As the interest of Jean Bodel's first two divisions[68] differs strikingly, and yet represents, in each case intimately and indispensably, certain sides of the mediaeval character, so also does that of his third. This has perhaps more purely an interest of curiosity than either of the others. It neither constitutes a capital division of general literature like the Arthurian story, nor embodies and preserves a single long-past phase in national spirit and character, like the _chansons de geste_. From certain standpoints of the drier and more rigid criticism it is exposed to the charge of being trifling, almost puerile. We cannot understand--or, to speak with extremer correctness, it would seem that some of us cannot understand--the frame of mind which puts Dictys and Dares on the one hand, Homer on the other, as authorities to be weighed on equal terms, and gravely sets Homer aside as a very inferior and prejudiced person; which, even after taking its Dictys and Dares, proceeds to supplement them with entire inventions of its own; which, after in the same way taking the Pseudo-Callisthenes as the authoritative biographer of Alexander, elaborates the legend with a wild luxuriance that makes the treatment of the Tale of Troy seem positively modest and sober; which makes Thebes, Julius Caesar, anything and anybody in fabulous and historical antiquity alike, the centre, or at least the nucleus, of successive accretions of romantic fiction. [Footnote 68: See note 2, p. 26.] [Sidenote: _Its importance--the Troy story._]