Anonymus dedicated his work to "the most venerable man N" who had been his schoolmate in an unspecified school. Anonymus mentioned that they had found pleasure in reading the "Trojan History", a work attributed to Dares Phrygius, which enjoyed popularity in the Middle Ages. He also referred to a work of the Trojan War that he had "brought most lovingly together into one volume" upon his masters' instructions. Anonymus stated that he had decided to write of "the genealogy of the kings of Hungary and of their noblemen" because he had no knowledge of any decent account of the Hungarian Conquest. According to scholars who identify Anonymus as King Béla III's notary, he wrote his "Gesta" around 1200 or in the first decades of the 13th century.