Few works have shaped a national literature as thoroughly as the Poem of the Cid has shaped the Spanish literary tradition. Tracing the life of the eleventh-century military commander Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, called the Cid (from the Arabic Sayyidi, "My Lord"), this medieval epic describes a series of events surrounding his exile. The text of the poem survives in only one early thirteenth-century manuscript copied by a single scribe, yet centuries later the figure of the Cid still was celebrated in the Spanish popular ballad tradition. Today almost every theme that characterizes Spanish literature - honor, justice, loyalty, treachery, and jealousy - derives from the Poem of the Cid.<BR>Restored by poet and medievalist George Economou, this elegant and spirited translation by Paul Blackburn is judged by many the finest English translation of a great medieval poem.