Hinc Dardanus ortus: The myth of Dardanus’ Italian origins in Virgil’s Aeneid

Abstract

According to Virgil’s Aeneid Dardanus, the son of Zeus who is the ancestor of the Trojan kings and people, came originally from Italy, and specifically from a mysterious town called Corythus, located somewhere in Etruria. This version is not attested elsewhere either before or after Virgil. Usually Dardanus was either an autochthon of the Troad (Homer), or an immigrant from Samothracia (Hellanicus); in other traditions, he was originally from Arcadia (Varro, Dionysius of Halicarnassus). Even if the issue is not without its complications, it is clear that in the Aeneid we have a manipulation of mythical ‘history’ in order to give a justification for Aeneas’ divinely ordered settlement in Italy. This manipulation is most probably to be attributed to Virgil himself. On the one hand, there is no convincing proof that the legend of Dardanus the Italian was significantly developed in any source prior to Virgil, while on the other hand there are in the Aeneid hints that lead us to think of this legend as Virgil’s own invention. First, the fact that in Book 3 the Trojans completely misunderstand the oracle of Apollo, who, after having addressed them as Dardanidae (‘descendants of Dardanus’), tells them to ‘look for their ancient mother’, suggests that - on a metaliterary level - they could not have any clue about the ‘right’ interpretation of what seems to be a most ‘clear’ response because no such version ever existed before Virgil. Virgil’s manipulative attitude towards the traditions about the origins of the Trojan race is emphasized by the presence, in the same oracle of Apollo, of the ‘manipulated’ version of Poseidon’s prophecy at Il. XX.306-308. Second, while Ilioneus in Book 7, speaking to the Italian King Latinus, introduces the Trojans emphatically as the descendants of Italian Dardanus, a legend King Latinus himself declares to be vaguely aware of, when Aeneas speaks to the Greek Evander in Book 8, he does not say anything about an Italian origin of Dardanus, insinuating instead that Dardanus might have been an immigrant from Arcadia. By representing his characters, and especially Aeneas, as manipulators and mythmakers, Virgil reflects on his own manipulations and his own politically interested mythmaking.