ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Alexander the Great: translation

(356–323 B.C.E.)

   The historical Alexander the Great, Macedonian king and world conqueror, was clearly not a medieval figure. However, the character of Alexander became the central figure of a number of medieval ROMANCES, comparable to though less numerous than the cycles of legends surrounding the figures of CHARLEMAGNE and KING ARTHUR.

   Historically, Alexander was the son of Philip II, king ofMacedon, and in his youth was educated by the great philosopher Aristotle.He became king of Macedonia at the age of 20 upon his father’s assassination. In 334 B.C.E., he crossed the Hellespont with 35,000 men to invade the Persian Empire. He conquered Egypt and founded the city of Alexandria. He captured the family of the Persian emperor Darius, then crushed the Persians at the Battle of Arbela in 331. He captured the city of Babylon and the Persian capital of Persepolis, which he burned to the ground in retaliation for the Persian burning of Athens in 480 B.C.E. He married Roxana, daughter of the Bactrian prince Oxytares, and took a second wife, Barsine, the daughter of Darius. Alexander then advanced into India, where he defeated the northern Indian prince Porus in 326 B.C.E. That same year, he contracted a fever and died at the age of 32, having conquered virtually the entire world as he knew it. The medieval versions of the Alexander legend derive ultimately from a third-century Greek account purported to be by a certain Callisthenes. Latin versions of Callisthenes’ story were circulating by the early Middle Ages, and these ultimately were the source of the great 12th-century French Roman d’Alexandre. This poem, attributed to Lambert le Tort and Alexandre de Bernay, is a text of some 20,000 12-syllable lines of verse. As the first known poem to use the 12-syllable line, the Roman has given its name to that verse form—12-syllable lines are now known as alexandrines. The poem is a fanciful blend of myth and history.Alexander is presented as a king with a retinue of knights and vassals, as if he were Charlemagne, and he visits fantastic lands and enchanted castles, like an Arthurian knight.

   Other 12th-century Alexander poems include a Provençal version by Alberic de Pisonçon and the famous German ALEXANDERLIED. An Anglo-Norman Roman de toute chevalrie was apparently the source of the best-known English version of the legend, the early 14th-century King Alisaunder. King Alisaunder is an anonymous romance of 8,032 verses in octosyllabic (eight-syllable) couplets. Written in MIDDLE ENGLISH in the dialect of London and apparently intended for oral delivery, the poem narrates Alisaunder’s mythologized history from his magical conception to his death. In this version, Alexander is not the son of Philip but rather of the Egyptian king Nectanabus, who through magic is able to deceive Philip’s wife into sleeping with him. (The scene recalls the legendary events surrounding the conception of King Arthur in the liaison between Uther Pendragon and Igraine, brought about through Merlin’s magic.) The first half of the poem relates Alisaunder’s youth, succession to the throne, conquest of Carthage, and his Persian war and defeat of Darius. The second half of the poem, focused on Alisaunder in the eastern lands, contains a number of fanciful geographical descriptions and relations of the wonders of those far-off lands. It also tells of Alisaunder’s visit with and seduction by Candace, queen of Meroe (historically Ethiopia), and ultimately of Alisaunder’s death by poison.

   Texts and fragments of other treatments of the Alexander legend survive in Middle English in both verse and prose from the 14th century on. One of these, called the Alexander Buik, is a Scottish version once thought to be the work of John BARBOUR. The popularity of Alexander as a romance hero was widespread throughout Europe in the later Middle Ages, and it is not surprising that he, like Arthur and Charlemagne, is consistently represented in late medieval art and literature as among the NINEWORTHIES of the world.

   Bibliography

   ■ Aertsen,Henk, and Alasdair A.MacDonald. Companion to Middle English Romance. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1990.

   ■ Barbour, John. The Buik of Alexander, or, The Buik of the most noble and valiant conquerour Alexander the Grit. Edited with introductions, and notes by R. L. Graeme Ritchie. Scottish Text Society New Series 17, 12, 21, 25. 4 vols. Edinburgh: Printed for the Scottish Text Society by W. Blackwood and Sons, 1921–1929.

   ■ Kyng Alisaunder. Edited by G. V. Smithers. Early English Text Society 227, 237. 2 vols. London: Published for the Early English Text Society by Oxford University Press, 1952–1957.

   Albrecht Classen

Alexander the Great: translation

    The son of Philip II, king of Macedon, Alexander was destined to conquer the known world and, after the provinces of the Persian empire fell before him, Tyre besieged and Gaza taken, he finally reached Egypt in the autumn of 332 BC. He met with little opposition from the Persian satrap in Egypt, and the native population, who disliked *Persian administration, welcomed him as a liberator. He spent scarcely six months in the country however, travelling as far south as the First Cataract, but in that time he established a Greek system of control over the military and finance of Egypt. He appointed a viceroy with the Persian title of satrap and made provision for the imposition and collection of taxes. The first satrap was Cleomenes of Naucratis and under his general Ptolemy, son of Lagos (later *Ptolemy I), Alexander established a small standing army.

    Two important events are recorded during the conqueror's stay in Egypt, although it is difficult to determine the true facts surrounding these occasions. Near the ancient village of Rhakotis, opposite the island of Pharos, he traced the foundations of a new capital city for Egypt—Alexandria—on the Mediterranean coast. According to *Plutarch, who wrote a life of Alexander, the choice of this site for the city was confirmed for the king in a prophetic dream. Tradition places its foundation on April 7, 331 BC, and Alexandria became not only the Egyptian capital but also the most important port in the Mediterranean. It provided Egypt with access to the rest of Alexander's empire and enabled the country's wealth to be more readily exported, but it also became the great Hellenistic centre of learning and knowledge.

    The other significant event during Alexander's time in Egypt was his visit to the famous oracle of Jupiter Amun at Siwa, Egypt's most westerly oasis in the Libyan desert.According to legend, the god recognised Alexander as his son and promised him dominion over the whole world. Although this was the usual formalised recognition that Egypt's great state-god gave to the pharaoh, Alexander appears to have interpreted this as a form of personal deification. He went on to conquer many other lands and, in Egypt, the oracle was interpreted as the divine recognition of Alexander and his successors as the legitimate rulers of Egypt, despite their foreign origin. Alexander was probably crowned in a traditional ceremony in the temple of Ptah in the ancient capital of Memphis, where he performed a sacrifice to the sacred Apis bull.

    In 331 BC, he left Egypt to continue his conquests in the east. He eliminated the Persian empire and finally reached India, but on his return journey, he fell ill and died in Babylon in 323 BC. His body was reputedly brought back to Egypt and remained first in Memphis before being buried in Alexandria, although his tomb (to which the Emperor Caracalla paid the last recorded visit in AD 215) has never been discovered.

    After his premature demise, Alexander's generals divided his empire between them. Ptolemy, who had charge of the troops in Egypt, now claimed the position of satrap and ultimately became an independent ruler in Egypt, as *Ptolemy I, the founder of the Macedonian Dynasty. He inaugurated a divine cult for Alexander at Alexandria and thus established the basis for an official state-cult of the rulers of this dynasty.

    As pharaoh, Alexander evidently tolerated the worship of the native Egyptian gods and indeed emphasised his own role as the country's religious leader. During his reign, a sanctuary in the Temple of Luxor was rebuilt and decorated with wall-reliefs which showed him in the company of the Egyptian gods, and he also appears in new reliefs and inscriptions which were added to the walls of a room in the Temple of Amun at Karnak which *Tuthmosis III had originally built.

    The Hellenistic sculpture of the early years of the Ptolemaic Dynasty preserves the powerful facial expression of Alexander, for the king's heavy brow, deep-set eyes and piercing gaze appear even on the statues of other people.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT: translation

(fl. 356–321 B.C.)

   Macedonian conqueror, son of Philip II of Macedon. He set out to challenge the supremacy of the Achaemenid Persians in Ionia and ended up with an empire that for the first time in history linked Europe with Western and Central Asia. He achieved this by a series of campaigns with a relatively small but highly disciplined force of fighters in which he provoked pitched battles with the Persian army, fielding many thousands of men. He won his first victory at the river Granicus (334), which gave him access to the Cilician Gates. He then confronted the massed forces led by the Persian king Darius III at Issos (333) and inflicted another defeat on the Persians. Darius escaped to Babylon while Alexander continued southward to Syria and Palestine, where most of the cities surrendered voluntarily.Alexander then invaded Egypt and was enthroned as pharaoh in 331. Darius had meanwhile assembled a vast army in Babylonia. Another battle was fought near Gaugamela, and Alexander triumphed again. He then marched to Babylon, where the satrap Mazeus surrendered. Darius had escaped to Media, and Alexander set out for Persepolis, the dynastic center of the Achaemenid empire, which he looted of its wealth before setting fire to the city.

   Darius was assassinated by his own people, and Alexander continued his conquest farther east across the Iranian highland and into Bactria, where he married the daughter of the vanquished king in 324. He pressed on into India, reached Pattala in 325, and, while part of his troops returned by sea, he marched back to Persia. The return of the fleet and the conquest of India were celebrated at Susa, and he took the eldest daughter of Darius in marriage. Alexander planned the conquest of Arabia and set out for Babylon, where preparations were made for a seaborne invasion. On 31 March 323, he caught a fever from which he was never to recover. He died on 10 June, not yet 33 years old. His untimely death sparked intense and prolonged rivalries for his succession and the division of the enormous territories he had conquered.

   See also ANTIGONUS MONOPHTALMOS; SELEUCID DYNASTY; SELEUCUS I NICATOR.

Alexander The Great: translation

(356–323 BC)

   King of Macedon and conqueror of the Persian Empire, including Egypt. Son of King Philip of Macedon and Olympias of Epirus. Alexander succeeded to the Macedonian throne upon the assassination of his father in 336 BC and in 334 BC embarked on the conquest of Persia. In 332 BC, his army entered Egypt, whose satrap surrendered peacefully. Alexander assumed the status of an Egyptian ruler and visited the Siwa Oasis, where he received an oracular pronouncement, later believed to indicate that he was the son of a god. He indicated the position of a new city to be built on the coast and namedAlexandriaafter himself. He left Egypt in 331 BC to continue his conquests elsewhere, arranging for the country to be divided under various officials, the chief of whom was Cleomenes, the chief financial officer. Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC upon his return from India. Hismummifiedbody was eventually buried in a special mausoleum in Alexandria, where it remained on display until at least the 3rd century AD.

   See also Alexander II; Philiparrhidaeus; Ptolemy I Soter.

Alexander the Great: translation

   The king of Macedonia, the great conqueror; probably represented in Daniel by the "belly of brass" (Dan. 2:32), and the leopard and the he-goat (7:6; 11:3, 4). He succeeded his father Philip, and died at the age of thirty-two from the effects of intemperance, B.C. 323. His empire was divided among his four generals.