The ''Gesta Regum Britanniae'' ( la, Deeds of the Kings of Britain) is a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

epic written at some time between 1235 and 1254, and attributed to a Breton monk, William of Rennes. The ''Gesta'' is fundamentally a versification of Geoffrey of Monmouth's ''

Historia Regum Britanniae ''Historia regum Britanniae'' (''The History of the Kings of Britain''), originally called ''De gestis Britonum'' (''On the Deeds of the Britons''), is a pseudohistorical account of British history, written around 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. ...

'' in Latin epic hexameters. It retains Geoffrey's overall sequence and structure, but expands upon those elements and stories which had the greatest dramatic potential, while treating other sections more cursorily. William omits the ''Prophecies of Merlin'' section of the ''Historia'', as Wace did in his earlier '' Roman de Brut''. William may have read Geoffrey's '' Vita Merlini'', but otherwise does not intrude any elements of the (by then very copious) Arthurian legend into his adaptation of the ''Historia''. The form of the ''Gesta'' was inspired by Walter of Châtillon's '' Alexandreis''. It is divided into ten books, each of which is prefaced by a terse summary of its contents, also in verse. The entire poem is 4,923 lines long, each book being about 500 lines in length.

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''Gesta regum Britanniae''
edition by

Francisque Michel Francisque Xavier Michel (18 February 1809, Lyon – 18 May 1887, Paris) was a French historian and philologist. Life He became known for his editions of French works of the Middle Ages, and the French Government, recognizing their value, sent ...

Arthurian literature in Latin Epic poems in Latin 13th-century Latin books {{poem-stub