In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great

by David Grant

  258.For Heracles’ death Diodorus 20.28, Pausanias 9.7.2-3, Justin 15.2.3. Antigonus claimed Cassander forced Thessalonice into marriage, Diodorus 19.52.1. and 61.2, Pausanias 8.7.7, Justin 14.6.13. For the death of Cleopatra on Antigonus’ orders, Diodorus 20.37.5-6.

  259.Quoting Carney (2006) p 84 on Cassander’s attempt to de-legitimise Alexander’s Argead branch.

  260.Plutarch Pyrrhus for Neoptolemus’ death, though his identity is challenged; see Heckel (2006) p 175. Also see Carney (2006) p 67 and footnote 25 (p 169); whilst not specifically attested as her children, Neoptolemus is mentioned as their father, though as Carney argues, this could mean ‘descendants’ and thus grandchildren, for Neoptolemus was the father to Alexander of Epirus, Cleopatra’s husband.

  261.Plutarch Sertorius 1.4, translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1919, for comparisons with Philip, Antigonus and Hannibal and quoting 1.6

  262.Plutarch The Comparison of Sertorius with Eumenes 2.3-4.

  263.Whilst Plutarch painted a picture of Eumenes’ pre-battle contemplations, this episode may well have taken place once he took council and the outcome of the battle looked doubtful once the Silver Shields had been surrounded, as Diodorus clarified that a council took place immediately before his arrest.

  264.Plutarch Eumenes 16.2.

  265.Plutarch Comparison of Eumenes with Sertorius 2.4.

  266.Plutarch Eumenes 18.2 for the Silver Shields’ complaint and 16-18 for the outcome at Gabiene.

  267.Diodorus 19.44.3 for Hieronymus’ capture and new employment.

  268.See chapter titled Guardians and Ghosts of the Ephemerides for discussion of Hagnothemis’ role. See Billows (1990) pp 387-388 for Hagnon’s final activity; the date of the battle off of Cyprus is disputed, 315/314 BCE is proposed, though this conflicts with Diodorus 19.58.1 which claimed Antigonus had no naval force then (also see 19.59.1 and 19.62.3-4 for the possible engagement). Hagnon had been granted citizenship of Ephesus in 321/320 BCE.

  269.Plutarch Apophthegms or Sayings of Kings and Commanders 8860 (5), Lysander.

  270.Plutarch Life of Demetrius 4. Demetrius was described as a young man, so dating is not exact. But if born in ca. 336 BCE he would have been seventeen when Eumenes was at Nora, thus it is likely the episode took place before Eumenes’ death at which point Demetrius would have been close to twenty. Heckel (2006) p 109 for discussion of Demetrius’ age. Cicero’s supposed line taken from R Harris Imperium, Pocket Books, 2006 p 262.

  271.‘Unable to fly’ quoting Plutarch Comparison of Eumenes and Sertorius 2.4. Justin 14.3, possibly drawing from Duris, claimed Eumenes attempted to flee and only when captured again did he demand the right to deliver his final scathing speech. The use of Duris is somewhat backed up by Plutarch’s Comparison of Eumenes with Sertorius 2.3-4 in which he alleged the same.

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  THE PRECARIOUS PATH OF PERGAMENA AND PAPYRUS

  What did it take for ancient manuscripts to survive, how were they manipulated in the process, and how closely does today’s library represent the original texts?

  The 2,340 years since Alexander died have seen the loss of classical libraries, books change in materials and format, and witnessed the emergence of religions and philosophies that tugged at the consciences of those who decided which of them would survive.

  The evolving classical library also gave rise to an industry of damaging imitations and outright fakes; the authenticity of some of the books we read today is still open to question.

  Adding to these challenges was the gradual metamorphosis of the classical and vernacular languages into which texts had to be translated, and this provided further latitude for interpolation, well-meaning or otherwise.

  So how closely does our extant library approximate the original authors’ intent, and how relevant is this to any study of Alexander and his times? We review the precarious path of the book, from its origins in Egyptian papyrus to the age of the printing press.

  ‘I have turned my attention to Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy some Greek authors; after that, I shall buy some clothes.’1

  Erasmus Letter to Jacob Batt, 12th April 1500

  ‘But one thing the facts cry out, and it can be clear, as they say, even to a blind man, that often through the translator’s clumsiness or inattention the Greek has been wrongly rendered; often the true and genuine reading has been corrupted by ignorant scribes, which we see happen every day, or altered by scribes who are half-asleep.’2

  Erasmus Epistle 337

  ‘We can claim to have learnt reasonably well how to detect forgeries of ancient texts made either in the Middle Ages or in the Renaissance or later… On the other hand, it would be fatuous to maintain that we can readily expose a forgery when the forgery was made in Antiquity. Indeed in this case the name of forgery becomes a problem. What we are tempted to label as a forgery, may, on closer examination, be a perfectly honest work attributed to the wrong author.’3

  Arnaldo Momigliano Studies in Historiography

  Erasmus, the Dutch theologian, manuscript collector and so-called prince of the humanists, was so irked by ‘clumsy translators’ that he mastered ‘pure’ Latin, a skill he employed to unify the parallel Greek and Latin traditions of the New Testament. His new publication, followed by Martin Luther’s (reputedly) nailing his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences on the door of the Church of All Saints on 31st October 1517, became a landmark that heralded in the Reformation which posed a challenge to the doctrine of the Catholic Church.4

  A year earlier, Thomas More, a friend to Erasmus, published his Latin Utopia, which, as well as satirising the society of the day, had espoused religious tolerances through descriptions of an Arcadian isle; it embodied something of Lucian’s wry sense of humour beside elements of Plato’s Republic.5 In one of the many ironies, tragedies, twists and turns of this troubled ‘humanist’ era, More became vigorously opposed to Protestantism, claiming Catholicism was the one true faith in his Dialogue Concerning Heresies. He perhaps failed to appreciate that its ‘sacred history was Jewish, its theology was Greek’, and ‘its government and canon laws were, at least indirectly, Roman’.6

  Erasmus’ Novum Instrumentum Omne, dedicated to Pope Leo X, was ‘rushed’ into print in 1516; it was a task spurred on by the discovery in 1504 of Laurentius Valla’s New Testament Notes.7 The new edition stabilised (Erasmus said ‘purified’) the Greek, Byzantine and Vulgate biblical texts in the same way the Alexandrian librarians had anchored down the fluid Homeric epics from their ‘limpid formulaic style’.8 For through his correspondence with numerous influential scholars of his day, many of whose methods he openly criticised (the Lutherans especially), Erasmus had seen first-hand the damage being done to ancient manuscripts at the scriptoriums across Europe. But despite his pedantic spirit, Erasmus’ new influential and polished Latin translations ignored the older and better manuscripts to avoid what he termed the ‘erratic’ texts that conflicted with his direction. As a result, his Greek New Testament was demonstrably inferior, for example, to the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, a translation from 1514 originating in Alcala in Spain.9

  Manuscript corruptions were occasionally deliberate when religiously or politically contrived, but more often than not they were due to the simple blind incompetency and lawlessness of ill-trained scribes. Erasmus’ linguistic skills highlighted many, and he pertinently coined the adage ‘in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’.10 But it was Petrarch (1304-1374), born in exile at the close of the High Middle Ages (or High Medieval Period, ca. 1000-1300) who was ‘the first man since antiquity to make a systematic collection of Latin classical manuscripts’. In his attempt ‘not to fashion fables but to retell history’, he opened the pages of old once more as a fascination took hold with all things alle romana et alla antica, though in the case of Alexander, Petrarch thought he died in Babylon ‘effeminate’ and ‘transformed into some kind of monster’.11 Although the knowledge of Lati
n had improved, with much of its purity preserved by the Church, scholars’ dexterity with classical Greek lagged far behind; as Momigliano reminds us, there was once a time when the Bible was only available in Greek but at the beginning of the Renaissance almost none existed.12

  Edward Gibbon, whose own later English prose was still ‘steeped in the cadences of Ciceronian Latin’, recorded that Petrarch admitted similar linguistic shortcomings with Greek had hampered his own translation efforts, lamenting of a rare Homer manuscript that had been presented to him: ‘Alas! Either Homer is dumb or I am deaf, nor is it within my power to enjoy the beauty I possess.’13 Gibbon himself complained of the Byzantine-influenced Greek being spoken in his day: ‘The modern Greeks pronounce the β as a V consonant, and confound three vowels and several diphthongs.’14 Although Petrarch’s earlier attempt to learn more than the rudiments of Greek from the Calabrian monk Barlaam came too late in his own life to be completely successful, his younger friend, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), did master the classical language before his reconversion to Church doctrine, and he saw to it that the Leontios Pilatos (locally Leonzio Pilato, died 1366) became the first professor of the neglected tongue in Western Europe by 1360 (though this was, in fact, Byzantine Greek too).15

  A new generation of Graeco-Romans was being born, despite the diversion of wars, Crusades and the Black Death of 1348 which indiscriminately took scholar and pauper with it. In the re-educational process, the European languages were enriched with Greek and Latin loan words and attached phraseology, because the ‘poorer’ vernacular languages had previously evolved around purely practical, though rarely intellectual, vocabulary. This, in turn, broadened the translator’s style as the new literary devices and linguistic structures entered the target language through ‘positive paganism’ at last.16 Arguably, Dante’s Divine Comedy, written in exile between ca. 1308-1320, had already helped to bridge a gap between the Christian doctrine and the values of the pagan Graeco-Roman tradition, in this case with the guidance of a reincarnated Virgil.17 English was to benefit through the well-travelled Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400) and his translation of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy (the original written ca. 523 CE).

  The Bible went through similar transmutations into English once the outcome of the Reformation finally permitted publication of Greek gospels and Latin sermons into the modern languages. Inspired by Luther’s German translation, Tyndale principally used Erasmus’ 1522 edition (along with the Latin Vulgate and Hebrew texts) for his 1526 English New Testament. It inclined to a very personal translation to ensure he would: ‘… cause the boy that drives the plow to know more of the Scriptures than the Pope himself!’18 Published in secret in Germany (where Tyndale had been given safe haven by Luther), it came replete with idioms stemming from his native Gloucestershire patois, framing Latinate words in Anglo-Saxon and creating a rhythm that appealed to the humble masses, though it would cost Tyndale his life. The result was a new ‘Vulgate’ edition that remained largely intact in the King James Bible of 1611, giving us many of the influential words we use today.19

  The Renaissance additionally saw a ‘humanist’ enlightenment that returned the individual to the centre stage as Hellenistic philosophies came under scrutiny with their templates of personal virtue and vice. Erasmus inspired fellow Dutchman, Jeroen de Busleyden, to found the Collegium Trilingue to promote the teaching of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew to better arm scholars resuscitating ancient texts. This was not for purely esoteric purposes; as Momigliano put it, men emerging from the ‘ruins of a feudal system’ were anxious to get ‘all the advice they could’ when searching for new ‘political and military machinery’ from the classical thinkers.20 Enlightened Europeans knew they needed the lessons from the past to plot the path of a learned future.

  But scholarship was still weighted down by the religious intolerances of the Holy Roman Empire and the threat of Ottoman invasion, so religious works dominated the scriptoriums located at abbeys and monasteries at the expense of the ‘heathen’ classics that preceded Christianity. Original Greek and Christian texts were ferried westwards as Byzantium (Constantinople) threatened to fall, and then they were chaperoned to safety by private collectors such as Cosimo de’ Medici (1389-1464), Erasmus, and Poggio Bracciolini, who described how he found manuscripts in ‘leaky rat-ridden monastery attics’… ‘looking up at him for help’ like ‘friends in a hospital or a prison’; Boccaccio had similarly burst into tears at seeing the state of the library at Monte Cassino.21

  The likes of Valla (1406-1457) and Machiavelli (Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, 1469-1527) nevertheless, revived a wider philosophical curiosity that was inspired by these classical manuscripts, and finally universities and new libraries emerged, including the Vatican Library founded by Pope Nicholas V (reigned 1447-1455) whose eight years in office saw 5,000 volumes emerge from the hands of copyists and scholars.22

  The momentum behind Renaissance ‘enlightenment’ led to a rising demand for previously neglected manuscripts from the classical past, and, ironically, this led to the start of a new industry in politically opportune and profitable forgeries. Pope Leo X was paying handsomely for new Greek and Latin texts, and Maffeo Vegio (1407-1458) wrote a thirteenth book to the Aeneid at the tender age of twenty-one, unsatisfied as he was with the original conclusion of Virgil. Bishop Gavin Douglas used Vegio’s homespun edition when first translating the Aeneid to Scots in 1553, and he was followed by Thomas Twyne and his English edition published in 1584. In 1583 another unsatisfied scholar, Carlo Sigonio, declared he had discovered a complete copy of De Consolatione by Cicero; when challenged on its authenticity, he indignantly replied that if not genuine, it was at least worthy of Cicero.

  The authenticity of Tacitus’ Annals was soon called into question and Poggio Bracciolini, possibly because of their loud ‘calls for help’, was accused of being their fabricator. Bracciolini ‘who rose to high posts in public affairs and won imperishable fame in letters’ after he had fortuitously stumbled upon a genuine hoard of lost Latin texts some fifty years before, including (amongst others) the masterpieces of Cicero, Quintilian and Vitruvius the Roman civil engineer.23 Debate on whether we have the fully genuine article for Tacitus’ books 1-6 and 11-16 still has an audience, though JW Ross in his 1878 treatise on the matter was in no doubt:

  I give a detailed history of the forgery, from its conception to its completion, the sum that was paid for it, the abbey where it was transcribed, and other such convincing minutiae taken from a correspondence that Poggio carried on with a familiar friend who resided in Florence.

  Ross went on to explain why not all agreed with the conclusion: ‘The cause is obvious: the forger fabricated with the decided determination of defying detection.’24 Bracciolini was not against using bribery to obtain the manuscripts he wanted, or attacking his contemporaries with compositions that led to a decade of invectives between him and Laurentius Valla. He superficially remained an austere scholar who dedicated his life to the papal curia. Whether the accusations are founded or not we may never know, but his sale of a Livy manuscript in 1434 enabled him to build a villa and adorn it with fine antiques.

  THE LEAD BLADE FROM THE IVORY SCABBARD25

  This brings us to the career of Johannes Annius of Viterbo (ca. 1432-1502), one of the ‘great crop of forgers bred of the dark earth’. Although Annius’ story is far removed from the death of Alexander, it remains potently pertinent too,26 for his is a tale of contemporaneous historical forgery and creative historiographical method rolled into one. It raises the obvious question: has the history of Alexander survived with any more, or less, integrity? Documentary fakes and political frauds have changed the course of history, and many, we must speculate, remain undetected. Furthermore, by now, these historical traditions have inertias that make them difficult to reconsider any other way, and so they remain unchallenged. Given a following wind and with less talented philologists in circulation, Annius may have well become a hero of Italian Renaissance historiography,
and for a while he was. Instead the man who claimed to read Etruscan is remembered today as a fraud.27

  Annius was a Dominican preaching monk as well as an archaeologist and meddler in antiquity who held an apocalyptic view of the struggle between Christianity, Islam and Judaism. He perceived the worlds of Europe and Asia as historically irreconcilable and as culturally opposed as Alexander had once found them some 2,000 years before him, though some scholars romantically maintain that Alexander was attempting to change just that.28 In the late 1490s Annius faked a number of Etruscan inscriptions giving pseudoarchaeology a new birth, and his magnum opus was an anthology of seventeen classical manuscripts he claimed to have ‘unearthed’ at Mantua.

  Annius was probably inspired by Poggio Bracciolini and a hoard of new ‘finds’, all written by Annius himself, were published as Antiquitatum Variarum. His attendant commentaries, which first saw light in Rome in 1498, lent a fine verisimilitude to the whole affair, and the collection soon became famous as The Antiquities of Annius and it had Europe talking for a century or more.29

  Annius’ elaborate fabrications, which supposedly stemmed from ancient narratives leading back to the biblical Creation, were falsely attributed to Berossus the Chaldean priest of Babylonian Bel-Marduk, to a Persian, Metasthenes, and the Egyptian priest Manetho (3rd century BCE), alongside fragments from Xenophon and Cato the Elder; in other words, writers whose influential accounts shaped our knowledge of the classical world. Along the way, Annius placed his hometown of Viterbo on the site of Fanum Vultumnae and thus as the capital of the Etruscan Golden Age.

  For good measure, Annius proposed that the Roman emperor Augustus had founded Florence, so enhancing the state ideology of the Medici.30 This was a civic elevation synonymous with earlier classical claims by the Greek historian Ephorus, who proposed that Cyme, his home city in Aeolis (modern Nemrut in Turkey), was the birthplace of Homer and Hesiod.31 Although he was eventually exposed, Annius’ deceits were initially influential and he dedicated them to Ferdinand V and Isabella of Spain with a bold preface assuring the reader that as a theologian he had a particular duty to respect the truth; it was a ‘denunciation of mendacity’ that gave his ‘discoveries’ an ‘air of moral as well as factual superiority’.32