It will be, of course, obvious to the merest tyro in criticism that these prefaces bear "forgery" on the very face of them. The first is only one of those innumerable variants of the genesis of a fiction which Sir Walter Scott has so pleasantly summarised in one of his introductions; and the phrase quoted about _animi otiosi desidiam_ is a commonplace of mediaeval bookmaking. The second, more cleverly arranged, exposes itself to the question how far, putting the difficulty about writing aside, an ancient Greek MS. of the kind could possibly have escaped the literary activity of many centuries of Athenian wits and scholars, to fall into the hands of Cornelius Nepos. The actual age and origin of the two have, of course, occupied many modern scholars; and the favourite opinion seems to be that Dictys may have been originally written by some Greek about the time of Nero (the Latin translation cannot well be earlier than the fourth century and may be much later), while Dares may possibly be as late as the twelfth. Neither book is of the very slightest interest intrinsically. Dictys (the full title of whose book is _Ephemeris Belli Trojani_) is not only the longer but the better written of the two. It contains no direct "set" at Homer; and may possibly preserve traits of some value from the lost cyclic writers. But it was not anything like such a favourite with the Middle Ages as Dares. Dictys had contented himself with beginning at the abduction of Helen; Dares starts his _De Excidio Trojae_ with the Golden Fleece, and excuses the act of Paris as mere reprisals for the carrying off of Hesione by Telamon. Antenor having been sent to Greece to demand reparation and rudely treated, Paris makes a regular raid in vengeance, and so the war begins with a sort of balance of cause for it on the Trojan side. Before the actual fighting, some personal descriptions of the chief heroes and heroines are given, curiously feeble and strongly tinged with mediaeval peculiarities, but thought to be possibly derived from some similar things attributed to the rhetorician Philostratus at the end of the third century. And among these a great place is given to Troilus and "Briseida."