Note 152 — from the Origins To the Renaissance (continued 2)

Even under the Roman empire, nations had been known to attribute to themselves a Trojan origin. Lucanus states that the men of Auvergne were conceited enough to consider themselves allied to the Trojan race. Ammianus Marcellinus, fourth century, states that similar traditions were current in Gaul in his time: "Aiunt quidam paucos post excidium Trojæ fugientes Græcos ubique dispersos, loca hæc occupasse tunc vacua." "Rerum Gestarum," lib. xv. cap. ix. During the Middle Ages a Roman ancestry was attributed to the French, the Britons, the Lombards, the Normans. The history of Brutus, father of the Britons, is in Nennius, tenth century(?); he says he drew his information from "annalibus Romanorum" ("Historia Britonum," ed. Stevenson, Historical Society, London, 1838, p. 7). The English historians after him, up to modern times, accepted the same legend; it is reproduced by Matthew Paris in the thirteenth century, by Ralph Higden in the fourteenth, by Holinshed in Shakesperean times: "This Brutus ... was the sonne of Silvius, the sonne of Ascanius, the sonne of Æneas the Troian, begotten of his wife Creusa, and borne in Troie, before the citie was destroied." Chronicles, 1807, 6 vols. fol. book ii. chap. 1. In France at the Renaissance, Ronsard chose for his hero Francus the Trojan, "because," as he says, "he had an extreme desire to honour the house of France."