this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Literature

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Ancient historical fiction? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I had an interesting thought yesterday. I was pondering, what if some of the archaic literature we relied upon to document past events was actually fictional accounts intended to be read for leisure?

This prompted me to ask what ancient or medieval (preferably before the 15th century) do you know of? Some may describe The Iliad as historical fiction, what do you think.

P.S. Regarding fictional accounts mistook as historical, I found this enlightening discussion on reddit, libreddit link.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Virgil's Aenead was overtly fictionalized; it was basically an alternate history version of Homer's work, that inserted Roman characters and themes to recast the story as foundational to the Roman republic.