McCormick, Thomas J. Jr.

Partial Edition of Les Fais Des Rommains with a Study of Its Style and Syntax a Medieval Roman History

1995 0-7734-2918-2
Les Fais des Rommains is an early fifteenth century copy of an anonymous prose translation of Roman history with Julius Caesar as the central figure. It was an ambitious attempt to glean from the best Roman historians a history of Roman civilization with intentional didactic emendations for a medieval audience. Fifty-nine manuscripts of the translation are accounted for, the oldest one written in the thirteenth century. Hence, changes in syntax and style and other miscellaneous variations between this fifteenth century version and previously edited thirteenth-century renditions can be studied, where a scribe is faithful to his text, but echoes the thoughts and language of his own time.