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Oriental Motifs in the Alexander Romance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

Richard Stoneman
Richard Stoneman*
Affiliation:
Institute of Classical Studies, London
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Extract

Over the centuries, the fabulous adventures of Alexander the Great have become as prominent in art and literature as his historical achievements. Medieval artists in particular are frequent sources of depictions of the hero in such adventures as the search for the water of life, the flight into the air in a basket borne by eagles, the descent into the sea in a diving bell, the interview with the talking trees of India and the visit to the dwellings of the gods. Familiar as these episodes are—or were—it is easy for us to forget how completely new a thing they represent in the tradition of Greek prose writing. With the decipherments of cuneiform some one hundred years ago, a number of scholars concluded that they could not have been developed entirely within the Greek tradition, and posited direct influence from one or more Babylonian or other near eastern sources or traditions to explain the occurrence in Greek literature of these curious tales. Despite the antiquity of these arguments, they have been accepted without examination by many more recent writers on the Alexander Romance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 26 , November 1992 , pp. 95 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1992

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References

1 The basic studies are: Meissner, Bruno, Alexander und digamos (Leipzig 1894)Google Scholar; id. ‘Quellenuntersuchungen zur Haikargeschichte’, ZDMG 48 (1894) 171-97Google Scholar, largely repeated in Das Märchen vom weisen Achiqar (Alte Orient 16, 1917), with the benefit of knowledge of the Elephantine papyri; Lidzbarski, M., ‘Wer ist Chadhir?’, Ztschr. f. Assyriologie 7 (1892) 104–116 Google Scholar, cf. 8 (1893) 266; Millet, G., ‘L'ascension d'Alexandre’, Syria 4 (1923) 85–133 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 The arguments were cautiously accepted by Adolf Ausfeld in his edition of the Alexander Romance (1908), p. 172, and adopted without demur by Thiel, H. van in his edition of the L-manuscript, Leben und Taten Alexanders von Makedonien (Darmstadt 1983) xxviii Google Scholar; by Braun, M., History and Romance in Graeco-Oriental Literature (Oxford 1938)Google Scholar; and by Michael, I.D.L., Alexander's Flying Machine: the History of a Legend (Inaugural lecture Southampton 1974)Google Scholar. Babylonian sources for Greek fables and folktales are also claimed by B.E. Perry in his Loeb edition of Babrius and Phaedrus, xxxviii f. (Ahikar) and xxxiv (Etana and Archilochus), though without reference to the Alexander Romance. The question is bound up with that of the Greek or oriental origins of romance in general; see now Reardon, B.P., The Form of Greek Romance (Princeton 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2a See Stoneman, R., ‘Romantic Ethnography. Central Asia and India in the Alexander Romance’, forthcoming in Ancient World 24 (1993)Google Scholar.

3 See Pearson, L., The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great (Chico, Calif. 1960)Google Scholar; Karttunen, Klaus, India in Early Greek Literature (Helsinki 1989)Google Scholar; Tarn, W.W., The Greeks in Bactria and India2 (Cambridge 1951)Google Scholar.

4 These episodes, which include Alexander's visit to Jerusalem, his preaching of One God in Alexandria, his enclosure of the unclean nations, and his dealings with the prophet Jeremiah, both alive and dead, belong to the gamma-recension. See Pfister, L., Alexander der Grosse in den Offenbarungen der Griechen, Juden, Mohammedanern und Christen (1956)Google Scholar; Anderson, A.R., Alexander's Gate, Gog and Magog, and the Inclosed Nations (Cambridge, Mass. 1932)Google Scholar; id., ‘Alexander at the Caspian Gates,’ TAPA 59 (1928) 130-63Google Scholar; Kazis, L.J., The Gests of Alexander of Macedón (Cambridge, Mass. 1962)Google Scholar; Wallach, L., ‘Alexander the Great and the Indian Gymnosophists in Hebrew Tradition,’ Proc. Amer. Acad. Jewish Research 11 (1941) 47–83 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 I summarise here the outline in my Greek Alexander Romance (Harmondsworth 1991) 28–31 Google Scholar. For other accounts of the recensions of the Romance see Bergson, L., Der griechische Alexanderroman Rezension ß (Uppsala 1965) v–xxxv Google Scholar, and H. van Thiel (op.cit. in n.2) xxxvi-xli.

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12 Budge, E.A.W., The Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great (London 1896)Google Scholar.

13 in Oes. 165; cf. Plutarch, Alexander 63; Quintus Curtius 9.2.9, 9.3.8, 9.6.22, 5.6.12-14; Arrian 5.26.2. Aristotle thought that Ocean was visible from the Hindu Kush (Meteor. 1.13.15): see Holt, F.C., Alexander the Great and Bactria (Leiden 1988) 105-9Google Scholar.

14 Agatharchides, On the Erythraean Sea 1.17 tr. Burstein, SM. [Hakluyt Society, second series, 172] (London 1989) 52 Google Scholar.

15 Teles ap. Stobaeus Eel. 97.31, which is part of a list of those who always want the opposite of what they have: … .

16 See n.l. In embarking on this theme, I have to make clear that I do not read any ancient near eastern languages, and am dependent on translations for the report of what is contained in the texts discussed.

17 I follow the text in Stephanie Dalley's translation.

18 Lidzbarski, op.cit. (n.1).

19 For the fullest treatment see I. Friedländer, Die Chadhirlegende und der Alexander-roman (Leipzig 1913).

20 Op.cit. 32 ff., 107 ff.

21 Ov. Met. 13.898 ff.

22 Pindar's Homer (Baltimore, MD 1990) 271

23 The motif of the dried fish returning to life does reappear in Greek literature, in the Acts of Peter, written in Greek not later than A.D. 200.

Peter turned and saw a herring (sardine) hung in a window, and took it and said to the people: If ye now see this swimming in the water like a fish, will ye be able to believe in him whom I preach? And they said with one voice: Verily we will believe thee. Then he said—now there was a bath for swimming at hand: In thy name, O Jesu Christ, forasmuch as hitherto it is not believed in, in the sight of all these live and swim like a fish. And he cast the herring into the bath, and it lived and began to swim. And all the people saw the fish swimming, and it did not so at that hour only, lest it should be said that it was a delusion (phantasm), but he made it to swim for a long time, so that they brought much people from all quarters and showed them the herring that was made a living fish, so that certain of the people even cast bread to it; and they saw that it was whole. And seeing this, many followed Peter and believed in the Lord.

(Acts of Peter ch. 13, cited from The Apocryphal New Testament ed. M.R. James [Oxford 1924] 316.) The episode has an educational effect like that in the Herodotus passage; no such point belongs to the Alexander Romance version.

24 Aelian HA 12.21. This passage is accepted as a ‘possible’ fragment of Berossus by Burstein (see n.26) 29 f.

25 Wilson, J.V. Kinnier, The Legend of Etana (Chicago 1985) 15 Google Scholar, suggests that Aelian's tale actually concerned the eagle abducting the son of Etana, which seems to have occurred somewhere in the Etana legend. The attribution of the name of Gilgamesh to this child would be an error of Aelian's.

26 On Berossus see Schnabel, P., Berossos (1927)Google Scholar; Burstein, S., The Babyloniaca of Berossus [Sources and Monographs of the Ancient Near East, 1.5] (Malibu 1978)Google Scholar; Kuhrt, Amélie, ‘Berossus’ Babyloniaca and Seleucid Rule in Babylonia’, in Hellenism in the East ed. Amélie Kuhrt and Susan Sherwin-White (London 1987) 32–56 Google Scholar.

27 Diod. Sic. 2.14.3-4.

28 The story goes back to the fourth century: see Erbse, H., Fragmente griechischer Theosophien (Hamburg 1941)Google Scholar. Cf. Malalas p. 24-25 = John of Antioch fr. 6.9 = FHG 4.543. On oracle-stories of this kind, see Fox, Robin Lane, Pagans and Christians (1986)Google Scholar, ch.5, “The Language of the Gods’.

29 Desire to see the gods is not perhaps so unusual. Gregory of Nyssa, de Vita Moysis 400 AB ascribes to Moses a desire to see God which ‘exceeds the desires of human nature’. Pothos again!

30 These islands of gold occur also in Hindu tradition, which also deterred its explorers by the tale of the elephant-eating Garuda bird which lived in a tree protruding from the Ocean: ships reaching so far either fell prey to the Garuda bird or were sucked into a hole in the Ocean; perhaps the first reference to Australia in Western literature? ( Clark, Manning, History of Australia 1 [Melbourne 1962] 6 ff.)Google Scholar

31 Stith Thompson's motif index of folk tales includes very few examples of speaking trees (D.1311.4 an Irish example; D.1316.5 a speaking tree or reed betrays a secret; D.1610.2 and D.1313.4 a blinded trickster is directed by trees). The only one resembling our instance is D.1311.4.2, where a speaking tree utters prophecy: cites, Thompson Gorion, M.J. bin, Der Born Judas (Leipzig 1918 ff.) 3.140, 307 Google Scholar, which is this very Alexander story, in the version of Yosippon. In the Book of Susanna (5459) the contradictory evidence of the elders as to which tree they had seen Susanna and the young men under serves to condemn them as liars. See also Baumgartner, , ARW 24 (1926-1927)Google Scholar.

32 Lambert, W.G., Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford 1960) 154 Google Scholar.

33 See West, M.L., HSCP 73 (1969), 118 ffGoogle Scholar. This is not the only place where Callimachus is credited with knowledge of oriental or Jewish lore; another example is the alleged derivation of Epigram 55,

from the Septuagint of Isaiah 14.12

See Canfora, L., The Vanished Library (London 1989) 43 Google Scholar. The connection is extremely slight, and one may be forgiven for wondering whether Callimachus had to read Isaiah to come up with such a phrase. A further connection of Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos, in this case with an Egyptian model, is argued by Koenen, L. in Dack, E. Van't, Dessel, P. Van and Gucht, W. van (edd.), Egypt and the Hellenistic World: Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven 24-26 May 1982 (Louvain 1983) 174 ff.Google Scholar: I have not seen this work.

34 Merkelbach, op.cit. (n.7) 70.

35 Henrichs, A. and Koenen, L., ZPE 5 (1970) 148 fGoogle Scholar.

36 Budge, E.A. Wallis, Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great (London 1896) 267 Google Scholar.

37 Iter Alexandri ad Paradisum, ed. Zacher, Julius (Königsberg 1859)Google Scholar; Hilka, A. in Peckham, L.P.G. and Du, M.S. La (edd.), La Prise de Defur & Le Voyage d'Alexandre au Paradis Terrestre [Elliott Monographs, 35] (Princeton 1935) xli–xlviii Google Scholar.

38 Kazis, I.J., The Gests of Alexander of Macedón (Cambridge, Mass. 1962)Google Scholar.

39 The motif is further elaborated in Nizami, where the luminous stone is revealed to be an eye, which while it shines can illuminate the whole earth, but a little dust can extinguish it for ever. It may be possible to connect this development of the eye-parable with one of the sayings of Ahikar: ‘the eye of man is a fountain, and it will never be satisfied until it is filled with dust.’ (Quoted in Conybeare, F., Harris, J.R. and Lewis, A.S., The Story of Ahikar [Oxford 1913] lxxxii Google Scholar, where it is connnected, rather rashly, with Qur'an Sura 102, ‘the emulous desire of multiplying riches occupieth you, until you visit the grave.’)

40 Agatharchides of Cnidus, On the Erythraean Sea 5.84a, tr. S.M. Burstein (n.14 above) 138 f. Burstein cites Juba for the information that these islands are always fogbound, strengthening the impression that this passage is based on North African information. I follow Burstein's translation of the version of Photius.

41 G. Millet, op.cit. (n. 1).

42 Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford 1989) 189 Google Scholar.

43 For a livelier translation see J.V. Kinnier Wilson, op.cit. (n.25) 69, 113, 121.

44 Cf. Apuleius, Met. 11.23.8 Google Scholar.

45 Hengel, Martin, Judaism and Hellenism (London 1974) 214 and n.669Google Scholar.

46 The earliest text was probably Aramaic: it is preserved also in Ethiopie and Greek, and in a Latin fragment.

47 The ascent of Enoch and other ‘riders in the chariot’ is treated by Barker, M., The Lost Prophet (London 1988) 49–50, 56, 59, as simply an account of a mystical ascentGoogle Scholar.

48 Cicero, Somnium Scipionis 2.3 etc.

49 Etana and the eagle do however do obeisance at the gate of the gods: Kinnier Wilson, op.cit. (n.25) 121-3.

50 Perry, B.E., Studies in the Text History of the Life and Fables of Aesop (Lancaster, PA 1936) 24 ffGoogle Scholar. For the texts of the two Greek recensions of the Life see Perry, B.E., Aesopica (Urbana, 111. 1952)Google Scholar.

51 Epic of the Kings: Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, tr. Levy, R. (London 1967) 69 Google Scholar.

52 Tabari 602, in The History of al-Tabari 4, tr. Perlman, M. (New York 1987) 5 Google Scholar.

53 Cf. Meissner, B., Das Märchen vom weisen Achiqar (1917) 31 Google Scholar. The parallel with Aristophanes’ Cloud-Cuckoo-Land is probably irrelevant.

54 It is curious that representations of Alexander's flight in medieval cathedrals and illuminations commonly show the basket drawn upwards by griffins, not eagles. The image may be contaminated with that of Solomon's griffin throne (Tabari 1.448).

55 Conybeare, Harris and Lewis, op.cit. (n.39); Haslam, M. ap. POxy 3720 (53 p. 149-72)Google Scholar. West, M L., ‘Near Eastern material in Hellenistic and Roman Literature’, HSCP 73 (1969) 113–134 Google Scholar characterises Ahiqar, as ‘the first international bestseller’. Keller, , cited by Meissner (ZDMG 48 [1894] 188)Google Scholar, suggested that an additional source for the Aesop life was Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca (2nd c. A.D.), which contains an episode of a hero being concealed in a tomb.

56 Judas suffers the same fate in the Papias tradition: Kermode, F., The Genesis of Secrecy (1979) 87 and n.22Google Scholar.

57 Cowley, A., Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (1923; repr. Osnabrück 1967)Google Scholar.

58 Zauzich, K-Th., ‘Demotische Fragmente zum Ahikar-Roman’, Folia Rara W. Voigt LXV d.n. celebranti… dedicata, ed. H. Francke et al. (Wiesbaden 1976) 180-85Google Scholar.

59 Maspéro, F., Contes populaires de l'Egypte ancienne (1911) 259 ffGoogle Scholar. (English translation, Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt [New York 1967] 290–303)Google Scholar; Lemm, O. von, Der Alexanderroman bei den Kopten (St Petersburg 1903)Google Scholar.

60 Lichtheim, M., Ancient Egyptian Literature 3 (Berkeley 1980) 163 Google Scholar. The story pattern may be relatively common: cf. Hdt. 3.36.5-6, Curzon, R., Visits to Monasteries in the Levant (1849) 65-6Google Scholar. For these two references I thank Stephanie West.

61 Cf. n.55. A Talmudic account of the life of Moses has the young man hidden in a pit for ten years to avoid Pharaoh's wrath. During this time he is fed by Zipporah, and he marries her on his emergence. See Silver, D., Images of Moses (New York 1982) 204 Google Scholar.

62 Egyptian tradition but not, Merkelbach insists, oral tradition: ‘eine Grossstadt bringt keine Sagen hervor’ (Die Quellen des griechischen Alexanderromans2 [Munich 1977] 68)Google Scholar. For the Egyptian influence in general, see the important article by Barns, J.W.B., ‘Egypt and the Greek Romance’, Mitteilungen aus der Papyrussammlung der österreichischen Nationalbibliothek n.s. 5 (1956) 29–36 Google Scholar.

63 See my The Greek Alexander Romance (Harmondsworth 1991) 16 and n.46Google Scholar; Perry, B.E., TAPA 97 (1966) 327–333 Google Scholar.

64 POxy 2332: Koenen, L., ZPE 2 (1968) 178–209 Google Scholar. This document probably reflects the sentiments of ‘poor white’ Graeco-Egyptians, though it may date from any time between the fourth and the late second centuries B.C.: see Lloyd, A.B., ‘Nationalist Propaganda in Hellenistic Egypt’, Historia 31 (1982) 33 ff.Google Scholar; Thompson, Dorothy, Memphis under the Ptolemies (Princeton 1988) 82 and 152-3 nn.Google Scholar; Eddy, S.K., The King is Dead (Lincoln, Nebraska 1961) 293 Google Scholar.

65 F. Maspéro, op.cit. (n.59) 285 ff.; Wilcken, U., Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit 1 (Berlin 1927) no. 81 Google Scholar.

66 Erman, Adolf, The Ancient Egyptians: a Sourcebook of their Writings (New York 1966) 37 ffGoogle Scholar.

67 A.B. Lloyd, op. cit. (n.64). Cf. Bams, op.cit. (n.62) 32.

68 The key passage is 1.34, where Alexander is received at Memphis next to a statue of Nectanebo on which is inscribed ‘the king who has fled will return to Egypt, no longer an old man but a young one, and will subject our enemies the Persians to us.’ The scene is elaborated in 2.27 (gamma-recension).

69 Manetho fr. 80 = Plut. De Is. et Os. 28.

70 See Downey, G., History of Antioch (Princeton 1961) 67 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Green, P., Alexander to Actiurn (London 1991) 162 Google Scholar.

71 CAH 6.653, 823; P. Green, op.cit. 146.

72 West, S., JEA 55 (1969) 161 ffGoogle Scholar.

73 Bowersock, G., Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 An earlier version of this paper was given at a seminar at the University of Sydney in April 1991. I am grateful to those who took part in the discussion for many illuminating remarks, in particular to David Konstan, Suzanne MacAlister and Frances Muecke. I am also grateful to Stephanie West for reading and commenting on the whole of a later draft, and to two anonymous readers for Antichthon for editorial advice.