A source which is mentioned, yet remains unidentified is the «Libro de las generaciones de los gentiles», apparently unrelated to the work of Petrus Pictaviensis just mentioned. This work, and the question of mythological sources in general, is one of the knottiest problems of the GE. María Rosa Lida (La General Estoria... I, 120) notes that it is primarily utilized with regard to geneologies, and especially concerning Jupiter. But it seems likely that the work is also related to the frequent formula «dizen los gentiles». In Part I this may refer to a specific author (I, 179a to Eusebius; I, 246a, 305a to Ovid; I, 360a to Orosius) but later it is mentioned as a source of itself; «Mas ante desso queremos uos contar unas razones que leuantaron los autores de los gentiles en este lugar» (II, 1, 275b); «finco Achilles encantado de aquellas aguas que, segunt dizen los abtores de los gentiles, en ninguna parte de su cuerpo non podie entrar fierro...» (II, 2, 127b), leading one to think more of an anonymous compilation of myths. This would have been less demanding to use than referring to individual separate accounts.

María Rosa Lida speculates that the work may be related to Theodontius, «an unidentified writer whose works are lost, and whom some have thought fictitious» (Charles Osgood, Boccaccio on Poetry, Indianapolis, 1956, p. 190). Another possibility is Hyginus, whose Fabulae (more properly, Geneologiae) offer, by a small margin, the most complete version of the particular crime of Tantalus which Alfonso has included, that of killing his son Pelops (II, 2, 90 ff.) I mention this work because what has arrived to us is «a late and bad series of excerpts» (Oxford Classical Dictionary, under «mythographers»).

It is worth noting that deaths end both Parts I and II.

Op. Cit., pp. 188-196.

Two items point to the source being ultimately based on Eusebius: first, that Alfonso gives no chronologies until after Abraham's birth, and second, that the kings he gives correspond with those in the Chronici canones.

See Dorothy Donald, Suetonius in the Primera Crónica General through the Speculum Historiale, HR, XI, 1943, 95-115.

La General Estoria... 1, 112.

Also I, 100a, 112a, 122a, 283a, 306b, 327a, 370b, 384b; II, 1, 82a.

«Sabed que nin Moysen nin Jheronimo, como quier que lieuen la estoria de la Biblia por annos, non la lieuan por la cuenta dellos departiendo las estorias diziendo: esto contescio en tal anno e esto en tal...» (I, 595a).

Ovid «en sus libros [puso] razones... de solaz» (I, 369a); in another place, he is «la theologia e la Biblia dello entre los gentiles» (I, 163a). The Arabs «dixieron enel fecho dela Biblia e enlos otros saberes... muchas buenas palabras, e çiertas e con razon... e grandes sabios fueron e son aun oy» (I, 85b).

Aside from a passing reference to the Physiologus, Pliny is the only source mentioned for natural history.