Product Establishment Covering Letter

ALEXANDER THE GREAT: MAN, KING, HERO ( III)

PSEUDO-Callisthenes
BETWEEN THE HISTORY AND THE NOVEL

Alejandro

The text on most influence on posterity is called Novel of Alexander. is a work of great influence throughout the Western tradition, even in unfamiliar authors and periods of Greek

• influences the Roman Alexandre (S. XII), in the case of the French medieval novel. Within
• English literature influences the Libro de Alexandre (S. XIII), possibly through the intermediate model of Roman Alexandre.

The Novel of Alexander "profiled over a thousand years the image of Alexander in the East and West "( Elizabeth Frenzel, Dictionary of arguments in the literature, Madrid, Gredos, 1976, p. 20). See the translation of C. García Gual (trans.), Pseudo Callisthenes. Life and deeds of Alexander of Macedonia, Madrid, Gredos, 1977 (National Translation Award 1978), this is the Preface to the translation of García Gual:

The most remarkable and most courageous of men was at Apparently, Alexander, king of the Macedonians, who did all his work so unique and always found the support of the Providence with its virtues. For in war and battle each of the people spent less time than those who would need to accurately describe the cities of those countries. The exploits of Alexander, his excellence of body and soul, the success of their companies and their value now tell, beginning with his lineage and say who was his father. That deceive many who say he was the son of King Philip, as this is not true. It was not the son of former Nectanebo but as they say the wisest of the Egyptians, who bore him after he lost his royal dignity.

The Novel of Alexander written in the early S. III d. C. although come sources of Hellenism, is conserved in various

• Greek versions, more or less divergent: the existence of a multiplicity of reviews attests to the popular nature of the text;
• through the Latin translation of Julio Valerio, late S. III d. C.;
• there are also other translations, of which the most important is the translation into Armenian.

is obvious that the textual history of this work (which we also have papyrus) has been complex.

other hand, materials that have converged in the fiction of Alexander vary. But there are two main sources:

• A historical account Hellenistic, probably a biography of Alexander ("century BC?). It is important to note that the Hellenistic historiography historiography is rhetoric, Catch the pathetic effect of special effects, these traits were inherited by Pseudo-Callisthenes.
• A collection of letters and epistolary novel. The epistolary novel is also a kind of origin seeking rhetorical pomposity, the portrait of a character: in our case, that of Alexander.

collections letters were a genre flourishing between the time of Cicero and Adriano, the time in which lie the sources of the Pseudo-Callisthenes. Indeed been preserved papyrus with alleged correspondence between Alexander and Darius ("school exercises?).

addition to these main sources, have also converged in the work of Pseudo-Callisthenes other elements, four types. These other sources will occur as a result relatively independent, integrated into the whole episode as:

Alejandro
• Letters addressed to Aristotle and his mother Olympias. Talk about the wonders of the journey of Alexander to India. It is not known if these letters have been added directly by Pseudo-Callisthenes to all, or if the material he received and included.

These letters are examples of the "teratological literature, literature of wonders, represented in Greece by Ctesias, Yambulo or Luciano (code-parody), and literature of the East by the story of Sinbad the Sailor.

Note that the teratological literature must be in the first person to make it believable in the context of novel Pseudo-Callisthenes, the use of first person is further justified with the artifice of the letter, is "literature of wonders "in a letter.

Nectanebo
• The legend according to which it is assumed that Alexander is not really the son of Philip but Nectanebo, the last pharaoh of Egypt:

Then farewell to the Queen Nectanebo and pick some plants to a lonely place, from which known for its application to the production of dreams. And, after squeezing the juice, modeled a female figurine wax and enrolled him over the name of Olympias. She lit a few lamps, and, while pouring over them the juice of plants, invoking the gods with spells devoted to such office, to receive the appearance Olympias. And that night she looks to the god Amun who has embraced and which, when standing up to leave, he says,

Woman, keep your belly a son who has to be your avenger.

Nectanebo's story comes from an Egyptian folk tale seeks to explain the special relationship of Alexander with the god Amun, whom Alexander visit in the course of the work in the sanctuary of the oasis of Siwa.

also Nectanebo legend explains the rivalry with Philip, which is not really son Alejandro, a fact that the two end up knowing.

• gymnosophists The conversation with the "naked sophists" Brahmins to which Alejandro known in India. This episode connects the work with the Wisdom literature and manages a topic of long tradition, ↔ the wise king of confrontation:

Solon-Croesus (in Herodotus);

Plato

Dionysus;

Alejandro-Diogenes the cynic.

Pseudo-Callisthenes
• has also had to manage as a historical source on the last days of Alexander: This part provides specific historical data.

the individual is supposed to unify all these materials should not be a person especially inspired: it would be a "poor man", literally says History of Greek Literature Albin Lesky. Is little careful, p. eg., in all that relates to the geographic route.

• And yet, the trial of Lesky does not do justice to the fact that this text has had an important weight in the Western Tradition.
• On the other hand, the life and deeds of Alexander of Macedonia or Novel of Alexander, without being a key work of the universal narrative, is an entertaining read that stands out above all, for his great fantasy.

The work is extremely imaginative, as I said and as verified through the reading of some passages. I will now highlight the milestones that we can offer a basic idea of \u200b\u200bthe structure the entire text:

• begin by recalling that, according to the work, Alexander is not the son of Philip but Nectanebo, the last pharaoh of Egypt, who gave birth on Olympias under the figure of the god Amun.
• Alejandro is, therefore, Egyptian: note that, quite possibly, the text of the novel comes from Alexandria. Alejandro
• beat Darius, who was entrusted with the custody of his daughter in this episode shows the generosity and humanitarianism of the monarch, is that in the Novel of Alexander, Alexander is characterized as an ideal hero.
• Alejandro arrives in his campaign to India where you experience incredible adventures, faces all kinds of monsters (a veritable bestiary), find the source of immortality, travels through the air in a chariot drawn by griffins and descends into the depths in a glass bubble:

After making all the preparations, I was introduced in the glass tub with a desire to attempt the impossible. As soon as I got inside, the entrance was closed with a lid of lead. When I had one hundred and twenty cubits down a passing fish with its tail hit me my cage, and hoisted me because they felt the shaking of the chain. The second time I got the same thing happened to me. The third went down about three hundred eight elbows and watched a wide variety of fish species go flipping around me. And look to me about big fish I caught with my cage in his mouth and took me to the ground from more than a mile away. In our barges were the men who held me, three hundred sixty, and all drove with the four barges. While swimming with her teeth quickly broke the cage and then threw me on the mainland. I arrived limp and died of terror.

I lay there on his knees and prostrated myself in gratitude to Providence from above that I had saved alive from the terrible monster. And I said to myself: "Let go, Alejandro, attempting impossible to track down lest the abyss deprive of life." And then I ordered the army from there and continue the march forward.

• In India also has the gymnosophists interview, Brahmin philosophers like cynics who do see the futility of their efforts and the inability of man to attain immortality. In India
• Alejandro is also the talking trees, which prophesy his death.
• Alexander, on his return to Babylon, is killed by the chamberlain Yolo.

could say that what prevails in this work is the tragic image of Alexander, a new Achilles who, like him, died in youth. The Alexander of the novel is the prototype of the mythical hero, as it must have been alive to their own soldiers

• Alejandro is always obsessed by the idea of \u200b\u200bgoing beyond, to reach the art.
• But come to meet limits that can not pass (it is impossible to find immortality, as he declared the gymnosophists) and dies. Die
• also young, as if endowed with an unlucky fate.
• The Alexander that seeks to go "beyond" seems to commit an act of hubris that attracts divine punishment.

This is an idea that abound in the medieval sources, which show directly the king's death as a punishment:

• Gautier de Chatillon, Alexandreis: Alejandro are punished by their overweening ambition that leads him to lament that there are no more worlds to conquer.
• Libro de Alexandre: Alexandre are punished for their sinful curiosity (as a result of the Sea), God called "the lunatic non tasting restraint." Look at the verses 2161 and 2165.

Natura creating all creatures,

them that I am a paladin and they are dark,

Tovo said that Alexander harsh words,

who wanted to reach the secret nature.

(...)

Weight the Creator to create Natura,

egg wrath of Alexander Grant and rencura,

said: "This cata lunatic who does not bow,

• yo make it enjoy it all in bitterness. "

Alexander was obsessed with the idea of \u200b\u200bhaving a Homer to sing his deeds, paradoxically, the "Homer" that Alejandro owes much of its fame as a myth is the Pseudo-Callisthenes an entertaining author, picturesque but (admittedly with Lesky) not too brilliant.

Although, however, perhaps the delightful image of Alexander that approximates closely conveys the image that Alexander's soldiers took their king, in this sense, Pseudo-Callisthenes may be, paradoxically, more truthful than serious historians .

Joseph B. Torres Guerra