The First Pagan Historian
The Fortunes of a Fraud from Antiquity to the Enlightenment
Frederic Clark
Reviews and Awards
"It is precisely a book a classicist should read." -- Jane Lightfoot, Histos
"Clark's discussion is powerful." -- Jane Lightfoot, Histos
"Riveting.... Clark's book is heavy on detail, but the story that weaves in and out of those details is fascinating. It is a tale of the medieval Latin West's embattled, shifting relationship with the 'pagan' past it both claimed and rejected; of the slow congealing of the distinction between narrative truth and narrative fiction; of the enduring magnetic pull of the Trojan War and the myths around it; and of the emergence of Enlightenment mentalities, with their aggressive intolerance of fakery." -- Times Literary Supplement
"Clark has done very good work in unearthing some impressively obscure books and scholars... Clark's book...is itself much more entertaining than its subject." -- James Zetzel, Columbia University, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"This is an important contribution to our study of ancient texts and their afterlives. At the same time, it is a penetrating meditation on the fluid nature of textual authenticity. From late antiquity to the early modern era, the putatively eyewitness History of the Destruction of Troy by Dares the Phrygian was enormously exploited as an authentic counter-narrative to the poetic versions of Homer and Virgil. Yet its claims and reputation, from reverence to repudiation, have remained little studied, until Frederic Clark's broad-ranging and learned book. The book's historical reach, and the range of skills and materials it employs, are magisterial; they are deployed with enviable discipline and economy." -- Christopher Baswell, Columbia University and Barnard College
"In this magnificent book, Frederic Clark has contributed a milestone to the interdisciplinary study of the European Renaissance, medieval European culture, and the field of classical reception. With enormous expertise and discernment, he discusses more than a hundred of Dares' readers — enthusiastic, antagonistic, perplexed. And Clark explores, on a vast and exhilarating plane, their cultural, political, and literary assumptions; their concerns reach far beyond the exposure of forgery into the history of printing, the veracity of Virgil's Aeneid, and the theory of historical witnesses. His story marvelously combines cultural change with surprising continuities between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. I recommend it to a broad group of erudite readers and students." -- Kristine Haugen, California Institute of Technology
"In this marvelous book, Frederic Clark traces the making and reception of a forgery — a very popular and durable work by one Dares the Phrygian, which told the story of the Trojan War from the losing side. He introduces the reader to the extraordinary characters — scribes and printers, chroniclers and poets — who kept Dares' account alive for many centuries, and the scholars who came to see it as a fake. He challenges conventional ideas about the borders between forgery and fiction, and medieval and Renaissance scholarship. And he does it all in graceful, readable prose." -- Anthony T. Grafton, Princeton University
