary sources.22 After explaining how to read histories, he then listed out which histories to read, in a format reminiscent of Vives’ De tradendis disciplinis. As a fitting appendix to his Method, Bodin compiled a comprehensive historical bibliography.23 He divided his historians into genres, beginning with writers of universal history, and then organized them chronologically within each category. Unfortunately, he was not the most discriminating judge of whom to include, and so he fell for a number of spurious works. More than three decades after Vives had attacked Annius, and a year after Barreiros had published his Censura, Bodin still placed Annius’ Berosus directly below Moses in his catalog of universal historians. With a bit of hedging, he described him as the so-​ called Berosus, even though he made liberal use of him regardless.24 For Bodin, universal history began with Genesis and then continued with the Babylonian astrologer. From historia universalis Bodin moved on to particular histories. A few pages later he compiled a list of historici Graecorum or “historians of the Greeks.” It began with none other than the oldest writers on matters Greek: Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius.25 (See Figure 5.1.) Bodin recorded that both Dictys and Dares flourished 1,129 years before Christ. Hence, his dating implied that he accepted both Dictys and Dares as eyewitnesses to Troy. Both visually and chronologically, Bodin accorded the Destruction of Troy priority in his comprehensive record of historiography. And in so doing, this ostensible pioneer of modern historical criticism perpetuated a remarkable continuity. Throughout sixteenth-​century

22.  For Bodin, see Julian Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Sixteenth–​Century Revolution in the Methodology of Law and History (New York, 1963); Donald R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship:  Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New  York, 1970), 134–​40; and Marie–​Dominique Couzinet, Histoire et méthode à la Renaissance: une lecture de la Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem de Jean Bodin (Paris, 1996). See also Sara Miglietti’s recent edition and Italian translation of the Methodus: Jean Bodin, Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, ed. and trans. Sara Miglietti (Pisa, 2013). 23. Zwinger drew upon this bibliographical appendix extensively. 24. Jean Bodin, Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (Paris, 1566), 443–​44: “Berosi Caldaei, quae dicuntur, fragmenta universae historiae ab orbe condito usque ad annum mundi IIIMCXXX. in Sardanapalo desiit, ut Metasthenes scribit. *Claruit ante Christum anno 330.” Bodin used a similar hedging formulation when describing Annius’ Manetho (p.  450) and Cato (p. 452). 25. Bodin, Methodus, 450: “Clar. ante Chr. 1129. Daretis Phrygii de bello Troiano libri VI e Graeca lingua Latino carmine conuersi a Cornelio Nepote.” On Bodin’s acceptance of Annius, Dares, and Dictys, see Grafton, “Invention,” 29. The significance of Bodin’s use of the formulation “Latino carmine” is explored in the next chapter.

20

220

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Figure 5.1  Jean Bodin lists Dictys and Dares at the very beginning of his bibliography of Greek historians, recording that both flourished in the year 1129 BCE. Jean Bodin, Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (Paris, 1566), now Bibliothèque nationale de France Z-​7825, p. 450.

learning, a proliferation of entries, notices, and vitae carried the Phrygian’s august name through one encyclopedia after another. None of these entries even so much as mentioned the emergent attacks against the first pagan historian.

Autopsy, Print, and the New Empiricism:  The Case of Albanus Torinus How did these encyclopedia entries multiply and spread across sixteenth century reference works? In varying forms they derived from a single source: Raffaello Volterrano’s aforementioned 1506 vita of Dares. This brief life of the Phrygian—​ which affirmed his status as both an ancient and an eyewitness—​did not just circulate in bibliographic guides. It also came to adorn printed editions of the Destruction of Troy. Print worked side by side with biobibliography to bolster the Phrygian’s authority. In 1541, the Basel scholar and physician Albanus Torinus published an edition of the Phrygian along with several other Troy-​related texts.26 Torinus served

26. Dares Phrygius, De bello Troiano, ed. Albanus Torinus (Basel, 1541). These texts, and the confusions this volume wrought, are discussed in the following chapter.

21



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

221

as rector of the University of Basel and became the personal physician to the Duke of Württemberg. He mostly edited medical works, but Troy also piqued his interest. His volume of Troy texts placed Volterrano’s vita on the verso of its title page.27 Volterrano had emphasized Dares’ autopsy: Dares had written of the Trojan War “in which he himself fought” (in quo ipse militavit). Like many other printers and editors of the Phrygian, Torinus also talked up Dares’ autoptic bona fides. As we will see, he used his preface to launch a full-​throated defense of eyewitness history, backed by ancient authorities. Although Torinus’ volume of Trojan texts is all but forgotten today, the Basel scholar is better known for his contribution to a more celebrated chapter in the history of eyewitnessing and empiricism—​itself integral to narratives about the early modern origins of modern science. This project shared surprising affinities with the early modern reception of the Phrygian. Torinus was friends with the Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius, professor at the University of Padua and author of the 1543 anatomical textbook De humani corporis fabrica or On the Fabric of the Human Body. Torinus translated an abridged version of the De fabrica into German, thereby making Vesalius’ medical researches available to those outside of a learned Latin milieu.28 To us, Vesalius’ anatomy and Dares’ historiography might not seem similar, but to someone like Torinus, they were of a piece. In the preface to his De fabrica, Vesalius had launched a famous case for empiricism: he celebrated empirical observation as an ancient practice that had disappeared with antiquity’s end, and he called for its modern revival. Just as Valla and others had told the story of Latinity’s decline, so Vesalius told the story of anatomy’s. The distant past of Greek antiquity had been its Golden Age. Then physicians had actually performed dissections, making use of their own eyes and their own hands. But this art reached its nadir when the Goths and other barbarians overran the Roman Empire. In Vesalius’ doleful estimation, “particularly after the filth of the Goths . . . medicine began to be ravaged by having its primary instrument, the application of the hand’s work in healing, so neglected that it seemed to have been handed over to common folk and to persons completely untrained in the disciplines that serve the medicinal art.”29 And it was not anatomy alone that had suffered such neglect. 27. Dares, De bello Troiano, ed. Torinus, title page verso. 28. Andreas Vesalius, Von des menschen Cörpers Anatomey, trans. Albanus Torinus (Basel, 1543). See discussion of this work in Henry E. Sigerist, “Albanus Torinus and the German Edition of the Epitome of Vesalius,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 14 (1943): 652–​66. 29. Andreas Vesalius, “Praefatio,” in De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (Basel, 1555 [1543]), sig. a 2 recto: “. . . et praecipue post Gotthorum illuuiem . . . medicina eousque lacerari coeperit, quod primarium eius instrumentum, manus operam in curando adhibens, ita neglectum sit, ut

2

222

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Especially “after the devastation of the Goths” (post Gotthorum uastationem), Vesalius lamented, “all the sciences previously in their prime and fittingly practiced went to ruin.”30 Physicians no longer wished, quite literally, to dirty their hands with direct knowledge. This scorn survived into the present, so much so that many contemporary physicians still did not perform dissection itself, instead outsourcing it to barbers and others of lower social rank. Vesalius decried this bifurcation: “some perform the dissection of the human body (humani corporis sectionem), and others narrate the description of its parts (partium historiam).” Recognizing anatomy as a species of natural history, he duly described its texts as historiae. And he condemned those professional readers of historia who “squawk like jackdaws from their lofty professorial chairs things they have never done but only memorize from the books of others or see written down . . .”31 By invoking historia in this fashion, Vesalius raised a problem inherent in any attempt at the transmission of autoptic information. Written records of firsthand observations conveyed by authors ipso facto became secondhand information when received by readers. Language itself, the raw material of historia, formed a barrier to the direct apprehension of knowledge. Hence, Vesalius adorned his De fabrica with intricate images and diagrams. These pictures would place his results “before the eyes” (ob oculos) of those who could not witness dissections in person. They promised to convey the fruits of autopsy “more exactly” (exactius) than even “the most explicit speech” (explicatissimo sermone).32 This valorization of the visual image anticipated Della Porta’s approach to the Phrygian’s “portraits” ad plebeios, ac disciplinis medicae arti subseruientibus neutiquam instructos, id quasi uideatur esse demandatum.” The translation used here is taken (with modifications) from Andreas Vesalius, On the Fabric of the Human Body, trans. Daniel Garrison and Malcolm Hast, available online through Northwestern University at http://​vesalius.northwestern.edu. 30. Vesalius, “Praefatio,” sig. a 2 verso: “Verum maxime post Gotthorum uastationem, quando omnes scientiae, antea pulcherrime florentes, utque decebat exercitae, pessum iuere, lautiores medici primum in Italia, ad ueterum Romanorum imitationem, manus operam fastidientes, quae in aegris manu facienda ducerent, seruis prescribere, ac illis tantum architectorum modo astare, coeperunt.” 31. Vesalius, “Praefatio,” sig. a 3 recto: “. . . alii humani corporis sectionem administrare, alii partium historiam enarrare consueuerunt. His quidem graculorum modo, quae nunquam aggressi sunt, sed tantum ex aliorum libris memoriae commendant, descripta ue ob oculos ponunt, alte in cathedra egregio fastu occinentibus.” 32. Vesalius, “Praefatio,” sig. a 4 verso: On historia and anatomy, see Gianna Pomata, “Praxis Historialis: The Uses of Historia in Early Modern Medicine,” in Historia, ed. Pomata and Siraisi, 105–​46, and Andrea Carlino, Books of the Body:  Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning, trans. John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi (Chicago, 1999). For the capaciousness of early modern notions of historia, see especially Arno Seifert, Cognitio historica: Die Geschichte als Namengeberin der frühneuzeitlichen Empirie (Berlin, 1976). On approaches to vision and images in early modernity, see Susanna Berger, The Art of Philosophy: Visual Thinking in Europe

23



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

223

of Trojans and Greeks; they were eyes that Dares provided to those who had not actually been present at the war. In 1543 Vesalius traveled from Padua to Basel to oversee the publication of his De fabrica by the famous printer Johannes Oporinus. Here he met Torinus, who invited him to the university to perform a dissection. Their views must have been congenial to one another. Two years earlier, when he published Dares Phrygius, Torinus had made a case for the ancient art of eyewitnessing quite similar to what Vesalius would voice in his more famous manifesto. In his preface, the Basel physician explained why he had printed Dares, that “seer and most ancient historian of all” (vate et historico omnium antiquissimo): No one will easily discover anyone older or truer (neque uetustiorem, neque ueriorem) than Dares, inasmuch as he was present at Troy in person for the very things that occurred, and he pursued a history he seized upon with his eyes, not just with his ears. I am unaware of any poets or historians before him. According to the proverb, who does not know that greater faith must be placed in the eyes than in the ears? Therefore Horace rightly says: “Wide open ears do not retain deeds more faithfully /​than those exposed to the eyes.” And therefore history, which is a description of deeds, obtains its name from historein, that is from seeing.33 Isidore of Seville had offered a variation on this dictum when defining history, right before he deemed Dares the first to practice it. The eyes were more trustworthy than the ears; direct knowledge was better than indirect. But when explicating this “proverb,” Torinus did not access the ancients directly. Instead, he used a contemporary intermediary—​Erasmus’ Adagia.34 Without acknowledgment, from the Late Renaissance to the Early Enlightenment (Princeton, 2017), and Stuart Clark, Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford, 2007). 33. Torinus, “Epistola Nuncupatoria,” in Dares, De bello Troiano, sig. † 3 recto: “Hoc nobis consilii fuit in DARETE hoc Phrygio, uate et Historico omnium antiquissimo, in lucem edendo, tot seculis ab omnibus fere desiderato: quo nemo facile mihi neque uetustiorem, neque ueriorem proferet ullum, utpote qui rebus ipsis ad Troiam gestis praesens praesentibus adfuerit, et historiam oculis, non auribus solum usurpatam persecutus sit:  quem ante, nescio qui uel Poetae, uel Historici extiterint. Oculis porro, iuxta prouerbium, quis nescit maiorem esse fidem habendam, quam auribus? Recte igitur Flaccus inquit: Nec retinent patulae commissa fidelius aures,/​Quam quae sunt oculis subiecta. Eoque historia, quae est rerum gestarum descriptio, παρὰ τὸ ἱστορεῖν quod est, a uidendo, nomen obtinet.” Cf. Isid. Etym. 1.41.1. 34. Erasmus, Adagia, 1.1.100, in Les adages, Vol I, ed. and trans. Jean-​Christophe Saladin (Paris, 2011), 132–​33:  “Ὠντίων πιστότεροι ὀφθαλμοί, id est oculis credendum potius quam auribus. Quae cernuntur, certiora sunt quam quae audiuntur. Item Horatius: Nec retinent patulae commissa fidelius aures. Idem in arte poetica: Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem/​Quam quae

24

224

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

the Basel humanist borrowed Erasmus’ explication of this bon mot almost verbatim, including his citations of Horace. He did so in order to pile up classical authorities in favor of Dares, an author who had claimed to follow this Horatian injunction by faithful use of his eyes. Yet Torinus had not looked directly at Horace with faithful eyes, and so he perpetuated Erasmus’ original misquotation of the Roman poet. Although the famous humanist partially corrected himself in a later edition of his Adagia, he had initially fumbled together two distinct passages from two different works of Horace, presenting them as one. The first was from the Epistles, where the poet explained that “Wide open ears do not retain things more faithfully /​and once a word has been uttered, it flies forth irrevocably.” The second, from Horace’s Ars poetica, declared, “Things sent through the ear provoke our minds more slowly than those things that are exposed to faithful eyes.” Torinus, following Erasmus’ initial error, took a line from each and so printed a Horatian passage that Horace himself had never written. Ironically, Erasmus’ and Torinus’ very (mis)use of Horace illustrated the fallibility of the ears—​the problems inherent in indirect transmission. Erasmus did not just furnish weapons to Dares’ critics, such as Vives and Barreiros. The humanist critic par excellence also furnished Dares’ champions with arguments:  in the form of pithy aphorisms about eyewitness history and empirical knowledge. For Torinus, Vesalius, and Erasmus alike, autopsy trumped hearsay. That assumption ignored a problem so obvious it might seem trivial to state it directly. This book, however, is ultimately a history of this problem. When authors said they saw things, how were readers to evaluate whether or not they were telling the truth? Such logic operated according to a syllogism, but its middle term proved slippery. It went roughly as follows: (1) eyewitness historians were the most credible historians, (2) Dares was an eyewitness historian, and (3) Dares was a most credible historian. But how did one know that Dares was an actual eyewitness? There were no eyewitnesses to guarantee his eyewitnesses authority. This absence of corroboration was unavoidable when dealing with testimony from so distant and ancient a past as Troy. Perhaps it was easier to follow Varro and consign such faraway events to myth. But extracting historiae veritas—​and not just vague fabulae—​from deep antiquity necessitated reliance upon what ancient “eyewitnesses” had claimed to sunt oculis subiecta fidelibus, et quae/​ipse sibi tradit spectator.” Cf. Hor. Epist. 1.18.70–​71: “Nec retinent patulae commissa fidelius aures/​Et semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum” and Hor. Ars P. 180–​82. For the original version, before Erasmus realized the error, see Erasmus, Adagiorum chiliades tres (Venice, 1508), 249. On Erasmus’ misuse of Horace and his subsequent correction of it, see Collected Works of Erasmus:  Adages Ii1 to Iv100, trans. Margaret Mann Phillips (Toronto, 1982), 142–​43.

25



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

225

transmit via books—​just as Vesalius had claimed to do when memorializing his dissections in the diagrams of his De fabrica. This was no different from what Annius, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and pseudo-​Nepos had claimed to do when they purported to discover, translate, and comment upon histories whose underlying events they themselves had never seen. Our own blinders make it difficult to understand the worldview that simultaneously accepted Andreas Vesalius and Dares Phrygius. Modern historiography later swept the former up into the triumphalist rhetoric of the Scientific Revolution—​a story of clear-​eyed empiricism defeating error and obfuscation—​while relegating the latter to the realm of credulity and forgery, the very sort of obfuscation that disenchanted, scientific empiricism had ostensibly eliminated. Yet they both shared a conception of eyewitnessing—​and a vision of its ancient practice—​more similar than we might suppose. However, unlike anatomy, history contained a Catch-​22. Vesalius’ credibility was theoretically confirmable: someone with sufficient expertise could reproduce the anatomist’s dissections and see if the real flesh and blood results matched his De fabrica. But history was not universally replicable. Even those who subscribed to theories of exemplarity, and posited enough similitude between past and present to deem the former the teacher or magistra of the latter, had no means of recreating Troy and testing whether Dares had actually told the truth. There was no foolproof way of knowing whether Aeneas had actually betrayed the city, or whether Hector had actually possessed a venerable visage. There was a further paradox at work here. The past’s authority was also predicated upon its irrecoverable nature—​that yawning gap that separated it from the present. Dares’ authority, as Torinus made clear in his alliterative pairing of vestustior and verior, did not just derive from eyewitnessing but rather from his status as an ancient eyewitness, the first of the pagans, in fact, to record empirical observations and thus practice the art of historia itself.

From Vernacular Forgery to Greek Chronology: Printing Dares after Torinus In 1573, some three decades after Albanus Torinus declared that there was nothing older or truer than the Phrygian, the Augsburg scholar George Henisch published another edition of Dares (along with Dictys). In it he proclaimed the Phrygian’s antiquity in still more universal terms. As we saw, this was the printing Dee annotated. Like Torinus, Henisch was also both a humanist scholar and a physician. Among other endeavors, he served as librarian at Augsburg, edited the writings of the Greek medical writer Aretaeus of Cappadocia, and began a

26

226

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

German dictionary, his Thesaurus linguae et sapientiae Germanicae.35 His preface to the Phrygian reflected his eclectic pursuits. It began at the very beginning, with none other than Adam himself. Thereafter, following Ovid and others, it offered a long-​winded meditation on the Golden Age and the age of heroes. Some eight pages into this discussion, Henisch remembered that he was writing a preface to Dares and Dictys. He explained his prior digression as follows: But what is the purpose of all this? The subject of the present book—​in which are contained histories of the Trojan War—​has provoked this rather prolix commemoration of the declining ages of the world. These histories seemed to require some narration of such things [i.e., history’s decline], since they contain a splendid testimony of the wisdom and sincere virtue of ancient ages (sapientiae et sincerae virtutis veterum seculorum). The heralds and interpreters [of this testimony] are also themselves most ancient (ipsi antiquissimi), and profane histories have none older (vetustiores) than they. For deeds described before the times of the Trojan War, except the Colchian and Theban expedition, deserve to be called not histories but fables (non tam historiae quam fabulae).36 Like Torinus, Henisch made explicit that no pagan histories were “older” (vetustiores) than Dares and Dictys. In a variation upon Varro’s periodization, he judged the Trojan War, not the First Olympiad, as the start of the historical epoch. Co-​opting a key phrase from pseudo-​Nepos’ epistle, he thereafter described how the Phrygian and the Cretan—​present at the Trojan War itself—​ had unfolded their histories “truly and simply” (vere simpliciterque).37 Given the fabulous nature of what preceded them, they were the first pagans to write in such true and simple style.

35. On Henisch, see John Considine, Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe: Lexicography and the Making of Heritage (Cambridge, 2008), 135–​38. 36. Belli Troiani scriptores, ed. Georg Henisch, sig. 5 verso–​6 recto: “Sed quorsum haec tam multa? Hanc quidem de inclinantibus mundi seculis prolixiorem commemorationem excitauit praesentis libri argumentum, in quo belli Troiani historiae continentur, quae omnino flagitare narrationem de his aliquam videbantur, cum illae luculentum testimonium habeant sapientiae et sincerae virtutis veterum seculorum: cuius praecones atque interpretes sunt et ipsi antiquissimi, et quibus profanae historiae non habent vetustiores. Quaecunque enim ante Troiani belli tempora res gestae describuntur praeter Colchicam et Thebanam expeditionem eae non tam historiae quam fabulae dici merentur.” 37. Belli Troiani scriptores, ed. Henisch, sig. 6 recto: “Dictys enim Cretensis et Dares Phrygius ipsi bello interfuerunt, ideoque vere simpliciterque res gestas exposuerunt, locis, personis, temporibusque distinctas, hoc tantum fine, ut hominum memoriae commendentur.”

27



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

227

Henisch also used their priority to make a more macroscopic point concerning the history of history, not unlike what Polydore Vergil and Juan Luis Vives had argued. For the Augsburg scholar, Dares and Dictys were simultaneously old and young. If they were firsts, they demonstrated just how long it had taken the pagans to invent history and hence how much younger pagan history was than its sacred counterpart. According to his calculations, Troy had been captured 402  years before the founding of Rome, 1,153  years before the birth of Christ, and some 2,809 years after the Creation. Although he did not cite his sources for these numbers, the humanist Henisch showed that he possessed a facility for the kind of chronological scholarship that Eusebius and Jerome had practiced. In a moment we will see how early modern chronological research could imperil the Phrygian, but here it will suffice to note that—​at least in its rudimentary forms—​ chronology also continued to bolster the temporal framework that afforded him authority. In Henisch’s judgment, these calculations made clear “how much more ancient histories of the church are than those of the pagans, who not only described nothing from the first origin of the world to the Flood, but also began their own histories a long time after the Flood.”38 The Phrygian allowed Henisch to keep the pagans in their proper place; the first pagan historian confirmed that the Bible was even older and truer, much as Isidore had affirmed by placing Dares after Moses. Henisch used Dares to uphold the traditional order of things, much as Isidore of Seville and his medieval successors had done. But other sixteenth-​century printings of the Destruction of Troy upheld this order by taking the Phrygian to places he had not hitherto traveled. It will suffice to mention two here, both of which reflected new developments in early modern learned culture. The first example comes from Dares’ migration into the budding world of vernacular translation, and the second from his encounter with newly accessible Greek texts. Although a wide-​ranging vernacular tradition inspired by Dares flourished during the Middle Ages, the Destruction of Troy itself was not translated into the vernacular until the sixteenth century. Then, in a matter of decades, it proliferated across languages. Much like Torinus’ German translation of Vesalius, these translations made the Phrygian accessible to those who did not necessarily command Latinity. French, English, Italian, and German versions of the Destruction of Troy all appeared

38. Belli Troiani scriptores, ed. Henisch, sig. 6 recto: “Ferunt autem Troiam matrem Romani populi captam esse ante urbis Romanae conditionem annis quadringentis et duobus, ante natum Christum 1153. et post diluuium fere totidem: a condito vero mundo 2809. Ex quibus palam fit, quanto sint antiquiores Ecclesiae historiae, quam Ethnicorum, qui non modo res a prima origine mundi usque ad diluuium nullas descripserunt, sed suas etiam historias longo tempore post diluuium inchoarunt.”

28

228

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

between the 1530s and 1550s. And sometimes these new vernacular translations perpetuated the stranger aspects of the Latin Dares’ medieval fortunes. As discussed in Chapter 2, the Origo Troianorum or Origins of the Trojans—​ which William of Malmesbury had erroneously attributed to Cato—​became a popular coda to the Destruction of Troy. It appeared in over a dozen Dares manuscripts from the twelfth century onward. From here it migrated into several Renaissance printings of the Destruction of Troy. For example, the Sicilian Faragonius’ edition, mentioned earlier, placed it directly before pseudo-​Nepos’ epistle. Faragonius had simply labeled it a historia de origine Troianorum or “history concerning the origins of the Trojans,” but a later printing, issued in 1520 at Paris, altered its title subtly yet significantly. This Paris Dares explicitly credited the authorship of the genealogy to the Phrygian himself, titling it Dares Phrigius de origine Troianorum or “Dares Phrygius on the origins of the Trojans.”39 The genealogy also made its way into several vernacular translations, including an Italian Dares from 1543 and a French Dares from 1553.40 The former linked Dares and the Origins of the Trojans to an Italian translation of some texts of profound contemporary significance—​none other than Annius’ Antiquities, in fact. Annius of Viterbo had not only carved out a privileged place in world history for Dardanus, the star of William’s genealogy, but he also claimed to have discovered his own fragments of Cato, thanks to his imaginary Mantuan. Fittingly enough, this Italian edition, published some four centuries after William of Malmesbury produced his compilation, printed Dares, Dictys, and the Origins of the Trojans alongside Italian translations of several of Annius’ texts, including his Berosus.41 This volume was the work of a Venetian, one Giovan Battista Roscio. In Valentina Prosperi’s analysis, Roscio’s printing of the Phrygian, the Cretan, and Annius alongside one another reflected their participation in a common project: not only did they all assert their extreme antiquity, but they also each purported to recast myth as history.42

39. Dares, De excidio Troiae historia, ed. Faragonius, sig. h recto: the incipit reads “HISTORIA De origine Troianorum foeliciter incipit.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae historia: cum figuris cum privilegio (Paris, 1520), sig. A. i: “Dares Phrigius De origine Troianorum.” 40. La vraye et breve histoire de la guerre et ruine de Troie anciennement escripte en Grec par Dares Phrigius (Paris, 1553), sig. A vi recto. 41.  Ditte Candiano della guerra Troiana. Darete Frigio della rovina Troiana, trans. Giovan Battista Roscio (Venice, 1543), fol. 67v:  “Dell’origine de Troiani. Fude Troiani l’origine Dardano, il quale di Giove et Elettra figliuola d’Atlante nasciuto per uno oracolo si parti d’Ilatia [sic], e venuto à Samo per Tracia la chiamò Samotracia, & indi in Frigia pervenne e chiamola dal suo nome Dardania.” This edition is noted by Stephens, Giants, 383 n. 19. 42. Prosperi, “Il paradosso,” 48–​49.

29



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

229

The Origins of the Trojans constituted an ideal bridge between Dares and Annius, much as William of Malmesbury had used it as a bridge between Dares and more conventional sources of Roman history. Annius’ Berosus ended with Dardanus leaving Italy and founding Dardania, and this is where the Origins of the Trojans began, as it detailed how Dardania eventually became Troy. In more macroscopic terms, Annius’ Antiquities were also guides to the origins and genealogies of peoples. They were ideal traveling companions for a Trojan genealogy. This parallelism is evident in the titles Roscio chose for his various translations: in addition to this brief text On the Origins of the Trojans, they included Myrsilius Lesbius’ On the Origins of Italy and the Tyrrhenians, Quintus Fabius Pictor’s On the Golden Age and the Origins of Rome, and Caius Sempronius Tuditanus’ On the Division of Italy and the Origins of Rome.43 These explicit mentions of “origins” were not present in Annius’ original Latin titles; rather, they were products of Roscio’s own editorial styling. Thanks to Roscio, the Destruction of Troy and the Antiquities, ancient and modern forgeries simultaneously indicted by carping critics, were also yoked to one another by enthusiastic editors and translators, linked in part by a genealogy frequently appended to the medieval Dares. In the sixteenth century, Dares’ history remained a prologue to origins, now diffused into the vernacular, much as it had been in the Latinate medieval world of William of Malmesbury and Geoffrey of Monmouth. Sixteenth-​century printers also joined the Phrygian to another class of new texts: Greek histories that had been largely lost with the decline of Greek learning in the medieval West. As seen in our discussion of Sidney, the revival of an important genuine work of Greek antiquity—​Aristotle’s Poetics—​indirectly bolstered the historical credibility of the Destruction of Troy, a text that—​thanks to its invocation of Homer’s Athenian detractors and the like—​had fabricated its association with Greek antiquity. This process had proven to be still more direct in the case of another ancient Greek author, the historian Diodorus Siculus. The Βιβλιοθήκη ἱστορική or Historical Library of Diodorus was mostly inaccessible to Western Europeans in the Middle Ages. And although Renaissance scholars like Poggio Bracciolini and Henricus Stephanus translated and edited large portions of it, the Sicilian historian’s Library had not wholly survived the injuries of time. His account of Troy, for instance, was available only in fragments. Still, it was clear from the extant portions of the Historical Library that Diodorus considered

43. Ditte Candiano della guerra Troiana, title page: “Mirsilio Lesbio dell’origine d’Italia, e de Tirreni. /​Quinto Fabio Pittore dell’Aurea età, e dell’origine di Roma. /​Caio Sempronio della divisione d’Italia, & origine di Roma.” Cf. Annius, Antiquitates, title page.

230

230

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

the Trojan War a crucial turning point in world history. As he described it, only after Troy could chronology be established with certainty; he would not attempt to date the periods before it precisely.44 Early moderns devised some creative solutions for counteracting the fragmentary nature of the text. In 1548 the Basel professor Marcus Hopperus published a Latin edition of Diodorus’ Library. As he announced on the title page, he filled in its lacunose middle portions with the Trojan histories of Dictys and Dares, “so that the order of times and the course of events would be preserved as they occurred.”45 In his preface, Hopperus elaborated upon this unusual decision. The first six books of Diodorus contained almost all of history from the beginning of the world to the Trojan War, and hence, on the advice of some unnamed “learned men,” he had joined them to Dictys and Dares “like a thread to a congruent thread” (filum filo congruenti).46 Joining these threads together promised to make lux veritatis shine more brightly; reading Dares, Dictys, and Diodorus all together was both pleasant and useful “for knowing the truth of the matter more thoroughly.” The title page of a 1559 reprint of Hopperus’ volume made this strategy still more explicit. It announced that it had “interposed” Dares and Dictys within Diodorus’ Historical Library, “in order to supplement the lacuna of

44. Diod. Sic. 1.5.1: “Τῶν δὲ χρόνων τούτων περιειλημμένων ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ πραγματείᾳ τοὺς μὲν πρὸ τῶν Τρωικῶν οὐ διοριζόμεθα βεβαίως διὰ τὸ μηδὲν παράπηγμα παρειληφέναι περὶ τούτων πιστευόμενον . . .” See Charles E. Muntz, Diodorus Siculus and the World of the Late Roman Republic (New York, 2017). 45. Diodorus Siculus, Bibliothecae historicae libri . . . XVII (Basel, 1548), title page: “His adiecimus, Dictys Cretensis, et Daretis Phrygii De Troiano bello historiam, quo temporum ordo, ac series rerum, ut quaeque sunt gestae, conseruaretur.” 46. Diodorus Siculus, Bibliothecae historicae libri . . . XVII, sig. a 2 verso: “Sed heus: mirabitur forsitan lector, quanam ratione, quoue consilio tam Dictys Cretensis, quam Daretis Phrygii de bello Troiano libellos inserere hisce uoluerimus. Huius uero facti consilium hoc secuti sumus. Quum sex illi Diodori priores rerum antiquarum libri, omnes fere ab exordio mundi ad bellum usque Troianum historias continerent, quo coepta historia ulterius sese protenderet, et quasi filum filo congruenti annecteremus, hi nobis authores in primis tum occurrebant, quos doctorum uirorum consilio hisce rerum priscarum libris appenderemus:  qui etsi in rei fere eiusdem descriptione occupati sint, tamen quia non eodem forte modo, iucundum hercle et utile fuerit ob rei ueritatem penitius cognoscendam, eos inter sese conferre.” A printer’s error quite literally confused the two texts, joining them together as more than just two threads: at p. 230 in Diodorus, the running title read “Daretis Phrygii” instead of “Diodori Siculi.” For an example of a reader correcting this by striking through the former and inserting the latter, see Diodorus Siculus, Bibliothecae historicae. . . libri XVII (Basel, 1548), now Bodleian Library Vet. D1 c.86, 230.

231



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

231

five books, which are missing between books five and eleven.”47 Dares and Dictys could fill in the missing portions of other texts and hence fill out the murky and uncertain record of the distant past; they provided firsthand details where other histories had failed to do so. Once again, the Destruction of Troy demanded continuation and supplementation, as it had throughout the Middle Ages. The pairing of the Phrygian and Diodorus perpetuated those very compilatory impulses that had hitherto tied the Destruction of Troy to diverse medieval Latin texts, from the Fredegar Chronicle to Geoffrey of Monmouth. Diodorus, whose history was rich in details concerning the distant world of Near Eastern antiquity, proved to be an even older witness to the tradition that Eusebius and Jerome had consolidated. Much like medieval codices, early modern print continued to fuse heterogeneous texts and traditions, forming new histories that their original authors could never have anticipated. The Destruction of Troy’s importance to sixteenth-​century print and encyclopedism underscores the extent to which the text extended its authority well into the early modern period. Both encyclopedism and print—​symbiotically related to one another—​perpetuated those very responses to antiquity that had celebrated the Phrygian as an authoritative first throughout the Middle Ages. Renaissance encyclopedism took inspiration from late antique attempts to order past textual traditions, and the printing press perpetuated approaches to compilation and ascription that had long governed the packaging of texts in medieval codices. As genres proliferated that privileged lists and firsts, not everyone followed Polydore Vergil’s lead: Dares continued to enjoy a commanding place in the canon, and sometimes quite literally at the top of the page. The force of these webs of authority and attribution is aptly conveyed in a copy of the 1520 Paris Destruction of Troy, discussed earlier in this chapter. A  contemporary annotation scribbled on the title page not only placed Dares at the fall of Troy but also established his synchronicity with biblical history. In the words of this otherwise unknown reader, Dares “lived during the time of Samson, 1129 years before Christ.” Even at the micro-​level of anonymous, individual readings, the Phrygian remained the first pagan historian.48

47.  Diodorus Siculus, Bibliothecae historicae libri XVII (Basel, 1559)), title page:  “Praeterea interiecta est Dictys Cretensis et Daretis Phrygii de bello Troiano historia, ad supplendam lacunam quinque librorum, qui inter quintum et undecimum desiderantur.” 48. Dares, De excidio Troiae historia: cum figuris cum privilegio (Paris, 1520), now Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Lodge 1520 D24:  annotation on title page reads: “Vixit tempore Samsonis ante Christum natum 1129.” The date suggests a potential reading of Bodin’s Methodus, which also dated the Phrygian to 1129 BCE.

23

232

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Higher Criticism and Selective Bibliography:  Dares Around 1600 However, as the sixteenth century gave way to the seventeenth, more scholars followed Vives’ and Barreiros’ lead and began to reject Dares and his ilk. As we will see, some of the very manifestations of his success—​not least his ubiquity in print and his connections to the Greek canon—​soon presented opportunities for his undoing. In a moment we will encounter a scholar whose valorization of Diodorus led him to reject those spurious Trojan eyewitnesses whose presence had adulterated printings of the Historical Library. Yet there were other reasons why Dares fell victim to renewed attacks in the years around 1600. They too highlight the salience of comparison as a hermeneutic tool, albeit comparison of a more accidental variety. The Phrygian was now found guilty by association. Dares’ waning fortunes reflected larger shifts outside the history of criticism:  the first pagan historian and his fellow travelers become collateral damage in the confessional conflicts ignited by the Reformation and Counter-​ Reformation. These battles did not only concern theology but also gradually engulfed history—​namely, sacred history and the history of the church.49 In this context religious antagonists weaponized philology. It became more urgent to know which biblical and patristic texts were genuine, and which were spurious. As we saw, Erasmus, while editing Jerome but a year before Luther’s Ninety-​Five Theses, had anticipated these concerns. A bit more than a decade later, Vives had also expressed the need to cleanse sacred history of spuria—​hence the vitriol with which he attacked pseudo-​Berosus’ claim to rival Genesis. As Erasmus had made clear, purging the pagan canon was an essential preliminary to purging the Christian canon as well. Nonetheless, the advent of the Reformation did not herald the Phrygian’s immediate demise. On the contrary, exchange across confessional lines actually facilitated his continued acceptance:  to cite but one example, the Swiss Protestant Conrad Gessner did not share much in common with Raffaello

49. See for instance Simon Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity, and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular (Cambridge, 1995); Irena Backus, Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation (1378–​1615) (Leiden, 2003); Jean-​Louis Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity:  The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 2009); Katherine Van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan, eds., Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World (Oxford, 2012); Dimitri Levitin, “From Sacred History to the History of Religion: Paganism, Judaism, and Christianity in European Historiography from Reformation to ‘Enlightenment’,” The Historical Journal 55 (2012): 1117–​1160; and Nicholas Hardy, Criticism and Confession: The Bible in the Seventeenth Century Republic of Letters (Oxford, 2017).

23



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

233

Volterrano, a member of the Servite Order who had been active in papal circles. But the Catholic Volterrano was still a useful source for vitae of Dares and so many others, and the Protestant Gessner duly copied out Volterrano’s claim that the Phrygian was the first pagan historian. Gradually, however, the situation changed. The years around 1600 saw two attacks against the Phrygian that were motivated, at least obliquely, by confessional concerns. At this moment a new generation of humanists—​including such luminaries as Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon—​tackled problems of forgery and spuria in a more systematic fashion. Chief among the victims were ancient “pagan” sources that anticipated Christianity, especially the Sibylline Oracles and Hermes Trismegistus. The Huguenot Casaubon attacked the authenticity of the latter as but one small component of his broadside against his Catholic adversary Cesare Baronio’s church history. Baronio had cited Hermes as evidence of prisca theologia:  the primeval “pagan revelation” of Christian truth. Casaubon responded by demonstrating that the late Greek and manifestly Christianized vocabulary of the Hermetic Corpus necessarily had to postdate Christ’s birth.50 Critiques of this nature put pressure on other texts that, like Hermes, also claimed the status of primeval “firsts.” More important, it put pressure on the ancient canon in general, whether pagan or Christian. Hence why a term like collateral damage so aptly depicts what happened to the Destruction of Troy. As the yoking of Dares to Annius suggests, the history of criticism sometimes obeyed its own internal logic, engulfing spurious texts whose links to one another were not always obvious. Attacking one text as false often made a critic attack others, either as a rhetorical strategy for demonstrating the ubiquity of such mendacity, or as the fruit of a kind of free association, or both. In 1593 the Italian Jesuit Antonio Possevino published his Bibliotheca selecta or Selected Library, which he designed as a deliberate counterpoint to Conrad Gessner’s Universal Library and dedicated to Pope Clement VIII.51 Possevino was in the vanguard of Counter-​Reformation scholarship: he played a key role in the papal court and was an associate of figures like Cardinal Bellarmine. He

50. See Anthony Grafton, “Higher Criticism Ancient and Modern: The Lamentable Deaths of Hermes and the Sibyls,” in The Uses of Greek and Latin: Historical Essays, ed. A.C. Dionisotti, Anthony Grafton, and Jill Kraye (London, 1988), 155–​70, and Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge, MA, 2011). 51. On Possevino, see, Luigi Balsamo, “How to Doctor a Bibliography: Antonio Possevino’s Practice,” in Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy, ed. Gigliola Fragnito (Cambridge, 2001), 50–​ 78; Luigi Balsamo, Antonio Possevino S.I., bibliografo della Controriforma e diffusione della sua opera in area anglicana (Florence, 2006); and Zedelmaier, Bibliotheca Universalis, 128–​49.

234

234

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

led a papal delegation to the court of Ivan the Terrible and wrote an account of his travels to Russia, his Muscovia. Unlike Gessner’s attempt to compile a “universal” bibliographical record, Possevino’ Selected Library assembled a narrowed list of approved authorities, reflective of both current philological scholarship and post-​Tridentine orthodoxy. However, the Selected Library was not solely a riposte to Gessner. Instead, it also revised those catalogs of historical writers appended to Bodin’s Methodus, recasting them as prescriptive guides to the “order of reading” or ordo legendi. Though the bulk of his redactions reflected confessional prerogatives, Possevino also applied bibliotheca selecta or “selective bibliography” to the pagan past. While the Jesuit copied verbatim nearly the entirety of Bodin’s list of historici Graecorum, he began only with Herodotus. Conspicuously absent from the very top of his list were Dictys and Dares.52 Elsewhere in his Bibliotheca, Possevino had explained this omission. Much like Juan Luis Vives and Gaspar Barreiros, Possevino indicted the two pseudo-​ authors while demolishing Annius of Viterbo. He addressed all this in a chapter that he explicitly billed as a warning on Berosus, Metasthenes, and other Annian works.53 For Possevino, selective bibliography required a special section condemning the texts it had selected against. In addition to pointing out chronological mistakes and other errors throughout the Annian corpus, he also appealed to Erasmian categories of habitus and style: for example, he maintained that Annius’ pseudo-​Philo lacked the “style, eloquence, gravity, piety, and truth” present in the genuine Philo’s works.54 Throughout, he mixed categories both philological and theological. He lamented that even “most learned men” (viri doctissimi) and those “most constant in the Catholic faith” (in fide Catholica constantissimi) had been deceived by Annius’ tricks.55 Protestants who had fallen for Annius, such as the German cartographer Sebastian Münster, presented still graver dangers. The

52. Antonio Possevino, Bibliothecae selectae pars secunda (Rome, 1593), 238. 53. Antonio Possevino, Bibliotheca selecta (Rome, 1593), 73: “De Beroso, Metasthene, Philone de temporibus, ac de Annio, qui circumferuntur, quid sentiendum, quidve in iis cauendum sit.” A later printing changed this title to the more general and programmatic “On histories, either supposititious or untrustworthy” or “De historicis, vel supposititiis, vel non veracibus.” See Antonio Possevino, Bibliotheca selecta (Cologne, 1607), 342. 54.  Possevino, Bibliotheca selecta (Rome, 1593), 76:  “Praeterea quae legitima Philonis opera extant, nil quidquam habent simile cum istis Anniani Philonis; quippe stylo, eloquentia, grauitate, pietate, veritate praestant, quae nulla sunt in hoc altero.” 55.  Antonio Possevino, Bibliotheca selecta, 74:  “Sic enim doctissimi alioquin viri, et in fide Catholica constantissimi, qui factum ignorauerant, decepti sunt.”

235



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

235

Jesuit warned his readers to stay far away from Münster’s Geographia “because this book, in addition to errors of history, also contains heresies.”56 At the end of this section, Possevino turned briefly to authors beyond Annius. The first that sprang to his mind were the Phrygian and the Cretan: “Likewise, neither are Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius, who are joined to the Library of Diodorus, the genuine ones possessed in antiquity.” Although Possevino acknowledged Isidore of Seville’s contention that “Dares was the first of the pagans who wrote history,” and he seemed to agree that a lost, legitimate Destruction of Troy once existed deep in the distant past, even Isidore’s imprimatur proved an insufficient match to the logic of selective bibliography. For if Isidore were correct, Possevino asked, and the ancient world had had access to the text of its supposed first historian, why had such diverse authorities as Livy, Diodorus, Pompeius Trogus, Velleius Paterculus, and Eusebius narrated the events of Troy so “frigidly and timidly?”57 If Dares and Dictys—​perfect firsthand sources—​had been extant, why had other historians not used and cited them? Why all that hedging about mythic time and the unreliable nature of the distant past? Possevino’s critique depended upon the total authoritative weight of his “selected” ancient canon. Whereas encyclopedists like Gessner and other advocates of bibliotheca universalis had absorbed an ever-​increasing number of texts within the canon’s penumbra, Possevino weighed its competing elements against each other and demolished those found wanting. Like many early modern critics, Possevino co-​opted ancient exempla. The Jesuit had modeled his own book, including its very name, upon Diodorus Siculus’ aforementioned Historical Library. And he had described both Dictys and Dares as “joined to the Library of Diodorus”—​a patent reference to the Basel editions discussed previously in this chapter. Yet but several sentences later, he included the ancient Sicilian historian in his parade of authorities whose works disproved Dictys and Dares. Far from seeing them as complementary threads, as Hopperus had claimed, Possevino understood that damning inconsistencies could reside within the constituent parts of a single physical book. Diodorus, joined to Dares and Dictys in

56. Possevino, Bibliotheca selecta, 76: “[E]‌t abstinendum est. . . a Geographia Munsteri, quod hic liber cum erroribus historiae, haereses quoque contineat.” On Münster’s acceptance of pseudo-​Berosus, see Krebs, Most Dangerous Book,  102–​3. 57.  Possevino, Bibliotheca selecta, 76:  “Neque item Dyctys Cretensis, et Dares Phrygius, qui Diodori Bibliothecae adiunguntur, legitimi sunt illi, qui antiquitus habebantur . . . Et quidem Isidorus mentionem istius historiae facit, quum eum inquit primum Gentilium fuisse, qui historias scripserit . . . Sed nihil horum ad nostra tempora peruenisse, certissima illa argumenta sunt, quod Liuius, Diodorus Siculus, Pompeius Trogus, Velleius Paterculus, et Eusebius, atque alii non tam frigide ac timide narrassent gesta Troianorum, si tam luculentam habuissent historiam, atque eiusmodi testibus oculatis uti potuissent.” See Prosperi, “Il paradosso,” 50.

236

236

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

contemporary print, constituted a source of challenge to the very authors he had materially engulfed.58 Approximately a decade later, and on the exact opposite end of the confessional spectrum, Dares attracted the attention of one of the most avid practitioners of early modern higher criticism—​the French Protestant scholar Joseph Scaliger. As we saw, his father, Julius Caesar Scaliger, had cited Aelian’s reference to Dares’ pre-​Homeric Iliad. In 1593 the younger Scaliger became a professor at the University of Leiden, one of the new centers of Reformed learning, where he remained for the rest of his life and did pioneering work on historical chronology. Before that, he published editions of Festus, Catullus, and Manilius, among many others. In a 1605 letter to Isaac Casaubon, he rejected the authenticity of a wide range of pagan, Jewish, and Christian sources, all in the space of a single damning paragraph. Scaliger began with the low hanging fruit and then quickly ascended to more consequential and dangerous targets. His point of entry to this discourse was the Alexander romance attributed to Callisthenes, a Macedonian historian present on Alexander’s expedition. A Latin version of this pseudo-​Callisthenes had been popular in the Middle Ages and in fact appeared in some manuscripts alongside the Destruction of Troy.59 Like Dares, it presented itself as a translation from the Greek. Scaliger recognized pseudo-​Callisthenes as belonging to a still larger class: pseudonymous ancient texts that mendaciously claimed venerable authors. As he then said to Casaubon, There were once many monstrosities of spurious writers of this sort, among whom Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis are today extant in Latin . . . What of that Aristaeus, who, although ancient since he is also cited by Josephus, is a falsehood of the Hellenistic Jews? What of Hecataeus’ On the Jews, which was concocted long ago by the same Hellenistic Jews, as is clearly inferred from Origen? What of the pseudo-​Sibylline oracles, which the Christians used to oppose the pagans, when in fact they had issued from the workshop of the Christians, and were not found in the libraries of the pagans? Did they judge that the word of God was so useless that they despaired of advancing the kingdom of Christ without lies? If only they were the first [of the Christians] who had begun to lie!60

58. On Diodorus’ importance to Possevino, see Zedelmaier, Bibliotheca Universalis, 154–​59. 59. On Dares and medieval Alexander materials, see Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 150–​51. 60. See The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger: Vol. 6, ed. Paul Botley and Dirk van Miert (Geneva, 2012), Scaliger to Casaubon, November 9, 1605, 215–​16: “Callisthenem illum nunquam vidi, et quia a pseudo–​Gurionide citatur, omnino Latinum fuisse, non Graecum quem ille

237



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

237

Scaliger included Dares and Dictys within this larger class, but he did not say explicitly why he considered them to be “monstrosities of spurious writers” (ὑποβολιμαίων scriptorum monstra). Like Erasmus, who had lamented that the problem of forgery was more common among Christians than pagans, Scaliger debunked pagan spuria as a propaedeutic to indicting Jewish and Christian ones. The Christians, so he implied, anxious that their genuine texts were not authoritative and august enough, had co-​opted a long-​standing ancient practice and had begun to forge. But they had begun to do so much earlier than it seemed licit to suppose. His voice growing more urgent, he then turned to biblical texts: Let the Epistle of James, Second Peter, and Jude come into this judgment. Concerning these things I shall say nothing further, as I wish them to be cast into your ears alone, lest this judgment of mine be blurted out. How many other things would I be able to relate about pseudo-​Christian works (pseudochristianis)? But peace: keep all pious silence.61 Casaubon followed Scaliger’s closing directive, and when in 1610 he prepared a posthumous edition of Scaliger’s letters, he dutifully removed these lines, in which his friend suggested that James, Second Peter, and Jude belonged in that same spurious class with the likes of Dares, Dictys, and the Sibylline Oracles.62 As we saw with Vives and Barreiros, debunking a forgery could set off a kind of chain

vidit necesse est. Nam Graecismi imperitum eum vincunt scripta ejus. Istiusmodi ὑποβολιμαίων scriptorum monstra olim multa fuerunt, in quibus Dares Phrygius, Dictys Cretensis, qui hodie Latini extant . . . Quid Aristaeas ille, quam antiquus est ut etiam a Iosepho citetur, quod est τῶν ἑλληνιστῶν Ἰουδαίων παρεγχείρημα? Quid Ecataeus de Iudaeis, quem ab iisdem Hellenistis antiquitus confictum fuisse, manifesto ex Origene colligitur? Quid pseudosibyllina oracula, quae Christiani gentibus obiiciebant, quum tamen e Christianorum officina prodiissent, in gentium bibliothecis non reperirentur? Adeo verbum Dei inefficax esse censuerunt ut regnum Christi sine mendaciis promoveri posse diffiderent? Atque utinam illi primi mentiri coepissent.” On this letter and Scaliger’s unmasking of apocrypha, see Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, Vol. 2: Historical Chronology (Oxford, 1993),  705–​6. 61. Correspondence, ed. Botley and van Miert, 216–​17: “Epistola Iacobi, Secunda Petri, et Iudae in hunc censum veniant, de quibus ut nihil amplius dicam, ita in aures tuas solas coniici velim ut ne eliminetur hoc iudicium nostrum. Quam multa alia de pseudochristianis narrare possem? Sed pax: πάντα εὔστομα κείσθω.” For this final formulation, cf. Hdt. 2.171–​2, where Herodotus refuses to discuss details of Egyptian mysteries and the rites of Demeter. Scaliger was hardly alone in this criticism of New Testament works. It is worth noting that Erasmus, in his preface to Jerome discussed in Chapter 4, had expressed similar doubts about the attributions of James and Second Peter. See Jerome, Opera, ed. Erasmus, fol. 3r. 62. Correspondence, ed. Botley and van Miert, 217 n.23.

238

238

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

reaction in the mind of a critic. Scaliger took this chain reaction to a potentially dangerous extreme. This was not the only place where Scaliger mentioned the Phrygian and the Cretan. His dismissal of them was also informed by a far more ambitious attempt to order the past: the correction of universal history itself. In 1606 the Leiden professor published his magnum opus, the Thesaurus temporum. This massive work included numerous comments on, and corrections of, Eusebius’ Chronicle.63 Here Scaliger blamed Dares and Dictys for errors in Eusebius. Specifically, he took issue with Eusebius’ claim that the Trojan Antenor had governed postwar Troy, until Helenus and the sons of Hector overthrew his offspring.64 As we saw, both William of Malmesbury and Geoffrey of Monmouth had used this Eusebian anecdote in their own reckonings of the Trojan past. But Scaliger was not convinced of its veracity. Helenus’ post-​Troy travels had actually taken him to Epirus, and Antenor had migrated to the Veneto and founded Padua. The only thing close to it was Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ report that Ascanius had helped some of Hector’s descendants return to Troy, but Dionysius made no mention of them uprooting Antenor’s descendants in the process. Here Scaliger concluded that Eusebius’ details “do battle with the entire history of Trojan matters” (pugnant cum omni Troicarum rerum memoria). And where had Eusebius absorbed these distortions of Trojan memoria? In Scaliger’s estimation, the early Christian scholar had derived them “from the supposititious writers (supposititiis scriptoribus) Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius.”65 Although neither Dares nor Dictys recorded that Hector’s sons eventually retook Troy, they both maintained, as Scaliger made clear, that Antenor and Aeneas had betrayed their city, and that as a result, the victorious Greeks had bestowed the fallen kingdom upon the former. But Antenor’s rule over Troy ran counter to the claim, alluded to by Virgil and voiced in so many medieval narratives of Trojan ancestry, that the Trojan leader had made his way to Italy. Scaliger used the historicity of Antenor’s post-​Troy itinerary as a means of debunking the Destruction of Troy, a text that throughout the Middle Ages had bolstered such

63. On this project, see Grafton, Scaliger, Vol. 2: Historical Chronology. 64. Eusebius-​Jerome, Chronici canones, ed. Fotheringham, 103. Cf. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.47.5. 65. Joseph Scaliger, “Animadversiones,” in Thesaurus temporum (Leiden, 1606), 51–​52: “Deinde qui sunt isti Antenoridae praeter posteritatem Antenoris, qui Venetiis occupatis Patauium condidit? Denique quomodo Helenus potuit esse auctor huius expeditionis, qui semper post excidium Troiae in Epiro vixit, et Pyrrhi Neoptolemi liberorum tutor ibi fuit? . . . Haec profecto pugnant cum omni Troicarum rerum memoria. Tamen unde haec Eusebio? A  supposititiis scriptoribus Dictye Crete, et Darete Phryge. Apud vtrumque reperies, Troia ab Antenore et Aenea prodita, regnum Troiae a Graecis Antenori ultro oblatum.”

239



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

239

accounts of westward diaspora. In this fashion, Scaliger corrected Christian universal history by challenging its purported reliance upon two pagan forgeries. As we saw in Chapters 1 and 2, the fall of Troy—​and Dares’ account of it—​had long played a role in historia universalis, that master narrative of Christian salvation history. In fact, the oldest version of Dares from the medieval West—​the strange Historia Daretis Phrygii that claimed a Trojan pedigree for the Franks—​appeared within a version of Jerome’s translation of Eusebius’ Chronicle. Dares had entered the historical tradition of the Latin West as a means of augmenting universal history. A millennium later, scholars attempted to exile him from the Latin canon in order to purify universal history. In a world of intra-​Christian antagonisms, the purification of universal sacred history took on new urgency. What does Scaliger’s engagement with the Phrygian reveal about visions of antiquity—​both sacred and profane—​that emerged out of these early modern religious conflicts? For one, it demonstrates how the snowballing effects of criticism could link the Christian and the pagan pasts in new and perhaps unnerving ways. Scaliger, following the less explicit suggestions of Erasmus and others, and in a fashion akin to Casaubon’s condemnation of Hermes Trismegistus, understood that the early Christians had had every motivation to claim a greater antiquity for their beliefs than history actually warranted. At some point they had begun to lie, and when doing so they had employed the same mendacious arts that the pagans had used to fabricate the deep antiquity of spurious sources like Dictys and Dares. But these analogies could lead to troubling conclusions. Hence, Scaliger seemed to recognize that he had crossed a red line when suggesting just how quickly Christianity had begun to traffic in such deceits. Yet these new conclusions did not imply that Scaliger abandoned old categories. The Leiden scholar still spoke of truth and falsehood in the language that we have seen deployed throughout this book, from the medieval Dares’ poets to Annius’ sixteenth-​century detractors. His condemnation of Dares and Dictys as examples of monstrosity was unmistakably ethical; indeed, we cannot help but feel the sense of moral urgency that animated his emotional appeal to Casaubon. Scaliger still believed that truths about deep antiquity were knowable, and so he condemned those who could not speak of it “without lies” (sine mendaciis). The Scaliger who could easily historicize—​and critique—​certain Christian claims to deep history (such as the claim that the Sibyls had been prophetesses of Christ) was the same Scaliger who still assumed a fundamental historicity about the “entire history of Trojan matters.” His project of correcting Eusebius reflected his belief that ancient chronology was correctible, even when it came to events in Varro’s mythic age like the Trojan War and its postwar diaspora. Indeed, this belief is what in part motivated his polemic against Dares and Dictys: they had

240

240

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

succeeded in distorting Eusebius’ own knowledge of deep antiquity, and by exposing them for the monstrosities they were, one could begin to correct time itself. At the dawn of the seventeenth century, Dares found himself engulfed in newly urgent debates over the truth-​value of the Christian and pagan pasts. But even as more critics both Catholic and Protestant dismissed him, in an effort to cleanse the canon and purify universal history, they did not discard long-​standing notions about the vexed relationship between history and myth, traceable all the way back to ancients like Varro himself. Despite the many differences between them, Antonio Possevino and Joseph Scaliger still assumed a stable truth about Troy. For the former it resided in a consensus formed by Eusebius, Diodorus, and the like, and for the latter it was found in a memoria that Eusebius sometimes got right and sometimes violated. The examples underscore just how anachronistic it is for us to impose our varieties of disenchantment about the distant past upon early modern critics. In the next chapter and the Conclusion, we will follow these disputes far into the seventeenth century, and beyond.

Dares versus Nepos: The Construction of Latinity’s Golden Age In the early seventeenth century, skepticism about Dares made unlikely bedfellows of scholars who otherwise had little in common. For instance, Joseph Scaliger’s incorrigible enemy, the German scholar and polemicist Gaspar Scioppius, also heaped abuse upon the Phrygian. Born a Protestant, Scioppius converted to Catholicism and then authored various polemics against his former coreligionists. He attacked Scaliger’s claims to Italian nobility in a scathing missive titled the Scaliger Hypobolimaeus or Spurious Scaliger—​using that same term, ironically, that Scaliger himself had applied to the likes of Dares, Dictys, and pseudo-​Callisthenes.66 Scaliger, he argued, was not really descended from the noble Veronese Della Scala. He was equally scathing when it came to ancient spuria. In a letter to the Neapolitan scholar Julius Caesar Capaccio, collected in his aptly titled 1628 Paradoxa literaria, Scioppius launched one of the most biting attacks yet against Dares. Unlike Possevino and Scaliger, who rejected Dares because he had contradicted accepted sources of historiae veritas, Scioppius rejected the Phrygian on linguistic grounds. Historical and religious orthodoxies were not the only orthodoxies that proved dangerous to Dares; literary or philological orthodoxy—​i.e., that vision of the Golden Age of Cicero and his associates—​also threatened his 66. Gaspar Scioppius, Scaliger Hypobolimaeus (Mainz, 1607).

241



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

241

survival. For Scioppius demolished Dares exactly as Gaspar Barreiros had. He indicted Dares’ Latinity and compared him negatively to the genuine Cornelius Nepos. In fact, his dismissal of Dares was but a footnote of sorts to a broader discussion of Nepos’ style. He quoted Cicero’s remark to Atticus that when it came to literary attainments, Nepos was “immortal” (ἄμβροτος).67 For Scioppius, the immortal Cornelius Nepos simply could not have translated “the history of the Trojan War which bears the name of Dares Phrygius.” This astounding falsehood could deceive only those wholly ignorant of the Latin language. Even those who had just touched the edges of their lips to “good authors of Latin” (bonos Latinitatis auctores) would taste the Destruction of Troy as the work of a “most unlearned man, who never drank even the least draught of Latin speech.”68 Dares and his credulous readers alike had failed to imbibe the proper waters. Rejecting the Phrygian and his ilk was a prerequisite to gaining the cultural capital that accrued from proper Latin erudition. In other words, only a reader who had never encountered any “good authors” could be tricked into placing the Phrygian among their company. Just who were these “good authors,” and who were they not? Although he did not venture a specific date for its actual composition, Scioppius made clear just how distant Dares’ history was from the age of boni auctores. With pejorative language, he exiled the Destruction of Troy to a time long after that Golden Age of Cicero and Nepos. Rather, all its little pages exhibited things “that taste of the cloisters of monks (τῶν κοινοβίων claustra), or seem to have very recently broken open the lattices of the clerks (Actuariorum cancellos).” In other words, although he did not say so explicitly, Dares seemed gauchely late. This insult echoed how Lorenzo Valla had disparaged the Donation: it was “not the speech of Constantine, but that of some dim-​witted petty cleric (clericuli stolidi).”69 It also echoed Erasmus’ theory that a medieval Augustinian monk had forged works of Jerome. And if the true author of Dares were not a monk, Scioppius offered another hypothesis. Perhaps he hailed from the equally inelegant world of legal shorthand. Maybe he had recently invaded the domain of those scribes or

67. Cic. Att. 410.5. See discussion at Chapter 1, 60. 68. Gaspar Scioppius, Paradoxa literaria (Milan, 1628), 45–​46: “Hinc porro iudicari potest, cuius notae Critici sint, qui historiam belli Troiani, quae Daretis Phrygii nomen praefert, a Cornelio Nepote Latine conuersam censuere . . . cum qui vel primoribus labris bonos Latinitatis auctores attigit, historiam tam luculentam non nisi ab homine indoctissimo, qui nec minimum Latini sermonis gustum umquam hauserit, scribi potuisse statim agnoscat. Ita in omnibus pagellis ea se offerunt, quae τῶν κοινοβίων claustra resipiant, aut Actuariorum cancellos nuper admodum refregisse videantur.” 69. Valla, De donatione 65, trans. Bowersock, 111–​12.

24

242

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

clerks—​the Roman actuarii—​who sat behind cancelli or lattice works in Roman courtrooms. Yet whatever his actual identity, Dares was the very opposite of the first pagan historian. If anything, he was a brazenly new pseudo-​historian, perhaps even an untutored medieval monk. Only someone equally untutored in Latinity could fall for his ruse. There was nothing new about Scioppius’ debunking, at least from a narrowly philological point of view. Barreiros had drawn an identical contrast between Nepos and Dares over half a century before. But Scioppius’ comments did feature something new in the long history of mixing philology and polemic. Barreiros had attacked the actual author of Dares by accusing him of concocting falsehoods, and contrasting his inelegance with the elegance of Nepos himself. He did not say a word about who he thought the actual author was, or when he might have flourished. But Scioppius’ takedown was one of the first to speculate, in pejorative fashion, concerning these questions. His polemic did not just depend upon the old binaries of truth and falsehood; instead, it also linked the concoction of false texts to a benighted temporal milieu. The true author of the Destruction of Troy was not only a liar, but he was also bad at such lying because he seemed to have flourished at a time when the good Latin authors had disappeared. This dismissal depended on the hardening of temporal lines around the Latin canon, and Scioppius himself played a role in drawing such lines. He helped popularize the division of Latin authors into various metallic ages: in a 1628 pedagogical treatise, he distinguished the Golden Latin of such figures as Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Livy, and significantly, Nepos himself, from their less canonical Silver, Bronze, and Iron counterparts. He even followed these traditional ages with a still worse age of wood and clay. Perhaps the monkish pseudo-​Dares resided in this last unpalatable category, among the lowest of the medieval low.70 By the seventeenth century, Nepos had become an exemplar of Latinity’s supposed Golden Age. This development exerted newfound pressure upon the Phrygian, whose style and character seemed so very out of keeping with the supposed crème de la crème of the Latin canon. How had Nepos earned this vaunted status? As a contemporary and associate of Cicero’s, he was a perfect fit chronologically. Yet Nepos had not simply been at the right place at the right time, soaking up the praise of his more famous friend. Instead, over the course of the sixteenth century, his star had risen considerably thanks to some specific, fortuitous developments in humanist classical scholarship.

70. Gaspar Scioppius, Consultationes de scholarum et studiorum ratione (Padua, 1636), 57–​62. For the application of the metallic metaphor to Latinity, see Wolfram Ax, “Quattuor Linguae Latinae Aetates: Neue Forschungen zur Geschichte der Begriffe ‘Goldene’ und ‘Silberne Latinität’,” Hermes 124 (1996): 220–​40.

243



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

243

These fortunate developments might seem a bit strange given the reputation Nepos would subsequently acquire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As he became a staple of elementary Latin schoolbooks, the simplicity of his prose sometimes made him seem—​to modern readers at least—​rather juvenile and uninspired. Still, as late as the end of the eighteenth century, his use as a schoolroom entry point to those “good authors of Latin” was cause for unmitigated praise. In his autobiography, Edward Gibbon reminisced about how, as a schoolboy, “at the expense of many tears and some blood, I purchased the knowledge of the Latin syntax.” Reflecting upon the curriculum of the day, Gibbon described how he had mastered Latin via Nepos: “the lives of Cornelius Nepos, the friend of Cicero and Atticus, are composed in the style of the purest age: his simplicity is elegant; his brevity copious; he exhibits a series of men and manners, and with such illustrations . . . this classic biographer may initiate a young student in the history of Greece and Rome.”71 Nepos was a “classic,” and an exemplar of the “purest age.” Not only his language, but also the underlying contents of his histories, possessed instructive exemplarity. In Ciceronian terms, the real Nepos was now beating pseudo-​Nepos not only at being lux veritatis, but also at being magistra vitae. Gibbon praised Nepos for exposing him to the lives and manners of a wide variety of illustrious Greeks and Romans. Yet slightly over two centuries earlier, Gaspar Barreiros, who also invoked that “Golden Age of Cicero,” had expressed disappointment that the only work of Nepos’ to have survived the injuries of time was the Life of Atticus. In his estimation, the light of one of the Golden Age’s leading luminaries had been nearly extinguished. Gibbon the English schoolboy, in other words, had read a lot more Nepos than the Portuguese humanist had. How had this happened? Righting misattribution was not always, temporally speaking, a one-​way street. Texts that seemed ancient and venerable were not always ultimately unmasked as unpalatably recent. Sometimes the opposite occurred; philologists had the joy of reassigning texts once considered late to ages they considered canonical and classical. During the sixteenth century, Cornelius Nepos experienced this happy fate. In 1569, just several years after Barreiros’ Censura, the French philologist Denys Lambin published that collection of Nepos’ vitae that—​as discussed in Chapter  1—​had formerly been ascribed to the late antique Aemilius Probus. Lambin argued that, for the most part at least, these vitae were genuine works by Nepos. As he explained, they seemed to have been written when Rome was still

71.  Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life and Writings, ed. John Lord Sheffield (Dublin, 1796),  22–​23.

24

244

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

a republic, and not yet an empire ruled by a single individual. And they invoked Atticus in a manner that suggested their author was his contemporary.72 But these were not the only proofs. Lambin also turned to questions of language. By marshaling stylistic distinctions between late Latin and its “Golden Age” counterpart, and some praise of Cicero to boot, he maintained that these supposed late antique texts had been composed in the first century BCE.73 As he noted: The other argument is that no one in the age of Theodosius spoke as this writer speaks. For the style of this speech [i.e., in the vitae ascribed to Probus] is subtle, deliberate, polished, and clearly Attic; it is a type of speech that is natural, pure, elegant, bright, not elaborated, not exceedingly bitter, not pedantic, not excessive, nor odious to smooth ears, but plainly recalling and smelling of Roman cleanliness and simplicity, almost like the language Caesar uses in his commentaries, or Cicero in his epistle to Atticus and several of his Ad familiares. However, none of those who flourished in the age of the Theodosians spoke Latin thus, but everyone seized upon a type of speech that was either excessively bitter, or impolite, or tumid and inflated, or (as they say) florid and dyed, or fatty and thick, or soiled and sordid, or exotic and uncouth.74 This was the same kind of logic that Valla had applied to the Donation of Constantine, albeit reversed. The Italian humanist had argued that a document that claimed to have been written in the early fourth century was much younger, while Lambin argued that texts thought to date to the early fifth century were too good to have been written then. Although many of the French humanists in Lambin’s milieu had a taste for late antique Latin authors, Lambin argued that

72. Aemilii Probi, seu Cornelii Nepotis liber de vita excellentium imperatorum (Paris, 1569), sig. aaa 3 verso. 73. See discussion of Lambin’s work in A.C. Dionisotti, “Nepos and the Generals,” The Journal of Roman Studies 78 (1988): 35–​49. 74. Aemilii Probi, seu Cornelii Nepotis liber, sig. aaa 3 verso–​4 recto: “Alterum argumentum est, quod nemo aetate Theodosii sic locutus est, ut hic scriptor loquitur. Est enim filum huius orationis subtile, pressum, limatum, et plane Atticum, genusque dicendi natiuum, purum, elegans, nitidum, non elaboratum, non longe arcessitum, non putidum, non insolens, neque teretibus auribus odiosum: sed plane Romanam simplicitatem, et munditiem referens, ac redolens, quali fere sermone aut Caesar in commentariis suis utitur, aut M. Tullius in epist. ad Atticum, et in nonnullis ad familiareis. At eorum, qui Theodosiorum aetate floruerunt, nemo sic Latine locutus est: sed omnes dicendi genus vel longe arcessitum, vel impolitum, vel tumidum atque inflatum, vel (ut appellant) floridum, et fucatum, vel adipatum, et pingue, vel inquinatum, et sordidum, vel peregrinum, et hyposolaecum usurparunt.”

245



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

245

Latin had already degenerated by that point, into a soiled and sordid shadow of its former Ciceronian self.75 There was simply no way that, in an era of such sorry Latinity, Aemilius Probus could have written as Cicero or Caesar had. As Lambin argued, the vitae long credited to Probus were almost half a millennium older than supposed: they were the work of Cornelius Nepos himself. Much like Scioppius, Lambin could not resist mixing philology and moralizing polemic. While the first part of his analysis offered something akin to proofs (including his observations, albeit not supported by examples of individual passages or the like, that the vitae seemed stylistically akin to specific works by Cicero and Caesar), the second part (which consisted of a general indictment of Theodosian-​era Latinity) was altogether more vague. Lambin issued a list of pejorative adjectives, declaring with broad strokes that everyone in this late and un-​Ciceronian world used language that was tumid, fatty, sordid, and the like. But he did not enlighten his readers about what exactly rendered Theodosian Latin deserving of such epithets. Perhaps he assumed that such claims were so self-​evident that they did not require demonstration. Granted, from a purely philological perspective, neither Lambin nor Scioppius (nor Lorenzo Valla, for that matter) was necessarily incorrect in his hypotheses about when the texts he analyzed had been written. But it is worth considering why such hypotheses required not only criticism, but also the more withering varieties of critique. Once scholars possessed more datapoints on the genuine Nepos, it grew ever more difficult to accept the claim that he had translated Dares Phrygius. The corpus of the Roman historian and biographer now seemed less stable: if actual works of Nepos had been improperly ascribed to others, then surely the works of others could have been improperly ascribed to Nepos. The Antwerp Jesuit scholar Andreas Schottus addressed this parallelism explicitly. In 1609 he published a commentary on the vitae that Lambin had edited. Here he addressed the problem of Nepos and Probus in Erasmian terms. Lambin’s vitae possessed a “style and elegant character of speech” (stylus, dicendique elegans character) that proved they could not have been the work of Probus, whom Schottus dismissed in temporal terms as an “author of later age (sequioris aetatis).”76 This prompted 75. On this scholarly world of French humanism, see Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship. For its influence upon Joseph Scaliger’s own interests in late antique Latin, see Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, Vol. 1: Textual Criticism and Exegesis (Oxford, 1983), esp. 128–​33. 76.  Andreas Schottus, “Epistola,” in Cornelius Nepos, De excellentibus viris, ed. Johannes Henricus Boeclerus (Strasbourg, 1640), sig. L 3 recto:  “Librum enim de vita et moribus Excellentium Graeciae Imperatorum, ad T.  Pomponium Atticum, sequioris aetatis auctori Aemilio Probo attribuunt: a quo stylus, dicendique elegans character, Attici aetas, multaque abiudicant.”

246

246

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

the Jesuit to state a corollary. If Nepos had been denied works worthy of him, he had also been saddled with works unworthy of him—​i.e., the Destruction of Troy. Schottus knew Nepos had not translated Dares’ history thanks to the same logic by which he knew that Nepos had in fact composed Lambin’s vitae. He acknowledged that Aelian had mentioned a pre-​Homeric Dares, but he vehemently doubted that this was the work Nepos had supposedly translated. For he judged that “its style is clearly not of that Golden Age (stylus sane non est aureae illius aetatis), still less is it that of Cornelius, whose eloquence Cicero, the most eloquent Roman, praised . . .” Like Barreiros, he marveled at how the true author of the Destruction of Troy, whom he dismissed in harsh terms with the epithet “that forger” (falsarius ille), had written an illegitimate work—​as was manifest from how he had addressed Sallust “rustically and ineptly.”77 For Schottus, the Golden Age had become a heuristic device that proved not only misattribution, but also nefarious intent. Knowing the stylus and character of this age of purportedly perfect Latinity not only gave the lie to Dares but also revealed his status as a falsarius—​a forger or falsifier who had himself tried to ape the Golden Age’s attainments. The forger’s very attempt—​however inept—​ to insinuate himself into this canon helped proved its canonicity, and his own corrupt intent.

Conclusion: Puppies and Pigs These various arguments against Dares came together in the work of the seventeenth-​century Dutch classical scholar G.J. Vossius. Vossius—​with whom we close this chapter—​delivered one of the most comprehensive condemnations of the Phrygian launched to date.78 He studied and taught at the University of Leiden, and his academic genealogy stretched back to Joseph Scaliger: one of his teachers, the humanist Daniel Heinsius, had been Scaliger’s own student. Vossius composed everything from a manual on the ars historica to rhetorical handbooks and a history of the Pelagian controversy. His Arminian views ran counter to the

77. Schottus, “Epistola,” sig. L 3 verso: “Stylus sane non est aureae illius aetatis, nedum Cornelii, cuius eloquentiam M.  Tullius Ro. disertissimus laudarit, eoque nomine carissimum habuerit . . . Sallustio id opus nothum et illegitimum falsarius ille, quisquis is est, lege Cornelia, si deprehendatur, puniendus inscripsit—​Quem quidem Crispum Ro. Historiae principem, initio statim rustice, et inepte appellat . . .” 78. For Vossius’ scholarship, see Nicholas Wickenden, G.J. Vossius and the Humanist Concept of History (Assen, 1993), and C.S.M. Rademaker, Life and Work of G.J. Vossius, trans. H.P. Doezema (Assen, 1981).

247



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

247

Calvinist orthodoxy prevalent at Leiden, and after time in England, he ultimately accepted a post at the newly founded Amsterdam Athenaeum. Some of his most popular and enduring works were his encyclopedic guides to the Greek and Latin historians and poets, which combined the criticism and classical scholarship of figures like Scaliger with the encyclopedic breadth of Conrad Gessner and others. It was in these guides that Vossius both praised Nepos and lambasted Dares. Hence, Vossius took a genre that had initially proven favorable to the first pagan historian—​i.e., the encyclopedic reference work—​and turned it against him. Vossius’ attacks bore the imprint of earlier critiques:  not only did he cite Scaliger’s dismissal of Dares in his Thesaurus temporum, but he also proclaimed that Juan Luis Vives had “perceived rightly” when the Spanish humanist had labeled Dares and Dictys “figments” or figmenta. However, his debunking strategy most resembled that of someone he did not cite: the Annian critic Gaspar Barreiros. In his 1624 De historicis Graecis or On the Greek Historians, Vossius demanded to know what had been written more purely and elegantly than the extant writings of the genuine Nepos, including his Life of Atticus and those vitae that Lambin had edited. “What is the translation of Dares compared to them?” he asked with a flourish. Then, comparing the two, he echoed a scornful line from Plautus’ Epidicus, in which Philippa denied that Acropolistis was her daughter: “as they say, puppies smell one way, pigs another.”79 Much as Barreiros had used a clever Virgilian allusion to take down Dares, so Vossius demolished the Phrygian in pejorative terms by invoking a line from an ancient Roman playwright. In 1627, Vossius followed his encyclopedia of Greek historians with his De historicis Latinis or On the Latin Historians. Here he inserted another entry for Dares, “or rather the spurious writer (supposititius scriptor) who is circulated under this name.” In it the Dutch scholar systematically demolished that supposititius scriptor in a fashion akin to the criticism of Barreiros, Scioppius, Schottus, and others who had also pledged their fealty to the genuine Nepos: Dares was translated from the Greek by Cornelius Nepos, if we believe the frivolous epistle that is prefaced to the text. I know that in the age of

79. G.J. Vossius, De historicis Graecis (Leiden, 1624), 343: “De Darete autem Phrygio tale auctori placuit figmentum. Cornelium Nepotem inducit scribentem ad Crispum Sallustium, ut Athenis esset repertus ἀυτόγραφος liber Daretis . . . Sed exstat genuini Cornelii Nepotis liber de Attici vita; item, quem scripsit de Imperatoribus externis. Quid his libris purius; elegantiusque? Quid ad ista tralatio Daretis? Nempe, ut dici solet, aliter catuli olent, aliter sues. Recte igitur sensit Ludovicus Vives in quincto de tradendis disciplinis; cum ait, et Daretem, et Dictyn istum, esse figmenta eorum, qui de bello famosissimo voluerunt ludere.” Cf. Plaut. Epidicus 4.2.579.

248

248

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Aelian there still existed a Phrygian Iliad of Dares, for it is clear enough from chapter two of his eleventh book of the Varia historia. But I do not doubt that that Greek one was far different. For the writer whom we possess in Latin reveals himself quite effectively to have been of meager learning and judgment. I plainly judge that he is the falsification (commentum) of a man who did not so much translate, as write Latin. In fact, he by no means knew Latin.80 Not only was the actual author of the Destruction of Troy far removed from Latinity’s Golden Age—​exemplified as it was by the purity and elegance of Cornelius Nepos—​but his language was so poor and meager that it did not even merit the name of Latin. In other words, the properly classical canon was composed of clean and fragrant puppies, and Dares was clearly an odorous pig. Yet Vossius the encyclopedist had undertaken to catalog everyone, puppies and pigs alike, and so the spurious author who had so brazenly stolen Nepos’ identity still merited a place in his compendia of Greek and Latin authors. Dares still belonged to a canon of sorts, even if only as a negative exemplum: a cautionary tale with which critics could police the boundaries of good Latinity. The ambiguities of Dares’ slow decline reflect the ambiguities of “early modernity” writ large, or at least the insufficiencies of the categories we use to characterize it. The Destruction of Troy survived longer than we might suppose, and this fact reflects what might strike us as a paradox—​namely, that early modern philology still perpetuated the old prerogatives of late antique encyclopedism and medieval compilation, even as it was bolstered by new ideologies of humanism and new technologies of print. And even that art of criticism—​as expounded by figures from Valla and Erasmus to Scaliger and beyond—​was an explication of

80.  G.J. Vossius, De historicis Latinis (Leiden, 1627), 626:  “Hic quoque aliquem sibi locum postulare videtur DARES PHRYGIUS, vel potius supposititius scriptor, qui sub hoc nomine circumfertur. Is ex Graeco a Cornelio Nepote translatus est: si epistolae nugaci credimus, quae praemittitur. Scio Aeliani aetate etiamnum exstitisse Phrygiam Daretis Iliadem. Nam id satis liquet ex ejus lib. XI Var. Hist. cap. II. Sed non dubito, quin longe alius fuerit Graecus ille. Nam quem nos Latine habemus, satis prodit, se exiguae, et doctrinae, et judicii, fuisse. Plane autem arbitror, esse commentum hominis, qui non tam verterit, quam scripserit Latine: imo qui haut admodum Latine sciverit, ut omnino in Glandorpio judicium desiderem, cum translationem eam Nepotis esse credidit. Majoris et eruditionis, et elegantiae, est Dictys Cretensis:  de quo postea dicemus.” For Glandorp, see 218 in this chapter. Vossius’ judgment of Dictys will be discussed at Chapter 6, 283–​84.

249



The Ebbs and Flows of a Forger’s Fortunes

249

antiquity via the tools and techniques and very authorities of antiquity itself.81 One still challenged the classical tradition by appealing to other aspects of the classical tradition. Even those critiques that evinced a newfound readiness to topple long-​standing authorities sprang from continued valorization of the ultimate authority that inhered in the very concept of the ancient.

81.  On the theme of reading antiquity through itself, see Anthony Grafton, “Renaissance Readers and Ancient Texts:  Comments on Some Commentaries,” Renaissance Quarterly 38 (1985): 615–​49.

250

251

6

Dares Survives Webs of Misattribution and the Persistence of the Distant Past “Some have not rightly thought Dares apocryphal.” —​F ortunio  Liceti

Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the various texts that the Phrygian ensnared would test the meaning and boundaries of antiquity itself. From Joseph of Exeter and Dictys Cretensis to Homer himself, Dares caught a widening cast of other texts both ancient and medieval in webs of misattribution and confusion, even as the ranks of those who believed in him grew thinner and thinner. Out of this fog—​which sometimes robbed even the most perspicacious critics of sight—​a sense of antiquity’s limits began to emerge, with all of the rich contradictions inherent in such a term. The scholars who wrestled with these texts did so by debating when the ancient world had ended, and when it had begun. It is the contention of this chapter that out of discourses we have hitherto examined—​of truth versus falsehood, elegance versus ineptitude, or, to adopt Vossius’ parlance, puppies versus pigs—​some of the inherent problems of antiquity and its definition took shape. These problems still shape our discussions of what counts as ancient. It was no easy task defining antiquity, and it involved far more than separating impostors from truly ancient works, whatever that meant. Rather, it engulfed multiple gray zones: gray in terms of both authenticity and temporality. Defining the boundaries of the ancient hinged upon fundamental questions over the historical truth-​value of said antiquity. Over the course of the seventeenth century, these questions grew more and more fraught. This chapter examines the fortunes of Dares and his fellow travelers—​that is, texts that were associated with him in print, manuscript, or concept. Whereas the previous chapters focused primarily on the Phrygian’s sixteenth-​century reception, with a brief exploration of the early seventeenth century at the end of the last chapter, the present chapter follows Dares into the closing decades of the

The First Pagan Historian. Frederic Clark, Oxford University Press (2020). © Frederic Clark. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190492304.001.0001.

25

252

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

seventeenth century. It differs from the prior chapters not only in its chronological progress, but also in its method and scope: rather than always taking Dares himself as its central unit of analysis, it analyzes the Phrygian from the perspective of these fellow travelers. Some of these other texts soon began to transcend the Phrygian himself, rendering him an afterthought in larger debates. As a result, far from the finality suggested by Vossius’ remarks, Dares lived longer than we might expect—​and in some cases he was kept alive precisely thanks to the confusions wrought by the texts that traveled with him. The story of these fellow travelers is one of simultaneous confusion and comparison. Comparison, as discussed at the beginning of Chapter 4, was sometimes a consciously deployed method of evaluation and interpretation. Yet at other times it was a method thrust upon readers thanks to the material realities of which texts circulated together in a given volume, or which authors had their names iterated together in a bibliography or list. Barreiros had referred to Dares and Dictys as a single volume, perhaps even (incorrectly) assuming that they shared an author. Possevino had thought of Dares together with Diodorus Siculus, just as they had been printed. And by some form of association, thinking badly of Annius prompted some to think badly of Dictys and Dares. This particular brand of analysis fell somewhere in the middle of the two extremes posited by many modern critics. It neither evaluated Dares in a vacuum, as a text-​in-​itself, nor slotted him into a biographical, historical context. In fact, even some of Dares’ ardent critics resisted rudimentary historical contextualization. Few, if any, took the time to hypothesize where, when, or why the actual author of the Destruction of Troy had assumed the name of Dares Phrygius and concocted his spurious text. They made clear that he lived much later than Cornelius Nepos, perhaps in a benighted or monkish age, but that was about it. Rather, what we shall see here is use of a hermeneutic method that evaluated texts in pairs or otherwise discrete groups, even when these pairings presented themselves to interpreters accidentally. If Dares was not lucky enough to be contextualized, sometimes his fellow travelers were. Strangely, many critics decided that some of the texts swirling around Dares had defied their times. Although Dictys, like Dares, lost many believers, unlike Dares he was not judged inept but was deemed an adept, elegant, and erudite forger. And Joseph of Exeter, whose Iliad we examined in Chapter 3 and will return to now, came to be celebrated as a poet who had transcended his supposedly benighted age. To many of their seventeenth-​century readers, both Joseph and Dictys defied the barbarous tenor of their own milieux. They were meritorious outliers, lucky exceptions. Precisely as Dares suffered more blows, Joseph and Dictys—​each in their own disparate ways—​went on to earn more praise. They gained a strange kind of honorary status among the ancient authors they had mimicked. Thus, they became useful for meditating on everything from

253



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

253

the preclassical world of the deep pagan past to the postclassical world of medieval Europe. Simultaneously, Dares also gained a new foil, or rather regained his original one. Whereas Dares’ medieval fortunes were marked by a quarrel with Virgil, the seventeenth century returned to the original quarrel pseudo-​Nepos had fought in his prefatory epistle. This was the battle between the rationalizing Dares and the mendacious, “insane” Homer. Renewed debates over the worth and veracity of Homer inevitably ensnared the Phrygian. At least one seventeenth-​century scholar even attacked Dares, Dictys, and Homer alike for that upon which they agreed. And in doing so critics hinted at troubling new questions, which today we are often more likely to associate with eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century scholarship. How far removed from the events of Troy was whoever had first composed what became the Iliad and Odyssey? Was there even a certain history underneath whatever Homer had distorted with fables? Had Troy ever really fallen to the Greeks? And whatever the truth-​value of his subject matter, was Homer to be taken as exemplary, in either literary or moral terms? This quarrel over Homer, already promoted in antiquity by pseudo-​Nepos and others, would play a defining role in that most famous quarrel of the ancients and moderns that erupted around 1700. The quarrel set the stage for the emergence of modern classical scholarship and still casts a shadow over its practice. We will examine that clash, and the Phrygian’s neglected role in it, in the Conclusion to this book. Even as scholars debated these most distant of pasts, they found their access to them filtered by a more recent past whose erring ways many thought they had eradicated. In other words, they still had to contend with the Middle Ages. If the theme of the previous chapters was the survival of antiquity, still at work in early modern notions of authority and canonicity, the theme of the present chapter is the survival of the Middle Ages, still present in conceptions of such basic units as book or author. Medieval manuscripts—​and decisions made therein concerning compilation and attribution—​continued to haunt early modern scholars, even when they were not looking at the manuscripts firsthand. The unintended legacies of manuscript culture still mattered. These legacies are responsible for some of the principal confusions outlined in this chapter. The Middle Ages had the last laugh, or they were still laughing longer than some early moderns might have thought possible. Several of the figures examined in this chapter were pioneers of what we might term medieval studies, but they were less removed from the objects of their study than they knew. Their very horizon of expectations was silently set by the medieval books they read.1 Sometimes they misinterpreted a given manuscript and so created phantoms of their own design.

1. See here Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, cited and discussed in the Introduction.

254

254

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

How did the confusions wrought by these fellow travelers affect the task of criticism? As argued here, they sometimes had a paralyzing effect. Although our stereotypical view of humanist scholars has them banishing fakes from the canon with avidity—​and a number of humanists, as we saw in the last two chapters, lived up to that reputation for iconoclasm—​not all wished to pull this particular trigger. For instance, even an unsparing critic like G.J. Vossius did not actually desire to remove Dares Phrygius from his encyclopedic record of Latin historians, despite the fact that Dares, in his estimation, had barely even written Latin. In other cases, the finality of a judgment like Vossius’ proved nearly impossible: with so many misattributions, deceptions, and confusions swirling around a given text, sometimes it was more advisable to act conservatively and keep the name of the author who had long been attached to it. Finally, sometimes texts were kept alive by a belief that they were simply too good at imitating, or even falsifying, antiquity. For instance, many critics went on praising the literary merits (and sometimes even the historical fides) of Dictys Cretensis and Joseph of Exeter, even when they realized that these authors were not exactly who they said they were. Some humanists found them kindred spirits; their approaches to antiquity shared a family resemblance to humanism’s own approach to the ancient past. Albeit in very different ways, Dictys the erudite forger and Joseph the classicizing poet were engaged in projects fundamentally akin to the humanists’ own dream of reviving antiquity. This affinity made it difficult to stop reading them—​and by extension, Dares, too—​despite their literal falsehoods. Once again, affective responses and ethical judgments, which ascribed a species of virtue to the likes of Dictys and Joseph, proved integral to criticism and helped their texts survive far longer than we might suppose. The second half of this chapter examines another unexpected development that kept Dares and his fellow travelers alive beyond what we might assume to be their expiration dates. This concerned the history of history, especially its deepest and most distant reaches. As we saw in the last chapter, in the decades around 1600, prominent philologists like Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon, and others had demonstrated how sources of supposed prisca sapientia like Hermes Trismegistus and the Sibyls were, in fact, late and spurious. Yet philological criticism of this nature did not necessarily lead to disenchantment with the distant past. Some chose to refute or even just ignore such arguments. As a result, the seventeenth century also witnessed newfound attempts to tell the history of earliest antiquity with creativity, flexibility, and perhaps even fantasy. Figures from the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher and the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth to no less towering a figure than Isaac Newton produced visions of antiquity that were every bit as bold and radical

25



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

255

as that which Annius of Viterbo had advanced.2 Somehow these enterprises coexisted with the new criticism or else formed a natural and inevitable response to them. They also coexisted, and sometimes even shared surprising affinities, with the more radical forms of historical skepticism that would emerge in the century’s closing decades. A few of these visions made use of Dares and Dictys and required that they remain genuine specimens of the distant Trojan past. Throughout this chapter we will see that the story that emerged, however fitfully and slowly, in the previous chapter was not one of inevitability. True, the partisans of the Phrygian in 1650 were fewer in number than they had been in 1550, and a few people by 1550 were registering complaints against his authenticity that had scarcely been voiced by 1450. This might seem like progress, at least of a quantitative nature. Whereas we are perhaps now used to disabusing ourselves of stories of criticism triumphant in the Renaissance, what of that slower, less glamorous march to myths and errors discredited that might seem to gain pace as we approach the early decades of the Enlightenment? Dares also cautions us against accepting that story too readily, even if it has been subjected to less official revisionism than its Renaissance analog.3 What are we to make of the fact that, as we approach 1700, we still find those who thought that the Phrygian was an eyewitness to the Trojan War, and that he wrote the unvarnished truth, thanks to his very status as an eyewitness? Or that even those who discredited him fell into errors and confusions that in hindsight might seem just as inconceivable or even absurd as supposing that the first historian of the pagans was a Trojan whose diary of his city’s siege conveniently survived in Athens? Dares and his fellow travelers multiplied errors in exponential fashion, and thanks in part to them, Dares survived.

An Ancient Historian and a Medieval Poet:  Dares and Joseph of Exeter The afterlives of many texts, whether ancient or medieval, often involved misattribution, and misattributions could multiply easily, building upon themselves 2. See for instance Paula Findlen, ed., Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything (New  York, 2004), Jed Z.  Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold, Newton and the Origin of Civilization (Princeton, 2013), Daniel Stolzenberg, Egyptian Oedipus: Athanasius Kircher and the Secrets of Antiquity (Chicago, 2013), and Dmitri Levitin, Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science: Histories of Philosophy in England, c. 1640–​1700 (Cambridge, 2015). 3. For recent work on this score, see Dmitri Levitin, Ancient Wisdom, and the essays collected in Dan Edelstein, ed., The Super-​Enlightenment: Daring to Know Too Much (Oxford, 2010), and Anton M. Matytsin and Dan Edelstein, eds., Let There Be Enlightenment: The Religious and Mystical Sources of Rationality (Baltimore, 2018).

256

256

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

with a snowballing effect. In the Middle Ages, notions of things like titles and authors differed profoundly from our own. Indeed, the title page was one of the few features of early modern print that did not possess much in the way of medieval precedents.4 Instead, medieval scribes identified texts with a simpler, more economical incipit. As the paleographer Richard Sharpe aptly put it, the frequent absence of “authorial titles” in medieval works “leads to much inconsequential fluidity in the form in which a work is referred to, but it is a fluidity that can create confusion.”5 Dares created a number of such confusions, some of which turned out to be rather consequential. This problem, which often affected perfectly genuine authors, was exacerbated when an author was not who he said he was. For instance, William of Malmesbury finished off his Dares with a Trojan genealogy he incorrectly credited to Cato the Elder, and one of William’s contemporaries ended his Dares with a poem he erroneously ascribed to Saint Jerome. Dares easily engulfed little texts like these, creating double misattributions. Slightly later, Dares assumed the identity of one of his chief poetic imitators. We saw this with Bernardus, the scribe with a taste for verse who spoke ill of the Phrygian. Why did Bernardus address Dares as a poet? Confusion between Joseph of Exeter and Dares did not dissipate in early modernity. This case of mistaken identity was hardly just a medieval phenomenon, another consequence of fuzzy, “un-​modern” conceptions of authorship. On the contrary, it lasted all the way into the seventeenth century. It lasted even after a good number of critics had dismissed Dares once and for all. Joseph closed his poem with some formulaic words that were perhaps more prescient than he knew. He reassured his work that it would be safe from envious detractors: “Live, O book, and flourish in freedom! But if any will harm you, learn with gladness that nothing is more sublime than spite.”6 In other words, injury motived by spiteful envy was the most sublime of compliments a work could receive. But what spite could not accomplish, sometimes accident could. Due to an unfortunate accident, Joseph’s book went on to live and flourish without Joseph’s own name attached to it. In order to see how this accident persisted in practice, we need to return to the encyclopedia entries for Dares discussed in the last chapter. Far from constituting evidence of a simple story of critics versus

4.  See Richard Sharpe, Titulus:  Identifying Medieval Latin Texts—​ An Evidence–​ Based Approach (Turnhout, 2003), 26–​27, citing M.M. Smith, The Title-​Page: Its Early Development, 1460–​1510 (London, 2000). For the medieval incipit, see Sharpe, Titulus,  45–​59. 5. Sharpe, Titulus, 22. 6. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 6.974–​75, ed. Gompf, 211: “Vive, liber, liberque vige! Sed, si qua nocebunt,/​Disce libens livore nichil sublimius esse!”

257



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

257

true believers, they contain another wrinkle, which illustrates how the lines between history and poetry—​historia and fabula—​kept on blurring. Early modern bibliographers and encyclopedists credited Dares with far more than he had ever claimed. At first glance, their entries might seem straightforward affirmations of Isidore’s judgment, rendered a millennium earlier, that Dares was the first of the pagans to write history. Yet closer inspection reveals considerable inconsistencies. According to Volterrano, Nepos fashioned the Latin Dares into “six books;” in Gessner’s words, he translated “six books in epic verse;” for Bodin, the Roman biographer produced six books “in Latin verse” or Latino carmine. Now not only is the Destruction of Troy clearly not divided into six component books, but it is also manifestly a work of prose. And it was precisely the inelegance of the text’s prose that would prompt Barreiros, Scioppius, and many others to laugh off its ascription to Nepos. Whatever its literary merits, the Destruction of Troy was altogether not a work in Latino carmine. As it turned out, Volterrano, Gessner, Bodin, and their fellow encyclopedists were referring to Joseph of Exeter without realizing it. They had inadvertently confused an ancient pseudo-​history with a classicizing medieval epic, the latter written more than half a millennium after the former. How did this come about? Joseph did not mention himself by name in his work. And the surviving manuscripts mostly omitted any reference to Joseph’s authorship, instead usually referring to his poem with variations upon Frigii Daretis Ylias or the Iliad of Dares Phrygius, in homage to that “Phrygian seer” whom, contra the mendacious fables of Virgil and Homer, Joseph had chosen to follow.7 Even the copy of the poem that accompanied the commentary discussed in Chapter 3 did not say anything about Joseph in its incipit, despite the fact that the commentary itself distinguished between Cornelius Nepos as the prose translator of Dares and “he who wrote this work” (qui hoc opus conscripsit) as Dares’ translator into verse.8 “He who wrote this work” lacked a name. Thus, when Renaissance readers, familiar with the claim that Nepos had translated the

7. On the title of Joseph’s text, see Joseph of Exeter, Ylias, ed. Gompf, 12–​19. However, Joseph was not entirely unknown in the later Middle Ages. For instance, in a thirteenth-​century manuscript, now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 406, a verse prologue to the Ylias refers to Joseph by name, though his name—​as in the other manuscripts—​is absent from the incipit of the text itself. See Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 406, fol. 74v. For the intriguing suggestion that Chaucer's reference to “Dares” in the House of Fame was actually an unknowing reference to Joseph of Exeter, see R.K. Root, “Chaucer's Dares,” Modern Philology 15 (1917): 1–​22. 8. See Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fonds latin 15015, fol. 1r: “Incipit commentarium super Darete Frigio.”

258

258

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

actual Destruction of Troy, encountered manuscripts of a Latin epic identified with Dares, they assumed that Nepos was responsible for its elegant hexameters. Confusions multiplied. A late antique forgery, credited to the first pagan historian who purportedly flourished deep in the remote ancient past, and whose survival was supposedly due to its discovery and translation by an eminent Roman historian, saw its own false claims transferred to an ingenious work of twelfth-​century classical imitatio. Precisely as critics demolished Dares, Annius of Viterbo, and other such spuria, a potent confluence of printing, editing, and encyclopedic cataloging extended the Phrygian’s authority in new and unexpected directions. As strange as it might seem, this was a plausible response to that intricate web of texts, ascriptions, and authorities that had been woven together throughout the prior millennium. The first Renaissance editor to confuse Dares with Joseph was the physician Albanus Torinus. As we saw in the last chapter, Torinus had affirmed Dares’ status as the most ancient of historians. But his 1541 Basel edition did not print the Destruction of Troy alone; instead, it paired the Phrygian with several other texts, including Joseph of Exeter and Nicholas Valla’s Latin translation of Homer’s own Iliad. This was Joseph’s editio princeps, yet his name was nowhere to be found in it. Instead, to add insult to injury, Torinus even reversed the relationship between the two texts: Joseph’s poem was not an expansion of the original prose Destruction of Troy; rather, he deemed it a prose abridgment (periocha) of Nepos’ six-​book epic.9 And in effecting this role reversal he did some very odd cutting and pasting: he yanked pseudo-​Nepos’ letter to Sallust from the Destruction of Troy itself and placed it in front of Joseph’s poem instead.10 If it were not for the fact that Torinus had actually printed a twelfth-​ century poem, he might have bequeathed us yet another textbook example of a Renaissance printer “discovering” a hitherto unknown classical text—​more evidence of the exhilarating triumph of humanism and philology. Here was a lost work of Cornelius Nepos, whom many Renaissance scholars would celebrate as an exemplary stylist of Golden Age Latinity. But not so fast, we might protest. There are passages in Joseph’s Iliad that would altogether preclude Nepos’ authorship. Joseph referred to his plan for writing an epic on the Crusades, he dedicated the poem to Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, and he mentioned

9. On the confusions present in this edition, Joseph’s editio princeps, see Joseph of Exeter, Ylias, ed. Gompf, 10–​12. On this role-​reversal, see also Faivre D'Arcier, "Josias Mercier," 195. 10. Dares, De bello Troiano, ed. Torinus, sig. † 8 recto. Joseph’s poem then begins on the following page (p. 1), whereas the De excidio Troiae itself does not start until p. 174.

259



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

259

Thomas Becket and Henry II. Did one really need to marshal all the skills of the new philological criticism, as honed by Valla and Erasmus, to know that there was simply no way this poem could have been written in first-​century-​B CE Rome, by that very person to whom Catullus dedicated his work? The contents of Torinus’ edition suggest a more complicated story. As Chapter 3 mentioned, it is not clear when exactly Joseph added his dedicatory verses to Archbishop Baldwin. These “smoking gun” passages were simply missing from Torinus’ edition of the text, and we no longer possess the manuscript he followed when he printed it. Gone from the beginning of Torinus’ edition of the poem were those seven key lines, in which Joseph summarized Baldwin’s career and speculated flatteringly about his patron’s ecclesiastical future.11 But Torinus did print those nearly as problematic lines that directly preceded them: here Joseph described how he had banished the poets, lest pagan mendacity disturb the archbishop “under whose prelature Canterbury (Cantia) thrives.”12 The Basel editor proposed an ingenious solution. He printed Cantia as tantia and suggested in a marginal emendation that perhaps the poet had meant Pontia. It is not clear to what Pontia would have referred: perhaps Torinus thought the poet had meant the island of Pontia, now modern-​day Ponza, in the Tyrrhenian Sea? Suetonius, for instance, had mentioned Pontia in his life of the emperor Tiberius—​as the place to which the vengeful and paranoid emperor sent Nero, the son of Germanicus.13 A  tiny island off the coast of western Italy would have been a conceivable part of Nepos’ world, whereas Canterbury, of course, was altogether beyond it in both time and space. Marginalia in surviving copies of Torinus’ edition suggest that not all readers accepted his conjecture. For instance, in a copy that once belonged to the English polymath John Selden, an astute reader supplied the missing passages in the margin. In addition, the same reader emphatically crossed out Torinus’ Pontia and replaced it in the opposite hand margin with Cantia.14 But Torinus did sound caution. In his preface, he explained that he had more doubt over the translator than over the original author himself: he was confident

11. Also absent are those lines at the end of Joseph’s poem, in which he again mentions Baldwin and announces his plans for his Crusade epic. See Dares, De bello Troiano, ed. Torinus, 173. 12. See Dares, De bello Troiano, ed. Torinus, 3. “Et laedant figmenta pater, quo praeside floret/​ *Tantia, et in priscas respirat libera leges.” In the margin Torinus supplies “Pontia.” Cf. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 1.28–​32, ed. Gompf, 78. 13. Suet. Tib. 54.2. 14. See Dares, De bello Troiano, ed. Torinus (Basel, 1541), now Bodleian Library 8o D. 24 Art. Selden, 3 and 173.

260

260

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

that Dares had written the Destruction of Troy but was not quite as sure that Nepos had translated it. It was possible, he acknowledged, that the translator could have been British.15 Still, he deferred to tradition and kept Nepos’ name in the title. Whatever his motivations, the implications of his edition were profound. Torinus bestowed a new and more august title upon the Phrygian. Whereas Isidore of Seville had named Dares the first pagan historian, and Volterrano and others had offered variations upon this status, Torinus expanded it slightly but significantly. Reworking Volterrano’s description of Dares as the primus historicorum, he retitled Joseph’s work Six Books of Dares Phrygius, the First of All the Historians and Poets, on the Trojan War, in Which He Himself Fought (Daretis Phrygii poetarum et historicorum omnium primi, de bello Troiano, in quo ipse militauit, libri sex).16 The Phrygian was now an ancient poet, and by implication one much older than Homer himself. (See Figure 6.1.) Did this imply that Nepos had found a Greek poem in that Athenian archive? It would not have been a wholly implausible hypothesis, given that some early modern scholars were well aware of Aelian’s contention that a certain Dares had composed an Iliad before Homer. But whatever the precise implications of Torinus’ title, it proclaimed the Phrygian a double first: deep in the past he had conquered those antithetical enterprises of history and poetry, historia and fabula. By the sixteenth century, Dares was “renowned in illustrious song” once more, just as the scribe Bernardus had described him nearly four centuries prior. Others followed his lead. Joseph also appeared in Georg Henisch’s 1573 Basel printing of Dares and Dictys, and Henisch retained Torinus’ title (see Figure 6.2).17 More immediately, Torinus’ judgment call made its way into the encyclopedic record. Just four years after Torinus published Joseph of Exeter, Conrad Gessner released the first edition of his Universal Library. Gessner typically augmented his entries for authors by copying material wholesale from their most recent printed editions. And so his entry for Nepos included an excerpt from Torinus’ own preface, which repeated the editor’s reservations concerning Nepos’ authorship and

15. See Torinus, “Epistola nuncupatoria,” in Dares, De bello Troiano, sig. † 3 verso: “De quo (ut semel dicam) quid in totum sentiam, non habeo necesse nunc ferre sententiam, nisi quod de autore minus quam de interprete ambigam. Sunt quae Britannum hunc fuisse arguunt.” 16.  The full title reads:  Daretis Phrygii Poetarum et Historicorum omnium primi, de bello Troiano, in quo ipse militauit, Libri (quibus multis seculis caruimus) sex. 17. Henisch also retained Torinus’ guess about Pontia. For another example of a reader who disputed it and changed “Pontia” to “Cantia,” see Belli Troiani scriptores, ed. Henisch (Basel, 1573), now Bodleian Library Crynes 486, 217. This reader also wrote “per Iosephum Iscanum” at the start of the poem at p. 216. (See Figure 6.2).

261

Figure 6.1  The title page of Albanus Torinus’ edition of Joseph of Exeter, which attributes Joseph’s poem to Cornelius Nepos. Torinus styles Dares “the first of all the poets and historians.” Daretis Phrygii Poetarum et Historicorum omnium primi, de bello Troiano, in quo ipse militauit, Libri (quibus multis seculis caruimus) sex . . . (Basel, 1541), now Folger Shakespeare Library, 259–​ 776q, title page.

26

262

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Figure 6.2  A reader corrects Georg Henisch’s version of Joseph of Exeter’s Troy poem, adding Joseph’s name next to the ascription to Nepos and changing the conjecture (originally made by Albanus Torinus) of “Pontia” to “Cantia.” Belli Troiani scriptores praecipui: Dictys Cretensis, Dares Phrygius et Homerus (Basel, 1573), now Bodleian Library, Crynes 486, pp. 216–​17.

his acknowledgment that the work could be British.18 However, Gessner’s habit was also to abstain from judgment and correction. Notwithstanding the murkiness of the question, he happily concluded that the Roman biographer “rendered Dares’ history of the Trojan War into Latin in six books and epic verses . . .” Listing out Nepos’ works, including those found in Torinus’ Basel edition, Gessner added, “also attributed to him there is an abridgment of Dares’ six books in prose, printed in the same volume.”19 Gessner, following Torinus himself, entertained

18. On Gessner’s practices in this regard, see Paul Nelles, “Reading and Memory in the Universal Library: Conrad Gessner and the Renaissance Book,” in Ars Reminiscendi: Mind and Memory in Renaissance Culture, ed. Donald Beecher and Grant Williams (Toronto, 2009), 147–​69. 19. See Gessner, Bibliotheca universalis, fol. 188r: “Daretis Phrygii historiam de bello Troiano uersibus heroicis Latinam fecit libris 6 chartae sunt II excusae nuper Basileae cum Pindari Thebani epitome Iliados, etc. Ibidem ei attribuitur etiam Periocha sex librorum Daretis sermone soluto, eodem uolumine excusa, chartis 3 et quadr. Ex praefatione Cor. Nepotis ad C. Crisp. Salustium . . . [Gessner goes on to excerpt pseudo-​Nepos’ prefatory epistle]. Ex praefatione Albani Torini. De authore minus quam de interprete ambigo. Sunt quae Britannum

263



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

263

the possibility that the original Destruction of Troy was a mere prose abbreviation of an epic poem that in fact postdated it by more than half a millennium. Perhaps Nepos had helpfully composed a “Cliffs Notes” crib to his lengthy six-​ book poem? Whatever the explanation, a forger silently exchanged places with one of his chief imitators. Gessner demonstrates that Torinus was not the only one to let an attribution stand out of stated deference to tradition. Nor was Torinus the first early modern to fall into this trap. Raffaello Volterrano, whose vita of the Phrygian proudly adorned the front matter of Torinus’ edition, had published his encyclopedia more than thirty years before Torinus printed Dares.20 And while he did not mention whether Nepos’ translation was in prose or in verse, he did maintain that it occupied six books. The Italian encyclopedist seemed to have referred to Joseph without knowing it. This error had entered into print even while Joseph himself still remained in manuscript.

A British History: Joseph of Exeter versus Cornelius Nepos As Torinus acknowledged, the ascription of Joseph’s Iliad to Cornelius Nepos by no means represented the consensus omnium among early modern scholars. Rather, a few dissenting voices—​who hailed from Britain, predictably—​aimed to reclaim Joseph’s status as the rightful author of his epic. In doing so, they sometimes adopted a counterintuitive strategy: they extolled misattribution itself as an ironic index of authorial worth. Joseph was a poet of such elegance and talent, they suggested, that he had transcended his age. Although the effacement of Joseph’s name was unfortunate, it was a testament to his literary merits that he could be mistaken for a proper ancient like Nepos. These arguments show how an emergent fashion for medievalism, imbued with national sentiment, could simultaneously subvert and reaffirm the exemplarity of the classical canon. One of Joseph of Exeter’s first and most passionate defenders was the sixteenth-​century English antiquary John Leland, a pioneer of local history who also undertook a systematic survey of English libraries at the behest of Henry VIII. Leland wrote up the fruits of his library searches in his Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis or Commentaries on British Writers, a collection (unpublished until the eighteenth century) not unlike the bibliographies and collections of vitae that Volterrano and Gessner compiled. In it he told the highly personal

hunc fuisse arguunt  .  .  .” The reference to Pindarus Thebanus will be discussed later in this chapter. 20. Dares, De bello Troiano, ed. Torinus, title page verso.

264

264

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

story of his encounter with Joseph of Exeter.21 He began by contrasting Joseph with his medieval world: “Joseph, easily the first of all the poets of his time . . . was a man of such great eloquence, majesty, and erudition, that I can never wonder enough whence elegance accrued to him in so barbarous and rude an age (tam barbara et rudi aetate) . . .” Joseph had entirely surpassed his barbara aetas. Yet these virtues had not guaranteed him immortality, for very few now knew the poet by name. Therefore, Leland took it upon himself to “release from obscurity so splendid a star of Britain.”22 The patriotic implications of this task were clear, especially when he combined it with a critique of how foreigners had mishandled the text—​a swipe, as we shall see, against Torinus. The antiquary then related an exciting detective story. He first found Joseph in the library of Magdalene College, Oxford, in a manuscript “imperfect and nearly obliterated.” It featured the title “Dares Phrygius on the Trojan War,” without any reference whatsoever to its actual author. Leland “devoured” the text. But it puzzled him: it was a work of Latin poetry, and he knew that Dares himself had written originally in Greek, and in prose.23 Two years later, Leland was in Paris, and here he found another manuscript of Joseph, also maimed and corrupted.24 There he saw a third copy, and it yielded a crucial clue. Where Joseph had asked, “what gods should I  call to prayers?” and then declared in his Virgilian swipe at Virgil that he would invoke truth instead, Leland found a note that “some diligent reader had written in the margin, in the most minute letters.” It read Supple, ego Josephus or “Supply, I Joseph.”25 Now, Leland rejoiced, the poet was

21.  John Leland, Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis, Vol. I, ed. Anthony Hall (Oxford, 1709), 236–​39. For a modern edition, see John Leland, De viris illustribus, ed. and trans. James P. Carley (Toronto, 2010). On Leland’s scholarship, seeCathy Shrank, Writing the Nation in Reformation England, 1530–​1580 (Oxford, 2004). 22. Leland, Commentarii, 236: “JOSEPHUS, omnium poetarum sui temporis, absit invidia dicto, facile primus, tantae eloquentiae, majestatis, eruditionis homo fuit, ut nunquam satis admirari possum, unde illi in tam barbara et rudi aetate facundia accreverit usque adeo omnibus numeris tersa, elegans, rotunda. quae tamen virtus his nostris diebus tam nihil ad immortalitatem profuit, ut paucissimis ne de nomine quidem cognitus sit; tantum abest, ut doctorum manibus assidue teratur. Quare putabam meae partis esse tam splendidum Britanniae sidus ab obscuritate asserere.” 23. Leland, Commentarii, 236: “Non adeo multis adhinc annis, cum essem Isidis in Vado, et casu diverterem in bibliothecam Magdaleniacam, reperi libellum carmine scriptum, sed imperfectum, et tantum non obliteratum, cum hoc titulo, Dares Phrygius de Bello Trojano. Carmen utcunque pro tempore devorabam, non nescius Daretem Graece, soluta tamen oratione, de Rebus Trojanis scripsisse.” 24. This would seem to be Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fonds latin 15015. 25. Leland, Commentarii, 236–​37: “[T]‌andem ubi ad hoc hemistichium perventum est: Quos superos in vota vocem: quidam diligens lector in margine, minutissimis literis, ascripserat: Supple, ego Josephus.” Cf. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 1.12, ed. Gompf, 78.

265



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

265

no longer a nameless ego. In an irony that many of today’s literary critics would surely relish, an author was rescued from anonymity thanks to the intervention of an anonymous reader. A marginal note, almost invisible in the smallest of scripts, restored Joseph’s identity. When Leland returned to England, he eventually discovered a still fuller manuscript of Joseph. And from it he was able to place Joseph in time and space, as he found the poet’s dedication to Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury. Still, the battle was not won. Leland closed by describing his shock when he saw the poem in print, attributed to Cornelius Nepos. “The work of Joseph appeared, printed by German type, but so corruptly, that if its own father [i.e., Joseph] were restored to life and beheld so deformed an offspring, he would clearly never recognize it.”26 Like Leland, the antiquary William Camden also engaged in a systematic effort to recover the textual and material remains of the British past. In the various editions of his magnum opus, the Britannia, Camden made repeated references to Joseph of Exeter. Camden first commented on Joseph in the Britannia’s first edition of 1586, when he found a line printed in Torinus’ edition that he deemed solid proof against Nepos’ authorship. When describing the wedding of the Argonaut Telamon and the Trojan Hesione, Joseph had compared the guests’ appetite for wine to the Britons’ zeal for drinking.27 Now presumably Cornelius Nepos had not been acquainted personally with British drinking habits. Camden had his proof. “I am able to prove,” the antiquary concluded, “plainly and as if by sealed documents (quasi obsignatis tabulis), that the author of this poem was not Cornelius Nepos, as the Germans wish, but Joseph Iscanus [i.e., the Latinized form of Exeter].”28 In the Roman world, documents that had been sealed were said to constitute airtight evidence, as they could not be altered or

26. Leland, Commentarii, 239: “Haec cum scripsissem, prodiit Josephi opus interpretis de Bello Trojano, typis excusum Germanicis; sed tam corrupte, ut si pater ipse in prolem redivivus oculos converteret tam informem, cognosceret plane nunquam. Utque fucus edito praefigeretur libro, Cornelii Nepotis, Romani, nomine inscriptus est.” 27. See Dares, De bello Troiano, ed. Torinus, 31. Cf. Joseph of Exeter, Ylias 2.86–​88, ed. Gompf, 101:  “Et in aurea pocula fusi/​Invitant sese; pateris plebs mixta—​Britanni/​Certatura siti longique potentior haustus . . .” 28. Camden, Britannia (London, 1586), 24: “Plane Poeticum est, et illius authorem non fuisse Cornelium Nepotum, ut Germani volunt, sed Iosephum Iscanum, siue Exoniensem dilucide et quasi obsignatis tabulis probare possum.” Cf. Cic. Tusc. 5.11.33: “Tu quidem tabellis obsignatis agis mecum et testificaris, quid dixerim aliquando aut scripserim.” I also discuss these passages from Camden in Frederic Clark, “Reading the Life Cycle:  History, Antiquity and Fides in Lambarde’s Perambulation and Beyond,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 81 (2018): 191–​208, esp. 197. On Camden's project in the Britannia, see Angus Vine, In Defiance of Time: Antiquarian Writing in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2010), 80–​108.

26

266

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

revised. Camden’s invocation of them was a Ciceronian flourish. In the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero had his interlocutor attempt to catch him in an inconsistency by claiming he had contradicted a statement from one of his prior works, De finibus. Cicero responded by exclaiming: “You pursue me with sealed documents (tabellis obsignatis), and invoke as a witness what I have sometime said or written.” Camden implied that he could muster a similar level of juridical proof against the “Germans” who wished to make Nepos the author of the poem. In the following year’s edition of 1587, Camden made this proof more airtight, by recording that the poem’s author had invoked both Henry II and Thomas Becket.29 If Nepos had known to mention them, he would have been quite the time traveler indeed. In his 1590 edition of the Britannia, Camden added yet another passage about Joseph, complete with an entirely new take on the situation. When surveying Exeter, the antiquary described its native son, Joseph Iscanus, as a “poet of such splendid quality, whose writings were so approved that they gained the praiseworthy status accorded ancient authors (ad veterum scriptorum laudem).”30 For the “Germans” had disseminated his poem under the name of Nepos. Now, rather than use such misattribution simply as an excuse to castigate Torinus and the Germans, he turned it into an ironic source of praise for the author they had wronged. Joseph was so splendid a medieval poet that he could be mistaken for the real ancient thing. Perhaps Leland’s reincarnated Joseph would not have been aghast at his editio princeps but rather proud. In Camden’s estimation, his classical imitatio had been devastatingly effective and was a point in medieval England’s favor. Unlike the Phrygian himself, a medieval English poet had written something worthy of Nepos. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Joseph of Exeter remained a source of pride for English scholars. In 1603 the poet Samuel Daniel invoked him in his Defence of Rhyme. Like Sidney’s Defense of Poesy, Daniel’s work also championed the literary arts against their detractors. He attempted to refute the English poet and lutist Thomas Campion, who had argued that rhyme was decadent—​a baleful sign of how classical metrical purity had declined into medieval barbarism.

29. William Camden, Britannia (London, 1587), 27: “Vtique qui Henrici nostri Secundi, et Thomae Cantuariensis meminerit.” 30. William Camden, Britannia (London, 1590), 133–​34: “Quo seculo floruit qui hinc oriundus et cognominatus Iosephus Iscanus, splendidissimo ingenio Poeta, cuius scripta ita probabantur, ut ad veterum scriptorum laudem pervenerint: eius etenim de bello Troiano poema Germani semel atque iterum sub Cornelii Nepotis nomine divulgarunt.” This passage is absent from both the 1586 and 1587 editions of the Britannia.

267



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

267

In response, Daniel mounted a defense of medieval literary culture that encompassed far more than mere technical questions of poetic composition. In order to salvage the Middle Ages, he rejected the notion that it was only with the recent advent of humanist scholarship that learning and culture had returned. It was a “most apparant ignorance” to claim that “all lay pittifully deformed in those lacke-​learning times from the declining of the Romane Empire, till the light of the Latine tongue was revived by Rewcline, Erasmus and Moore.”31 Instead, he extolled the merits of Petrarch and Boccaccio, and in an apt Troy allusion, he described how thereafter Lorenzo Valla, Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Bruni, and other Italian scholars burst forth tanquam ex equo Troiano or “as from the Trojan horse.”32 But learning had not been moribund in England, and lest anyone think this was an Italian-​centered story, Daniel argued that “long before all these, and likewise with these,” England was “concurrent with the best of all this lettered world.”33 To prove this point, he appealed to such luminaries as Bede. But he also cited Joseph of Exeter. Joseph proved that medieval English poetry was anything but decadent. “Witnesse Iosephus Devonius,” Daniel proclaimed, paraphrasing Camden’s remarks in the Britannia, “who wrote de bello Troiano, in so excellent manner, and so neere resembling Antiquity, as Printing his worke beyond the Seas, they have ascribed it to Cornelius Nepos, one of the Ancients.”34 Joseph had mimicked antiquity so well that he himself appeared to be an ancient, some twelve centuries older than he really was. Together with figures like Walter Map, Gervase of Tilbury, Roger Bacon, and others, Joseph revealed that medieval England had produced “monuments of most profound iudgement and learning in all sciences.” This age was hardly dark or barbarous; as Daniel remarked, “it is but the cloudes gathered about our owne iudgement that makes us thinke all other ages wrapt up in mistes.”35 Daniel and Joseph made a fitting pair. Whether in the twelfth century or the seventeenth, each was involved in a quarrel between ancients and moderns. Each of these quarrels expressed themselves in questions over literary form and style. Joseph had castigated antiquity by besting it in what he described as a ludic exercise. Some four hundred years later, Daniel argued against the exclusive embrace 31. Samuel Daniel, A Defence of Ryme: Against a Pamphlet Entituled: Observations in the Art of English Poesie (London, 1603), sig. G verso. 32. Daniel, Defence of Ryme, sig. G 2 verso. 33. Daniel, Defence of Ryme, sig. G 3 recto. 34. Daniel, Defence of Ryme, sig. G 3 verso. 35. Daniel, Defense of Ryme, sig. G 3 verso.

268

268

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

of antiquity precisely because some post-​antique authors like Joseph wrote “in so excellent a manner” that they could pass as ancients. His rhetoric anticipated the far more famous quarrel of ancients and moderns that would begin approximately a century later. It was a mistake, Daniel argued, to restrict oneself to a narrow canon of ancients: “Methinkes we should not so soone yeeld our consents captive to the authoritie of Antiquitie . . . all our understandings are not to be built by the square of Greece and Italie.”36 Instead, Daniel championed a greater eclecticism in time and space: it was “arrogant ignorance,” he insisted, “to hold this or that nation Barbarous, these or those times grosse . . .”37 Eventually Joseph was reunited with his poem. Although Leland, Camden, and Daniel had blamed foreigners and “Germans” for effacing Joseph’s name, ironically it was a German scholar who ultimately saved him from obscurity. In 1620, Samuel Dresemius, who studied at Frankfurt and then served as rector of the gymnasium in the Brandenburg town of Joachimsthal, released an edition of, and commentary on, Joseph’s Iliad. He titled it Six Books on the Trojan War of the Most Elegant Poet Joseph of Exeter, Hitherto Edited Several Times under the Name of Cornelius Nepos, and now Restored to the Author.38 He repeatedly cited Camden among others. Yet as we shall see at the end of this chapter, his efforts did not mark the end of confusions among Dares, Nepos, and Joseph. The curious early modern afterlife of Joseph’s Iliad demonstrates that “ancient” texts could not always be separated from their medieval fellow travelers, even when such travels had not begun intentionally. One could not read the first pagan historian without encountering—​and sometimes unconsciously perpetuating—​a near millennium of medieval readings that had multiplied his original act of falsification. Aside from the power of mere accident, what might the conflation of Cornelius Nepos and Joseph of Exeter—​who flourished in the first century BCE and twelfth century CE, respectively—​tell us about early modern approaches to antiquity? Whether one proclaimed (like Albanus Torinus) that Joseph was literally Nepos or argued (like William Camden and Samuel Daniel) that the medieval Joseph was worthy of the ancient Nepos, why did he deserve reading—​perhaps even more so than did the bare text of the Destruction of Troy itself ? To many of the humanists discussed here, whether critics or believers, classicizing was a paramount virtue. Hence, even if they did not always express it directly, they often shared an affinity with Joseph’s own classicizing

36. Daniel, Defence of Ryme, sig. F 8 verso. 37. Daniel, Defense of Ryme, sig. G recto. 38. Iosephi Iscani poetae elegantissimi de bello Troiano, libri sex, hactenus Cornelii Nepotis nomine aliquoties editi, nunc autori restituti . . ., ed. Samuel Dresemius (Frankfurt, 1620).

269



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

269

twelfth-​century milieu. Dares’ prose certainly violated their aesthetic sensibilities, but Joseph’s hexameters did not. If this medieval version of Dares had not existed, perhaps early modern humanists would have had to invent it. And in a sense they did, by making Cornelius Nepos—​biographer, chronologer, and embodiment of Latinity’s Golden Age—​into a poet. Those who could not tolerate Dares’ barbarism perhaps found this “translation” of him into the language of classicism far more palatable. And if he had read him, perhaps Philip Sidney would have found Joseph much as he had found Virgil: not only more palatable, but also more “doctrinable” than the Phrygian himself.

Dares and Homeric Questions The confusion between Dares and Joseph was not the only mix-​up that complicated readings of the Phrygian. In the early modern period Dares was accompanied by another, still more bizarre conflation of authors, which plunged still deeper into the ancient past. To trace its origins we must return to the world of Gessner and Torinus. As we saw, Gessner had reported that Cornelius Nepos “rendered Dares’ history of the Trojan War into Latin in six books and epic verses.” While this statement was perplexing enough, his very next statement proved even odder. He added that Nepos’ poem had been “printed at Basel with an epitome of the Iliad by Pindar of Thebes.”39 What was this other Iliad, ostensibly written by the ancient Greek lyricist Pindar? In his 1541 Basel edition, Torinus had printed both Joseph and Dares with other Troy texts, including Nicholas Valla’s translation of Homer’s own Iliad. To these he added the so-​called Ilias Latina or Latin Iliad, a Latin epitome of Homer probably composed sometime during Nero’s reign in the first century CE. It consisted of some 1,070 hexameters and is now generally attributed to one Baebicus Italicus. It was a popular medieval school text, substituting for the actual Homeric Iliad.40 However, Torinus chose to consign the Latin Iliad to a far deeper past. He attributed it to none other than Pindar of Thebes. Pindar had died in the middle

39. Gessner, Bibliotheca universalis, fol. 188r: “Daretis Phrygii historiam de bello Troiano versibus heroicis Latinam fecit libris sex, excusam Basileae cum Pindari Thebani epitome Iliados, etc. ibidem. Ei attribuitur etiam Periocha sex librorum Daretis sermone soluto, eodem volumine excusa.” See 260–61 in this chapter. 40. For recent analyses of the Ilias Latina, see Christiane Reitz, “Verkürzen und Erweitern—​ Literarische Techniken für eilige Leser? Die ‘Ilias Latina’ als poetische Epitome,” Hermes 135 (2007): 334–​51; Reinhold F. Glei, “The Ilias Latina as a Roman Continuation of the Iliad,” in Brill’s Companion to Prequels, ed. Simms, 31–​51; and Michael C.J. Putnam, “Baebius Italicus’s Ilias Latina and the End of Vergil’s Aeneid,” Vergilius 64 (2018): 157–​72. For the text’s medieval transmission and reception, see Woods, Weeping for Dido, esp. 49–​103.

270

270

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

of the fifth century BCE. Hence, it would be a wholly inadequate understatement to call Torinus’ attribution odd, since there was no way that Pindar of all people could have written anything resembling Latin. To us, it might seem as breathtakingly anachronistic as supposing that Cornelius Nepos dedicated a poem to the Archbishop of Canterbury. As Torinus explained in his preface, “on account of the affinity of the argument, we have added a most erudite poem of Pindar of Thebes, in which that poet summed up the entire Iliad of Homer in a most beautiful and most complete epitome.”41 Torinus did not invent this confusion. The misattribution of the Latin Iliad to Pindar possessed some very old medieval roots. As proposed by Marco Scaffai, the editor of the Latin Iliad, this mix-​up was derived potentially from an infelicitous mixture of manuscript association and scribal corruption. Early in the Middle Ages this Homeric abridgement began to travel in manuscripts with Dares.42 In some cases, the Ilias Latina was followed—​not unlike how Dares was followed by pseudo-​Cato in William of Malmesbury's manuscript—​by a coda from the final chapter of Dares, which recorded details like the length of the war and the number of Greek and Trojan casualties.43 As Scaffai speculated, one or more incipits or library catalogs may have titled these multi-​text codices Homerus dein Dares or “Homer, then Dares.” This formulation may later have been miscopied, through several fateful slips of the pen, as Homerus Peindares, and eventually, Homerus Pindarus.44 And even though scribes and scholars in the medieval West did not have ready access to Pindar’s works, at least some of them must have known the name. Presumably at some point the vague “Pindarus” morphed into the more specific “Pindarus Thebanus” or Pindar of Thebes. One of the authors we met in Chapter 3 provides firsthand evidence of this confusion. The twelfth-​century chronicler Otto von Freising had discussed the Trojan War in his universal history. While Otto’s brief précis drew upon the Phrygian himself, he urged anyone who wished to know more about that

41.  Torinus, “Epistola nuncupatoria,” in Dares, De bello Troiano, ed. Torinus, sig. † 5 recto: “Addidimus autem DARETI propter argumenti affinitatem, Pindari Thebani eruditissimum poema, quo uates ille pulcherrima et absolutissima Epitome universae Iliados Homericae summam complexus est.” 42. See Ilias Latina, ed. Marco Scaffai (Bologna, 1982), 35–​36, and Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire, 94, 108–​9, 112, 114, and 156. 43. For manuscripts that use an extract from Dares as a coda to the Ilias Latina, see Marco Scaffai, “Pindarus seu Homerus: un’ipotesi sul titolo dell’Ilias Latina,” Latomus 38 (1979): 932–​ 39, esp. 937–​38, and Faivre D’Arcier, Histoire,  108–​9. 44. Scaffai, “Pindarus seu Homerus,” 938–​39.

271



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

271

“infamous fall of Troy” to “read Homer and his imitators, Pindar and Virgil.”45 That Virgil wrote on matters Trojan and was an imitator of Homer was clear enough, but Pindar? Otto appeared to be referring to another take on Homer, the Latin Iliad. And approximately four centuries after Otto von Freising wrote these words, Albanus Torinus published a volume for those who wished to know more about Troy. In doing so he brought together a motley assortment of dubiously identified texts: a classicizing twelfth-​century epic, a Neronian-​era epitome, and a late antique pseudo-​history that he ascribed respectively to a first-​century-​B CE Roman historian, a fifth-​century-​B CE Greek lyricist, and the first pagan historian himself. By publishing the Latin Iliad with Dares, Torinus reunited two texts that had long been linked in manuscript. But just as he was not the first Renaissance scholar to confuse Nepos and Joseph, so he was not the first early modern to inject Dares into the confusion between Pindar and the Ilias Latina. For example, a 1513 Wittenberg edition of Dares also featured links to pseudo-​Pindar. It began with a series of handsome woodcuts, illustrating key events in the Troy story and capturing the likenesses of various heroes both Greek and Trojan. Perhaps these images were designed as visual accompaniments to the Phrygian’s own catalog of characters. Trojans and Greeks alike were outfitted in (fittingly anachronistic) knightly attire. (See Figure 1 in the Introduction for this edition’s portrayal of Agamemnon.) For instance, Paris, asleep on the ground, dreamt of the three goddesses vying for his favor; a mustachioed Hector, clad in armor, appeared astride a horse; Achilles, “who killed Hector,” brandished a sword; a rather dour looking Menelaus, “the husband of Helen,” crossed his arms; a bearded Priam, “king of the Trojans,” raised his left arm; and Aeneas held a flower.46 Below these images were short snippets of text further evoking each figure. Yet these citations were not culled from the corresponding text of the Phrygian, as one might expect. Instead, they were lines of verse, perhaps intended—​as Joseph of Exeter’s medieval commentator had noted—​to enliven Dares’ less enticing prose. Several of these verses were taken from Virgil, such as the lines from Aeneid 1.378–​80 adorning the image of Aeneas. But others, such as those inscribed below the portrait of Hector, cited as their source a certain Pindarus Thebanus.47 These 45. See Otto von Freising, Chronica 1.25, ed. Lammers, 90–​91 and Chapter 3, 122. 46.  See Historia Daretis Phrygii de excidio Troie (Wittenberg, 1513). These images are also included in the front matter of the 1520 Paris printing of Dares discussed in Chapter 5. 47. Historia Daretis Phrygii de excidio Troie, sig. A 2 verso: “Pindarus Thebanus: Proh deducus inquit/​Aeternum patriae generisque infamia nostri/​Terga refers? Nihil audiuvat arma/​ Nobilitas formae: duro Mars milite gaudet.” Lines from the Ilias Latina, credited to “Pindarus Thebanus,” also appear alongside the depiction of Paris at sig. A verso.

27

272

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

lines were in fact excerpts from the Latin Iliad. Dares and “Pindar” were linked in print even when their full texts did not circulate together. Of course, unlike Dares, Virgil and “Pindar” were not eyewitnesses who claimed to possess firsthand information about the appearances of Hector, Aeneas, and others. But maybe they still counted as witnesses, even if they had not been lucky enough to be at Troy. They still furnished useful and even enlivening testimony about the Trojan War.48 Perhaps the use of these poets to adorn Dares marked a subtle shift away from that hard dichotomy between historia and fabula explored in previous chapters. Perhaps poetry did not always need to oppose history but could rather complement it. However, not everyone was content with the proliferation of misattributions that swarmed around Dares. As the Phrygian and the Theban rose together, so they also fell together. Dares and pseudo-​Pindar were not just joined in manuscript and print; they were also joined in the protestations of critics. Curiously, Joseph Scaliger also thought of Dares and the Latin Iliad in tandem. In the previous chapter we discussed his letter to Isaac Casaubon in which he called out a whole host of ancient texts as fakes. Here, immediately after he debunked Dares and Dictys, he exclaimed to Casaubon: “what shall you say of that Latin verse epitome of the Iliad? How ridiculously have they advertised it as belonging to Pindar of Thebes!”49 Just as Antonio Possevino had used Diodorus Siculus to disprove Dares and Dictys—​unlikely bedfellows who traveled together in several sixteenth-​century editions—​so Scaliger indicted the Destruction of Troy and the Latin Iliad together, simultaneously demolishing two texts long conjoined in manuscript and print. Each in its own way was “ridiculously” (ridicule) misattributed. Perhaps Scaliger thought of them together because he had read them together. According to his library auction catalog, he owned a volume containing both Dares and “Pindar” from Basel, presumably Torinus’ edition or a reprint.50 Criticism did not proceed in a vacuum but sometimes depended on coincidence.

48. On notions of witnessing and proof in early modern scholarship, see Grafton, What Was History?, R.W. Serjeanston, “Testimony and Proof in Early–​Modern England,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30 (1999): 195–​236, Jacob Soll, “Introduction: The Uses of Historical Evidence in Early Modern Europe,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): 149–​57 and the essays collected in this special issue of JHI. 49. Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger, ed. Botley and van Miert, Scaliger to Casaubon, November 9, 1605, 216: “Quid dicas de Epitome Iliados Epica Latina? quam ridicule Pindarum Thebanum proscripserunt?” 50. Louis Elzevir, The Auction Catalogue of the Library of J.J. Scaliger, facsimile ed. with intro. by H.J. de Jonge (Utrecht, 1977 [1609]), 55.

273



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

273

The material contexts of transmission often determined the fate of authors. Nor did numbers guarantee safety. Sometimes, if two pseudonymous authors were unlucky enough to travel together, they increased their risks of facing joint expulsion from the canon. We have spoken of multiple Iliads, variously ascribed to Joseph of Exeter, Pindar of Thebes, Cornelius Nepos, and Dares himself. To use Otto von Freising’s formulation, they were all imitators of Homer in some way, even if they did not all know it. So what of that original Iliad—​Homer’s own? Where did the bard himself figure in this story? He has been largely absent from the previous chapters. Throughout the Middle Ages, he often remained a mere name. He was routinely attacked for his supposed lies and was rarely present to defend himself against such charges. The previous chapter examined the consequences of the revival of Greek works in early modern scholarship, particularly Aristotle’s Poetics and Diodorus Siculus’ Historical Library. Now we consider the reemergence of one of the most consequential and canonical of Greek authors—​Homer himself. With the advent of the Renaissance the Homeric texts began to creep back into Western Europe, in both Greek and in Latin translations.51 Torinus, for instance, had printed a Latin versification of Homer’s Iliad along with the other items in his 1541 edition. The Basel physician, who grandly styled the Phrygian “the first of all the historians and poets,” also gave Homer the enviable title of “the prince of poets.”52 Celebrating the former did not necessarily mean rejecting the latter, pseudo-​Nepos’ protests notwithstanding. Perhaps Torinus, not unlike the 1513 Wittenberg edition discussed previously, welcomed a conciliation of sorts between history and poetry. Critical work on Homer continued throughout the sixteenth century. In 1583 the Huguenot scholar Jean de Sponde or Johannes Spondanus published a massive Greek edition and Latin translation of the Iliad and Odyssey, augmented by his own commentary.53 Spondanus had worked and lived in Basel, where he studied with Theodor Zwinger. As traced by Marc Bizer, he argued for the 51. On the early modern reception of Homer, see, for instance, Jessica Wolfe, Homer and the Question of Strife from Erasmus to Hobbes (Toronto, 2015); Marc Bizer, Homer and the Politics of Authority in Renaissance France (Oxford, 2011); Philip Ford, De Troie à Ithaque: réception des épopées homériques à la Renaissance (Geneva, 2007); and Anthony Grafton, “How Guillaume Budé Read His Homer,” in Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor, 1997), 135–​84. 52. Dares, De bello Troiano, ed. Torinus, title page: “Ad haec, Homeri poetarum principis Ilias, quatenus a Nicolao Valla, et V. Obsopoeo carmine reddita.” 53. See Homeri quae extant omnia, ed. Johannes Spondanus (Basel, 1583). For Spondanus as commentator, see Christiane Deloince-​ Louette, Sponde:  commentateur d’Homère (Paris, 2001), and Bizer, Homer and the Politics of Authority, esp. 162–​80.

274

274

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

political uses of reading Homer, especially in his dedicatory epistle to Henri III of Navarre, the future Henri IV of France. And throughout his commentary he drew implicit parallels between the Trojan War and the religious conflicts that tore apart France in the sixteenth century. Spondanus did not print Homer alone. Following Torinus’ lead, he published his Homer with Joseph of Exeter and the Latin Iliad. Spondanus treated Dares and Dictys with ambivalence. In his preface he numbered them among that multitude of authors who had taken the Trojan War as their subject: “Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis wrote of that war: their books are circulated, but they are thought by many to be illegitimate and counterfeit (nothi ac adulterini). With judgment suspended we include them.” Like Torinus and others before him, Spondanus made a show of bowing to tradition. And he suggested that Dares and Dictys were still worth reading even if they were not genuine. The Homeric commentator declared that “we have ordered Dares Phrygius—​rendered in a paraphrastic poem by Cornelius Nepos—​to be printed at the foot of the Iliad.”54 Of course, Spondanus was actually referring to Joseph of Exeter without realizing it. Remarkably, although he voiced doubts about the Phrygian himself, he did not express any parallel reservations about whether Nepos had actually rendered Dares into Latin verse. Doubt and acceptance, however fleeting or perfunctory, took many permutations. Spondanus may have suspended judgment on the narrow question of authorship—​i.e., the question of whether the authors who called themselves Dares and Dictys had really been present at the Trojan War—​but his decision to print them nonetheless also counted as an implicit judgment of a more positive variety. Perhaps Spondanus’ acceptance of them constituted a variation on the same impulse that in the following century would compel G.J. Vossius—​ his bracing polemics notwithstanding—​to include Dares in his encyclopedic guides to Greek and Latin historians. Even those who engaged in criticism—​and Spondanus had done so, however perfunctorily, by acknowledging that perhaps both authors were illegitimate—​still engaged in aggregation and compilation, not unlike the medieval manuscript anthologizers examined in Chapter 2. Even if Spondanus helped restore Homer to his place at the center of the Trojan pantheon, he was not prepared to do so at the expense of the other members of this 54.  Spondanus, “Argumentum Iliadis,” in Homeri quae extant omnia, ed. Spondanus, 44: “Dares etiam Phrygius et Dictys Cretensis bellum illud scriptis mandarunt: quorum libri quidem circumferuntur, sed a multis putantur nothi ac adulterini. Nos iudicio suspenso eos admittimus: e quibus Daretem Phrygium carmine paraphrastico donatum a Cornelio Nepote ad calcem Iliadis excudi iussimus.” See Bizer, Homer and the Politics of Authority, 165–​66. On ancient descriptions of false texts as illegitimate children or nothoi, see Peirano, Rhetoric of the Roman Fake, 38.

275



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

275

canon. Not all Renaissance humanist critics were the iconoclasts we have sometimes made them out to be. On the contrary, the need to catalog and compare witnesses and traditions often proved stronger than the desire to banish them from the canon and render them unread. Yet given his reservations about the “illegitimate and counterfeit,” rather more surprising is the other text that Spondanus placed at the foot of his Homer. In addition to that poem by Cornelius Nepos, he also printed the Ilias Latina and dutifully assigned it to Pindar of Thebes. Without any corresponding explanation, he suspended his judgment once again and admitted another pseudonymous text into Homer’s company. He copied the title directly from Torinus, styling it An Epitome and Summa of the Whole Iliad of Homer, by the Author Pindar of Thebes.55 In so doing, Spondanus brought two pseudonymous fellow travelers—​i.e., “Pindar” and “Nepos”—​into the ambit of sixteenth-​century Homeric scholarship. In a development that surely would have made pseudo-​ Nepos proud, Dares and his fellow pseudo-​authors—​including “Pindar” of all people—​now gained a place in the Homeric commentary tradition. The return of Homer did not seal their downfall but rather perpetuated their afterlives, even in demoted form.

An Exemplary Fake? Dares versus Dictys Cretensis In his Homeric commentary, Spondanus relied on some unexpected historical sources. Marc Bizer has shown that one of these “histories” was none other than Dictys Cretensis. As Bizer points out, when Spondanus glossed Agamemnon’s announcement of his decision to return Chrysies, the French commentator used the term historia to cite an unnamed source that claimed the Greeks were considering replacing Agamemnon with Achilles as their leader. Hence, following this history’s hints, Spondanus read Agamemnon’s decision as a political calculation. This historia was in fact the Journal of the Trojan War, which Spondanus seemed to regard as authoritative in some fashion, despite his intimation that it was “illegitimate and counterfeit.”56 Spondanus had chosen to print a text based upon Dares, but he had not printed Dictys. Still, as other passages in his glosses suggest, he seems to have

55. See Homeri quae extant omnia, ed. Spondanus, 428: “Epitome ac Summa uniuersae Iliados Homeri, Pindaro Thebano auctore.” Joseph follows at p.  444, where Spondanus titles his poem as had Torinus:  “Daretis Phrygii Poetarum et Historicorum omnium primi, de bello Troianorum libri sex, Latine carmine a CORNELIO NEPOTE eleganter redditi.” 56. See Bizer, Homer and the Politics of Authority, 165–​66, citing Homeri quae extant omnia, ed. Spondanus, 8.

276

276

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

regarded the latter, absent text as a better source of historical information than the former, despite inserting a poetic version of the former at the foot of his Iliad. When glossing Homer’s mention of how Athena used trickery and guile to coax Hector into facing Achilles in combat, Spondanus read this line as a poetic embellishment of an underlying historical truth the bard could not otherwise conceal. “I think the poet fabricated this,” he proposed, “because he was not able to disguise the truth of the matter (veritatem rei).” And how did Spondanus know the truth that lurked behind Homer’s fanciful account of divine intervention? From historia: “for history narrates that Achilles waited to ambush Hector and killed him by deception.”57 He then cited the relevant passage from this historia, which now he identified by name as Dictys. It detailed how Achilles had ambushed Hector as he and some other Trojans were crossing a river, en route to a meeting with the Amazonian queen. Perhaps Dictys was illegitimate, but his text was still a historia that could explain and rationalize a fabula. Spondanus was still fulfilling the duties of the commentator, much as Servius and other ancients had understood them. And in doing so he still accepted, even with respect to details like the manner of Hector’s death, that there existed discernible truths about the Trojan War, and that these truths could be obtained by reconciling seemingly opposed sources. Much as Antonio Possevino would do, Spondanus argued from a perceived consensus between trusted authorities. And not unlike how pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris had attempted to reconcile the likes of Virgil and the Phrygian, he sought to solve seeming discrepancies between poets and historians. Reconciliation was an admirable goal. But perhaps not all historiae were created equal. Spondanus next pointed out how Dares diverged from both Homer and Dictys. For the Phrygian had made no mention whatsoever of any trickery involved in Hector’s death: “but Dares Phrygius records that Hector was killed in battle by Achilles,” he explained.58 The commentator then highlighted another discrepancy between the Cretan and the Phrygian. He quoted again from Dictys, this time at length, about how Achilles dragged the body of Hector by his chariot, and how the city of Troy erupted in fear and lamentation at the news of the hero’s death. This narrative was consonant with Homer’s own, but it was nowhere to be found in Dares. “Dares does not know all these things,” he observed. The

57. Homeri quae extant omnia, ed. Spondanus, 394: “κερδοσύνῃ ἡγήσατ’ Ἀθήνη]: Et nunc dicebamus, uincendo Hectori arcessendi fuerunt doli, quod Poetam finxisse puto, quod ueritatem rei non potuerit dissimulare. Nam historia narrat Achillem insidiatum Hectori, et fraude illum interemisse . . .” Cf. Dictys, Ephemeris 3.15, ed. Eisenhut, 70–​71 and Hom. Il. 22.247. 58.  Homeri quae extant omnia, ed. Spondanus, 394:  “At Dares Phrygius in praelio occisum Hectorem ab Achille memorat.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 24, ed. Meister, 30.

27



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

277

Phrygian made scant mention of Trojan grief and wholly omitted Achilles’ dragging of Hector’s body.59 Did Dares’ very brevity, designed to bolster his fides, actually make him suspect, especially when he failed to include details on which both historia and fabula otherwise agreed? Although Spondanus had suggested that both Dares and Dictys were illegitimate and counterfeit, he appeared to trust the latter more than the former. How precisely did he understand the relationship between the two pseudo-​authors, and of each to poets like Homer, the object of his glosses? This brings us to a question we have not hitherto considered. Although it was easy to yoke the two pseudo-​authors together, especially when merely citing them as names on a list, how did scholars adjudicate points of contrast between Dares and Dictys? We have seen how they critiqued the dubious elements of the former, but how did they read the more fantastical portions of the latter? As discussed in the previous chapters, many of the arguments over Dares hinged on what Cornelius Nepos had or had not done. Had he actually discovered Dares’ autograph manuscript in Athens? And if he had, would he have translated it as it now appeared? The trope of discovering a lost book was an old one—​in fact, one of the oldest means of vouching for the authenticity of a text that really was a fake. But the story of Nepos at Athens seemed rather dull compared to the discovery tale that prefaced Dictys of Crete’s Journal of the Trojan War, complete with its shepherds, unearthed graves, and earthquakes. Although few critics engaged the question of just what had actually happened in Crete during Nero’s reign, many showed a surprising willingness to entertain the contents of Dictys’ text with seriousness. Sometimes even those who rejected his fantastical framing device still credited Dictys’ underlying narrative with some species of historical veracity. Spondanus had used Dictys as a source of historia, despite accepting the possibility that his text was a fake. Even if Dictys were not an actual eyewitness to Troy, his historia could still correct Homeric fabula, just as pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris had used Dares’ historia to correct Virgil’s fabula. Dictys occupied a gray zone, and maintaining it required what we might now dismiss as cognitive dissonance. Yet this illustrates just how malleable were definitions of historia in early modernity. Perhaps historia, as Servius had defined it over a millennium earlier, was not just a narrow record of “what happened” but rather embraced some broader notion of verisimilitude. Perhaps it did not matter if Dictys had actually been at Troy, as long as he had written a plausible account of it. This ambiguous view of Dictys’ merits, which gained strength over the course 59. Homeri quae extant omnia, ed. Spondanus, 394: “Sed Dares haec omnia non agnoscit, uidelicet sic tractum Hectorem ab Achillis curru.” Cf. Dictys, Ephemeris 3.15–​16, ed. Eisenhut, 71–​ 72 and Dares, De excidio Troiae 24, ed. Meister, 30.

278

278

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, represented a fusion of notions both old and new. It combined the view of historia as verisimilitude with new and more capacious definitions of witnessing. Even if Dictys were not an actual eyewitness, he was nonetheless a witness, thanks to his wide reading, to what other proper ancient sources had said about Troy. His very act of forgery—​of pretending to be a primary source—​actually made him a useful secondary source. Thus, he still deserved a seat at the table, even if he was no longer placed at its head.60 By according Dictys this nebulous veracity, Spondanus heralded a broader trend. Dares’ fellow pseudo-​author would acquire a cadre of grudging admirers over the course of the next century. And many of them would explicitly favor him over the Phrygian. This was equally true in practice and pronouncement: when seventeenth-​century scholars glossed Dictys, they often ignored Dares. By 1700 there had accumulated a sizeable commentary tradition on the Journal of the Trojan War, and a lively debate over the date and circumstances of its composition. Dares, on the contrary, would not enjoy such exegesis. This book has traced various iterations of conflict between Dares and opposing authors: Dares versus Homer, Dares versus Virgil, Dares versus Nepos, Dares versus Joseph, and now finally Dares versus Dictys. We might say that, by the seventeenth century, the Phrygian and the Cretan had switched places. In the Middle Ages, Dares was often favored over Dictys: the former was a Trojan, whereas Dictys represented those mendacious Greeks. But now Dares’ star seemed to fade in comparison with his Greek counterpart. Dictys’ supposed merits made the Phrygian seem only more wanting in comparison. This contrast was on full display in the work of the French classical and patristic scholar Josias Mercier. In 1618 Mercier released a new edition of Dictys and Dares, with an extensive line-​by-​line commentary only on the former.61 In his dedicatory epistle to his friend and fellow scholar Jerôme Groslot, Mercier described the Cretan in surprisingly flattering language. Using a term that was still rare in the historical lexicon, he judged him an “elegant writer of the Middle Ages (mediae aetatis).” In the first half of the seventeenth century, relatively few referred to the Middle Ages as a discrete temporal entity or deployed the label that has now become our default means of identifying the millennium between antiquity and the Renaissance.62 Although he did not hazard a guess as to which 60. On early modern approaches to history as a collection of multiple sources and testimonies, see Grafton, What Was History?, 68. 61. On Mercier’s editing of the De excidio Troiae, see Faivre D’Arcier, “Josias Mercier,” 191–​234. 62.  On the development of media aetas and related terms, see for instance Paul Lehmann, “Vom Mittelalter und von der lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters,” in Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters (Munich, 1914), 1–​25, and G.S.

279



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

279

specific century the text dated from, Mercier chose to deploy this comparative neologism when describing Dictys’ temporal ambiguity. Dictys was a forger but a good one, ancient-​like even if not a proper ancient. He occupied a middle ground in more ways than one. Much as William Camden had used Joseph of Exeter, Mercier used Dictys to develop an emergent sense of the merits of “medieval” literary culture. In Mercier’s view, this elegant impostor “concocted a history of the Trojan War in Latin under the name of the illustrious Dictys, with the greatest erudition and judgment (maxima eruditione ac iudicio).”63 Mercier claimed to recognize Dictys’ erudition from “diligent and accurate reading of ancient writers.” The French classical scholar both posited and collapsed a dichotomy between antiquity and the Middle Ages. Like Joseph of Exeter, Dictys was medieval, but somehow commensurate with the ancients. He was worthy of praise via comparison with them, just as he had constructed his work via imitation and compilation of them. Many had written on Troy and the resultant return of the Greeks, so Mercier explained, whether in tragedies, epic verses, or even in prose. Dictys (or rather pseudo-​Dictys) had weighed the conflicting opinions and narratives of the ancients, and almost everywhere he chose materials that were consistent with the “consensus of the weightiest authors” (gravissimorum auctorum consensu). Then, after Dictys had trimmed them of their poetic fictions (poeticis figmentis), these materials finally “represented history as it could have happened, without marvel (sine miraculo).” Perhaps Dictys had lied about his own identity, but he still produced a history that possessed verisimilitude and was free of poetic or marvelous content. Remarkably, Mercier praised Dictys in language reminiscent of how the Dares poets of the Middle Ages had praised the Phrygian. And tellingly, he did

Gordon, “Medium Aevum and the Middle Age,” Society for the Propagation of English, Tracts 19 (1925): 3–​28. 63. Dictys Cretensis de bello Troiano et Dares Phrygius de excidio Troiae ex veteris libris emendati: Additae sunt ad Dictym notae, ed. Josias Mercier (Paris, 1618), sig. a ii recto–​verso: “Dictym Cretensem mitto ad te, ornatissime et amicissime Grosloti, vel potius elegantem mediae aetatis scribtorem, qui sub illustri Dictys nomine Troiani belli historiam Latine concinnauit, maxima eruditione ac iudicio, ut ego quidem censeo; qui eruditionem agnosco ex diligenti et accurata lectione veterum scribtorum, τὰ τῆς Τρωϊκῆς ὑποθέσεως et τὰ περὶ τοὶς νόστοις post Homerum omnis eruditionis principem tragico cothurno plurimi, alii epico carmine, quidam etiam soluta oratione illustrauerant: iudicium, ex sollerti cura, quam serio adhibuit, ut e diuersis antiquorum sententiis et discrepantibus relationibus fere ubique eas eligeret, quae et plurium et grauissimorum auctorum consensu firmarentur, et resecatis poeticis figmentis quae supra hominum ac rerum naturam deos veluti e machina ad omnes actus adhibuerant, historiam repraesentarent ita uti potuit accidisse sine miraculo.” For discussion of the preface, see Faivre D’Arcier, “Josias Mercier,” 193. He also provides a transcription of it in an appendix at pp. 226–​29.

280

280

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

not explicitly affirm that Dictys’ history had happened but simply concluded that it could have happened (potuit accidisse). Mercier the critic still discussed Dictys in the old language of historia and fabula. Though a pseudo-​author, Dictys revealed a truth more faithful than Homer’s fictions. Whereas Homer had mixed history with “pure fables” (fabulis meris), Dictys, in contrast, “related the same narrative in such a manner that there is nothing that diminishes its credibility.” And this credibility made him useful:  “He adorned [his narrative] with illustrious speeches that demonstrate the true causes of the downfall of Asiatic empire—​namely avarice and lust—​and from which the prudent judges of states may gain an exemplum.”64 Dictys offered not only truth, but also exemplary political lessons on the rise and fall of empire. He was both lux veritatis and magistra vitae. Nor did Mercier consider these matters of state merely academic. He too had mixed scholarship and politics: earlier in his career he had served as secretary to one of Queen Elizabeth’s advisors, the diplomat Daniel Rogers (himself a person of humanist learning and an associate of Philip Sidney’s).65 Mercier still made space for spuria in the canon, especially if they contained history both true to the past and useful to the present. In effect, he performed a variation upon those ancient techniques of rationalizing myth. Instead of bracketing fabulae, he bracketed pseudonymity, while happily accepting the underlying historicity of what his pseudonymous source had said. In contrast, Mercier’s treatment of Dares could not have been more unflattering. In his prefatory letter, he saw it necessary to apologize to Groslot for publishing Dares along with Dictys.66 The Phrygian and the Cretan had appeared together before, after all, and they discussed the same events. But Dares was “far inferior” (longe inferius) to Dictys. Mercier found in Dares “neither erudition,

64. Dictys, De bello Troiano, ed. Mercier, sig. a iiii recto–​verso: “. . . quod si in Homero locum habet, cuius historia fabulis meris mixta fidem vero detrahere potuit, quid de hoc nostro dicemus, qui eandem narrationem ita relatam ut nihil sit quod fidem minuat, illustribus concionibus exornauit, quae veras caussas euersionis Asiatici imperii euincunt, auaritiam ac libidinem, e quis [sic] exemplum sibi sumant prudentes rerum publicarum arbitri?” 65. On Mercier and Rogers, including the former’s presence on the latter’s diplomatic mission to Denmark, see David Scott Gehring, ed., Diplomatic Intelligence on the Holy Roman Empire and Denmark during the Reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI: Three Treatises (Cambridge, 2016), esp.  39–​41. 66. Dictys, De bello Troiano, ed. Mercier, sig. a iii recto: “[C]‌ui [i.e., Dictys] etiam addidimus libellum de excidio Troiae Daretis Phrygii nomine praescribtum: non aliam ob caussam quam quod ante una edi solitus, et circa idem argumentum versatus: scribtum alioqui longe inferius illo altero, in quo neque eruditionem, neque iudicium, neque ullam elocutionis elegantiam obseruamus, ut nimis impudenter fecisse videatur qui Cornelii Nepotis nomen ementitus est quasi inficetae versionis auctoris. In enarratione totius historiae fere ubique diuersus abit ab omni antiquitate . . .”

281



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

281

nor judgment, nor any elegance of elocution.” Whoever had dared ascribe his work to Cornelius Nepos had acted “extraordinarily shamelessly.” Throughout his history, Dares had diverged from “all antiquity” and related many absurdities. Nevertheless, Mercier still felt compelled to edit the text. He had made “this author, of whatever sort he is, better.”67 Mercier would not be the last to apologize for devoting his scholarly energy to the Phrygian. Dares survived into the seventeenth century because critics, editors, and printers continued to deem him worthy of such energy, even as they roundly criticized him. His survival did not just depend upon the persistence of error, but also, however paradoxically, upon the most unsparing forms of criticism. The criticism that Mercier performed on Dictys was simultaneously gentler and more detailed. At the beginning of his commentary, he took up the question of when, and in what language, the real author of Dictys had written. He argued that the prefatory epistle could not be trusted: the Journal of the Trojan War was an original Latin composition, as opposed to a translation from the Greek, as its “translator” Septimius had claimed. Mercier also observed the flavor of Sallust in its style. To prove that the text was not actually discovered via a lucky earthquake in the reign of Nero, he adopted an approach not dissimilar from how Lorenzo Valla had scrutinized the Donation; Mercier too used the presence of anachronisms to argue that a given text had been written after Constantine. The fourth-​century world of the first Christian emperor was one that Valla, as we saw, had deemed the last act of true antiquity. Mercier used evidence of the changing nature of Roman imperial administration to place the text of Dictys after this age, and not in the more properly classical age of Nero as its preface claimed. The preface had described how Eupraxides, the master of the lucky shepherds who had found Dictys’ manuscript, then gave the book to Rutilius Ruffus, the governor (consularis) of Crete.68 Constantine had elevated many of the empire’s provincial governorships from equestrian-​rank praesides to senatorial consulares, and so Mercier took this reference to Rutilius Ruffus’ status as a telling slip. Here was evidence of the text’s true post-​Constantinian date, as he explained in a brief history lesson: “But although some consulares were instituted by Hadrian, nevertheless very many were instituted by Constantine, when—​with the seat of

67. Dictys, De bello Troiano, ed. Mercier, sig. a iii verso: “Nos tamen et hunc auctorem, qualiscumque est, meliorem damus, ope duorum codicum e bibliotheca S. Victoris Parisiensis, quos ante annos triginta et amplius contulimus, e quibus quantumvis dissimillimis editionem huius libelli commodiorem et fideliorem praestamus.” 68. Dictys, Ephemeris, Prologus, ed. Eisenhut, 2–​3: “Et aperta ea invenerunt tilias incognitis sibi litteris conscriptas continuoque ad suum dominum, Eupraxidem quendam nomine, pertulerunt. qui agnitas, quaenam essent, litteras Rutilio Rufo, illius insulae tunc consulari, obtulit.”

28

282

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

the Empire having been translated—​he changed the order of the administration and jurisdiction of all the provinces. He ordered twenty provinces in the West to submit to magistrates named consulares, and fifteen provinces in the East, including Crete.”69 Hence, “Rutilius Rufus” possessed an office that would not exist for almost three more centuries. Yet not all critics were content to judge a text on chronology and anachronism alone. Valla, Erasmus, and many of Dares’ detractors had also based arguments on the subtler, and perhaps more subjective, criterion of authorial style. And this nebulous criterion depended upon definitions of antiquity and its temporal parameters. For instance, content and style alike seemed to agree that the Donation could not actually have been written in the age of Constantine. Yet in the case of Dictys, perhaps the two were at odds: did the text’s style suggest a pre-​Constantinian, more properly “ancient” date of composition, even if its specific contents (such as its use of the term consularis) suggested otherwise? Other critics would take up this line of reasoning, arguing that stylistic worth made Dictys, despite his pseudonymity, older than Mercier had allowed. Gaspar Scioppius—​who, as we saw in the previous chapter, did not have kind words for Dares Phrygius—​was one of these critics. Even though Mercier had praised Dictys, in Scioppius’ estimation he had not gone far enough. He criticized the French scholar for supposing the text to be post-​antique. Acknowledging that Mercier was otherwise a man of “great erudition and sharp judgment,” Scioppius alleged that he had put forth “exceedingly frivolous arguments” when claiming that the Journal of the Trojan War had been written after the age of Constantine.70 This was a strange irony: for Scioppius, it was a sign of frivolity to date a spurious text too late, instead of too early. With these words Scioppius joined a growing debate over the proper boundaries of the ancient world. And when doing so he managed to get in another jab at Dares. He suggested that the Phrygian and the Cretan should have swapped their paratextual ruses: Cornelius Nepos would have made a far more plausible translator

69. Mercier, “Ad Dictym Cretensem notae,” in Dictys, De bello Troiano, ed. Mercier, 161: “At Consulares quamuis quidam ab Adriano, tamen plerique a Constantino instituti, quum translata sede Imperii, prouinciarum omnium administrationis et iurisdictionis ordinem mutauit, et in Occidente viginti prouincias magistratibus Consularium nomine parere iussit; in Oriente quindecim, in iis Cretam.” On Constantine’s replacement of praesides with consulares, see Michele Renee Salzman, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2002), 31–​32. 70.  Scioppius, Paradoxa literaria, 46:  “Iosias Mercerus, vir sane magnae eruditionis acrique iudicio, perfrivolis ducitur argumentis, ut eam post Constantini demum Magni aetatem scriptam putet.”

283



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

283

of Dictys than of Dares.71 Whereas Mercier had assigned Dictys to the “Middle Age,” Scioppius suggested that his style made him almost worthy of Golden Age Latinity. As Dictys’ fortunes rose, so Dares’ fell. Dares had been suffering when compared with Cornelius Nepos, the genuine author who had served as his authorizing device, and now he also began to suffer when compared with his spurious fellow traveler, Dictys Cretensis. G.J. Vossius accepted a similar dichotomy between the two pseudo-​authors. Vossius published his On the Greek Historians in 1624, just six years after Mercier’s edition of Dictys and Dares, and his On the Latin Historians followed three years later in 1627. In his entry for Dares in his On the Latin Historians, he made sure to remark—​in language that seemed to echo Mercier—​that “Dictys, concerning whom I will speak afterwards, has greater erudition and elegance.”72 And his revised edition of On the Greek Historians, published posthumously in 1650, included a crucial addition: as we saw, after Vossius damned Dares by using Plautus to compare his style to swine, he approvingly cited Juan Luis Vives’ remark that Dares and Dictys were fiction. In parentheses, the text of the new edition added that, of the two, Dictys was “nevertheless somewhat more cultivated and elegant.”73 Vossius also included an entry for Septimius (Dictys’ supposed translator) in his On the Latin Historians. In it he agreed with Mercier that the real author of the text had written after the age of Constantine. Nor did he think that the Journal of the Trojan War was a genuine translation from the Greek. “Whoever the author of this work is, he wrote in Latin, not Greek. Nevertheless, he read Greek authors with judgment, and he excerpted materials from them that would seem consistent with the truth.” In a manner that echoed Mercier’s preface, Vossius credited Dictys with access to both a deeper antiquity and a kernel of veritas. Like Joseph of Exeter, his style seemed to belie his times, or at least what Vossius judged to be his times. And perhaps the Dutch humanist even saw something of himself in Dictys: he imagined the actual author of the Journal of the Trojan War as a good humanist scholar, diligently compiling excerpts from ancient Greek sources. Indeed, the compilatory practices that he attributed to this erudite forger were not unlike

71. Scioppius, Paradoxa literaria, 46: “Facilius multo intelligentibus fidem fecissent, si alteram historiam, cuius Dictys Cretensis auctor inscribitur, ad Nepotem retulissent . . .” 72.  Vossius, De historicis Latinis, 626:  “Majoris, et eruditionis, et elegantiae, est Dictys Cretensis: de quo postea dicemus.” 73. G.J. Vossius, De historicis Graecis (Leiden, 1650), 429: “Recte igitur sensit Ludovicus Vives in quincto de tradendis disciplinis; cum ait, et Daretem, et Dictyn istum, (quorum tamen hic aliquanto est cultior, et elegantior,) esse figmenta eorum, qui de bello famosissimo voluerunt ludere.”

284

284

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

those that he himself employed when assembling his own encyclopedic guides to Greek and Latin authors. The Cretan’s virtues made Vossius reluctant to date him as late as he ultimately did: “Nevertheless, I do not judge that he lived in the age of Constantine, but several centuries afterwards, even if the elegance of his diction is such that it does not seem altogether unworthy of the age of Constantine.”74 This spurious author possessed stylistic merits that made him appear more ancient than he was. Although he did not use the term explicitly, “several centuries” after Constantine seemed to place the real author of Dictys somewhere near the start of the “Middle Age.” Dictys had earned an indeterminate status: he was an almost-​ ancient who resembled antiquity, and a forger who was nevertheless solicitous of the truth. Few of Dares’ critics said anything so forgiving. The increasingly divergent fortunes of Dictys and Dares illustrate how an author’s fortunes could quickly fall. Dares had once been the first, in multiple senses of that ambiguous term. He had been at the center of much of medieval Latin culture and medieval vernacular culture too. He proved important for everyone from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Geoffrey Chaucer. In the twelfth century, he played a role in some of the most programmatic and novel defenses of historical veracity. In the Renaissance, he shared an affinity with the era’s most notorious forger, Annius of Viterbo. But by the seventeenth century, the Phrygian had lost his former aura of consequence. Not even his downfall was treated as consequential. No one bothered to debunk him in the in-​depth manner that Lorenzo Valla had taken down the Donation, or that others had exterminated Hermes Trismegistus and the Sibylline Oracles. Sadly, no one even argued over the actual date of the spurious Destruction of Troy. They called it a fake, they called its author inept, and they moved on. They did not waste time debating whether its Latin dated from the fourth century, the fifth, or the sixth, nor did they bother to hypothesize about where it might have been composed. Dictys, in contrast, went on to enjoy a fate not dissimilar to that of the most famous of forgeries, the Donation of Constantine. Not a few scholars spilled much ink debating whether or not the actual author of the Journal of the Trojan War had written in the time of Constantine or later—​precisely the same temporal options that Valla and the Donation’s defenders debated.75

74. Vossius, De historicis Latinis, 673: “Sed quisquis auctor est ejus operis, Latine, non Graece scripsit: Graecos tamen auctores cum judicio legit, atque ex iis excerpsit, quae veritati consentanea viderentur. Nec tamen Constantini aevo, sed seculis aliquot post, vixisse censeo: etsi ea sit dictionis elegantia, ut non indignus omnino Constantini quidem seculo videatur.” 75.  On sixteenth-​century debates over the Donation’s authenticity that involved questions about fourth-​century Latinity, see Ronald K. Delph, “Valla Grammaticus, Agostino Steuco, and the Donation of Constantine,” Journal of the History of Ideas 57 (1996): 55–​77.

285



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

285

The Deep Past and the Fortunes of Fabula Yet not everyone was ready to give up Dictys for pseudo-​Dictys, and consign debates about his provenance to a few short centuries. Just as some used him to provide definitions of the Middle Ages, so others were still using him to illuminate an otherwise dark and shadowy distant past and, hence, were accepting his book as the real thing. Dares’ fellow travelers provided fodder for some of the seventeenth-​century’s more creative reconstructions of antiquity, many of which proved impervious to criticism. Whereas the first part of this chapter examined how webs of misattribution, including many derived from the Middle Ages, sustained spurious texts, the present section examines how new seventeenth-​century attempts to probe the deep past also sustained such enterprises. Otto Heurnius, who used Dictys’ eyewitness status to draw conclusions about the origins of writing in the ancient world, was one of the seventeenth century’s most curious defenders of the Cretan. A  professor of medicine at Leiden and an avid Hermeticist, Heurnius published his Barbaricae philosophiae antiquitatum libri duo or Two Books of the Antiquities of Barbarous Philosophy in 1600.76 Giambattista Vico, whom we will discuss in the Conclusion, would frequently quote from him in his New Science.77 Heurnius sought to decenter the Greco-​Roman world and expand the reach of what counted as ancient, albeit not into the medieval future but rather deeper into the distant past. Just as some seventeenth-​century scholars sought to define the end of antiquity by articulating a notion of the Middle Ages, so others sought to define antiquity’s beginning by debating the nature and parameters of what we might term prehistory.78 A pioneer of the so-​called history of philosophy, Heurnius traced how the most ancient of “barbarous” philosophy, expounded by the Chaldeans, Babylonians, and the like, had made its way from Adamic origins to Greece and Rome. He ignored those critics who had begun to call the authenticity of this so-​called prisca sapientia into question. And when tracing this august lineage, Heurnius found the testimony of a supposed eyewitness from primeval antiquity invaluable. As part of his project, Heurnius sought to prove the august origins of syllabic writing. He argued that the Phoenicians must have learned the art of letters from

76.  Otto Heurnius, Barbaricae philosophiae antiquitatum libri duo (Leiden, 1600). On Heurnius, see Francesco Bottin, Luciano Malusa, et al., Models of the History of Philosophy, Vol. I: From Its Origins in the Renaissance to the “Historia Philosophica” (Dordrecht, 1993), 106–​13. 77. Giambattista Vico, The New Science 44, 93, 100, 745, trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (Ithaca, 1991), 29–​30, 48, 51–​52, 287. 78. On this development, see Paolo Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time: The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago, 1984).

286

286

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Abraham himself.79 And he repeated the story of the Phoenician Cadmus bringing these letters to Greece. Then, Heurnius made an impassioned plea for the antiquity of Phoenician writing, complete with metaphors of light and darkness, sun and shadow: By this sun we put to flight the smoke from the minds of those obscured, who stubbornly contend that the Greeks were ignorant of the use of letters before the age of Homer. O blind hearts! O minds made darker, as they say, by chimerical gloom! In fact I assert that the Greeks used letters not only before the age of Homer, but also at the very time of the Trojan War, and that they were pure Phoenician, not yet claimed by Greece. To illustrate this, Dictys Cretensis shines a ray of light for me from that shadowy Trojan age itself . . .80 Heurnius went on to quote from Dictys on how the Greeks, when choosing who would lead their expedition against Troy, wrote down their votes on tablets, and “designat[ed] the name of Agamemnon in Punic letters.” Here was irrefutable proof that the Greeks were writing in Phoenician at the time of the Trojan War! “Therefore dismiss doubt,” he exclaimed, “and at last with this anchor bring to a stop the ship of judgment, tossing about in this strait of antiquity (in antiquitatis hoc freto).”81 According to Heurnius, Dictys had confirmed the deep antiquity of writing itself. One was no longer floating at the mercy of waves and storms in so vast an antiquity, but secure and anchored thanks to his testimony. Deep antiquity was itself dark and shadowy, but sources like Dictys could still imbue it with light. Otto Heurnius’ book of barbarian wisdom confirms that some at the dawn of the seventeenth century still believed the light of history could illuminate an

79. Heurnius, Barbaricae philosophiae antiquitatum libri duo,  30–​31. 80. Heurnius, Barbaricae philosophiae antiquitatum libri duo, 36–​37: “Hoc sole fumum fugamus ex quorundam tenebrionum animis, qui ante Homeri aetatem Graecos literarum usum ignorasse pertinaciter contendunt. O caeca pectora! O mentes Cimmeriis, ut aiunt, tenebris atriores! quin non tantum assero usos literis ante Homeri aetatem, verum etiam ipso belli Troiani tempore, iisque puris Phoeniciis nondum Graecia vindicatis. Ad cuius illustrationem radium ab ipso illo tenebroso Troiano aevo allucet mihi Dictys Cretensis scribens: Singuli in tabellis, quas ad delegendum belli principem, qui cuique videretur, acceperant, Punicis litteris nomen Agamennonis [sic] designant . . .” In an accompanying note Heurnius affirmed that Punic letters should be understood as Phoenician letters. Cf. Dictys, Ephemeris 1.16, ed. Eisenhut, 13. 81. Heurnius, Barbaricae philosophiae antiquitatum libri duo, 37: “Quid, an non clara haec et expressa verba, imo ipso quod dicitur Solis radio scripta? Mittite igitur dubitationem, et tandem hac anchora fluctuantem in antiquitatis hoc freto navem iudicii sistite.”

287



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

287

otherwise dark Trojan age. Hitherto we have focused on those points of contention between critics and true believers. But many assumptions also united them. Even those who criticized authors like Dictys and Dares still assumed that the Greeks and Trojans had fought a conflict that ended with Troy’s fall; they just doubted that Dictys and Dares had actually been there to record it. If they disagreed on the merits or fides of a particular author, they agreed there existed an underlying historical truth about the contents of which such authors wrote. In fact, some who criticized pseudonymous sources based their arguments upon a commitment to the existence of an underlying history extractable from fable and myth. Joseph Scaliger believed in an authoritative Trojan memoria, capable of correcting universal history itself, and he deployed this memoria to dismiss Dares and Dictys. But the consensus that animated these arguments began to dissolve over the course of the seventeenth century. Granted, these doubts were still minority views. At the beginning of this book we quoted Paul Veyne’s remarks on Bishop Bossuet, who in the late seventeenth century still had no problem whatsoever ascribing historicity to a figure like Hercules.82 Yet slowly but surely, something had begun to change. These subtle challenges to the truth-​value of deep antiquity rarely involved the wholesale rejection of tradition. Rather, these critics put tradition itself in the service of doubt:  they used a method akin to Scaliger’s even if (as we will see shortly) they rejected his specific conclusions about Trojan memoria. After all, the historical skepticism that began to flourish in this age, known as historical Pyrrhonism and part of what the historian Paul Hazard famously termed la crise de la conscience européenne, sprang from what its advocates claimed was but a faithful revival of the skeptical views of ancients like Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus.83 Nor did one need to be a skeptic in the philosophical sense to acknowledge that fable had bled frequently into history: as mentioned at the start of Chapter 1, Livy had famously offered such a warning about the history of early Rome.84 Moreover, as explored in Chapter 3, rejection of the historicity of the distant pagan past was part and parcel of the Christian critique of fabula. Yet for many in the Middle Ages and early modernity alike, these critiques of fable depended upon the existence of a stable history beneath it. Neither 82. Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?,  1–​2. 83. Paul Hazard, La crise de la conscience européenne, 1680–​1715 (Paris, 1935). On Pyrrhonism, see Carlo Borghero, La certezza et la storia:  Cartesianesimo, pirronismo e conoscenza storica (Milan, 1983), Richard Popkin, The History of Skepticism from Savonarola to Bayle:  Revised and Expanded Edition (Oxford, 2003), and most recently Anton M. Matytsin, The Specter of Skepticism in the Age of Enlightenment (Baltimore, 2016). 84. Liv. Ab urbe condita 1.Pr.6.

28

288

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris nor Joseph Scaliger, for example, had questioned the historical reality of events such as Aeneas’ arrival in Italy; they had just questioned how particular authors had depicted said events. But over the course of the seventeenth century, others began to shatter the centuries-​old consensus that had kept alive a stable sense of history beneath such debates over the fides of particular authors. For instance, one of Scaliger’s pupils, the Leiden geographer Philipp Cluverius, boldly challenged the received history of Troy and Rome. In his Italia antiqua, posthumously published in 1624, he maintained that Aeneas had never settled on the Italian peninsula, and he denied the existence of the historical Romulus.85 Another who espoused this radical rejection of consensus was one Christoph Adam Rupertus, a humanist scholar from Altdorf. He wrote a commentary, published posthumously in 1659, on a universal history written by the scholar Christoph Besold. Much as it had been for Scaliger, historia universalis remained a fruitful site for debating the fides of ancient sources, including the Phrygian himself. In his commentary, Rupertus surveyed various authors who had written on Trojan matters, including, among others, Dictys and Dares. At first, his take on them seemed rather conventional, especially for a well-​read humanist scholar working in the middle of the seventeenth century. Both authors were pseudonymous, but it was the judgment of learned men, he acknowledged, that Dictys was “old enough.”86 Even if he were not an ancient per se, he was still a useful source of information about Troy. Like Mercier and Vossius, Rupertus held a dimmer view of Dares. He pointed out that although Aelian, Photius, and Isidore of Seville had mentioned the Phrygian, the text that now circulated was clearly spurious—​ and he cited such disparate authorities as Scaliger and Possevino in support of this judgment. Like so many others, he roundly dismissed the notion that Cornelius Nepos could have had anything whatsoever to do with the Destruction

85. See Philippus Cluverius, Italia antiqua (Leiden, 1624). On Cluverius’ rejection of Romulus and company, see Bietenholz, Historia and Fabula, 291–​94. Nor was this work without precedent. In the sixteenth century, the aptly named French scholar Joannes Temporarius had similarly questioned the historicity of Romulus. See Joannes Temporarius, Chronologicarum demonstrationum libri tres (Frankfurt, 1596), and discussion in Bietenholz, Historia and Fabula, 289–​91. On approaches to this topic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see also H.J. Erasmus, The Origins of Rome in Historiography from Petrarch to Perizonius (Assen, 1962). 86.  Christoph Adam Rupertus, Observationes ad historiae universalis synopsin Besoldianam minorem (Nuremberg, 1659), 71–​72: “Versantur autem hodieque in manibus omnium Dictys Cretensis, et Dares Phrygius; quorum illum auctorem satis veterem esse, agnoverunt eruditissimi Viri . . . Hoc saltem de Dicty voluimus, quamvis antiquus ille non sit, tamen in rebus Trojanis illustrandis minime rejici a doctissimis Viris.” For Rupertus’ treatment of Dares and Dictys, see Beitenholz, Historia and Fabula, 296.

289



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

289

of Troy: “Whoever the author of this history may be, he is not of the Golden Age; rather he is barbarous, and clearly wanting in judgment.”87 In a manner akin to sixteenth-​century critics like Vives and Barreiros, Rupertus even castigated the Phrygian alongside Annius’ Berosus, whom he had attacked earlier in his commentary. Just as he had warned his readers about the latter, so he would also warn them about the former:  “We order the youth to beware, lest he sanction shadows (tenebras) in this light of letters, and summon straw witnesses (stramineos testes) to assert the history of things (rerum memoriam).”88 Rupertus’ use of the phrase straminei testes—​those dangerous purveyors of false memoria—​struck directly against the Phrygian’s claim to be the best type of witness. Those who failed to reject him, so Rupertus suggested, risked letting straw men cast shadows over the light of history. Like Heurnius, Rupertus spoke of the distant Trojan past in terms of light and darkness, even if he had a very different opinion as to which sources possessed lux veritatis. So far, so good. All this had been rehearsed before, and Rupertus simply cited others to prove that Dares was a straw witness. Yet what he said next proved far more devastating. He declared it possible to doubt even the reliable sources, not just the straw men and impostors: “However, the credibility (fides) even of those whom we have endorsed, and from whose reasoning we have hitherto spoken of Trojan matters and the fall of Troy, can be called into doubt.” Rupertus then parroted his critics: “What do you say? Do you dare to deny—​against so great a multitude of writers (tantam Scriptorum multitudinem)—​that Priam was killed then, and Troy captured by the Greeks and burned?” To which he replied: “I do not deny that the multitude is immense; on the contrary, I know from it that some of these writers were so confident that they transmitted to posterity the day of Troy’s destruction.”89 He then cited Plutarch and Dionysius of Halicarnassus

87. Rupertus, Observationes, 73: “Quisquis tandem sit historiae auctor, non est aetatis aureae; sed barbarus, et judicio plane destitutus.” 88. Rupertus, Observationes, 73: “Ut, quod Pseudoberoso precium constituimus, ponamus huic quoque; et juventutem cavere jubeamus, ne in hac literarum luce tenebras probet; et ad asserendam rerum memoriam stramineos testes advocet.” For Rupertus’ discussion of Annius, see Rupertus, Observationes,  24–​25. 89. Rupertus, Observationes, 73: “Quamvis et illorum fides, quos velut approbatos nominavimus, et e quorum mente hactenus locuti summus, de rebus Trojanis et excidio Trojae, in dubium vocari possit. Quid ais? tunc Priamum occisum, Trojam a Graecis captam et inflammatam, contra tantam Scriptorum multitudinem negare audes? Non nego, immensam multitudinem esse, immo scio ex illa, quosdam tam confidentes fuisse, qui diem excisae Trojae posteritati traderent.” On Joseph Scaliger’s and other scholars’ attempts to date Troy’s fall, see A.T. Grafton and N.M. Swerdlow, “Greek Chronography in Roman Epic: The Calendrical Date of the Fall of Troy in the Aeneid,” The Classical Quarterly 36 (1986): 212–​18.

290

290

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

as examples of otherwise credible writers who had committed such folly. They and many others had been so confident in the historicity of Troy’s fall that they had tried to date it—​foolishly, Rupertus contended—​with the most precise of temporal exactitude. Some in antiquity had dared reject this consensus, and here Rupertus appealed to none other than Dio Chrysostom, whose denial of Troy’s fall we discussed in the Introduction. Rupertus used Dio much as later seventeenth-​century skeptics would use Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus. Antiquity facilitated its own latter-​day subversion. Fittingly, in another early modern clue to reverse reception, Rupertus’ subversive source was an author of the Second Sophistic, who had aimed his rhetoric against no less canonical an authority than Homer himself. Chrysostom alone had objected to the errors of the multitude, Rupertus argued, and had refuted what other authors had accepted in their mindless commitment to majoritarian agreement. Not for Rupertus was the logic of consensus via bibliotheca selecta that Antonio Possevino had advocated. Instead, he pledged his allegiance to that loneliest of minority views: “Chrysostom seems to me to speak truth itself (ipsam veritatem).” Whereas Josias Mercier had praised Dictys for following the “consensus of the weightiest authors,” Rupertus faulted Dictys, Dares, and others for perpetuating it. In contrast, he commended Dio for trusting his Egyptian priest, because the Egyptians had preserved the “memory of all things as diligently as possible.” Among the Greeks, in contrast, antiquities were “either buried, or wrapped in marvelous fables.”90 As a result, Dio’s claim that Troy never fell was more credible than the claim—​advanced by Homer, Dares, and a multitude of others—​that it had. Throughout this book we have seen both critics and defenders of the Phrygian highlight how his narrative diverged from that of Homer, Virgil, and other poets. They expressed these divergences in the dichotomy between historia and fabula. But Rupertus reset that division and made allies of old enemies. He yoked that prince of poets and first of historians together: despite their disagreements, they belonged to a multitude that had promoted a false consensus. The consensus consisted of both historiae and fabulae, at least in the most literal sense of these terms. Both poetic license and pseudo-​historical invention had worked together to promote it.

90.  Rupertus, Observationes, 75:  “Ut ingenue fatear, ipsam veritatem loqui mihi videtur Chrysostomus; et qui scit, quantum Aegyptiorum monumenta Graecorum narrationes praegravent, vix aliter affectus erit. Aegyptiorum namque potissima cura fuit, ut omnium memoria quam diligentissime conservaretur: Contra apud Graecos antiquitates vel sepultae, vel miris fabulis involutae.” On Rupertus and his invocation of Dio, see Simon Swain, “Reception and Interpretation,” in Dio Chrysostom, ed. Swain, 18–​19.

291



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

291

It might seem odd that Rupertus wasted his time with Dares when he had a multitude of bigger fish to fry. Yet he had a very specific reason for singling out the Phrygian’s untruths. Dio maintained that Troy had never fallen, and that Priam and Hector had never been killed. Priam and his family had gone on to rule Troy as happily as they had before the war. Dares and Dictys, in contrast, maintained the very opposite: not only did they record the city’s fall, but they also both related how Antenor, thanks to his and Aeneas’ illicit conspiracy with the Greeks, came to rule postwar Troy. A few pages after celebrating Dio, Rupertus cited that aforementioned passage from Joseph Scaliger’s Thesaurus temporum, where Scaliger claimed Eusebius had used the “supposititious writers” Dares and Dictys to record that the descendants of Hector had retaken Troy from the descendants of Antenor. Scaliger believed this contradicted authoritative Trojan memoria. The Leiden chronologer was baffled, Rupertus pointed out, by how the Hectoridae could have retaken a city that had been destroyed and leveled to the ground. Moreover, the Greeks had supposedly killed all of Hector’s children. Scaliger had resolved this assault on Trojan memoria by positing that Eusebius had foolishly used Dares and Dictys. But Rupertus, deploying an Occam’s razor method of historical criticism, rejected both this memoria and the Phrygian alike. Scaliger had tried to bend history to a false consensus. Would it not be simpler if Hector and his family had never lost control of Troy in the first place? He then enumerated some of Scaliger’s problematic assumptions: “As if none of the ancients, besides Dionysius, make mention of the sons of Hector reigning after the death of Priam? As if it is certain that Dares is so old that Eusebius held him in his hands? As if it is clearer than the mid-​day light (luce meridiana) that Troy fell?”91 Once again, shadows—​albeit of a very different sort—​threatened the light of truth. Truth was to be illuminated not by consensus building but rather via iconoclasm. Here Rupertus went even further than Scaliger in casting Dares out of the temporal penumbra of antiquity. And in so doing he came the closest of any critic we have examined to offering a terminus post quem for the Phrygian. He was not ancient enough to have been a source for Eusebius’ Chronicle, written early in the fourth century. He was mendacious to be sure, but he had come very late to that game: Dares was a barbarous addition to a multitude that had begun lying already in the ancient world itself. This might seem a fitting ending to our account of Dares’ early modern afterlife. The first pagan historian had been rejected by a wide spectrum of

91. Rupertus, Observationes, 79: “Quasi nemo Veterum, praeter Dionysium, mentionem faciat filiorum Hectoris, post Priami mortem regnantium? Quasi certum sit, Daretum [sic] tam veterem, ut eum in manibus habuerit Eusebius? Quasi luce meridiana clarius, Trojam excissam?” Cf. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.47.5.

29

292

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

scholars: Protestants and Catholics, champions of Cornelius Nepos, partisans of Dictys, readers of Homer, Joseph Scaliger and his antagonists, and last but not least, those who denied the very fall of Troy that Dares had claimed to witness. Even if they disagreed over what would have been observable at Troy, they agreed that the Phrygian was an eyewitness of straw. Yet this was not the whole story. Just as Otto Heurnius still believed in Dictys Cretensis at the start of the seventeenth century, so others continued to accept the Phrygian as the century wore on—​in an age that also produced skeptics like Cluverius and Rupertus. Moreover, the nature of these skeptical critiques should caution us against assuming that someone like Dares was now ipso facto beyond the pale of acceptable opinion. After all, Rupertus’ iconoclasm still relied upon affirming the historicity of an informant whose fides we might consider improbable, to put it mildly. Why was a garrulous Egyptian priest any more plausible than a Phrygian eyewitness, or a Cretan writing in Punic letters?92 Rupertus did not read any artifice or irony into Dio’s oration but rather chose to take it as literally as possible. Unlike Juan Luis Vives, he did not suggest that Dio—​or Dares and Dictys—​were playing. In other words, perhaps Rupertus’ either/​or approach to historiae veritas was not all that different from that espoused by the objects of his criticism. The world that produced Rupertus was also the world that produced still more champions of Dares. These champions—​as we will see in a moment—​used the Phrygian to construct visions of the distant past at once deeply traditional and newly fantastical. Prisca sapientia—​and prisca historia, for that matter—​still flourished in a world that had not only absorbed the critiques of philological heavyweights like Scaliger and Casaubon but had also begun to encounter more radical varieties of historical skepticism. Some of Rupertus’ contemporaries had no time for attacks against the first pagan historian. One of the Phrygian’s loudest mid seventeenth-​century champions was Fortunio Liceti, a professor and physician at the University of Padua. Liceti knew and corresponded with Galileo, and he enjoyed associations with figures from Cardinal Francesco Barberini’s circle, such as the antiquary Cassiano dal Pozzo, patron of Poussin.93 Liceti is perhaps best known today for his work in teratology—​the study of congenital abnormalities. In 1653, he also published an emblem book, a popular early modern genre that collected allegorical images—​ especially concerning ancient subjects—​and sought to discern their hidden 92. On the long-​standing trope of the superior fides of Egyptian sources over Greek ones, see Hawes, Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity, esp. 9. 93.  On Liceti, see Stolzenberg, Egyptian Oedipus:  Athanasius Kircher and the Secrets of Antiquity (Chicago, 2013), 63–​64. Here Stolzenberg mentions Liceti when discussing the persistence of Hermeticism and the prisca theologia in the seventeenth century.

293



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

293

meanings. It was here that Liceti claimed allegiance to the Phrygian. His example shows that prominent and well-​connected persons in seventeenth-​century intellectual life still had no problem asserting the authenticity of Dares. One of Liceti’s emblems featured a depiction of the Trojan horse, with an accompanying admonition concerning gifts from enemies.94 It facilitated a digression on the topic of historicity. Was it really true, Liceti asked, that Troy had fallen because the Trojans had allowed a wooden horse full of Greek soldiers to enter the city? “Above all we must determine,” he announced, “whether the story of the Trojan horse was a history or a fable.” By debating Troy in the language of historia and fabula, Liceti joined a long lineage of exegetes. The categories of Servius, Isidore, and pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris still had purchase, much as Spondanus and Mercier had employed them in the more recent past. As Liceti judged it, different accounts of the Trojan horse possessed different degrees of historicity. In Virgil’s Aeneid, for instance, the horse was quite literally a gift of the enemy, whereas in Dares Phrygius the only horse involved in the fall of Troy was that sculpted equine head upon the Scaean Gate, which Aeneas and his treacherous cabal opened to the Greeks. There was nothing there, as John Dee had memorably observed, about an actual horse.95 Which was true? For Liceti, the answer appeared self-​evident. When it came to Troy and equine matters, Dares offered a “simple narrative, containing naked and, in my judgment, true history.”96 And how could he be sure? It was easy! Nepos’ prefatory letter to Sallust confirmed that Dares had been an eyewitness, and so Liceti concluded that Dares had offered “a genuine and true history (genuinam ac veram historiam) of the Trojan horse.”97 Liceti reproduced the prefatory letter in its entirety and then excerpted the relevant passage about the horse’s head atop the Scaean Gate. From this he concluded that “the narration of Dares Phrygius appears simple and free from fiction. Some—​not rightly, in my judgment—​have thought it

94. Fortunio Liceti, Hieroglyphica siue antiqua schemata gemmarum anularium (Padua, 1653), 310: “Hostium dona suspecta semper esse debere: namque Aduersus hostes in bello iusto, dolis aeque ac viribus utendum.” 95. Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 40, ed. Meister, 48–​49. 96. Liceti, Hieroglyphica, 310: “Sed nobis ante omnia videndum est, an historia fuerit, an fabula, narratio de Troiano Equo . . . Profecto Poetae non solum, sed etiam Historici celebrati nominis de illo mentionem habuere; Quorum omnium tres habentur narrationes; una simplex, nudam, ac meo iudicio veram historiam referens; quam habemus a Darete Phrygio . . .” 97. Liceti, Hieroglyphica, 310: “Equidem agnosco Daretis Phrygii genuinam, ac veram historiam de Troiano Equo per ea, quae Cornelius Nepos Sallustio Crispo S . . .”

294

294

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

apocryphal.”98 Not only did Dares’ simplicity affirm his veracity, but so too did his backing by an impressive classical authority. As Liceti explained, before reproducing the relevant excerpt from this poem, “Cornelius Nepos certainly subscribes to Dares, whose history he thus sings in elegant song (eleganti carmine).”99 Like the scribe Bernardus, Liceti also considered the Phrygian renowned in an illustrious carmen. And he assumed that Nepos had been so certain of the Phrygian’s veracity that he had celebrated him not only in prose, but also in verse. Of course, here the Paduan scholar actually referred to Joseph of Exeter without knowing it. Liceti appears to have been one of the only scholars who actually defended Dares. That is, he alone not only acknowledged but also tried to refute the claim that Dares was apocryphal. Most of those who professed faith in the Phrygian made no mention whatsoever of his detractors. A few scholars, from Salutati to Spondanus, had acknowledged that others thought little of his fides, and then they had done their best to hedge. But Liceti directly accused those who rejected the Phrygian of poor judgment. Perhaps in 1653 this was a more necessary tactic than it had been before, simply because the Phrygian’s detractors were now greater in number. A  page later, he likewise defended Dictys against his own unnamed detractors. The prefatory letter of Septimius had persuaded him that Dictys too was “not apocryphal, as some suppose.”100 Nor was Septimius the only purported translator of Dictys who buttressed the text’s underlying claims. Liceti’s next point proved considerably more bizarre. With a dramatic flair reminiscent of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s or Annius of Viterbo’s tales of libri vetustissimi, Liceti then divulged that he had in his possession “a very ancient manuscript book” (librum habeo vetustissimum, manuscriptum), bound not in common paper but in parchment. Its author was a certain judge, by the name of Guido delle Colonne, who claimed to have translated those much-​abbreviated books of Dictys and Dares “more brilliantly.” Once more, the material legacies of the Middle Ages—​and its methods of expansion and imitatio—​entered into early modern debates over credibility and authenticity. As we saw in Chapter 3, Guido’s book was indeed much longer than his supposed sources, given that it was mostly a Latin rendering of Benoît de Sainte-​Maure’s

98. Liceti, Hieroglyphica, 311: “Quibus apparet Daretis Phrygii simplex et absque fictione narratio; quam apocrypham aliqui, me iudice, non bene putarunt.” 99.  Liceti, Hieroglyphica, 311:  “Sane Cornelius Nepos Dareti subscribit; cuius historiam eleganti carmine concinit ita.” 100.  Liceti, Hieroglyphica, 312–​13:  “Consimiliter autem Dictys Cretensis enarrationem de gestis Graecorum apud Ilium, non apocrypham, ut alii rentur, ast ab illo reapse descriptam, nobis persuadet, praeter Suidam, etiam olim amico suo scribens verbis ipsissimis Q. Septimius Romanus Quinto Aradio S.D. . . .”

295



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

295

far more capacious Roman de Troie. But Liceti surmised that the Sicilian jurist had bypassed both the medieval and classical epochs in their entirety and gone ad fontes to an exponentially deeper antiquity: “Guido delle Colonne seems to have read this same journal of Dictys on the Trojan War in Punic letters, and to have rendered into Latin a version more abundant than Septimius’ translation.”101 By asserting that Guido could have comprehended Dictys’ ancient Punic script, which Otto Heurnius had praised for the light it shed on the deep past, Guido made a claim as astonishing as the assertion that Pindar of Thebes could have rendered Homer into Latin. The advocate of simple, naked truth alighted with ease into a realm that might strike us as pure fantasy. Overall, Liceti’s proffered criteria for historical truth mimicked pseudo-​ Nepos’ own. They involved direct eyewitnesses, faithful translators, simple prose, naked history, and the rationalization of mythic phenomena like the Trojan horse. These methods—​deployed in the middle of the seventeenth century, when we might suppose that they had begun to lose their purchase—​were essentially those of the ancient and medieval readers we met in the first half of this book. If we encountered Liceti without having met Valla, Erasmus, Scaliger, and others in the intervening pages, we might be forgiven for assuming that virtually nothing had changed. Liceti’s defense of Dares’ stogy old historiae veritas and his conjuring of Guido’s newfound Punic prowess represented the wishes of one who not only refused to yield to the new criticism but also countered it with still more tales of libri vetustissimi. And he directly attacked said criticism for having the audacity to deem certain ancient texts apocryphal. But Liceti had to carve out one exception to the rules he had embraced. As discussed in Chapter 3, medieval approaches to the historicity of Troy mirrored approaches to the historicity of the Bible, even if exegetes did not always make explicit the parallels they posited between the two. Liceti, in contrast, directly tackled a dangerous contradiction lurking in this equivalence. He advanced only one criticism against pseudo-​Nepos:  it was not proper, he argued, for Dares’ translator to have criticized Homer for depicting humans quarreling with gods. “Still, Homer did not have to be called insane because of these things, since he took from Holy Writ what he applied in his own manner to the fabulous gods

101. Liceti, Hieroglyphica, 313: “Hanc eandem Ephemeridem Dictys de bello Troiano legisse videtur literis Punicis, et Latine vertisse, cumulatiorem Septimiana translatione, Guido de Columna Messana; siquidem apud me librum habeo vetustissimum, manuscriptum, non vulgari papyro, siue charta, sed pergamena compactum, opinor ante Calchographiae inuentionem; cuius autor Iudex quidam, nomine Guido de Columna Messana, scribit se libros Dictys Cretensis et Daretis Phrygii multum abbreuiatos, luculentius vertisse.” For Dictys’ claim to have written in Punic letters, see Dictys, Ephemeris 5.17, ed. Eisenhut, 119.

296

296

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

of the pagans (fabulosis Diis Ethnicorum). For he had read that Jacob remained alone, and behold a man wrestled with him until morning.” Here Liceti reproduced Genesis 32.24 and the subsequent verses, in which the patriarch Jacob wrestled with an angel and hence earned the name Israel.102 The Paduan professor did not elaborate on precisely how the historical Homer had acquainted himself with the Book of Genesis, much as he did not elaborate upon how a medieval Sicilian jurist had mastered ancient Punic. But as we shall see in the Conclusion, Liceti was hardly alone in reading Homer alongside Scripture. Homer could not be faulted for what he had supposedly taken, and thence refashioned in his own language of fabula, from the Bible itself. Liceti shows us one way in which early moderns could interpret the deep past and weigh how its fables were related to its histories. Nor was his method unique. Figuring pagan fabulae as imperfect reflections—​but reflections, nonetheless—​ of biblical narrative or Christian veritas was a long-​standing hermeneutic strategy, used by medieval exegetes like pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris. More broadly, the parallelism between the deep Christian past and its deep—​but, importantly, not as deep—​pagan counterpart had always shaped the Phrygian’s reception, beginning with the parallelism that Isidore of Seville had drawn between Dares and Moses. Otto Heurnius had professed a variation on this parallelism when he traced the diffusion of letters from Abraham to Dictys. And Rupertus, through a more extreme use of Graecia mendax, recycled an attack that Christian apologists had been making for centuries against supposed pagan mendacity. Heurnius, Rupertus, and Liceti disagreed on many things, including the question of whether sources like Dictys and Dares actually belonged to the deep pagan past. But they all agreed, albeit with varying degrees of confidence, that the underlying historicity of this past had manifested itself in more than mere fable, and they blithely ignored more sober-​seeming critics as they conjured this past in eclectic fashion. That assumption too would change, but we are not there yet. Although these scholars did not overtly concern themselves with establishing their literal consanguinity with the deep past—​as the many Trojan genealogists of the Middle Ages had done—​ascertaining the truth-​value of that past was still a project of enormous stakes, with implications across philosophy, theology, and beyond.

102. Liceti, Hieroglyphica, 311: “Ceterum Homerus non ob haec insanus dicendus erat: quum e sacra pagina sumpserit, quod more suo fabulosis Diis Ethnicorum applicuit; legerat enim Iacob mansit solus. Et ecce vir luctabatur cum eo usque mane . . .” Cf. Genesis 32.24.

297



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

297

Epilogue: The First Pagan Historian Survives Fortunio Liceti was not alone in fearing the effects that the Phrygian’s approach to the deep past might have on Christian readers. In 1669, Joseph of Exeter appeared again in Milan. This was a reprint of Albanus Torinus’ original edition: it made no mention whatsoever of Joseph himself and instead still attributed his verses to Nepos. Even though Samuel Dresemius had restored Joseph’s name to the poem half a century earlier, this printing kept Torinus’ title: Six Books on the Trojan War by Dares Phrygius, the First of All the Poets and Historians, Elegantly Rendered into Latin Song by Cornelius Nepos. Its printer was one Caesar Ratus, who, seemingly unaware of any debates over the poem’s ascription, deemed its author “a celebrated poet, dug up from fragments of antiquity (antiquitatis fragmentis).” This poet “described the Trojan War in most ancient song (vetustissimo carmine).”103 Ratus had no doubt the poem was superlatively ancient. And while making fragments of deep pagan antiquity whole again was a worthy cause, which could save works from what Gaspar Barreiros had described as the injury of time, it was not without potential dangers for Christian orthodoxy. This edition also featured an ecclesiastical imprimatur, and it gave the “prudent and pious reader” both an admonition and a pass: “So that you can read these verses without offense, you ought to note with caution that the things you will find in them that smell of paganism, fate, fortune, multiple gods and the like should cause you no trouble, since they were composed by a heathen.”104 This statement was rich in irony. Much of the poem’s ostensibly objectionable paganism did not come from the first pagan historian himself but from Joseph of Exeter, a medieval Christian poet. Pseudo-​Nepos had praised Dares for banishing the fables of the gods, and it took a twelfth-​century Christian, who declared his work but a ludic exercise and went on to memorialize the Crusades instead, to bring the trappings of paganism back again. Once more, Joseph proved too good at his own imitative game. And so seventeenth-​century Italian Catholics were warned to beware of figments and fables sung by a poet who—​in lines that had conveniently disappeared from his poem—​predicted his patron’s imminent elevation to the papacy. Whereas Liceti had excused Homer’s interventionist deities 103. Daretis Phrygii poetarum et historicorum omnium primi de bello Troiano libri sex Latino carmine eleganter redditi a Cornelio Nepote (Milan, 1669), sig. A 2 recto: “Ecce tibi, Illustrissime Adolescens, ex antiquitatis fragmentis erutus tandem iterum in lucem Poeta celebris, qui vetustissimo carmine Bellum Troianum exposuit.” 104. Dares, De bello Troiano, sig. A 3 recto: “Prudens, ac pie Lector, ut inoffense haec carmina percurrere, possis, caute aduertere, debes, quod quae in istis inuenies redolentia paganismum, Fatum, Fortunam plures Deos, et similia, ea nullum tibi facescere, debent negotium, utpote ab Ethnico exarata. Vale.”

298

298

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

on the grounds that the bard was only imitating the Bible, the Milan printing faulted Joseph for the same error while supposing him to be Cornelius Nepos. Just six years after Joseph appeared in Milan, he appeared in London—​his first printing on native soil—​in an edition by one John More, who dedicated the poem to the Anglo-​Irish earl and Lord Privy Seal Arthur Annesley. We know little about More, save that he possessed a legal background. Unlike Caesar Ratus, More realized that his Iliad was by Joseph, and he could not contain his anger at those who had suppressed this fact. Styling himself a “defender of truth” or veritatis vindex, More began his prefatory epistle to the reader with a citation of the Lex Fabia de plagiariis, the Roman code against the abduction of both slaves and free persons. In Roman jurisprudence, a plagiarius was a kidnapper. The poet Martial had applied the concept to literary property, when accusing another poet of stealing his verses. None other than Lorenzo Valla would go on to appropriate Martial’s use of the term, and from this Roman legal concept we derive our modern sense of the word plagiarism.105 As More lugubriously claimed, Joseph of Exeter had also been the victim of a kidnapping. Literal plagiarists, “having snatched Joseph from his fellow citizens, thought to suppress him in perpetual shadows; they transferred his children (the free-​born offspring of his mind) to another; and they enslaved them to Cornelius Nepos.”106 Among this band of kidnappers he singled out Spondanus, who had printed Joseph under Nepos’ name at the foot of Homer’s Iliad. He also reprised those themes of patriotism and medievalism first voiced by Leland and Camden:  foreigners had robbed Britain of Joseph, “a glory of his fatherland and a miracle of his age (seculi sui miraculum).” The gravity of their theft was all the more serious given the extent to which Joseph had miraculously defied the barbarism of his times. More pointed out that neither Dares Phrygius nor Cornelius Nepos had been a poet, and that the actual prose Destruction of Troy was not divided into

105. See McGill, Plagiarism in Latin Literature, 8–​9 and 74–​111. 106. Daretis Phrygii, historicorum omnium primi, de bello Trojano libri sex: Latino carmine a Josepho Exoniensi elegantissime redditi, ed. John More (London, 1675), sig. A 6 recto: “Cum proprium Justitiae sit unicuique suum tribuere, nemo miretur me (Themidis cultorem) veritatis vindicem, Orphanorum jura illibata tueri. Cumque Lege Fabia De PLAGIARIIS (Digest. Lib. 48. tit.15) cautum sit, Plagii paenam esse capitalem; quid (amabo) statuendum de illis qui Josephum Iscanum (seculi sui miraculum patriaeque decus) a Civibus suis abreptum, perpetuis opprimere tenebris cogitarunt, ipsiusque liberos (ingenuos animi foetus) alio transtulerunt, et Cornelio (nescio cui) Nepoti manciparunt. Certe in hac re Germani parum germane nobiscum egerunt; nominatim Jo. Spondanus nobis maxime injurius est, qui in versione sua et editione Operum Homeri, Basileae 1583. ad calcem Iliadis excudi jussit elegans poema Josephi Iscani, hoc titulo, Daretis Phrygii Poetarum et Historicorum omnium primi, De Bello Trojano Libri sex, Latino Carmine a Cornelio Nepote eleganter redditi: cum constet neutrum horum fuisse Poetam, et Historiam illam non fuisse divisam in sex Libros.”

29



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

299

six component books. Plus, Joseph was manifestly British! By 1675, none of these arguments were original. Nonetheless, More pursued his case with a new intensity. In doing so he ended up writing a mini-​vita of Cornelius Nepos. Nepos had been a friend and contemporary of Cicero. He had been born at Verona. He had died during the reign of the Emperor Augustus. As if to make this all painfully clear, More even excerpted those lines from Catullus 1, in which the poet gave his “charming new little book” (lepidum novum libellum) to Nepos.107 We seem to catch More banging his head against the wall here. It defied the most basic logic that Catullus’ dedicatee could have dedicated his own work to Baldwin of Exeter, the twelfth-​century Archbishop of Canterbury. He also referenced lines in which Joseph mentioned “our Britain” or nostra Britannia. Surely exposing these anachronisms and inconsistencies did not require even the most elementary philological reasoning. Given his concern for authenticity and attribution, what More said next might seem surprising. Right after he quoted Catullus, he also quoted from Dares’ prefatory epistle, where pseudo-​Nepos claimed to have translated Dares just as Dares had written history: i.e., vere et simpliciter. But Joseph had clearly done the opposite: “Our author [i.e., Joseph] did not write a strict translation, but a paraphrase, as his work is much more copious than Dares’ history.” This manifest stylistic difference sealed the case. But it is worth examining just how More introduced this excerpt: “Besides,” he explained, “Cornelius Nepos, in the dedicatory epistle of his translation to Sallust, says . . .”108 More invoked Nepos without qualifications or scare quotes:  he did not reproduce what the purported Nepos said but rather what Nepos said, full stop. The genuine, historical Cornelius Nepos, whom Catullus had deemed worthy of charming poems and Cicero had deemed worthy of friendship, also seemed to be the Nepos who had discovered a hitherto unknown Trojan history at Athens and translated it into Latin. He had provided the raw materials for Joseph’s verses, which were perhaps as pleasing as Catullus’ lepidus libellus. If More assumed that the actual Nepos had translated Dares, what did he believe about Dares himself ? He answered this question directly in his accompanying dedicatory epistle to Annesley. He embraced the Phrygian and his fides with the enthusiasm of Liceti:

107. Joseph of Exeter, De bello Troiano, ed. More, sig. A 6 recto–​verso. 108. Joseph of Exeter, De bello Troiano, ed. More, sig. A 6 verso: “Praeterea, Corn. Nepos, in versionis suae Epistola dedicatoria ad Crisp. Salustium, ait, Optimum ergo duxi, ita ut fuit, vere et simpliciter perscripta, sic eam [Historiam] ad verbum in Latinitatem transverterem. Auctor vero noster non versionem strictam sed paraphrasin scripsit, utpote quae multo copiosior est Historia Daretis.”

30

300

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Accept with a serene face and happy expression the work of Dares Phrygius, clothed as elegantly as possible in metrical dress by Joseph of Exeter. Accept, I say, the history of the Trojan War, at which Dares himself was present. If you read it at leisure, free from the duties of the state by which you are constantly distracted, you will discover the wondrous style, the frequent bolts of wit, and the eloquent density of our poet. Here is no Iliad of Attius, drunk with hellebore . . . nor the fabulous rhapsodies of Homer, nor the figments of Virgil, desiring the goodwill of Augustus. For he [i.e., Dares] writes of those things which he saw and did . . . If cleverness in war is pleasing, you have Ulysses; if you desire exceptional deeds, consider Achilles; and if the gravity of public speaking is your wish, place Nestor before your eyes. And finally, will it not be pleasing to gain a thorough knowledge of the vestiges and manners of that most ancient age (vestigia, ac mores antiquissimi illius saeculi), and, having let go of the fabulous rounds of poets and others, to be instructed and restored by the truth of history (Historiae veritate)?109 If these lines sound familiar, it is because they should. Ironically, More was guilty of some kidnapping of his own. He had copied this passage, in many cases absolutely verbatim, from Franciscus Faragonius’ 1498 dedicatory epistle to his patron Bernardus Rictius, discussed at the beginning of Chapter 4. Faragonius had been speaking of Dictys, and More cleverly repurposed his words to describe Dares, while showering Annesley with the same praise that Faragonius had showered upon Rictius some two centuries before. Though he was guilty of the very crime for which he sought to prosecute Joseph’s early editors, it is perhaps fitting that More pilfered his dedication from a Sicilian humanist of the era of incunabula. If More’s vision of historiae veritas seemed redolent of the age of early humanism, it was because he had quite literally plagiarized it from 1498 Messina. Granted, such cut-​and-​paste composition

109. Joseph of Exeter, De bello Troiano, ed. More, sig. A 3 recto: “Accipe ergo serena fronte, et laeto vultu, Daretis Phrygii, a Josepho Exoniensi Metrica veste quam elegantissime indutum opus. Accipe (inquam) Belli Trojani (cui ipse Dares interfuit) Historiam, quam si a reipublicae muneribus, quibus jugiter distineris, feriatus perlegeris, mirum poetae nostri stilum, crebra acumina, et argutam densitatem deprehendes. Non hic est Ilias Acci ebria veratro . . . non fabulosae Homeri rhapsodiae; non Maronis, Augusti benevolentiam captantis, figmenta; scribit enim ea quae vidit, quae gessit . . . Nam si in bello astutia arridet, habes Ulyssem; si res egregie gestas cupis, intuere Achillem; si concionandi gravitatem peroptes, Nestorem prae oculis pone. Nonne denique vestigia, ac mores antiquissimi illius saeculi pernoscere, et omissa Poetarum aliorumque fabulosa circuitione, Historiae veritate imbui, atque refici jucundum erit?” More borrowed this description of Attius Labeo’s Iliad from the Satires of the Roman poet Persius. Cf. Pers. 1.50–​51: “Non hic est Ilias Atti/​ebria veratro?”

301



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

301

makes it difficult to ascertain just how much More actually believed what he had written. Yet the sentences he copied confirm the extraordinary durability of a vision of history we have traced throughout this book. It defined historia through the absence of fables and figments. It still used that trope of Virgil concocting fictions as Augustan propaganda, voiced by Servius and repeated by Virgilian commentators down the centuries. It also maintained robust confidence in historical exemplarity. The real Ulysses, Achilles, and Nestor (and not just their chimerical, poetical counterparts) still offered models for the present. Trojan history, whether composed by authors considered genuine or pseudonymous, conveyed ethical and political lessons. Figures from Orderic Vitalis and Otto von Freising to Johannes Spondanus and Josias Mercier agreed: Troy was a teachable moment. This exemplarity also made room for a kind of historicism, which could make the distant past knowable. More’s (and Faragonius’) historiae veritas did not only instruct the present but also shed light upon the otherwise shadowy vestigia and mores of the deepest of pasts, much as Otto Heurnius or Fortunio Liceti had confidently proclaimed. The critique of fable still worked both ways in 1675. It functioned as a tool of criticism as much as affirmation. Dares’ champions and antagonists remained equally at home with it. John Locke—​the famous English empiricist philosopher and a contemporary of More’s—​owned a copy of this 1675 Joseph. He signed his own name and inscribed its author’s name as “Iscanus” but did not leave any other annotations. We can only imagine—​if indeed he read the preface—​what he might have made of More’s claims about the historicity of the first pagan historian.110 Perhaps More’s title alone would have perplexed him. In a dramatic display of material continuity, he recycled a slightly modified version of that old tag from Torinus’ edition. He advertised Dares on the title page as nothing less than the “first of all the historians.” Even if the Phrygian no longer merited a similar priority among the poets, he still remained a historical “first.” (See Figure 6.3). This was by no means insignificant. Troy still mattered, and the version of Trojan history derived from Dares still possessed cultural currency and imaginative force, whether or not one read it as literal historiae veritas. As More had explained to Annesley, Dares’ Troy was useful for those engaged in statecraft. His most ancient narrative could address the most modern of political and moral

110.  Joseph of Exeter, De bello Troiano, ed. More, now Bodleian Library Locke 7.69, flyleaf: Locke writes “Iscanus” and then signs it “John Locke.” On Locke and categories of history and fable, see Kirstie M. McClure, “Cato’s Retreat: Fabula, Historia and the Question of Constitutionalism in Mr Locke’s Anonymous Essay on Government,” in Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Cambridge, 2003), 317–​50.

302

302

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Figure 6.3  John More’s edition of Joseph of Exeter’s Troy poem. His title page restores the poem’s attribution to Joseph but still keeps half of Torinus’ title, deeming Dares “the first of all the historians.” Daretis Phrygii historicorum omnium primi de bello Trojano libri sex: Latino carmine a Josepho Exoniensi elegantissime redditi (London, 1675), now Bodleian Library, Locke 7.69, title page.

quandaries. We close this chapter with one of its most striking applications from More’s late seventeenth-​century milieu. An anonymous poem, published at London in 1682 following the so-​called Exclusion Crisis—​which began with attempts to remove the Catholic Duke of York, and future James II, from the line

30



Misattribution and Persistence of the Distant Past

303

of succession—​used the events of Troy to satirize the current political imbroglio. It bore a telling title: The Conspiracy of Aeneas and Antenor against the State of Troy.111 The trope of the treacherous Aeneas became a means of warning against a new sort of treachery threatening the British state. Aeneas himself stood for James, and the Rome that he would found thanks to his Trojan treachery represented the dangers of a potential Catholic monarchy. This attack against Aeneas was not all that different from the anti-​Roman sentiments voiced throughout the Middle Ages, everywhere from the Book of the History of the Franks to Geoffrey of Monmouth, even if it addressed some distinctly modern religious and political realities. Taken together, all these works offer us important examples of reverse reception, hinting at the ways in which the treacherous Aeneas tradition also served subversive uses in antiquity itself. The poet harnessed Aeneas’ treachery—​recorded by Dares and others more than a millennium before—​to draw moralizing lessons from the current political situation. And so with these words he had Odysseus, crafty as ever, urge Aeneas (i.e., the future James II) to betray his fellow Trojans: Consult the Gods; th’art destin’d to enjoy /​Scepters and Crowns (perhaps) though not in Troy /​ Apollo speaks Stupendious things to come, /​ An absolute Empire, and a spiritual Rome; /​Which shall extend her Sway to that Degree, /​That Phrigia shall a petty Province be; /​And what you value more, than all beside, /​When you are Rotten, you’l be Deifi’d; /​ Let Troy then fall that does your Fate Controul, /​And with the Name of Country Checks your Soul . . .112 By betraying Troy, Aeneas-​cum-​James would become the master of church and state, the ruler of both a temporal and spiritual Rome. Although the exact definition of that ill-​gotten empire had changed, Aeneas’ treachery remained the surest way of condemning Roman original sin. In a clever reworking of a key moment in the Aeneid, the anonymous poet had Jupiter repent of the empire promised to that “miscreant exile” and “traitor.” This was the same Virgilian passage that Geoffrey of Monmouth had refashioned when recording Diana’s prophecy to Brutus:

111. The Conspiracy of Aeneas and Antenor against the State of Troy: A Poem (London, 1682). On this work, see Alan Roper, “Aeneas and Agathocles in the Exclusion Crisis,” The Review of English Studies 56 (2005): 550–​76. 112. Conspiracy of Aeneas and Antenor, 12.

304

304

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

’Twas from this Land [i.e., Carthage] he got his Love mishap, /​But after sleeping in fair Dido’s Lap, /​Who could have Dreamt of such an After-​ Clap? /​From hence to Rome the Miscreant Exile flys, /​Depending most upon his Enemies; /​His promis’d Empire he demands of Fate, /​Neither regarding Subjects Love nor Hate: /​Can Providence and such Injustice be? /​No, Heav’n it self repents its own Decree: /​Jove therefore by the Stygian Torrent swore, /​No Traytor ere should find such Fortune more.113 Not unlike Antenor, who, as Virgil wrote, had managed to slip through the Greek lines and escape Troy, so Dares slipped past his critics and escaped, wounded but alive, into the early decades of the Enlightenment. In late antiquity, Servius had read Virgil’s vignette about Antenor as a veiled attempt to discredit the counter-​narrative of Aeneas and Antenor’s treachery. In the centuries after Servius, that counter-​tradition survived and flourished, thanks above all to Dares Phrygius. We began our examination of Dares’ early modern fortunes in 1400, with a debate over Aeneas’ and Antenor’s treachery, and we end this chapter in 1682, with an appropriation of that same ancient treachery for the most contemporary of political ends. For Coluccio Salutati, Aeneas had offered a parallel to Brutus and Cassius; for the author of this poem, he offered a parallel to the future James II. Perhaps Salutati had been ahead of his time when he raised the possibility that Dares was apocryphal. But he had also been more prescient than he knew on another score: he had acknowledged the difficulty of dispensing with a fama that had endured for two and a half millennia. And here, in an anonymous English pamphlet poem, it still flourished, nearly three centuries after Salutati’s death. Both complexity and simplicity facilitated the survival of the Dares tradition. On the one hand, it was sustained through intricate webs of error and misattribution, and by equally intricate attempts to define the nature and the limits of the ancient past. Yet on the other hand, it also persisted because acceptance of its arrestingly simple claims to historiae veritas—​trumpeted by figures from Fortunio Liceti to John More—​proved the path of least resistance. Perhaps not everyone believed in Dares anymore, but his critics had not stamped him out entirely, nor had they wholly defeated the stubborn and subversive counter-​ narratives he sustained.

113. Conspiracy of Aeneas and Antenor, 20. Cf. Verg. Aen. 1.278–​79, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae 1.16, ed. Reeve, 20–​21.

305

CONCLUSION

The Perennial Quarrel Dares between Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood “I enjoy Homer in his own language infinitely beyond . . . the dull narrative of the same events by Dares Phrygius.” —​T homas Jefferson

The preceding chapters have ranged from Dares’ birth at the end of antiquity to his survival at the dawn of the Enlightenment. We have traversed some varied intellectual terrain:  late antique chronology, early medieval genealogy, the classical revival of the twelfth century, early Renaissance humanism, the polemics of the Reformation, and the scholarly pursuits of the international Latinate Republic of Letters. In the course of all this we have seen Dares’ fortunes rise and fall, ebb and flow, and even rise again when they seemed to have fallen once and for all. We have followed the Phrygian from manuscript to print, from prose to verse, from Latin to the vernacular, and from the prestige of a first to the ignominy of a last. We have seen him meet a rotating cast of foils, antagonists, and fellow travelers: Homer, Virgil, Nepos, Dictys, and Joseph of Exeter, among others. But in spite of these changes we have also found him read for over a millennium through a remarkably stable set of concepts and methods: historia, fabula, eyewitnessing, demythologizing, rationalizing, stylistic comparison, moral exemplarity, and the like. We have seen various tropes, from the discovery of lost books to the banishment of poetic figments, return time and time again. Throughout it all, we have moved back and forth between Dares’ antiquity—​or what he claimed as his antiquity—​and his post-​antique interpreters, illuminating both what his reception reveals about their worlds, and what their interpretations reveal, in reverse, about his own. And we have seen Dares expose the poverty of our own macro-​narratives, whether the triumph of criticism or the disenchantment of the past. Amid all this, certain judgments about Dares—​mostly negative ones—​became possible that had not been possible before. But somehow these judgments never The First Pagan Historian. Frederic Clark, Oxford University Press (2020). © Frederic Clark. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190492304.001.0001.

306

306

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

killed him off entirely. Even at the end of the seventeenth century, the very categories that had undermined him could also sustain him. Since this book is itself a study in historical continuity, it seems fitting to end it with a question: how much had really changed? In order to answer it, we cannot stop here. Rather, our Conclusion must march on just a bit more, to reach a moment in the eighteenth century that has often been interpreted as the genesis moment of two phenomena anticipated throughout this book: that is, the birth of modern classical scholarship and the origins of Enlightenment disenchantment. Dares was not forgotten quite yet. He played a key role in what we retrospectively imagine as the beginnings of both these phenomena, even if it is not the role that classical scholars or other “moderns” might suspect. For Valla, Erasmus, and many other early modern humanists, it seemed axiomatic that antiquity possessed both authority and authenticity. The synonymous nature of all three of these categories—​authority, authenticity, and antiquity—​ defined so much of the humanist project and hence the history of classical reception and classical scholarship as we know it. Albanus Torinus said he knew no one “older or truer” among the ancient pagans than Dares. Vetustior and verior seemed a natural pair for more than mere alliterative purposes. And many who ventured the opposite—​i.e., that Dares Phrygius was neither old nor true—​did so because they were just as convinced that those two categories belonged together. Yet the assumptions behind their pairing began to erode over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The years around 1700 witnessed two great challenges to antiquity. The so-​called “moderns” of the querelle des anciens et des modernes assailed antiquity’s authority, and historical skeptics or so-​called Pyrrhonists demolished antiquity’s authenticity.1 Both of these developments have long been accorded privileged positions in the annals of intellectual history. Yet examining them from the Phrygian’s perspective promises new and surprising insights into their legacies. The French Jesuit Jean Hardouin, whom we met in the Introduction, had the rare honor of playing a key role in both these challenges. At once exemplary and wholly sui generis, Hardouin the conspiracy theorist offers an ideal entry point

1.  The literature on the quarrel and its aftermath is extensive. See Joseph M. Levine, Dr.  Woodward’s Shield:  History, Science, and Satire in Augustan England (Berkeley, 1977); Joseph M. Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age (Ithaca, 1994); Chantal Grell, Le dix-​huitième siècle et l’antiquité en France, 1680–​1789 (Oxford, 1995); John DeJean, Ancients against Moderns:  Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle (Chicago, 1997); Anne-​Marie Lecoq, ed., La querelle des Anciens et des Modernes (XVIIe–​ XVIIIe siècles) (Paris, 2001); Dan Edelstein, Enlightenment: A Genealogy (Chicago, 2010); and Larry F. Norman, The Shock of the Ancient:  Literature and History in Early Modern France (Chicago, 2011)

307



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

307

into this world, even though he never deigned to waste his time on so conventional a target of criticism as the Phrygian. The position he staked out in these debates might strike us as odd: he was an extreme skeptic who nonetheless proved an “ancient” in the quarrel. Late in his life, he even issued an apology for Dares’ oldest antagonist, Homer. In a few pages we will turn to Hardouin’s 1716 intervention in the clash of ancients and moderns, but first we must explore his forays into historical skepticism, which he was publicly pursuing as early as 1693.2 Hardouin’s theory of systematic forgery represented the very antithesis of the old equation that vetustas equaled veritas. Rather than list which ancient texts were false, he deemed it more economical to enumerate the few exceptions—​Pliny and some of Cicero and Horace, for instance—​that were true. By default, all the rest were fakes, concocted by that cabal of medieval Benedictines. A text’s proffered old age was no longer an index of veracity but rather a warning of mendacity. Granted, Hardouin was not the first to mount a large-​scale attack against the historical fides of ancient texts. Rupertus did not hesitate to accuse nearly every ancient who had written about Troy—​with the exception of Dio Chrysostom—​ of falsehood. Nor did everyone consider historical truth the best or only form of veritas. The history of what we now label classical reception was also a long history of various “moderns” finding extra-​historical truths in ancient texts—​truths that the ancients themselves had not necessarily known or intended. Allegory and moral exemplarity were two of the most popular resources for reading beyond an ancient author’s own intentions. And even the ancients themselves had never quite ascertained the precise truth-​value of their own antiquity. As we have seen throughout this book, a long-​standing discourse had sought to rationalize or sanitize fabulae and myths; by doing so it equated the distant reaches of the past with some species of untruth, or at least less-​than-​truth. Ancient scholars like Varro had explicitly divided the past according to its degrees of historicity. According to this model, historia itself had a history: before its emergence, there was only fabula, which by definition could not deliver the same certitude or veracity. But there was something oddly tautological about the Roman antiquary’s periodization: he defined the historical epoch as beginning when people started writing “true histories.” This circularity anticipated the difficulties that post-​antique readers of ancient texts would also face when deciding what counted as historical truth. Against this background, Hardouin and his fellow skeptics took their critiques to a new level: they attacked even those parts of antiquity that ancients and moderns alike had formerly assumed historically authentic. They judged not

2. See Anthony Grafton, “Jean Hardouin: The Antiquary as Pariah,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 62 (1999): 241–​67. On historical Pyrrhonism, see Chapter 6, 287–88.

308

308

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

only antiquity’s fabulae, but also its historiae, to be false. As Rupertus had said, one could question not only the straw witnesses like Dares, but also the seemingly credible ones. Hardouin dismissed them all in a flash. Theoretically at least, one could now imagine that every ancient history had been produced just as Dares and his ilk had been concocted—​i.e., through some form of fraud or fakery. Despite its seeming absurdity, something quite dangerous had now entered the horizon of expectations. It is perhaps no coincidence that these developments were largely contemporaneous with the querelle des anciens et des modernes. The formal beginning of this clash is usually dated to 1687, when the French academician Charles Perrault composed a poem, Le Siècle de Louis le Grand, which praised the age of the current French monarch and critiqued antiquity in the process. In the following year, he built upon this apology for modernity in the first volume of his Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes.3 Perrault maintained that, thanks to advances in the arts and sciences, modern Europe had finally surpassed the Greco-​Roman world, whose authority it had so long venerated. The so-​called “ancient” party responded to his provocations, and the battles that ensued spread beyond France. Equally contentious fights erupted in England, which began with William Temple’s Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning and invited interventions from the classical scholar Richard Bentley, including his debunking of the Letters of Phalaris.4 It culminated in Jonathan Swift’s famous satire The Battle of the Books; Swift conjured anthropomorphized ancient and modern books waging literal warfare, and tearing off each other’s title pages in St. James’ Library.5 In the first decades of the eighteenth century, the learned world experienced one of the quarrel’s strongest aftershocks: a conflict over the nature and merits of Homer himself. In fact, this final chapter of the larger querelle, which we will discuss at length, is often referred to as the querelle d’Homère.6 Yet the story of Homer’s bête noire, Dares Phrygius, also confirms that the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns began long before the closing years of the seventeenth century. Rather, this dispute was built into the hermeneutic practices that we now label classical reception. There had always been a quarrel, whether during the Second Sophistic, or the so-​called renaissance of the twelfth century, or beyond. In each of its iterations, the “moderns,” from Dio Chrysostom 3. Charles Perrault, Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes (Paris, 1688). 4. See especially Haugen, Richard Bentley. 5. Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub . . . to Which Is added, an Account of a Battel between the Antient and Modern Books in St. James’s Library (London, 1704). 6. Norman, Shock of the Ancient, 13.

309



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

309

to Joseph of Exeter, had lobbed an especially stinging charge against the ancient objects of their criticism: put simply, they named them liars. However, and this is the principal paradox we have traced throughout the prior chapters, they proved these ancient lies via appeals to other “ancients,” whether an Egyptian priest or a vates like Dares. Sometimes, armed with these proofs, they launched generalizable attacks against ancient mendacity. Joseph began his Iliad with an apostrophe to truth: he attacked antiquity for having scorned her, and he reminded her that the moderns were her true champions.7 The quarrel of antiquity and modernity was always part and parcel of a quarrel between truth and falsehood. We will close this book with a reexamination of both this quarrel and the new skeptical and critical methods that accompanied its most intense phase. And we will do so by investigating what Dares—​who enjoyed a now forgotten cameo in them—​can tell us about these headline cultural conflicts of the Enlightenment.

Skeptics and Critics: Hardouin, Mabillon, and Le Clerc It is one of the great ironies in the history of criticism that Hardouin’s theory of forgery—​however bizarre and conspiratorial his conjuring of a cabal of monk-​ forgers might strike us in retrospect—​was in some respects a natural extension of those “mainstream” philological methods pioneered by Valla, Erasmus, and company. Hardouin also detected anachronisms, inconsistencies, and stylistic anomalies in ancient texts, but rather than reject just some of them, he rejected them all as a class. Criticism could verge easily into hypercriticism, and hypercriticism started to resemble credulity under another name. After all, was the belief that fourteenth-​century monks had invented Cornelius Nepos really all that different from the belief that Nepos had dedicated a poem to the Archbishop of Canterbury? In his Ad censuram veterum scriptorum prolegomena or Prolegomena to the Censure of Ancient Writers, Hardouin described something like the former scenario with unflappable clarity. Whereas more than a century earlier Gaspar Barreiros had written a censura against a specific pseudo-​ancient—​Annius’ Berosus—​Hardouin wrote a censure of veteres scriptores or “ancient writers” writ large. In the course of this treatise, the Jesuit hypothesized in clinical detail about how one could pull off this forging:

7. See Chapter 3, 150.

310

310

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

If I had a genius equal to any of those ancients (istis veteribus), and if a desire came into my mind to print something under the feigned name (sub ementito nomine) of any writer out of those whose works are believed to have perished; if I were to write it on parchment, which in the course of a few years would appear some 600 or 800 years old, using the right ink for the job; if I were to transfer into that work certain excerpts from ancient writings which are commonly supposed to be genuine (sincera), with a view to induce faith in my work and belief in its antiquity (ei fidem et opinionem vetustatis); tell me, would it not be right for anyone to try and find out and detect any hidden fraud or impiety that he might suspect?8 Hardouin vividly evoked the creation of a liber vetustissimus, of the sort that pseudo-​Nepos, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Annius of Viterbo had claimed to discover. But he also displayed a newfound concern for the materiality of books—​complete with a discussion of parchment and ink—​that made their efforts seem imprecise and amateurish. In the last chapter we examined the intersections, some undetected by critics themselves, between physical books and criticism. Hardouin inhabited a milieu in which the two had grown closer together than ever before. This was due above all to a recent development in the critical arts: i.e., the formalization of the discipline of paleography, especially by Jean Mabillon, a French Benedictine scholar of the Congregation of Saint Maur.9 Mabillon systematically described how to use knowledge of scripts in order to distinguish genuine documents from forgeries. Handwriting possessed a history, just as language itself did. And he made these points in order to counter attacks that (albeit in much less extreme form) anticipated Hardouin’s. Mabillon’s 1681 De re diplomatica or On Diplomatics formed a response to the Bollandist Daniel Papebroch’s skeptical attack against the authenticity of Benedictine charters.

8. Jean Hardouin, Ad censuram veterum scriptorum prolegomena (London, 1766), 3–​4: “Si mihi tantum ingenii foret, quantum alicui ex istis veteribus; animumque cupido incesseret operis cudendi sub ementito nomine scriptoris alicujus ex iis, quorum scripta creduntur deperdita: si illud in pergameno exararem, quod post annos aliquot referret sexcentos vel octingentos annos, atramento ad id apto adhibito: si quaedam ex scriptis veteribus in illud opus excerpta transferrem, quae sincera vulgo creduntur, ad conciliandam ei fidem et opinionem vetustatis: an non fas esset unicuique tentare, num posset fraudem impietatemque, si qua lateret, indagare ac detegere?” For the translation used here (with slight modifications), see Jean Hardouin, Prolegomena, trans. Edwin Johnson (Sydney, 1909), 2–​3. 9.  On Mabillon, see Blandine Barret-​Kriegel, Les historiens et la monarchie, Vol. I:  Jean Mabillon (Paris, 1988); Alfred Hiatt, “Diplomatic Arts:  Hickes against Mabillon in the Republic of Letters,” Journal of the History of Ideas 70 (2009):  351–​73; and Jan Marco Sawilla, Antiquarianismus, Hagiographie und Historie im 17 Jahrhundert:  Zum Werk der Bollandisten: Ein wissenschaftshistorischer Versuch (Tübingen, 2009).

31



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

311

Mabillon’s method was essentially an updated version of what Erasmus had declared over a century before. But whereas Erasmus had warned against the dangers of assuming false texts true, Mabillon warned against the dangers of assuming true texts false. In doing so he recognized that criticism was predicted upon a hermeneutic circle. The only way one recognized a true text was by comparison with other true texts. This circularity made absolute knowledge of antiquity impossible. Instead, one had to rely upon the next best thing:  a kind of provisional knowledge, gained via induction. In his 1704 supplement to his On Diplomatics, he explained it as follows: Of course, there is no class of writers in which false and spurious (falsa et spuria) works are not found mixed with true and genuine ones (veris ac genuinis). Neither historical works, nor the writings of the fathers, nor decretal letters, nor the records of councils, nor the lives of the saints—​ out of reverence I  shall be silent about Scripture—​were immune from this blemish. In what way will you distinguish the false from the true? Only by the testimony of the ancients, by the comparison of suspect works with genuine ones; and finally by a certain taste (quodam gustu) which is acquired by constant reading of the genuine works of each author.10 Mabillon’s “certain taste” (quidam gustus) was a variation upon Erasmus’ “most certain index” (certissimus index). The new criticism—​like its antagonist, the new skepticism—​was ultimately an extension of the principles that previous generations of scholars had extracted from antiquity itself. Although the projects of Mabillon and others have long been taken as harbingers of a newfound Enlightenment rationalism, they also owed much to those traditions of humanist criticism that we have traced throughout this book. To use Vossius’ memorable formulation, this kind of stylistic discernment was the best possible means of separating puppies from pigs. Like Scaliger, Mabillon was aware of its dangerous religious implications, and he made sure to specify its limits: he declared that,

10. Jean Mabillon, Librorum de re diplomatica supplementum (Paris, 1704), 3: “Nullum quippe genus scriptorum est, in quo falsa et spuria veris ac genuinis opera permista non occurrant. Non historica opera, non scripta Patrum, non epistolae decretales, non Concilia, non denique Sanctorum vitae, ut de libris sacris reverentiae causa taceam, ab hac labe fuere immunes. Quo pacto falsa a veris discernes? Non alio sane quam veterum testimonio, comparatione suspectorum cum genuinis, denique quodam gustu, qui ex assidua germanorum cujusque auctoris operum lectione percipitur.” For the translation used here (with modifications), see Jean Mabillon, “On Diplomatics,” trans. Richard Wertis, in Historians at Work: Volume II, ed. Peter Gay and Victor G. Wexler (New York, 1972), 167–​68.

312

312

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

“out of reverence” (reverentiae causa), he would not scrutinize the Bible.11 And he acknowledged that the only way to acquire a taste for genuine authors and genuine manuscripts was to read them constantly and compare them to one another. At the end of the day nothing more scientific could be said than that. Mabillon’s cultivation of this “certain taste” made him an ideal candidate for hunting down libri vetustissimi. In 1685–​86, he went on a mission to Italy, sponsored by the French government, to inspect and collect manuscripts.12 In his account of this Italian journey, his Iter Italicum, he described his March 1686 visit to the Medici Library in Florence. There he saw Cicero’s letters to Atticus, the ninth-​century copy of Tacitus that had once belonged to the monastery of Fulda, an unedited work of Plotinus, and a version of the Book of Esther, written in Hebrew without vowel points. Among these treasures he also observed “the history of Dares Phrygius, whoever that impostor might be (quicumque sit impostor ille) . . . extant in a codex written eight hundred years ago.”13 When describing Dares, Mabillon used a variation upon the formulation that Barreiros, Vossius, Rupertus and others had used before:  “whoever he might be,” the true author of the Destruction of Troy was unknown. And like Schottus, who had called this unknown author a falsarius, Mabillon judged him an impostor: he recognized a devious intent behind his text. Yet unlike these prior critics, Mabillon, the great adjudicator of the genuine and the forged, the true and the false, did not bother to explain why Dares Phrygius was an impostor. Nor did he even stop to lambaste him for his deceit or his ineptitude. Instead, Mabillon the paleographer, already star-​struck by the Fulda Tacitus and others, eagerly noted the great antiquity of the manuscript in which he had encountered him:  it appeared to be from the ninth century! Unlike Hardouin, he did not entertain the thought that any devious impostors had aged its ink and parchment to seem eight hundred years old. He knew that the false and spurious always came comingled with the true and genuine, and he simply left it at that.

11.  On Catholic and Protestant approaches to questions of biblical authorship, see Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford, 2002). 12.  On Mabillon’s Italian journey, see Rutherford Aris, “Jean Mabillon (1632–​1707),” in Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline I: History, ed. Helen Damico and Joseph B. Zavadil (New York, 1994), esp. 19–​21. 13. Jean Mabillon, Iter Italicum litterarium annis MDCLXXXV et MDCLXXXVI (Paris, 1687), 169: “Nec ab re erit observare, in eadem bibliotheca historiam Daretis Phrygii, quicumque sit impostor ille, de exitu Trojanorum, et de eorumdem excidio, exstare in codice ante annos octingentos exarato.” This manuscript is now Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut. 66.40. Dares appears at fol. 6v–​20r.

31



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

313

Mabillon and Hardouin demonstrate the twin poles of skepticism and moderation that coexisted in the closing decades of the seventeenth century. And just as Mabillon had sought to formulate systematic rules for paleography, so in the following decade the Protestant theologian and biblical critic Jean Le Clerc sought to formulate systematic rules for textual criticism. In 1697 Le Clerc published his Ars critica or Art of Criticism at Amsterdam. Its long title promised a reason or rule (ratio) for “distinguishing spurious writers from the genuine.”14 The Ars critica enumerated various indicia or “proofs” of spuriousness, and in Erasmian fashion its ninth proof concerned style. Again, the new criticism drew upon old humanist antecedents. Le Clerc made it all sound so simple: “if the style (stylus) [of a text] be different from the known style of the age (saeculi) or the writer (scriptoris), then it is not his, even if it displays his name.”15 By ascribing stylistic indices not only to individual authors but also to whole ages, Le Clerc linked notions of taste to an explicitly historical criticism.16 And nothing better illustrated the Janus-​faced nature of this historical criticism than two cases of misattribution involving Cornelius Nepos. First was the confusion between Nepos and Aemilius Probus. As Le Clerc explained, scholars had once attributed Nepos’ vitae to an unknown writer of the Theodosian age, even though the elegance of the texts surpassed the qualities of these late times.17 Le Clerc took Lambin’s and Schottus’ critiques of late antique Latinity as a given. The stylus of these works clearly exceeded the sorry Theodosian saeculum. “Vice versa,” Le Clerc then explained, “scribes dared to attribute to Cornelius Nepos an inept and corrupt history that is more recent (recentiorem), it seems, than the Theodosian age.” Le Clerc cited Mercier’s description of Dares as a writer lacking “any erudition, judgment, or elegance of elocution.” Moreover, 14. Jean Le Clerc, Ars critica, in qua ad studia linguarum Latinae, Graecae, et Hebraicae via munitur, veterumque emendandorum, et spuriorum scriptorum a genuinis dignoscendorum ratio traditur: Volumen secundum (Amsterdam, 1697). On Le Clerc’s definition of criticism, see Benedetto Bravo, “Critice in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and the Rise of the Notion of Historical Criticism,” in History of Scholarship: A Selection of Papers from the Seminar on the History of Scholarship Held Annually at the Warburg Institute, ed. Christopher Ligota and Jean-​Louis Quantin (Oxford, 2006), esp. 192–​94, and Hardy, Criticism and Confession, esp. 391–​97. 15. Le Clerc, Ars critica, 502: “Si stylus sit diversus a noto aut saeculi, aut Scriptoris stylo, ejus non est, quamvis nomen ejus praeferat.” 16. On Erasmus and Le Clerc, see Jerry H. Bentley, “Erasmus, Jean Le Clerc, and the Principle of the Harder Reading,” Renaissance Quarterly 31 (1978): 309–​21. 17. Le Clerc, Ars critica, 502–​3: “Vitas excellentium Imperatorum, quas merito vero Scriptori adsertas diximus  .  .  .  Cornelio, scilicet, Nepoti, Ciceronis familiari, nonnulli eruditi viri, ante centum annos, sustinuerant tribuere Scriptori ignoto Theodosiani aevi; cum manifestum esset elegantia ejus libelli multum superari captum, atque ingenium eorum temporum.”

314

314

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

he explained that the prefatory epistle could not fool anyone, save those “who are devoid of all knowledge of Latin (omni Latinitatis cognitione),” or “clearly do something else when they read monkish frauds of this sort (ejusmodi Monachorum fraudes).”18 Here at last was a more precise attempt to date Dares. And this guess of “more recent than the Theodosian age” was rather close to the fifth-​or sixth-​ century date that we give the text today. While Le Clerc, a heterodox Protestant and associate of John Locke, would not have seen eye to eye on much with a staunch Catholic like Gaspar Scioppius, as practitioners of criticism they agreed on the defects of the Phrygian. Le Clerc’s language echoed Scioppius’ conclusion that Dares smelled of the “cloisters of monks.” He condemned the first pagan historian as a monkish impostor of sorts and relegated him to antiquity’s very end.19 Here was one text at least whose forging might actually have occurred in a milieu of cloistered tricksters akin to that conjured by Hardouin! The new critics of the late seventeenth century, like their skeptical counterparts, had no time for Dares. Save with one important exception, they took his spuriousness as too self-​evident to merit detailed explanation.

“The Road Must Be Tread”: Anne Dacier, Dares’ Reluctant Commentator Just a few years before Mabillon encountered Dares in Florence, the Phrygian earned a prize that had hitherto eluded him: he finally received a commentary of his own, just as his fellow travelers Dictys and Joseph of Exeter had. This distinction also came from the world of French erudite scholarship. Anne Le Fèvre Dacier, often known simply as Madame Dacier, is perhaps best remembered for her French translation of the Iliad, and the role it played in the querelle des anciens et des modernes. As we will see shortly, she would defend Homer against the slights of the moderns, arguing that the poetry of her own age was a decadent shadow of what had once flourished in Homer’s world. As Larry Norman has shown in an important recent reassessment of the querelle, she celebrated the Homeric past 18. Le Clerc, Ars critica, 503–​4: “Vice versa, ineptam atque inficetam historiam Theodosiano aevo, ut videtur, recentiorem, audebant Librarii Cornelio Nepoti tribuere. Ea est Daretis Phrygii, de excidio Troiae, historia, in qua Josias Mercerus, qui eam emendatiorem edidit, merito aut ullam eruditionem, aut judicium, aut eloquutionis elegantiam negat inveniri . . . Praefixa est etiam Epistola, nomine Corn. Nepotis, ad Sallustium Crispum scripta, sed quae neminem fallere queat, praeter eos qui omni Latinitatis cognitione destituti sunt, aut plane aliud agunt, cum ejusmodi Monachorum fraudes legunt.” 19. This came but a bit before the section of the Ars critica in which he launched his sustained attack against Quintus Curtius Rufus, studied in detail by Anthony Grafton. See Grafton, What Was History?, esp. 1–​20.

315



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

315

for its alterity: deep antiquity was a foreign country, remote from the refinements and soft manners of the world of Louis XIV, and hence it was a source of wonder.20 Long before Dacier turned her attention to Homer, she quarreled with his old opponent, the Phrygian. And while Dacier’s youthful Dares commentary is all but forgotten today, it sheds important light on her far more famous Homeric work, and the resultant position she staked out in the querelle. Unlike the many critics we have hitherto examined, who attacked Dares for his bad Latin and then called it a day, Dacier attacked Dares for his inept and fumbling efforts to rationalize and correct Homer. Dacier began her career as an editor for the Delphin series, a collection of ancient texts published for the edification of Louis XIV’s son that was spearheaded by the humanist and bishop Pierre-​Daniel Huet.21 In this capacity in 1680 she published an edition and commentary on both Dictys and Dares. Perhaps toiling over a known impostor like the Phrygian was not exactly a plum assignment. But it offered her an entry point into the world of erudite classical scholarship, in which she subsequently enjoyed a lengthy and distinguished career. In tackling Dictys and Dares she drew upon the work of her predecessor Josias Mercier, and like Mercier she appended the Phrygian to the Cretan. But unlike Mercier, she outfitted Dares with glosses as well—​even though they were hardly flattering. In her dedication to the Dauphin, she—​like Mercier, John More, and others—​ affirmed the exemplary nature of the Trojan past. Critics were not yet ready to dispense with Troy’s moral lessons, however formulaic they now sounded. But then, in her preface to Dictys, she turned to more technical matters. And here she heralded a decisive change in a story otherwise defined by continuity. She pointed out what she took to be the chief defect of the kind of criticism that we have encountered throughout this book. As we have seen, many a critic declared a text forged or spurious, but few actually took the time to prove it. They told but did not show. Dacier recognized that this did not go far enough: “It is known that Dictys is commonly believed to be spurious, but this is only believed (credita), and still proven (probata) by no one.” Hence, Dacier announced that she would prove it: throughout her subsequent commentary she would catalog the

20. On Dacier, see Paul Mazon, Madame Dacier et les traductions d’Homère en France (Oxford, 1936); Julie Candler Hayes, “Of Meaning and Modernity:  Anne Dacier and the Homer Debate,” EMF: Studies in Early Modern France 8 (2002): 173–​95; Norman, The Shock of the Ancient; and Carol Pal, Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 2012), 270–​75. 21. On Huet, see April Shelford, Transforming the Republic of Letters: Pierre-​Daniel Huet and European Intellectual Life, 1650–​1720 (Rochester, 2007).

316

316

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

sources from which the supposedly eyewitness Dictys had so clearly concocted his history.22 Dictys’ derivative nature proved him false, but it also had the happy side effect of showcasing his learning: “Therefore, reader, behold that historian pseudo-​Dictys (Pseudodictym istum historicum), who is nonetheless erudite and useful.” In language derived from Mercier’s preface, she praised Dictys for wisely selecting materials about the expedition of the Greeks and their return from actual ancient writers or veteres scriptores, and for excising poetic figments (poetica figmenta) in the process. Importantly, Homer was among these ancient authors Dictys had followed, even if the Cretan disagreed with the poet’s fables. Remarkably, the pseudo-​author had thereby stayed true to the faith of history and had not sinned against verisimilitude.23 If we were to translate this statement into the terms used by Chapter 1’s ancient exegetes, Dacier categorized Dictys as both historia and argumentum; he recorded both what happened and what could have happened. Like Scaliger, Dacier still believed in an authoritative memoria of Troy. The Trojan past possessed an underlying historicity, and Dictys proved faithful to it, notwithstanding his pseudonymity. Like Mercier, and Vossius, Scioppius, and others, Dacier deemed the Cretan a model forger. By a seeming law of opposites, an unfortunate effect of the comparative methods whose employment we traced in the previous chapter, Dares proved to be the very opposite of a model forger. Rather, he offered a case study in how not to forge. In her preface to the Destruction of Troy, Dacier declared that the actual author of the text was a man of meager learning and judgment, just as “the most learned Vossius warned long ago.” Unlike Dictys, who had violated neither, Dares had sinned against both history and verisimilitude (contra historiam et contra verisimilitudinem).24 Hence, a text that had tried so hard to embody historiae veritas, and had attacked Homer for depicting things contra naturam, did not even merit the status of an argumentum, something merely probable. Its author had been too inept to meet even this lower bar.

22. Dictys Cretensis de bello Trojano et Dares Phrygius de excidio Trojae . . . in usum serenissimi Delphini, ed. Anne Dacier (Paris, 1680), sig. a iv recto: “Notum est eum vulgo supposititium credi, sed res credita tantum et a nemine adhuc probata. Quare id in primis mihi probandum putavi, et iis argumentis, quibus fides derogari non posset, pervincendum falsum Dictym esse hunc.” 23. Dictys, De bello Trojano, sig. a iv recto–​verso: “Habes igitur, Lector, Pseudodictym istum historicum, sed utilem tamen et eruditum. Is sane veteres omnes scriptores de expeditione Graecorum, deque eorum reditu, diligenter pervoluit . . . Is poetica omnia figmenta resecuit, vel ea ad historiae fidem sic immutavit, ut nihil contra verisimilitudinem peccet.” 24.  Dares, De excidio Trojae, ed. Dacier, 144:  “Nam et ipse scriptor (et jam diu monuit Doctissimus Vossius) per se satis prodit se perexiguae et doctrinae et judicii fuisse, qui multa non solum contra historiam et contra verisimilitudinem peccet.”

317



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

317

As had her predecessors, Dacier then lacerated Dares by appealing to Latinity’s Golden Age: And concerning Cornelius Nepos, scarcely anyone will ever believe that he was the translator of this little book, save one who will ignore the talent and elegance of the Augustan age. For this author scarcely writes Latin, as we will discuss in the proper place. That epistle, which is addressed to Sallust, is so worthless and trifling, that it revives the final old age (ultimum senium) of Latinity, rather than its vigor (vigorem) and its flowering youth (florentem adolescentiam).25 Borrowing a line from Vossius, Dacier indicted the real author of Dares for scarcely knowing Latin. And like Scioppius and others, she assigned this ineptitude a temporal dimension. But she made this temporal discrimination even more explicit than had Scioppius, who with his biting invocation of monkishness had gotten the closest so far to dating the Phrygian. Although she did not hazard an exact time of composition for the Destruction of Troy, she dated it comparatively, according to Latinity’s life cycle. Everyone who knew anything, she implied, knew that the elegance of the Augustan age represented the youth and vigor of Latin literature. And since it was axiomatic that language itself followed this biological cycle, it was clear that Dares embodied the very opposite of Augustan vigor; he derived from an epoch of senility and senescence. Far from being the first pagan historian, he was more likely the last, if indeed he had even been a pagan. This chronology was essential to Dacier’s project. As a committed ancient, she read the history of literature after the Golden Age of Augustus—​and even up to her own day—​as one of inevitable and continuous decline. In fact, far from comparing Louis XIV to Augustus, as the monarch’s own propaganda often did, she once even drew a comparison between the contemporary world and that of Nero. Modernity was one long story of post-​Augustan decadence, extending all the way to the present.26

25.  Dares, De excidio Trojae, ed. Dacier, 144:  “Et de Cornelio Nepote, vix erit unquam qui credat eum hujus libelli interpretem fuisse, nisi qui Augustaei aevi nitorem et genium ignorabit. Auctor enim iste vix latine scribit, ut suo loco dicemus, illa Epistola quae Salustio Crispo inscripta est ita futilis est et nugax, ut latinitatis potius ultimum senium, quam vigorem illum et florentem illam adolescentiam resipiscat.” On precedents for this naturalizing metaphor in the work of Julius Caesar Scaliger, see Walther Rehm, Der Untergang Roms im abendländischen Denken: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichtsschreibung und zum Dekadenzproblem (Leipzig, 1930), 154 and 162. 26. On this point, see Norman, Shock of the Ancient, 142–​43.

318

318

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

When Dacier got around to her individual glosses upon Dares, she was equally scathing. Throughout her notes she referred to him as the ineptus scriptor or “inept writer.” His style was woeful, and it reflected the senility of his times. Again, unlike prior critics, here she made sure to demonstrate, rather than merely assert, the relationship between the Phrygian’s ineptitude and his temporal milieu. For instance, when Dares used the conjunction quia instead of an infinitive in an indirect statement, she corrected the sentence in her gloss and sarcastically scoffed at the “elegance of this age” (elegantia hujus saeculi).27 She also explained that the Phrygian’s faults were by no means limited to matters of language and style. This forger had been so inept that he violated basic logic. For example, when introducing those portraits of Greeks and Trojans, an unnamed narrator—​ presumably pseudo-​ Nepos—​ suddenly broke the fourth wall and referred to the Phrygian in the third person, declaring that “Dares Phrygius, who wrote this history, said that he fought until Troy was captured,” and so he could describe firsthand those whom he had seen. “What?” Dacier exclaimed with mock wonder, “can it be that this shall constitute an epitome of Dares? But the spurious translator in that nonsense epistle says that he neither added nor subtracted anything for the purpose of shaping it.” Amazingly this ineptus scriptor had forgotten the basic premise of this con: that he presented an original, unmediated eyewitness narrative.28 It was manifest that the forger had nodded often. At another point Dacier condemned him for repeating himself: “in nearly the same words here the inept writer repeats the things which he already said on the above page.”29 A few lines later Dacier reserved an entire gloss for conveying just how thankless it was to comment upon Dares:  “Clearly I  follow this most inept author (ineptissimum hunc scriptorem) unwillingly; of course he writes so barbarously and wretchedly (barbare et misere). But nonetheless the road must be tread (sed calcanda tamen via).”30 This barbarous writer necessitated near constant correction. No wonder

27. Dares, De excidio Trojae, ed. Dacier, 159: “Audivit quia hostes parati sunt.] Elegantia hujus saeculi pro audivit hostes paratos esse.” 28. Dares, De excidio Trojae, ed. Dacier, 156: “Quid? an haec erit Daretis Epitome. Sed suppositius Interpres in nugaci epistola ait se nihil adjecisse neque deminuisse rei formandae causa.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 12, ed. Meister, 14: “Dares Phrygius, qui hanc historiam scripsit, ait se militasse usque dum Troia capta est, hos se vidisse, cum indutiae essent, partim proelio interfuisse . . .” 29. Dares, De excidio Trojae, ed. Dacier, 153: “Iisdem fere verbis hic repetit ineptus scriptor quae jam dixit pagina superiori.” 30. Dares, De excidio Trojae, ed. Dacier, 153: “Invita sane ineptissimum hunc scriptorem percurro, ita barbare et misere scribit scilicet. Sed calcanda tamen via.”

319



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

319

a full commentary had previously eluded him. “Indeed, there is no page where you do not need a judgment (judicium) of Dares.”31 Moreover, Dacier constantly made clear the sources she preferred instead. She rendered some of these judgments against Dares by appealing to Dictys, a forger who had violated neither history nor verisimilitude. For instance, when Dares had Palamedes complain that Agamemnon had been named leader only “by a few” (a paucis) of the Greeks, Dacier accused Dares of advancing this claim “against the faith of history” (contra historiae fidem). For “other authors”—​including Dictys, in that very passage on Punic letters that Otto Heurnius had celebrated—​stated that the whole Greek army had selected Agamemnon as their leader.32 Hence, even though Dacier read this detail from Dictys rather differently from how Heurnius the defender of prisca sapientia had, she still agreed with him that it possessed a kind of historicity. But one of her very first notes revealed what most bothered her about the Phrygian. When glossing the prefatory epistle, Dacier the defender of Homer took pseudo-​Nepos to task for his vociferous anti-​Homericism. She deemed the entire notion of Homer’s trial at Athens preposterous. For who had ever heard that the Athenians had charged the bard with insanity? Dacier attributed it to the forger’s ignorance. He was aware that some at Athens had deemed Homer foolish for depicting the gods fighting with humans. Perhaps he knew that Plato had rendered judgment against Homer. And so this “inept writer” imagined a literal trial, in which Homer had been charged with insanity.33 Hence, Dares was such an unskilled forger that he could not even get his attacks against Homer straight. Indeed, this denizen of antiquity’s senescence was one of the first of many inept moderns who failed to appreciate Homer’s merits. Rather, through overly facile literalism, he had tried to challenge the bard but only made a fool of himself while doing so. Nearly alone among the critics we have examined, Dacier made explicit that Dares’ strategy was to historicize myth, and she faulted him for doing it so poorly. At multiple points she observed how Dares had tried to “accommodate” fabula

31.  Dares, De excidio Trojae, ed. Dacier, 167:  “Nulla certe pagina ubi non Daretis judicium requiras.” 32. Dares, De excidio Trojae, ed. Dacier, 163: “Sed illud Dares contra historiae fidem adducit nempe Agamemnonem a paucis ducem electum, cum alii auctores tradant eum ab omni exercitu creatum ducem. De qua re apud Dictyn.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 20, ed. Meister, 25, and Dictys, Ephemeris 1.16, ed. Eisenhut, 13. 33.  Dares, De excidio Trojae, ed. Dacier, 145:  “Quod quis unquam audivit! Atqui non illud voluit ineptus scriptor. Sed illud tantum, fuisse olim Athenis qui Homerum Stultum judicarent quod Deos cum hominibus pugnantes induceret, et Platonem intelligit qui de Homero iniquum illud judicium tulit.”

320

320

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

to history but had in fact oversimplified the far more complex processes by which literal truth became fable. For instance, commenting on the same passage that John Dee highlighted, she observed that “as he accommodates the fable of the Judgment of Paris to history, Dares says that it all happened in a dream.”34 But according to Cedrenus and the Suda, she explained, Paris had actually written a hymn to Venus, and from this the idea of the Judgment of Paris was eventually born (never mind that the historicity of this might strike us as equally implausible!). Similarly, when the Phrygian described King Diomedes of Thrace “hunting with his fierce and powerful horses,” she noted that Dares was striving to “accommodate the fable of the horses to history”—​that is, he was attempting to sanitize the myth that the Thracian king’s horses ate human flesh.35 Even if Dacier knew that Dares was not who he said he was, she nonetheless maintained that this barbarous author from the senile end of the ancient world still possessed some route of access to primitive, deep antiquity. It was this deep antiquity that Dacier would later praise, in her work on Homer, for its parallels with the Bible. When Dares explained how Peleus received Antenor, granting him hospitality for three days and only asking him the purpose of his business on the fourth, Dacier pointed out that the ancient Jews had also followed this practice: “Observe the custom (observa morem) by which envoys and others sat in the home of their hosts for several days before they related the purpose of their arrival, so that they could be restored from the labor of their journey.” As a parallel she cited Ezra 8.32, in which Ezra and the other exiles returning from Babylon rested for three days upon arrival in Jerusalem. Like Fortunio Liceti, who possessed a very different opinion about Dares Phrygius, she saw parallels between the Homeric and biblical pasts.36 Her observation of these parallels was one of the few places where she did not accuse Dares of ineptitude.37 Like John More, she still believed that Dares—​however problematic a messenger he was—​illuminated the vestigia ac mores of the most ancient age. 34. Dares, De excidio Trojae, ed. Dacier, 153: “Ut Fabulam de Iudicio Paridis historiae accommodat id omne in somnis factum fuisse dicit. Sed alii scribunt Paridem hymnum in Venerem composuisse ubi eam Junoni et Palladi praeferebat, unde postea fabula nata est quasi ipse praesentes deas judicarit.” 35. Dares, De excidio Trojae, ed. Dacier, 160: “Fabulam equarum historiae accommodare nititur Dares cum ait equas illas potentes ac feras fuisse.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 16, ed. Meister, 21. 36. On Dacier’s positing of parallels between the Homeric and biblical worlds, see Norman, Shock of the Ancient, 144–​49. 37. Dares, De excidio Trojae, ed. Dacier, 151: “Observa morem quo legati et alii quique per dies aliquot in domo hospitum sedebant antequam de adventu suo quidquam proponerent, scilicet ut ab itineris labore recrearentur, hinc intelligendus Esdras c. 8. v. 32.” Cf. Dares, De excidio Troiae 5, ed. Meister, 6–​7.

321



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

321

Dacier alone of all our critics actually took the time to demolish the Phrygian, line by line. Rather than simply judge him barbarous and call it a day, she seized upon numerous instances that proved—​beyond a reasonable doubt, in her judgment—​that he could not really have been the first pagan historian. And rather than simply castigate him for deficient Latin unworthy of Cornelius Nepos—​even though that demerit formed a large part of her critique—​she alone indicted him for his deficient attempts at sanitizing myth. She critiqued Dares not only as a pseudo-​historian, but also for his pseudo-​historicity, and even his pseudo-​historicism. His clumsy rationalizations of fabulae unmasked him as much as his clumsy Latinity did. This critique anticipated how she would later attack the misguided rationalism of Homer’s modern detractors. Dacier’s work did not mean that the Phrygian perished immediately; on the contrary, at least some kept reading him, and her version soon became the standard edition of the text. Her commentaries on Dictys and Dares were reprinted in a 1702 Amsterdam variorum edition, along with the notes of Mercier and others. This comprehensive volume brought together many of the critics we have examined in the previous pages. It not only printed excerpts from G.J. Vossius’ encyclopedias, but it also featured the text of Joseph of Exeter complete with Samuel Dresemius’ commentary. And it included an important new piece of scholarship as well: a lengthy dissertation on Dictys by Jean Le Clerc’s antagonist, the Leiden professor Jacob Perizonius.38 As we shall see in the following section, Dacier’s work on Dares was but a warm-​up for what she considered a far more consequential task: her defense of Homer, and by extension, her apology for the worth of antiquity itself. Dares was not consequential enough to merit mention in her more famous works, but the road she had tread in commenting on him, however thankless, informed her defense of the fabulae that the Phrygian and his many modern heirs had so foolishly attacked and misconstrued.

Homer’s Enlightenment Trials:  Dacier, Hardouin, and Vico In the previous chapter we saw how Johannes Spondanus brought Dares and Dictys into the orbit of Homeric scholarship. Anne Dacier, who began her career

38. Jacob Perizonius, “Dissertatio de historia belli Trojani, quae Dictyos Cretensis nomen praefert,” in Dictys Cretensis et Dares Phrygius de bello et excidio Trojae (Amsterdam, 1702). Here the Leiden scholar argued for a Greek original of Dictys, although he did not address the question of Dares.

32

322

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

with Dares and Dictys and then capped it off with an apology for Homer, continued this trend. In the Middle Ages Dares had figured in questions over Virgil. Now, at the beginning of the Enlightenment, he figured in Homeric questions. This marked a return, more than a millennium later, to the original quarrel instigated by pseudo-​Nepos. Dacier had dismissed pseudo-​Nepos’ proposition that Homer had literally been tried at Athens, but at the dawn of the eighteenth century, the poet found himself on trial once again. As mentioned earlier, this so-​ called querelle d’Homère marked the last, and perhaps the most consequential, act of the querelle des anciens et des modernes. Although they do not usually figure in standard accounts of the quarrel, anxieties about forgery and falsification—​i.e., anxieties about the fragility of historical truth—​were at the heart of it. As Larry Norman and others have shown, the “moderns” were not necessarily heroic champions of progress, nor were the “ancients” necessarily hidebound defenders of traditionalism. Champions of antiquity like Dacier celebrated antiquity for its radical divergence from the norms and strictures of the present. Hence why Homer loomed so large in these disputes: his distant heroic age came to stand for ancient alterity itself. And this alterity was always threatened by those who had ostensibly faked antiquity, from an impostor like Dares to Hardouin’s band of Benedictines. Forgery was now conceived of as a threat to the apprehension of difference itself. Forgery mattered to those whom we seldom associate with it (Dacier), those who are now obscure (Hardouin), and those who were once obscure but posthumously grew famous (Giambattista Vico). Reassessing the quarrel in this light is crucial to the history of classical scholarship:  even if some of the partisans of the “ancients” romanticized antiquity’s difference in a fashion that might not seem to accord with the restrained or sober posture of Altertumswissenschaft, their views gave rise to the stated desire of many nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century classicists to approach the ancient past on its own terms. Anxiety about forgery played a key role in this story. However, it did not always produce the disenchantment of the past that we now claim. Rather, it promoted some new and unexpected forms of enchantment. Dacier published her French Homer in multiple volumes in 1709–​11, and in her preface she systematically defended the bard against modern attacks. In so doing she sketched a history of literature. Homer represented “the height” (la hauteur) of Greek poetry. After him it suffered a “total eclipse.” But then, poetic genius traveled from Greece to Rome. In Rome, Virgil resuscitated the epic form, some nine centuries after Homer. However, then decline began inexorably once more: “this second eclipse lasted, and lasts still” (cette seconde éclipse a duré & dure encore). As late as the eighteenth century, epic poetry was still degenerating from its former Homeric and Virgilian heights! This was not just the celebration of

32



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

323

a lost Golden Age but rather a pessimist’s literary history if ever there was one. Moreover, Dacier linked this decline to new forms of falsehood. Using language that we have elsewhere seen in critiques of forgery, Dacier explained that “by the corruption and ignorance of men, all the sciences and all the arts usually produce false arts and false sciences that counterfeit (contrefont) the real ones.”39 Dacier next explained what made Homer such a difficult and unsatisfactory read for audiences at the start of the eighteenth century. For one, Dacier’s contemporaries—​ perhaps not unlike pseudo-​ Nepos—​ could not tolerate Homer’s fictions. Some of the most outlandish of these fictions included self-​ moving tripods, animate golden statues, and talking horses. Channeling the critiques of her contemporaries, Dacier lamented that these phenomena lacked “the verisimilitude (la vray-​semblance) that we demand.”40 However, the moderns were wrong to reject them. According to Dacier, it was licit for Homer to have sinned against verisimilitude; such violations were part of the poet’s office. Yet as we saw, she had deemed it wrong for Dares to have done so, since he had claimed to be a historian correcting Homer’s very transgressions on that score. Similarly, the moderns could not stomach allegories and arcana: they despised “these veils and shadows” that could hide a text’s true meaning and rather wanted everything “simple and clear” (simple et clair).41 With these words she assailed the very quality that pseudo-​Nepos valorized—​i.e., writing vere et simpliciter. This was the same aesthetic sensibility that informed her critique of Dares as the 39. Anne Dacier, L’Iliade d’Homère traduite en François (Paris, 1719 [1709]), iv: “Il y en a eû aussi aprés luy; mais il n’y en a pas eû un seul, je ne dis pas qui se soit élevé à la hauteur d’Homere, mais qui ait mesme connu son art. Par tout ce qui nous reste de l’Antiquité, nous voyons que cet art a souffert depuis ce poëte une éclipse totale en Grece, & que les poëmes, qu’elle a produits, n’en ont point suivi les regles. Dés que la Grece vaincuë eust captivé par ses attraits ses farouches vainqueurs, comme dit Horace, & porté les arts en Italie, les ébauches grossieres de la Poësie Romaine commencerent à s’embellir, & le genie croissant avec l’Empire, enfin l’art du Poëme Epique fut ressuscité par Virgile prés de neuf cents ans aprés Homere. Ce grand poëte l’emporta encore avec luy, dans le tombeau, car on ne voit point que les poëtes, qui l’ont suivi, en ayent eu la veritable idée. Cette seconde éclipse a duré & dure encore. Mais, comme on l’a remarqué avant moy, toutes les sciences & tous les arts produisent d’ordinaire par la corruption & par l’ignorance des hommes de faux arts & de fausses sciences qui les contrefont.” An English translation of Dacier by John Ozell appeared at London in 1712, and Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, which also drew upon Dacier, appeared in 1715–​20. 40. Dacier, L’Iliade d’Homère, vii: “La quatriéme vient des fictions d’Homère qui paroissent aujourd’huy trop outrées et hors de la vray-​semblance que nous demandons. Comment faire supporter à nostre siecle des trepieds qui marchent seuls et qui vont aux assemblées? des statuës d’or qui aident Vulcain dans son travail? des chevaux qui parlent, et plusieurs autres imaginations de cette nature?” 41. Dacier, L’Iliade d’Homère, viii–​ix: “Les sages se faisoient un merite de penetrer ces mysteres & d’en descouvrir le sens; & le peuple respectoit ces sçavantes tenebres. Nostre siecle mesprise ces voiles & ces ombres, & n’estime que ce qui est simple & clair.”

324

324

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

inept rationalizer: like the moderns, he had labored to produce a false clarity of meaning. Even if—​or perhaps because—​Homer seemed to violate the reason and taste of modernity, he was worthy of being read. Dacier also addressed other charges against him. She systematically defended Homer against Plato’s critique, which (as we saw) she believed pseudo-​Nepos had badly channeled. Moreover, she declared that there was nothing impious about Homer’s treatment of the gods: he had followed a kind of ancient natural religion—​Dacier termed it “the ancient pagan theology” (l’ancienne Theologie payenne)—​and this was perfectly compatible with true religion.42 After all, the poet’s depictions of gods quarreling with humans were no different from accounts of such incidents in the Bible. To prove this point, she even cited the same passage that Fortunio Liceti had invoked: “regarding the leagues and battles of the gods, we can say that Homer is again protected from our censures; Holy Scripture presents us examples, which deserve all our respect and all our veneration. We see in Genesis that an angel wrestles with Jacob.”43 Dacier’s work aroused controversy. A  partisan of the “moderns,” Antoine Houdar de la Motte, issued a critique of Homer, and Dacier countered him with a systematic defense of antiquity, her aptly titled Des causes de la corruption du goût or On the Causes of the Corruption of Taste. This querelle d’Homère also invited an intervention from none other than Jean Hardouin. In 1716—​late in his already bizarre career—​Hardouin published his own Apologie d’Homère. Surprisingly enough, here the arch-​skeptic, that demolisher of all antiquity, defended Homer against his critics. But he also defended him against his supposed champions. In effect, Hardouin endeavored to prove that he was an even better “ancient” than Homer’s early eighteenth-​century partisans. He criticized attempts to reconcile Homer with sacred history and Christian theology.44 By implication, he suggested that Dacier and the other ancients, despite their desire to read the ancient past on its own terms, had not gone far enough to grasp antiquity’s true alterity. Homer had nothing whatsoever to do with the Bible; but this was cause for praise, not critique. Rather, those who suggested that the world of Troy revealed traces of true religion were guilty of impiety. Not for Hardouin were the 42. Dacier, L’Iliade d’Homère,  ix–​x. 43. Dacier, L’Iliade d’Homère, xvi: “A l’égard des ligues & des combats des Dieux, on peut dire qu’Homère est encore à couvert des nos censures; l’Escriture sainte nous presente des exemples, qui meritent tout nostre respect & toute nostre veneration. Nous voyons dans la Genese un Ange lutter avec Jacob.” 44. Jean Hardouin, Apologie d’Homère (Paris, 1716). It appeared in English in the following year as Jean Hardouin, An Apology for Homer (London, 1717).

325



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

325

syntheses drawn by Dacier or Liceti. Athens had nothing to do with Jerusalem, and when Homer’s gods quarreled with his heroes, they had nothing to do with Jacob wrestling an angel. Hardouin bemoaned the temerity of those who had compared Homer to the prophet Ezekiel and scoffed at the misguided syncretism of those who behaved “as if Homer had read the Second Epistle of Saint Peter, and the Book of Job.”45 Instead, as he made clear at the start of his work, he would laud Homer for having composed the perfect specimen of an epic poem, nothing more and nothing less.46 There was nothing particularly original about Hardouin’s defense of poetry; we have seen aspects of it voiced throughout this book. But what is perhaps most remarkable, coming from Hardouin at least, was what it omitted. Hardouin did not say that these Homeric fables were produced by a conspiracy of monkish forgers. Rather, it was with Homer of all possible authors that Hardouin cast aside his prior skepticism. Here again he indulged his contrarianism.47 Whereas many who accepted the fides of classical authors in perfectly conventional fashion sometimes entertained doubts about the historicity of the preclassical Homeric past, Hardouin, who had rejected nearly everything else from antiquity, happily reserved the equation. He affirmed that Homer was a real person, and that this real historical person had actually written the Iliad, some 370 years after the real historical event that was the Trojan War.48 That war had involved real historical figures like Aeneas, but Hardouin’s vision of it was rather different from the conventional Trojan memoria. He believed that Aeneas’ descendants had gone on to rule postwar Troy, and that Homer had written in order to glorify him.49 This was the true design of the Iliad, which the Jesuit claimed to reveal in his treatise. Therefore, he advanced a strange variation upon Servius’ and pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris’ notion that Virgil had celebrated Aeneas in order to glorify his descendants: he believed Homer had done so instead. In fact, Hardouin went out of his way to make clear that it was nothing but a

45.  Hardouin, Apologie d’Homère, 3–​4:  “C’est donc temerité de comparer Homere avec le Prophete Ezechiel . . . Comme si Homere avoit lu la seconde epistre de S. Pierre, & le livre de Job.” 46. Hardouin, Apologie d’Homère, 2: “J’ay toujours regardé l’Iliade, comme le chef-​d’oeuvre le plus ingenieux de l’esprit humain en ce genre là.” 47.  On Hardouin’s acceptance of Homer, specifically in contrast to his rejection of Virgil’s Aeneid and other ancient works, see James M. Scott, “Who Tried to Kill Nearly Everyone Else but Homer?,” The Classical World 97 (2004): 373–​83. 48. Hardouin, Apologie d’Homère,  25–​26. 49. Hardouin, Apologie d’Homère,  11–​23.

326

326

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

roman or “romance” that Aeneas had sailed to Italy.50 In saying this, Hardouin became an unlikely heir to medieval authors like Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Frankish chroniclers, who had subverted Rome’s traditional claims to Trojan ancestry. Yet he did so far more radically and bizarrely than had they. Not only did he reject the roman of Aeneas’ wanderings, but in another treatise he also argued at length that Virgil had never written the Aeneid.51 Hence, Homer’s Iliad was genuine, whereas the Aeneid of “Virgil” was a forgery! Dares was not the only forger who had attempted to supplant the rightful priority of the bard; rather, “pseudo-​Virgil” belonged to this ignominious company as well. Of all the authors in the ancient corpus, Homer, one of the first and oldest of the poets, was one of the few to possess historicity. In contrast, his later imitators, “Virgil” included, were pseudonymous. Hardouin’s conspiracy theory, born of hyperskepticism, did not reflect disenchantment with the pastness of the distant past per se. Rather, antiquity’s distant Homeric phase was truer than what followed. The historicity of the distant past was a hotly contested question in the aftermath of the quarrel. The Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico weighed in with one possible solution. Vico’s engagement with Homer is well known, but we have often ignored the fact that he also invoked Dares Phrygius in the process. Nonetheless, his invocation of the Phrygian—​however fleeting—​offers us crucial insights into his vision of antiquity. In 1725 he published the first edition of his Scienza Nuova or New Science; revised editions followed in 1730 and 1744.52 Vico added a new twist to that old debate between historia and fabula. Like Philip Sidney, he argued that a kind of natural poetry had been the oldest form of human expression; it far predated philosophy, history, or theology. But he combined these now traditional apologies for fiction with the new fruits of the ars critica. He maintained that the old notion of primeval ancient wisdom or prisca sapientia was nothing but a ruse, promoted by the “conceit of scholars” that all knowledge, by definition, needed august ancient beginnings. Isaac Casaubon

50. Hardouin, Apologie d’Homère, 26: “Ainsi ce discours de Neptune, & le dessein de l’Iliade entiere, détruisent formellement & sans replique, comme des sçavans l’ont déja conclu de ce passage seul, le voyage d’Enée en Italie, qui n’est qu’un Roman.” 51.  For Hardouin’s identification of the Aeneid with “pseudo-​Vergilius,” see Grafton, “Jean Hardouin,” 250–​51. 52. On Vico’s work as a response to the querelle, see Joseph Levine, “Giambattista Vico and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns,” Journal of the History of Ideas 52 (1991): 55–​ 79. The classic account of Vico as a proto-​historicist who rejected the Enlightenment is found in Isaiah Berlin, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas (London, 1976). On Vico’s approach to Homer, see Kirsti Simonsuuri, Homer’s Original Genius:  Eighteenth-​Century Notions of the Early Greek Epic (1688–​1798) (Cambridge, 1979), 90–​98, and Rossi, Dark Abyss of Time.

327



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

327

had rejected such a conceit when taking down the Hermetic Corpus (a debunking that Vico cited approvingly), and Joseph Scaliger had ridiculed it when he indicted the Sibylline Oracles alongside Dares and Dictys.53 Over a century later, Vico absorbed critiques of this nature into a systematic theory of the origins of culture. Vico’s task was to restore poetic fabula to its proper temporal priority. It was an error of grammarians, he maintained, “that prose speech is proper speech, and poetic speech improper; and that prose speech came first and afterward speech in verse.”54 But this was incorrect, since poetry was the first language of the ancient pagans or gentes: “It is characteristic of children to take inanimate things in their hands and talk to them in play as if they were living persons.” And so it followed that “in the world’s childhood men were by nature sublime poets.”55 Not unlike pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris centuries before, Vico unfolded a genealogy of human speech according to the ages of the life cycle. And he deemed it obvious that the first poets of the world’s childhood had not engaged in anything so esoteric, or “modern,” as philosophy. Rather, they were poets, possessed of a primitive, natural sublimity that had yet to invent such things as abstraction or second-​order reflection.56 Vico’s thesis required sustained engagement with Homer. In fact, he devoted an entire book of his New Science to what he titled “Discovery of the True Homer.”57 Here he argued that the false Homer was the Homer of the prisca sapientia, a philosopher endowed with esoteric wisdom. The true Homer, on the other hand, was a vulgar poet of the people, whose work reflected the barbarous customs and beliefs of the world’s childhood. For instance, Ulysses, so often celebrated as exemplary, was actually depicted as a drunkard.58 Homer had not written philosophy. Nor had he, or others who had sung of Troy for that matter, written history in the sense that moderns would have understood the term. Contra Otto Heurnius and champions of prisca sapientia, Vico argued that the Greeks had not even known how to write at the time of Troy. And he anticipated these conclusions in a lengthy chronological table that he prefixed to his New 53. Vico, New Science 47, trans. Bergin and Fisch, 31. 54. Vico, New Science 409, trans. Bergin and Fisch, 131. 55. Vico, New Science 186–​87, trans. Bergin and Fisch, 71. 56. See, for instance, Vico, New Science 816, trans. Bergin and Fisch, 312: “The poetic characters, in which the essence of the fables consists, were born of the need of a nature incapable of abstracting forms and properties from subjects.” 57. Vico, New Science 780–​914, trans. Bergin and Fisch, 301–​32. 58. Vico, New Science 784, trans. Bergin and Fisch, 303.

328

328

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Science. Here he dated the Trojan War to some 2,820 years after Creation, and described it as follows: This war, as it is recounted by Homer, is thought by circumspect critics (avveduti Critici) never to have taken place; and authors like Dictys of Crete and Dares of Phrygia, who as historians of their time (Storici del suo tempo) gave prose accounts of it, are by these same critics relegated to the library of imposture (Libraria dell’Impostura).59 Not unlike Coluccio Salutati, Vico did not identify these “circumspect critics” by name. Indeed, his inclusion of Dares and Dictys in his rejection of Homer’s historicity was but a passing remark, and his New Science never mentioned them again. Yet it is worth noting that Vico had to eliminate the Cretan and the Phrygian for his newfound science to work:  the first pagan historian could not have flourished at a time when poetic fabulae remained the default mode of human expression. Historiae veritas, at least of the sort that Dares and Dictys proffered, had yet to be invented. Vico recognized the significance of their claims to be contemporary, eyewitness historians (Storici del suo tempo), and by virtue of those very claims he knew them to be specious. Like the critics, he had no choice but to consign the Phrygian to the Libraria dell’Impostura, much as Mabillon and others had deemed Dares an impostor. Presumably Vico was aware that this library contained many other pseudo-​ancient texts, which had sought to fill the world’s barbarous childhood with false proofs of culture and learning. In many cases Vico showed himself as a “circumspect critic,” even if his critical idiom might seem very different from our own. His work anticipated the great Homeric Question of nineteenth-​century scholarship. Rather than assume that the poet was a literal, historical person, Vico declared that he would “take the middle ground that Homer was an idea or a heroic character of Grecian men.” And he even claimed to have done to Homer what those avveduti critici had done to Troy:  “the most judicious critics hold that though it [i.e., the Trojan War] marks a famous epoch in history it never in the world took place.”60 Elsewhere he

59. Vico, New Science 84, trans. Bergin and Fisch, 45. For the original, see Giambattista Vico, Cinque libri de’ principi d’una scienza nuova (Naples, 1730 [1725]), 118: “La guerra Troiana: La quale, come ci è narrata da Omero avveduti Critici giudicano non essersi mai fatta nel Mondo: e i Ditti Cretesi, e i Dareti Frigi, che la scrissero in prosa, come Storici del suo tempo, da medesimi Critici sono mandati a conservarsi nella Libraria dell’Impostura.” This passage (and the corresponding chronological table) does not appear in the first edition of 1725, but does appear in the second edition of 1730 and the third edition of 1744. 60. Vico, New Science 873, trans. Bergin and Fisch, 323.

329



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

329

offered a sociocultural explanation for a phenomenon we have traced throughout this book: medieval claims to Trojan ancestry. Vico understood the Middle Ages as a “return” or ricorso of primitive barbarism, and he believed that, as barbarians gradually sought civilization, they invented “illustrious foreign origins.” Medieval peoples believed that “a Trojan king, Priam, had reigned in Germany.”61 Moreover, like Hardouin, he denied that Aeneas had fled from Troy to Italy.62 In many cases, Vico evinced an iconoclasm akin to that of Rupertus or even Hardouin. Yet the New Science also contained elements of traditions whose acceptance might seem the very opposite of critical circumspection. Vico also proposed genealogies not all that different from Annius of Viterbo’s, or those that medieval scribes had appended to Dares. Much like Annius, he believed that giants populated the earth after the Flood, and he provided a memorable explanation for their gigantism. After the diaspora of Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, their descendants eventually lost true religion and succumbed to a primitive paganism. Living like beasts, they soon grew into giants by absorbing rich nitrous salts as they wallowed in their filth.63 Just when we think we have reached a sense of disenchantment—​here in the text of someone whom many in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would celebrate as a historicist before his time—​it eludes us. Dacier, Hardouin, and Vico might have had no time for someone like Dares Phrygius, but not always for reasons that would comfort us.

An American Postscript: Thomas Jefferson and the “Dull” Dares Giambattista Vico did not follow the conventional wisdom on most things, yet in at least one area he agreed with what had become a growing consensus: Dares Phrygius belonged to the “library of imposture.” Nonetheless, at some point later in the eighteenth century, the impostor made his way across the Atlantic. Thomas Jefferson, who assembled one of the largest libraries in North America, acquired a copy.64 He did not think highly of the Phrygian. The future president 61. Vico, New Science 766, trans. Bergin and Fisch, 291. 62. Vico, New Science 307, trans. Bergin and Fisch, 90. 63. Vico, New Science 13 and 369–​70, trans. Bergin and Fisch, 9 and 112–​14. 64. Jefferson’s library catalog indicates that he owned a copy of Dares and Dictys among the books he did not sell to the Library of Congress. Its location remains unknown today. See E. Millicent Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, 1952), 61. Jefferson also owned and annotated a copy of John Lydgate’s Troy Book, an English verse translation of Guido delle Colonne. In it he remarked upon the sheer number of verses in the poem. See John Lydgate, The Auncient Historie and Onely Trewe and Syncere Cronicle of the Warres

30

330

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

corresponded at length with the English chemist and religious freethinker Joseph Priestley, who had recently immigrated to the United States. In a letter dated January 18th, 1800, just one year before he would become the third president of the United States, Jefferson wrote extensively about his plans for the future University of Virginia, enumerating subjects for his proposed curriculum from chemistry, zoology, and agriculture to politics and ethics.65 Just a few days later, on January 27th, he wrote to Priestley again with an apology. He had mistakenly omitted the classics and ancient languages, which he then proceeded to praise: I think the Greeks & Romans have left us the purest models which exist of fine composition, whether we examine them as works of reason, or of style and fancy. . . to read the Latin and Greek authors in their original is a sublime luxury; and I deem luxury in science to be at least as justifiable as in architecture, painting, gardening or the other arts. I enjoy Homer in his own language infinitely beyond Pope’s translation of him, and both beyond the dull narrative of the same events by Dares Phrygius, and it is an innocent enjoyment.66 For Jefferson, the most noteworthy thing about Dares was not that he was fake but rather that he was dull. And he was derivative too, perhaps even more derivative than Alexander Pope’s English translation, which Pope had based in part upon Dacier’s French. Perhaps Jefferson—​who famously “rationalized” his personal copy of the Gospels, excising miraculous and metaphysical content from the story of Jesus, just as Dares had claimed to rationalize mythological content from Homer’s Iliad—​took Troy’s fabulous nature as a given. Perhaps he did not think that its lack of historicity required overt restatement. Dares was not to be faulted for faking history, but for failing at the proper requirements of literature. He could not provide that “sublime luxury” or “innocent enjoyment” of a belletristic sort that Jefferson found not only in ancient poetry, but also in the pursuit of architecture and painting, and even gardening. Jefferson recognized Dares as a barrier to his proper enjoyment of antiquity’s prince of poets. Perhaps this judgment was uncharitable, but it was prophetic. We began this story in the Middle betwixte the Grecians and the Troyans (London, 1555),now Library of Congress, Sowerby 4276, rear flyleaf: Jefferson exclaims, “This book contains about 28000 verses!” 65. Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, January 18, 1800. See The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Vol. 31, 1 February 1799–​31 May 1800, ed. Barbara B. Oberg (Princeton, 2004), 319–​23. 66. Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, January 27, 1800. See The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Vol. 31, ed. Oberg, 339–​41. On Jefferson’s reception of antiquity, see Thomas Jefferson, the Classical World, and Early America, ed. Peter S. Onuf and Nicholas P. Cole (Charlottesville, 2011).

31



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

331

Ages, when one often read Dares but never Homer. Today we still read Homer, but almost never Dares. “Innocent enjoyment” not only required the avoidance of dull texts; it also meant not thinking too much about history. Jefferson did not care for those debates over precisely when or where someone like Homer had lived. Unlike Vico and others, he did not see any need to identify the “true Homer,” literal or otherwise, with a particular moment in the cultural history of antiquity. In Jefferson’s vast library was a copy of the 1757 edition of the Scottish classical scholar Thomas Blackwell’s Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer. In this treatise, first published in 1736, Blackwell argued that the poet had lived midway between primitive barbarism and the early days of Greek civilization and so had inhabited a kind of Goldilocks moment, just right for the production of epic poetry. Blackwell also influenced one of eighteenth-​century Europe’s most famous forgers, James MacPherson, author of a cycle of ballads he attributed to the imaginary ancient bard Ossian—​a kind of Scottish Homer. Jefferson was normally not a copious annotator, but when reading Blackwell, he felt impelled to enter a lengthy note on the flyleaf, which he excerpted from the philosopher David Hume’s essay “On the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” (See Figure 7.1): A man who would enquire why such a particular poet as Homer existed at such a place, in such a time, would throw himself headlong into chimera, and could never treat of such a subject without a multitude of false subtleties and refinements. He might as well pretend to give a reason why such particular generals as Fabius and Scipio lived in Rome at such a time, and why Fabius came into the world before Scipio. For such incidents as those no other reason can be given but that of Horace: “Genius knows, the companion who governs our natal star, the god of human nature, mortal through each single life, mutable in expression, white and black.”67

67. Thomas Blackwell, An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer: Third Edition (London, 1757), now Library of Congress, Sowerby 30, front flyleaf:  Jefferson, following Hume, cites the following lines from Horace in the original Latin, “Scit Genius, natale comes qui temperat astrum/​naturae deus humanae, mortalis in unum/​quodque caput, voltu mutabilis, albus et ater.” Cf. Hor. Epist. 2.2.187–​89. For the broader context of the passage, in which Hume actually did endorse inquiries into historical causation, see David Hume, “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” in Selected Essays, ed. Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar (Oxford, 1996), 59. On this annotation, see Lucia White, “On a Passage of Hume Incorrectly Attributed to Jefferson,” Journal of the History of Ideas 37 (1976): 133–​35. On Blackwell and Homer, see Simonsuuri, Homer’s Original Genius, esp. 99–​107, and Colin Kidd, The World of Mr Casaubon: Britain’s Wars of Mythography, 1700-​1870 (Cambridge, 2016).

32

332

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Figure 7.1  Thomas Jefferson’s note in his copy of Thomas Blackwell’s Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, in which he copies a passage from David Hume to comment on the futility of historical criticism and cites Horace in the process. Thomas Blackwell, An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer:  Third Edition (London, 1757), now Library of Congress, Sowerby 30, front flyleaf.

According to Jefferson, there were falsehoods and chimeras far more problematic than the Destruction of Troy; Dares merely elicited boredom, not critique. Instead, far more dangerous to antiquity was the new vogue for historicizing it. In this fashion Jefferson sought to separate history and literature: Blackwell could propose theories for the former, but only what Horace had termed an individual’s genius, or guardian spirit, could explain the many mysteries of the latter. Too many and too subtle attempts to ascertain the time, place, and milieu that shaped said genius threatened to destroy the “sublime luxury” of aesthetic experience. This was not so much a quarrel of ancients and moderns but rather a longstanding quarrel—​fought among ancients and moderns alike—​between historiae veritas and truths of an ahistorical, aesthetic nature. It was not all that different from those battles in twentieth-​century literary studies between so-​called New Critics and New Historicists.

3



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

333

Jefferson sought the luxury of aesthetic experience in many places: as a result, while he easily dismissed the Phrygian, he was entirely deceived by a different but equally chimerical antiquity—​in fact, one of the most notorious forgeries of his day. This was none other than Ossian, the supposed Scottish Homer. A quarter century before he wrote Priestley about Homer and Dares, he had written to Charles MacPherson, a relative of James MacPherson, to express his admiration for Ossian and ask if he could see the original Gaelic texts that James had supposedly edited and translated. MacPherson was a latter-​day pseudo-​Nepos or Geoffrey of Monmouth; he too claimed to have translated Ossian’s libri vetustissimi. This would be as if Sallust, unsatisfied with Nepos’ translation, had written back to demand Dares’ original autograph manuscript as well! Jefferson wanted the actual manuscripts not because he was a skeptic who required proof of their authenticity, but simply because he desired the pleasure of reading Ossian in his original Gaelic, much as he savored that “sublime luxury” of reading Homer in his original Greek.68 He told MacPherson’s relation that he deemed this “rude bard of the North” to be nothing less than “the greatest Poet that has ever existed.” He even wanted to learn Gaelic to appreciate Ossian as Ossian himself had written and therefore asked to be furnished with some grammars and dictionaries if MacPherson possessed any. In this fashion Jefferson wished to eliminate intermediaries like MacPherson, much as he wished to eliminate intermediaries like Alexander Pope or Dares Phrygius. Jefferson did not want to date Homer, and presumably he did not want to date Ossian either: it was enough to encounter their genius. Perhaps Jefferson would not have dismissed Dares had he seemed less dull. Even a supposed Enlightenment rationalist like Jefferson did not experience disenchantment with the distant past qua past. Just as Hardouin the arch-​skeptic actually accepted Homer, and Vico the debunker of the prisca sapientia still believed in postdiluvian giants, so Jefferson fell headlong for the “rude bard of the North.” All in their own way embraced their favored forms of credulity. * * *

68.  Thomas Jefferson to Charles MacPherson, February 25, 1773. See The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Vol. 1, 1760–​1776, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, 1950), 96–​97: “I understood you were related to the gentleman of your name Mr. James Macpherson to whom the world is so much indebted for the collection, arrangement and elegant translation, of Ossian’s poems . . . I am not ashamed to own that I think this rude bard of the North the greatest Poet that has ever existed. Merely for the pleasure of reading his works I  am become desirous of learning the language in which he sung and of possessing his songs in their original form. Mr. MacPherson I think informs us he is possessed of the originals.” I thank Earle Havens for providing me with this reference.

34

334

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, whether because he was false or because he was dull, Dares slipped into obscurity. He seems to have failed as both a historia and a fabula. His critics maintained that he did not possess the requisite veracity for the former, or the requisite art for the latter. But rather than ascribe this twin failure to Dares himself, we can now see—​with the benefit of hindsight that a reception study affords us—​how the critics who rejected his status as history did so by creating the very categories that enabled their subsequent rejection of his status as literature. In other words, the philological comparisons that severed Dares from Latinity’s Golden Age did not just unmask him as unhistorical; they also rendered him unaesthetic, as long as the Golden Age remained golden. Yet even if we accept the former unmasking, we should not blindly accept the latter. After all, some today might think differently from Jefferson and his aesthetics. Whether or not we find beauty, or even pleasure, in Dares’ formulaic character portraits and minimalist prose, we need not reflexively dismiss him as “dull”—​i.e., as somehow below the requirements of art and literature. Even if readers of the last two centuries have not found the book congenial to their tastes, the Destruction of Troy managed to inspire many for over a millennium before that. And perhaps it may inspire again, especially those who read ludic, parodic, or subversive intent into its contents. Whether or not we appreciate Dares as a historia or a fabula, we must acknowledge that for centuries he was required reading when adjudicating the dueling claims of both. Likewise, even those who deemed his text a forgery never quite explained what kind of forger he was, and we have hardly settled this question today. In the words of the French classical scholar Paul Veyne, with whom we began this book, we must distinguish between “the alleged forgers, who are only doing what their contemporaries find normal but who amuse posterity, and forgers who are regarded as such in the eyes of their contemporaries.”69 We still do not know whether the real author of the Destruction of Troy was doing whatever seemed normal to his contemporaries, let alone who his precise contemporaries even were. This remains the case despite nearly a millennium and a half of the text’s reception. Perhaps there is something unsatisfying about this conclusion. It feels as though we have missed some crucial act in the play:  Dares’ afterlife contained many moments of drama, but he seems to have passed from acceptance and canonicity to rejection and obscurity without the requisite big reveal. This lack of finality actually stemmed from the workings of criticism itself. As argued throughout this book, criticism was inherently comparative, and often ethically comparative, to be exact. It juxtaposed the virtues and vices of

69. Paul Veyne, Did The Greeks Believe in Their Myths?, 105.

35



Ancients and Moderns, Truth and Falsehood

335

authors, texts, and even fictional characters with the virtues and vices of other such authors, texts, and fictional characters, across genres and languages. Philip Sidney, for instance, could not help but compare the false Virgil and the true Dares in terms of their respective moral utility. Hence why the language of moral judgment that medieval exegetes applied to Dares’ depiction of Troy could so easily be co-​opted by early modern humanists and applied to the authorial merits (or demerits) of Dares himself. Hence why poets and forgers alike faced charges of malicious mendacity, even when their specific claims were opposed to one another. Hence why Virgil’s supposedly sycophantic relationship to Augustus became a tool of moral critique aimed at the Aeneid, and Dares’ deficient Latinity became a tool of moral critique aimed not only at Dares himself, but also at those supposedly ignorant readers who could not recognize “bad” Latin for what it was. This language, as Anne Dacier seemed to recognize even if she enthusiastically deployed it nonetheless, sometimes favored polemic over demonstration. It told, yet did not always show. Perhaps some critics even deemed it gauche to demonstrate what, in their view, everyone who knew anything should have grasped as self-​evident. Recognizing the moralizing comparisons at the heart of critical judgment certainly means rejecting those teleological claims that any one epoch—​whether the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or even our own—​ achieved the ultimate triumph of something like critical objectivity. Yet at the end of the day, merely negating a teleology is perhaps as unsatisfactory as finding that Dares disappeared with a whimper and not a bang. What else can we learn from it? As suggested here, Dares’ life and death illuminate the extra-​rational components of all attempts at systematizing human rationality into a set of neat rules and methods, across otherwise unbridgeable epochs both ancient and modern. For better or for worse, this extra-​rationality is not a bug, but a feature, of the enterprise we label criticism. Put another way, the phenomena we associate with the triumph of a certain kind of rational criticism—​philology, empiricism, historicism, autopsy, disenchantment, and the like—​can just as easily serve as agents of falsification, or invention. This is part of what makes them so rich, but also so befuddling. Moreover, when applied to something called antiquity, these tools are often stretched to their limits even as the stakes rise exponentially. We need them to give us someone like the first pagan historian—​a true first—​yet the very intensity of this need ipso facto threatens their efficacy. The distant past is simultaneously too far and too close. Dares' reception illustrates this simultaneous closeness and distance between antiquity and its latter-​day interpreters, much as Dares’ own use of Nepos showed that simultaneous closeness and distance between classical Rome and late antiquity. Whether in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment, scholars and critics never quite knew how the ancient

36

336

T he Fir st Pagan Histori an

Greco-​Roman world understood as pivotal yet amorphous a concept as historical truth, but still they could not help but define their own take on such a concept via the ancient world’s ostensibly oldest historian. This is itself crucial evidence of reception in reverse. Many things separated Joseph of Exeter, pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris, Coluccio Salutati, G.J. Vossius, John Dee, and Giambattista Vico from one another. But the fact that they all used Dares Phrygius to engage in the same debate about historia versus fabula and the moral stakes of each demonstrates a remarkable strand of continuity. We express the terms of this debate through different oppositions:  fact versus fictionality, allegory and the figurative versus the literal, myth versus logos, or history versus literature. Still, whatever the specific terminology they adopted, readers of Dares were thinking through the same dichotomy, even as their particular views on his fides or credibility vacillated. Dares himself, “whoever he was,” had thought through this dichotomy too. In effect, nearly everyone examined in these pages asked variations on the same fundamental question, though they did not always voice it so explicitly. Did antiquity—​that most distant yet most exemplary and canonical of pasts—​ become adulterated as soon as it became “historical?” In his Virgil commentary, pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris suggested that the ancient past contained truths far more profound than mere history. The historical Aeneas, whoever he was, provided raw material that could be remolded to reveal ostensibly timeless moral and metaphysical truths. The empirical truth of these raw materials was at best ancillary, and at worst irrelevant. History, whether in antiquity, the Middle Ages, early modernity, or today, has always had its critics (even if they gradually lost their taste for pseudo-​Bernardus’ Platonizing allegory) who have dismissed it as a comparatively impoverished discourse. Yet awareness of the past’s historicity, however messy or unsatisfactory it might seem, remains essential to the enterprise of criticism, whether in classical studies or beyond. The longevity of Dares’ afterlife is central to understanding equally long-​standing debates over both the contested history of antiquity, and the contested antiquity of history. Indeed, precisely because the first pagan historian embodied the authority of history and antiquity alike, he was alternately challenged and embraced by centuries of interpreters eager to define—​or discard—​the relationship between the two.

37

Acknowledgments

It is a pleasure to record my thanks to the many individuals, institutions, and intellectual communities that have aided and sustained me across the decade I spent working on this project. I must begin by recording my heartfelt gratitude to my PhD advisor, mentor, and friend, Tony Grafton. Tony first opened my eyes to the study of forgery long before I met him. Many years ago as an undergraduate I read Tony’s Forgers and Critics and was immediately transfixed: here was a book that not only brought the technical work of philology alive, but also established a new field of study. It made forged texts—​and the methods used to combat them—​worthy of serious historical analysis. And it did so by combining erudition with empathy—​ especially for some of the more befuddling confusions of past scholarship. In the years since, Tony has shown me that same erudition and empathy in person. He has read numerous iterations of this material (often with impressively speedy turnarounds at the 5am hour!), ceaselessly refined my ideas and arguments, and always shared his encyclopedic knowledge of humanism, forgery, book history, the history of scholarship, and more. In addition, our many shared adventures in rare book rooms have taught me the joy of scholarly detective work. When I first came to Princeton, I had a vague notion of making Dares a chapter or a case study in my dissertation; but one day Tony suggested—​in one of those seemingly offhand yet consequential comments during office hours—​that perhaps Dares deserved a whole book of his own. I thank him for all that he has done to guide that resultant book across the years, and for his inspiring example as a teacher and a scholar. I had first encountered the enigmatic figure of Dares Phrygius several years earlier, during a tutorial on the medieval Virgilian tradition with Jan Ziolkowski. I  thank Jan not only for introducing me to Dares, but also for his unflagging dedication in advising my subsequent BA thesis on the topic. He shared with me his deep knowledge of medieval Latinity, and the example of his scholarship has informed my discussion of the manuscripts, poems, and commentaries examined

38

338

Acknowledgments

in Chapters 2 and 3 of this book. At the same time, Ann Blair introduced me to the study of book history and early modern Europe, and she has generously guided my development as a scholar ever since. I wrote a very early version of the material in Chapters 4 and 5 in her wonderful research seminar “History in Early Modern Europe.” I also wish to thank my other teachers at Harvard who inspired my work on Dares. Andy Romig remains an extraordinarily generous mentor: he introduced me to the study of the Middle Ages and also taught me much about writing, teaching, and the value of academic community. Michael McCormick shared with me his infectious enthusiasm for early medieval history, and it was in a seminar with him that I not only explored new ways of thinking about philology, but also first dissected the Frankish materials in Chapter 2. With deep erudition and insight Christopher Jones likewise introduced me to the world of late antiquity, and in more recent years I have greatly profited from conversations with him in which he kindly shared his own work on forgery. It is also my pleasure to thank Emma Dench, James Hankins, Richard Tarrant, Elly Truitt, and all my other teachers in Classics, History, and History & Literature. I continued my studies of Dares as an MPhil student at Cambridge, where I found an ideal teacher and mentor in Tessa Webber. Tessa introduced me to the richness of the twelfth century, and with her extraordinarily sharp eye she taught me paleography. As we deciphered Latin abbreviations, she also directed my MPhil thesis on Dares’ twelfth-​century fortunes, which laid the groundwork for the materials in Chapters  2 and 3.  I  also owe many thanks to Rosamond McKitterick, who taught me much about the manuscript culture and historical traditions of the early Middle Ages that I explore in Chapter 2. Finally, I thank Clarissa Chenovick, Michael Hetherington, Sara Harris, Megan Welton, and everyone else in the MPhil programs that year for enriching my time at Cambridge. At Princeton, I was fortunate to work with a gifted and generous group of teachers and mentors, who taught me what it means to be a scholar and reader of the past: I would like in particular to thank Adam Beaver, David Bell, Peter Brown, Constanze Güthenke, Bill Jordan, and Jenny Rampling. Helmut Reimitz played an especially important role in this project, from the early days when (before high quality images on Gallica!) we went to Firestone Library to look at a microfilm of BnF lat. 7906. Ever since it has been a privilege to count him as an interlocutor. I have learned a great deal from his own work about how codices and compilations can rewrite history, and I hope that my study of manuscripts in this book can live up to the methods he has pioneered. Last but not least, I remain deeply indebted to my fellow graduate students at Princeton, now colleagues, collaborators, and friends: Alex Bevilacqua, Anna Bonnell-​Freidin, Richard Calis, Alex Chase-​Levenson, Henry Cowles, Paul Davis, Will Deringer, Christian

39

Acknowledgments

339

Flow, Heidi Hausse, Cynthia Houng, Rebecca Johnson, Meg Leja, Valeria Lopez-​ Fadul, Glenn McDorman, Maddy McMahon, Iwa Nawrocki, Andrei Pesic, Jenna Phillips, Paris Spies-​Gans, and Iain Watts. At Stanford, I thank Lanier Anderson and JP Daughton, the co-​directors of the Mellon Fellowship, and Caroline Winterer, the director of the Humanities Center, for fostering such a generous and vibrant intellectual community. Paula Findlen warmly welcomed me to the History Department and to Stanford’s early modern community, and I am especially grateful to her for discussing with me her own work on forgery and the early modern invention of the Middle Ages. It is also a great pleasure to thank Anton Matytsin for historiographical comradery. Long after we left Palo Alto, my subsequent collaborations with Anton have taken me across the Republic of Letters, from Amsterdam and Oxford to Denver and Edinburgh: conversations with him on the history of history, and his own work on Pyrrhonism, have inspired my approach in Chapter 6 and the Conclusion. Finally, I wish to record my thanks to Lucy Alford, Anne Austin, Brian Brege, Giovanna Ceserani, Mackenzie Cooley, Fred Donner, Dan Edelstein, Marisa Galvez, Allie Kieffer, Christopher Krebs, Tom O’Donnell, John Mustain, Alex Statman, and Luke Sunderland. At NYU, I thank the directors of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, Roger Bagnall and Alex Jones, for making ISAW such an exciting and innovative place to study antiquity. Colleagues, friends, and students at both ISAW and NYU’s Gallatin School, where I  taught a seminar on the theme “Ancient vs Moderns,” enriched my time in New  York, including Emily Cole, Robert Hoyland, Gina Konstantopoulos, Maya Maskerinec, Franziska Naether, Stacy Pies, Andy Romig, Connor Sedelak, and Laura Slatkin. I am also indebted to all the participants in my ISAW seminar on classical reception studies, where we discussed many topics related to this book. My study of Dares could not have been completed without my year spent at Rice University’s Humanities Research Center, as a participant in the seminar “Forgery and the Ancient.” I  owe special thanks to John Hopkins and Scott McGill, the directors of the seminar, not only for their friendship and good humor, but also for doing so much to advance our understanding of forgery. Scott’s own work, on everything from Roman notions of plagiarism to the reception of the Virgilian tradition, has left its mark on these pages. I am also grateful to my fellow “forgers” for their generosity and their insights, including Jay Forde, Chris Hallett, Katie Langenfeld, Alex McAdams, Erin Thompson, and all the guest speakers who joined us from elsewhere. And I  thank everyone else who made my time at Rice so stimulating, especially Allie Kieffer, Andrew Kraebel, Lis Narkin, Sebastian Schmidt, and Christine Wehrli.

340

340

Acknowledgments

I feel extremely lucky to have found such a welcoming and vibrant home in the Classics Department at USC. It is a pleasure to record my thanks to all my colleagues, not only for their warmth and friendship, but also for making the study of antiquity so expansive and dynamic: Afroditi Angelopoulou, Brandon Bourgeois, Tony Boyle, Vincent Farenga, Christelle Fischer-​Bovet, Lucas Herchenroeder, Susan Lape, Claudia Moatti, Stefano Rebeggiani, Danny Richter, Alex Roberts, Greg Thalmann, and Ann Marie Yasin. I owe special thanks to Greg, Christelle, and Ann Marie for all their hard work and support as department chairs. I regret that the late Tom Habinek did not live to see this book in print, but I  thank him posthumously for his intellectual generosity and our conversations about this project. I am indebted to my students for all that they have taught me, especially the members of my Fall 2019 graduate seminar: Claire Mieher, AnnMarie Patterson, Tyler Patterson, and Victoria Perez. And I thank Ryan Prijic for his unfailing assistance in all things. I have also been fortunate to enjoy a richly interdisciplinary intellectual community at USC: I thank especially David Albertson, Emily Anderson, Susanna Berger, Daniela Bleichmar, Joe Boone, Eva Buechel, Cavan Concannon, Jason Glenn, Deb Harkness, Heather James, Anna Krakus, Rebecca Lemon, Peter Mancall and the Early Modern Studies Institute, Maya Maskerinec, Danielle Mihram, Melissa Miller, Jason Nguyen, Greta Panova, Nathan Perl-​Rosenthal, Lisa Pon, Hector Reyes, Jay Rubenstein and the Center for the Study of the Premodern World, and Jake Soll. Over the last decade many across the respublica literaria have shared their wisdom on these and related topics, whether in conversations, seminars, on conference panels, through references shared, emails exchanged, edits given, or scholarly conviviality over meals or drinks. I would like to thank Nate Aschenbrenner, Chris Baswell, Stefan Bauer, Katie Birkwood, Jackie Burek, Shane Butler, Michael Clarke, Stephen Clucas, Julia Crick, Surekha Davies, Greti Dinvoka-​Bruun, Rowan Dorin, Theo Dunkelgrün, Moti Feingold, Alex Forte, Ulrich Groetsch, Justin Haynes, Nick Hardy, Sundar Henny, Alfred Hiatt, Joseph Howley, Boyda Johnstone, Jakub Kabala, Bob Kaster, Jill Kraye, Dmitri Levitin, Pam Long, Sue Marchand, Javier Martínez, Peter Miller, Stuart McManus, Ann Moyer, Larry Norman, Anthony Ossa-​Richardson, Ada Palmer, Irene Peirano Garrison, Nick Popper, Eleá de la Porte, Larry Principe, Jake Ransohoff, Levi Roach, JB Shank, Bill Sherman, Erin Shreiner, Pamela Smith, Adele Tutter, Michael Tworek, Neil Weijer, Thomas Wallnig, Leah Whittington, and Jessica Wolfe. I owe a special thanks to Earle Havens and Walter Stephens for all that they have done to promote the study of forgery, especially through Johns Hopkins’ Bibliotheca Fictiva. More specifically, Earle has shown me how to use marginalia and annotations to illuminate the history of forgery, and Walter has helped guide me down the wonderful rabbit hole that is Annius of Viterbo’s Antiquities, discussed in Chapter 4.

341

Acknowledgments

341

I wish to acknowledge the colleagues and institutions that invited me to present aspects of my work on Dares over the years, and for the invaluable suggestions that I received from audience members on these occasions. These include the Singleton Center for the Study of Pre-​Modern Europe at Johns Hopkins (Earle Havens, Walter Stephens, and Janet Gomez), the Department of English at Penn (Emily Steiner and Jackie Burek), the Department of Classics and the Interdisciplinary Working Group for the Study of Antiquity, Yale (Irene Peirano Garrison and James Nati), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard (Ann Blair and Leah Whittington), the Humanities Research Center, Rice (Scott McGill and John Hopkins), the Virginia Fox Stern Center and Department of Classics, Johns Hopkins (Earle Havens and Shane Butler), the University of Exeter (Levi Roach and Jennie England), and the Committee for the Study of Books and Media, Princeton (Tony Grafton and Jin-​Woo Choi). In addition, I  received invaluable feedback from audiences at conferences and other gatherings at Cambridge, Reading, Columbia, Penn, Swansea, Toronto, NYU, and SUNY Binghamton. I also thank all the rare book and manuscript librarians who assisted my research on Dares over the years, especially the staff at the Bodleian and British Library, where I spent many memorable summers. I would like to thank the publications in which my previous work on Dares appeared, and the editors and reviewers who engaged with my work and immeasurably improved it in the process: these include Viator (Vol. 42, 2010), Journal of the History of Ideas (Vol. 72, 2011), the Virgil Encyclopedia (Richard Thomas and Jan Ziolkowski, 2013), the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum (Vol. 11, Greti Dinvoka-​Bruun, 2016), and Animo decipiendi: Fakes, Forgeries, and Issues of Authenticity in Classical Literature ( Javier Martínez, 2018). I gratefully acknowledge the various libraries that kindly allowed me to reproduce images in these pages: the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the British Library, London; the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC; Houghton Library, Harvard; the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; the Royal College of Physicians, London; and the Wellcome Library, London. A special thanks to the Rare Books Division of the Princeton University Library for generously reproducing the book’s cover image of Fortunio Liceti’s Trojan horse (discussed in Chapter 6). For financial support that enabled my research at Dares, I thank the Herchel Smith Scholarship, the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London, the Scaliger Institute at the University of Leiden, Houghton Library at Harvard, the Princeton History Department, the Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities at Stanford, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, the Humanities Research Center at Rice University, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the University of Southern California.

342

342

Acknowledgments

It has been a pleasure to work with Stefan Vranka and his entire team at Oxford University Press. From the early days when Dares was merely a book proposal to the final stages of production, Stefan has brought this project to life with professionalism, care, and enthusiasm, and his comments have greatly improved the book. I  also thank Rajakumari Ganessin, project manager at Newgen, for guiding the book through the production process, and Felice Whittum for her work preparing the index. Finally, I wish to record my myriad debts to Kristine Haugen, who subsequently revealed herself to me as one of the readers of the manuscript. Kristine delved deeply into every page and every footnote. From her expertise in technical matters of ancient chronology and her insights into Latin poetry to her own brilliant work on early modern classical scholarship, she was an ideal interlocutor for Dares and his long afterlife. The care she devoted to the manuscript has incalculably improved the final version. I owe the greatest thanks to all my friends, family, relatives, and loved ones for their encouragement, support, laughter, and good cheer. My mother, father, and sister have encouraged me always: they have taught me the joy of ideas, the pleasures of language, and—​as Dares would surely appreciate—​the importance of countless inside jokes. Plus, with her keen eye for language and style my mom heroically (and on a tight deadline!) helped copyedit the final manuscript. I dedicate this book to the three of them.

34

Index

Figures are indicated by f following the page number For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages.   acta diurna,  15–​16 ad fontes, 1–​2, 10, 34–​36, 294–​95. See also Renaissance Aeneas. See exemplarity; Trojan War; Troy: betrayal of afterlife antiquity, 35, 38–​39, 63, 79–​80 Dares, 4–​6, 23, 31–​32, 35–​36, 40–​41, 46–​48, 53–​54, 139, 160, 167, 169, 291–​92, 334, 336 Joseph’s Iliad,  268–​69 allegory, 12–​13, 126–​27, 128, 132–​35, 139, 145–​46, 149, 156, 157–​58, 165, 292–​93, 307, 323–​24, 335–​36. See also fable; history anachronism (as tool of criticism), 27, 28–​29, 175, 240, 269–​70, 271, 281–​ 82, 298–​99, 309 ancients versus moderns. See quarrel of ancients and moderns annales. See history Annius of Viterbo, 11, 182–​99, 200–​1, 209, 217–​19, 224–​25, 228–​29, 233, 234–​35, 239–​40, 252, 254–​55, 257–​ 58, 284, 289–​95, 309, 310, 329

annotation. See marginalia anonymity, 33, 70–​71, 82–​83, 86, 108, 109–​10, 125, 135, 155–​56, 158–​59, 231, 264–​65, 301–​3,  304 antiquarianism, 51–​52, 65, 74, 177, 181–​82n.26, 183n.28, 189, 263–​66, 292–​93,  307 antiquity authority of, 2–​3, 175–​76, 177, 181, 189–​90, 193–​94, 198–​99, 205–​7, 214, 221, 225–​26, 228, 231, 248–​49, 306, 320, 321, 322, 324–​26 conceptions of, 2, 4–​5, 6, 8–​9, 29–​30, 31–​32, 80, 150–​51, 183, 185–​86, 188–​89, 198–​99, 204–​5, 209, 279–​ 80, 286, 294–​95, 314–​15, 326–​27, 331, 332 construction of, 20, 55–​56, 58–​59, 126, 254–​55, 281–​82,  285 critique of, 26, 27, 29, 70, 239–​40, 248–​49, 251, 267–​68, 280–​81, 282, 287–​88, 291, 307–​8,  313–​14 deep, 58–​59, 188–​89, 224–​25, 239–​40, 286, 287–​88, 314–​15, 320 Greek, 56, 75–​76, 212, 221, 229–​30

34

344

Index

antiquity (Cont.) late, 59–​61, 70–​71,  90–​91 Latin, 58, 120, 194 modernity and, 1–​2, 6–​7, 10, 24, 32, 140, 150, 151, 212, 239, 251, 253, 306, 308–​9 (see also quarrel of ancients and moderns) Near Eastern, 230–​31 reception of, 32–​41, 63, 79–​80, 83, 86, 129, 164, 174, 180–​81, 254, 268–​69, 290, 297, 301–​3, 335–​36 Roman, 75–​76, 103 tragic narrative and, 3, 80–​81, 235 apocrypha, 8, 170–​71, 172–​73, 175, 176, 197–​98, 293–​94, 295, 304 argumentum, 46–​49, 51, 315–​16 ars historica, 218–​19,  246–​47 auctoritas, 77–​78, 141, 158–​59 Auerbach, Erich, 31–​32, 127–​28 Aulus Gellius, 51, 63–​191, 197–​98, 199 authenticity affirmations of, 200–​9, 292–​93 anxiety over, 4 claims of, 30–​31, 277 conception of, 2–​3, 11, 12, 13, 306 debates about, 1–​2, 40–​41, 174, 182, 189–​90,  294–​95 judgment against, 8–​9, 169, 215, 218, 236, 251, 255, 285, 306, 310 quest for, 1, 3 authorial intent, 2–​3, 8, 12–​13, 58, 66, 71–​ 72, 101–​2, 122–​23, 133, 134, 157–​58, 188, 246, 307, 312 authorship, 9–​10, 11–​13, 100–​1, 167, 181, 191–​92, 228, 255–​56, 257–​59, 260–​ 63, 265–​66,  274–​75 autopsy. See eyewitnessing    Babylon, 52–​53, 182–​84, 186–​87, 218–​19, 285, 320 barbarism (as literary concept), 2, 16–​17, 35–​36, 175–​76, 194–​95, 198–​99,

204–​5, 221, 252–​53, 263–​64, 266–​ 69, 285, 286–​87, 288–​89, 291, 298, 318–​19, 320–​21, 327–​29,  331 Barreiros, Gaspar, 193–​200, 202, 209, 217, 218–​19, 224, 232, 234–​35, 237–​38, 240–​41, 242, 243–​44, 246, 247, 252, 257, 289, 297, 309, 312 Benedictines, 29, 95–​96, 118, 121, 153, 200–​2, 306–​7, 310, 322 Benoît de Sainte-​Maure, 125, 139–​42, 146–​47, 155–​56, 159, 160, 161–​62, 165–​66, 176,  294–​95 Berosus (and pseudo-​Berosus), 182–​84, 186–​89, 193–​94, 195–​96, 198–​99, 218–​19, 228–​29, 232, 234–​35, 289, 309. See also Annius of Viterbo biblical criticism, 9–​10, 24, 32, 52–​53, 127, 134–​35, 183, 191, 232, 237, 295–​96, 311–​12, 313, 320, 324 bibliography, 182, 200–​1, 211–​12, 215–​16, 217–​19, 220f, 220, 232–​40, 252, 256–​ 57, 263–​64. See also encyclopedias and encyclopedists biography, 63, 71, 268–​69 Bodin, Jean, 38, 218–​20, 220f, 233–​34,  257 book history (history of reading), 33–​35, 38, 79–​80n.3 Bossuet, Jacques-​Bénigne, 28, 29–​30, 34–​35,  286–​87    canons (canonicity) ancient, 11, 21–​22, 23, 30–​32, 45–​46, 53–​54, 63–​64, 66, 125, 134–​35, 184, 198–​99, 216, 233, 235–​36, 263, 267–​ 68, 290, 336 Christianity and, 9–​10, 232, 240 criticism and, 180–​81, 184, 198, 233, 235–​36,  248 Dares in, 231–​32, 240, 246, 248 fakes in, 10, 23–​24, 191, 195, 198, 209, 254, 272–​73, 280

345

Index formation of, 2–​3, 10, 22–​23, 36–​37, 39, 80–​81, 129–​30, 216, 272–​73,  274–​75 Latin, 194–​95, 238–​39,  242–​43 medievalism and, 65–​66, 263 vernacular,  193–​94 Cassiodorus, 44, 59–​60, 80, 90–​91 Catholicism, 6–​7, 28, 29, 232–​33, 234–​35, 240, 291–​92, 297–​98, 301–​3,  313–​14 Cato the Elder, 98–​101, 117–​18, 120, 174, 182–​83, 185, 187–​88, 228, 255–​56, 271 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 40, 101–​2n.78, 139, 166–​67, 169–​70,  284 Christianity and Christians allegory and, 126–​29, 139 Dares and, 6–​7, 54–​55, 126 empire and, 92–​93 forgeries and, 232, 233, 236–​37 history and, 28, 52–​54, 62, 83, 84–​85, 188–​90, 238–​40, 287–​88,  296 late antiquity and, 58–​60, 63–​64,  281–​82 New Testament canon, 9–​10, 191 paganism and, 6–​7, 43–​44, 50–​51, 70, 120–​21, 131, 149, 197–​98, 297–​98 poetry and, 165 Troy and, 65–​66, 70, 152–​53, 324–​25 chronology, 4, 38, 52–​54, 61–​63, 78–​79, 88–​89, 112–​13, 194–​95, 197, 200–​1, 214–​16, 218–​20, 225–​31, 234–​35, 236, 239–​40, 242, 251–​52, 268–​69, 282, 291, 305, 317, 327–​28 Cicero, 29, 30–​31, 35–​36, 40, 44, 48–​51, 59–​60, 63–​65, 76, 114–​15, 169–​70, 179–​81, 191, 194–​95, 197, 198–​99, 205–​7, 218, 240–​42, 243–​45, 246, 265–​66, 298–​99,  306–​7 Ciceronianism, 63–​64, 179, 180, 194–​95, 199, 243, 244–​45, 265–​66 classics, 10, 32–​33, 35, 38–​39, 329–​30. See also canons codices. See also manuscripts antique, 3

345

codicology and, 33–​34 Dares and, 78–​79, 89, 96, 108, 111, 117, 118–​19, 142–​43, 163–​64, 270, 312 early modern print and, 231 medieval, 78–​81, 106–​7, 231 readers’ experience of, 191 commentary, 67–​68, 70–​72, 113–​14, 130–​ 39, 142–​43, 158–​59, 160, 185, 186, 194–​95, 201–​2, 245–​46, 257–​58, 263–​64, 268, 273–​74, 275, 278–​79, 281–​82, 288–​89, 314–​16, 318–​19, 321, 336 comparison (as hermeneutic tool), 57–​58, 175, 181–​82, 197, 232, 252, 278, 279–​ 80, 305, 311, 317, 334–​35 compilation, 77–​79, 118–​19, 185, 215–​16, 228, 231, 248–​49, 253, 274–​75,  279–​80 Constantine, 52–​53, 175, 281–​84. See also Donation of Constantine contextualization, 58, 111–​12, 127, 134, 155–​56,  252–​53 Counter-​Reformation. See Reformation Creation (biblical), 50, 122, 200–​1, 218, 227,  327–​28 credulity, 24, 26, 27, 164, 167–​68, 180–​81, 182, 224–​25, 240–​41, 309, 333 criticism authorship and, 12, 191, 272–​73, 274–​75,  281–​82 biblical, 190 categories and, 180–​81 forgery and, 11, 25, 172–​73, 182–​99, 310,  315–​16 higher, 189–​90,  232–​40 historical, 291–​92, 300–​1, 313, 332f, 336 history of, 2–​3, 4–​5, 26, 122–​23, 136–​37, 167–​68, 169–​70, 174, 215, 219–​20,  255 humanist, 175–​76, 180, 248–​49, 254,  311–​12 moral, 5–​6, 157, 192–​93, 334–​35

346

346 criticism (Cont.) objectivity and, 4, 8–​9, 10 philological, 254–​55, 258–​59, 309 polemical,  308–​9 rejection of, 295 Curtius, Ernst Robert, 124–​25n.17,  150–​51    Dacier, Anne, 314–​29 Dante, 165, 169–​70, 193–​94 deception. See also forgery authorial, 2–​3, 6, 8, 20, 122–​23, 129, 182–​83, 198, 234–​35, 240–​41, 254, 312, 333 literary depictions of, 69–​70, 157, 163–​64,  275–​76 religious, 239 Dee, John, 202–​5, 206f, 209, 214, 215, 293, 319–​20,  335–​36 Della Porta, Giambattista, 205–​9, 208f, 215,  222–​23 demythologizing, 16, 204, 305. See also myth; rationalization; Weber, Max Dictys of Crete Aeneas and, 67–​68 compared to Dares, 28–​29, 252–​55, 275–​84,  318–​19 criticism of, 170–​73, 180, 184–​85, 186, 187–​90, 195–​96, 198, 235–​36, 237–​ 40, 247, 328 literary devices of, 22–​23, 203 lost book trope and, 103 model for Dares, 18–​19 overview of, 54–​65 print versions, 228, 230–​31, 233–​34, 260–​63,  321 reliability of, 26, 175, 176–​77, 201–​2, 204–​5, 219–​20, 220f, 226–​27,  274–​75 revisionism and, 129 uses of, 161–​62, 164, 166, 285–​96,  314–​16

Index Diodorus Siculus, 4, 188–​89, 229–​31, 232, 235–​36, 240, 252, 272–​73 disenchantment. See Weber, Max Donation of Constantine, 5, 6–​7, 174–​75, 181, 182, 184, 195–​96, 241–​42, 244–​45, 281–​82, 284. See also Constantine; pseudepigrapha; Valla, Lorenzo    early modernity, 1–​2, 4, 6–​7, 11, 25–​26, 30, 39–​40, 47–​48, 76, 113–​14, 167–​ 68, 180–​81, 211–​12, 248–​49, 255–​56, 277–​78, 287–​88,  336 Egypt, 21–​22, 43–​44, 131, 157–​58, 182–​84, 186–​87, 290, 291–​92,  308–​9 elision. See meter elite culture, 36–​37, 165, 194–​95 empire, 66, 75–​76, 92–​93, 96, 105–​ 6, 221, 243–​44, 266–​67, 280, 281–​82,  303–​4 empiricism, 47–​48, 49, 125, 211–​12, 220–​25,  301 encyclopedias and encyclopedists, 43, 44, 46, 51, 110–​11, 185–​86, 215–​16, 218–​20, 231, 235–​36, 246–​47, 248–​ 49, 254, 256–​58, 260–​63, 274–​75, 283–​84, 321. See also bibliography Enlightenment, 4, 23, 26, 27, 32–​33, 150–​ 51, 255, 304, 305–​6, 308–​9, 311–​12, 321–​29,  334–​36 epitomes and epitomization, 2, 54–​55, 57–​58, 96, 100, 110–​11, 130, 213, 269–​71, 272–​73, 275, 318 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 186, 190–​93, 194–​95, 197–​99, 205–​7, 209, 215, 223–​24, 232, 237, 239, 241–​42, 248–​ 49, 258–​59, 266–​67, 282, 295, 306, 309,  311–​12 ethics, 6, 117–​18, 124, 125, 126, 129–​30, 148–​49, 161–​62, 167, 181–​82, 191–​ 92, 205–​7, 239–​40, 254, 300–​1, 329–​30,  334–​35

347

Index etymology, 43, 44, 82, 87–​88, 93–​94, 97–​98, 104, 106–​7,  108–​9 Euhemerism, 25, 127. See also demythologizing; rationalization Eusebius, 28, 51–​54, 61, 65–​66, 81–​82, 91–​92, 100, 105, 107, 120, 121, 127–​ 28, 178–​79, 185–​86, 188–​89, 201, 227, 230–​31, 235, 238–​40, 244–​45. See also Jerome exemplarity Aeneas and, 108–​9 classical canon and, 263 Dares and, 114–​15, 121, 126, 205–​9 Dictys and, 176–​77, 280 fiction and, 31–​32, 160 Homer and, 253, 327–​28 moral, 128, 129–​30, 157–​58, 161–​62, 181, 205–​7, 305, 307 Nepos and, 242–​43, 258–​59 texts, 3, 90–​91, 235–​36 theory of history, 30, 38–​39, 91–​92, 149, 212–​13, 225, 300–​1, 336 Troy and, 34–​35, 57–​58, 119, 120–​21, 123–​24, 138, 177, 178, 315–​16 truth and, 125, 179–​80, 211 eyewitnessing, 141, 147–​48, 158–​59, 191–​ 92, 221, 223, 224–​25, 305    fable (fabula). See also allegory; figmentum; history falseness and, 8, 133–​34, 149, 257–​58,  290 fiction and, 30, 64, 214–​15 history vs. 25, 27, 46, 48, 73–​74, 106–​7, 113–​14, 124–​25, 134–​35, 138–​39, 150, 165–​66, 177, 187–​88, 207–​9, 226, 253, 280, 286–​88, 296, 300–​1,  319–​20 nature vs. 47 persistence of, 167–​68 poetry and, 51–​52, 161, 211, 297–​98,  315–​16

347

refutation of, 145–​46, 151, 157–​58, 300–​1,  325 fakes. See forgery falsehood. See deception; fable; forgery figmentum, 8, 106–​7, 131–​32, 133, 135–​37, 146–​47, 154–​56, 167, 187–​88, 195–​ 96, 198, 247, 279–​80, 297–​98, 300–​ 1, 305, 315–​16. See also fable “firsts,” 43–​44, 94–​95, 178, 179, 186–​87, 227, 231, 233 forgery. See also deception; Grafton, Anthony afterlife and uses of, 25, 39–​40, 63, 128–​29, 211–​12, 257–​58, 277–​78,  334 anxiety and, 322 authorship and, 13 criticism and, 5, 11, 23–​24, 25, 174, 182–​99, 233, 309, 322–​23 definition, 2, 8–​9, 11, 136–​37, 334 history of, 3, 4, 9–​10, 174, 224–​25 lost book and, 3–​4 persistence of, 4–​5 refutation and, 6, 224–​25, 237–​38, 306–​7,  325–​26 Franks, 65–​66, 74–​76, 81–​94, 95–​96, 104, 107, 109–​15, 173, 185–​86, 200–​1, 207, 238–​39, 301–​3. See also Fredegar; genealogy Frechulf of Lisieux, 91–​94, 95–​96,  110–​14 Fredegar, 81–​88, 91–​94, 99–​100, 101–​2, 110–​11, 112–​13, 185–​86, 200–​1, 230–​ 31. See also Franks Freising, Otto von, 122, 125, 135–​36, 200–​ 1, 270–​71, 300–​1. See also universal history French (Old), 139, 161–​62    genealogy. See also Fredegar; Geoffrey of Monmouth; Troy: Trojan diaspora anti-​Roman,  105–​6 British, 94, 106–​7, 163–​64

348

348

Index

genealogy (Cont.) Flood and, 329 Frankish, 94, 95–​96 Hungarian,  109–​10 Julian gens, 74, 228 language, 327 medieval, 40, 65–​66, 78–​79, 96, 101, 111, 114 Trojan, 94–​96, 97–​98, 103–​4, 111, 112–​ 13, 117–​18, 228, 229, 255–​56, 296 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 101–​9, 118–​19, 126, 129, 135–​36, 142–​43, 152–​53, 163–​64, 178, 179, 184–​86, 209, 224–​25, 229, 230–​31, 238, 301–​3, 310, 325–​26, 333. See also genealogy Gessner, Conrad, 217–​18, 232–​34, 235–​ 36, 246–​47, 257, 260–​64, 269 Golden Age barbarism vs., 199, 288–​89 debunking of, 151 end of, 122–​23, 124, 322–​23 Greek, 221, 225–​26 Latin, 35–​37, 194, 197, 198–​99, 240–​ 46, 248, 258–​59, 268–​69, 317, 334 Roman, 229, 317 Grafton, Anthony, 10–​11, 184, 185–​86 grammar and grammarians, 46–​47, 49, 57–​58, 141–​42, 190–​91, 327, 333 Greek canon, 191, 201–​2, 232, 248, 273, 322–​23,  330 humanists and, 176–​77 language, 16–​17, 21, 52–​53, 105, 130, 141, 233, 264–​65, 286, 327–​28, 333 texts, 19, 22–​23, 54–​55, 56, 57–​58, 211–​12, 215, 217–​18, 227–​28, 229–​30, 269–​70,  273–​74 translation from, 58, 61, 64–​65, 103, 160, 236, 247–​48, 273–​74, 281–​82,  283–​84 Greeks. See also myth; Trojan War Aeneas and, 75–​76, 87, 143, 238–​39, 291, 293

authority and, 43–​44 heroes, 14f, 22, 28–​29, 203, 204–​5, 275 history and, 45, 52–​53, 187–​89, 214–​15, 219–​20, 220f, 246–​47, 274–​75, 290,  318–​19 modernity and, 212 Trojans and, 2–​3, 13–​16, 17–​18, 45–​46, 65–​66, 83, 119, 123–​24, 148–​49, 205–​7,  286–​87 trustworthiness and, 21–​22, 26, 183–​84,  278 Guido delle Colonne, 161–​64, 165–​66, 170–​71, 172–​73, 176,  294–​95    Hardouin, Jean, 29–​30, 34–​35, 192–​93, 306–​8, 309–​14, 321–​29,  333 Hebrew, 127, 217–​18, 312 Hebrew Bible. See Moses hermeneutics, 8, 27, 122–​23, 181, 191–​92, 232, 252, 296, 308–​9, 311 Hermes Trismegistus, 43–​44, 233, 239, 254–​55, 284,  326–​27 Hermeticism, 233, 285. See also Heurnius, Otto Herodotus, 4, 45–​46, 233–​34 Heurnius, Otto, 285–​87, 289, 291–​92, 294–​95, 296, 300–​1, 318–​19,  327–​28 historicism, 25–​26, 30, 177, 300–​1, 321, 329 historiography, 6, 16–​17, 33–​34, 37–​38, 50–​53, 64–​65, 70–​71, 77–​78, 82–​ 83, 86, 101–​2, 103, 127–​28, 131–​32, 137–​38, 139, 158–​59, 200–​1, 219–​20, 221,  224–​25 history. See also exemplarity; myth allegory vs. 126–​27, 128, 133, 134, 165, 307 annales vs., 48–​49, 51–​52, 54, 61, 64–​ 65, 79, 114 fabula vs., 51–​52, 64–​65, 95–​96, 113–​ 14, 124–​25, 126, 128, 130–​31, 167–​68, 178, 205, 224–​25, 226, 280, 290, 307–​8, 321, 328

349

Index history of, 182, 186–​87, 227, 254–​55 prehistory, 107, 285 pseudo-​, 185, 241–​42, 257, 270–​71, 290, 321 science and, 23–​24, 43–​44, 214, 221–​ 22, 267, 328 universal, 28, 53–​54, 65–​66, 81–​82, 91–​ 92, 105, 110–​11, 112–​13, 122, 200–​2, 218–​19, 238–​39, 240, 270–​71, 286–​87,  288–​89 veracity of, 32–​33, 50, 128–​30, 138–​39, 141–​42, 152–​53, 157, 158–​59, 165–​68, 175, 176–​77, 178, 187–​88, 195–​96, 203–​4, 211, 215, 224–​25, 240–​41, 277–​78, 283–​84, 291–​92, 295, 300–​3, 304, 307, 316, 328, 332 Homer. See also quarrel of ancients and moderns authority of, 17–​18, 31–​32, 122, 330 canon and, 39, 201, 330–​31, 333 Christian readers of, 127–​28, 295–​96,  297–​98 criticism of, 21–​1, 30–​31, 61, 125, 139–​ 40, 145–​46, 147–​48, 153, 161, 167, 181, 188, 290 Dares and, 20–​21, 66, 128, 201–​2, 214–​ 15, 259–​60, 278, 290, 306–​7, 319 Erasmus and, 190–​91 gods and, 15, 23–​24, 25, 28, 165–​66 history and, 275–​76, 277–​78, 280 medieval readers and, 130, 269–​71 mendacity of, 25–​26, 29, 155, 187–​89, 198, 204, 253, 257–​58 Nepos and, 62 praise of, 71–​72, 314–​15, 320, 321–​29 pseudonymous authors and, 275, 276–​77,  316 Renaissance reemergence of, 273–​75 Horace, 71–​73, 145, 154, 173, 205–​7, 223–​ 24, 242, 306–​7, 331–​32, 332f, 333 humanism and humanists. See also Petrarch ancient sources and, 170–​71, 174, 177, 243,  288–​89

349 antiquity and authenticity, 175–​76, 306 classical canon and, 80–​81, 184,  198–​99 critique of antiquity, 16–​17, 26, 189–​90,  313 forgery and, 11, 36–​37, 40–​41, 184, 192–​94, 233, 254, 274–​75, 334–​35 Greek and, 176–​77, 215, 283–​84 history and, 30–​31, 178, 179–​80, 181–​82,  300–​1 Latin and, 35–​37, 194–​95, 243, 244–​ 45, 258–​59,  268–​69 poetry and, 212 recovery of antiquity, 1–​2, 3–​4, 254 translation and, 58 triumphalism and, 10, 29, 258–​59

   Ilias Latina, 130, 269, 271 incipit, 100–​1, 111, 158–​59, 163–​64, 255–​ 56, 257–​58, 270. See also manuscripts intellectual history, 37, 150–​51, 211–​12, 215, 292–​93, 305, 306 Isidore of Seville, 6, 43–​55, 61, 64–​65, 79, 80, 81–​82, 83, 94–​95, 96–​98, 97f, 99–​100, 105, 110–​11, 114–​15, 120–​21, 124–​25, 127–​28, 138–​39, 158–​59, 178–​ 79, 186–​87, 215–​18, 223–​24, 227–​28, 235, 257, 259–​60, 288–​89, 293, 296    Jauss, Hans Robert, 33, 79–​80 Jerome, 52–​54, 58–​59, 61–​62, 79, 81–​82, 83, 85–​86, 91–​92, 93–​95, 100, 105, 107, 112–​13, 120, 127–​28, 175, 190–​93, 195–​96, 201, 226, 230–​31, 232, 238–​ 39, 241–​42, 255–​56. See also Eusebius Jesuits, 29, 233–​36, 245–​46, 254–​55, 306–​7,  325–​26 Joseph of Exeter, 125, 142–​53, 144f, 155–​ 56, 157–​59, 161–​63, 166–​67, 178, 180, 188, 191–​92, 193–​94, 195–​96, 211, 251, 252–​53, 254, 255–​69, 261f, 262f, 271, 273–​74, 278–​80, 283–​84, 293–​94, 297–​98, 302f, 305, 308–​9, 314–​15, 321,  335–​36

350

350

Index

Latinity. See also exemplarity critique of, 313, 334–​35 Dares and, 54–​55, 317, 321, 334 Golden Age of, 240–​46, 248, 258–​59, 268–​69,  282–​83 history of, 35–​36, 81–​82, 140–​41, 194–​95, 197–​99, 221, 317 prestige of, 36–​37, 77–​78, 103, 193–​94,  197–​98 vernacular and, 227–​28 Le Clerc, Jean, 309–​14, 321 Leland, John, 263–​66, 268, 298 libri vetustissimi, 294–​95, 312, 333 Liceti, Fortunio, 292–​98, 299, 300–​1, 304, 320, 324–​25 literary devices, 22–​23, 172, 240–​41, 285–​86, 291–​92, 297–​98. See also allegory; comparison; style literary theory, 12–​13, 201–​2, 211. See also authorship Livy, 2, 4, 51–​53, 54, 64, 71–​73, 80, 89, 170–​71, 172, 173, 175, 235, 242. See also Latinity Locke, John, 40, 301, 313–​14 lost book, 3–​4, 17, 18, 103, 140, 141, 182–​ 83, 184–​85, 277, 305    Mabillon, Jean, 309–​15, 328 Manetho, 182–​84,  188–​89 manuscripts. See also codices collection of, 312, 333 culture, 253 physical object, 33–​34, 53–​54, 79, 82–​ 84, 94, 101–​2, 111, 163–​64, 185, 228, 236,  257–​58 readers and, 33, 118, 257–​58, 311–​12, 333 transmission, 18–​19, 40, 58–​59, 78–​79, 80, 81–​82, 89, 100–​2, 173, 270 marginalia, 33–​34, 96, 106–​7, 203–​4, 205, 206f, 211, 259, 264–​65 medievalism, 83–​84, 263, 298

Metasthenes, 182–​83,  234–​35 meter, 154, 155, 160. See also poetry Middle Ages. See also Latinity; manuscripts ancient world, debates about, 4, 23, 39–​40, 77–​78, 113–​14, 150–​51,  273 ancient world, persistence of, 43, 58–​59, 64–​66, 74–​75, 76, 135–​36,  185–​86 ancient world, reception of, 44, 79–​ 80, 110–​11, 126, 129 discrete historical period, 278–​80, 285,  328–​29 early modernity vs., 150–​51, 176–​77, 180–​81, 211–​12, 235, 236 forgery and, 29–​30, 101, 192–​93,  238–​39 Greek and, 229–​30, 330–​31 persistence of, 215, 231, 253, 266–​67, 294–​95,  301–​3 theory of history, 30, 47–​48, 126, 128, 135, 180, 211, 287–​88, 335–​36 Virgil in, 130–​31, 197, 321–​22 misattribution, 60–​61, 98–​99, 120–​21, 174, 191, 243, 246, 251, 254, 255–​ 56, 263, 266, 270, 272–​73, 285, 304, 313 modernity, 1–​2, 24, 36–​37, 39, 150, 151, 308–​9, 317, 324. See also quarrel of ancients and moderns moralism, 4–​5, 30, 57–​58, 98–​99, 117–​18, 120–​30, 138–​39, 145–​46, 147–​48, 149, 154, 157–​58, 162, 166–​67, 177, 181, 192–​93, 195, 205–​7, 209, 239–​ 40, 245, 253, 301–​3, 305, 307, 315–​16, 334–​36. See also exemplarity More, John, 298–​303, 302f, 304, 315–​16,  320 Moses, 6, 43–​44, 45–​46, 50, 54, 83, 94–​95, 121, 127–​28, 178–​79, 183–​84, 186–​87, 188–​89, 218–​19, 227, 296

351

Index myth. See also demythologizing; Euhemerism; fable; Greeks; rationalization; Veyne, Paul; Weber, Max belief in, 27–​28 Christian critique of, 149 history vs., 2–​3, 23–​32, 51–​52, 64–​65, 127, 189–​90, 198–​99, 207–​9, 214–​15, 224–​25, 228, 240, 286–​87,  319–​20 origins and, 74, 105, 201 persistence of, 36–​37, 255 rationalizing of, 25, 28, 47, 67, 149, 151, 280, 295, 307, 319–​20, 321, 330–​31 truth vs., 49, 204–​5, 209    Nachleben. See afterlife Nepos, Cornelius (and Pseudo-​Nepos. See also Homer; Joseph of Exeter; pseudepigrapha acceptance of pseudo-​Nepos, 165–​ 66, 201–​2, 204, 211, 217, 218, 228, 293–​94,  295 anachronism and, 162–​63, 269–​70 biography of, 298–​99 confusion over, 140–​42, 159–​60, 161–​62,  277 criticism and, 295–​96, 309 Dares vs., 209, 240–​46, 247–​48, 252, 278,  280–​81 debunking of pseudo-​Nepos, 35–​36, 196–​97, 253, 283, 288–​89, 317, 321 demythologizing and pseudo-​Nepos, 23–​24, 49, 113–​14,  297–​98 description of pseudo-​Nepos, 16–​19 Dictys and, 282–​83 forgery and, 128–​29, 224–​25 Homer vs., 21, 23, 30–​32, 66, 130, 165–​ 66, 204, 275, 319, 321–​22, 323–​24 imitations of pseudo-​Nepos, 110–​11,  226

351

inaccuracies of pseudo-​Nepos, 89–​91,  90f Joseph of Exeter vs., 146–​49, 263–​69, 271,  297–​98 late antiquity vs. classical antiquity, 51–​53, 54–​65, 198–​99,  335–​36 misattribution, 257–​59, 297, 298–​99,  313–​14 translator of Dares, 96–​97, 102–​3, 218, 259–​63, 269, 274, 299 New Criticism, 209, 254–​55, 295, 311–​12, 313–​14,  332 New Historicism, 332    objectivity, 5, 179–​80, 334–​35. See also criticism origins, Trojan. See Troy Orosius, 96, 100, 121, 122, 130–​31, 200–​1 Ossian, 331, 333    paganism, 6–​7, 120–​21, 164–​65, 297–​98, 329. See also Christianity papacy (popes), 174, 182–​83, 197–​98, 233–​34,  297–​98 parody, 8–​9, 188 patriotism, 263–​64, 298 patristics (patristic canon), 120, 134–​35, 191, 232, 278–​79. See also Latinity periodization, 35–​37, 51–​52, 189–​90, 200–​1, 226, 307 Petrarch, 40, 164–​66, 169–​70, 193–​94, 211,  266–​67 Philo, 182–​83,  191–​92 philology, 1–​2, 11, 25–​26, 28–​29, 35–​37, 40–​41, 58, 139, 167, 175, 180–​82, 190, 209, 215–​16, 232, 233–​35, 240–​41, 242, 243–​44, 245, 248–​49, 254–​55, 258–​59, 291–​92, 298–​99, 309, 334 philosophy, 18–​19, 30, 40, 77–​78, 202–​3, 214, 285, 296, 326–​28. See also Heurnius, Otto

352

352

Index

physicians, 164–​65, 220–​22, 223, 225–​26, 258, 273, 292–​93 physiognomy, 205–​7, 208f, 209, 211 Pindar of Thebes (and pseudo-​Pindar), 269–​73, 275. See also Ilias Latina; pseudepigrapha plagiarism, 9–​10, 298, 300–​1 Pliny the Elder, 29, 43, 96–​97, 178–​79, 183–​84,  306–​7 Pliny the Younger, 201–​2 poetry. See also Homer; Petrarch; rhetoric; Virgil canon, 31–​32,  129–​30 criticism of, 21, 30–​31, 139, 190–​91 Dares and, 30, 40, 66, 102–​3, 117–​18, 146–​47, 195–​96, 205,  259–​60 defense of, 164–​65, 211, 212, 214, 266–​ 67, 314–​15, 322–​23, 325 fables and, 48–​49, 51–​52, 149–​50, 177–​78, 327, 328 history and, 20, 32, 49, 50–​51, 72–​73, 120, 124–​25, 126, 128–​39, 140, 143, 181, 188, 212–​13, 256–​57, 271–​72, 279–​80, 290,  325–​26 imitation and, 129, 255–​56, 297–​98 medieval vs. ancient, 142–​58 medieval and early modern, 261f, 263–​65,  266 prose vs., 26, 160 truth and, 24, 25–​26, 40, 122–​23, 124–​ 25, 127, 150–​51, 166, 259, 275–​76, 323–​24,  334–​35 politics, 65, 66, 76, 82–​83, 114–​15, 133, 169–​70, 174–​75, 177, 204–​5, 209, 273–​74, 280, 300–​3, 304 Possevino, Antonio, 233–​36, 240–​41, 252, 272–​73, 276–​77, 288–​89,  290 postmodernism,  12–​13 print. See also Annius of Viterbo; codices; Dictys of Crete; Ilias Latina; manuscripts afterlives and, 211–​12, 215, 220, 231, 248–​49, 257–​58,  280–​81

culture of, 40–​41, 79–​80 Dares editions, 18–​19, 38–​39, 176–​ 77, 181–​83, 202–​3, 220, 225–​26, 227–​30, 232, 235–​36, 252, 272–​73, 275–​76,  321 errors and, 223–​24 history of, 33–​34 Homer editions, 273–​74, 275 Joseph of Exeter editions, 258–​63, 264–​65, 267, 274, 297, 298 medieval codices and, 230–​31, 255–​56 proliferation of, 215–​16 reading of, 33 prisca sapientia, 254–​55, 285, 291–​92, 318–​ 19, 326–​28, 333 prisca theologia, 233 proof, 6, 18, 147–​48, 159, 198–​99, 265–​66, 286, 313, 333. See also criticism prose. See also poetry Dares’, 12–​13, 15, 16–​17, 26, 30–​31, 78–​79, 141–​42, 143, 147–​48, 155–​56, 165, 201–​2, 260–​63, 264–​65, 271, 298–​99, 328, 334 poetry vs., 125, 135, 212, 213, 258, 327 style of, 57–​58, 243, 257, 268–​69 translations, 159–​60, 257–​58, 263 veracity and, 49, 295 Protestantism, 6–​7, 232–​33, 235, 236, 240, 291–​92,  313–​14 pseudepigrapha. See also Annius of Viterbo; Berosus; Dictys of Crete; Donation of Constantine; Nepos, Cornelius; Pindar of Thebes; Sallust biblical texts, 237 debunking of, 234–​35, 236, 272–​73,  328 definitions, 8 Pope Gelasius, 197–​98 pseudo-​Aethicus Ister,  58–​59 pseudo-​Bernardus Silvestris, 132–​35, 140–​41, 145–​46, 156, 157–​58, 165, 180, 195–​96, 275–​76, 277–​78, 287–​ 88, 293, 296, 325–​26, 327, 336

35

Index pseudo-​Callisthenes,  236 pseudo-​Cato, 99–​100,  271 pseudo-​history, 185, 241–​42, 257, 270–​ 71, 290, 321 pseudo-​Jerome,  120 pseudo-​Philo,  234–​35 pseudo-​Sallust, 17–​18,  63 pseudo-​translators,  58–​59 pseudo-​transmission,  141–​42 Punic, 286, 291–​92, 294–​96, 318–​19 Pyrrhonism, 287–​88, 290, 306. See also skepticism    quarrel of the ancients and the moderns, 34–​35, 40–​41, 150, 193–​94, 253, 267–​68, 308–​9,  332 Quintilian, 48–​49, 64–​65, 76, 126, 137–​38,  191    rationalization, 16, 25–​26, 28, 47, 67–​68, 128–​29, 147–​49, 151, 204, 205, 253, 275–​76, 280, 295, 305, 307, 314–​15, 321, 323–​24, 330–​31. See also demythologizing; Euhemerism reception antiquity and, 23, 55–​56, 174, 306, 307,  308–​9 Dares’, 30, 45–​46, 110–​11, 119, 221, 251–​ 52, 296, 305, 334, 335–​36 field of study, 32–​36, 37–​40 medieval, 77, 79–​80 Nepos’,  63–​64 Petrarch and, 164 reverse, 126, 145–​46, 290, 301–​3,  335–​36 transmission and, 80–​81 Reformation, 232–​34, 305 religion, 6–​7, 9–​10, 24, 54, 63–​64, 65, 149, 190, 239, 240–​41, 301–​3, 311–​12, 324–​25, 329. See also Catholicism; Christianity; Protestantism Renaissance antiquity and, 175–​76, 177, 216

353

authenticity and, 2–​3, 10, 40–​41, 184, 200–​1, 274–​75,  284 authority and, 10, 255, 334–​35 fiction and, 31–​32 misattribution in, 60–​61, 257–​59, 271 periodization of, 169–​70, 278–​79 Petrarch and, 164 print in, 130–​31, 215, 228, 231 quarrel of ancients and moderns in,  150–​51 return to sources, 1–​2, 34–​36, 273 transmission and, 80–​81, 229–​30 Republic of Letters, 305 Republic (Roman), 51–​52, 57–​58, 63–​64, 70–​71, 170,  243–​44 rhetoric anti-​Homericism and, 21–​23, 290 anti-​rhetoric, 103, 135–​36,  179–​80 debunking fakes and, 233–​34 empiricism and, 211–​12, 224–​25 ethopoeia,  137–​38 Greek and, 43–​44 history and, 5, 30–​31, 128–​29, 179–​80 Latin and, 48–​49 morality and, 5 simplicity vs., 78–​79, 102–​3, 110, 126 translatio imperii, 75–​76,  92–​93 Troy as exemplar, 177 Virgil and, 71 rhyme, 142–​43,  266–​67 Rome (ancient), 30–​31, 35–​37, 40, 48–​49, 51–​52, 54, 55–​56, 61, 65–​76, 83–​84, 86, 87–​88, 92–​93, 96, 98–​99, 100, 103, 105–​6, 122–​23, 140, 162–​63, 198–​99, 227, 229, 243–​44, 258–​59, 285, 287–​88, 322–​23, 331, 335–​36. See also Latinity    Sallust, 16–​18, 40, 51–​53, 54, 55–​56, 57–​ 58, 59–​60, 63, 80, 83–​84, 89, 110, 140, 161–​62, 165–​66, 195–​96, 199, 217, 246, 258, 293–​94, 299, 317, 333. See also pseudepigrapha

354

354

Index

Scaliger, Joseph, 233, 236–​41, 246–​47, 248–​49, 254–​55, 272–​73, 286–​89, 291, 295, 311–​12, 315–​16, 326–​27 scholasticism, 2, 110–​11, 164–​65, 186 Scientific Revolution, 211–​12, 224–​25 Second Sophistic, 21, 22–​23, 34–​35, 58–​ 59, 103, 129, 130, 153, 188, 290, 308–​ 9. See also Homer; Latinity; Rome Servius, 44, 46–​48, 49, 51, 63–​65, 71–​74, 76, 93–​94, 98–​99, 111–​15, 122–​23, 124–​25, 131–​32, 133, 155–​56, 173, 180–​81, 275–​76, 277–​78, 293, 300–​ 1, 304, 325–​26 Sidney, Philip, 211–​15, 229–​30, 266–​67, 268–​69, 280, 326–​27,  334–​35 skepticism, 26, 29, 96, 106–​7, 113–​14, 131–​32, 149, 188–​89, 240, 254–​55, 287–​88, 290, 291–​92, 306–​14, 324–​26,  333 Spondanus, Johannes, 273–​78, 293, 294, 298, 300–​1,  321–​22 style, 57–​58, 85–​86, 102–​3, 191–​92, 194–​ 95, 209, 226, 234–​35, 240–​41, 242–​ 43, 244, 245–​46, 267–​68, 282–​84, 300, 313, 318, 330. See also prose    Thucydides, 4, 137–​38 translation. See also Nepos, Cornelius; pseudepigrapha Bible,  84–​85 debunking of, 247, 257–​58, 281–​82,  283–​84 genre, 128–​29, 160, 268–​69 Greek, from, 17–​18, 19, 23, 57–​58, 236, 269 Latin, into, 52–​53, 103, 161, 165–​66, 202, 239, 258, 273–​74, 294–​95 medieval, 34–​35, 159 misattribution, 120, 196, 263 translation of, 56–​57

vernacular, 141–​42, 176, 227–​29, 314–​15,  330–​31 transmission, 29, 54–​55, 78–​81, 141–​42, 181–​82, 222–​24, 272–​73. See also reception treason. See Troy: betrayal of Trithemius, Johannes, 200–​9 Trojan horse, 67–​68, 133–​34, 205, 206f, 266–​67, 293–​94, 295. See also rationalization Trojan War. See also Troy Aeneas’ role in, 72–​74, 87 Christians and, 53–​54, 118–​19, 297 European origins and, 74–​76, 82, 87–​88, 97–​98, 101–​2, 103–​4, 111–​12, 163–​64,  209 events of, 15–​16, 69, 83–​84, 87, 148–​49,  205 eyewitnessing of, 8, 18–​19, 28–​29, 50, 146–​47, 191–​92, 200, 201–​2, 207–​9, 217–​18, 220–​21, 255, 271–​72, 286 history and, 6–​7, 23–​24, 50, 127–​28, 172, 175, 178–​79, 189, 198–​99, 226, 229–​31, 239–​40, 273–​74,  279–​80 Homer and, 17–​18, 21–​22, 61, 324–​25 moralizing and, 154, 156, 157–​58 reception of, 23, 55–​56, 81–​82, 91–​ 92, 101–​2, 108, 110–​11, 136, 137, 200–​1, 240–​41, 260–​63, 264–​65, 269,  270–​71 veracity of, 2–​3, 161, 255, 274–​76, 300,  327–​28 Troy. See also genealogy; Greeks; Homer; pseudepigrapha; Virgil betrayal of, 66–​68, 69–​71, 72–​73, 84–​85, 94, 100, 108, 133–​34, 143, 145–​46, 156, 160, 163–​64, 169–​72, 225,  238–​39 fall of, 53–​54, 66, 72–​73, 81–​82, 88–​89, 99–​100, 102–​3, 122, 134, 158–​59,

35

Index 163–​64, 200–​1, 203–​5, 231, 238–​39, 270–​71, 289–​90, 291–​92,  293 Trojan diaspora, 65–​66, 73–​74, 83–​84, 93–​94, 95–​96, 97–​98, 107, 111–​14,  238–​40 Trojan origins, 74, 81–​101, 173, 201 truth. See authenticity; history; myth; poetry; prose; verisimilitude    universal history. See history: universal    Valla, Lorenzo, 5, 174–​76, 180–​81, 184, 190, 192–​96, 198–​99, 209, 215, 221, 241–​42, 244–​45, 248–​49, 266–​67, 281–​82, 284, 298 Varro, 4, 51–​52, 62, 74, 175, 189–​90, 191, 192–​93, 197–​98, 199, 204–​5, 207–​9, 224–​25, 240, 307 Vergil, Polydore, 178–​79, 180, 186–​87, 227, 231 verisimilitude, 49, 114–​15, 277–​80, 315–​ 16, 318–​19,  323–​24 vernacular, 40, 77–​78, 139–​42, 143–​45, 160–​61, 193–​94, 225–​31, 284, 305. See also translation versification, 78–​79, 273. See also poetry Veyne, Paul, 27–​29, 47, 286–​87, 334 Vico, Giambattista, 285, 321–​30, 331, 333,  335–​36 Virgil allegory and, 133–​34 anti-​Virgilianism, 108–​9, 124, 125, 129–​30, 136–​37, 145–​46, 153, 155–​58, 161, 167, 257–​58, 264–​65, 300–​1, 325–​26,  334–​35 canon and, 29, 31–​32, 39, 59–​60, 242,  322–​23

355

copies of, 3, 89 Dares and, 20–​21, 40, 66, 85–​86, 122, 128, 134–​35, 136–​37, 143, 197, 205, 247, 253, 276–​78, 290, 300, 304 defense of, 165–​66, 212–​14, 268–​69 Middle Ages and, 130–​33, 181, 321–​22 misattribution,  191–​98 printing of, 176 reception of, 24, 44, 47, 69–​74, 77–​ 78, 114, 122–​23, 126–​27, 173 Trojan diaspora, 65–​66, 74, 93–​94, 97–​98, 105–​6, 111–​12, 211,  325–​26 Trojan War, 13–​15, 67, 69, 270–​71, 293 vitae. See biography Vitalis, Orderic, 121, 300–​1 Vives, Juan Luis, 186–​91, 193–​94, 195–​ 96, 198, 199–​200, 202, 204–​5, 207–​9, 214–​15, 217, 218–​19, 224, 227, 232, 234–​35, 237–​38, 247, 283, 289,  291–​92 Volterrano, Raffaello, 215–​18, 220–​21, 232–​33, 257, 259–​60,  263–​64 Vossius, G.J., 246–​47, 248, 251–​52, 254, 274–​75, 283–​84, 288–​89, 311–​12, 316, 317, 321, 335–​36    Weber, Max, 23–​26, 27 William of Malmesbury, 95–​96, 97f, 101–​ 2, 105, 107, 113–​14, 117–​18, 120, 121, 158–​59, 165–​66, 185, 191, 228–​29, 238, 255–​56,  270–​71 writing, antiquity of, 45–​46, 56, 80, 94–​ 95, 178–​79, 285–​86, 291–​92, 310    Xenophon, 182–​83,  212–​13    Zwinger, Theodor, 215–​18, 273–​74

356