Cultural Depictions of Julius Caesar - Medieval Works

Medieval Works

  • A legendary account of Caesar's invasions of Britain appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136)
  • In the 13th century French romance Les Faits des Romains, Caesar is made a bishop
  • In the 13th century French chanson de geste Huon of Bordeaux, the fairy king Oberon is the son of Caesar and Morgan le Fay
  • Caesar appears in Canto IV of Dante Alighieri's epic poem The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321). He is in the section of Limbo reserved for virtuous non-Christians, along with Aeneas, Homer, Ovid, Horace and Lucan. His assassins, Brutus and Cassius, and his lover, Cleopatra, are seen among the souls of the wicked in the lower regions of hell.
  • Caesar was included as one of the Nine Worthies by Jacques de Longuyon in Voeux du Paon (1312). These were nine historical, scriptural, mythological or semi-legendary figures who, in the Middle Ages, were believed to personify the ideals of chivalry.
  • Caesar's civil war and assassination are recounted in Geoffrey Chaucer's Monk's Tale (c. 1385, one of his Canterbury Tales)

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