Dares Attacked

Abstract

Chapter 4 begins in the early Italian Renaissance with the Florentine humanist Coluccio Salutati, one of the first scholars to suggest that Dares was perhaps not who he said he was. After considering the contributions of figures like Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus to the history of criticism, it surveys how debates over Dares’ authenticity spread across early modern scholarship. In the sixteenth century, the forged Antiquities of a modern trickster, the Dominican Annius of Viterbo, prompted some critics to attack not only Annius’ own works, but also the “ancient” texts of Dares and Dictys Cretensis. Suddenly it became possible to doubt the first pagan historian. Yet even as a growing number of early modern scholars attacked Dares’ credibility, others blithely went on believing him. As this chapter argues, this simultaneous rejection and affirmation of Dares reflected the continued valorization of ancient authority in early modern scholarship, and its newfound concern for forming a classical canon.