[1] Cf. Menendez y Pelayo, Tratado de los romances viejos, I, 315.

This is the epic Cid who in the last quarter of the eleventh
century was banished by Alphonso VI of Castile, fought his way to
the Mediterranean, stormed Valencia, married his two daughters to
the Heirs of Carrion and defended his fair name in parliament and
in battle.

The poet either from ignorance or choice has disregarded the
historical significance of the campaigns of the Cid. He fails to
mention his defeat of the threatening horde of Almoravides at the
very moment when their victory over Alphonso's Castilians at
Zalaca had opened to them Spain's richest provinces, and turns the
crowning achievement of the great warrior's life into the
preliminary to a domestic event which he considered of greater
importance. We are grateful to him for his lack of accuracy, for
it illustrates how men thought about their heroes in that time.
The twelfth century Castilians would have admitted that in battle
the Cid was of less avail than their patron James, the son of
Zebedee, but they would have added that after all the saint was a
Galilean and not a Spaniard.

In order then to make the Cid not merely heroic but a national
hero he must become the possessor of attributes of greatness
beyond mere courage. The poet therefore, probably assuming that
his hearers were well aware of the Cid's prowess in arms, devoted
himself to a theme of more intimate appeal. The Cid, an exile from
Castile and flouted by his enemies at home, must vindicate
himself. The discomfiture of the Moor is not an end in itself but