Published in 1820, Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe was so wildly popular that Alice Chandler asserts in "Sir Walter Scott and the Medieval Revival" that the 19th century interest in the middle ages, which has continued until the present day, began because of this book. There was a newfound European interest in chivalry and romance, and Ivanhoe's publication helped give new life to stories of Robin Hood and King Arthur.

Throughout the Greco-Roman period of the Middle East, "Romantic Histories" were very popular. These are impassioned narratives that convey a historical sentiment but do not relate events as actually happened. Some famous examples of these are 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, and 4 Maccabees. Each work writes about a different aspect of either Antiochus IV Epiphanes or Ptolemy IV Philopater and his respective vendetta against the Jews.

I would classify these as historical fictions because they use a historical event or a historical character to impart the reader with some sort of lesson--sometimes moral; sometimes historical.

Though these examples are earlier in the Greco-Roman period (3rd-1st c. B.C.E), a later example of the evolving genre is the Greek Alexander Romance, which details a romanticized version of Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia.