But between Benoit and Boccaccio there is another personage who concerns us very distinctly. Never was there such a case, even in the Middle Ages, when the absence of printing, of public libraries, and of general knowledge of literature made such things easy, of _sic vos non vobis_ as the _Historia Trojana_ of Guido de Columnis, otherwise Guido delle Colonne, or Guido Colonna, of Messina. This person appears to have spent some time in England rather late in the thirteenth century; and there, no doubt, he fell in with the _Roman de Troie_. He wrote--in Latin, and thereby appealing to a larger audience than even French could appeal to--a Troy-book which almost at once became widely popular. The MSS. of it occur by scores in the principal libraries of Europe; it was the direct source of Boccaccio, and with that writer's _Filostrato_ of Chaucer, and it formed the foundation of almost all the known Troy-books of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Benoit being completely forgotten. Yet recent investigation has shown that Guido not merely adapted Benoit in the usual mediaeval fashion, but followed him so closely that his work might rather be called translation than adaptation. At any rate, beyond a few details he has added nothing to the story of Troilus and Cressida as Benoit left it, and as, in default of all evidence to the contrary, it is only fair to conclude that he made it. From the date, 1287, of Guido delle Colonne's version, it follows necessarily that all the vernacular Troy-books--our own _Destruction of Troy_,[85] the French prose romance of _Troilus_,[86] &c., not to mention Lydgate and others--fall like Boccaccio and Chaucer out of the limits of this volume. Nor can it be necessary to enter into detail as to the other classical French romances, the _Roman de Thebes_, the _Roman d'Eneas_, the _Roman de Jules Cesar_, _Athis and Profilias_, and the rest;[87] while something will be said of the German AEneid of H. von Veldeke in a future chapter. The capital examples of the Alexandreid and the Iliad, as understood by the Middle Ages, not only must but actually do suffice for our purpose. [Footnote 85: Ed. Panton and Donaldson, E.E.T.S. London, 1869-74.] [Footnote 86: Ed. Moland and d'Hericault, _op. cit._] [Footnote 87: The section on "L'Epopee Antique" in M. Petit de Julleville's book, more than once referred to, is by M. Leopold Constans, editor of the _Roman de Thebes_, and will be found useful.] [Sidenote: _Meaning of the classical romance._]