Alexander Romance

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

The text was transformed into various versions between the 4th and the 16th centuries, in Medieval Greek, Latin, Armenian, Syriac, Hebrew and most medieval European vernaculars.

Alexander was a legend during his own time. In a now-lost history of the king, the historical Callisthenes described the sea in Cilicia as drawing back from him in proskynesis. Writing after Alexander's death, another participant, Onesicritus, invented a tryst between Alexander and Thalestris, queen of the mythical Amazons. (According to Plutarch, when Onesicritus read this passage to his patron Lysimachus, one of Alexander's generals who later became a king himself, Lysimachus quipped "I wonder where I was at the time.")

Throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Romance experienced numerous expansions and revisions exhibiting a variability unknown for more formal literary forms. Latin, Armenian, Georgian and Syriac translations were made in Late Antiquity (4th to 6th centuries).

The Celticist Kuno Meyer received his doctorate for his thesis Eine irische Version der Alexandersage, an Irish version of the Alexander Romance, in 1884.

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