Strategie di autoconservazione del mito. La guerra di Troia tra Seconda Sofistica e prima età moderna

This paper investigates the theoretical tenets of one of the most relevant but often overlooked phenomena in Western classical reception: how the Myth of Troy survived and flourished in Europe despite Homer’s disappearance and feeding instead on two pseudo-documentary Latin texts.
My focus is on the two texts circulating under the names of Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius, texts that have come down to us in Latin but were first composed in Greek somewhere between I and II century a. D. Veritable dwarfs on giants’ shoulders, Dictys and Dares defeated Homer, challenged Virgil and have for centuries alimented an enormous mass of fiction and historiography. Various aspects of Dictys’ and Dares’ early modern diffusion and success have been examined, especially in recent times. But the scope of the phenomenon is such, that reckoning with the motives underlining it has become mandatory: we cannot simply ascribe it to the fate’s vagaries. The paper sheds therefore light onto the reasons of such success as well as detailing it throughout the Middle Ages and the Early modern age.