The Mediaeval Mind (Volume 2 of 2) / A History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages

by Henry Osborn Taylor

[333] Hugo of St. Victor says in the twelfth century: “Apud gentiles primus Darhes Phrygius Trojanam historiam edidit, quam in foliis palmarum ab eo scriptam esse ferunt” (Erud. didas. iii. cap. 3; Migne 176, col. 767).

On the Trojan origin of the Franks, Britons, and other peoples, see Joly in his “Benoit de St. More et le Roman de Troie,” pp. 606-635 (Mem. de la Soc. des Antiquaires de Normandie, vol. vii. 3^me ser., 1869); also Graf, Roma nella memoria, etc., del medio aevo. The Trojan origin of the Franks was a commonplace in the early Middle Ages, see e.g. Aimoinus of Fleury in beginning of his Historia Francorum, Migne 139, col. 637.

On Dares the Phrygian and Dictys the Cretan see “Dares and Dictys,” N. E. Griffin (Johns Hopkins Studies, Baltimore, 1907); Taylor, Classical Heritage, pp. 40 and 360 (authorities); also, generally, L. Constans, “L’Épopée antique,” in Petit de Julleville’s Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française, vol. i. (Paris, 1896).

[334] Joseph of Exeter or de Iscano, as he is called, at the close of the twelfth century composed a Latin poem in six books of hexameters entitled De bello Trojano. It is one of the best mediaeval productions in that metre. The author followed Dares, but his diction shows a study of Virgil, Ovid, Statius, and Claudian. See J. J. Jusserand, De Josepho Exoniensi vel Iscano (Paris, 1877); A. Sarradin, De Josepho Iscano, Belli Trojani, etc. (Versailles, 1878).

[335] Eneas, ed. by Salverda de Grave (Halle, 1891), lines 7857-9262.

[336] Roman de Troie, 5257-5270, ed. Joly; “Benoit de St. More et le Roman de Troie, etc.,” Mem. de la Soc. des Antiquaires de Normandie, vol. vii. 3^me ser., 1869. On its sources see also L. Constans, in Petit de Julleville’s Hist. de la langue et de la litt. française, vol. i. pp. 188-220.

[337] Roman de Troie, 13235 sqq.

[338] The Roman de Thebes, the third of these large poems, is temperate in the adaptation and extension of its theme. Its ten thousand or more lines of eight-syllable rhyming verse are no longer than the Thebaid of Statius, and as a narrative make quite as interesting reading. Statius, who lived under Domitian, was a poet of considerable skill, but with no genius for the construction of an epic. His work reads well in patches, but does not move. Several books are taken up with getting the Argive army in motion, and when the reader and Jove himself are wearied, it moves on—to the next halt. And so forth through the whole twelve books. See Nisard, Études sur les poètes latins de la décadence, vol. i. p. 261 sqq. (2nd ed., Paris, 1849); Pichon, Hist. de la litt. lat. p. 606 (2nd ed., Paris, 1898). The Roman de Thebes was not drawn directly from the work of Statius, but through the channels, apparently, of intervening prose compendia. It also evidently drew from other works, as it contains matters not found in Statius’s Thebaid. It is easy, if not inspiring reading. The style is clear, and the narrative moves. Of course it presents a general mediaevalizing of the manners of Statius’s somewhat fustian antique heroes; it introduces courtly love (e.g. the love between Parthonopeus and Antigone, lines 3793 sqq.), mediaeval commonplaces, and feudal customs. It drops the antique conception of accursed fate as a fundamental motive of the plot, substituting in its place the varied play of romantic and chivalric sentiment.

Leopold Constans has made the Roman de Thebes his own. Having followed the story of Oedipus through the Middle Ages in his Légende d’Œdipe, etc. (Paris, 1881) he has corrected some of his views in his critical edition of the poem, “Le Roman de Thèbes,” 2 vols., 1890 (Soc. des anciens textes français), and has treated the same matters more popularly in Petit de Julleville’s Hist. de la langue et de la litt. française, vol. i. pp. 170-188. These works fully discuss the sources, date, and language of the poem, and the later redactions in prose and verse through Europe.

[339] On Pseudo-Callisthenes see Paul Meyer, Alexandre le Grand dans la littérature française du moyen âge (Paris, 1886); Taylor, Classical Heritage, etc., pp. 38 and 360. In the last quarter of the twelfth century Walter of Lille, called also Walter of Chatillon, wrote his Alexandreis in ten books of easy-flowing hexameters. It is printed in Migne, Pat. Lat. 209, col. 463-572. Cf. ante, page 192. His work shows that a mediaeval scholar-poet could reproduce a historical theme quite soberly. His poem was read by other bookmen; but the Alexander of the Middle Ages remained the Alexander of the fabulous vernacular versions.