DARES PHRYGIUS

a Trojan priest of Hephaestus who appears as one of the characters in Homer's Iliad and is the reputed author of a lost pre-Homeric eyewitness account of the Trojan War. The Daretis Phrygii de Excidio Trojae historia, a Latin work purporting to be a translation of this, dates probably from the 5th century AD. The influence of this pro-Trojan work in the Latin-speaking West from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance, a period when the works of Homer were known only by hearsay, was enormous. It was widely used as a source by medieval writers of Troy romances. See also Troy.