rather his elaborate Latin style. We know from his writing that he was in the retinue and received the patronage of Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, who was the foremost adviser to King Valdemar I. In his will Absalon forgives his clerk Saxo a small debt of two and a half marks of silver and tells him to return two borrowed books to the monastery of Sorø. The legacy of Saxo Grammaticus is the sixteen-book heroic history of the Danes called Gesta Danorum. Gesta Danorum In the preface to the work, Saxo writes that his patron Absalon (c. 1128 – 21 March 1201), Archbishop of Lund, had encouraged him to write a heroic history of the Danes. The history is thought to have been started about 1185, after Sven Aggesen wrote his history. The goal of Gesta Danorum was, as Saxo writes, "to glorify our fatherland", which he accomplishes on the model of Virgil's Aeneid. Saxo also may have owed much to Plato and Cicero, a well as to more contemporary writers like Geoffrey of Monmouth. Saxo's history of the Danes was compiled from sources that are of questionable historical value but were to him the only ones extant. He drew on oral tales of the Icelanders, ancient volumes, letters carved on rocks and stone, and the statements of his patron Absalon concerning the history of which the Archbishop had been a part. Saxo's work was not strictly a history or a simple record of old tales, but rather, as Friis-Jensen puts it, "a product of Saxo's own mind and times". Westergaard writes that Saxo combines the history and mythology of the heroic age of Denmark, and reworks it into his own story that exemplifies the past of the Danes. The history is composed of sixteen books, and extends from the time of the founders of the Danish people, Dan I of Denmark and Angul, into about the year 1187. The first four books are concerned with the history of the Danes before Christ, the next four books with their history after Christ, and books 9–12 with Christian Denmark, and books 13–16 promote Lund and exploits before and during Saxo's own lifetime. It is assumed that the last eight books were written first, as Saxo drew heavily on the work of Absalon (who died in 1201, before the work was completed) for evidence of the age of Saint Canute and Valdemar