JOSEPH OF EXETER [attrib. to DARES PHRYGIUS].

Daretis Phrygii...De Bello Troiano,...Libri Sex, a Cornelio Nepote Latino carmine heroico donati...Item, Pindari Thebani Homericae Iliados Epitome...Ad haec, Homeri Ilias, quatenus a Nicolao Valla, & V. Obsopoeo Carmine reddita.

[Edited by Alban Thorer]. Italic type, with some printing in Greek & one line of Hebrew in Thorer'spreface. Woodcut initials. 8 p.l., 612 pp., one leaf (colophon). 8vo, 18th-cent. half-vellum & boards (light dampstains in first four quires), two vellum lettering pieces on spine. Basel: no printer, [March 1541]. Editio princeps of the Latin epic poem De Bello Troiano ("On the Trojan War"), the only surviving work of the 12th-century English poet who wrote in Latin, Joseph of Exeter (Josephus Iscanus, fl. 1190). During the Middle Ages, when knowledge of Homeric texts in the original, was lost in Western Europe, such Latin retellings of the events of the Trojan War became immensely important. One of the most popular of these accounts was De Exidio Troiae Historia ("History of the Fall of Troy") by "Dares the Phrygian," which purports to be an eyewitness account of the Trojan War, and which is known to us through a medieval Latin version believed to have been composed in the early sixth century A.D. In the late 12th century the English poet Joseph of Exeter adapted Dares' prose work into Latin hexameters, and it is this version that is printed here for the first time, but erroneously attributed to Dares -- it was not until the Frankfurt edition of 1620 that Joseph's name was correctly attached to the poem. Scholars have suggested that Joseph's version was the principal source (through Boccaccio's Il Filostrato) of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, which in turn inspired Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. Following Joseph's epic is printed the so-called Ilias Latina ("Latin Iliad"), a Latin verse epitome in 1070 hexameters of Homer's Iliad attributed to one "Pindarus Thebanus" in the manuscripts and in early editions (as here); its date is unknown, although internal evidence places it before A.D. 68. The main importance of this Latin Iliad lies in preserving the events of the epic for those ignorant of Greek. The second half of the volume is taken up by twelve Books of Homer's Iliad in the Latin verse translations by the Bavarian humanist Vincentius Opsopoeus (Books I, II, and IX), and Niccolò della Valle (Books III-V, XIII, XVIII, XX, XXII-XXIV). Adams D-128 (assigning printing to J. Parcus [3D Kuendig], who, however, is not recorded as a Basel printer before 1546). D.N.B., X, pp. 1093-94. Shaaber, Check-list of Works of British Authors Printed Abroad, J-331. VD16, D 127.

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