Before speaking of these we may mention other oriental versions of the story. An Armenian text dates from the fifth century. A Syriac version, which dates from the seventh or eighth century and was “much read by the Nestorians,” was itself derived from an earlier Persian rendering. It seems to make use of both the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes and Julius Valerius since it includes incidents from either which are not found in the other. And it omits a considerable section of the Greek version besides adding episodes which are not found in it, although contained in Julius Valerius. We hear further of Arabic and Hebrew versions of the romance, while manuscripts of recent date supply an Ethiopic version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes of unknown authorship and date, together with other Ethiopic histories and romances of Alexander. These are based partly upon Arabic and Jewish works but take great liberties with their sources in making alterations to suit a Christian audience, omitting for example, as Budge points out, Alexander’s victory in the chariot race, and transforming Philip and Alexander into Christian martyrs, or the Greek gods into patriarchs and prophets like Enoch and Elijah. Even the Greek version did not remain unaltered in the Byzantine period when two recensions in prose and two more in verse are distinguished. Indeed, none of the Greek manuscripts of the work antedates the eleventh or twelfth century, they differ greatly, and some of them ascribe the romance to Alexander himself.
Medieval epitomes of Julius Valerius.
Such variations in the eastern versions of the story of Alexander illustrate how the middle ages made the classical heritage their own and prepare us for similar alterations in the Latin account current in western Europe. The work of Julius Valerius, though written in the rhetorical style characteristic of the declining Roman Empire and composed almost on the verge of the middle ages, was to undergo further alterations to adapt it more closely to medieval taste and use. By the ninth century, if not earlier, two epitomes of it had been made, and, beginning with that century, manuscripts of the shorter of these epitomes become far more numerous than those of the original Valerius.[2298]
Letters of Alexander.
Two sections of the Alexander legend were omitted in the Epitome, not because medieval men had lost interest in them but because they had become so fond of them as to enlarge upon them and issue them as distinct works. They often, however, accompany the Epitome in the manuscripts. One of these was the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle on the Marvels of India.[2299] It is longer than the corresponding chapter of Valerius[2300] where a letter of Alexander to Aristotle is quoted and also differs from any known Greek text. The fact that reference is made to it in the longer Epitome leads to the conclusion that the Letter is older. This would also seem to be the case with the other work, a short series of letters interchanged between Alexander and Dindimus, the king of the Brahmans, since the Epitome omits the two chapters of Valerius which tell of Alexander’s interview with the Brahmans. It is believed that Alcuin, who died in 804, in one of his letters to Charlemagne speaks of sending these epistles exchanged between Alexander and Dindimus along with the equally apocryphal correspondence of the apostle Paul and the philosopher Seneca. No such letters are found in the Pseudo-Callisthenes, for the ten chapters on the Brahmans found in one Greek codex are interpolated from the treatise of Palladius, likewise in the form of a correspondence.[2301] Julius Valerius does not even mention Dindimus, but a third epistolary discussion of the Brahmans exists in Latin, De moribus Brachmannorum, ascribed to St. Ambrose.[2302]
Leo’s Historia de praeliis.
Leo, an archpriest of Naples, who went to Constantinople about 941-944 on an embassy for two dukes of Campania, John and Marinus, brought back with him a History containing the conflicts and victories of Alexander the Great, King of Macedon. Later Duke John, who was fond of science, had Leo translate this work from Greek into Latin, in which tongue it is entitled Historia de praeliis. We learn these facts from its prologue which is found only in the oldest extant manuscript, a Bamberg codex of the eleventh century,[2303] and in a manuscript of the twelfth or thirteenth century at Munich. The location of these two manuscripts suggests that the work was early carried from Italy to Germany, lands then connected in the Holy Roman Empire. Of the De praeliis apart from the prologue there came to be many copies, but most of them date from the later middle ages, and the importance of the work as a source for the vernacular romances of Alexander has been somewhat overestimated, since Meyer has shown that no manuscript of it is found in France until the thirteenth century and since the manuscripts of the Epitome are far more numerous.[2304]
Medieval metamorphosis of ancient tradition.
In the foregoing observations we may seem to have digressed too far from our main theme of science and magic into the domain of literary history. But the development of the Alexander legend, which happens to have been traced more thoroughly than perhaps any other one thread in the medieval metamorphosis of ancient tradition, throws light at least by analogy upon many matters in which we are interested: the state of medieval manuscript material, the continuity and yet the alteration of ancient culture during the early middle ages, the process of translation from the Greek which went on even then, and the varying rapidity or slowness with which books circulated and ideas permeated.
Survival of magical and scientific features.