Guido delle Colonne was an early 13th century Sicilian

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

 writer, living at Messina, who wrote in Latin. He is the author of a prose narrative of the Trojan War

Trojan War

In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...

 entitled Historia destructionis Troiae

Historia destructionis Troiae

Historia destructionis Troiae or Historia Troiana is a Latin prose narrative written by Guido delle Colonne, a Sicilian author, in the early 13th century. Its main source was the Old French verse romance by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Roman de Troie...

("History of the destruction of Troy") that was based on De excidio Trojae historia written by Dares Phrygius

Dares Phrygius

Dares Phrygius , according to Homer, was a Trojan priest of Hephaestus. He was supposed to have been the author of an account of the destruction of Troy, and to have lived before Homer...

 and Ephemeridos belli Trojani written by Dictys Cretensis

Dictys Cretensis

Dictys Cretensis of Knossus was the legendary companion of Idomeneus during the Trojan War, and the purported author of a diary of its events, that deployed some of the same materials worked up by Homer for the Iliad...

.

Dante

Dante Alighieri

Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...

 (De vulgari eloquentia

De vulgari eloquentia

De vulgari eloquentia is the title of an essay by Dante Alighieri, written in Latin and initially meant to consist of four books, but abandoned in the middle of the second. It was probably composed shortly after Dante went into exile; internal evidence points to a date between 1302 and 1305...

2.5) named Guido as a poet in the vernacular, and in fact five poems by him in Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

survive.

Further reading

• Benson, C. David, The History of Troy in Middle English Literature: Guido delle Colonne's Historia Destructionis Troiae in Medieval England, Rowman & Littlefield (1980), ISBN 0847662896