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Abstract
At the crucial moment in Asser's De Rebus Gestis Alfredi in which Asser narrates the crowning of Alfred, Asser praises Alfred in two balanced clauses celebrating respectively Alfred's sapientia and his fortitudo. The use of this famous topos in this context is interesting and important, and it also relevant to the structure of the work as whole. It has long been recognized that the De Rebus Gestis Alfredi is a bi-partite work and that the two halves of the work are quite different in their concerns. I suggest that Asser was deliberately structuring the work as a whole in terms of this theme, first celebrating Alfred's fortitudo in the Danish wars, and then celebrating his sapientia, his achievements as a philosopher king, in the final portion of the Vita.