than in the romance that one might almost suspect it of having been
the original. But we must know more about the Kathakosa and about
the communication between Byzantium and India before we can
decisively determine which came first.


III


Amis and Amil were the David and Jonathan, the Orestes and Pylades,
of the mediaeval world. Dr. Hofmann, who has edited the earliest
French verse account of the Legend, enumerates nearly thirty other
versions of it in almost all the tongues of Western and Northern
Europe, not to mention various versions which have crept into
different collections of the Lives of the Saints. For their peerless
friendship raised them to the ranks of the martyrs, at any rate, at
Mortara and Novara, where, according to the Legend, they died. The
earliest of all these forms is a set of Latin Hexameters by one
Radulfus Tortarius, born at Fleury, 1063, lived in Normandy, and died
some time after 1122. It was, therefore, possible that the story had
come back with the first crusaders, and the Grimms attribute to it a
Greek original. But in its earliest as well as in its present form,
it is definitely located on Romance soil, while the names of the
heroes are clearly Latin (Amicus and AEmilius). It was, however,
only at a later stage that the story was affiliated to the Epic Cycle
of Charlemagne. On the face of it there is clearly stamped the
impress of popular tradition. Heads are not so easily replaced,
except by a freak of the Folk imagination. It is probably for this
reason that M. Gaston Paris attributes an Oriental origin to the
latter part of the tale, and for the same reason the Benedictine