A History of Alexander the Great in World Culture

Alexander III of Macedon (356-323 BC) has for over 2000 years been one of the best recognized names from antiquity. He set about creating his own legend in his lifetime, and subsequent writers and political actors developed it. He acquired the surname 'Great' by the Roman period, and the Alexander Romance transmitted his legendary biography to every language of medieval Europe and the Middle East. As well as an adventurer who sought the secret of immortality and discussed the purpose of life with the naked sages of India, he became a model for military achievement as well as a religious prophet bringing Christianity (in the Crusades) and Islam (in the Qur'an and beyond) to the regions he conquered. This innovative and fascinating volume explores these and many other facets of his reception in various cultures around the world, right up to the present and his role in gay activism.

Philosophy in the Narrative Mode

Histories of Arabic and Islamic philosophy tend to focus on texts which are systematic in nature and conventionally classified as philosophy or related scholarly disciplines. Philosophical principles, however, are also defining features of texts associated with other genres. Within the larger field of philosophy, this might be especially true of ethics and within the larger body of literature this might be especially the case for stories. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that the very purpose of storytelling is to reinforce and disseminate moral conventions. Likewise, the moral philosopher can be conceptualized as a homo narrans.The aim of this contribution is to apply the approach to narratives as a mode of debating ethical or moral principles to biographies of Alexander the Great. More than any other figure of the classical world, Alexander was religiously validated in the Islamic tradition due to his quasi-prophetic status as the ‘man with the two horns’ in the Qur’an. He appears prominently in the larger orbit of Arabic and Islamic philosophy as interlocutor and disciple of Aristotle and is adduced anecdotally in philosophical literature as an example to teach larger lessons of life. As a world conqueror, he provided an attractive model for those who sought to reconcile philosophical insight with worldly ambition.Focusing on biographies of Alexander, this article explores ethical principles which are inscribed in this body of literature and thus reads the texts as a narrativized form of philosophy. The analysis is comparative in two ways. Biographies of different periods and regions of the Islamicate world will be discussed, but comparisons with pre-Islamic biographies of Alexander (notably Roman biographies and the Alexander Romance) are included as well.

The City of Brass and Alexander’s Narrow Grave: Translation and Commentary of Kafas added to Manuscript M7709 (Part 1)

The 17th-century manuscript M7709 (held in the Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia) includes an Armenian copy of the History of the City of Brass, to which an unknown scribe has added short poems about Alexander the Great. The first of three articles that together present the Alexander poems of M7709 in full, with English translation, for the first time, this article introduces the manuscript and considers the first six poems: the seduction of Olympias, and Alexander’s encounter with plant-men at the edge of the world. It adds commentary on the poems’ relationship to the corresponding part of the History of the City of Brass on each page, proposing textual reasons why the scribe added the poems where he did. Across the three articles, this commentary delves into textual relationships beyond the pages of M7709, linking the Armenian History of the City of Brass, Alexander Romance and other texts and traditions, to show how this manuscript is situated amid wider networks of circulating literature. As a microhistorical study, it seeks to provide illumination into the macrohistory of medieval and early modern literature in and beyond the Caucasus.

The Alexander Romance

The present paper focusses on the oldest version of the Alexander Romance (the so-called alpha recension). It is a composite work, made of heterogeneous elements whose combination generates tensions in the portrayal of the protagonist, Alexander. His presentation is multifocal: making use of letters, speeches, and dialogues, and multiplying the points of view, the narrator constructs a kaleidoscopic image of Alexander which is that of an actant rather than a character. Nevertheless, the emphasis put on Alexander’s singularity and exceptional destiny gives the Romance its consistency. The prevalence of an entertaining prospect implies a redirection of biographical tools for the benefit of fictitiousness.

Popular Biography

Ancient popular biographies are distinguished by a set of common characteristics: primacy of content over form, simple one-dimensional characterization, a non-organic accumulative structure, circulation in variant versions, wide appeal across space and time, and heavy dependence on oral storytelling materials. The various traditions regarding the Seven Sages current in classical Greece were a form of collective popular oral biography of this group and influenced later biographical compositions significantly. The protagonists of these stories are often shown in roles typically found in the folktale repertoire. The Life of Aesop is an exemplary representative of popular biography. It combines old legends about Aesop, anecdotes borrowed from other cultural traditions, pieces of wisdom literature, and widespread folktales. It incorporates many specimens of folk genres (fables, scabrous novellas, proverbs, riddles) and reproduces the structure of Aesopic fables on a magnified scale. Other biographical compositions containing such popular elements (Life of Secundus, Alexander Romance, Lives of Homer) are also briefly discussed.