Given the amount of writing by Jews in Greek, it is not surprising that native Egyptians too turned to Greek as a natural literary medium. The amount of Egyptian literature surviving from the second century BC may reflect the more prominent role in Egyptian affairs taken by native Egyptians from about 205 in the reign of Ptolemy V. The Egyptian history of Manetho has already been mentioned. Plutarch39 remarked on the predilection of the Egyptians for stories about the heroic deeds of Sesostris – a predilection for heroic tales that ancient peoples generally shared. But most Greek writing of the Egyptian tradition is of a very different kind, knowledge of which we owe almost entirely to the discovery and decipherment of papyri in the last forty years. There are some commonplace hymns, but also folk tales, romances, and resistance pamphlets in the form of oracles. (Important examples are the Dream of Nectanebo of the second century BC, and the Oracle of the Potter, probably of the third, possibly very soon after the foundation of Alexandria.)
There is no dividing line between the kind of material written in Greek and in demotic Egyptian; the Demotic Chronicle of the third century BC, written in demotic Egyptian, is essentially a Romance-type history of Egypt.40 Some works circulated in both languages.41 We also find in both languages works which have interesting resemblances to the Alexander Romance. These include the Romance of Sesonchosis,42 and the story of Amenophis – fighting the gods reminds us strongly of Nectanebo’s similar position in the Alexander Romance.43 A Ptolemaic tale of an Egyptian army in the Land of the Amazons also recalls the atmosphere of our work.44 Similarly the story of King Thulis,45 who asked the oracle of the god Serapis, ‘Has there ever been another king as powerful as I? or will there ever be?’, reminds us very much of Alexander’s own questions to the same god regarding his death. Unfortunately few of these legendary texts can be firmly dated.
The figure of Nectanebo recurs several times in these texts.46 As the last Pharaoh of Egypt (his Egyptian name is Nekhthorheb) before the Persian conquest, he was regarded to some extent in a Messianic aspect, as the king who would return to drive out foreign rule. Hence the significance of Alexander’s reception in Memphis as the son of Nectanebo or the Pharaoh incarnate. It seems clear that folk tales of this kind were familiar in early Ptolemaic Alexandria, and, furthermore, that they had an impact on Greek literary works even of a quite sophisticated kind.
The same point may be made concerning the Romance’s account of the foundation of Alexandria (I.31). This reflects Egyptian tradition, but also corresponds to a stylistic feature of Greek literature that involved the explication of obscure monuments. This literary technique began with Herodotus in Egypt and continued to the eighth-century collection of legends concerning the monuments of Constantinople.47 Aetiology – ‘giving accounts of causes’ – is one of the major literary forms of Alexandrian literature, and is intimately connected with the Alexandrian poets’ project to humanize and make approachable the heroic myths.48
These considerations suggest that the Alexander Romance would by no means be out of place in the literary context of third-century-BC Alexandria. It is of course impossible to state that the Romance in precisely its present form dates from that period. Much of the material that clearly was added later – notably that from the Jewish tradition – had certainly begun to circulate at this time. One must imagine a continuous process of rewriting up to the composition of our earliest manuscript in the third century AD, and beyond. The reason for its acquiring a canonical form at this time must be connected with the growing interest in the lives of great men, already noted. This point can be sharpened by a consideration of the literary character of the work in terms of genre.
THE GENRE OF THE ALEXANDER ROMANCE
What kind of a work is the Alexander Romance? The title we give to it begs a considerable question. There is no Greek word for romance, and the nature and the genesis of the genre have been a matter of some controversy. In 1876 Erwin Rohde argued, in an influential work,49 that romance was a creation of the Second Sophistic – the period of revival of Greek literature in the second and third centuries AD – and that it resulted from a convergence of the picaresque adventure tale or travel account with a love story. At that time the only ancient romances known belonged to that period: Heliodorus’ Aethiopica (probably c. AD 220–50), Achilles Tatius’ Clitophon and Leucippe (second century AD), and perhaps Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (date uncertain).
Rohde’s view of the origins of romance was exploded by the discovery of a number of papyri of substantially earlier date than these works, containing Hellenistic works with a similar subject matter. Now that romance had to be given an origin in the Hellenistic period, it was not difficult to find analogues in existing Hellenistic literature:50 the love tales of Hellenistic poets, which utilized obscure local legends for the purposes of piquant narrative, seemed to be closely similar in content though they were written in verse. The only difference lay in the greater length of the prose romances. Their characters are epic heroes newly clad in bourgeois dress and with their emotions tailored to fit a more domestic world.
But a definition of romance primarily as a love story does not fit the Alexander Romance at all. It is more illuminating to see this work as a descendant of the adventure narrative, which goes back – who could expect otherwise? – to the roots of Greek literature, the poetry of Homer. Some of Odysseus’ adventures have a love interest, others do not. The only essential difference between what are usually called romances and Homer, is that the latter is in verse, the former in prose. The unhistoricity of the narratives of romance is made explicit by the fabulous character of many of the events. This is a feature that goes back to Homer with his one-eyed giants, to Hesiod’s Long-heads, Dog-heads and Pygmies, and to some of the taller tales of Herodotus. The traveller’s tale became a recognizable genre as early as the fifth century BC, but was easily contaminated with tall stories. A good example is the tale of Iambulus (undated, but probably third century BC) and his journey to the Paradise Islands.51 Such tales were satirized by Lucian (second century AD) in his Icaromenippus, the story of a man whose many adventures include, like Baron Munchausen’s, a visit to the moon. Lucian’s True History also picks up some typical tall stories, some of which recall the Alexander Romance: for example, the Pillars of Heracles and Dionysus (Lucian, I.7) or the men in the Moon who, having no mouths, feed on smells (Lucian, I.23).
What distinguishes the Alexander Romance from wonder tales of this kind is its use of a historical figure as hero. Narrative inevitably aspires, or at least pretends, to the condition of history. That is why so many authors of romance called themselves Xenophon: the simple one-thing-after-another narrative of Xenophon was a highly appropriate model for the picaresque.
Setting was at least as important in the plot as the characters. There is a quasi-nationalist aspect to these romances, consonant with the origins of the genre in local legends. This aspect of Hellenistic romance facilitated its adoption by Jewish writers in those numerous works that aim to identify Jewish interests and to establish their independence and dignity against their Greek masters – ‘to promote cultural survival’.52 Many of the books of the Apocrypha fit this description – the books of Esther, Tobit, Judith, Daniel, Ruth and Susanna – as well as some of the Pseudepigrapha – for example, III Maccabees and the Testament of Joseph. In many of these an adventure story, often with a love element, serves to clarify and confirm Jewish self-consciousness, and establishes – for example, with Daniel or Esther – the type of the wise man or clever champion of his/her own culture.
The influence of romance in this form on Jewish writing took a further step in the development of the Apocryphal Gospels and Apocryphal Acts of the early Christian period.53 These combined a series of travel and wonder tales with an account of the life of a single character. In doing so they drew also on the traditional forms of ancient biography, the purposes of which were neatly summarized by Plutarch.54
I am writing biography, not history, and the truth is that the most bri
lliant exploits often tell us nothing of the virtues or vices of the men who performed them, while on the other hand a chance remark or a joke may reveal far more of a man’s character than the mere feat of winning battles in which thousands fall.
His purpose was above all to illustrate character, and he followed Aristotle in believing that the best way to understand character was to look at acts or actions (praxeis).55 In this connection it is striking that some MSS of the Alexander Romance refer to the work as the ‘Acts’ or ‘Life and Acts’ of Alexander.
There is another strand to ancient biography that has been called aretalogy56 – literally, a ‘description of virtues’. Though the ultimate model is Plato’s account of the last days of Socrates, generally this kind of biography has a higher proportion of miraculous elements. Again, the confluence of Jewish and Greek traditions is important: a good example of such a life is Philo’s Life of Moses, which follows closely the Biblical narrative while presenting it in a form suitable for Greeks, with discussion of such miracles as that of the Burning Bush.
These models provide us with all the fundamental features of the apocryphal lives of the Apostles: a prolonged wandering by the hero, the performance of miracles, the regular presence of a companion as foil, sea journeys, fights with dragons, discovery of sunken cities and great treasures, the worship of the hero as a god, the encounters with cannibals and monsters, wondrous plants, strange races and talking animals, struggles to escape erotic entanglements, the help of God given at crucial moments, and the incidence of oracles, prophetic dreams and divine orders. All these features can easily be paralleled in the Alexander Romance. The Acts of Thomas include several specific parallels, including a visit to India. The Acts of Andrew and Matthias include a visit to the Anthropophagi. And so on. These Apocryphal Acts belong of course to the Christian era, two to three centuries later than the date at which we have argued the earliest form of the Alexander Romance was composed. But it is precisely the romance elements that are least in evidence in the first recension of the Romance, the one that clings most closely to the form of Hellenistic history. The development of Hellenistic romance in the Christian period has in turn influenced the successive rewritings of the Romance.
The development we should thus envisage is as follows: in the decades after Alexander’s death a history was composed, on a broadly biographical framework, with extensive rhetorical passages such as the Debate in Athens. To this was added, perhaps as an integral part of the very composition of the history, a series of letters that characterize the clever man and diplomat (some of the most successful writing is in the correspondence of Alexander and Darius). A second series of letters, included in only brief form in the earliest version, gave the opportunity for continued expansion of the romance elements and an increasing assimilation of the work to the form of the Apostolic Acts, in consonance with which the work eventually comes to be referred to as the Acts of Alexander. This process can probably be imagined as continuing from the third century BC right up to the dates of the two later recensions. The writing down of the first recension in the third century AD ties in very neatly with the new enthusiasm for Lives of saints, sages and holy men which was then gaining momentum. The Alexander Romance approximated to this genre but was found not to be extravagant enough, and so was gradually adapted to meet the expectations of that genre.
This development went still further with the increasing importance of the fabulous element in the later versions. Such aspects of Alexander’s character as his desire to go beyond the limits of the known world and to discover the precise date of his death (or, perhaps, to be assured of his immortality) receive growing attention. Episodes such as the descent in the diving bell, the ascent into the air, the admonitions not to seek for immortality and the search for the Water of Life are precisely the elements that are completely absent in the earliest version, and must, therefore, have been introduced into the narrative well after the beginning of the Christian era. Many of them have a heavily Christian colouring which becomes even more pronounced in the Syriac versions, and which may also be directly related to such themes in Babylonian literature as Gilgamesh’s search for the secret of immortality in the Epic of Gilgamesh.57
The dominant theme of the wonder tales is the quest for immortality. This motif is combined with the historically attested – though controversial – facts of Alexander’s seeking to be worshipped as a god. Soon after his conquest of Persia, Alexander began to demand the treatment and honours appropriate to a god, prompting Demosthenes to say, ‘Let him be a god if he wants to.’ This was partly manifested in the controversial insistence on prostration before him in the Persian style, and partly in outright demands for worship. The dividing line between man and god was less absolute in antiquity than it is now, and Alexander would not have been the first mortal to ascend the skies: apart from his ancestor Heracles, the Spartan general Lysander had recently been accorded cult status at Samos.58 Alexander’s achievements made him godlike, and this was acknowledged in contemporary and later writers.59
But by the time the Romance was written, Alexander’s achievement was less easy to define. The Empire he had conquered was fragmented again; the god’s achievement had proved impermanent. So the search for immortality reflects the tragedy as well as the wonder of Alexander, the impermanence of his conquest as well as its immensity. Each succeeding version makes more of Alexander’s relation to God, his dependence on and trust in ‘Providence above’, and his eventual submission to the divine commands to ‘go no further’. In the Brahman episode we see the motif stood on its head. When the Brahmans ask Alexander for immortality, he states plainly that it is impossible for any man to give that. Alexander in the later versions of the Romance has become a sage more than a conqueror, an exemplar of virtue specifically in his continence. (The latter trait is, however, documented also in Plutarch’s Fortune of Alexander, pp. 328 f.60)
By the second century AD the man of influence is already beginning to be not the one who has political power but the one who is in touch with the gods. The fictional Alexander of the later versions looks not only back to the yearning fanatical youth and conqueror, but forward to the Holy Man of the fourth century.61 In his adaptability as a figure of legend lies the secret of his endurance through the centuries.
The two closest parallels from antiquity to the Romance may help us to characterize the respective ends of this development. One of these is a popular work, the anonymous Life of Aesop; the other much more literary, written in the second century AD, just about the time of our earliest recension of the Romance, the Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus.
The Life of Aesop62 has been dated to every century from the fifth century BC (soon after Aesop’s death) to the fourteenth century AD. Papyri now show that it cannot be later than the third century AD. It is very probable that it originated in early Hellenistic Alexandria. It resembles the Alexander Romance in a number of ways: Aesop, like Alexander, is represented as a clever inventor; both works have in common the ascent in an eagle-chariot and the involvement of Nectanebo; and the Life of Aesop, like the Romance, is an example of a Greek work borrowing Egyptian ways of thinking and writing.
Stylistically, the Life of Apollonius of Tyana63 is a complete contrast – a highly polished literary encomium of a remarkable sage and wonder-worker, who shows interesting similarities to Jesus Christ. It, nonetheless, contains numerous parallels with – perhaps borrowings from – the Alexander Romance, including a visit to the Brahmans, a visit to Meroe, and a visit to the Great King’s palace. It is a secular or pagan analogue to the Christian Gospels. It belongs to the literary life of the imperial court circles of the early third century AD, when considerable interest was being shown in oriental religions.
The Alexander Romance is a popular, uneducated version of the same kind of work. Although it concerns a conqueror and not a wise man like Aesop or Apollonius, Alexander has, as we have seen, taken on important characteristics of the sage. The best modern analogy is not
with literature but with film. The Alexander Romance is Cecil B. de Mille’s Gospel of Alexander.
NOTES
In these notes the following abbreviations are used. FGrH = Fragmente der griechischen Historiker; POxy = Papyrus Oxyrhynchus; PSI = Pubblicazioni della Società italiana per la ricerca dei papyri greci e Latini in Egitto.
1. W. W. Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India (Cambridge, 1951), p. 302.
2. Tarn, op. cit., p. 408.
3. S. K. Eddy, The King is Dead: Studies in the Near Eastern Resistance to Hellenism 334–31 BC (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1961), chs. 2 and 3; James Darmesteter ‘La Légende d’Alexandre chez les Parses’, Essais Orientaux (Paris, 1883), pp. 227–50.
4. L. Boulnois, The Silk Road (London, 1966), p. 161.
5. The main historical accounts of Alexander are those of Arrian, Quintus Curtius Rufus and Plutarch. Among modern biographies one may mention those of U. Wilcken (New York, 1967); W. W. Tarn (Cambridge, 1948); Robin Lane Fox (London, 1973); and A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge, 1988).
6. The articles of Badian are too numerous to list here. There is an excellent bibliography of Alexander studies in Bosworth, op. cit.
7. S. M. Stern, Aristotle on the World State (Oxford, 1968).
8. D. W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkeley, 1978).
9. In L Iolaus is called Ioullos; in A, Iollas.
10. See in general G. Cary, The Medieval Alexander (Cambridge, 1956) and D.J. A. Ross, Alexander Historiatus (London, 1963).
11. See David Holton, The Tale of Alexander: The Rhymed Version (Thessaloniki, 1974).
12. See in general A. Abel, Le Roman d’Alexandre (Brussels, 1955); T. Nöldeke, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alexanderroman, Denkschriften der kaiserl. Akad. der Wissenschaften, phil-hist. Klasse 38 (Vienna, 1890).
The Greek Alexander Romance Page 3