Legends of Alexander the Great 9780755625741, 9781848857858

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introduction

1. alexander the great: a medieval hero The storie of Alisaundre is so commune That every wight that hath discrecioun Hath herd somewhat or al of his fortune wrote Geoffrey Chaucer in the Monk’s Tale.1 Alexander the Great (356–323 BC), the military genius who brought much of the known world under the rule of Greek-speaking Macedonians, was indeed a household name in the European Middle Ages, where he had taken on the characteristics not just of a conqueror, but of a perfect knight, discoverer and inventor; he had battled with fabulous beasts and strange races of men, exchanged philosophical argument with Indian sages and visited the Earthly Paradise. His name was often cited as a moral exemplar for kingship, liberality, wisdom and closeness to God, as well as for arrogant, covetous ambition. Another fourteenthcentury author, Jean de Longuyon, in his Voeux du Paon made Alexander one of the ‘Nine Worthies’: the others were the classical heroes Hector and Caesar; the Biblical heroes Joshua, David and Judas Maccabeus; and the Christian heroes Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon. Western Europe came comparatively late to the discovery of the Alexander legends, for they had already penetrated the Persian national epic, the Shahnameh, in the eleventh century AD, where Alexander became a successor by familial right to the defeated king Darius and established himself as a hero.

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For Firdausi, the author of the Shahnameh, Alexander was by origin a ‘Rumi’, an emperor of the West and thus a putative Christian; but other Persian authors drew on an already established Arabic tradition (Qur’an Sura 18) that made Alexander a Muslim and a Prophet of God. This was enshrined in several Arabic romances from the eighth century onwards. In Europe, Alexander was even thought to have a special connection with Britain. In the fourteenth century the French romance Perceforest sought to link the story of Alexander with the Arthurian legends of Britain. According to this work, Alexander’s ship was blown off course soon after his conquest of India, and blown ashore in Britain, an island he discovered to be inhabited mainly by sorcerers. He made his lieutenants Betis and Gadifer kings of England and Scotland respectively. Alexander was thus established – if uneasily – in the legendary past of Britain as a distant ancestor of Arthur, and particularly in Scotland, whose kings, several of them named Alexander, liked to trace their pedigree to the conqueror.2 Stories about his life were already widely known and texts proliferated. The French Roman d’Alexandre,3 composed in the twelfth century, influenced the English and German traditions from the early thirteenth century.4 In the two centuries from 1300 several English works told the story of Alexander in full: already circulating in Chaucer’s time were the verse Kyng Alisaundre, the now-fragmentary ‘Alexander and Dindimus’, and the alliterative Romance of Alexander, as well as John Gower’s Confessio Amantis that told the story of his birth by the Egyptian pharaoh Nectanebo, and John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, which devoted several long passages to episodes in the Alexander story. After Chaucer there were the Thornton Prose Life of Alexander and The Wars of Alexander in fourteeners, and then in Scots John Barbour’s Buik of Alexander and Gilbert Hay’s Buik of Alexander. In all of these Alexander is seen as a hero of medieval chivalry: his campaigns are usually described as being directed against the Saracens, and long passages are devoted to descriptions of battles on horseback, to the colourful tents

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on the battlefield and to the romantic relations (Minne, courtly love) between the knights and their ladies at home.5 This medieval Alexander is, it need hardly be said, a far cry from the world conqueror of the fourth century BC. The metamorphosis from Macedonian king to courtly hero is a touchstone of European sensibility over sixteen centuries, and because of the great number of texts about him this development can be studied in action at numerous points throughout that period. The texts collected in this book are representative of the least known of these late antique and early medieval traditions.

2. transmission There were four main channels of transmission of stories about Alexander from antiquity to the authors of the medieval texts. The first, which Chaucer follows in the account of Alexander’s career (to which the lines at the beginning of this chapter are the introduction), is the historical one given by Quintus Curtius Rufus,6 a Roman writer of the first or second century AD, whose history, though not the most reliable, is perhaps the most readable and entertaining of the ancient histories. Curtius made use of earlier historians whose works are lost, including the purveyor of wonders, Cleitarchus, and the adulatory Callisthenes (whose adulation was, however, cut short when Alexander had him executed for alleged conspiracy in 327 BC). To this he added a strong moralising bent, an enthusiasm for rhetorical elaboration and an emphasis on the role of the goddess Fortuna in Alexander’s career. Curtius was the source for the epic poem in Latin by Walter of Chatillon (1178),7 and ˆ this was probably Chaucer’s inspiration for his references, and also for some, though not all, the episodes in Gower’s Confessio Amantis.8 (John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes also draws on the Curtian tradition, perhaps via Walter, for the episodes he treats: the conspiracy of Philotas and the career of Olympias.) Walter adds some Christian colouring to his Roman source, but his main contribution is an extensive ‘divine apparatus’ in the

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manner of Vergil, culminating in a conference of the pagan gods and some biblical demons in Book X, when they send out Envy to bring Alexander’s career to an end before he breaks down the barriers even of hell in his unending conquest. Secondly, there was the Alexander Romance.9 This Greek work, which may have been written as early as the third century BC, went through numerous Greek recensions in antiquity and was translated twice into Latin, first by Julius Valerius10 before AD 338 and secondly by Leo the Archpriest of Naples in the tenth century. Leo’s work is lost but was the basis of a longer version of Alexander’s adventures in Latin, known as the Historia de Proeliis, of which there exist three recensions each expanding on the last.11 Chaucer was certainly acquainted with this work also, since in the House of Fame (860–1) he refers to the story of Alexander’s ascent into the heavens in a vehicle borne by eagles, which is a feature of the Romance. (It was also a popular motif on misericords, pavements and roof-bosses in cathedrals throughout Europe.12 ) This work too had its influence on Gower, who used stories from it in several passages.13 In addition to these two full-length narratives of Alexander’s life, there are numerous shorter texts referring to particular episodes in his career. Of these the most widespread are accounts of his adventures in India and beyond, which contribute to the non-military aspect of the medieval Alexander, the sage and seeker after wisdom. These include the Letter to Aristotle about India, which was probably originally written in Greek and became incorporated in the Alexander Romance, but survives only in two Latin versions, from the seventh and tenth centuries AD respectively; Palladius’ On the Brahmans, from the fifth century AD; and The Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus (known in Latin as the Collatio Alexandri et Dindimi), which was current by AD 700. The Letter to Aristotle influenced another late Latin text, the Letter of Pharasmanes to Hadrian, which in the later of its several recensions is known as the Wonders of the East. The other two texts just mentioned belong to a multifarious tradition about Alexander in India, a

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tradition which began in his lifetime when he sent his companion Onesicritus to interview the ‘naked philosophers’ of Taxila. Our earliest witness for this tradition is a fragmentary papyrus of about 100 BC, Berlin papyrus 13044 (Appendix I.i), containing part of a version of Alexander’s face-to-face interview with the Brahmans; it is followed by another papyrus of the second century AD, Geneva papyrus 271 (Appendix 1.ii), which gives much of the sermon of Dandamis and forms the basis of Palladius’ work. Both sets of texts became widely known in the East and West and influenced chroniclers such as George the Monk (ninth century AD), whose account of Alexander concentrates on the Indian adventures and Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem (a feature prominent in most medieval Greek Alexander books). The Indian and wonder tales were likewise assimilated and recombined in the various recensions of the Latin version of the Alexander Romance current in the Middle Ages, namely the Historia de Proeliis, which exhibits parts of the Letter of Pharasmanes and includes the Brahman episode twice: this became the norm for the numerous European vernacular Alexander romances based on the Historia de Proeliis and its successors. The Liber Alexandri Magni is a particularly full rewriting of the Historia de Proeliis from the second half of the twelfth century and was translated into German by Johann Hartlieb around 1444: the episode with the philosophers appears twice because they appear under two different names, as Brahmans and as gymnosophists or ‘naked philosophers’. The fourth strand of tradition about Alexander consists of two texts of Arabic origin, The Sayings of the Philosophers and The Secret of Secrets. The first of these was composed by Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809–73), the doyen of translators from Greek into Arabic at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad,14 incorporating an earlier, simpler version preserved in Syriac, which consists of a series of moralising laments uttered by a group of philosophers, as well as his wife, mother and courtiers, over the dead Alexander. The existence of the Syriac text may suggest that the work has Greek origins,15 since many Greek works were

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translated into Syriac in late antiquity. Hunayn’s version is much expanded from his model, and consists of a series of wise sayings attributed to many of the philosophers of antiquity, among whom is included Alexander himself. It was translated from Arabic into Spanish under the title Los Buenos proverbios before 1400.16 A second version of this work, several times longer than Hunayn’s, was composed by al-Mubashshir17 around 1053, and was translated into Spanish (the Bocados de Oro) in the late thirteenth century. It also entered the twelfth-century Disciplina Clericalis and thence the third recension of the Historia de Proeliis. From Latin it was translated also into French. In that form it became the source of the first book printed by William Caxton in England, The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers (1450). But there are also numerous manuscript versions of the work in English, all differing in some degree from one another.18 The second Arabic work, the Secret of Secrets, a correspondence between Aristotle and Alexander on the subject of kingship, was translated from Syriac by a Christian Arab, Yahya ibn Batrik (900–950). A Hebrew translation was made before 1235 by Yehuda al-Harizi, and a Latin translation not earlier than 1200.19 (A twelfth-century Spanish translation by Gerard of Cremona and Dominic Gonzalvez was made directly from the Arabic.20 ) A Latin version of Yahya’s work was already current by 1200 and is the source of several English works in prose and verse, notably John Lydgate’s Secrees of Old Philisoffres (Lydgate lived from 1370– 1449). This brief sketch will indicate the diversity of material that the Middle Ages inherited from antiquity about the heroic figure of Alexander. No general study has been made of the texts of the fourth group, which would require the skills of an Orientalist in addition to those of the classical and Middle English scholar. (But see Doufikar-Aerts 2010.) The Curtian tradition is briefly treated by R. Telfryn Pritchard in the introduction to his translation of Walter of Chatillon’s Alexandreis (1986), ˆ

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a work in itself deserving of much further study for its own qualities. A fuller study of Curtius’ impact on the Middle Ages and Elizabethan literature would be welcome. The Alexander Romance has been more extensively investigated, and my own Alexander the Great: A Life in Legend (2008) offers a thorough orientation in the scholarship. The present book offers a way into the Greek and Latin works of the third group, which are of direct relevance to the understanding of the classical heritage in medieval England and, indeed, other parts of Europe.21

3. alexander in india To set these legends in a historical context we should say a word about the actual events of Alexander’s visit to India. The historical sources for the conquest of India in 326–5 BC are Arrian (books 4.22–6.20), Quintus Curtius Rufus (book 8.9ff), Diodorus Siculus’ Library of History (book 17), Justin’s Epitome of the lost History of Pompeius Trogus (books 11–12) and Plutarch’s Life of Alexander (chs 57–69).22 The fullest account is that of Arrian, who devotes almost a quarter of his Anabasis to the Indian campaign, which lasted from the beginning of 326 BC to the late summer of 325. In addition, his Indica is an ethnographic and geographical account of India. Arrian also promised (Anab 6.16.5) a monograph on the wisdom of the Brahmans, which does not survive if it was ever written (but see the discussion below). The concentration on this brief portion of Alexander’s campaign is remarkable. It can be explained in part by the exotic nature of the material (5.5.1). But the Indian campaign was particularly important to Alexander for other reasons. It took him for the first time beyond the limits of the Persian Empire and raised in his mind the possibility of world domination. Probably, too, his mentor Aristotle had encouraged him to go on and collect scientific date from this land of fable: his scientific staff were numerous and several of them, including the

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philosopher Onesicritus and his admiral Nearchus, wrote much about the conditions in India. Yet, despite the quantities of blood shed in the conquest, Alexander made little attempt to retain his Indian possessions, so that, as Plutarch tells us (Sayings of Kings and Commanders 207D, 8), the Emperor Augustus ‘expressed his surprise that Alexander did not regard it as a greater task to set in order the empire he had won than to win it’. The conquest of the Persian Empire had occupied eight years and was not complete until the suppression of the Bactrian warlord Spitamenes in late 328 BC. At this point it might have been expected that the expedition would be over, since the avowed aim of revenge on Persia for its sacking of the Greek cities had been achieved. But Alexander believed (Arr 4.15.6) that ‘by subduing India he would at once be in possession of Asia as a whole, and with Asia in his possession he would return to Greece’. Aristotle23 believed that the River of Ocean would be visible from the summit of the Hindu Kush, so to advance beyond it was a step on the way to becoming ruler of the whole world. So in mid 327 he began the year-long march into ‘India’ (4.22.3). This term as used by Arrian encompasses the eastern parts of Afghanistan and present-day Pakistan to the eastern regions of the Indus valley. Alexander did not enter any part of the modern state of India. Somewhere on his journey into India he visited a city called Nysa, which was supposed to have been founded by the god Dionysus, India’s only previous conqueror. Now Alexander felt he was treading in the footsteps of the gods, his ancestors. After crossing the Indus he was welcomed by the native ruler of the region of Taxila (one of the major ‘university cities’ of ancient India) whose name was Ambhi (Omphis), and other allies (5.8.2) who hoped for his help against two neighbouring princes, Abisares and Porus. In Taxila there took place the most important of Alexander’s encounters as far as his later legend is concerned (7.2.2). He was impressed and interested by the civilization of Taxila

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and the presence of numerous ascetics living on the fringes of the city. He sent one of his staff, Onesicritus, to interview the ascetics about their way of life and beliefs. Onesicritus found the conversation hard, as he had to use a series of three interpreters (as Strabo 15.1.64 tells us; the episode is not in Arrian); but Alexander was sufficiently impressed by the results to adopt one of the philosophers, Calanus, as a member of his court. (Another philosopher, Dandamis, refused to come.) The episode emblematises the increasing difficulty of communication in the region, in which, being outside the fringes of the Persian Empire, the imperial lingua franca of Aramaic was no longer understood. Calanus later distinguished himself, when he fell ill in Persis, by committing suicide on a blazing pyre. But Alexander could not delay in Taxila and marched on to fight Porus, whom he successfully defeated in a major battle on the River Hydaspes (Jhelum). Alexander’s horse, Bucephalas, was killed in the battle and buried with honours at a new cityfoundation, which Alexander named Bucephala. Porus, a giant of a man over two metres tall, was captured, offered his loyalty and was confirmed as ruler of the lands beyond the Hydaspes – though now as a vassal of Alexander. Alexander had by now gained information about the lands to the east, in modern India proper, in particular the kingdoms of the Prasii and the Gangaridae based on the Ganges, and conceived ambitions to travel further east. He had reports that the Ganges was within 12 days’ march (Diod. 17.93.2), and that this would lead him to the Outer Ocean, at which point he could consider that he had conquered the world as far as its eastern limit. (A letter from one of the generals, Craterus, to his mother even claimed that he had reached the Ganges.) But at this point the army began to feel it had had enough. Their clothing and arms were worn out (Diod. 17. 94.1–3, Curt. 9.2.6–11) and even extensive raiding did not satisfy all their wants. The soldiers wanted to go home and reap the rewards of their labours; the cause for which they had taken up arms was long since achieved.

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After three days Alexander bowed to pressure and determined instead to follow the Indus to the south and to reach the Ocean that way, and thus to return to the Persian homeland. But this was no leisurely cruise home. There was fighting all the way, as Alexander continued to demand submission of all he encountered. The first peoples he encountered were the Malli and Oxydracae, known to modern scholars from their appearances in the Mahabharata as the Malavas and Kshudrakas. Among these, Arrian tells us, was a city of the Brachmanes: he writes as if the Brachmanes (Brahmans) were a people. Neither he nor the later writer Pliny the Elder properly grasp the Indian system of caste, nor understand that the Brahmans are a segment of society, not a people. But Arrian’s source, Aristobulus, and Alexander’s admiral, Nearchus, as well as the later Greek writer Megasthenes (who did almost grasp the caste system), understood that the Brahmans were royal advisers, in part owing to their status as ‘philosopher’. And Arrian later (6.16.5 and 17.2) refers to them as ‘philosophers’. The confusion was compounded by the Alexander Romance which referred to ‘the Brahmans or Oxydorkai’ (see 6.11.3) as a group of philosophers and identified them with the ‘naked philosophers’ encountered by Alexander the previous spring at Taxila. It may be that the Brahmans had concentrated their numbers in this particular town of the Malli: no king is mentioned among the Malli, and in fact they laid claim to self-government, so perhaps the Brahmans held particular power here. At any rate, the Malli were subject to slaughter, women and children included (6.11.1), like every other Indian tribe: this must have been particularly horrifying to the Indians for whom it was sacrilege to kill a Brahman. Brahmans were to the fore also in the next places attacked: the people of Sambus, ‘who had appointed himself satrap of the Indian hill-men’ (6.16.3–5) and the kingdom of Musicanus (6.17.1–2), whom Alexander hanged (or perhaps crucified: the Greek could mean either) along with ‘the Brahmans who had been the instigators of his revolt’ (80,000 were killed according

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to Cleitarchus, repeated in Diod. 17.102.7 and Curt. 9.8.15). Following this campaign of terror the remaining peoples offered submission. The last Brahman city to be subdued was Harmatelia, not mentioned by Arrian, which surrendered after a short battle (Diod. 17.103). Alexander had conquered the Indians and then just sailed away: no commanders were left to maintain his authority, apart from Porus many hundreds of miles to the north (and he soon made himself independent again): nothing but a legacy of hatred among the Indian population. The historical account of the campaign in India quickly took on a very different form in the legendary compilations about Alexander. The king’s frustrated wish to go beyond the Indus into India and towards Ocean became metamorphosed into the story that he actually did penetrate that region. Greek knowledge of India was extremely limited and was based largely on the writings of Ctesias of Cnidus (fifth–fourth century BC), who resided at the Persian court and was the author of a book about Persia as well as one about India. Both are unfortunately lost, although there are excerpts and summaries in later writers.24 What Ctesias said about India is known to us mainly from the summary by Photius the Patriarch of Constantinople (ninth century AD) in his notes of his own reading, plus a few excerpts in Aelian’s Historia Animalium and one or two other writers. Along with various exotica known also from Herodotus, such as the gold-guarding ants, there is information about the Cynocephali or Dog-headed men, the Pygmies and the Sciapodes (who have just one giant foot, which they use as an umbrella to keep off the sun),25 and particularly about a great quantity of fabulous beasts (e.g. the manticore) and exotic plants, including the Palmyra tree, which resembles a giant reed, a river of honey and the trees of the sun and moon, which pronounce oracles with a human voice. Much of what Ctesias reported was used by the author of Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle about India, though he also added a good deal of material of his own.

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A second source of information about India for Greek writers after Alexander was the interview that Onesicritus conducted with the ascetics of Taxila. It is hard to disentangle from the sources that derive from Onesicritus (which include Plutarch, the Alexander Romance, and the several works on the Brahmans in this volume) exactly how much was derived from the ascetics themselves and how much was imposed by Onesicritus on the garbled account he received through the medium of three interpreters; but comparison with what we learn from a later Greek writer on India, Megasthenes – who was the Seleucid ambassador at the court of the Maurya emperor Chandragupta (Sandrocottus to the Greeks) in the third century BC – suggests that Onesicritus did manage to convey some correct information about the ascetics’ beliefs and practices.26 The advice by Calanus (Plutarch, Life of Alexander 65) to hold down the centre of the kingdom, the soundness of which he demonstrates by a practical illustration – treading down an ox-hide, which, as he presses on one side, springs up on the other, and is held flat only when the centre is depressed – intriguingly echoes (with an opposite moral) a story of Chandragupta, who was given advice on how to secure his conquests by an old woman, who used the illustration that a chapatti is best eaten from the edges inwards rather than from the centre outwards. Perhaps we have here a genuine piece of Indian wisdom preserved in our Greek writers.27 The fact that Onesicritus, the Cynic philosopher, had written interestingly about the ascetics of India, with whom the Cynics obviously felt some affinity,28 prompted the growth of a further literary development of this meeting, in the form of a question-and-answer session between Alexander and the sages. This appears in its earliest form in a papyrus of about 100 BC (Berlin papyrus 13044: translated in Appendix 1.i), and is reused both by the author of the Alexander Romance and by Plutarch.29 In the Romance the king appears as a genuine seeker after wisdom and gives the sages presents after they have

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satisfactorily answered his questions; but in Plutarch the con¨ test is what the folklorists call a Halsratsel, a riddle on which depends life or death. In the end the sages escape punishment by turning on Alexander a form of the Liar Paradox and thus outwitting him. This part of the encounter did not become established in the later accounts, which concentrate on showing Alexander as learning wisdom from the sages but being unable to make use of it. In the Hellenistic age the Cynics and the early Stoic philosophers developed a prolific strand of Utopian writing, and the Brahmans’ polity has many points of contact with other ideal societies described by Hellenistic writers.30 These include: Theopompus’ Meropis (FGrH 115 F 75 c = Aelian VH 3.18), whose inhabitants are happier than the Hyperboreans;31 Euhemerus’ Panchaea, a paradise watered by the Fountain of the Sun; and Iambulus’ Island of the Sun. This is located in the Indian Ocean and is probably to be identified, as Schwarz argues, with Taprobane (modern Sri Lanka). Iambulus discovers the island as a result of being set adrift in a boat after a period of captivity in Ethiopia, a feature that closely recalls the adventure of the Theban scholar who is presented in Palladius as the source of the narrative about the Brahmans. Unfortunately, we do not know whether the original Cynic version of the Brahmans text included any form of this preamble. The people of this island live to an advanced age (150 years) and wives and children are held in common as a means of achieving harmony. Both these points recall the Brahmans text, with its description of the great age reached by the inhabitants of Taprobane and the details of their sexual arrangements. These are in fact not identical to those of Iambulus’ state; whereas Iambulus describes a sexual communism that recalls Platonic theory, the Brahmans keep their women on the other side of the river and mate with them at set times – in this they form a counterpoise to the well known myth of the Amazons who achieve congress with the neighbouring men in an analogous way.32

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One striking feature of the utopias of Euhemerus, Iambulus and Palladius is that they are all on an island. In fact, they are on one particular island, namely Taprobane. Taprobane, in ancient geographical thought, ran parallel to the coast of India and was frequently conceived as being located in the River of Ocean which surrounded the ‘far side’ of India. Thus it was not infrequently described as the beginning of ‘another world’. Its paradisaic qualities, which are still a major feature of modern tourist literature, surely led to the localisation of the earthly paradise of Christian thought in a similar position, just beyond the River of Ocean in the Far East.33 These ideal communities represented an antithesis to the busy political life of the Greek city-states, which converged with philosophical controversies about Alexander to produce such texts as the Cynic precursor of Palladius in the Geneva papyrus (Appendix 1.ii). The contrast of the ways of life of Alexander and the Brahmans is the theme of the Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus. So in this series of texts we see a steady development from Cynic controversy on Alexander to full-blown Christian apologetic. The Christianisation of this Utopian episode led to two further fictional developments in the Christian period, which, however, no longer involve the figure of Alexander. It is worth presenting them for comparison with the Alexander texts. The first is the apocryphal work known as the History of the Rechabites,34 which was later rewritten as a Christian work under the title ‘The Narrative of Zosimus’, perhaps as late as the seventh century. The ‘Narrative of Zosimus’ is preserved in Slavonic, Syriac, Ethiopic and Arabic texts; in the Slavonic version the Blessed Ones are in fact named as Brahmans. It also entered the medieval Jewish rewriting of Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews known as Yosippon: now the Blessed are called the ‘sons of Yonadab’. The Christian story concerns a hermit, Zosimus, who travels on a camel to the Land of the Blessed. These latter turn out to be the descendants of Rechab, one of the Lost Tribes of Israel,

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and their home is the Earthly Paradise. One of their number describes their way of life: Hear, ye sons of men, hear the way of life of the blessed. For God placed us in this land, for we are holy but not immortal. For the earth produces most fragrant fruit, and out of the trunks of the trees comes water sweeter than honey, and these are our food and drink. We also pray all night and day . . . With us there is no vine, nor ploughed field, nor works of wood or iron, nor have we any house or building, nor fire nor sword, nor iron wrought or unwrought, nor silver nor gold, nor air too heavy or too keen. Neither do any of us take to themselves wives, except for so long as to beget two children, and after they have produced two children they withdraw from each other and continue in chastity, not knowing that they were ever in the intercourse of marriage, but being in virginity as from the beginning. And the one child remains for marriage, and the other for virginity. And . . . all our day is one day. In our caves lie the leaves of trees, and this is our couch under the trees. But we are not naked of body as ye wrongly imagine, for we have the garment of immortality and are not ashamed of each other . . . We know also the time of our end, for we have no torment nor disease nor pain in our bodies, nor exhaustion nor weakness, but peace and great patience and love . . . If one quits the body in his youth, the days of his life here are 360 years, and he that quits the body in old age, the days of his life here are 688 years (10–12). In this remarkable narrative the chief traits of the Hellenistic utopia are entirely adapted to the Jewish-Christian vision of the Earthly Paradise. A much briefer account of a similar way of life in the Far East is that given of the Camarini in the Expositio Mundi et Gentium, a Christian Latin cosmography datable to AD 359

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(iv–vii). (The Camarini are also described in the Hodoiporia apo Edem tou Paradisou, probably a Nestorian work from preIslamic Syria, where they become the Macarini, i.e. Makarioi or Blessed Ones.35 ) The Camarini are located in the East, perhaps in Eden itself; they are good and pious and they eat no food except bread that falls from heaven and a drink made from wild honey and pepper. They live a communal life without a supreme ruler; they are without disease and their clothing is so pure that it cannot be defiled. They do not sow or reap, but collect precious stones that are washed down by the rivers. They know the dates of their death and build their own coffins in good time and then wait by them. Their next neighbours are, it turns out, the Brahmans. Thus the visit of Alexander became the occasion for two types of story: an account of the marvels of the East, and a search for the wisdom of the East (later re-defined as Christian introspection). Both these aspects were crucial to the development of the character of Alexander in medieval legend, and they were combined with a third that envisaged him seeking to go beyond the limits of the known world to the Land of the Blessed (or, in Christian terms, Paradise). This is the background to the latest of the legends assembled in this book. Let us look at each of the texts in turn.

4. the texts (i) Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle about India There are two Latin texts of the Letter to Aristotle. The first belongs to the seventh century at the latest; the second is a translation of the first into Italian-Latin dating from the tenth century.36 (The first has been translated by Lloyd Gunderson (1980); it is the latter which I translate in this book.) The Latin is certainly a translation of a lost Greek original which is preserved, in abbreviated form, in several of the recensions of the Alexander Romance. It appears already in the earliest

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known version, the alpha-recension, of which there is a single manuscript; A. Alpha was compiled not later than AD 338 when it was translated into Latin by Julius Valerius, and may be several centuries earlier.37 The letter is presented as written by Alexander immediately after his conquest of Porus and describes his adventures in India. In the later recensions of the Romance known as epsilon (eighth century) and gamma (ninth century) the adventures it recounts are told in the third person so that they become explicitly a continuation of the narrative after the conquest of Porus. As remarked above, much of the material in the letter derives from Ctesias: the giant reeds and the city of reeds;38 the Dog-heads; the lake of sweet water, which is probably derived from Ctesias’ river of honey; the monstrous animals, including the Odontotyrannus, which may be based on Ctesias’ giant worms;39 and the oracular trees of the sun and moon.40 Other elements that specifically relate to Alexander are obviously original to the Letter: the city of Porus and Porus’ participation in the expedition, and the visit to the Seres or Chinese and the Valley of Diamonds. Others still derive from common knowledge: elephants and hippopotami, for example. To these the composer of the Letter felt free to add yet more strange creatures: it would have been dull simply to retail all the same ones as Ctesias, and once you have started inventing strange hybrids it is not hard to go on. The Letter to Aristotle was extremely popular. Seventy-two manuscripts of the Latin survive and it was the first Alexander text to be translated into a medieval language: a translation into Old English is one of the four texts in the unique codex which preserves Beowulf.41 The other two texts in this codex are also concerned with the Far East, the story of St Christopher and, more importantly from our point of view, the Wonders of the East (De rebus in oriente mirabilibus).42 The patron who commissioned this codex was apparently interested in monsters, since a prominent part is also played in Beowulf by the monstrous Grendel.43

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This purported to be a letter from Pharasmanes, the king of Iberia (modern Georgia) to the Emperor Hadrian. There are several manuscripts with widely varying content;44 the earliest of them must have been composed before the year 800. The manuscript known as D was translated into Old English. This version is the only one to bring in the character of Alexander in its discussion of the marvels: allusions to him are absent in later versions. The ‘letter’ draws on earlier Latin lore, notably the geographer Solinus who in turn assembled most of his information from the Elder Pliny, as well as from the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville and Augustine’s City of God. It gives brief details of the various strange beasts and races of men such as the Pygmies, the Sciapodes, the Dog-heads and others, from which it can be seen that all its information goes back ultimately to Ctesias. The Letter of Pharasmanes, because of its similarities to the Letter to Aristotle, was pressed into service in the composition of the medieval versions of the Alexander romances, first appearing in the Historia de Proeliis (the first interpolated recension of which belongs to the eleventh century AD). There were also several French translations of the Letter of Pharasmanes. These in due course contributed, via Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum Historiale, to the account of the marvels of the East in the Book of Sir John Mandeville (1356–7).45 The influence of these accounts of the Far East can also be seen in pictorial form in several medieval world maps, most notably the Mappa Mundi of Hereford Cathedral.46

(iii) The Chronicle of George the Monk The ninth-century Byzantine chronicler George the Monk, also known as George Hamartolus or George ‘the Sinner’, included a brief account of the reign of Alexander in his chronicle from the earliest times to AD 842 (completed 866–7). It is notable that

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nearly half of it is devoted to the visit to India, while most of the rest concentrates on Alexander’s supposed visit to Jerusalem, in which George draws on the Greek-Jewish historian Josephus and other Jewish sources.

(iv) Palladius, ‘On the Life of the Brahmans’ Alexander’s encounter with the naked philosophers of Taxila was a feature of all the historical accounts as well as of the Alexander Romance. In the Romance they are referred to not only as ‘naked philosophers’ but as ‘the Brahmans or Oxydorkai’ (i.e., Oxydracae). In fact they may not have been Brahmans at all but some other kind of ascetic, or perhaps Jains. (The possibility has even been raised that they might have been Buddhists, but this seems unlikely.)47 Whoever they were (and it is my belief that the information about them in the Romance preserves a kernel of historical truth about their beliefs and practices), they quickly became one of the standard features of any description of the East. When Philostratus in the third century AD has his hero, Apollonius of Tyana, visit India,48 he declares that the Brahmans or Oxydracae whom Alexander met are not the true sages, for these live between the Hyphasis and the Ganges in a country that Alexander never assailed. This passage shows two things: first that Philostratus was already acquainted with the legend in the form it takes in the Alexander Romance; and secondly that the real Brahmans had now been relocated to somewhere near the Ganges (which is where Palladius puts them). The terms ‘Brahman’ and ‘naked philosopher’ became interchangeable in late antiquity. The Life of the Brahmans is attributed to Palladius,49 the fifth-century bishop of Helenopolis, and the attribution may very well be correct. In its present form it is certainly a Christian protreptic designed to recommend the monastic life; and the other main work known to be by Palladius is the Lausiac History, an account of the lives of a group of monks in Palestine. Palladius (if he is the author) states that the second part of his

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Life of the Brahmans is an opusculum of Arrian, the historian of Alexander and author of the Indica. Now it is a fact that Arrian does once (Anab 6.16.5) promise a detailed account of the Brahmans but never gives it: could this be his work?50 If so, it seems inconsistent with his historical principles, which are in general averse to rhetorical elaboration of this kind, and further doubts are raised by the fact that the description of the life of the Brahmans is clearly based on a work partially preserved on a papyrus of the mid-second century AD, in which it appears as one of a collection of Cynic diatribes,51 a form with some similarities to the Christian sermon. It is plain that much of the material in the papyrus is of purely Cynic origin, and as such could have been composed at any time from the second century BC to the second century AD. Arrian, as a pupil of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, may have shared the Stoics’ interest in the Cynic concern with ‘the natural life’; but Stoicism is a positive philosophy with more in common with Christianity, in comparison with which the negative attitude of rejection of society by the Cynics can seem superficial or impractical. This Cynic material has been reworked by Palladius to give it a Christian colour, and in addition there are several references to the games of Rome and the practice of exposing Christians to the wild beasts. An interesting feature is the discourse on vegetarianism. The relevant portion of the papyrus is missing, but the size of the missing part suggests that the treatment of vegetarianism was much briefer in the Cynic text. This passage seems to be an expansion of the material in line with what Christian thinkers believed to have been the practice of the Brahmans (whom they regarded as the ancestors of the sect of Encratites – the self-restrainers).52 Palladius’ work is preserved in two Greek recensions, of which I have translated the less elaborate (the Versio Ornatior and not the Versio Ornatior et Elaboratior).53 In addition, there are three Latin translations of the work, one of which is falsely attributed to St Ambrose.54 Palladius’ work seems also to have been an influence on the author of the Christian work

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known as the Life of Zosimus and also as the History of the Rechabites,55 which combines details of the Brahmans’ way of life with Jewish legends about the land of ‘the Blessed’ or the sons of Yonadab.56 In addition, the Expositio Mundi et Gentium, a Christian Latin cosmography dateable to AD 359 describes the life of the Camarini in the Far East, perhaps in Eden itself. Their name is perhaps a corruption of Macarioi (blessed): like the Brahmans (who are their close neighbours), they live a communal life, eat no food except that which nature provides, know the dates of their own deaths and build their coffins in good time.57 The development goes further in the location of the Brahmans on an island (like Paradise) by John of Salisbury, and hence in the works of Vincent of Beauvais and Sir John Mandeville.58

(v) The Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus It is to be assumed that there was a Greek original of this text, which tackles a different aspect of the same theme,59 Alexander’s encounter with the Brahmans, and expands the debate between the two characters on the active and contemplative lives – a kind of early Allegro and Penseroso. It is not possible to date the Latin text very precisely,60 though it was referred to in the eighth century by Alcuin, who sent a copy to Charlemagne.61 This likewise became important in medieval English literature: there is an alliterative verse translation from Gloucestershire of about 1340,62 and the section on the Greek gods and their vices is adapted by John Gower.63 It remained popular for centuries thereafter: there is a chapbook version of 1683,64 and it was also adapted in the anonymous Oeconomy of Human Life published by Robert Dodsley in 1751.65

(vi) Alexander the Great’s Journey to Paradise This is the latest text in the collection and cannot be dated precisely except to say that it is earlier than 1175, when it was

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interpolated in the Alexander poem of Pfaffe Lamprecht.66 However, the story it tells is much older. The meeting of Alexander with the old man and the parable of the eye is already in the Babylonian Talmud,67 and was therefore current before AD 500. From the Talmud it found its way into Latin, perhaps through a Jewish author writing in Latin, and thence into the Hebrew versions of the Alexander Romance that are derived from the Historia de Proeliis.68 The Latin text was the source of a French poem appended to La Prise de Defur,69 one of the thirteenth-century branches of the extremely complicated French Roman d’Alexandre tradition.70 The story of the wonderstone also had later reverberations as it contributed to the idea of the Grail, the search for which is the subject of Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, who certainly knew this text.71 The familiarity to English writers of the story of Alexander’s visit to Paradise was demonstrated by Mary Lascelles,72 though it is often barely alluded to. A key text in its transmission was Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon, and from him derives Gilbert Hay’s story of Alexander’s visit to Paradise, a feature which he alone adds to the Historia de Proeliis substrate on which he builds.73 This completes our survey of the tradition of these five texts and their influence on English literature. In conclusion, it may be worth mentioning the English versions of the Alexander Romance which were familiar alongside these texts and which included the Indian adventures as part of their comprehensive narrative. These include Kyng Alisaundre (early fourteenth century),74 the Alliterative Romance of Alexander (midfourteenth century),75 The Thornton Prose Alexander76 and the Wars of Alexander (both fifteenth century), and two Scots versions, the Buik of Alexander, probably by John Barbour (1428),77 and Gilbert Hay’s Buik of Alexander (1460).78 The former is essentially a version in Scots of the French Fuerre de Gadres; the latter derives from the second interpolated version of the Historia de Proeliis; it is briefer than ‘Barbour’s’ work, which was unknown to Hay.

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The following table summarises the chronology of the Alexander texts discussed. 100 BC 1st c. AD Pre-338 Ca 500 Ca 500 Pre-700 Pre-800 809–73 Pre-900

Ca 950 951–69 Pre-1000 Pre-1053 Pre-1100

Pre-1175 1175 1178 Pre-1200 1200–36 1250–1300

Berlin papyrus 13044 Geneva papyrus [Greek Letter to Aristotle] Julius Valerius Palladius de Bragmanibus Journey to Paradise in Talmud First Latin Letter to Aristotle Correspondence with Dindimus Latin Wonders of the East Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Kitab adab al-Falasifa (Sayings of the Philosophers) George the Monk Yahya ibn Batrik, Sirr al-Asrar (Secret of Secrets) Old English Letter to Aristotle Old English Wonders of the East Leo the Archpriest’s translation of PseudoCallisthenes Late Latin Letter to Aristotle Mubashshir ibn Fatik, Mukhtar al-Hakim (Sayings of the Philosophers) Historia de Proeliis (first recension) Yehuda al-Harizi, Sod ha-Sodot (Secret of Secrets) Latin Journey to Paradise Pfaffe Lamprecht, Alexanderlied Walter of Chatillon, Alexandreis ˆ Historia de Proeliis (second or Orosius recension) Historia de Proeliis (third recension) Liber philosophorum (translation of Bocados de oro)

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Bocados de oro Los Buenos proverbios Kyng Alisaundre Alexander and Dindimus (‘Alexander B’); and ‘Alexander A’ Alliterative Romance of Alexander John Lydgate, Secrees of Old Philisoffres John Gower, Confessio Amantis Geoffrey Chaucer The Book of Sir John Mandeville Thornton Prose Life of Alexander Wars of Alexander John Barbour, Buik of Alexander Johan Hartlieb, Alexander Stephen Scrope, Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers Gilbert Hay, Buik of Alexander The Upright Lives of the Heathens Briefly Noted – published by Andrew Soule

5. ancient controversies on alexander These texts all belong to the continuing history of reactions to, and debates about, the achievement of Alexander and his personality, and can only be understood as growing out of the controversies generated by philosophers and rhetoricians about his career from his own time onwards. What Alexander had accomplished was something far beyond what any Greek had ever conceived of before – not only the conquest of the ancient enemy, the Persian Empire, but the creation of a world empire under Greek-Macedonian rule. From the first, the sheer magnitude of his deeds had stimulated thinkers of all kinds to new efforts to find a place for him in their world views. Where could achievements of this kind be fitted into the traditional

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moral categories of Greek thought, with their emphasis on the divine punishment of excessive ambition, hostility to ‘tyrannical’ behaviour and approval of the man who is content with little? The problem of Alexander found early expression in philosophical and historical writing because Alexander took with him to the East a staff of scholars to record what they saw; and he certainly did correspond with Aristotle, who made use of some of Alexander’s ethnographic findings in his own philosophical and scientific studies. The historians approached the subject of his expedition from a variety of perspectives:79 Ptolemy, the general and the future king of Egypt, wrote a relatively sober and factual account, while Cleitarchus emphasised the wonders and exotica of the East. Callisthenes was responsible for a semi-hagiographical account in which Alexander could do no wrong – except that his history remained incomplete owing to his execution by Alexander when he refused to adopt the oriental custom of prostration before the king and was implicated in the Conspiracy of the Pages. Particularly interesting from our point of view is the contribution of Onesicritus, the devotee of Cynic philosophy, who was detailed by Alexander to interview the naked philosophers of Taxila, presumably because of his interest in philosophical talk and thought. Onesicritus, as one of Alexander’s staff, was the author of a generally favourable, though not always reliable, account of Alexander’s adventures and of Indian affairs.80 It has often been suspected that in his account of the Brahmans he has to some extent adapted the Indians’ ideas, as they were conveyed to him through a series of interpreters, to the dominant opinions of the Cynics with their rejection of the common opinions of men, of the state and of such fundamental things as clothing, in the interests of a life ‘according to nature’. The difference is that the Cynic sought such a way of life as a way of freeing himself from anxiety, while the Indian philosophers pursued their ascetic mode of life as a way of escaping the world altogether and coming closer to the divine.81

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In the Romance and other stories about Alexander in India, the interview by Onesicritus was transformed into a direct meeting by Alexander with the Brahmans. No doubt Alexander did meet some of them – not least Calanus, the sage who accompanied him to Babylon and there committed suicide by fire – but what they said to each other is not recorded. The early accounts of Alexander’s meeting with the Brahmans82 relate to an interview with those Brahmans responsible for the revolt of Sambus, and represent him in a very different light from that which Onesicritus casts on the earlier interview with the philosophers of Taxila. The two meetings (if either ever really took place) have become conflated in the tradition. In these early accounts he is a tyrant and the interview has a threatening tone. He tests the philosophers with a series of riddles, and a warning that whoever answers worst will be put to death; the tables are, however, turned on him by the wise men, who defeat the logic of his threats by a form of the Liar Paradox. This story, which is first found in Berlin papyrus 13044 (Appendix 1.i), is taken up by Plutarch as part of his biography, which aims to display the complexity of the great man’s character. It is commonly thought that this interview originated as an essay in Cynic philosophy, inspired by the historical meeting but not directly based on it: both the form of the interview – sage encounters tyrant – and the content – paradoxical argument – suit the known approaches of the Cynics and their close colleagues the Megarians.83 The latter had a special interest in puzzles and paradoxes, which appealed also to the Cynics because of their capacity to annoy people. A similar Cynic background is present in the famous story of Alexander’s encounter with Diogenes at Corinth. Diogenes was the effective founder of the Cynic school and was famed throughout antiquity for his rejection of convention, evinced in his choosing to live in a barrel and his practice of defecation and masturbation in public (like a dog, hence the name ‘cynic’). The story goes that Alexander met Diogenes and was so impressed

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by his wisdom that he offered him a gift; and Diogenes simply asked Alexander ‘Please stand out of my sunshine’.84 The philosopher content with the bare minimum of natural pleasure is contrasted with the world conqueror for whom no acquisition was sufficient. Many of the scattered anecdotes from antiquity that show Alexander in a bad light can be traced back to a Cynic milieu or to their Stoic successors. Stoic philosophy was in many respects a development of the moral teaching of Cynicism, with the anti-social elements removed and indeed an insistence that the wise man is not only a king in his own right but also a citizen of a world community.85 Cicero took from Carneades (a Stoic philosopher) the anecdote of Alexander’s encounter with a pirate, in which the pirate remarked that he could see little difference in the moral quality of their respective careers.86 Another Stoic, Panaetius, compared him unfavourably with his father Philip as a bad ruler.87 Vanity, arrogance and luxury were leitmotifs of this particular philosophical approach, as well as the view of Alexander as a murderous tyrant – an insane king, in the phrase of the poet Lucan, who filled the world with slaughter and who was at last brought down by Fate the Avenger.88 The horrified emphasis on slaughter was shared also by Lucan’s uncle the philosopher Seneca,89 and it is certainly relevant that both Lucan and Seneca were forced to take their own lives by another tyrannical ruler, the Emperor Nero, who resented their philosophic opposition. However, there is a parallel tradition that attributes a number of positive assessments of Alexander to the milieu of Diogenes. An early Christian florilegium of quotations suitable for use in sermons, attributed to Maximus Confessor,90 includes a great many attributed to Diogenes. Since many of those attributed to authors whose works survive can be shown to be genuine, there is a presumption that Pseudo-Maximus was quoting from genuine, now lost, writings of Diogenes. Thus Diogenes stands at the beginning of a distinct Cynic tradition that associates

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Alexander with continence, liberality, admiration for Diogenes, valuing his friends, and serious meditation on death.91 Seneca in another place went beyond mere condemnation to a more complex, philosophical position on Alexander’s career. In one passage he writes: There are some men who, withdrawn beyond the reach of every lust, are scarcely touched at all by any human desires; upon whom Fortune herself has nothing that she can bestow. In benefits I must of necessity be outdone by Socrates, of necessity by Diogenes, who marched naked through the midst of the treasures of the Macedonians, treading under foot the wealth of kings. O! in very truth, how rightly did he seem then, both to himself and to all others who had not been rendered blind to the perception of truth, to tower above the man beneath whose feet lay the whole world! Far more powerful, far richer was he than Alexander, who then was master of the whole world; for what Diogenes refused to receive was even more than Alexander was able to give.92 There are several parallels between Diogenes and Dindimus in the Alexander legends. In a fictitious letter of Diogenes93 the philosopher, on hearing that Alexander wishes to see him, insists that Alexander come to him, and not vice versa; just so does Dindimus/Dandamis await the attendance of the king in the Brahman texts. Also interesting is the regular implication of the Diogenes story that Alexander admired the philosopher;94 just so in the Alexander Romance, Alexander is impressed by Dandamis and gives him gifts, a motif taken up in the Geneva papyrus and its direct descendant, Palladius’ Life of the Brahmans. The passage of Seneca just quoted introduces two more of the dominant motifs of ancient thinking about Alexander: his insatiable desire and his fortune. His insatiability, what the historian Arrian termed his pothos, ‘longing’, became a standard element of the characterisation of Alexander, so much so that it

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was regularly used as a school exercise for training in rhetoric. (We should remember that all these philosophical opinions on Alexander belong in a non-historical context: philosophers were not necessarily making historical judgments; they were using historical figures as moral examples.)95 The Suasoriae (Exercises in persuasion) of the Elder Seneca contains one exercise (1.1) devoted to the theme ‘Alexander debates whether to sail the Ocean’. The elements of the debate are the greatness of the ambition, as commensurate with Alexander’s achievements so far, versus the idea that Alexander should be content with what he has already done. In the commentary the rhetorician Cestius is quoted for the view that the topic should be differently treated according to the audience involved, a free people or a king, and among kings according to the ability of the ruler to bear hard truths; in Alexander’s case the advice should be well tempered with flattery. A similar debate is Suasoriae 4, ‘Alexander the Great, warned of danger by an augur, deliberates whether to enter Babylon’. Here Alexander’s debate with himself concludes: ‘Shall there then be one place in the whole world that has not seen you victorious? Is Babylon closed for the man to whom Ocean stood open?’ Understood is the historical conclusion, in which Alexander did indeed enter Babylon, only to meet his death there – probably from illness, though the Romance attributes it to poison.96 Such exercises found their way even into the historians such as Arrian, who also allows Alexander a debate on whether to sail on to the Ocean beyond the borders of the world. They represent very clearly the image of the overweening conqueror, who in the Romance has repeatedly to be warned by talking birds and other creatures to turn back from travelling beyond the world and from seeking to know the hour of his death. That story too was taken up by the Elder Seneca (Controversiae 7.7.19), who refers to the voice heard by Alexander when he debated whether to cross the Ocean, which said, ‘How much longer, O unconquered one?’ Alexander is regularly used as an

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exemplum of excessive ambition in the philosophical letters of the younger Seneca.97 The dangers of ambition had been a leitmotif or commonplace of Greek thought since early classical times: both Aeschylus and Pindar repeatedly descant on the danger for successful heroes of reaching out too far: pride always goes before a fall. The theodicy of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon erects the progression into a quasi-philosophical system: excess and luxury (both included in the one word koros) lead to overweening pride (hybris) which then attracts the attention of Fate or Doom (ate).98 For a philosophic mind, Alexander’s early death neatly exemplified the truth of this progression. The question that such success naturally raised was: how did it come about in the first place? What was the reason for Alexander’s extraordinary good fortune which made him so puffed up? The question could then be reformulated: was Fortune on Alexander’s side or not? The earlier panegyrical historians certainly represented Alexander as a conqueror with the gods on his side. This in itself could be used to belittle Alexander, as it was by Livy, who implied that Alexander made his conquests not by his own abilities but by the favour of Fortune; and ‘no man was less able to bear good fortune than Alexander’.99 For many thinkers he thus became a type of the tyrant, puffed up by his good fortune and losing all self-control.100 Those who admired Alexander had to deal with this objection and attribute his success to his own virtues rather than simply to Fortune. That is the context for the complex discussion in Plutarch’s two essays on the subject, On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander. The arguments are various: Alexander in fact had a great deal of bad fortune too, so surely Fortune was against him much of the time (342C), and his achievements were made in spite of Fortune (328, 341); Fortune gave him his throne, but it is what he did with his position that determines our moral judgement of him (329D); by his virtue he deserved his fortune (340A). His rash behaviour at the Malli town is presented as a contest of Fortune and Virtue (344E).

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Integral to Plutarch’s discussion is Alexander’s own philosophical position. The king is represented as an admirer of Diogenes (331F: ‘if I were not Alexander, I should like to be Diogenes’), and even as asking his forgiveness for his mission to conquer the world – just as he almost apologises to Dandamis in the Romance for his career of conquest, which is forced on him by the necessity of his own nature. The antithesis Plutarch is exploring in this essay is that of the tyrant and the philosopher-king. For the Stoic the true philosopher was in fact a king because he possessed all that he could require, and in Plutarch’s view Alexander had been instrumental in creating a world-state of the kind envisaged by the early Stoic thinker Zeno (329AB).101 Plutarch, however, was no Stoic, though he may have flirted with Stoic ideas in his early years before developing his mature Platonist position; thus we cannot be sure whether Plutarch is putting forward a considered view or simply trying out some arguments. The rehabilitation of Alexander as a king who represented philosophic values became of particular importance in the reign of the Emperor Trajan (AD 98–117). The first Roman emperor, Augustus, had drawn some links between his own military achievements and those of Alexander but, as after Augustus the idea of further extending the Roman Empire had been abandoned, Alexander became a largely irrelevant model.102 Trajan, however, saw himself as (and indeed was) a great military hero, with successful though short-lived conquests of Dacia beyond the Danube and Mesopotamia beyond the Euphrates. It is no accident that the most favourable historical account of Alexander was composed in the reign of Trajan by Arrian, who had held high military office in that emperor’s service.103 Arrian had been a pupil of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, and showed a particular interest in Alexander’s adventures in India and his meeting with the Brahmans, composing a work devoted exclusively to India (the Indica) and promising also a monograph on the Brahmans (which does not survive, unless Palladius’ monograph, as it states but as seems unlikely, incorporates this work).104

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Arrian drew on the prevailing Stoic–Cynic tradition in his presentation of the Brahman episode, which is told not in the course of the narrative but in the context of an analysis of Alexander’s character, where it is placed in immediate collocation with the Diogenes anecdote. But there is no hint in Arrian of all the regular Cynic objections to Alexander’s rule and character, and Arrian is explicit in his admiration of the conqueror for the magnitude of his achievement. Truly the way in which one praised the character of Alexander needed to be modified according to one’s presumed audience – in this case, the ambitious conqueror Trajan. The Trajanic context is even more obvious in the speeches devoted to Alexander and his meeting with Diogenes by a contemporary writer, Dio of Prusa (known as Dio Chrysostom, the Golden-Mouthed). Fortune has deprived us of the eight books of Dio’s work On the Virtues of Alexander, but two of the Discourses on Kingship are devoted to Alexander. Oration 4 is a treatment of the interview with Diogenes which presents Alexander as a lover of glory (4) but yet an admirer of the philosopher (7). Alexander is presented as regretting the fate that compels him to arms (9), and only smiles at Diogenes’ insults (19–20). Most of the rest of the discourse is devoted to Alexander’s inquiry of Diogenes on how to be a good king, and Diogenes’ advice:105 the true king is by definition a good man,106 and that means achieving self-knowledge, avoiding wealth, pleasure and ambition, and not allowing oneself to be conquered by women (Alexander’s sexual continence was a common theme, based on his chivalrous treatment of the women of Darius’ family). Dio’s Oration 2 develops the idea of Alexander as a philosophic king in the course of a discussion between himself and his father, Philip, about the value of Homer, his character Achilles as a moral model, and the characteristics of the humane king (77). Alexander is represented as having learnt the lessons of kingship from Aristotle (79 – a motif which points the way forward to the extensive development in late antiquity and the Arabic and medieval traditions of Aristotle’s advice to Alexander on kingship). Like Plutarch, Dio insists (Oration 64) that

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Fortune did as much to bring Alexander down as she did to raise him. An emperor’s admiration can do wonders for a man’s reputation, and two centuries after Trajan the Emperor Julian (who also died in battle against Persia at the age of 33) liked to see himself not only as a philosopher but as a second Alexander. Julian was a strong admirer of the Cynic philosophy, though not of its more unwashed adherents, who reminded him too much of his bˆetes noires, the Christian monks. For him, Alexander was a great military hero ensnared by Fortune;107 and in his curious carnivalesque comedy The Caesars, Julian represents Alexander in debate with Roman conquerors such as Caesar and Trajan. Here, while not perfect, his anger and cruelty are tempered by remorse (352B), though his indulgence in pleasure is unfavourably compared with Trajan’s austerity. Alexander chooses Heracles as his patron god (335D), as indeed in life he had aimed to follow in the drunken muscle-man’s footsteps. Julian’s strange, and perhaps muddled and immature, views on Alexander bring to a close the chapter of responses to his achievement in antiquity. The Cynic view is again to the fore in his thinking, as it will be also in the later independent developments in Palladius, the Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus and so on. But Cynic opposition to Alexander has received an infusion of admiration for the conqueror as one who served the cause of philosophy and just rule as well arousing the philosophers’ ire. Alexander has been constituted as a worthy participant in the debates over the good life; and this is how he enters the Middle Ages, his cruelty and self-indulgence forgotten even as the Greek moral principles that made those traits problematic have been quenched by the different moral concerns of Christianity.

6. the christianisation of alexander Just what made these texts so popular in the Middle Ages? Or, since that is a question of psychology that can hardly be answered at this distance, how did these texts and the ideas

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they contain mesh with other features of the medieval worldview? In the first place, the wonder-tales about India represented an expansion of aspects of a set of texts conveying ideas of world geography as it had been handed down from late antiquity to the Middle Ages. The key point in this development was the invention of the circular map, known as the T-O style of map, which probably goes back to a map commissioned by Julius Caesar.108 More or less complex versions of this map, representing the three continents arranged around Jerusalem as a centre point, and the Mediterranean Sea with the Black Sea and the Nile forming the upright and two arms of a T, are found in many medieval manuscripts, notably those of Sallust’s Jugurtha. Such a world-view is clearly at the basis of the description of world geography in the Etymologiae of the seventhcentury bishop Isidore of Seville, which was the standard text of medieval geography as of much else. This description incorporated the peoples of the East, fabulous beasts and races and the location of Paradise, deriving from the geographer Solinus, who in turn drew his material from the encyclopaedist Pliny, who had read Ctesias and all the other sources. The Letter to Aristotle and the Wonders of the East represented valuable additional texts to supplement the information given by Isidore without coming into conflict with it. A parallel development took place in the Greek East in the codification of geographical knowledge by the sixth-century writer Cosmas Indicopleustes;109 but the Greek versions of the Alexander texts were apparently not current at this time (though they became known again about the eighth century), and so Alexander does not feature as an aspect of ancient geography for Greeks. (He did however become quite important for Islamic geographical ideas.110 ) The intrinsic fascination and curiosity value of the tales ensured their continuing popularity. It was not until the Far East had been completely opened up by Western embassies to the Mongol Khan that medieval men stopped expecting to find dog-headed and headless men, manticores and monstrous ants on the far side of India.111

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The second group of texts meshed rather with theological and philosophical concerns. The rhetorical tradition which the Middle Ages inherited from antiquity had already enshrined Alexander as an example (mainly a bad one), and because of his significance it became important to insert him in the JudaeoChristian tradition. In the Greek East, which drew heavily on the Jewish tradition, Alexander quickly became a pious devotee of the Judaeo-Christian God: in K. Mitsakis’ neat phrase, he was born an ancient pagan and died a Byzantine Christian.112 In the West his character remained ambivalent. Crucial here is the convergence of the figures of the Brahmans with Christian monks and the gradual identification of the island of the Brahmans with Paradise. The first development can be seen in the way Palladius adapts his Cynic source, and the second in the way that the Life of Zosimus draws on Brahman lore to describe the Land of the Blessed. The Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus represents a more even-handed approach to the contrast of the two ways of life; at some points at least, Alexander seems to advance sound arguments against the tenets of the Brahmans. However, the Collatio was still read as a fundamentally Christian text: Peter Abelard noted his admiration for the figure of Dindimus.113 The power of this text to stir minds is vividly demonstrated by its re-emergence as a chapbook more than two centuries after its original appearance in Middle English. The growing importance of the idea of the Earthly Paradise in the medieval consciousness (placed there by Isidore and the Mappae Mundi) lent strength to the stories of Alexander’s expedition to the East. Gradually the legendary lands beyond India visited by Alexander came to be identified with the Earthly Paradise; the oracular trees became part of its vegetation; and in the popular consciousness the two legends became one: After this sir Alysaunder all the world wanne, Bothe the see and the sonde and the sadde erthe, The iles of the orient to Ercules boundes, There Ely and Enoke ever hafe been sythen, And to the come of Antecriste unclosed be thay never.114

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The moral standing of Alexander remained contentious. Established as in some sense a philosopher-king by Dio of Prusa and other late classical writers, he entered the Arabic tradition (via Syriac writings, many of them now lost)115 as a wise man, not least because of his genuine historical connection with Aristotle.116 These features of Alexander thus returned to the West when Arabic works were translated into Latin or Spanish, and met head-on the views deriving from classical writings which emphasised both Alexander’s liberality117 and his lechery (his liaison with Candace), his anger (the murder of Callisthenes) and his premature death (seen as a divine judgement). Such features were not incompatible with, though they were not emphasised in, the knightly portrayal of Alexander in the full-length romances in English, French and German, as well as other languages. They lent him a solidity and complexity of character comparable with that of other classical heroes, such as the equally ambiguous Achilles. But it is the parable of the eye that sets the seal on the Christianisation of Alexander. The central meaning of this story is the vanity of human endeavour, the point put to Alexander by Dindimus and the Brahmans but which he is unable to accept from them. In the story of the eye, the Jewish sage who explains the riddle of the stone clearly presents Alexander with a truth that must be acknowledged. After this, Alexander’s death comes as neither surprise nor shame: it represents the reconciliation of the hero with the dictates of the Almighty, which the pagan hero could never achieve. Alexander has become Everyman. The fact that the same story carries a similar moral in the several Arabic romances of Alexander118 may demonstrate that the two worlds of Christian and Muslim that met in conflict in the Crusades to which Alexander became, in fiction, a party, had in at least one important point, a perfectly compatible view of the place of man in the universe.

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abbreviations

The following are used in the references for this edition. Aesch. AJ Arr. Cic. Ctes. Curt. Diog. Dio. Chr. Diod. Sic. EETS FGrH Isid. JHS Phars. Plin. Plut. Sen. Val. Max.

Aeschylus (Ag: Agamemnon) Antiquitates Judaeorum Arrian (Anab: Anabasis) Cicero (Rep: Republic) Ctesias Quintus Curtius Diogenes (Ep: Epistles) Dio Chrysostom Diodorus Siculus Early English Text Society Fragmente der griechischen Historiker Isidore (Etym: Etymologiae) Journal of Hellenic Studies Lucan, Pharsalia NH: Pliny, Natural History Plutarch Seneca (Ep: Epistles; de ben: de beneficiis) Valerius Maximus

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N

Map of Pakistan showing sites visited by Alexander

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The Hereford Mappa Mundi is the largest and best-preserved medieval map in the world and was the work of Richard of Haldingham who became Prebend of Norton near Hereford soon after 1276. The form of the map is that of the so-called T-O maps, in which the Mediterranean and Black Sea form a T within the circle of the whole. Jerusalem is in the centre and the earthly paradise is at the top. The geography of the regions east of Jerusalem, and the various peoples shown, are derived from fabulous accounts of the east contained in the Alexander legends and related antique and early medieval texts.

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introduction 1. 2361–3. On the medieval Alexander in general see Cary 1956. 2. See, for example, R.L. Stevenson, Catriona, chapter 10. 3. Edited by Harf-Lancner 1994. 4. See Cary 1956; Ross 1963. 5. Ulrich von Etzenbach’s (d. 1278) Alexandreis is a vivid illustration of the courtly Alexander, as is the slightly earlier Roman d’Alexandre. In the Thornton Prose Alexander the episode with Candace, a motherly woman in the Greek original, becomes a romantic conquest of Alexander’s, and in French versions the Ethiopian queen is described as ‘bele et blanche’. 6. See the translation by John Yardley and Waldemar Heckel, Penguin 1984, and the discussion by Baynham 1998 and Stoneman 1999a. 7. Edited by Colker 1978, tr. Townsend 1996. 8. III. 1221ff, 2363ff. 9. Stoneman 1991. 10. French translation by Callu 2010. 11. Pritchard 1992; Stoneman 1996 and 2008. 12. Schmidt 1995. 13. Confessio Amantis vi, 1789–2366 (Nectanebo); v. 1453ff (the Brahmans); 1571ff and 2543ff (Candace). 14. Gutas 1998; Lyons 2009. 15. There is a similar episode in Eutychius’ Annals. For what follows, see Sebastian Brock, ‘The laments of the philosophers over Alexander in Syriac’, Journal of Semitic Studies 15 (1970), 205–18; Cary 1956, 151f. 16. H. Knust, Mitteilungen aus dem Eskurial (Tubingen 1879): texts of both ¨ works in Spanish.

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17. Mukhtar al-Hakim; see Bruno Meissner, ‘Mubaˇssˇ ir’s Ahbar el-Iskander’, ¨ Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft (1895), 583– 627. 18. See Buhler 1941 for details. ¨ 19. Kazis 1962, 37–9. 20. Reilly 1993, 127. 21. The only one of these texts to have received much earlier attention is the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle: see Dimarco and Perelman 1978. 22. The best modern account of Alexander’s career is Bosworth 1988; for a brief overview see also Stoneman 2004. On India, Bosworth 1996; also Parker 2008. 23. Meteorologica. 350a 19–23. 24. Ctesias is no. 688 in F. Jacoby’s Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (FGrH). See now the thorough edition by Dominique Lenfant (Bud´e: Les Belles Lettres 2004) and the translation and study of the Persica by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and James Robson (London: Routledge 2009). There is no English translation of the fragments of the Indica: but see McCrindle 1901 for the other Greek sources on India. 25. Halbfass 1988, 11, suggests that these legendary creatures are a product of the Indian imagination. On Dog-heads, see the exhaustive and exciting book by White 1991. 26. See Stoneman 1995. The fragments of Megasthenes are FGrH 715; see McCrindle 1877 and Zambrini 1982–1985. 27. Mookerji 1966, 33. 28. Dawson 1992; Stoneman 1994b. 29. See also Boissonade, Anecdota Graeca, I. 145ff; my translation of the Alexander Romance (1991), 131–3. 30. A useful survey is Green 1990, 391–5. Diod. Sic. 6.1.4 for Euhemerus’ Panchaea, Diod. Sic. 2.55–60 for Iambulus’ Islands of the Sun. See Winston 1976, Graf 1993, Schwarz 1982. 31. Romm 1992, 67. 32. Alexander Romance III.25. 33. Stoneman 1994a; see above all Weerakkody 1997. 34. Greek text: James 1893. Translation (from Syriac): Charlesworth 1985 II. 443–61. See Knights 1993 and 1995. 35. Klotz 1910; Pfister 1911; Roug´e 1966, 56–63. 36. Stoneman 1999b.

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37. I incline to think it in the main a Hellenistic work from the third or second century BC: see Stoneman 2009. 38. Pliny NH 16.55.162, with Megasthenes as intermediary; see Karttunen 1989, 188–9. 39. Karttunen 1989, 190. 40. Ctes. F 45.17, with Karttunen 1989, 220; Gunderson 1980, 111–13. 41. Stanley Rypins, Three Old English Prose Texts (EETS 161, 1924). 42. James 1929; Rypins op. cit; Lecouteux 1979. There is a translation of the Old English text in Michael Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Prose (Everyman 1993), 227–33. See in general Friedman 1981. 43. Tolkien 1983. 44. Lecouteux 1979. 45. Edited by Seymour 1968 and also Moseley 1983. 46. Harvey 1991, Wiseman 1992, Stoneman 1994, Kline 2001 and Harvey 2006. 47. Friedman 1981 thinks they are Parsees, but it is not clear why. See Stoneman 1995 and 2008, 92–7. 48. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 2.33. 49. Edited by Derrett 1960 and Berghoff 1987. See Berg 1970, Stoneman 1994, Stoneman 1995, and Stoneman 2008, 97–8. A new edition of the text will appear in volume III of my edition of Il Romanzo di Alessandro (Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, forthcoming). The text is earlier than 600 because it is referred to by Isidore, Etym 13.21.8: see Pfister 1941 = Pfister 1975, 53–79; the reference is to p. 62 of the latter printing. 50. Derrett’s view (1964, 74–80) that Arrian was the author of the text in the Geneva papyrus cannot be accepted: see Stadter 1980, 228 n. 42. 51. Martin 1959 and Photiades 1959. See Appendix I.ii for a translation. 52. Hippolytus, refutation omnium heresiarum, 8.7. 53. The terms are Derrett’s. 54. A. Wilmart, ‘Les textes latines de la lettre de Palladius sur les moeurs des Brahmanes’, Revue B´en´edictine 45 (1933), 29–42, identifies three versions: B, the Commonitorium, found in the Bamberg MS; this is an abridgement of V, the Vatican MS; the third is S, the text attributed to Ambrose, an arbitrary recension, probably composed by a humanist. The character Ambrose replaces the narrator, and Moses replaces the Theban scholar. 55. Zosimus, Ante Nicene Fathers 8,219–42; Charlesworth 1983, II. 443 ff; Knights 1993 and 1995; Stoneman 2008, 102–3.

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56. Originally in Jeremiah 35.6–7. They were admired by Gregory of Nazianzus, Poem II.1.11 (‘On his own life’) 295. 57. The Camarini are also described, under the name of Macarini, in the Hodoiporia apo Edem tou Paradeisou (Guidebook from Eden the Paradise), probably a Nestorian work from pre-Islamic Syria: Klotz 1910 and Pfister 1911. 58. Pfister 1941/1976, 73–4. Chinese tradition also locates a Paradise on an island in the eastern sea (Horai-San or P’eng-Lai-Shan), where the genii drink everlastingly from a fountain of life: see for example W.G. Aston, Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan (North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle 1956) I. 368. 59. Pfister 1941/1976. For a survey of the MSS, see Cary 1956, 13f. 60. Found in the tenth-century Bamberg MS, which also includes the Commonitorium and the second Latin Letter to Aristotle. 61. Cary 1956, 14, who dates the first version to the fourth century AD. 62. MS Corpus Christi College (Cambridge) no 219, edited by Bisse; edited by W.W. Skeat, EETS extra series 31 (1878). It is usually known as Alexander B: see Appendix II for an extract. See Barron 1987, 124. 63. Confessio Amantis V. sect 2. See Appendix II. 64. The Upright Lives of the Heathens briefly noted. . . . , published by Andrew Soule (1683); see Appendix II. 65. The Oeconomy of Human Life. Translated from an Indian Manuscript written by an ancient Bramin. To which is prefixed an Account of the Manner in which the said Manuscript was discover’d . . . (London 1751). See John Bray, ‘The Oeconomy of Human Life: An ‘Ancient Bramin’ in Eighteenth-Century Tibet’ JRAS 3 (2009), 439–458. 66. Cary 1956, 19. There are three variants of Lamprecht’s poem, of which the fullest is known as the ‘Strassburg Alexander’ – edited by Ruttmann 1974. Both this and the much shorter ‘Vorauer Alexander’ are edited by Lienert 2007. 67. Tamid 32b. 68. Kazis 1962. 69. Edited by R. Hilka in Peckham and La Du 1935. 70. Harf-Lancner 1994. 71. Henry Kratz, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s ‘Parzival’ (Berne 1973), excursus EE, ‘lapsit exillis’. See also Stoneman 2008, 212. 72. Lascelles 1936. See also Graf 1984 and Scafi 2006 (relevant entries in index).

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73. Gilbert Hay, Buik of Alexander, 16182–16315. See Appendix II. 74. Ed. G.V. Smithers, I and II, Early English Text Society 227, 1952, and 237, 1957. 75. Edited by W.W. Skeat, William of Palerne EETS e.s. 1 1867. 76. Westlake 1931. 77. Ritchie 1921–9. 78. Cartwright 1986–90. 79. Hoffmann 1907; Pearson 1983; Stoneman 2004, 1–6. 80. Brown 1949. 81. Stoneman 1994b and 1995; also Stoneman 2008, 92–7. 82. Berlin papyrus 13044 (see Wilcken 1923) and Plutarch, Life of Alexander, lxiv (Brown 1949, 71). 83. Stoneman 1995. 84. Arr. Anab 7.2; Diog. Ep. 33. 85. See Dawson 1992; Stoneman 2003. 86. Cic. Rep 3.14.24; taken up by Jewish writers: see J. ben Gorion, Der Born Judas (Leipzig: Insel, n.d.), 183. 87. Cic. de officiis 1.90 and 2.53. 88. Pharsalia 10.20–46. 89. Sen. Ep. 94.62. 90. Migne, Patrologia Graeca xci, 721–1018; see Ihm 2001. 91. See further Stoneman 2003, 326–8, citing other authors, such as Valerius Maximus, whose view of Alexander is generally positive. 92. Seneca, de beneficiis 5.4. 93. Diog. Ep 23; see Julian, To the Cynic Heracleios (p. 93 in the Loeb edition). 94. Plutarch, Life of Alexander 14; Dio Chrysostom, On Kingship IV. 95. Stoneman 2003. 96. The bibliography on the death of Alexander is large: see ReamesZimmerman 2001 and (with caution) Doherty 2004. 97. Ep 53.10, 59.12, 83.19. 98. Aesch. Ag 380ff. Julian 199A applies the principle to Alexander. 99. Livy 9.18.1. On this passage see Morello 2002. 100. For Timaeus’ view of Alexander, see Hoffmann chapter 2; Menander fr. 924.

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101. On Zeno’s ‘world state’ see the caution expressed by Stoneman 2003, 340, following Schofield 1993. 102. On the Roman Alexander see in general Spencer 2002. 103. Stadter 1980. 104. See above, p. xxvi. 105. See also Diog. Ep 40 on how to rule: self-knowledge and the keeping of good company. 106. This is the theme also of Musonius Rufus’ discourse, ‘That kings should study philosophy’. See Hoistad 1948. ¨ 107. Letter to Themistius, II. 203 and 211 in the Loeb edition. 108. Wiseman 1992; Stoneman 1994a. 109. See McCrindle 1897, Winstedt 1909, Wolska-Conus 1968–73. 110. Miquel 1975. 111. Phillips 1988, esp. chapter 7. 112. Mitsakis 1967, 18. 113. Cary 1956, 93. 114. Parlement of the Thre Ages, 332–6. Brilliantly explicated by Lascelles 1936; see Graf 1984. 115. Stoneman 2008, 154–64. 116. Cary 1956, 105ff. 117. A Stoic tradition: Cary 1956, 85ff. 118. Zuwiyya 2001.

1. alexander’s letter to aristotle about india 1. 334 BC. The Granicus is a small river in the Troad. 2. Fasiace is a Greek version of the Sanskrit word prachyaka, ‘the eastern realm’. Porus’s kingdom was centred on the upper Punjab, southeast of modern Rawalpindi. 3. This description is borrowed from that of the palace of the kings of Persia, Herodotus 7.27.2. There is a similar description in the Greek Alexander Romance 3.28. 4. The Caspian Gates was the name normally given in antiquity to a defile in the Elburz Mountains near Rey. However, it also became attached to the Derbend Pass in the Caucasus; and because the Paropamisus or Hindu Kush was also sometimes known as Caucasus in antiquity, the Caspian Gates were

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in the Alexander legend placed further east and treated as the gateway to the world of fabulous creatures. See R. Stoneman, ‘Romantic ethnography: Central Asia and India in the Alexander Romance’, Ancient World (1994). 5. This belief about the origins of silk is first mentioned in Virgil, Georgics 2.121. Silkworms (and hence the truth about silk) were first smuggled out of China in the reign of Justinian (527–65). 6. This charismatic act of leadership is recounted by Arrian, Anab 6.26. It actually took place in the Gedrosian Desert (southeast Iran). 7. Ctesias FGrH 688 F 45.14. 8. A mistake for veratrum. The explanation is taken from Isidore, Etymologiae 17.9.24. 9. This curious sentence is not in the earlier Latin version. It apparently rests on a confusion of hippopotami with hippocentauri: see Isid. Etym. 11.3.39. 10. The earlier Latin text here includes ‘spotted lynxes, tigers and shaggy panthers’. 11. An unidentified monster which regularly occurs in the accounts of Alexander’s Indian adventures. See the note in my The Greek Alexander Romance (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), 196, n. 137. 12. Called ‘night-crows’ in the earlier Latin version. 13. Dionysus was thought to have originated in Nysa in India. Alexander’s soldiers thought they had found Nysa in a valley in Afghanistan (not certainly identified), where ivy grew as at home. (Ivy was the special plant of Dionysus.) Part of the ideology of Alexander’s expedition was to follow in the footsteps of these explorer gods. 14. In antiquity the earth was thought to be surrounded by a river known as Ocean. The conception survived into the Middle Ages, as can be seen on medieval maps such as the Hereford Mappa Mundi. See, e.g., P. D. A. Harvey, Medieval Maps (London: British Library, 1991). 15. This curious sentence is an addition by the author of the present Latin text. 16. The Fish-eaters were a tribe of South Arabia encountered by Alexander’s army, and they seem to represent a surviving pocket of Neolithic culture. There may be confusion with another group of fish-eaters mentioned by Herodotus (1.20.2) on the river Araxes. The sentence in square brackets is only in the earlier Latin version. 17. The Dog-heads are a regular feature of the Central Asian landscape from Herodotus (4.191) onwards; see Ctesias FGrH 688 F 45.37 ff. See, in general, D. G. White, Myths of the Dog-Man (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991). The gloss is a quotation from Isidore, Etymologiae 11.3.15.

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18. These trees also feature in Ctesias FGrH 688 F 45.17; Klaus Karttunen, India in Early Greek Literature (Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society, 1989), 220. 19. Olympias was murdered in 316 BC by Cassander, who had become King of Macedonia. 20. This story of the valley of diamonds, famous from the story of Sinbad in the Arabian Nights, first appears in Pseudo-Epiphanius, De Gemmis. 21. The Latin expression is ‘two or three congii’. A congius is about six pints. 22. Sacros: a mistake for scaros, ‘parrot-fish’.

2. on the wonders of the east 1. The text is numbered here as in the edition of Claude Lecouteux, De Rebus in Oriente Mirabilibus. This differs from the order of chapters in the Latin text edited by Stanley Rypins, Three Old English Prose Texts. See further Introduction, p. 19. 2. This famous story goes back to Herodotus, 3.102–5. See Klaus Karttunen, India in Early Greek Literature (Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society, 1989), 171–6.

3. from ‘the chronicle of george the monk’ 1. Byzantium, which was founded by the legendary Byzas, and refounded by Constantine as New Rome (later Constantinople) in AD 324. Alexander had no connection with the city. 2. This is a version of the story in Josephus AJ 11.326–339. 3. Daniel 8: 5–8, 21–2. 4. This story is also in Pseudo-Hecataeus (Jacoby FGrH 264 F 21), reported in Josephus, Against Apion I. 201–4, where the archer is called Mosallamus. 5. The Battle of Issus, 333 BC. 6. The story of Candace is also in the Greek Alexander Romance, where she is Queen of Meroe (Ethiopia). Only Jewish tradition makes her engage in a sexual liaison with Alexander. 7. Alexander makes the same complaint in Plutarch, de tranquillitate animi 466D; see Val. Max. 8.14 ext.2. 8. Alexander’s Pillars are shown on the late antique map known as the Tabula Peutingeriana with the note ‘Quousque Alexander’.

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9. These details are borrowed from Iambulus’s Utopian account of the Longlived people of India: Diod. Sic. 11.57.4. 10. See note 11 on the Letter to Aristotle about India. 11. This information seems to derive from Bardesanes’ Book of the Laws of Countries.

4. palladius, ‘on the life of the brahmans’ 1. Genesis 2: 10–14. Paradise is envisaged as lying in the East, beyond the River of Ocean. 2. These pillars are shown on the late antique map known as the Tabula Peutingeriana. 3. In Ethiopia. Ethiopia and India were often confused in antiquity. 4. Sri Lanka. 5. The Indian Ocean, known in antiquity as the Red Sea. 6. The pygmies of South India are referred to already by Ctesias F. 45, 21 and 45f; see K. Karrtunen, India in Early Greek Literature (Helsinki, 1989), 128f. They turn up also in the Greek Alexander Romance, 2.44. 7. That is, like monks. 8. For this description, see the Greek Alexander Romance 3.4ff, and Strabo 15.1.60, quoting Megasthenes. 9. In actual fact no part of India lies south of the equator. For vague ideas about the Antipodes in antiquity, see Pliny Natural History 4.12. 89–90, who remarks that ‘some’ place the Happy Land of the Hyperboreans between us and the Antipodes: this is seen as an appropriate location for a blessed race like that of the Brahmans. 10. See note 11 on the Letter to Aristotle. 11. Second century AD: the historian of Alexander. 12. C. 55–135, of Hierapolis. Reared as a slave, he was freed by his master Epaphroditus and became a distinguished Stoic teacher. 13. The address to Wisdom as a goddess may be a Gnostic touch: B. Berg, ‘Dandamis: an early Christian portrait of Indian asceticism’, Classica et medievalia, 31 (1970), 269–305 (279). Providence is regularly the ruler of the world in the Greek Alexander Romance. 14. An Indian ‘philosopher’ who attached himself to Alexander’s expedition at Taxila, and on falling ill at Susa committed suicide by burning.

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15. Sir John Marshall, the excavator of Taxila, wondered whether the name of this river is a recollection of the Tamra-nala at Taxila. The identification seems over-hopeful. 16. The same point is made in a Jewish legend about Alexander and King Kazia (Palestinian Talmud, Baba Mezia II.5.8c); see I. J. Kazis, The Gests of Alexander of Macedon (Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1962), 20–2. 17. Amerimnia, a word of similar sense to ataraxia, ‘untroubledness’, the keynote of the Cynic (and Epicurean) philosophies. 18. Onesicritus, a Cynic philosopher and contemporary historian of Alexander. See Truesdell S. Brown, Onesicritus (Berkeley, 1949); Lionel Pearson, The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great (Philadelphia, 1960), 83–113. The meeting of Onesicritus and the Brahmans is described in Strabo 15.1.63, following Onesicritus’s own account. 19. Pataliputra, modern Patna, the capital of the Maurya Empire in the second century BC. The other names, except Mesopotamia, are nonsense names. 20. A Christian touch? It could also be derived from Hindu theology, which set aside a selection of 19 different hells for the sinner. 21. Alexander in actual fact was anxious to continue to eastern India, but was prevented by a mutiny of his troops. 22. A fascinating foreshadowing of Tolstoy’s story, ‘How much land does a man need?’ The surviving portion of the Geneva papyrus (Introduction, p. xxi) begins at this point. 23. Brahmans in ancient India regularly performed a role as royal adviser. 24. The description seems to recall the Gospel parable of Dives and Lazarus. 25. A similar ‘crisis of confidence’ occurs in Alexander’s ‘mutability’ speech in the Greek Alexander Romance (3.6). 26. The oil is the only one of these gifts which it is proper for a Brahman to accept, as is stated in the Laws of Manu. 27. The discourse on vegetarianism which follows here is quite a bit longer than can have been the case in the Geneva papyrus (the relevant columns are missing). A much more intelligent defence of vegetarianism is mounted by Porphyry in De Abstinentia IV. 28. This passage is an attack on the wild-beast shows of Imperial Rome. 29. The Macedonian devotion to heavy drinking was famous, but Dandamis seems to have an eye more on Roman orgies here.

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30. Followers of Epicurus (341–270 BC), whose recipe for the happy life was maximisation of pleasure and minimisation of pain through simple living. 31. Called after the Stoa (portico) in Athens where the earliest Stoics taught. Stoics were not normally regarded as particularly acquisitive; perhaps the allusion is to the very wealthy Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca.

6. alexander the great’s journey to paradise 1. ‘And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads . . . Pison . . . Gihon . . . Hiddekel . . . and Euphrates’ (Genesis 2: 10–14). These rivers are usually identified as the Ganges, Nile, Tigris and Euphrates. Medieval maps show Paradise as an island, and the four rivers running out of that island, beneath the encircling Ocean, into the inhabited world. 2. The chief city of Persis and summer capital of the Persian Empire. 3. The legend is certainly of Jewish origin, first occurring in the Talmud (Tamid 32b); hence the prominence of the Jewish sage. 4. Proverbs 27: 20: ‘Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.’

appendix ii.vi. the upright lives of the heathens 1. Suidas: the Byzantine lexicon more correctly called the Suda. 2. Megasthenes: see Strabo 15.1.68. 3. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215): the reference is to Stromateis (‘Miscellanies’) 3.194. See J.W. McCrindle, Ancient India as described in Classical Literature (1901; repr. New Delhi 1979), 183–4. Alexander Polyhistor (105–after 49 BC): a historian of varied interests. 4. Arrian 7.1.5–6. 5. Eusebius (c. 260–340): Praeparatio evangelica 6.8. 6. Bradsanes: i.e., Bardesanes of Syria (Bardaisan of Edessa), author of the Book of the Laws of Countries. 7. O. Heurnius, Barbaricae philosophiae antiquitates (Leiden, 1600); the earliest of a flood of seventeenth-century Indology. Heurnius’s work is characterised as ‘trivial’ by Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe (New York, 1988), 147.

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8. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 10.7, 1177a 13–17: ‘Whether it be reason or something else that is this element which is thought to be our natural ruler and guide and to take thought of things noble and divine, whether it be itself also divine or only the most divine element in us, the activity of this in accordance with its proper virtue will be perfect happiness.’ The statement is a general one and has nothing to do with Brahmans in Aristotle’s text.

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index

Aeschylus xxxvi Alcuin xxvii ‘Alexander and Dindimus’ viii, xxx Alexander Romance, Greek x, xiii, xviii, xxii–xxiii, xxv, xxxii, xxxiv, xxxvii Alexander the Great passim Alexander the Great’s Journey to Paradise xxvii–xxix Alexandria 30 Alliterative Romance of Alexander xxviii, xxx, 96–98 Al-Mubashshir xii, xxix Amazons xix, 33 Ambrose, St xxvi Ammon 38, 108 Ants 21, 32, 38 Apollonius of Tyana xxv Aristobulus xvi Aristotle xiii–xiv, xxxi, xlii, 3, 19, 30, 107 Arrian xiii, xv, xvi, xxvi, xxxiv–xxxv, xxxvii–xxxviii, 38, 106 Arthur, King viii Augustine, St xxiv Axum 35 Babylon xxxii, xxxv, 16–17, 19, 20–21, 29, 30, 32, 38, 75, 90 Bactria 5, 86

Baghdad xi Barbour, John viii, xxviii, xxx Bardesanes 106 Bearded women 22 Beowulf xxiii Berlin papyrus 13044 xi, xviii, xxix, xxxii, 77–78 Betis and Gadifer viii Blessed Ones xx–xxii, xli Bocados de Oro xii, xxix–xxx Brahmans xi, xiii, xvi–xvii, xix, xx, xxii, xxv–xxvii, xxxi–xxxii, xxxiv, xxxvii, xli–xlii, 30–32, 34–56, 58–65, 82, 93–95, 96, 98, 99, 101–2, 104–6 Brahman women 37–8, 94 Britain viii, 33 Brixontes, 22 Buemar, R. 11 Caesarius, brother of Gregory the Great 32 Calanus xv, xviii, xxxii, 39, 41–2, 50, 81 Callisthenes ix, xxxi, xlii Camarini xxi–xxii, xxvii Candace xlii, 29–30 Carneades xxxiii Caspian Gates 5, 18, 116n.4 Castration 55 Caxton, William xii

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Chandragupta xviii Chaucer, Geoffrey vii, viii, ix, x, xxx China xxiii Christians xxv–xxvi, xl–xlii Cicero xxxiii Cleitarchus ix, xvii, xxxi Clement of Alexandria 105 Correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus x, xx, xxvii, xxix, xxxix, xli Cosmas Indicopleustes xl Craterus xv Ctesias xvii, xxiii, xxiv, xl Curtius Rufus, Q. ix, xiii Cynics xviii–xx, xxvi, xxxi–xxxiv, xxxviii–xxxix, xli Dandamis/Dindimus x, xi, xv, xxxiv, xxxvii, xli–xlii, 38, 42–56, 57–66, 80–81, 96, 98, 99–104, 105 (as Mandanis) Daniel, Book of 28 Darius, king of Persia vii, 4, 25, 29, 32 Desire, mastery of 45, 53, 58, 65–6, 73–4, 82, 95, 97, 100, 103 Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers xii, xxx Diodorus Siculus xiii Diogenes xxxii–xxxiv, xxxvii–xxxviii Dionysus (Liber) 11, 13, 19 Dio of Prusa xxxviii, xlii Disciplina Clericalis xii Dogheads xvii, xxiii, xxiv, xl, 12, 21, 117n.17 Drunkenness 53–5 Egypt 21–22, 35 Elephants 11–12, 22, 32, 38 Ephod 26 Epicureans 55

Ethiopia 23, 36 Euhemerus xix–xx Eusebius 106 Expositio Mundi et Gentium xxi, xxvii Eye, Parable of see Wonderstone Fasiace 4, 12–13, 17–18, 87, 116n.2 Firdausi viii Fish-eaters 12, 21 Fortune ix, xxiv, xxxvi, xxxix Furies 63 Ganges, R. xv, xxv, 31, 34, 37, 43, 67 Geneva papyrus 271 xi, xxix, xxxiv, 78–83 George the Monk xi, xxiv–xxv, xxix, 25–33 Gluttony 54 Gower, John viii, ix, x, xxvii, xxx, 98–99 Granicus, R. 3 Greek gods 62, 98–99 Gymnosophists xi, 77–78, 95 ¨ Halsratsel xix Harmatelia xvii Hartlieb, Johan xi, xxx Hay, Gilbert viii, xxviii, xxx, 107–110 Hell 63 Hercules 11, 13, 19, 62 Herod 103 Herodotus xvii Heurnius, O. 106 Higden, Ranulph xxviii Hippopotamuses 7, 11, 84 Historia de Proeliis x, xi, xii, xxiv, xxviii, xxix History of the Rechabites xx, xxvii

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index Hodoiporia apo Edem tou Paradeisou xxii Hunayn ibn Ishaq xi–xii, xxix Hydaspes, R. xv Hyperboreans xix Iambulus xix–xx India viii, xiii, xvii–xviii, xx, xxii–xxiii, 3–19, 29, 30, 35–36, 67, 75, 81, 84–5, 104–6 Indus, R. xiv Isidore of Seville xxiv, xl–xli Isopolis (Issus) 29 Jerusalem xxv, xl, xlvi, 25–29 Jews xxi, xxix, xlii, 25–29, 70–71 Judaea 25 John of Salisbury xxvii John the Baptist 103 Jordia, valley of 17 Josephus xxv Julian xxxix Julius Valerius x, xxiii, xxix Justin xiii Kyng Alisaundre viii, xxviii, xxx, 87–93 Lamprecht, Pfaffe xxviii, xxix Leo the Archpriest x, xxix Letter of Pharasmanes x, xi, xxiv, 20–24 Letter to Aristotle about India x, xvii, xxii–xxiii, xxiv, xxix, xl, 3–19 Liar Paradox xix, xxxii Liber Alexandri Magni xi Liber, Father see Dionysus Livy xxxvi Long-lived Ones 30–31, 35 Los Buenos proverbios xii, xxx Lucan xxxiii Lydgate, John viii, ix, xii, xxx

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Macedonia 3–4, 13, 38, 55, 80 Magnets 35 Mahabharata xvi Malli/Malavas xvi, xxxvi Mandeville, Sir John xxiv, xxvii, xxx, 93–95 Mappa Mundi xxiv, xl–xli, xlvi, 117n.14 Maximus Confessor xxxiii Megasthenes xvi, xviii, 105 Mesopotamia 43 Mitsakis, K. xii Monstrous races xvii, xxiii, xl, 22–24 Mosomachos, archer 29 Musicanus xvi Nectanebo viii Nearchus xiv, xvi Nero 38 ‘Night of Terrors’ 8–10, 85–6 Nile, R. 21–22 Nine Worthies vii Ocean, River of xiv, xvi, xvii, xx, xxxv, 11, 13, 18, 30–31, 37, 45, 60 Odontotyrannus xxiii, 9, 32, 38, 86 (as Andonntrucion) Oeconomy of Human Life xxvii Olympias ix, 2, 13 Onesicritus xi, xiv–xv, xviii, xxxi–xxxii, 42, 120n.18 Oxydracae/Kshudrakas xvi, xxv, 95 Palibothra 43 Palladius x, xix–xx, xxv–xxvii, xxix, xxxiv, xxxvii, xli, 34–56 Panaetius xxxiii Papas the Jew 70 Paradise (Earthly) vii, xx–xxii, xxvii, xxix, xli, 34, 67–75, 107–110, 121n.1

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Parmenion 28 Parzival xxviii Perceforest viii Perdiccas 90–91 Persia vii, viii, xiv–xv, 19, 28 Philostratus xxv Philotas ix, 16, 90 Phoenix 24 Physon, R. 67 Pliny xl Plutarch xiii, xiv, xviii, xxxii, xxxvi, xxxviii Porus xiv, xvii, xxiii, 4, 10–11, 18–19 Providence 37, 39, 46–7, 53 Ptolemy xxxi, 108–9 Pygmies, xvii, xxiii, xxiv Qur’an viii Red Sea 22, 24, 35 Riddles xix, xxxii River-women 18 Roman d’Alexandre viii, xxviii Rome xxvi, 36–37 Sambus xvi, xxxii Saracens viii Saul 26–27 Sayings of the Philosophers xi Secrees of Old Philisoffres xii Secret of Secrets xi–xii, xxix Scotland viii Scythia 43 Seneca the Elder xxxv Seneca the Younger xxxiii–xxxiv, xxxvi Seres xxiii, 5, 18, 32, 34 Shahnameh vii Solinus xl Stoicism xxvi, xxxiii, xxxvii–xxxviii, 55

Strabo xv Suidas 104, 106 Susa 70 Syriac language xi–xii, xlii Talmud xxviii Taprobane xix–xx, 35–36 Taxila xi, xiv–xvi, xxxi–xxxii Theban scholar 34–37 Theopompus xix Thornton Prose Life of Alexander viii, xxviii, xxx, 78–81 Tiberoboam, R. 39, 43, 93 Trajan xxxvii, xxxix Trees of Sun and Moon xxiii, 14–17, 23, 75, 87–93 Upright Lives of the Heathens Briefly Noted, The xxvii, xxx, 99–107 Utopia xix–xxii Valley of Diamonds (Emeralds) xxiii, 17, 118n.20 Vegetarianism xxvi, 32, 41, 52, 65, 79, 105, 120n.27 Vergil x Vincent of Beauvais xxiv, xxvii Voeux du Paon vii Walter of Chatillon ix, xii ˆ Wars of Alexander, The viii, xxviii, xxx Wonders of the East x, xxiii–xxiv, xxix, xl, 20–24 Wonderstone xlii, 69–74 Yahya ibn Batrik xii, xxix Zeno xxxvii Zosimus, History of xx, xxvii, xii

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