13. The Sikander Nama (London, 1881), tr. H. Wilberforce Clarke; W. Bacher, Nizamis Leben und Werke (Leipzig, 1871).
14. The Shahnama of Firdausi, tr. A. G. Warner and E. Warner (1912), vol. 6. For other Persian Alexander works see Iskandernameh, tr. Minoo S. Southgate (New York, 1978); J. A. Boyle, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 60 (1977), pp. 13–27.
15. J. A. Boyle, Zentralasiatische Studien, 9 (1965), pp. 265–73.
16. See the Note on the Text, pp. 28–32.
17. See Reinhold Merkelbach, Die Quellen des griechischen Alexanderroman (Munich, 1954; 2nd edn 1977); D. J. A. Ross, op. cit:
18. Dino Pieraccioni, Lettere del Ciclo di Alessandro in un Papiro Egiziano (Florence, 1947); re-edited by M. Norsa and V. Bartoletti, PSI, XII, no. 1285 (Florence, 1951).
19. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XI.8.
20. This is also the view of M. Braun, History and Romance in Graeco-Oriental Literature (Oxford, 1938).
21. See A. E. Samuel, ‘The Earliest Elements in the Alexander Romance’, Historia, 35 (1986), pp. 427–37; C. B. Welles, ‘The Discovery of Sarapis and the Foundation of Alexandria’, Historia, 11 (1962), pp. 271–98. See also R. Bagnall, ‘The Date of the Foundation of Alexandria’, American Journal of Ancient History, 4 (1979), pp. 46–9; POxy XVI, 1798; Lionel Pearson, The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great (Chico, California, 1960), pp. 255 f.
22. Alexander Romance, II.17; cf. Quintus Curtius, 4.11.14, Plutarch, Alexander, 29.
23. Engels, op. cit., p. 84, n. 67.
24. The Alexander Romance mentions the return of Nectanebo to his country at I.34; a similar idea appears in the Oracle of the Potter (POxy 2332; L. Koenen, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 2 (1968), pp. 178–209), which probably reflects the anti-Greek feelings of ‘poor white’ Graeco-Egyptians, though it may date from any time between the fourth and the late second centuries BC: see Dorothy Thompson, Memphis under the Ptolemies (Princeton, 1988), pp. 82 and 152–3 nn.; Eddy, op. cit., p. 293.
25. O. Weinreich, Der Trug des Nektanebos (Leipzig and Berlin, 1911).
26. P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford, 1972), p. 267.
27. Demosthenes, 23.4. Cf. Diodorus Siculus, 17.5.1; Adolf Ausfeld, Der griechische Alexanderroman (Leipzig, 1907), p. 152. A piece of Hellenistic tragic history (FGrH IIB, no. 153 F 8; POxy II, 216) in which an Athenian orator speaks against Alexander may represent a source, or a parallel, for this episode.
28. Merkelbach, op. cit., pp. 193 ff.
29. Quintus Curtius, 7.3; 7.4.29.
30. Quintus Curtius, 5.6.12–14; Engels, op. cit., pp. 74 f.
31. Arrian, 5.14.3–5. Lucian, How to Write History, 12, says that this source was Aristobulus; but Arrian implies that it was not in Aristobulus. Lucian is in error. Waldemar Heckel points out to me that the source is not Onesicritus either because the latter gives a different version from these writers of the death of Bucephalus.
32. Arrian, 7.13.2; Plutarch, Alexander, 46.4–5; W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great (Cambridge, 1948), p. 329.
33. ed. W. Berghoff, Palladius de gentibus Indiae et Bragmanibus (Meisenheim, 1967). There is a Latin translation ascribed to St Ambrose: V. Scheiwiller, De moribus Brachmanorum liber Sancto Ambrosio adscriptus (Milan, 1956).
34. Pearson, op. cit., p. 259.
35. Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon, 165; cf. Plutarch, Alexander, 63; Quintus Curtius, 9.2.9; 9.3.8; 9.6.22; 5.6.12–14; Arrian, 5.26.2; Engels, op. cit., pp. 74 f. The region was always a repository of legend: W. W. Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India, pp. 105–9. Aristotle thought that Ocean was visible from the Hindu Kush (Meteor, 1.13.15): see F. C. Holt, Alexander the Great and Bactria (Leiden, 1988), pp. 71–2. Plutarch (Theseus, 1) remarks on the propensity of writers to fill ill-explored regions with fabulous beasts and plants.
36. N. Lewis, Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt (Oxford, 1986); Alan K. Bowman, Egypt after the Pharaohs (Oxford, 1986); Dorothy Thompson, op. cit.; A. E. Samuel, The Shifting Sands of History: Interpretations of Ptolemaic Egypt (Lanham, MD, 1989).
37. Titles include Demetrius’ work On the Kings of Judaea, Artapanus’ Romance of Moses (FGH, 726 – a nationalist romantic aretalogy of about 100 BC, designed to combat the anti-Jewish accounts of Manetho known to us from Josephus, Contra Apionem, 1.228 ff.; Philo the Elder’s Life of Moses, Aristobulus’ Commentary on Moses (written under Ptolemy VI, 181–145 BC), Pseudo-Hecataeus, On the Jews (200–150 BC), Eupolemus, On the Kings in Judaea (150 BC), and the work of the late-second-century historian Jason of Cyrene, which was utilized by the author of II Maccabees.
38. Epigram 54 may echo Isaiah 14.12, and his Iambus IV describes a contest of talking trees, a form familiar in Middle Eastern literature.
39. De Iside et Osiride, 360 B.
40. ed. W. Spiegelberg, Die sogenannte demotische Chronik (Leipzig, 1914).
41. For example, the Tale of Tefnut: J. V. Powell, New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature, 3rd series (Oxford, 1933), p. 227. S. West, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 55 (1969), pp. 161 ff.
42. POxy 1826, 2466, 3319 – all papyri of the third century AD.
43. POxy 3011 (third century AD). Cf. Josephus, Contra Apionem, 1.243 ff.; M. Braun points out the resemblance.
44. E. Bresciani, Letteratura e poesia dell’ antico Egitto (Turin, 1969).
45. Suda, s.v., Thoulis. The god’s reference in his reply to ‘god, word and spirit’ suggests a date in the Christian period for this tale. The punchline comes with Thoulis’ departure from the sanctuary, upon which he is immediately murdered.
46. See B. E. Perry, ‘The Egyptian Legend of Nectanebus’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 97 (1966), pp. 327 ff.
47. Averil Cameron and Judith Herrin, Constantinople in the Early Eighth Century: the Parastaseis Syntomai Chronikai (Leiden, 1984).
48. On some similar folk-tale aetiologies, see S. West, ‘And it came to pass that Pharaoh dreamed’, Classical Quarterly, 37 (1987), pp. 262–71.
49. E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman (Leipzig, 1876).
50. B. Lavagnini, Studi sul Romanzo greco (Messina-Florence, 1950).
51. Diodorus Siculus, II.55–60.
52. Moses Hadas, Aristeas to Philocrates (New York, 1951), p. 127.
53. Rosa Söder, Die Apokryphen Apostelgeschichten (Stuttgart, 1932).
54. Plutarch, Alexander, 1.
55. cf. Aristotle, Poetics, 1450a1–2 and Rhetoric, 1359a, where it is argued that one can generalize from praxeis, and that they are therefore a useful object of study.
56. R. Reitzenstein, Hellenistische Wundererzählungen (Leipzig, 1906).
57. Bruno Meissner, Alexander und Gilgamos (Leipzig, 1894; Berlin, 1928).
58. See Ch. Habicht, Gottmenschtum und griechische Städte, 2nd edn (Munich, 1970), pp. 3–7.
59. W. Kroll, Historia Alexandri Magni recensio vetusta (Berlin, 1926).
60. cf. T. Nöldeke, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alexanderroman, Denkschriften der Kaiserl. Akad. der Wissenschaften, phil-hist. Klasse 38 (Vienna, 1890).
61. Peter Brown, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, Journal of Roman Studies, 61 (1971), pp. 80–101.
62. B. E. Perry, Aesopica (Urbana, Illinois, 1952), dates it to the first century AD.
63. tr. C. P.Jones (Penguin Classics, 1970).
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
The textual history of the Alexander Romance is an unusually complicated one, and cannot be ignored in approaching the translation. There are three major traditions or recensions, each of which contains material differing substantially from the other two. Our earliest version, known as A, is a single MS of the third century AD.1 Of the extant versions, this most closely resembles a conventional historical work, with a detailed account of Alexander’s activities in Greece, and formal rhetorical debates in the classical manner to illuminate the issues. It contains virtually none of the fabulous elements prevalent in later versions, though it is precisely these elements that are the most conspicu
ous and familiar from the post-Greek and non-literary traditions.
The single MS of A represents the closest approach to what may be posited as the original form of the Romance. This hypothetical original is known as α.2 A contains several large and small lacunae. These lacunae may be supplemented from two early translations of A, a Latin one by Julius Valerius (after AD 300), and an Armenian one perhaps by Moses of Khoren (fifth century AD).3 In particular, the Armenian version gives a fuller version of Alexander’s letter to Aristotle about India (III.7–16; see Supplement I, pp. 181–5) of which a yet fuller version is the independent Latin Epistula.4
Deriving from α is β, a fuller version known in several MSS and probably dating from between AD 300 and 550.5 In this version the verse passages have been recast as prose, and some (unsuccessful) attempts have been made to restore the confused chronology in the first book.
β is the source of a further recension λ represented by five MSS, in which the adventures recounted in the letter to Olympias
The recensions of the Alexander Romance
Note: Greek letters indicate recensions, upper-case letters indicate
manuscripts. A dotted line indicates uncertain
origin. (II.38–41) are greatly expanded. In particular, this is the only β-version to include the descent in the diving bell and the flight into the air. Very close to the λ-recension is another MS of β, L,6 which contains some additional unique material (for example, the letter to Olympias in III.33).
In about the eighth century a new version, ε, was compiled from a combination of the original a and some material from β, as well as from parts of the letter to Aristotle on India, from Palladius on the Brahmans (ε.30–31) and Pseudo-Methodius on the Unclean Nations (ε.39 and 45.2).7 This last addition gives us a terminus post quem for the recension, as Pseudo-Methodius is to be dated c. AD 640. Both ε and βwere then combined in the composition of the latest and longest version, γ.8 This version is characterized by a markedly inferior style, inept metres and some notably tasteless passages, γ has a heavy admixture of Jewish and Christian material, which probably originated many centuries before its use in this recension.
δ*, a fourth version of the Romance which is now no longer extant, was based either on A or on another version of the archetype α.9 This version was the immediate source of the Latin translation made in the tenth century by Leo the Archpriest, known as the Historia de Proeliis.10 This was the immediate source for all the subsequent European versions of the Romance.
The same recension, δ*, is the source also of the Syriac translation,11 which was translated into Arabic and then Ethiopian;12 at each stage further variants were introduced.
Because of the variety and variation of the Greek texts, the Alexander Romance presents an unusually complex problem to an editor or translator. The three major recensions differ markedly in style, to the point where one (A) tells in verse what the others tell in prose. Content is equally diverse: many of the most famous episodes occur only in the late and often crass γ-recension, while the debate in Athens and the conquest of Thebes, as well as Alexander’s will, appear in full only in A. Different readers will seek different things from a translation: the historian will look for the possibly historical material of A, the medievalist or orientalist will wish to trace the originals of the wonder tales in the texts familiar to him, while the general reader will simply want to read as much of the Greek legendary material about Alexander as possible.
The only solution seemed to be to provide a composite text. No way of doing this can be completely satisfactory: some events are told in a different order in different recensions (the meeting with the Brahmans); others are displaced historically and occur twice even in a single recension (the sack of Thebes in L). Several passages of A are lost in the single MS and have to be restored from the Armenian translation or from Julius Valerius. The spelling of proper names varies from one recension to another also. Editors of the Greek recensions have used a single system of chapter-numbering for all versions, so that some chapter numbers are absent in some of the recensions.
What I have done is to translate the whole of L, being the fullest version of the β-recension, and to insert into the narrative, where practicable, the extra material that occurs in the other recensions. These passages are enclosed within bold square brackets and their source is indicated at the end of each passage. In some cases the narratives diverge too widely for this to be possible, and here I have given the versions of A or γ as supplements to be found together on pp. 161–88 the points at which they would have occurred are noted in the main text. Angle brackets indicate passages that are lost in the Greek MS, but have been restored by comparison with the Armenian version. Where a passage of A was restored by Kroll from the Armenian, I have used the modern English translation of the Armenian text by A. M. Wolohojian,13 though I have changed proper names from their uncouth Armenian forms into ones consistent with the rest of the narrative.
The long section on the meeting with the Brahmans posed a particular problem. Both A and y insert here (III.7–16) the bulk of a separate work by Palladius, a fourth-century writer, On the Brahmans. Despite its intrinsic interest, I have omitted this as it is in many respects a doublet of the Romance’s own narrative and is not strictly part of the same work. (Kroll did likewise in his edition of the A-text.)
Consistency in the Anglicization of Greek names is impossible and I have aimed to be clear and not to confuse or to jolt the reader.
The Alexander Romance is not a literary masterpiece. It is definitely popular literature. That at least eases the task of the translator. The importance of the Romance lies in the rich store of fabulous material that it drew together and bequeathed to the civilizations of both East and West. This I hope to have made more accessible to the general reader, in what is to date the only full translation into English.
NOTES
1. W. Kroll, Historia Alexandri Magni (Berlin, 1926).
2. Adolf Ausfeld, Der griechische Alexanderroman (Leipzig, 1907), is an attempt to reconstruct on a priori principles the hypothetical α; there is an English translation of Ausfeld’s reconstruction by E. H. Haight (New York, 1955)
3. A. Wolohojian, The Romance of Alexander the Great by Pseudo-Callisthenes (New York, 1969).
4. F. Gunderson, Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle about India (Meisenheim am Glan, 1980).
5. Leif Bergson, Der griechische Alexanderroman, Rezension β (Uppsala, 1965).
6. Helmut van Thiel, Leben und Taten Alexanders von Makedonien nach der Handschrift L (Darmstadt, 1983).
7. J. Trumpf, Vita Alexandri Regis Macedonum (Stuttgart, 1974).
8. Der griechische Alexanderroman Rezension γ: vol. 1, ed. Ursula Lauenstein (Meisenheim, 1962); vol. 2, ed. Hartmut Engelmann (Meisenheim, 1963); vol. 3, ed. F. Parthe (Meisenheim, 1969).
9. The existence of δ* is taken as a datum by A. Ausfeld, Der griechische Alexanderroman (1907), F. Pfister, Historia de Proeliis (Heidelberg, 1913) and G. Cary, The Medieval Alexander (Cambridge, 1956).
10. ed. F. Pfister, op. cit.; Michael Feldbusch, Die Historia de Proeliis Alexandri Magni (Meisenheim am Glan, 1976).
11. E. A. Wallis Budge,. The History of Alexander the Great (Cambridge, 1889).
12. E. A. Wallis Budge, The Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great (Cambridge, 1896), and The Alexander Book in Ethiopia (Cambridge, 1933).
13. See note 3.
THE GREEK ALEXANDER ROMANCE
THE LIFE AND DEEDS OF
ALEXANDER OF MACEDON
BOOK I
1. In our opinion, Alexander the king of the Macedonians was the best and most noble of men, for he did everything in his own way, finding that his foresight always worked in harness with his virtues. When he made war against a people, the time he spent in his campaigns was not sufficient for those who wished to research the affairs of the cities. We are going now to speak of the deeds of Alexander, of the virtues of his body and his spirit, of his good fortune in action and his bravery;
and we will begin with his family and his paternity. Many say that he was the son of King Philip, but they are deceivers.1 This is untrue: he was not Philip’s son, but the wisest of the Egyptians say that he was the son of Nectanebo,2 after the latter had fallen from his royal state.
This Nectanebo was skilled in the art of magic, and by its use overcame all peoples and thus lived in peace. If ever a hostile power came against him, he did not prepare armies, nor build engines of war nor construct transport wagons, he did not trouble his officers with military exercises, but took a bowl and carried out a divination by water. He filled the bowl with spring water and with his hands moulded ships and men of wax, and placed them in the bowl. Then he robed himself in the priestly robes of a prophet and took an ebony staff in his hand. Standing erect, he called on the so-called3 gods of spells and the airy spirits and the demons below the earth, and by the spell the wax figures came to life. Then he sank the ships in the bowl, and straightaway, as they sank, so the ships of the enemy which were coming against him perished. All this came about because of the man’s great experience in the magic art. And thus his kingdom continued in peace.
2. After some time had gone by there came men on reconnaissance, whom the Romans call exploratores and the Greeks kata-skopoi, and they informed Nectanebo of a black cloud of war, a force of innumerable armed men advancing on Egypt. Nectanebo’s general came to him and said: ‘O King, live for ever! Put aside now all the ways of peace and prepare yourself for the manoeuvres of war. For a great storm cloud of barbarians is threatening us: it is not one people that advances against us, but a horde of 10,000. Those who are coming against us are the Indians, the Nocimaeans, the Oxydorcae, the Iberians, the Kauchones, the Lelapes, the Bosporoi, the Bastranoi, the Azanians, the Chalybes and all the other great peoples of the East,4 and their massed army of countless armed men is advancing on Egypt. Set all else aside and consider your position.’
The Greek Alexander Romance Page 4