Troianalexandrina

The De excidio Troiae, written at the end of the fifth or at the beginning of the sixth century attributed to Dares Phrygius, was widely diffused during the Middle Ages. Many variant versions exist -a very interesting example is provided by an English or Welsh family of the text.

The tradition according to which the Greek hero Ulysses founded Lisbon appears for the first time in geographical and non literary texts, and continues in data in medieval historical accounts, an example being the letter written by an English crusader about the conquest of Lisbon (1147).

The Libro de Alexandre is transmitted by a few manuscripts, but only two of them tell the story of the Macedonian king in its entirety. Of these two, named P and O, the first is considered the best by critics because O contains some gaps. These differences are noticeable, above all if we examine the sequence of the stanzas in the advice Alexander was given by Aristotle. Through the analysis of the syntactical and semantic links that connect lines and quatrains, it becomes evident that it is possible to consider the two manuscripts in an absolutely individual way, reconsidering O not as a degraded copy if compared to P, but both of them as manifestations of two different texts with a very different message.

In the earliest Greek calendar -Hesiod's Works and Days-, the author puts particular emphasis on the fatigue and thirst of the peasant labouring in canicular heat. In the Ancient calendars, whether illuminated with miniatures or mosaics, this literary motif became a figurative topos in the nude and seminude personifications of Summer and August resting, fanning themselves or taking refreshment. The same subject survived as a representation of August in Byzantine art and literature. At the end of the 12th century it was incorporated into Italian and Spanish calendars as a consequence of the expansion of Byzantine models that characterized the art of the period, and which resulted in a wide range of themes related to the Greek tradition appearing in the calendar cycles of this period.