''Daretis Phrygii Ilias De bello Troiano'' ("The Iliad of Dares the Phrygian: On the Trojan War") is an

epic poem An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. ...

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, written around 1183 by the English poet

Joseph of Exeter Joseph of Exeter was a twelfth-century Latin poet from Exeter, England. Around 1180, he left to study at Gueldres, where he began his lifelong friendship with Guibert, who later became Abbot of Florennes. Some of their correspondence still survi ...

.Mortimer ''Angevin England'' p. 210 It tells the story of the ten year

Trojan War In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has ...

as it was known in medieval western Europe. The ancient Greek epic on the subject, the ''

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odysse ...

'', was inaccessible; instead, the sources available included the fictional "diaries" of

Dictys of Crete Dictys Cretensis, i.e. Dictys of Crete (, ; grc, Δίκτυς ὁ Κρής) of Knossos was a legendary companion of Idomeneus during the Trojan War, and the purported author of a diary of its events, that deployed some of the same materials worke ...

and

Dares of Phrygia Dares Phrygius ( grc, Δάρης), according to Homer, was 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. A work in Latin, purporting to be a transla ...

. When Joseph's text was printed for the first time in 1541, it was actually erroneously attributed to Dares of Phrygia, announced as the long-lost verse version of his story (''quibus multis seculis caruimus'' – which we lacked for many centuries) supposedly put into Latin hexameters by Nepos.

Notes

References

* Mortimer, Richard ''Angevin England 1154-1258'' Oxford: Blackwell 1994

External links

English translation by A. G. Rigg available

Latin edition from 1824
(Internet Archive)

(Bavarian State Library) 12th-century Latin books 12th-century poems Epic poems in Latin Trojan War literature 1183 works {{latin-stub