nuscript written
on linden-bark paper in a tin case at his tomb at Gnossus; that their
landlord turning the Punic letters into Greek (which had always been
the language), gave it to Nero the Emperor, who rewarded him richly;
and that he, Septimius, having by chance got the book into his hands,
thought it worth while to translate it into Latin, both for the sake
of making the true history known and "ut otiosi animi desidiam
discuteremus." The Dares volume is more ambitious, and purports to be
introduced by no less a person than Cornelius Nepos to no less a
person than Sallustius Crispus, and to have been "faithfully
translated" by the former from MS. in the very hand of Dares, which he
found at Athens, in order to correct the late and fabulous authority
of Homer, who actually makes gods fight with men!

[Footnote 83: Ed. Meister. Leipzig, 1872-73.]

[Sidenote: _The Dares story._]

It will be, of course, obvious to the merest tyro in criticism that
these prefaces bear "forgery" on the very face of them. The first is
only one of those innumerable variants of the genesis of a fiction
which Sir Walter Scott has so pleasantly summarised in one of his
introductions; and the phrase quoted about _animi otiosi desidiam_ is
a commonplace of mediaeval bookmaking. The second, more cleverly
arranged, exposes itself to the question how far, putting the
difficulty about writing aside, an ancient Greek MS. of the kind could
possibly have escaped the literary activity of many centuries of
Athenian wits and scholars, to fall into the hands of Cornelius Nepos.
The actual age and origin of the two have, of course, occupied many
modern scholars; and the favourite opinion seems to be that Dictys may
have been originally written by some Greek about the time of Nero (the
Latin translation cannot well be earlier than the fourth century and
may be much later), while Dares may possibly be as late as the
twelfth. Neither book is of the very slightest interest intrinsically.
Dictys (the full title of whose book is _Ephemeris Belli Trojani_) is
not only the longer but the better written of the two. It contains no
direct "set" at Homer; and may possibly preserve traits of some value
from the lost cyclic writers. But it was not anything like such a
favourite with the Middle Ages as Dares. Dictys had contented himself
with beginning at the abduction of Helen; Dares starts his _De Excidio
Trojae_ with the Golden Fleece, and excuses the act of Paris as