If written history of their ways and origin is lacking, the later chroniclers of Assisi endeavour to supply with their gossip, what is missing. Rambling and strange as their legends often seem to us, nevertheless they contain a germ of truth, an image, faint but partly true of a time so infinitely far away. Most of the local Umbrian historians have awarded the honour of the foundation of their own particular town to the earliest heroes whom they happen to know of, and these are invariably Noah and his family. It is, therefore, curious to note that the Assisan chroniclers have departed from this custom and have woven for themselves a legend so different from the usual friar's tale: "Various are the opinions," says one of them, "concerning the first building of our city; but the most probable, and the most universally accepted by serious writers, is the one which gives Dardanus as her founder. In the year 713 after the Deluge, and 865 years before the foundation of Rome, the first civil war in Italy broke out between the brothers Jasius and Dardanus, both sons of Electra; but the father of Jasius was Jupiter, while Dardanus was the son of Corythus, King of Cortona." The people of Umbria took sides, as some would have it that Jasius ought to be king in the place of the dead prince Corythus. Now it happened that Dardanus had pitched his tent on the slope of Mount Subasio, when a dream came to him that Jupiter and Minerva were preparing to assail the enemy, and that Jasius would be vanquished. On waking he determined, should his dream be true, to raise a temple to the goddess on the spot where he had slept. He went forth to battle, and with the help of the goddess drove the enemy back with great slaughter; Jasius was killed and they buried him on the field of battle. "Full well did Dardanus keep his vow, for in a few months there arose a wonderful building, now known as the sacred temple, dedicated to the true Minerva of Heaven, under the name of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Thus it is that the country round Assisi has been called _Palladios agros_, the fields of Pallas."[1] [Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF MINERVA]