into English, also incorporated chivalrous elements.
Perhaps the earliest English adaptation of the Alexan-
der story is in the Kyng Alisaunder romance of ca. 1330.
The inspiration for this text was an ANGLO-NORMAN
romance. Typical of the romance genre, it elaborates
upon the basic Alexander conquest story to incorpo-
rate marvels and elaborate battle sequences. Alexander
makes a brief appearance in Ranulph Higdon’s Poly-
chronicon of 1362, which also includes more substan-
tial Matter of Rome material, with references to Roman
writers such as Josephus and Seneca. The Polychronicon
was translated into English in 1385–87 by John of
Trevisa and again in the 15th century by an unknown
author.
Two fragmentary Alexander tales, known as Alexan-
der A and Alexander B, were probably written in the
late 14th century. The B fragment incorporates one of
the standard medieval interpolations into the Alexan-
der legend, a letter reputedly from Alexander to King
Dindimus of Brahmin. The alliterative Wars of Alexan-
der might be called the culmination of the Matter of
Alexander; the poem dates from the late 14th or early
15th century. As with its predecessors, the Wars of
Alexander is essentially a translation of a Continental
Latin source—in this case, the 10th century Historia de
Preliis by Leo of Naples.
A dramatic shift in the number and scope of classi-
cal allusions occurred with the rediscovery and revival
of interest in Greek and Roman authors during the late
15th and throughout the 16th century. This is most
notable in the proliferation in references to the Matter
of Rome, which is directly tied to VIRGIL and OVID, the
two most signifi cant Roman authors for medieval and
Renaissance English literature. Virgil’s Aeneid and
Eclogues were widely known, and various annotated
versions in Latin, as well as commentaries on these
texts, circulated in medieval England. Roman mythol-
ogy, drawn from these texts, was a particularly fruitful
source of characters and plots. However, the historical
characters of Rome were also popular in the late Mid-
dle Ages and the Renaissance.
In terms of literature in English, Chaucer’s The LEG-
END OF GOOD WOMEN and Gower’s Confessio Amantis
draw heavily on the writings of Ovid, particularly his
epistles and the Amores; the latter was itself translated
into English by CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1580). Shake-
speare’s Titus Andronicus (1594) makes Ovid’s Meta-
morphoses into a prop as well as invoking the poem in
its own lines. There were many other important trans-
lations of classical texts in the 15th and 16th centuries,
which provided more classical material for writers to
incorporate into English literary creations. Around
1460, Benedict Burgh translated Cato’s Distichs, which
had been an infl uential text in its original Latin. The
Aeneid was translated in 1513 by GAVIN DOUGLAS, and
in 1573 by Thomas Phaer, and Virgil is cited directly
by many authors of both the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. EDMUND SPENSER refers to Virgil as both
his predecessor and his model in PASTORAL poetry in
THE SHEPHEARDES CALENDER (1579), and one of Mar-
lowe’s earliest plays was Dido, Queen of Carthage (1586).
The FABLEs of Aesop, via Latin and French translations,
were also popular in this period; WILLIAM CAXTON
translated them from the French in 1484, and other
versions appeared in English in the late 16th century,
most notably, perhaps, by ROBERT HENRYSON.
Original works from this material include the Seven
Sages of Rome (1470) and John Lydgate’s Secrees of olde
Philisoffres, which was completed by Benedict Burgh
(1450). The latter was a translation of the Secreta Secre-
torum, a text on politics and the role of the prince
which was widely thought to have been written by
Aristotle, and which infl uenced numerous medieval
treatises on government, including THOMAS HOCCLEVE’s
Regiment of Princes (1412). With the Matter of Rome,
Renaissance literature once again (as with the Matter of
Troy) moved beyond using the classical sources for lit-
erary purposes and returned to using it for didactic
purposes. Roman models were particularly common in
the plethora of Renaissance political treatises and man-
uals of governance.
FURTHER READING
Boitani, Piero, ed. The European Tragedy of Troilus. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989.
James, Heather. Shakespeare’s Troy: Drama, Politics, and the
Translation of Empire. Cambridge: University Press, 1997.
Noble, Peter, Lucie Polak, and Claire Isoz, eds. The Medieval
Alexander Legend and Romance Epic. New York: Kraus
International Publications, 1982.
Pearsall, Derek. Old English and Middle English Poetry. Lon-
don: Routledge/Kegan Paul, 1977.118 CLASSICAL TRADITION