22 II: Alexandra Madeła (UW), Mapping out mythical Troy: The spaces of Dares Phrygius’ De Excidio Troiae and ancient scholarship on Homer’s geography

Abstract 

Whereas modern audiences tend to treat Homer’s Iliad as predominantly a work of fiction, ancient readers viewed it as a poeticized account of a true historical event, the Trojan War. As such, ancient scholars studied Homer’s epic as a historical source, asking questions about details of the war, such as the landscape of the Trojan plain, or the birthplaces of  Homer’s heroes.

In my talk, I will show that this kind of inquiry into Homer was not limited to scholarly commentaries, but was continued in works of fiction about the Trojan War. One such work is the late antique De Excidio Troiae Historia, which purports to be an eyewitness account of the Trojan War, composed by an eyewitness and participant in the war, Dares the Phrygian. I will demonstrate that De Excidio Troiae addresses many of the questions ancient scholars asked Homer’s geography. What differentiates Dares Phrygius from the author of a scholarly treatise is that a later scholar could only interpret the Homeric evidence, whereas Dares could claim to have firsthand knowledge of the Trojan War.