ALEXANDER THE GREAT
Edwyn Robert Bevan
Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, 1910,
vol 1, page 545-550
ALEXANDER III., known as THE GREAT (356-323 B.C.), king of Macedon, was
the son of Philip II. of Macedon, and Olympias, an Epirote princess. His father
was pre-eminent for practical genius, his mother a woman of half-wild blood,
weird, visionary and terrible; and Alexander himself is singular among men of
action for the imaginative splendours which guided him, and among romantic
dreamers for the things he achieved. He was born in 356 B.C., probably
about October (Hogarth, pp.284 if.). The court at which he grew up was the
focus of great activities, for Philip, by war and diplomacy, was raising
Macedon to the headship of the Greek states, and the air was charged with great
ideas. To unite the Greek race in a war against the Persian empire was set up
as the ultimate mark for ambition, the theme of idealists. The great literary
achievements of the Greeks in the 5th century lay already far enough behind to
have become invested with a classical dignity; the meaning of Hellenic
civilization had been made concrete in a way which might sustain enthusiasm for
a body of ideal values, authoritative by tradition. And upon Alexander in his
fourteenth year this sum of tradition was brought to bear through the person of
the man who beyond all others had gathered it up into an organic whole: in
343-342 Aristotle (q.v.) came to Pella at Philip's bidding to direct the
education of his son. We do not know what faculty the master-thinker may have
had fair captivating this ardent spirit; at any rate Alexander carried with him
through life a passion for Homer, however he may have been disposed to greater
philosophic theory. But his education was not all from books. The coming and
going of envoys from many states, Greek and Oriental, taught him something of
the actual conditions of the world. He was early schooled in war. At the age of
sixteen he commanded in Macedonia during Philip's absence and quelled a rising
of the hill-tribes on the northern border; in the following year (338) he
headed the charge which broke the Sacred Band at Chaeronea. Then came family
dissensions such as usually vex the polygamous courts of the East. In 337
Philip repudiated Olympias for another wife, Cleopatra, Alexander went with his
mother to her home in Epirus, and, though he soon returned and an outward
reconciliation between father and son was contrived, their hearts were
estranged. The king's new wife was with chlld; her kinsmen were in the
ascendant; the succession of Alexander was imperilled. Some negotiations which
Pixodarus, the satrap of Catia, opened with the Macedonian court with a view to
effecting a marriage alliance between his house and Philip's, brought Alexander
into fresh broils. In 336 Philip was suddenly assassinated whilst celebrating
at Aegae the marriage of his daughter to Alexander I. of Epirus in the presence
of a great concourse from all the Greek world. It is certain that the hand of
the assassin was prompted by some one in the background; suspicion could not
fail to fall upon Alexander among others. But gnilt of that sort would hardly
be consistent with his character as it appears in those early days.
Alexander was not the only claimant to the vacant throne: but, recognized
by the army, he soon swept all rivals from his path. The newly born son of
Philip by Cleopatra, and Alexander's cousin Amyntas, were put to death, and
Alexander took up the interrupted work of his father. That work was on the
point of opening its most brilliant chapter by an invasion of the great king's
dominions; the army was concentrated and certain forces had already been sent
on to occupy the opposite shore of the Hellespont. The assassination of Philip
delayed the blow, for it immediately made the base, Macedonia, insecure, and in
such an enterprise, plunging into the vast territories of the Persian empire, a
secure base was every thing. Philip's removal had made all the hill-peoples of
the north and west raise their heads and set the Greek states free from their
fears. A demonstration in Greece, led by the new king of Macedonia, momentarily
checked the agitation, and at the diet at Corinth Alexander was recognized as
captain-general of the Hellenes against the barbarians, in the place of his
father Philip. In the spring of 335 he went out from Macedonia northwards,
struck across the Balkans, probably by the Shipka Pass, frustrating the
mountain warfare of its tribes by a precision of discipline which, probably, no
other army of the time could have approached, and traversed the land of the
Triballians (Rumelia) to the Danube. To gratify his own imagination or strike
the imagination of the world he took his army over the Danube and burnt a
settlement of the Getae upon the other side. Meanwhile the Illyrians had seized
Pelion (Pliassa), which commanded the passes on the west of Macedonia, and from
the Danube Alexander marched straight thither over the hills. He had hardly
restored Macedonian prestige in this quarter when he heard that Greece was
aflame. Thebes had taken up arms. By a forced march he took the Thebans
completely by surprise, and in a few days the city, which a generation before
had won the headship of Greece, was taken. There were to be no half-measures
now; the city was wiped out of existence with the exception of its temples and
the house which had been Pindar's. Greece might now be trusted to lie quiet for
some time to come. The Panhellenic alliance (from which Sparta still stood
aloof) against the barbarians was renewed. Athens, although known to be hostile
at heart to the cities of Macedonian power, Alexander treated all through with
eager courtesy. In the spring of 334, Alexander crossed with an army of between
30,000 and 40,000 men, Macedonians, Illyrians, Thracians and the contingents of
the Greek states, into Asia. The place of concentration was Arisbe on the
Hellespont.
Alexander himself first visited the site of Troy and there went through
those dramatic acts of sacrifice to the Ilian Athena, assumption of the shield
believed to be that of Achilles and offerings to the great Homeric dead, which
are of significance of the poetic glamour shed, in the young king's mind, over
the whole enterprise, and which men will estimate differently according to the
part they assign to imagination in human affairs. To meet the invader the great
king had in Asia Minor an army slightly larger, it would seem, than
Alexander's, gathered under the satraps of the western provinces at Zeleia. He
had also, what was more serious, command of the Aegean. Alexander could
communicate with his base only by the narrow line of the Hellespont, and ran
the risk, if he went far from it, of being cut off altogether. To draw him
after them, while avoiding a conilict, was sound strategy for the Persian
generals. It was urged upon them by their colleagne the Rhodian Memnon. But
strategic considerations were cancelled by the Persian barons' code of
chivalry, and Alexander found them waiting for him on the banks of the
Granicus. It was a cavalry melee, in which the common code of honour caused
Macedonian and Persian chieftains to engage hand to hand, and at the end of the
day the relics of the Persian army were in flight, leaving the high-roads of
Asia Minor clear for the invader. Alexander could now accomplish the first part
of the task belonging to. him as captain-general to the Hellenes, that
liberation of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, for which Panhellenic enthusiasts
had cried out so long. He first went to take possession of the old Lydian
capital Sardis, the headquarters of the Persian government on this side of the
Taurus, and the strong city surrendered without a blow. And now in all the
Greek cities of Aeolis and Ionia the oligarchies or tyrants friendly to Persia
fell, and democracies were established under the eye of Alexander's officers.
Only where the cities were held by garrisons in the Persian service, garrisons
composed mainly of Greek mercenaries, was the liberator likely to meet with any
resistance. From Ephesus indeed the garrison fled upon the news of Granicus,
but Miletus required a siege. The Persian fleet in vain endeavoured to relieve
it, and Miletus did not long hold out against Alexander's attack. It was at
Halicarnassus that Alexander first encountered stuhborn resistance, at
Halicarnassus where Memnon and the satraps of Caria had rallied what
land-forces yet belonged to Persia in the west. When winter fell, Alexander had
captured indeed the city itself, but the two citadels still held out against
his blockade.
Meanwhile Alexander was making it plain that he had come not merely as
captain-general for a war of reprisals, but to take the Persian's place as king
of the land. The conquered provinces were organized under Macedonian governors
and in Caria a dethroned princess of the native dynasty, Ada, was restored to
power. In the winter, whilst Parmenio advanced upon the central plateau to make
the occupation of Phrygia effective, Alexander himself passed along the coast
to receive the submission of the Lycians and the adherence of the Greek cities
of the Pamphylian sea-board. The hills inland were the domain of fighting
tribes which the Persian government had never been able to subdue. To conquer
them, indeed, Alexander had no time, but he stormed some of their fortresses to
hold them in check, and marched through their territory when he turned north
from Pamphylia into the interior. The point of concentration for next year's
campaign had been fixed at Gordium, a meeting-place of roads in Northern
Phrygia. The story of Alexander's cutting the fatal "Gordian knot" on
the chariot of the ancient Phrygian king Gordius is connected with his stay in
this place.
Whilst Alexander had been grounding his power in Asia Minor, he had run a
narrow risk of losing his base in Europe. He had after the siege of Miletus
disbanded the Graeco- Macedonian fleet, surrendering for the time all attempts
to challenge the command of the Aegean. Memnon the Rhodian, now in supreme
command of the Persian fleet, saw the European coasts exposed and set out to
raise Greece, where discontent always smouldered in Alexander's rear. But
Memnon died at the critical moment whilst laying siege to Mytilene and the
great plan collapsed. A Persian fleet still held the sea, but it effected
little, and presently fresh Graeco-Macedonian squadrons began to hold it in
check. It was, however, the need to ensure command of the sea and free all
lines of communication behind him that determined Alexander's plan for the next
campaign. If he mastered the whole coast-line of the Levant, the enemy's fleet
would find itself left in the air. The Syrian coast was accordingly his
immediate objective when he broke up from Gordium for the campaign of 333. He
was through the Cicilian Gates before the Persian king, Darius III., had sent
up a force adequate to hold them. His passage through Cilicia was marked by a
violent fever that arrested him for a while in Tarsus, and meantime a great
Persian army was waiting for him in northern Syria under the command of Darius
himself. In the knot of mountains which close in about the head of the Gulf of
Alexandretta, Alexander, following hard by the coast, marched past the Persian
army encamped on the plains to the east. To cut Alexander's communications with
the rear, Darius now committed the error of entangling his large force in the
mountain defiles. Alexander turned, and near the town of Issus fought his
second pitched battle, sending Darius and the relic of his army in wild flight
back to the east.1 It was an incident which did not modify
Alexander's plan. He did not press the pursuit far, although the great king's
camp with his harem fell into his hands. The chivalrous courtesy which he
showed to the captive princesses was a favourite theme for later rhetoricians.
He went on his way to occupy Syria and Phoenicia. It is now that we get
definite evidence as to the reach of Alexander's designs; for Darius opened
negotiations in which he ultimately went so far as to offer a partition of the
empire, all west of the Euphrates, to be Alexander's. Alexander refused the
bargain and definitely claimed the whole.2 The conquest of the
Phoenician coast was not to be altogether easy, for Tyre shut its gates and for
seven months Alexander had to sit before it--one of those obstinate sieges
which mark the history of the Semitic races. When it fell, Alexander had the
old Tyrian people scattered to the winds, 30,000 sold as slaves. Gaza offered a
resistance equally heroic, lasting two months, and here too the old population
was dispersed. The occupation of the rest of Syria and Palestine proceeded
smoothly, and after the fall of Gaza Alexander's way lay open into Egypt.3
Egypt was the last of the Mediterranean provinces to be won, and here no
defence was made. To the native Egyptians Alexander appeared as a deliverer
from the Persian tyranny, and he sacrificed piously to the gods of Memphis. The
winter (332-331) which Alexander spent in Egypt saw two memorable actions on
his part. One was the expedition (problematic in its motive and details) to the
oracle of Zeus Ammon (Oasis of Siwa), where Alexander was hailed by the priest
as son of the god, a belief which the circle of Alexander, and perhaps
Alexander himself, seem hereafter to have liked to play with in that sort of
semi-serious vein which still allowed him in the moments of every-day
commonplace to be the son of Philip. The other action was the foundation of
Alexandria at the Canopic mouth of the Nile, the place destined to be a new
commercial centre for the eastern Mediterranean world which Alexander had now
taken in possession, to rise to an importance which the founder, although
obviously acting with intention, can hardly have foreseen (E. Keller, Alex.
d. Grosse nach der Schlachl l)ei Issus, 1904).
1. See Bauer,; 'DieSchlacht be issus" injahreshefled.oslerr.
archa~oL Inslit. ii. pp.105 f.; A. Janke. Auf Alex. d. grossen Pfaden;
Gruhn, Dos Sch'achtfeld von Issus; Lam mert in BerI. Philol.
Wochenschr. (1905)' col. 1596 f.
2 Pridik, De Alex. Meg. epist. commerejo (Dorpat, 1893); Schwartz,
art. Curtius" in Pauly-Wissowa, col. 1884.
3. The story of Alexander's visit to Jerusalem rests on no better authority
than a later Jewish romance.
In the spring of 331 Alexander could at last leave the Mediterranean to
strike into the heart of the Persian empire, for by his occupation of the
coasts the Persian command of the sea had inevitably collapsed. Returning
through Syria, and stopping at Tyre to make final arrangements for the
conquered provinces, he traversed Mesopotamia and struck the Tigris some four
marches above the site of Nineveh. It was near Nineveh that Darius was waiting
with the immense host which a supreme effort could muster from all parts of the
empire. The happy coincidence of a lunar eclipse gives us the 20th of September
331 as the exact day upon which the Macedonian army crossed the Tigris.
Alexander came within sight of the Persian host without having met with any
opposition since he quitted Tyre. He had now to settle the most serious problem
which had yet faced him, for in the plains the Persian army was formidable by
sheer bulk. But the day showed the Macedonian army equal to the task. The last
army gathered by an Achaemenian king was shattered in the battle called
popularly after the city of Arbela some 6o m. distant, or more precisely after
the village of Gaugamela hard by. Darius fled eastwards into Media and again
Alexander waited till he had secured the provinces to the south. He followed
the Tigris into Babalonia, the central seat of the empire and its richest
region, and from Babylon went on to seize the fabulous riches which the Persian
kings had amassed in their spring residence, Susa. Thence he at last ascended
upon the Iranian plateau. The mountain tribes on the road (the Oxii, Pers,
Huzha), accustomed to exact blackmail even from the king's train, learnt by a
bitter lesson that a stronger hand had come to wield the empire. Alexander
entered Persis, the cradle of the Achaemenian house, and came upon fresh masses
of treasure in the royal city, Persepolis. He destroyed the royal palace by
fire, an act which has been variously estimated by historians. Ostensibly a
solemn revenge for the burning of Greek temples by Xerxes, it has been
justified as a symbolical act calculated to impress usefully the imagination of
the East, and condemned as a senseless and vainglorious work of destruction.
With the spring of 330 Alexander was prepared for further pursuit. Darius
fled northwards from Ecbatana upon his approach. At Ecbatana new masses of
treasure were seized, but when once the necessary measures which its disposal
and the occupation of the Median capital entailed were taken, Alexander
continued the pursuit. It was an exciting chase of king by king, in which each
covered the ground by incredible exertions, shedding their slower-going
followers as they went, past Rhagae (Rai) and the Caspian gates, till early one
morning Alexander came in sight of the broken train which still clung to the
fallen king. He had become a puppet in the hands of his cousin Bessus and the
Persian magnates with him (see DARIUS III.), and at this extremity they stabbed
him and allowed Alexander to become master only of his corpse (summer 330).
The pursuit had brought Alexander into that region of mountains to the
south of the Caspian which connects western Iran with the provinces to the east
of the great central desert. To conquer this remaining portion of the empire,
Alexander now went on through the mountain belt, teaching the power of his arms
to the hillsmen, Tapyri and Mardi, till he came, passing through Zadracarta
(Asterabad), to Parthia and thence to Aria. In these further provinces of Iran
the Macedonian invader had for the first time to encounter a serious national
opposition, for in the west the Iranian rule had been merely the supremacy of
an alien power over native populations indifferent or hostile. Here the ruling
race was at home. In Asia Alexander learnt that Bessus had taken the diadem as
Darius' successor in Bactria, but so soon as he marched against him Aria rose
in his rear, and Alexander had to return in all haste to bring the revolt
under. Nor did he, when this was accomplished, again strike directly at
Bactria, but made a wide turning movement through Seistan over Kandahar into
the Kabul valley. It was on the way, in Seistan at Prophthasia (mod. Farrah
?), that the alienation between Alexander and his Macedonian followers,
which becomes sensible in the latter part of his career, first showed itself in
an ugly form. Alexander had come to merge the characters of Macedonian king and
Hellenic captain-general, with which he had set out, in that of Oriental despot
(Spieker. Hof U. Hofordnung Al. d. Gr., 1904). He wore on occasions of
state the Persian dress. (According to pseudo-Plutarch, de fort. Al. i.
8, it was the simpler Persian dress, not the Median.) A discontent began
to work among the Macedonians, and at Prophtniasia the commander of the
Macedonian cavalry the son of Parmenio, and certain others were arraigned
before the army on the charge of conspiring against the king's life. They were
condemned and put to death. Not satisfied with procuring this, Alexander had
Parmenio himself, who had been left in command in Media, put to death by secret
orders. It is perhaps the worst crime, because the most cold-blooded and
ungenerous, which can be laid to his charge. By the winter of 329-328 Alexander
had reached the Kabul valley at the foot of the Paropamisadae (Hindu Kush).
The ordinarily received chronology makes Alexander reach the Kabul valley
in the winter of 330-329. That to fit the actions and distances covered by
Alexander into such a scheme, assuming that he went by Seistan and Kandahar,
would involve physical impossibilities has been pointed out by Count Yorck v.
Wartenburg and Mr D. G. Hogarth. Kaerst and Beloch continue to give the
ordinary chronology untroubled.
In the spring of 328 Alexander crossed the Hindu Kush into Bactria and
followed the retreat of Bessus across the Oxus and into Sogdiana (Bokhara).
Here Bessus was at last of caught and treated with the barbaric cruelty which
the rule of the old Persian monarchy prescribed for rebels. Till the spring of
327 Alexander was moving to and fro in Bactria and Sogdiana, beating down the
recurrent rebellions and planting Greek cities. Just as in 335 he had crossed
the Danube, so he now made one raid across the frontier river, the Jaxartes
(Sir Darya), to teach the fear of his name to the outlying peoples of the
steppe (summer 328). And meanwhile the rift between Alexander and his European
followers continued to show itself in dark incidents - the murder of Clitus at
Maracanda (Samarkand), when Alexander struck down an old friend, both being hot
with wine; the claim that Alexander should be approached with prostration
(proskynesis), urged in the spring of 327, and opposed boldly by the
philosopher Callisthenes, Aristotle's nephew, who had come in the king's train;
the conspiracy of the pages at Bactria, which was made an occasion for putting
Callisthenes to death. It was now that Alexander completed the conquest of the
provinces north of the Hindu Kush by the reduction of the last mountain
strongholds of the native princes. In one of them he captured Roxana, the
daughter of Oxyartes, whom he made his wife. Before the summer of 327 he had
once more crossed the Hindu Kush on his way to India (for the campaigns in the
N.E. see F. von Schwarz, Alex. d. Grossen Feldzuge in Turkestan, 1893,
v.).
Whilst the heavier troops moved down the Kabul valley to Pencelaotis
(Charsadda) under Perdiccas and Hephaestion, Alexander with a body of
lighter-armed troops and cavalry pushed up the valleys which join the Kabul
from the north through the regions now known as Bajour, Swat and Buner,
inhabited by Indian hill peoples, as fierce then against the western intruder
as their Pathan successors are against the British columns. The books give a
number of their " cities" reduced by Alexander - walled mountain
villages which can in some cases be identified more or less certainly with
places where the clans are established today. The crowning exploit was the
reduction of Aornus,1 a stronghold perched on a precipitous summit
above the Indus, which it was said that Heracles had failed to take. How much
of the story of Alexander's discovery of the sacred mountain of the Nysa and
the traces of Dionysus is due to the invention of Aristobulus and Clitarchus
(Arrian did not find it in Ptolemy) we cannot say. Meantime Perdiccas and
Hephaestion had built a bridge over the Indus, and by this in the spring of 326
Alexander passed into the Punjab (at Ohind, m. above Attock, according to
Foucher, Notes sur la geogr. ane. di' Gandhara, 1902). The country into
which he came was dominated by three principalities, that of Ambhi (Gr.
Omphis, Curt. viii. 12.6) between the Indus and the Hydaspes
(Jhelum,Jehlam), centred in the great city of Takkasila (Gr.
Taxila), that of the Paurara rajah (Gr. Porus) between the
Hydaspes and Acesines (Chenaf), and that of Abhisara (Gr. Alisares)
between the same two rivers higher up, on the confines of Kashmir (Stein,
Rojatorangini, transi. bk. i. i8o, v. 217).
1. The best opinion now confirms Abbott's identification of Aornus with
Mahibau~Deane, Joarn. R. Asiat. Soc. (Oct. 1896), p.673; Stein,
Report of an Archaeological Tour with the Buner Field Force (Lahore,
1898), pp.45-48.
The kings of Taxila and Porus were at enmity, and for this cause the
invader could reckon upon Omphis as a firm ally. Porus was prepared to contest
the passage of the Hydaspes with all his strength. Abisares preferred to play a
double game and wait upon events. Alexander reached the Hydaspes just as the
rains broke, when the river was already swollen. Porus held the opposite bank
with a powerful army, including 200 elephants. Alexander succeeded in taking a
part of his forces across the river higher up during a night of torrential
rain, and then he fought the fourth and last of his pitched battles in Asia,
the one which put to proof more shrewdly than any of the others the quality of
the Macedonian army as an instrument of war, and yet again emerged victorious.
Porus fell sorely wounded into his hands.2 Porus had saved his
honour, and now Alexander tried, and not in vain, to gain him as a friend. When
he continued his progress eastwards across the Acesines, Porus was an active
ally. Alexander moved along close under the hills. After crossing the Hydraotes
(Ritvi) he once more came into contact with hostile tribes, and the work of
storming petty towns began again. Then the Hyphasis (Beas) was reached, and
here the Macedonian army refused to go any farther. It was a bitter
mortification to Alexander, before whose imagination new vistas had just opened
out eastwards, where there beckoned the unknown world of the Ganges and its
splendid kings. For three days the will of king and people were locked in
antagonism; then Alexander gave way; the long eastward movement was ended; the
return began.
Alexander left the conquered portion of India east of the Indus to be
governed under Porus, Omphis of Taxila, and Abisares; the country west of the
Indus under Macedonian governors, and set out to explore the great river to its
mouth (for the organization of the Indian provinces, see especially Niese, vol.
i. pp. 500 f.). The fleet prepared on the Hydaspes sailed in October, while a
land army moved along the bank. The confluence of the Hydaspes and Acesines
passed, the Macedonians were once more in a region of hostile tribes with towns
to be stormed. It was at one of these, a town of the Malli, that a memorable
incident occurred, such as characterized the personality of Alexander for all
succeeding time. He leapt from the wall with only three companions into the
hostile town, and, before the army behind him could effect an entrance, lay
wounded almost to death.3
2. Beside V. Smith (cited below) see Schubert, "Die
Porusschlacht," in Rhein. Mus. lvi., 1901, p.543.
3. There seems nothing to fix the exact spot of this town; the common
identification with Multan is, according to Raverty and V. Smith, certainly
wrong.
He recovered and beat down the resistance of the tribes, leaving them
annexed to the Macedonian satrapy west of the Indus. Below the confluence of
the Punjab rivers into the single stream of the Indus the territory of loose
tribes was succeeded by another group of regular principalities, under the
rajahs called by the Greeks Musicanus, Oxycanus and Sambus. These opposed a
national resistance to the Macedonians, the fires of which were fanned by the
Brahmins, but still the strong arm of the western people prevailed. The rajah
of Patala at the apex of the Indus delta abandoned his country and fled. It was
the high summer of 325 when Alexander reached Patala. From here he explored
both arms of the delta to the ocean, now seen by the Macedonians for the first
time. He had determined that the Indus fleet should be used to explore this new
world and try to find a water way between the Indus and the Persian Gulf. A
great part of the land-forces had been already sent off under Craterus in the
earlier summer to return west by Kandahar and Seistan; the fleet was to sail
under the Greek Nearchus from the Indus mouth with the winter monsoon;
Alexander himself with the rest of the land-forces set out in October to go by
the coast of Baluchistan, through the appalling sand-wastes of the
Mekran.1
1. For the Indian campaigns of Alexander see especially McCrindle,
Invasion of India iy Alexander the Great (1896); Vincent A. Smith,
Early History of India 1904 and the references there given to the
researches of Sir T. II. Holdich, Raverty and Foucher; A. Anspach, De Alex.
Magni exped. md. (1903).
He would seem to have kept down to the coast until the headland of Ras
Malan was reached, scattering before him the bands of Arabitae and Oritae who
were the inhabitants of this well-provisioned tract. For the 150 miles between
Ras Malan and Pasni Alexander was compelled by the natural barriers to march
inland, and it was here that his troops sank under the horrors of heat and
thirst and sand. The coast once regained, the way was easy; no such desert had
to be traversed, when Alexander again struck inland for the chief city of the
Gedrosians (Pura), and thence made his way into Carmania. Here the spent troops
rested; here the army of Craterus joined them, and Nearchus came to announce
his safe arrival at the entrance of the Persian Gulf. 2
2. Tomaschek, " Topographische Erla·ntorung der Kustenfahrt
Nearchs " in the Sitzungsberichte der kaiserl. Akad. d. Wissensci.
of Vienna (Phitosoph.-kistor. Kiasse, vol. cxxi.); Major P. M.
Sykes, Ten Thousand Mi/es in Persia (1902), pp.166 f.
The machine of empire had not functioned altogether smoothly while the
king had been absent, and on Alexander's re-appearance many incapables and
rogues in high office had to be replaced by better men. In Carmania, in Persis,
complaints from the provinces continued to reach him, as well as the news of
disorders in Macedonia and Greece. New orders and appointments served to bring
the empire into hand again, and at Susa in the spring of 324 Alexander rested,
the task of conquering and compassing the Achaemenian realm achieved. The task
of its internal reorganization now began to occupy him - changes, for instance,
in the military system which tended to assimilate Macedonians and Orientals.
The same policy of fusion was furthered by the great marriage festival at Susa,
when Alexander took two more wives from the Persian royal house, married a
number of his generals to Oriental princesses, and even induced as many as he
could of the rank-and-file to take Asiatic wives. This policy did not allay the
discontent of the Macedonian army, and when Alexander in the summer of 324
moved to the cooler region of Media, an actual mutiny of the Macedonians broke
out on the way at Opis on the Tigris. It was occasioned by the discharge of the
Macedonian veterans, and only the personal magnetism of Alexander and his
threat to entrust himself altogether to the Orientals availed to quell it. At
Ecbatana the death of Hephaestion for a time plunged Alexander into a passion
of mourning. But by the winter (324-323) he was again active, bringing the
hill- tribes on the S.W. border of Media, the Cossaei, into subjection. In the
spring of 323 he moved down to Babylon, receiving on the way embassies from
lands as far as the confines of the known world, for the eyes of all nations
were now turned with fear or wonder to the figure which had appeared with so
superhuman an effect upon the world's stage. The embassy from Rome, however, is
almost certainly a later, and an inevitable, invention. The exploration of the
waterways round about the empire was Alexander's immediate concern, the
discovery of the presumed connexion of the Caspian with the Northern Ocean, the
opening of a maritime route from Babylon to Egypt round Arabia. The latter
enterprise Alexander designed to conduct in person; under his supervision was
prepared in Babylon an immense fleet, a great basin dug out to contain 1000
ships, and the water- communications of Babylonia taken in hand. Innovations
were carried out in the tactical system of the army which were to modify
considerably the methods of future battle-fields. At last all was ready; the
20th of the month Daesius (? June 5) was fixed for the king's setting forth. on
the 15th and 16th Alexander caroused deep into the night at the house of the
favourite Medius. On the 17th he developed fever; for a time he treated it as a
momentary impediment to the expedition; but on the 27th his speech was gone,
and the Macedonian army were suffered to pass man by man through his chamber to
bid him farewell. On the 28th (?June 13) Alexander died.3
His son by Roxana, the so-called ALEXANDER "AEGUS," was born a
few months later. He and his uncle Philip, as joint kings, were placed under
the guardianship of Perdiccas, Peithon and Antipater in succession. After the
death of Antipater (319) Roxana fled with him to Epirus, and was afterwards
taken back to Macedonia, together with Olympias, by Polyperchon. All three fell
into the hands of Cassander; Alexander and his mother were in 310-309 put to
death by order of Cassander (Justin xiv. 6, xv. 2). The meaningless surname of
Aegus, still given in some books to this Alexander, is derived simply
from a modern misreading of the text of the Astronomical Canon, AIPOT for
AAAOT.
Alexander the Great is one of the instances of the vanity of appealing
from contemporary disputes to " the verdict of posterity "; his
character and his policy are estimated today as variously as ever. Certain
features-the high physical courage, the impulsive energy, the fervid
imagination - stand out clear; beyond that disagreement begins. That he was a
great master of war is admitted by most of those who judge his character
unfavourably, but even this has been seriously questioned (e.g. by Beloch,
Grieck. Gesck. ill. (i.), p.66). There is a dispute as to his real
designs. That he aimed at conquering the whole world and demanded to be
worshipped as a god is the traditional view. Droysen denies the former, and
Niese maintains that his ambition was limited by the bounds of the Persian
empire and that the claim to divine honours is fabulous (Historische
Zeitschr. lxxix., 1897, i f.). It is true that our best authority, Arrian;
fails to substantiate the traditional view satisfactorily; on the other hand
those who maintain it urge that Arrian's interests were mainly military, and
that the other authorities, if inferior in trustworthiness, are completer in
range of vision. Of those, again, who maintain the traditional view, some, like
Niebuhr and Grote, regard it as convicting Alexander of mad ambition and
vainglory, whilst to Kaerst Alexander only incorporates ideas which were the
timely fruit of a long historical development. The policy of fusing Greeks and
Orientals again is diversely judged. To Droysen and Kaerst it accords with the
historical conditions; to Grote and to Beloch it is a betrayal of the
prerogative of Hellenism.
Some notion of the personal appearance of Alexander may be got from the
literature and the surviving monuments. He is described as of an athletic
frame, though not taller than the common, and a white and ruddy complexion. The
expression of his eyes had something "liquid and melting" and the
hair which stood up over his forehead gave the suggestion of a lion. He had a
way of carrying his head somewhat aslant. (See especially Plut. Alex. 4; de
Alex. fort. ii. 2.) The greatest masters of the time executed portraits of
him, Lysippus in sculpture, Apelles in painting and Pyrgoteles in graven gems.
Among surviving monuments, we have no completely certified portraits except the
Tivoli herm (now in the Louvre) and the coins struck by his successors. The
herm is a dry work and the head upon the coins shows various degrees of
idealization. There are, however, a considerable number of works which can make
out a better or worse claim either to be portraits of Alexander or to reproduce
his type, and a large field of discussion is therefore open as to their values
and classification (F. Kopp, Uber des Bildnis Alexander' d. Grossen
(1892); K. J. Ujfalvy, Le Type physique d'Alexandre le Grand (1902);
T. Schreiber, Studien uber dos Bildnis Alexanders d. Grossen (1903); J.
J. Bernoulli, Die erhaltenen Darstellungen Alexanders d. Grossen
(1905). Alexander shaved clean, and set the fashion in this respect for the
Graeco-Roman world for the next 500 years.
2. For Alexander's funeral, see F. Jacoby in Rhein. Mus. (1903),
pp.461 f.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The campaigns and life of Alexander did not lack
contemporary historians, some of them eye-witnesses and even associates. They
included the philosopher Callesthenes, put to death by Alexander in 327, whose
history went up to the death of Darius, Alexander's general Ptolemy, afterwards
king in Egypt, Nearchus who commanded the fleet that sailed from the Indus to
the Persian Gulf, Onesicritus who served as pilot in the same fleet,
Aristobulus who was with Alexander in India, Clitarchus, a contemporary, if not
an eye-witness, important from the fact that his highly coloured version of the
life of Alexander became the popular authority for the succeeding centuries.
Besides the historical narrative, there were works mainly geographical or
topographical left by persons like Baeton and Diognetus, whom Alexander had
employed to survey the roads over which he passed. All such original sources
have now perished. The fragments are collected in the Didot edition of Arrian
by Karl Muller. Not reckoning scattered notices, we depend principally upon
five later compositions, Diodorus, book xvii. (c. 20 B.C.), the work of
Quintus Curtius (c. A.D. 42), Plutarch's (c. 45-125 A.D.) Life
of Alexander, Arrian's Anabasis and Indica (c. A.D. 150), and
the relevant books of Justin's abridgment (2nd cent. A.D.) of the history of
Trogus (c. 10 a.c.?). To these we may add the Latin Itinerarium
Alexandri, a skeleton outline of Alexander's campaigns dedicated to the
emperor Constantius (A.D. 324-361), printed at the end of the Didot edition of
Arrian, and the Epitome Rerum Gestarum Alexandri magni, an abridgment
made in the 4th or 5th century of a lost Latin work of uncertain date,
combining history with elements taken from the Romance (edited by 0.
Wagner, Leipzig, 1900). The relation of these works to the various original
sources constitutes the critical problem before the modern historian in
reference to the history of Alexander. See Droysen vol. i. appendix i.; A.
Schoene, De rerum Alexandri Magni scriptorum imprimis Arriani &
Plutarchi fontibus (1870); Fraenkel, Die Geschichtschreiber Alex. d.
Grossen (1883); 0. Maas, Kleitarch und Diodor (Petersburg, 1894);
Kaerst, For schungen zur Gesch. Alex. d. Grossen (1887), and Gesch.
d. heizenist. Zeitalters (vol.i., 1901), pp.421 f. F. L. Schoenle,
Diodorstudien (1891); E. Schwartz, articles "Aristobulos
(14)," "Arrianus," "Quintus Curtius," " Diodorus
" in Pauly-Wissowa's Reolencyclopadie.
For modern views of Alexander see Thirlwall, History of Greece;
Niebuhr. Lectures on Ancient History (Eng. trans. rev. by author,
1852); Grote, History of Greece; Droysen, Ilisto ire de l'Hcl'inismc
(translation by Bouchh-Leclerq); Ad. Holm, History of Greece (Eng.
trans., 1898); B. Niese, Gesch. der griech. u. 'maked. Staaten (vol.
i.); Kaerst, Gesch. des hellenist. Zeitalters (1901); J. Beloch,
GriechischeGesch. (vol. iii., 1904);J. B. Bury, IIistory
of Greece (1902); A. von Gutschmid, Geschichte Irans (1888). Among
the mass of monographs and special articles, reference may be made to Freeman,
Historical Essays, 2nd series, pp.182 f.; Dodge, Alexander (in a
series called Great Captains) 1890; Mahaffy, Problems in Greek
History (1892), ch. viii.; D. G. Rogarth, Philip and Alexander of
Macedon (1897), a striking effort of historical imagination to reconstruct
Alexander as a man of the real world; Benjamin I. Wheeler, Alexander the
Great (1900) in the " Heroes of the Nations Series." The purely
military aspect of Alexander's campaigns is treated in general histories of
warfare (Rustow-Kochly, Bauer, Delbruck, Verdy du Vernois), and in special
monographs by Hogarth, Joarn. of Philol. vol. xvii., 1888, pp. i foIl.;
H. Droysen, Untersuchnngcn u~ber A. des Gr. Heerwesen (1885), and Graf
Vorek von 'Wartenburg, Kurze Ubersicht der FeldzageA. deGr. (1897). For
further references to the literature on Alexander, see Kaerst's article in
Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopadie (1894). (E. R. B.)
The Romance of
Alexander.
Margaret Bryant
The figure of Alexander naturally impressed itself upon the imagination of
the world which his career had shaken. Even in India we are told that he was
held in honour by the native kings who took his farthest provinces in
possession. But Eastern tradition, so tenacious of the old myths of primitive
man, has a short memory for actual history, and five centuries later Alexander
was only remembered in Iran as the accursed destroyer of the sacred books,
whose wisdom he had at the same time pilfered by causing translations to be
made into " Roman." That the East today has so much to tell about
Alexander is only due to the fact that old mythical stories of gods or heroes
who go travelling through lands of monsters and darkness, of magical fountains
and unearthly oceans, became attached to his name in the popular literature of
the Roman empire, and this mythical Alexander was reintroduced in the 7th
century A.D. into the farther East, where the historical Alexander was almost
forgotten. The romance of Alexander is found written in the languages of nearly
all peoples from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, but all these versions are
derived, mediately or immediately, from the Greek original which circulated
under the false name of Callisthenes. The Greek pseudo-Callisthenes (otherwise
Aisopos we possess in three recensions, based all upon a book produced in Egypt
in the 2nd century A.D. But this book itself was a farrago of heterogeneous
elements-pieces of genuine history, ancient stories once told in Babylon of
Gilgamesh or Etanna, literary forgeries of the days soon after Alexander, like
the oldest part of the "Testament of Alexander," variations due to
Egyptian patriotic sentiment, like that which made Alexander the son of the
last Pharaoh, Nectanebus. As the story was reproduced, variations were freely
introduced according to the bent of different times and peoples; in the Persian
version Alexander (Iskander) became a son of Darius; among the Mahommedans he
turned into a prophet, hot against idols; the pen of Christian monks made him
an ascetic saint.
The Alexander romance found its way into Europe through the medium of
Latin, but originated mainly from the versions of the pseudo-Callisthenes, not
from the more sober narrative of Quintus Curtius. The pseudo-Callisthenes, in a
recension which has not been preserved, was translated into Latin by Julius
Valerius about the end of the 3rd century, and an epitome of this translation,
also in Latin, was made some time before the 9th century, and is introduced by
Vincent de Beauvais into his Speculum historiale. Much of the legend is
a running travesty of the true history of the conqueror. The first book deals
with his birth and early exploits. The trace of Alexandrian influence is to be
found in the pretence that his actual father was Nectanebus, a fugitive king of
Egypt. The latter was a great magician, able, by operating upon waxen figures
of the armies and ships of his enemies, to obtain complete power over their
real actions. Obliged, however, to flee to Pella in Macedonia, he established
himself as an astrologer, and as such was consulted by the childless Olympias.
Having promised that Zeus Ammon would visit her in the form of a dragon, he
himself assumed the disguise. In due course Alexander was born, and Philip's
suspicions were overcome by a second appearance of the dragon, which was held
to prove the divine fatherhood. The child was small and somewhat deformed, but
of great courage and intelligence. When he was twenty years old he was
instructed in starcraft by Nectanebus, who was killed by a fall into a pit,
into which he had been playfully pushed by Alexander, The first book also
relates his conquests in Italy, Africa, Syria and Asia Minor; his return to
Macedonia and the submission of Greece. The second book continues the history
of his conquests, and the third contains the victory over Porus, the relations
with the Brahmins, the letter to Aristotle on the wonders of India, the
histories of Candace and the Amazons, the letter to Olympias on the marvels of
Farther Asia, and lastly the account of Alexander's death in Babylon.
The most wide-spread Latin version of the story, however, was the
Historia de proeliis, 1 printed at Strassburg in 1486, which began to
supersede the Epitome of Julius Valerius in general favour about the end
of the 13th century.
1. Nativitas at victoriac Alexandri inagni regis was the
original title,
It is said to have been written by the Neapolitan arch-presbyter Leo, who
was sent by Johannes and Marinus, dukes of Campania (941-965) to
Constantinople, where be found his Greek original. Auxiliary sources for the
medieval romance-writers were -the opuscule (4th century) known as Alexandri
magni iter ad Paradisum, a fable of Eastern origin directed against
ambition; the Itinerarium A lexandri (340), based partly on Julius
Valerius and dedicated to Constans, son of the emperor Constantine; the letter
of Alexander to Aristotle (Epist. de situ at mirobilibus Indiae), and
the correspondence between Alexander and the king of the Brahmins, Dindimus,
both of which are often contained in MSS. of the Epitome; and the
treatise (based on a lost history of Alexander by Onesicritus), Dc gentibus
Indiac et Bragmanibus, ascribed without certainty to Palladius (d. a. 430),
successively bishop of Helenopolis and Aspona.
The Ethiopic versions are of great interest as a striking example of
literary "accommodation." Not only is the whole atmosphere Christian
in colouring, but we actually find the Greek gods in the guise of Enoch,
Elijah, &c - while Philip is a Christian martyr, and Alexander himself a
great apostle, even a saint; quotations from the Bible are frequent. Sytiac and
Armenian versions were made in the 5th century. Persians and Arabs told the
deeds of Iskander; and Firdousi made use of the story in the Shdhndma.
Another early Persian poet, Nizami, made the story specially his own. The
crusaders brought back fresh developments; Gog and Magog (partly Arab and
partly Greek) and some Jewish stories were then added. In the 11th. century
Simeon Seth, protovestiarius at the Byzantine court, translated the
fabulous history from the Persian back into Greek.
The Alexander legend was the theme of poetry in all European languages;
six or seven German poets dealt with the subject, and it may be read in French,
English, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Flemish and Bohemian.
French.- The earliest known French romance of Alexander, by Alberic
of Besancon (or more properly Briancon), was, until the discovery of a fragment
of 100 lines at Florence in 1852, known only through the German adaptation by
Lamprecht the preacher, who wrote towards the end of the 12th century, and by
the version made by a Poitevin poet named Simon in deca syllabic lines. Alberic
followed the epitome of Julius Valerius. He had some knowledge of authentic
history, and rejected the more marvellous elements of the story. The French
feudal romance, Li Romans d'Alexqndre, was written in the 12th century
by Lambert li Tors of Chateaudun, Alexandre de Bernai, sur named de Paris, and
others. It contained 20,000 lines, and was written in twelve-syllabled lines,
whence the term" alexandrine verse. The authors endowed Alexander with the
fashionable virtues of the chivalric hero, making him especially the type of
lavish generosity. They used as their sources Valerius, the letter to Aristotle
and the Iter ad Paradisum, adding much of their own. Pierre de Saint
Cloud, the writer of the fourth section of the romance, was evidently
acquainted with the Historia de proelus. The incident of the Fuerre
de Gadres (Foray of Gaza), interpolated in the second section, is assigned
to a certain Eustache. The redaction of the whole work is due to Alexandre de
Bernai, who replaced the original assonance by rhyme. According to all the
traditions of romance it was necessary to avenge the death of Alexander. At the
end of the 12th century Gui de Cambrai and Jean le Nevelon (or Nevelaux or
Venelais), each wrote a Vengeance d'Alerandre. Jean le Nevelon relates
how Abor, the son of Alexander and Candace, avenged his father's death on
Antipater and others. Between 1310 and 1315 Jacques de Longnyon (or Langhion)
introduced into the account of the Indian war Les Veux di' peon, a
romanesque and fantastic episode very loosely connected with Alexander. It is
interesting for its connexion with the 15th-century romance of Perceforest,
since in it Alexander visits Britain, where he bestows Scotland on Gadifer
and England on Betis (otherwise Perceforest). Les Vaez'x du peon enjoyed
great popularity, and had two sequels, Le Rester du peon, written before
1338 by Jean Brisebarre de Douai, and Le Parfait du paon,written in 1340
by Jean de la Mote. Florimont, a 12th-century poem by Aimon de Varenne,
relates to a fictitious personage said to have been the grandfather of
Alexander. This poem gave rise to two prose romances-La Conqueste de Grece
faicte par Philippe de Madien, by Perrinet du Pin, first printed in 1527,
and Histoire du roi Florimond (1528). Quintus Curtius was largely used
for the Alexandreis (c. uSo) of Gaultier de Lille or de Chatillon
(Galtherus ah Insulis or de Castellione). It is a Latin poem in ten books of
hexameters, and contains a curious admixture of Biblical history. It was
translated at the end of the next century into Flemish by J. van Maerlant and
into German by Ulrich von Eschenbach.
Of the French prose versions of the Historia de proelus may be
noticed the late romance, L'Histoire du noble et vaillant roy Alixendre le
Grant (i5o6). After an account of the ancient history of Macedonia and of
the intrigue of Nectanebus we are told how Philip dies, and how Alexander
subdues Rome and receives tribute from all European nations. He then makes his
Persian expedition; the Indian campaign gives occasion for descriptions of all
kinds of wonders. The conqueror visits a cannibal kingdom and finds many
marvels in the palace of Porus, among them a vine with golden branches, emerald
leaves and fruit of other precious stones. In one country he meets with women
who, after the burial in the winter, become alive again in the spring full (;f
youth and beauty. Having reached the ends of the earth and conquered all
natiofis, h~ aspires to the dominion of the air. He obtains a magic gias~ cage,
yoked with eight griffins, flies through the clouds, and thanks to enchanters
who know the language of birds, get~ information as to their manners and
customs, and ultimately receives their submission. The excessive heat of the
upper regions compels him to descend, and he next visits the bottom of the sea
in a kind of diving-bell. The fish crowd round him and pay homage. Alexander
returns to Babylon, is crowned with much pomp and mass is celebrated. He dies
by poison soon afterwards.
English Vcrsions.- The Alexander cycle was no less popular in Great
Britain. The letter from Alexander to Aristotle and his correspondence with
Dindimus are found in Early English versions dating from the 11th century.
These are printed by 0. Cockayne in his Narratiunculae Anglice conscriptae
(i86i). The Monk (De Gas. ill. vir.) in Chaucer's Canterbury
Tales prefaces his account of Alexander with the statement that his story
is so common .
That every wight that hath discrecioun
Hath herd somewhat or all of his fortune.
There are two considerable fragments of an English alliterative romance on
tbe subject written in the west midland dialect, and dating from the second
half of the 14th century. The first, The Gestes of the Worthy King and
Emperor Alisaunder of Macedoine (ed. W. W. Skeat, E.E.T.S., 1877, with
William of Palerme) contains an account of the wars of Philip, of
Nectanebus and of the education of Alexander. A second fragment (ed. Skeat,
E.E.T.S., 1878) contains Alexander's visit to the Gymnosophists and his
correspondence with Dindimus. Another alliterative poem in the northern
dialect, of 15th-century origin, is based on the Historia de proelus,
and was edited by Skeat for the E.E.T.S. (1886) as The Wars of
Alexander. Earlier than any of these is the rhyming Lyfe of Alisaunder
(c. 1330) which is printed in H. Weber's Metrical Romances (vol. i.,
1810). It is written in unusually picturesque and vigorous language, and is
based on the Roman de toute chevalerie, a French compilation made about
1250 by a certain Eustace or Thomas of Kent. Fragments of another rhyming poem
(pr. c. 1550) are preserved in the British Museum. The Scots Buik of
the most noble and vailyzeand Conqueror Alexander the Great, printed by
Alexander Arbuthnot (d. 1518) about 1480, reprinted in 1831 for the Bannatyne
Club, is not really a life. It contains three episodes of the cycle, the Forray
of Gadderis " (not taken from the Fuerre de Gadres but from the
Assaut de Tyr in the Romans d'Alixandre), "The Avowes of
Alexander," and "The Great Battel of Effesoun," taken from the
Vvux du paon. Many passages in John Barbour's Bruce are almost
identical with this book, and it is suggested by G. Neilson (John Barbour,
Poet and Translator, London, 1900) that Barbour was the author, although
the colophon states that it was written in 1438. Bruce at Bannockburn makes the
same oration as Alexander at" Effesoun." A Buke of the Conqueror
Alexander the Great by Sir Gilbert Hay (fi. 1456) is in MS. at Taymouth
Castle.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The best sketch of the Alexander romance literature is by
Paul Meyer, A lexandre le grand dans la litterature francaise au mayen age
(2 vols., Paris, 1886). The first volume contains some French texts, and
the second a detailed discussion of the various versions from the
pseudo-Callisthenes downwards. See also J. Zacher, Pseudo- Callisthenes,
Forschungen ilur . Alexandersage (Halle, 1867), and for Oriental versions,
T. No.·ldeke, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Alexanderromans "
(Denkschrl)'ten der ksl. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse,
vol.38: Vienna, 1890) For early printed versions see Brunet, Manuel
du librair', s.v. "Alexandre."
The text of the pseudo-Callisthenes was edited by C. W. Muller from three
MSS. in the Bibl. Nat. and printed in the Arrian of the CoIl. Didot (Paris,
1846), and by H. Meusel (Leipzig, 1871) from a Leiden MS. A. Mai edited Julius
Valerius (Milan, 1817) and the Itinerarium Alexandri (Class. Auct. vol.
vii.; Milan, 1835); J. Zacher, the Epitome (Halle, 1867) and Alex.
iter ul Paradisum (Regensburg, 1859); the Oxford MS. of the Epitome
was edited by G. Cilli (Strassburg, 1905); G. Landgraf, Die " Vita
Atex andri " . . . des Arch presbyter Leo (Historia de prodjis),
(Erlangen~ 1885); Alexander's letter to Aristotle and his correspondence
with Dindimus are included in the Teubner edition of Julius Valerius (ed. B.
Ku..bler, Leipzig, 1888). A newly discovered anonymous Epitome was
edited by 0. Wagner (Leipzig, 1900).
The fragment by Alberic was edited by P Heyse (Berlin, 1856); Lamprecht'~
German text by H. Weismann (Frankfort, 1850) and by C. Kinzel (Halle, 1884) ;
the Alexandreis of Gaultier de Lille, by F. A. 'iv. Mtildener (Leipzig,
1863); an Icelandic prose version (c. 1250) of the same, Alexanders
Saga, by C. R. ~xiger (Christiania, 1848); Li Romans d'Alixandre, by
H. Michelant (Stuttgart, 1846); the Ethiopic version by E. A. T. Wallis Budge
(1896, 2 vols., with English translation); the Syriac text of pseudo-
Callisthenes by Budge (Cambridge, 1889); cp. K. F. Weymann, Die athiopisehe
und arabische &bersetzungen des Pseudo-Kallisthenes (Kirchhain, 1901).
Besides the English editions quoted in the text, the alliterative English
poems were partially edited by ~ Stevenson for the Roxburghe Club (1849). There
is a great eal of information on the various texts in H. L. Wood's Catalogue
of Romances in the British Museum (1883, vol. i. pp.94 et seq.). See also
A. Hermann, Unter suchungen u.·~er das Scottische Alexanderbuch
(1893); and Unters. u~ber das med. Gedicht, The Wars of Alexander
(Berlin, 1889). Among other works see E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman
(2nd ed. Leipzig, 1900); B. Meissner, Alexander II. Gilgamos
(Leipzig, 1894); F. Kampers, Alex. d. Grusse und die Idee des Weltimperiums
in Prophetie und Sage"(in H. Granert's Studien, &c., Freiburg,
1901); Adolf Ausfeld, Der griechiscke Alexanderroman (Leipzig, 1907),
edited after the author's death by W. Kroll; Wilhelm Hertz, Aristoteles in den
Ale~. Dichtungen d. Mittelal~ers " (Kgl. Acad. d. Wissenschaften,
Munich, 1891); H. Becker, Die Brahmanen sn d. Alex. Sage
(Ko.·nigsberg, 1889). (M. BR.)
