Skip to main content
Article
Dio of Prusa, Or. 61, Chryseis, or Reading Homeric Silence
Classical Quarterly
  • Lawrence Kim, Trinity University
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2008
Disciplines
Abstract

Dio of Prusa, the itinerant orator and moralist of the late first century C.E., is a key figure in the history of ancient Homeric reception. His corpus, like that of many Imperial writers, is filled with Homeric citations and allusions, but it also features an encomiastic essay to the poet – On Homer ( Or . 53) – dialogues that use Homer to demonstrate the good ruler’s proper behaviour – the second Kingship Oration (2) and Agamemnon (56) – and other short essays on Homeric topics, such as Nestor (57) and On Homer and Socrates (55). He is perhaps best known, however, for his notorious anti-Homeric tour de force, the Trojan Oration (11), in which he demonstrates through a close reading of the Iliad that Homer had lied and that the Trojans had actually won the war. Along with Philostratus’ Heroicus and the ‘Troy Romances’ of Dictys and Dares, it is probably the best representative of the Homeric revisionism in vogue during the Roman Empire, and its mixture of audacity, erudition, irony and (feigned?) outrage in the service of overturning tradition has baffled, frustrated and delighted readers ever since.

Editor
David Bourget & David Chalmers
DOI
10.1017/S0009838808000669
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Citation Information
Kim, L. (2008). Dio of Prusa, Or. 61, Chryseis, or reading Homeric silence. Classical Quarterly, 58(2), 601-621. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000983880800066