But what made by far the strongest impression on the Middle Ages was not the example of Paris or of Leander, nor yet the passion of Catullus and Propertius, who were then unknown, but the poetry of the loyalty of the heroines, the fourth book of the _Aeneid_, the _Heroides_ of Ovid, and certain parts of the _Metamorphoses_. If anything literary can be said to have taken effect upon the temper of the Middle Ages, so as to produce the manners and sentiments of chivalry, this is the literature to which the largest share of influence must be ascribed. The ladies of Romance all owe allegiance, and some of them are ready to pay it, to the queens of the Latin poets.[85] Virgil's Dido and Ovid's Medea taught the eloquence of love to the French poets, and the first chivalrous lovers are those who have learned to think poorly of the recreant knights of antiquity. [Footnote 85: A fine passage is quoted from the romance of _Ider_ in the essay cited above, where Guenloïe the queen finds Ider near death and thinks of killing herself, like Phyllis and other ladies of the old time, who will welcome her. It is the "Saints' Legend of Cupid," many generations before Chaucer, in the form of an invocation to Love, the tyrant:-- Bel semblant ço quit me feront Les cheitives qui a toi sont Qui s'ocistrent par druerie D'amor; mout voil lor compainie: D'amor me recomfortera La lasse Deïanira, Qui s'encroast, et Canacé, Eco, Scilla, Fillis, Pronné, Ero, Biblis, Dido, Mirra, Tisbé, la bele Hypermnestra, Et des autres mil et cinc cenz. Amor! por quoi ne te repenz De ces simples lasses destruire? Trop cruelment te voi deduire: Pechié feiz que n'en as pitié; Nuls deus fors toi ne fait pechié! De ço est Tisbé al dessus, Que por lié s'ocist Piramus; Amors, de ço te puet loer Car a ta cort siet o son per; Ero i est o Leander: Si jo i fusse avec Ider, Aise fusse, ço m'est avis, Com alme qu'est en paraïs.] The French romantic authors were scholars in the poetry of the Provençal School, but they also knew a good deal independently of their Provençal masters, and did not need to be told everything. They read the ancient authors for themselves, and drew their own conclusions from them. They were influenced by the special Provençal rendering of the common ideas of chivalry and courtesy; they were also affected immediately by the authors who influenced the Provençal School. Few things are more instructive in this part of literature than the story of Medea in the _Roman de Troie_ of Benoit de Sainte More. It might even claim to be the representative French romance, for it contains in an admirable form the two chief elements common to all the dominant school--adventure (here reduced from Ovid to the scale of a common fairy story, as has been seen already) and sentimental eloquence, which in this particular story is very near its original fountain-head.