Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César

Composed in the early 13th century in northern France, it told the history of the world from the creation to the time of Julius Caesar.

[3] In manuscripts from the 14th and 15th centuries it was frequently found together with the Faits des Romains, which continued the history of the Roman Empire.

[4] The text was written for Roger IV, the châtelain of Lille;[2] the earlier suggestion that Wauchier de Denain was its author[5] is no longer held.

[4] The Faits des Romains may have been "composed with the intent of seeing a contemporary Caesar in the person of the French king", Philip II of France.

The removal of the prologue, the moralizing passages, and of appeals to the audience (all of which help establish an authorial presence and an individual voice) in later revisions has been argued to make the Histoire Ancienne a more general version of classical history, whose applicability exceeds that of the context of Roger de Lille.

Jean Fouquet , Coronation of Alexander the Great , 15th-century MS of Histoire Ancienne jusqu'à César and Faits des Romains in the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
Jean Fouquet , "Caesar Crossing the Rubicon", 15th-century MS of Histoire Ancienne jusqu'á César and Faits des Romains in the Bibliothèque nationale de France .