ABSTRACT
In this chapter only a selection of those historical sources that touch on our subject matter will be described. The term “historical sources” refers to documents that were understood by their authors to be histories. This is not the place to go into questions of historiography, but the writing of history consisted then as now of collecting information about the past. Written information was generally given precedence, but we must keep in mind that ancient and medieval historians often considered oral tradition, including not only narrative reports, but also poetically formed material, to be a reliable source for information. Scholars have discovered more than one “heroic lay” hidden in the Latin prose of these texts. 1
