Alexander Romance

[spitamenes]

Would anyone be able to give me an idea of what exactly the "Alexander Romance" actually is?just a brief explanation will suffice. I run accross authors talking about the Alexander Romance all the time and don't know if its something specific, or if its a collection of works, or what. Can it be purchased? Or does the term just get used as an umbrella for many works of a certain period or writing style contributed to Alexander? Thanks in advance.
All the best,
Spitamenes.

[marcus]

Would anyone be able to give me an idea of what exactly the "Alexander Romance" actually is?just a brief explanation will suffice. I run accross authors talking about the Alexander Romance all the time and don't know if its something specific, or if its a collection of works, or what. Can it be purchased? Or does the term just get used as an umbrella for many works of a certain period or writing style contributed to Alexander? Thanks in advance.
All the best,
Spitamenes.

Well, very briefly then ...

No-one is quite sure when the first version was written, but it is possible that it was written fairly soon after Alexander's death, possibly within a generation. Often referred to as Pseudo-Callisthenes, as it was at one time thought to have been the lost history written by Callisthenes (although no-one thinks that now).

Various versions were written, and these in turn were exported and translated into different languages, including Armenian and Ethiopian ... which then, by the middle ages, informed the French verse romance and even a version written in the style of the Icelandic Sagas (I would give my eye teeth for a copy of that version!).

There is a Penguin Classics edition, entitled "The Greek Alexander Romance". There's also a version presented by Waldemar Heckel (although I can't find a product page on Amazon, although I have a copy of it myself).

The thing about the Romance is that it contains some historical elements, but it also contains much of the more fanciful stories about Alexander, most notably the idea that he was the son of the last native Egyptian Pharaoh, Nectanebo, who (according to the Romance) came in exile to Macedonia and seduced Olympias. It is the Romance which tells us that Alexander's eyes were different colours (no other source suggests this), and at least one version makes out Bucephalus to have had horns.

ATB

[Taphoi]

Would anyone be able to give me an idea of what exactly the "Alexander Romance" actually is?just a brief explanation will suffice. I run accross authors talking about the Alexander Romance all the time and don't know if its something specific, or if its a collection of works, or what. Can it be purchased? Or does the term just get used as an umbrella for many works of a certain period or writing style contributed to Alexander? Thanks in advance.
All the best,
Spitamenes.

Modern scholarship has divided the antique manuscripts by ancient authors that treat the history of Alexander into three broad "traditions":

1. The so-called "Official Tradition" mainly represented by Arrian and the Itinerarium Alexandri and based on the eyewitness accounts of Ptolemy, Aristobulus and Nearchus (but heavily edited for "good taste" by Arrian himself and probably also by Ptolemy's publisher.)

2. The so-called "Vulgate Tradition" represented by Curtius, Diodorus, the Metz Epitome (sections 1-86) and (to a lesser extent) Justin and Plutarch, which is principally based on the lost thirteen-book History Concerning Alexander compiled by Cleitarchus in Alexandria in the early third century BC.

3. The so-called "Alexander Romance", which in terms of the number of manuscripts is by far the largest body of texts to come down to us. A number of its earliest manuscripts attribute this work to Callisthenes, Alexander's court historian. However, it cannot really be Callisthenes' account, firstly because much of it is clearly legendary in nature and secondly because it treats events subsequent to Callisthenes' arrest in early 327BC - hence the "pseudo". However, virtually all known versions appear to stem from an archetypal Greek version called "alpha", which was compiled no later than the third century AD by an unknown Egyptian redactor. A Greek manuscript (A) survives, which closely represents this archetype, but it is very lacunose. These gaps have to be filled using other early manuscripts, especially from translations into Latin (Julius Valerius) and Armenian from the 4th and 5th centuries AD respectively. The work became the source for nearly all popular accounts of Alexander down to the Renaissance, when the handful of surviving manuscripts of the Official and Vulgate traditions were re-established as the main authorities on the king. The Romance was a medieval bestseller and was translated into tens and possibly hundreds of languages with many additions and embellishments along the way. However, if you are interested in its (limited) historical value (rather than its literary merits), then you need to get hold of a version of Kroll's reconstruction of "alpha", which was translated into English by Elizabeth Haight as The Life of Alexander of Macedon by Pseudo-Callisthenes. Stoneman's Penguin edition is also good (and much easier to find!), but he used the "beta" recension (with a few supplements from the A manuscript and the "gamma" recension), so it is less easy to be sure that you are not reading accreted or corrupted material. The Armenian manuscripts have been translated into English by Wolohojian and his book is the fullest "pure" (i.e. unreconstructed) version of the "alpha" version.

This classification of the sources is about as true and as false as the statement that there are three main parties in the British political system, but it may be useful for getting to grips with the historiography, which is in reality much more complicated in detail (for example, the death of Alexander in the Romance and in the Metz Epitome seem to come from the same 4th century BC pamphlet by one of Alexander's commanders called Holcias.)

Best wishes,

Andrew

[Taphoi]

Just as a little donative for anyone who is interested in reading the reconstructed original version (alpha recension) of the Alexander Romance in English translation, I found this link, which may let you view the Elizabeth Haight book:
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=m ... 5046413939
Wishing Pothosians good luck with this,
Andrew
P.S. perhaps someone could post whether it also works for them (or not)?

[spitamenes]

Andrew,
Thank you for posting the link! It worked just fine and its something new to me so ill be soaking it all in through the next few days. Much appreciated. I'm sure ill be asking a question or three regarding the writings. So it has been determained that it can in no way be the decendent works of Callisthenes though? Thanks again.
All the best,
Spitamenes

[Taphoi]

Andrew,
So it has been determained that it can in no way be the decendent works of Callisthenes though?

All three traditions have been influenced to some extent by Callisthenes, because he wrote the earliest history of the first part of Alexander's reign, which seems to have been published whilst Alexander was still alive. However, whatever Pseudo-Callisthenes is, it cannot be verbatim Callisthenes. We actually have quite a few fragments of Callisthenes proper, preserved where later writers quoted from his lost Deeds of Alexander. An example would be Polybius 12.17-22, who cites much of Callisthenes' version of the Battle of Issus. There is nothing like this in Pseudo-Callisthenes. Nor much sign of any other fragments of Callisthenes proper.
Best wishes,
Andrew