Veri falsi, antichi e moderni. Le Antiquitates di Annio da Viterbo e le cronache troiane di Ditti Cretese e Darete Frigio

In Italy, at the end of the 15th century, a collection of ancient sources (Antiquitates) dramatically changed the shared notion of the Greek origins of Europe: their editor, Annius of Viterbo, was quickly exposed by some as a forger, but his forgery resisted most of the attacks for another full century. This paper considers how Annius’ collection was received by men of letters compared to the fate of two other texts, rooted in actual antiquity, but fictional nonetheless, that pretended to be eye-witness records of the Trojan War: Dictys Cretensis’ Ephemeris belli Troiani and Dares Phrygius’ De excidio Troiae historia. Leaving aside the unanswerable question whether Annius took his inspiration from them, it is abundantly clear, from a number of texts, that humanists noticed a striking similarity between Annius’ texts and the Trojan pseudo-chronicles.