The paper traces the Roman de Perceforest’s evolving intertextual relationships with the Alexander matter (Jacques de Longuyon’s Voeux du Paon), the matière de Rome (Horose, the Faits des Romains) and the British chronicle (Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae). These literary ties with the matter of antiquity – successively forged and broken by the romance’s author – follow a genealogical schema which allows for the gargantuan text to deploy its narrative in concordance with the traditional conception of translatio imperii et studii. At the same time, the romance’s original re-configuration of the dichotomy between “Greeks” and “Trojans” permits a profound re-writing of the intertexts themselves, leading to the Hellenisation of European history against traditional narratives of Trojan foundation.