ordered this tributary monarch to accompany him to the tournaments which were about to be celebrated at Constantinople. After his departure, Partenopex having contrived to interest the queen in his behalf, was allowed to escape, and arrived in the capital of the eastern empire just as the tournaments commenced. His most formidable antagonist was the sultan of Persia, but Partenopex is at length, by his strength and courage, permitted to lay claim to the hand of the rejoiced and forgiving empress. The romance of Partenopex is obviously derived from the fable of Cupid and Psyche, so beautifully told by Apuleius. Psyche is borne on the wings of Zephyr to the palace of her divine admirer. Partenopex is transported in a self-navigated bark, before a favourable breeze, to the mansion of Melior. Both are entertained at a banquet produced by invisible agency, and similar restrictions on curiosity are imposed: both are seduced into disobedience by the false insinuations of friends, and adopt the same method of clearing up their suspicions. Banishment, and a forfeiture of favour, are the punishments inflicted on both; and, after a long course of penance, both are restored to the affections of their supernatural admirers. These resemblances are too close to permit us to doubt, that the story of Psyche has, directly or indirectly, furnished mate 1 As to this," there are not many points of criticism on which there has been a more general consent, among those who have paid attention to the subject." So writes the Rev. W. E. Buckley, in his introduction to his edition of "the English version of Partonope of Blois," printed for the Roxburghe Club, in 1862, to which we refer the reader for a careful account of this romance. From Mr. Buckley's remarks it will be seen that M. Francisque Michel has found Denis Pyramus to be the author of the romance, or at least to claim the invention and versi fication of the poem, which M. Amaury Duval would include among the Romances of the Round Table, and M. Robert, on the other hand, would attach to the Carlovingian cycle. The name Partonope, or Parthenopex, or Partonopeus, has been derived by Mone and Graesse from Parthenay, in Poitou, and not from Parthenopaus, one of the Seven against Thebes, to which derivation Mr. Ward leans in his Catalogue, i. p. 700. A. Mussafia, in his Ueber die Spanischen Versionen der Historia Trojana, shows part of the Spanish versions to have been made directly from the French of Benoît de St. More, while others, including a Catalonian translation made in 1367 by J. Conæsa, is directly from Colonna's text. The Italian Binduccio worked on the French version. See Ward, Catalogue of Romances, etc. rials for the fiction with which we have been engaged. Some of the incidents in Partenopex have also a close resemblance to the story of the Prince of Futtun and Mherbanou, in the Bahar-Danush, or Garden of Knowledge. That work was indeed posterior to the composition of Partenopex; but the author Inatulla acknowledges that it was compiled from Brahmin traditions. The Peri, who is the heroine of that tale, is possessed of a barge covered with jewels, which steered without sails or oars; and the prince, while in search of its incomparable mistress, arrives at a palace, in which he finds the richest effects and preparations for festivity, but no person appears. Partenopex de Blois was translated into German, probably from the French romans, as early as the thirteenth century, the hero and his mistress being denominated Partenopier and Meliure. It has also been recently versified by Mr. Rose. The subject is happily chosen, as the romantic nature of the incidents, and tenderness of the amatory descriptions, are highly susceptible of poetical embellishment. Melior's enchanted palace is thus de scribed: Fast by the margin of the tumbling flood, Beneath the porch, in rich mosaic, blaze CHAPTER VI. ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY RELATING то CLASSICAL AND MYTHOLOGICAL HEROES.--LIVRE DE JASON.-LA VIE DE HERCULE. ALEXANDRE, ETC. IT T has been suggested in a former part of this work, that many arbitrary fictions of romance are drawn from the classical and mythological authors; and in the summary given of the tales of chivalry, a few instances have been pointed out, in which the ancient stories of Greece have been introduced, modified merely by the manners of the age. Since so much of the machinery of romance has been derived from classical fiction, it would have been strange had not the heroes of antiquity been also enlisted under the banners of chivalry. Accordingly we find that Achilles, Jason, and Hercules, were early adopted into romance, and celebrated in common with the knights of the Round Table, the paladins of Charlemagne, and the imaginary lineage of Amadis and Palmerin. And though the purer streams of classical learning were probably withheld from the romancers of the middle ages, spurious materials were not wanting to make them in some degree "conscious of a former time." The "Tale of Troy Divine" had been kept alive in two Latin works, which passed under the names of Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis. The former was a Trojan priest, mentioned by Homer,' and was believed to have written an account of the destruction of Troy. Elian men 1 "The sons of Dares first the combat sought, Pope's "Iliad," b. 5. tions that the history of Dares Phrygius was extant in his time, but he probably refers to some spurious author who had assumed that appellation. At length an obscure writer, posterior to the age of Constantine, availing himself of this tradition, wrote a book, which he entitled De Excidio Troja, and which professed to be translated from the work of Dares Phrygius, by Cornelius Nepos. A pretended epistle is prefixed, as addressed by the translator to Sallust, in which he informs his friend that he had discovered a MS. in the handwriting of Dares, while studying at Athens, where that historian had always been held in higher estimation than Homer, etc. The forgery, sheltered under these specious names, was a current and credited manuscript in the middle ages, and was first published at Milan in 1477. The work which bears the name of Dictys Cretensis is much longer and better written than the composition of Dares Phrygius. It is a prose Latin history, in six books, containing an account of the Trojan war, and the fate of the Grecian chiefs after their return. The author has principally drawn his materials from the Iliad, but has also pillaged other poems and histories, which contained information on the subject. In the preface to this work, it is said, that in the reign of Nero, the sepulchre of Dictys, who had been a follower of Idomeneus in the Trojan war, was thrown open by an earthquake, which shook the city of Gnossus in Crete. In the gap there was a chest found by some peasants, who carried it to their master Eupraxis. By him it was transmitted to Nero, and was then found to contain the history of the wars of Ilium, by Dictys Cretensis. After the preface follows the dedicatory epistle from Septimius to Quintus Arcadius, who lived in the reign of Constantine. Septimius professes himself to be the Latin translator of the work, and says he had rendered it into that language from the copy Eupraxis transmitted to Nero, and in which that Cretan had merely substituted Greek letters for the Phoenician characters, in which it was originally written. Now the commonly received opinion, and that maintained by the commentators Vossius, Mercerus, and Madame Dacier, is, that everything here is a fiction that it is false that a Trojan history was written : by Dictys; that it is equally untrue that any work of this nature was presented to Nero by Eupraxis; that even the letter of Septimius is a forgery; and that the work was written several ages posterior to the time of Constantine, by an unknown author, who feigned the story of the transmission to Nero, and the translation by Septimius.' It is certain, however, that there did at one time exist a Greek work on the Trojan war, under the name of Dictys Cretensis. Of this several fragments are preserved by Cedrenus in his annals, and the book has been used by Malela in his history. These Greek fragments and quotations, and also the title of the work, coincide pretty nearly with portions. of the Latin Dictys. It is not therefore altogether improbable (as has been attempted to be shown by Perizonius, in a very ingenious dissertation,) that the work was originally a forgery of Eupraxis, and by him presented as an antique to Nero; that Septimius in reality translated it from the Greek of Eupraxis, and that the Greek fragments in Cedrenus and Malela are parts of the forgery of Eupraxis. In the histories of Dares and Dictys, everything that related to mythology and the fights of the gods was expunged; and thus in the Tale of Troy, a vacancy was left for the introduction of romantic embellishment. The story was first versified in the metrical composition of Benoît de Sainte More, an Anglo-Norman poet, who lived in the reign of Henry II. of England. He took the groundwork of events from the writings of Dares and Dictys; comprehended in his plan the Theban and Argonautic expeditions, and grafted on these incidents many new romantic inventions, dictated by the taste of his age.2 This metrical work, as has been shown by Mr. Douce, is the same in incident and decoration with the Latin prose chronicle of Guido de Colonna, who was formerly believed 1 A. Dederich is of a like opinion. See his edition of the work, Bonn, 1837. 2 See Benoît de Sainte More et le Roman de Troie; ou les metamorphoses d'Homère de l'épopée greco-latine au moyen âge. Par A. Joly, Paris, 1870, i. 4to, and Fischer's "Der Roman de Troie" (Leipzig?), and Wilhelm Greif's "Die mittelalterlichen Bearbeitungen der Trojanersage, ein neuer Beitrag zur Dares-und Dictysfrage," 1885. The work is to be completed in Stengel's “ Ausgaben und Abhandlungen.” |