Abstract
In his serio-comic Trojan Oration (Or. 11), Dio of Prusa, one of the leading Greek orators of his time (1st century CE), argues that the Trojans, not the Greeks, have won the Trojan war. Homer has lied to us and these lies have been leading us to an unjust depiction of history for centuries. Dio shows how exactly this is possible: based on what Homer himself tells us (or does not tell us) Dio deconstructs the Iliad and through his revision attempts to convince his audience of Homer’s early case of ‘fake news’. Although the modern reader may initially consider this piece to be a mere joke, Dio’s text actually fits several traditions, including Homeric criticism, rationalizations of mythography, display of rhetorical command, literary play with (pseudo-)authoritative sources, and the urge of Roman Greeks to connect their Greek identity to the Homeric past. Moreover, Dio makes us consider the nature of the Iliad itself: what does Homer tell us? What does he leave out? And why?
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