Alexander the Great in legend

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The coronation of Alexander depicted in medieval European style in the 15th century romance The History of Alexander's Battles
This article is part of
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Alexander the Great
Early rule
Conquest of the Persian Empire
Expedition into India
Death and legacy
Cultural impact

The vast conquests of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great quickly inspired the formation and diffusion of legendary material about his deity, journeys, and tales. These appeared shortly after his death, and some may have already begun forming during his lifetime. Common themes and symbols, among legends about Alexander include the Gates of Alexander, the Horns of Alexander, and the Gordian Knot.

In the third century AD, an anonymous author writing in the name of Alexander's court historian Callisthenes (commonly referred to as Pseudo-Callisthenes) authored the Greek Alexander Romance. This text would spawn a genre of literature about the legends and exploits of Alexander across centuries, going through over one hundred versions in premodern times and appearing in almost every language in both European and Islamic worlds.

Greek tradition

Prophesied conqueror

King Philip had a dream in which he took a wax seal and sealed up the womb of his wife. The seal bore the image of a lion. The seer Aristander interpreted this to mean that Olympias was pregnant, since men do not seal up what is empty, and that she would bring forth a son who would be bold and lion-like.[1]

After Philip took Potidaea in 356 BC, he received word that his horse had just won at the Olympic games, and that Parmenion had defeated the Illyrians. Then he got word of the birth of Alexander. The seers told him that a son whose birth coincided with three victories would always be victorious.[2] When the young Alexander tamed the steed Bucephalus, his father noted that Macedonia would not be large enough for him.[2]

Deification

When Alexander went to Egypt, he was given the title of

Zeus Ammon as his true father. Returning to Memphis after the oracle visit, he was informed that the prophetess of the Apollonian oracle, the Erythraean Sibyl, had also confirmed his divine paternity as the son of Zeus.[3]

Apocryphal letters

See also: Letters of Alexander the Great
  • Leon of Pella wrote the work On the Gods in Egypt on the basis of an apocryphal letter sent from Alexander to his mother Olympias.
  • The Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem, described as being a letter sent from Alexander to his mentor Aristotle, concerning his adventures in India.

Plutarch

Many Alexander legends are found in the writings of the Greek historian Plutarch, such as that Alexander was born in the same day that the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was burnt down, during which the god Artemis was too preoccupied with his birth to pay the requisite attention needed to save his burning temple. Later in life when Alexander offered to pay for the temples reconstruction, he was informed that it was not appropriate for gods to dedicate offerings to other gods. In another anecdote, it was said that the priestess of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi exclaimed to him "You are invincible o young!"

Claudius Aelianus

Claudius Aelianus in the Characteristics of Animals wrote that Scythians say that there were horned donkeys, and their horns were holding water from the river Styx. Adding that Sopater brought one of these horns to Alexander, then Alexander set up the horn as a votive offering at Delphi, with an inscription beneath it.[4]

Jewish tradition

Josephus

Armenian War.[6]

Talmud

The

Simon the Just. It also mentions many other legends on Alexander, such as: The Ten Questions of Alexander to the Sages of the South, his Journey to the Regions of Darkness, the Amazons, the Gold Bread, Alexander at the Gate of Paradise, his ascent into the air, and Descent into the Sea.[7][8]

The Talmud also records a story that describes Alexander seeking the Fountain of Life, which also has versions appear in the Alexander Romance and in the Syriac Song of Alexander. In the version as it appears in the Talmud, Alexander washes a fish in a spring which immediately jumps to life upon being washed. Realizing that he has discovered the Fountain, he washes his own face in it, though the significance of this is not explained in the story. The Talmudic version differs from the other versions, insofar as only in the Talmud does Alexander succeed in accessing the Fountain, and in this story, Alexander is the one to discover it as opposed to one of his servants.[9]

Medieval European tradition

Alexander sees the world

Alexander the Great carried aloft by griffins, Otranto Cathedral floor mosaic

Wishing to see the world, Alexander was thought to have descended into the depths of the ocean in a sort of diving bell, which would let him see the world from above. To do this he harnessed two large griffins between which he was seated. He would hold meat skewers above their heads to entice them to keep flying further up.

Around 1260,

Bertold von Regensburg preached, that like Alexander believed that "he could take down the highest stars from the sky by hand, so you too would like to go up in the air if you could". But the story showed where such a climb would lead, and proved that the great Alexander "was one of the greatest fools the world has ever seen".[10]

Rice and Boardman have both argued that the figure on the Anglo-Saxon Alfred Jewel intended to represent this scene in order to represent the notion of one coming to knowledge through sight. Boardman has also argued that the Anglo-Saxon Fuller Brooch carries a similar theme.[11]

In Thessalonica

In medieval

Thessalonica, the largest city in the region of Macedonia, a popular legend arose among the inhabitants of the city connecting Alexander with the sculptures of a Roman-era portico of the city known as Las Incantadas ("the enchanted ones"), which had been erected long after his death. According to the legend, a Thracian king once visited Alexander, and his queen fell in love with him. They arranged to meet at night next to the portico, but the king learnt of this, and had his magician bewitch the portico so that everyone who passed near would be petrified. Alexander was notified not to go by his tutor Aristotle, but the queen and her attendants were not as lucky, and they turned all into sculptures. The king and his magician arrived later to see their work, and they were petrified too.[12]

Arabic tradition

Main article: Alexander the Great in Arabic tradition

With the Greek Alexander Romance and its translation into numerous languages including Armenian, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, and more, an entire genre of literature was dedicated to the exploits of Alexander in both Christian and Muslim realms. Alexander was also the one most frequently identified with Dhu al-Qarnayn (Arabic: ذو القرنين; lit. "The Two-Horned One"),[13][14][15] a figure that appears in Surah Al-Kahf in the Quran, the holy text of Islam, which greatly expanded the attention paid to him in the traditions of the Muslim world.

Arabic was introduced as the court language of the caliphate during the Umayyad Caliphate around the year 700. One of the first texts translated into Arabic was the Rasāʾil Arisṭāṭālīsa ilāʾl-Iskandar (The Letters of Aristotle to Alexander or the Epistolary Romance), which consist of a letter of apocryphal letters meant to confirm Alexander's reputation as a wise ruler. It was composed during the reign of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik (r. 724–743) from Greek sources like the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem. Part of this text became a constituent of the Kitāb Sirr al-Asrār (Book of Secret of Secrets) by Yahya ibn al-Batriq (d. 815), a Pseudo-Aristoteliean treatise which became immensely popular and was translated directly from the Arabic into many other (including European) languages. Both Alexander and Aristotle became important figures in Islamic wisdom literature, such as in the chapter dedicated to Alexander in the 9th-century Ādāb al-Falāsifa (Sayings of the Philosophers) written in the name of the famous Christian translator and physician Hunayn ibn Ishaq. Other texts in this tradition from the tenth century onward included Ṣiwān al-Ḥikma (Chest of Wisdom) of Abu Sulayman Sijistani, the Al-Ḥikma al-Khālida (Everlasting Wisdom) of Miskawayh, and the Al-Kalim al-Rūḥānīya fīʾl-Ḥikam al-Yūnānīya (Spiritual Sayings about Greek Maxims) of Ibn Hindu.[16]

The Alexander Romance literature would enter into the Arabic world through its Syriac language recension (version), known as the Syriac Alexander Legend. It would become the main source for Arabic-language historians who wanted to discuss the role of Alexander in pre-Islamic history. For example, the Kitāb al-Akhbār al-Ṭiwal (Book of Comprehensive History) of Abu Hanifa Dinawari (d. 896), itself based on an older version in Pseudo-Aṣma‛ī’s Nihāyat al-Arab (Ultimate Aim), includes a short history of the kingdom of Alexander in this tradition. Other examples include the Tārīkh (Historiae) of al-Yaʿqūbī (d. 897), the al-Rusul waʾl-Mulūk (History of the Prophets and Kings, or simply Annales) of al-Tabbari (d. 923), the Murūj al-Dhahab (Meadows of Gold) of al-Masudi (d. 956), and the Naẓm al-Jawhar (String of Pearls) of Eutychius of Alexandria.[17]

The earliest full-length Arabic Alexander Romance was the Qissat al-Iskandar of ʿUmara ibn Zayd, composed in the late 8th or early 9th century. The other prominent Arbaic versions would be the Qissat Dhulqarnayn (9th century), a second Qissat Dhulqarnayn in the Ara'is al-majalis fi Qisas al-anbiya' (Book of Prophets) of al-Tha'labi (11th century), the Hadith Dhulqarnayn (15th century), the Sīrat al-Iskandar (15th century), the Sirat al-malek Eskandar Dhu’ l-Qarneyn, and the Tārīkh al-Iskandar al-Makdūni (History of Alexander of Macedon) (17th century).[18]

Persian tradition

Pre-Islamic Persian tradition of Alexander is overwhelmingly negative, as in the Book of Arda Viraf and the Bundahishn. In these texts, Alexander is the enemy of Iran and of true religion. For example, the former text at one point says: Then the accursed, wicked Evil Spirit deluded the accursed (gizistag) Alexander the Roman, who lived in Egypt, in order to cause the people to have doubt about this religion". Early Islamic representations of Alexander retain some vestige of such views, as Alexander is occasionally called a gizistag in the Shahnameh.[19] Theodor Nöldeke has also inferred the existence of a now-lost Middle Persian recension of the Alexander Romance, which he believed was translated into Syriac as the Syriac Alexander Romance, but more recent scholarship has cast doubt on the existence of such an intermediary.[19]

Islamic-era Persian accounts of the Alexander legend, known as the

Rûm" i.e. "Philip the Greek" (cf. Philip II of Macedon).[23][24]

Indian tradition

Alexander the Great was claimed as the ancestor of the Hunza rulers.[25]

Alexander Romance

Eskandar fighting the enemy, 15th century Persian miniature, Czartoryski Museum
Main article: Alexander Romance

In the third-century AD, a quantity of legendary and historical material about Alexander the Great coalesced into the production of a text known as the Alexander Romance. The text is pseudonymously attributed to Callisthenes, a court historian of Alexander the Great. For this reason, it's author is usually referred to as Pseudo-Callisthenes.

In premodern times, the Alexander Romance underwent more than 100 translations, elaborations, and derivations in 25 languages, including almost all European vernaculars as well as in every language from the Islamicized regions of Asia and Africa, from Mali to Malaysia.[26]

In Europe, the Alexander Romance was forgotten until

Leo the Archpriest discovered a Greek copy in Constantinople while he was on a diplomatic missions. He produced a translation into Latin titled the Nativitas et victoria Alexandri Magni regis, which became the basis of the far more successful and expanded version known as the Historia de Proeliis, which went through three recensions between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries and made Alexander a household name throughout the Middle Ages.[27] Another very popular Latin version was the Alexandreis of Walter of Châtillon.[28]

Translations would subsequently be made into all the major languages of Europe as versions of the Alexander romance became the most popular form of medieval European literature after the Bible,[29] such as Old French (12th century),[30] Middle Scots (The Buik of Alexander, 13th century),[31] Italian,[32] Spanish (the Libro de Alexandre), Central German (Lamprecht's Alexanderlied, and a 15th-century version by Johannes Hartlieb), Slavonic,[33] Romanian, Hungarian, Irish, and more.[29][34]

The

Middle Mongolian (13th-14th century).[39]

Eastern reception

Quran

Alexander in the Qur'an).[42] The Arabic tradition also elaborated the legend that Alexander the Great had been the companion of Aristotle and Plato
.

Persian tradition

Persian versions of the Alexander Romance began with depictions covering three sections of

Kherad-nâme (Book of Alexandrian Intelligence) of Jâmi composed in the 15th century,[43] though numerous other versions would also continue to be written.[44]

Malay tradition

The

Rajendra Chola (Raja Suran, Raja Chola) in the Malay Annals, such as the Sumatra Minangkabau royalty.[45][46]

Western reception

Western epics based on the Alexander Romance include:

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Plutarch Al. 2.2–3
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-1-317-86644-2
    . Retrieved 2023-08-03.
  3. ^ "Lendering, Jona. "Alexander the God", Livius.org". Archived from the original on 2016-12-01. Retrieved 2020-03-26.
  4. ^ Aelian, Characteristics of Animals, § 10.40
  5. ISBN 978-0-674-02656-8
    .
  6. ISBN 978-9004100633
    .
  7. ^ Jewish Encyclopedia, Alexander The Great
  8. ^ "Chabad, Alexander in Jerusalem". Archived from the original on 2014-11-08. Retrieved 2013-11-04.
  9. ISBN 978-90-04-31931-8
    .
  10. ^ Bernd und Hiltrud Hainmüller (n.d.). "Weltbilder des Mittelalters,Station 4: Innenraum – Symbolik in visuellen Medien,1. Die romanischen Skulpturen". hainmueller.de. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
  11. ISBN 1782976582, 9781782976585, google books
  12. ^ Stuart, J.; Revett, N. (1762). The Antiquities of Athens, Measured and Delineated. Vol. 3. London: John Nichols. pp. 53–56.
  13. S2CID 251486595
    .
  14. ISBN 978-1-4426-6130-1
    , retrieved 2024-01-17
  15. ISBN 978-0-19-006754-0
    .
  16. ^ Gaullier-Bougassas, Catherine; Doufikar-Aerts, Faustina (2022). "Alexander the Great in Medieval Literature". Literature: A World History, Volumes 1-4. Wiley. pp. 532–533.
  17. ^ Gaullier-Bougassas, Catherine; Doufikar-Aerts, Faustina (2022). "Alexander the Great in Medieval Literature". Literature: A World History, Volumes 1-4. Wiley. p. 534.
  18. ^ Gaullier-Bougassas, Catherine; Doufikar-Aerts, Faustina (2022). "Alexander the Great in Medieval Literature". Literature: A World History, Volumes 1-4. Wiley. pp. 534–535.
  19. ^
    ISBN 978-90-04-35993-2
    , retrieved 2024-03-25
  20. ^ E.g. the Greek scholar G. G. Aperghis goes so far as to state: "Rather than considering the arrival of the Greeks as bringing something entirely new to the management of an empire, one should probably see them as apt pupils of excellent [Achaemenian] teachers. (link)"
  21. ISBN 9780520022171
    .
  22. ISBN 978-1-78672-366-6
    . The Shahnama also contains parts from the Syriac sources discussed in the first chapter of this book: the Syriac Alexander Romance (such as the dragon slaying and the journey to Chin), episodes from the Syriac Legend and Poem (such as Gog and Magog, and the Water of Life) and the philosophers' laments over Alexander's tomb.
  23. ISBN 978-0-7100-9109-3
  24. ISBN 0-415-22155-2
  25. ^ Edward Frederick Knight (1893). Where Three Empires Meet: A Narrative of Recent Travel in Kashmir, Western Tibet, Gilgit, and the Adjoining Countries. Longmans, Green, and Company. p. 330.
  26. ISBN 978-1-118-99318-7
    .
  27. ISBN 978-1-107-16769-8
    .
  28. ISBN 978-0-8122-3347-6
    .
  29. ^
    ISBN 978-1-032-54990-3
    .
  30. ISBN 978-0-85115-760-3
    .
  31. ISBN 978-90-420-2976-7
    , retrieved 2024-03-11
  32. ISBN 978-90-04-21193-3
    , retrieved 2024-03-11
  33. ISBN 978-1-4438-7761-9
    .
  34. ISBN 978-0-14-044560-2
    .
  35. doi:10.2143/MUS.114.1.302
    .
  36. ISBN 978-0-19-764687-8
    .
  37. ISBN 978-90-04-17416-0
    . The episode of Alexander's building a wall against Gog and Magog, however, is not found in the oldest Greek, Latin, Armenian and Syriac versions of the Romance. Though the Alexander Romance was decisive for the spreading of the new and supernatural image of Alexander the king in East and West, the barrier episode has not its origin in this text. The fusion of the motif of Alexander's barrier with the Biblical tradition of the apocalyptic peoples Gog and Magog appears in fact for the first time in the so called Syriac Alexander Legend. This text is a short appendix attached to the Syriac manuscripts of the Alexander Romance.
  38. ^ "Ahmedi, Taceddin". universalium.academic.ru. Retrieved 19 December 2011.
  39. JSTOR 2718540
    .
  40. ^ ""Alexander is Lowered into the Sea", Folio from a Khamsa (Quintet) of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi, 1597–98". www.metmuseum.org. Retrieved 2018-12-14.
  41. ^ Darvishi, Dariush, The Alexander Romance, page 44-51, Tehran, Negah-e Moaser, 2022]
  42. ISBN 978-1-4426-4466-3
    . The essence of his theory is that parallels can be found in the Quranic verses on Dhu'l-qarnayn (18:82-9) and the Christian Syriac Alexander Legend. The hypothesis requires a revision, because Noldeke's dating of Jacob of Sarug's Homily and the Christian Syriac Alexander Legend is no longer valid; therefore, it does not need to be rejected, but it has to be viewed from another perspective. See my exposé in Alexander Magnus Arabicus (see note 7), chapter 3.3 and note 57.
  43. ISBN 978-1-78673-664-2
    .
  44. ISBN 978-1-78673-664-2
    .
  45. ISBN 978-9971-69-574-3
    .
  46. ISBN 978-9971-69-818-8
    .

Sources

Further reading

  • Doufikar-Aerts, Faustina. Alexander Magnus Arabicus: A Survey of the Alexander Tradition Through Seven Centuries: From Pseudo-Callisthenes to Suri, Peeters 2010.
  • Manteghi, Haila. Alexander the Great in the Persian Tradition: History, Myth and Legend in Medieval Iran, I.B. Tauris 2018.
  • Moore, Kenneth. Brill's Companion to the Reception of Alexander the Great, Brill 2018.
  • Ogden, Daniel. The Cambridge Companion to Alexander the Great, Cambridge University Press 2024.
  • Stock, Markhus (ed.). Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages: Transcultural Perspectives, University of Toronto Press 2016.
  • Stoneman, Richard. Alexander the Great: a Life in Legend. New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN 9780300112030 (hbk).
  • Stoneman, Richard et al. (eds.). The Alexander Romance in Persia and the East, Barkhuis 2012.
  • Stoneman, Richard. A History of Alexander the Great in World Culture, Cambridge University Press 2022.
  • Zuwiyya, David (ed.). A Companion to Alexander Literature in the Middle Ages, Brill 2011.
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