 The opening third contains a history of the Trojan War from the marriage of Thetis to the building of the Trojan Horse, set out in a question-and-answer fashion that suggested to Atwood a school text, perhaps prefatory to the study of Virgil.The narrative material has been drawn together and classically ordered from so many scattered sources that its editor, E. Bagby Atwood, considered that it was "utterly impossible to consider that the account was originated by the mediaeval author of the extant version," and "utterly impossible to suppose a mediaeval writer capable of selecting and arranging this scattered information in a simple, connected narrative agreeing so closely in plan and order with the ancient Epic Cycle".He concluded that it was a rescension of a considerably older Latin chronicle of the Trojan War, perhaps as early as the Augustan age.