We have the excellent authority of the poet Gray for saying that the Alexandrine verse, which "like a wounded snake drags its slow length along," took its name from an early poem in this measure, called "La View d'Alexandre." There was also the "Roman d'Alexandre," contemporary with the "Alexandreïs," which Gray thinks was borrowed from the latter poem, apparently because the authors say that they took it from the Latin.[53] There was also "The Life and Actions of Alexander the Macedonian," originally written in Greek, by Simeon Seth, magister and protovestiary or wardrobe-keeper of the palace at Constantinople in 1070, and translated from Greek into Latin, and then into French, Italian, and German.[54] Arabia also contributed her stories, and the Grecian conqueror became a hero of romance. Like Charlemagne, he had his twelve peers; and he also had a horn, through which he gave the word of command, which took sixty men to blow it, and was heard sixty miles,—being the same horn which afterwards Orlando sounded at Roncesvalles. That great career which was one of the epochs of mankind,—which carried in its victorious march the Greek language and Greek civilization,—which at the time enlarged the geography of the world, and opened the way to India,—was overlaid by an incongruous mass of fable and anachronism, so that the real story was lost. Times, titles, and places were confounded. Monks and convents, churches and confessors, were mixed with the achievements of the hero; and in an early Spanish History of Alexander, by John Lorenzo, we meet such characters as Don Phoebus, the Emperor Jupiter, and the Count Don Demosthenes; and we are assured that the mother of Alexander fled to a convent of Benedictine nuns.
Philip Gaultier, With all his genius, has his incongruities and anachronisms; but his poem is founded substantially upon the History of Quintus Curtius, which he has done into Latin hexameters, with the addition of long speeches and some few inventions. Aristotle is represented with a hideous exterior, face and body lean, hair neglected, and the air of a pedant exhausted by study. The soldiers of Alexander are called Quirites, as if they were Romans. The month of June in Greece is described as if it were in Rome:—
"Mensis erat, cujus juvenum de nimine nomen."
Events connected with the passion of Jesus Christ are treated as having already passed in the time of Alexander.
The poem is divided into ten books,[55] and the ten initial letters of these books, when put together like an acrostic, spell the name of the Archbishop, Guillermus, the equivalent for William at that time, who was the patron of the poet. Besides this conceit, there is a dedication both at the beginning and at the end. Quantity, especially in Greek or Asiatic words, is disregarded; and there are affectations in style, of which the very beginning is an instance:—
"Gesta ducis Macedûm totum digesta per orbem
Musa, refer."
In the same vein is the verse,—
"Inclitus ille Clitus," etc.;
and another verse, describing the violence of the soldiers after victory:—
"Extorquent torques, et inaures perdidit auris."