Omero sconfitto. Ricerche sulla guerra di Troia dall'antichità al Rinascimento

This volume collects three essays dealing with different aspects of the same theme: the endurance and pervasiveness of the Myth of Troy in Western culture and civilization, from Antiquity to the Early Modern Age. The research moves from my interest in the reception of two now obscure Late Latin texts: the “War journals” of Dictys the Cretan and Dares the Phrygian, purportedly direct witnesses of the War of Troy.
The texts were originally written in Greek within the cultural context of the Second Sophistic and they were no more than examples of that Homer-centric production which prevailed at the time. However, Dictys and Dares managed to take medieval and early modern Europe by storm, accrediting themselves as the only reliable source on the topic of the Trojan War. We could easily say that the reception of the Trojan Myth in Europe equals the reception of Dictys and Dares: so the obvious question arises. How could it be that the West, despite the studia humanitatis, placed so much trust and passion in them? The language of their transmission certainly mattered, but the fact is: they were translated into Latin because they were trusted as reliable witnesses, and not the other way around. After all, in the centuries of the disappearance of Greek from Europe, there was a score of revered Latin texts that could be mined on the subject of Troy: from the Aeneid to the Heroids; from the Metamorphoses to the Achilleid.
But compared to these texts Dictys and Dares could claim a double advantage. First of all, the Aeneid and the other texts mentioned did not offer much to a Western medieval reader eager to know the whole story of Troy. All Latin literature dealing with the myth referred in fact its audience to the preliminary knowledge of Homer. Without Homer, Virgil, Ovid and the rest could not but appear partial and dissatisfying on the subject of Troy, whereas Dictys and Dares gave a complete account of the events.
Secondly, Dictys and Dares had the advantage of truth: of history over fiction. They appeared to be the only trustworthy historical sources of seminal events; events that had been disfigured by scores of poets, starting with Homer, by way of blatant fictions.
The first essay in the book thus tries to answer this question and gives a detailed outline of the phenomenon.
The second essay is devoted to Dante, to verify whether the old claim that he did not know the wealth of Trojan legends derived from Dictys and Dares can still stand.
The third essay, finally, deals with another inescapable question: how could it be possible that the return of Homer to the West did not affect the reception and success of Dictys and Dares. Indeed: all data point in the opposite direction and Homer appears as the defeated party by far. The essay investigates the terms of the phenomenon and the conclusions are rather surprising, given our acceptance of the canon that has in Homer the father of poetry.