enerally represented as knight-errants,
and made to talk and act as such knights would. Christianity and mythology
are jumbled up together in a most peculiar way, and history, chronology,
and geography are set at defiance and treated with the same scorn of
probabilities.

The classical romances forming this great general cycle are subdivided into
several classes or cycles. The interest of the first is mainly centered
upon the heroes of Homer and Hesiod. The best-known and most popular of
these mediaeval works was the "Roman de Troie," relating the siege and
downfall of Troy.

Based upon post-classical Greek and Latin writings rather than upon the
great Homeric epic itself, the story, which had already undergone many
changes to suit the ever-varying public taste, was further transformed by
the Anglo-Norman trouvere, Benoit de Sainte-More, about 1184. He composed a
poem of thirty thousand lines, in which he related not only the siege and
downfall of Troy, but also the Argonautic expedition, the wanderings of
Ulysses, the story of Aeneas, and many other mythological tales.

This poet, following the custom of the age, naively reproduced the manners,
customs, and, in general, the beliefs of the twelfth century. There is
plenty of local color in his work, only the color belongs to his own
locality, and not to that of the heroes whose adventures he purports to
relate. In his work the old classical heroes are transformed into typical
mediaeval knights, and heroines such as Helen and Medea, for instance, are
portrayed as damsels in distress.

This prevalent custom of viewing the ancients solely from the mediaeval
point of view gave rise not only to grotesque pen pictures, but also to a
number of paintings, such as Gozzoli's kidnapping of Helen. In this
composition, Paris, in trunk hose, is carrying off the fair Helen
pickaback, notwithstanding the evident clamor raised by the assembled court
ladies, who are attired in very full skirts and mediaeval headdresses.

On account of these peculiarities, and because the customs, dress,
festivities, weapons, manners, landscapes, etc., of the middle ages are so
minutely described, these romances have, with much justice, been considered
as really original works.

[Sidenote: The Roman de Troie.] The "Roman de Troie" was quite as popular
in mediaeval Europe as the "Iliad" had been in Hellenic countries during
the palmy days of Greece, and was translated into every dialect. There are
st