La General Estoria... I, 121.

It should be noted that in II Kings, the chapter divisions of Alfonso's work correspond, one-to-one, to the Bible's chapter divisions, which has happened nowhere before.

For example, the story of Pyramus and Thisbe (II, 1, 195 ff.), from Book IV of the Metamorphoses, is only included because it follows in Ovid what Alfonso was interested in, which was Pentheus, in Book III. The editors continued translating and including Ovid without stopping at the division between the books. Pyramus and Thisbe should be placed with Queen Semiramis of Babylonia, where they are indeed mentioned (I, 104b) and four verses from the text quoted. That Alfonso did not think the story worth including in its entirety (obviously its later inclusion is an accident) casts new light on his attitude towards Ovid, and shows again that his desire for comprehensiveness was not without limits. (He also rejects, as not sufficiently relevant, Heroides 3, 16 and 17. See Ashton, Op. Cit. in note 28).

One need not look far for an explanation of the increasing absence of an erudite hand. Alfonso began his historical works, his most ambitious cultural undertaking, about 1270 (see Diego Catalán, De Alfonso X al Conde de Barcelos, Madrid 1962, pp. 21-23), a period of relative calm in Castile. He began to work on the GE not long afterwards, presumably between 1272 and 1275. During the latter half of the decade, political cares were to increasingly press on him: in 1275, the ill-fated voyage to France, followed by problems of succession. By 1280, the only definite date associated with the GE (when Past IV was finished; v. XXII) he was involved in full-scale war with Granada, for the first time since 1266.