Memoria troiana e sistema letterario nel De raptu Helenae di Draconzio. Virgilio, Stazio, Darete Frigio

This paper shows how the text of the Latin Dares Phrygius, De excidio Troiae historia, is one of the main sources of Dracontius’ Rom. VIII, De raptu Helenae. My argument is straightforward and it works as follows. It is known that the two texts share many narrative elements that are specific to them only, but for lack of external evidence, it is sometimes still argued that Dracontius was the source for the Latin Dares, which should therefore be dated not earlier than the 6th century, with its first certain mention in Isidorus’ Etymologiae in the 7th. Through an analysis of the web of intertextual memories in De raptu, I show that: 1) in the De raptu all the allusions from Trojan-related sources certainly known to Dracontius (Aeneid and Achilleid especially) come together in the construction of an ideologically-oriented reading of the Trojan War, which is pessimistic and very far from the providential narrative of Virgil’s; 2) for this particular reading of the De raptu to fully work, we must take into account Dares as one of the relevant intertexts. It will be apparent that Dracontius substantiates his bleak picture of the Trojan War through a subtle activation of the various Latin subtexts at play: we’ll see how Statius’ Achilleid provides the general structure for the epyllion, while Aeneid and De excidio support the specific narrative choices of the De raptu. For example, Dracontius builds his ambiguous characters mainly through the interplay between Aeneid and De excidio: Paris is portrayed so as to remind the reader of the worst traits of the Virgilian Aeneas, but also of the Trojan horse; whereas the intertextual memory of Dares makes Aeneas a likely traitor of his people. Other aspects of my argument are: the emphasis on the melior via that Dracontius claims to follow in the proem; the presence of Dictys Cretensis as a source in the De raptu; and the presence of Dares as a source in two of his other pagan works: Rom. IX and Tragoedia Orestis. The consequences are extremely relevant and not only for our understanding of De raptu. With the De excidio now firmly dated before the De raptu, our view of its early circulation must change accordingly: if Dracontius deemed his readers capable of recognizing the allusions he disseminates his text with, we must conclude that the De excidio would already have been able to count on a large audience. Furthermore, the De raptu is the first Latin text where Dares and Dictys complement each other’s narratives, as they did from the Middle Ages onward.