Romance of Thebes

"Romance of Thebes" is a literary subject that has been treated in several languages.

French

"Le Roman de Thèbes" is a poem of some 10,000 lines which appears to be based, not on the "Thebaid" of Statius, but on an abridgment of that work. This view is supported by the omission of incidents and details which, in spite of the altered conditions under which the poem was composed, would naturally have been preserved in any imitation of the "Thebaid", while again certain modifications of the version of Statius can hardly be due to the author's invention but point to an ancient origin.

As in other poems of the same kind, the marvellous disappears; the Greeks adopt the French methods of warfare and the French code of chivalric love. The Roman dates from the 12th century (c. 1150-55), and is written, not in the tirades of the "chansons de geste", but in octosyllabic rhymed couplets. It was once attributed to Benoît de Sainte-Maure; but all that can be said is that the "Thebes" is prior to the "Roman de Troie", of which Benoît was undoubtedly the author.

The "Thebes" is preserved also in several French prose redactions, the first of which, printed in the 16th century under the name of "Edipus", belongs to the early years of the 13th century, and originally formed part of a compilation of ancient history, "Histoire ancienne jusqu'à Caesar". The first volume of "Les histoires de Paul Crose traduites en français" contains a free and amplified version of the "Thebes".

English

The "Siege of Thebes", written about 1420 by John Lydgate as a supplementary "Canterbury Tale", was printed by Wynkyn de Worde about 1500.

Anglo-Norman

From the "Roman de Thebes" also were possibly derived the "Ipomedon" and its sequel "Protheselaus", two "romans d'aventures" written about the end of the 12th century by Hue de Rotelande, an Anglo-Norman poet who lived in Credenhill, near Hereford. The author asserts that he translated from a Latin book lent him by Gilbert Fitz-Baderon, 4th lord of Monmouth, but in reality he has written romances of chivalry on the usual lines, the names of the characters alone being derived from antiquity.

References

*L. Constans, "La Légende d'Oedipe étudié dans l'antiquité, au moyen âge, et dans les temps modernes" (Paris, 1881)
*the section "L'Epopée antique" in De Julleville's "Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française"; "Le Roman de Thebes", ed. L. Constans (Soc. des anciens textes français (Paris, 1890)
*G. Ellis, "Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances", iii. (1805)

*1911