Although Virgil and Terence were standard curricular authors, their works were not
translated into French until the 15th century. Terence’s comedies were translated twice: a
prose translation of 1466 by Guillaume Rippe (two manuscripts) and a verse translation
by Gilles Cybille, which survives only in an incunabulum (ca. 1500). For the tradition of
Virgil’s Aeneid, we must preserve a distinction betwen the popular courtly imitation of
Virgil’s epic, the Roman d’ Énéas (ca. 1160), and actual translation of the work. Of the
latter, we have only one version, a translation by Octavien de Saint-Gelays, composed ca.
1500 (three manuscripts and two early printed editions).
Some translations of historical and political texts had wide circulation, and some
ancient works were of sufficient interest to undergo more than one translation. One
influential text, found in over sixty manuscripts, was a compilation known as the Fet des
Romains (1213–14), which combined materials from Sallust’s De coniuratione Catilinae,
Suetonius’s De vita Caesarum, Lucan’s Pharsalia, and Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum. But
these historical sources were also translated individually in the later Middle Ages. Of the
two 15th-century translations of Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum, one is by Jean Duchesne (ca.
1473; nine manuscripts) and the other by Robert Gaguin (late 15th c.; four manuscripts
and three incunabula). Sallust’s De coniuratione Catilinae and Bellum Iugurthinum were
translated in 1417 by Jean le Bègue (extracts in a unique manuscript). Part of Suetonius’s
De vita Caesarum was also translated separately. Lucan’s Pharsalia (properly called
Bellum civile) was translated in the late 14th century by Nicolas de Vérone (2
manuscripts).
To judge from manuscript circulation or multiple translations, the historical and
political works that commanded greatest interest were Livy’s history of Rome, Ab urbe
condita, and Vegetius’s De re militari, a manual of Roman military institutions composed
in the late 4th century A.D. Ab urbe condita was translated by the Benedictine monk
Pierre Bersuire between 1352 and 1356; this translation survives, either complete or in
part, in at least eighty manuscripts and an incunabulum. It was received as a preeminent
example of the transformation of French into a learned language: Bersuire equipped it
with a prefatory dictionary of all the French terms he had coined out of Latin in order to
render Livy’s text, and he also made use of a commentary on Livy by Nicholas Trevet.
Bersuire undertook the translation at the request of King John II the Good, and indeed
this text became a kind of “mirror of princes,” a treatise on politics, warfare, and
morality. Many aristocratic libraries possessed copies, notably those of Charles V, John
of Berry, and the dukes of Burgundy. It circulated widely through the 15th century, and
later in printed editions. Part of Livy’s history, the third decade, was retranslated by
Robert Gaguin ca. 1493 (one printed edition, 1508). Vegetius’s De re militari was
translated six times in the 13th and 14th centuries. Jean de Meun’s version, made for Jean
de Brienne, count of Eu, in 1284, is extant in over twenty manuscripts and was revised
twice: once in verse by Jean Priorat between 1284 and 1290 for Jean de Châlon-Harlay,
an influential noble, and again in the 15th century, with some substantive changes to
preserve its relevance for later audiences. Jean de Vignay, a prolific translator, produced
a version of Vegetius ca. 1320 for Philip VI (nine manuscripts). An anonymous
translation was made in 1380 (two manuscripts), and an Anglo-French translation ca.
1272, attributed in one of the four extant manuscripts to a “Maistre Richard”; this
translation seems to have been directed to the future Edward I of England.
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