Memnon in the Middle Ages: The Reception of a Homeric Hero
Trevor Dean
Abstract Memnon, the mythic king of Ethiopia killed by Achilles during Trojan War, had a double or fused identity in classical antiquity: both Asian and African for Greek Roman writers because his parentage geographical indeterminacy ‘Aithiopia’ ‘India’, but definitely black-skinned writers. How was this figure received medieval texts images? This paper tracks Memnon through three textual genres from twelfth to fifteenth century – commentaries on Ovid, catalogues famous men, histories War charts ways which overlaid transformed pro-Trojan sentiment, chivalric heroization Christian sacrificial thinking.
International Journal of the Classical Tradition