Christianity and mythology are jumbled up together in a most peculiar way, and history, chronology, and geography are set at defiance and treated with the same scorn of probabilities.
The classical romances forming this great general cycle are subdivided into several classes or cycles.

The interest of the first is mainly centered upon the heroes of Homer and Hesiod.

The best-known and most popular of these mediaeval works was the "Roman de Troie," relating the siege and downfall of Troy.
Based upon post-classical Greek and Latin writings rather than upon the great Homeric epic itself, the story, which had already undergone many changes to suit the ever-varying public taste, was further transformed by the Anglo-Norman trouvere, Benoit de Sainte-More, about 1184.

He composed a poem of thirty thousand lines, in which he related not only the siege and downfall of Troy, but also the Argonautic expedition, the wanderings of Ulysses, the story of Aeneas, and many other mythological tales.
This poet, following the custom of the age, naively reproduced the manners, customs, and, in general, the beliefs of the twelfth century.

There is plenty of local color in his work, only the color belongs to his own locality, and not to that of the heroes whose adventures he purports to relate.