Dictys Cretensis, i.e.Dictys of Crete (/ˈdɪktɪskriːˈtɛnzɪs/,Classical Latin:[ˈdɪktʏskreːˈtẽːsɪs];Ancient Greek:Δίκτυς ὁ Κρής) ofKnossos was a legendary companion ofIdomeneus during theTrojan War, and the purported author of a diary of its events, that deployed some of the same materials worked up byHomer for theIliad. The story of his journal, an amusing fiction addressed to a knowledgeableAlexandrian audience[citation needed], came to be taken literally duringLate Antiquity.
In the 4th century AD a certain Q. Septimius brought outDictys Cretensis Ephemeris belli Trojani ("Dictys of Crete, chronicle of the Trojan War") in six books, a work that professed to be aLatin translation of theGreek version. Its chief interest lies in the fact that, as knowledge of Greek waned and disappeared inWestern Europe, this and theDe excidio Trojae ofDares Phrygius were the sources from which the Homeric legends were transmitted to theRomance literature of theMiddle Ages.[1]
An elaborateframe story presented in the prologue to the Latin text details how the manuscript of this work, written inPhoenician characters on tablets of limewood or tree bark, survived: it was said to have been enclosed in a leaden box and buried with its author, according to his wishes.
The Greek "name" Eupraxis simply means "right actions", a familiar goal in discussions ofethics, and an amusingly apt name for the finder.
The prologue that characterizes one manuscript tradition is substituted in the other main group of manuscripts with a letter as if written by a Q. Septimius Romanus, to a Q. Arcadius Rufus, in which the writer, giving a condensed version of the discovery tale, informs his friend that, the volume having fallen into his hands, he had been induced, for his own amusement and the instruction of others, to convert it into Latin. The modern editor, Werner Eisenhut,[2] surmises that the two groups, neither of which is to be consistently preferred to the other, represent two published editions inLate Antiquity. There are retranslations into Greek of Byzantine date, embodied in universal histories, of which Smith adds, "We may add to this account, that the writers of the Byzantine period, such asJoannes Malelas,Constantinus Porphyrogenitus,Georgius Cedrenus,Constantinus Manasses,Joannes andIsaacus Tzetzes, with others, quote largely from this Dictys as an author of the highest and most unquestionable authority, and he certainly was known as early as the age ofAelian."
Petrarch's own copy ofEphemeris belli Troiani, his key to Homer, is now the Codex Parisinus Lat. 5690, in theBibliothèque nationale. The first printed edition was early, not after 1471.[3]
Modern scholars were in disagreement as to whether any Greek original really existed; but all doubt on the point was removed by the discovery of a fragment in Greek amongst theTebtunis papyri found byBernard Grenfell andArthur Hunt in 1899–1900.[4][5] It revealed that the Latin was a close translation. The other surprise was the discovery, in the library of conte Aurelio Guglielmo Balleani atJesi,[6] of a manuscript of Dictys, dating to the latter part of the ninth century, that was described and collated by C. Annibaldi in 1907.
For a medieval source on the Trojan War that is uniquely independent of Dictys and Dares, see the "Rawlinson Excidium Troie".
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Dictys Cretensis".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 200.