Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1981, Blaðsíða 23
XIX
kappa” in a chapter - the so-called Epilogue to the Skáldskaparmál
- which is not found in the Uppsala MS and is usually considered to
be an interpolation8. This chapter contains a good deal of Troy
matter and is thought to derive to some extent from Dares Phrygius.
The form taken by the name in Snorra Edda, which must in part be
due to confusion between an insular v and a p, cannot have been
copied from a Latin MS of Dares nor from Tmsl. If it was not taken
from Hb itself, it must at least go back to either a MS belonging to
the Tms2 branch of the stemma (i.e. an interpolated MS) or to a
possible (uninterpolated) intermediary between Tmsl and Tms2.
The Latin source of the translation
De excidio Troiae claims to be a translation from Greek of an
account by one Dares the Phrygian, who is said to have fought at
Troy on the Trojan side. A character by this name does appear in
the Iliad but the book is certainly a forgery; in its present form it
dates from late Roman times, presumably the sixth century, but it
may be based on a lost Greek original from the first centuries A.D.
It is notorious for its poverty of language and style9 but in the
Middle Ages its authority as a first-hand report remained un-
challenged. To the medieval mind Dares was a far more reliable
source than Homer; the latter, who was, of course, only known
through the Ilias Latina, was generally distrusted on the grounds
that “he was born many years after the war” and “wrote about gods
taking part in human battles”, as stated in the (fictitious) letter from
Cornelius Nepos to Sallustius which serves as a prologue to D. The
prologue was apparently not translated into Old Norse but its anti-
Homeric sentiment is echoed by the Norse compiler who in-
troduced the passages from II. Lat. and who felt obliged to add an
8 Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. by Finnur Jónsson, Copenhagen 1931, p. 87, cf. the
introduction, p. xx and Andreas Heusler, Die gelehrte Urgeschichte im altislándischen
Schrifttum, Berlin 1908, pp. 35-36, 74-76.
9 “As we have it, it is a short work in bad, flat Latin prose of extreme simplicity, verging
on stupidity, obviously written very late in the decline of Latin literature”, Gilbert Highet,
The Classical Tradition, Oxford University Press Paperback 1957/1967, p. 51.