Alexander Romance

From Freepedia

The Alexander Romance is any of several collections of legends concerning the mythical exploits of Alexander the Great. The earliest version is in Greek, dating to the 3rd century. Several late manuscripts attribute the work to Alexander's court historian Callisthenes, but the historical figure died before Alexander and couldn't have written a full account of his life. The unknown author is still sometimes called "Pseudo-Callisthenes".

Alexander was a legend in his own time. In a now-lost history of the king, the historical Callisthenes portrayed the sea in Cilicia as drawing back from him in proskynesis. Writing after Alexander's death, another participant, Onesicritus, went so far as to invent a tryst between Alexander and Thalestris, queen of the mythical Amazons. (When Onesicritus read this passage to his patron, Alexander's general and later King Lysimachus, quipped "I wonder where I was at the time.")

Throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Romance underwent numerous expansions and revisions exhibiting a plasticity unseen in "higher" literary forms. Latin and Syriac translations were made in Late Antiquity. From these, versions were developed in all the major languages of Europe and the Middle East, including Armenian, Georgian, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, Serbian, Slavonic, Romanian, Hungarian, German, English, Italian, and French. Farther east, a late Mongol version is also extant.

The story of Dhul-Qarnayn in the Qu'ran (Sura The Cave) matches the Gog and Magog episode in the Romance, which has caused some controversy among Islamic scholars. Alexander was identified in Persian and Arabic-language sources as "Dhû-'l Qarnayn", Arabic for the "Horned One", possibly a reference to the appearance of the Hercules head that appears on coins minted during his rule. Islamic accounts of the Alexander legend, particularly in Persia combined the Pseudo-Callisthenes material with indigenous Sasanid Persian ideas about Alexander. The Alexander Romance is the source of many incidents in Ferdowsi's "Shahnama".

Some believe that, excepting certain religious texts, it is the most widely-read work of pre-modern times.