DICTYS CRETENSIS

author of a pseudo-chronicle of the Trojan War. Dictys was supposed to have accompanied the Cretan leader Idomeneus from Knossos to the siege of Troy and to have written a pro-Greek account of the Trojan War. His manuscript was said to have been discovered during the 1st century AD and, by command of the Roman emperor Nero, to have been transliterated from Phoenician into Greek. Probably in the 4th century one Lucius Septimius put out a translation of Dictys' supposed eyewitness account (which in fact probably dates from the 2nd or 3rd century AD), and this fantastic work, the Ephemeris belli Trojani, together with a similar but pro-Trojan account by Dares Phrygius, was a major sourcebook for medieval handlings of the Trojan story.