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Dares Phrygius

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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According to Homer (Iliad, v. 9) a Trojan priest of Hephaestus. He was supposed to have been the author of an account of the destruction of Troy, and to have lived before Homer (Aelian, Var. Hist. xi. 2). A work in Latin, purporting to be a translation of this, and entitled Daretis Phrygii de excidio Trojae historic, was much read in the middle ages, and was then ascribed to Cornelius Nepos, who is made to dedicate it to Sallust; but the language is extremely corrupt, and the work belongs to a period much later than the time of Nepos (probably the 5th century A.D.). It is doubtful whether the work as we have it is an abridgment of a larger Latin work or an adaptation of a Greek original. Together with the similar work of Dictys Cretensis (with which it is generally printed) the De excidio forms the chief source for the numerous middle age accounts of the Trojan legend. (See DICTYS; and O. S. von Fleschenberg, Daresstudien, 1908.)