Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

BIOGRAPHY
terms of his testament. The first portion is based directly or indirectly on
Diodorus and Quintus Curtius, i.e. it represents historical rather than legendary
tradition. The second portion corresponds closely to that of the early
versions of pseudo-Callisthenes. The work cannot be dated with certainty,
but belongs to late antiquity rather than to the Middle Ages. All these works
testify to the attraction which the personality and exploits of Alexander — real
or imagined — had for the men of late antiquity. It is no wonder that John
Chrysostom {Ad ilium, catech. 2.5 (2.243E)) upbraided the Christians of
Antioch for using coins of Alexander as amulets.
It should be noted that none of these early Latin versions provided the
starting-point for the rich and varied Alexander-tradition in western European
literature. That honour belongs rather to the Historia de preliis, translated
from the Greek in the middle of the tenth century in Naples by the Archipresbyter
Leo at the behest of Duke John of Campania. The Greek version
used by Leo was akin to that which, via Middle Persian and Syriac translations,
gave rise to the extensive Alexander tradition of the Moslem world.
An example of romantic biography even more remote from reality and
aiming at entertainment rather than instruction, is the Ephemeris Belli Troiani,
'Diary of the Trojan War', attributed to Dictys the Cretan, a companion on
the Trojan campaign of Idomeneus and Meriones. Allegedly written in Phoenician
characters, the work was said to have been discovered by Cretan shepherds
in the age of Nero and transcribed into Greek. The Latin adaptation
is the work of a certain L. Septimius and is dedicated to Q. Aradius Rufinus,
who is probably to be identified with the consul of 311. The book recounts the
story of the Trojan War from the Greek point of view from the seduction of
Helen to the death of Odysseus, with much imaginative detail on the personal
appearance of the heroes and such matters. A papyrus of A.D. 206 contains a
portion of the original Greek Dictys, which Septimius appears to have
translated fairly faithfully. The style is clear and simple, though monotonous.
Occasional poetic or archaic expressions are designed to lend a patina of
antiquity to the work. The ultimate source of Dictys and Dares Phrygius
is to be sought in Hellenistic treatises in which the post-Homeric treatment
of Homeric themes, particularly by the Attic tragedians, was discussed. It
was from Dictys and Dares that the western world in the Middle Ages learned
what it knew of the Tale of Troy. The Greek east, although it had access to
Homer, made much use of the lost Greek originals of Dictys and Dares, which
are reflected in the Antehomerica and Posthomerica of John Tzetzes, the
Chronicle of Constantine Manasses (both twelfth century) and the Trojan War
of Constantine Hermoniakos (fourteenth century).
A similar account of the Trojan war from the Trojan point of view is
attributed to Dares the Phrygian. It covers the period from the death of
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