banks of the Thames, and called it New Troy. Otto Frisingensis (12th century) and other German chroniclers repeat similar myths, and the apocryphal hypothesis is echoed in Scandinavian sagas. About 1050 a monk named Bernard wrote De excidio Trojae, and in the middle of the 12th century Simon Chèvre d'Or, canon of the abbey of Saint-Victor, Paris, followed with another poem in leonine elegiacs on the fall of the city and the adventures of Aeneas, in which the Homeric and Virgilian records were blended.
We now come to a work on the same subject, which in its own day and for centuries afterwards exercised an extraordinary influence throughout Europe. About the year 1184 Benoît de Sainte-More (q.v.) composed a poem of 30,000 lines entitled Roman de Troie. It forms a true Trojan cycle and embraces the entire heroic history of Hellas. The introduction relates the story of the Argonauts, and the last 2680 verses are devoted to the return of the Greek chiefs and the wanderings of Ulysses. With no fear of chronological discrepancy before his eyes, Benoît reproduces the manners of his own times, and builds up a complete museum of the 12th century—its arts, costumes, manufactures, architecture, arms, and even religious terms. Women are repeatedly introduced in unwarranted situations; they are spectators of all combats. The idea of personal beauty is different from that of the old Greeks; by Benoît good humour, as well as health and strength, is held to be one of its chief characteristics. The love-pictures are another addition of the modern writer. The author speaks enthusiastically of Homer, but he derived his information chiefly from the pseudo-annals of Dictys and Dares, more especially the latter, augmented by his own imagination and the spirit of the age. It is to Benoît alone that the honour of poetic invention is due, and in spite of its obligation for a groundwork to Dictys and Dares we may justly consider the Roman de Troie as an original work. From this source subsequent writers drew their notions of Troy, mostly without naming their authority and generally without even knowing his name. This is the masterpiece of the pseudo-classical cycle of romances: and in the Latin version of Guido delle Colonne it passed through every country of Europe.
The De bello trojano of Joseph of Exeter, in six books, a genuine poem of no little merit, was written soon after Benoît's work or about the years 1187–1188. At first ascribed to Dares Phrygius and Cornelius Nepos, it was not published as Joseph's until 1620 at Frankfort. It was directly drawn from the pseudo-annalists, but the influence of Benoît was considerable. Of the same kind was the Troilus of Albert of Stade (1249), a version of Dares, in verse, characterized by the old severity and affected realism. But these Latin works can only be associated indirectly with Benoît, who had closer imitators in Germany at an early period. Herbort of Fritzlar reproduced the French text in his Lied von Troye (early 13th century), as did also Konrad von Würzburg (d. 1287) in his Buch von Troye of 40,000 verses, which he himself compared to the “boundless ocean.” It was completed by an anonymous poet. To the like source may be traced a poem of 30,000 verses on the same subject by Wolfram von Eschenbach; and Jacques van Maerlant reproduced Benoît's narrative in Flemish. The Norse or Icelandic Trojumanna saga repeats the tale with some variations.
In Italy Guido delle Colonne, a Sicilian, began in 1270 and finished in 1287 a prose Historia trojana, in which he reproduced the Roman de Troie of Benoît, and so closely as to copy the errors of the latter and to give the name of Peleus to Pelias, Jason's uncle. As the debt was entirely unacknowledged, Benoît at last came to be considered the imitator of Guido. The original is generally abridged, and the vivacity and poetry of the Anglo-Norman trouvère disappear in a dry version. The immense popularity of Guido's work is shown by the large number of existing MSS. the French Bibliothèque Nationale possesses eighteen codices of Guido to thirteen of Benoît, while at the British Museum the proportion is ten to two. Guido's History was translated into German about 1392 by Hans Mair of Nördlingen. Two Italian translations were made: by Filippo Ceffi (1324) and by Matteo Beliebuoni (1333). In the 14th and the commencement of the 15th century four versions appeared in England and Scotland. The best known is the Troy Book, written between 1414 and 1420, of John Lydgate, who had both French and Latin texts before him. An earlier and anonymous rendering exists at Oxford (Bodleian MS. Laud Misc. 595). There is the Gest Hystoriale of the Destruction of Troy (Early Eng. Text Soc., 1869–1874), written in a northern dialect about 1390; a Scottish version (15th century) by a certain Barbour, not the poet, John Barbour; and The Seege of Troy, a version of Dares (Harl. MS. 525 Brit. Mus.). The invention of printing gave fresh impetus to the spread of Guido's work. The first book printed in English was The Recuyell of the Hystoryes of Troye: a translation by Caxton from the French of Raoul Lefèvre. The Recueil des histoires de Troyes was “composé par vénérable homme Raoul le Feure prestre chappellain de mon très redoupté seigneur monseigneur le duc Phelippe de Bourgoingne en l'an de grace 1464,” but probably printed in 1474 by Caxton or Colard Mansion at Bruges. It is in three books, of which the first deals with the story of Jupiter and Saturn, the origin of the Trojans, the feats of Perseus, and the first achievements of Hercules; the second book is wholly taken up with the “prouesses du fort Hercuiez”; the third, “traictant de la generally destruction de Troyes qui vint a 'ocasion du rauissement de dame Helaine,” is little else than a translation of that portion of Guido delle Colonne which relates to Priam and his sons. Two MSS. of the Recueil in the Bibliothèque Nationale wrongly attribute the work to Guillaume Fillastre, a voluminous author, and predecessor of Lefèvre as secretary to the duke. Another codex in the same library, Histoire ancienne de Thèbes et de Troyes, is partly taken from Orosius. The Bibliothèque Nationale possesses an unpublished Histoire des Troyens et des Thébains jusgu'à la mort de Turnus, d'après Orose, Ovide et Raoul Lefèbre (early 16th century), and the British Museum a Latin history of Troy dated 1403. There were also translations into Italian, Spanish, High German, Low Saxon, Dutch and Danish; Guido even appeared in a Flemish and a Bohemian dress.
Thus far we have only considered works more or less closely imitated from the original. Boccaccio, passing by the earlier tales, took one original incident from Benoît, the love of Troilus and the treachery of Briseida, and composed Filostrato, a parable of his own relations with the Neapolitan princess who figures in his works as Fiammetta. This was borrowed by Chaucer for his Boke of Troilus and Cresside, and also by Shakespeare for his Troilus and Cressida (1609). One reason why the Round Table stories of the 12th and 13th centuries had a never-ceasing charm for readers of the two following centuries was that they were constantly being re-edited to suit the changing taste. The Roman de Troie experienced the same fate. By the 13th century it was translated into prose and worked up in those enormous compilations, such as the Mer des histoires, &c., in which the middle ages studied antiquity. It reappeared in the religious dramas called Mysteries. Jacques Millet, who produced La Destruction de Troie la Grande between 1452 and 1454, merely added vulgar realism to the original. Writers of chap-books borrowed the story, which is again found on the stage in Antoine de Montchrétien's tragedy of Hector (1603)—a last echo of the influence of Benoît.
Bibliography.—The Troy legend is dealt with in the elaborate work of A. Joly, Benoît de Sainte-More et le Roman de Troie (1870–1871); G. Körting, Der altfranz. Roman de Troie (1883); F. Settegast, Benoît de Ste-More (Breslau, 1876); G. C.Frommann, Herbort v. Fritzlar u. Benoît de Ste-More (Stuttgart, 1837); R. Jäckel, Dares Phrygius u. Benoît de Ste-More (Breslau, 1875); E. Juste, Sur l'origine des poémes attrib. à Homère et sur les cycles épiques de l'antiq. et du Moyen-Âge (Brussels, 1849); J. A. Fuchs, De varietate fabularum troicarum quaestiones (Cologne, 1830); H. Dunger, Die Sage vom trojan. Kriege (Leipzig, 1869); G. Körting, Dictys u. Dares (Halle, 1874); H. Dunger, Dictys Septimius (Dresden, 1878); L. Havet, “Sur la date du Dictys de Septimius,” Rev. de philol. (1878); F. Meister, “Zur Ephem. belli Troiani von Dictys,” Philologus (1879); R. Barth, Guido de Columna (Leipzig, 1877); A. Mussafia, “Sulle Versione Italiane della Storia Troiana,” Sitz. d. k. Akad. Wien (1871),vol. lxvii., and “Ueber d. span. Versionen” (ibid., 1871), vol. lxix.; A. Pey, Essai sur lí romans d'Eneas (1856). See also J, J. Jusserand, De Josepho Exoniensi (1877); E. Gorra, Testi inediti di Storia trojana (Turin, 1887); A. Graf, Roma nella memoria et nelle imaginazioni del medio evo (Turin, 1882); Le Roman de Troie, ed. L. Constans (Soc. d. anc. textes fr. Paris, 1904); H. L. Ward, Catalogue of Romances (1883), vol. i.; W. Greif, “Die mittelälterlichen Bearbeitungen der Trojanersage,” in E. Stengel's Ausgaben und Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der romanischen Philologie (Marburg, 1886); A. N. Wesselofsky, Mat. et recherches pour servir à l'histoire du roman et de la nouvelle (Petersburg, 1889); R. Dernedde, Ueber die den altfranzösischen Dichtern bekannten epischen Stoffe aus dem Alterthum (1887).
TROY, a city and the county-seat of Rensselaer county, New York, U.S.A., at the head of tidewater on the eastern bank of the Hudson river, opposite the mouth of the Mohawk, about 6 m. N. of Albany and about 148 m. N. of New York City. Pop. (1880), 56,747; (1890), 60,956; (1900), 60,651, of whom 14,384 were foreign-born (7348 being Irish, 1796 German and 1498 English) and 400 were negroes; (1910, census), 76,813. Troy is served by the Boston & Maine, the New York Central & Hudson River and the Delaware & Hudson railways, and by interurban electric lines connecting with aratoga and Lake George on the north, Albany on the south and Schenectady and the cities of the populous Mohawk Valley on the west; it is at the head of river steamboat navigation on the Hudson, and has water communication by means of the Erie and Champlain canals with the Great Lakes and Canada. The site is a level oblong tract extending along the Hudson for 7 m. and reaching back a mile or so from the river to highlands which rise to a height of 400 ft., with Mt Ida (240 ft. above tidewater) forming a picturesque background. The older part of the city and the principal business and manufacturing district occupies the low lands; the newer part, chiefly residential, is built upon the heights. The northern part of the city was the village of Lansingburg (pop. 1900, 12,595) until 1901, when with parts of, the towns of Brunswick and North Greenbush it was annexed to
