- The story of the symbolic gifts sent by Darius to Alexander the Great (Alexander Romance 1.36-38) derives from a Hellenistic collection of ictional letters narrating the Macedonian conqueror’s expedition. A direct model of the narrative was the legend about the Scythians’ enigmatic presents to Darius I, recounted by Herodotus (4.131-132) and other sources and well known in Hellenistic times. Apart from this, the story of Alexander and Darius is also inluenced from oral traditions of lore and entertainment, equally traceable to the Hellenistic age. The Persian and the Macedonian king compete in offering contrasting explanations of the symbolic items; their explanations are placed in a kind of ascending scale from weaker to stronger. Alexander’s interpretation makes the objects stand for the notions of power and conquest, thus capping Darius’ weaker allegory of childishness and submission. This narrative scheme recalls riddle games with analogous escalating structure, attested for early Hellenistic symposia by Diphilos and Klearchos of Soloi. In such playful competitions, two or more players strove to surpass each other by producing ever superior solutions for the same riddle.
- The so-called Alexander Romance is a ictionalized biographical novel relating the life, wars, exploits, and death of Alexander the Great. Part of its narrative seems to have been based on a historiographical account and incorporates several familiar episodes from the Macedonian conqueror’s biography and military campaigns. However, the historical material is often cast in a much distorted form, with many anachronisms and errors in chronology, geography, and realia. Further, the storyline is adorned with many novelistic elements, ictitious episodes, legends, and wondrous tales about Alexander’s explorations at far-off lands. The entire work is otherwise known as “Pseudo-Kallisthenes” because it was once falsely attributed to Kallisthenes of Olynthos, a nephew of Aristotle, who wrote a historical work about Alexander’s deeds but was accused of conspiracy and executed in 327 B.C., years before Alexander’s demise. The Greek Alexander Romance survives nowadays in a series of successive recensions, which follow the same essential storyline but considerably vary in terms of particular plot elements and linguistic traits. The earliest of those redactions (α) is represented by a single Greek manuscript (A), as well as by a Latin and an Armenian translation. Recension α must have been composed in the 3rd century A.D., as indicated by the language and certain historical references of its Greek text, and is generally held to be closest to the lost original form of PseudoKallisthenes. The date of the original form, however, is a matter of controversy. Several scholars would place the genesis of the prototypical Alexander Romance in the Imperial period, shortly before the compilation of recension α (See e.g. Fraser 1972, I, p. 677, II, p. 946; Merkelbach 1977, pp. 90-91; Dowden 1989, pp. 650-651; Fraser 1996, pp. 221-223; Stramaglia 1996, p. 106; Jouanno 2002, pp. 13-16, 26-28, 34; Jouanno 2009a, pp. 7-8).
- On the other hand, Richard Stoneman, whose arguments gain more followers in recent years, has consistently argued for a dating in the Hellenistic age and striven to locate the original novel within the cultural milieu of Ptolemaic Alexandria (See Stoneman 1991, pp. 8-10, 14-17; Stoneman 2007, pp. xxviii-xxxiii, l, liii-lvi). In this respect, he is taking up a thesis of earlier scholars (e.g. Braun 1938, pp. 31-42; Berg 1973); but he has adduced new indications and arguments to support it. Stoneman is followed by other modern researchers, such as Whitmarsh 2013, pp. 171-172, 185-186. An intermediate position is advocated by Callu 2010, pp. 23-31, who proposes to date the Alexander Romance around the early 1st century A.D., but on very slim grounds. Most of Callu’s theory reposes on a Tabula Iliaca from the early years of Emperor Tiberius (SEG 33.802). However, it is doubtful that this inscription actually contains a portion from the Alexander Romance itself; it may well represent one of Pseudo-Kallisthenes’ sources or a redaction of an entirely different work; see below, section 2, for detailed discussion and bibliography.
- Most of those compositions are independently attested in papyri or later Latin translations, and many of them seem to have been circulating already in the Hellenistic period. Generally on the sources of the Alexander Romance see the surveys of Fraser 1972, I, pp. 677-680, II, pp. 946-950; Merkelbach 1977; Stoneman 1991, pp. 9-14; Fraser 1996, pp. 210-220; Jouanno 2002, pp. 17-26; Stoneman 2007, pp. xxv-xxviii, xliii-l; Jouanno 2009a, pp. 7-10; Giuliano 2010, pp. 221-222.
- Darius’ symbolic gifts: Tradition and variants of the story
For a good part of the irst two books of Pseudo-Kallisthenes, Alexander and his main rival, the Persian king Darius III, are shown exchanging letters, by which they menace each other or negotiate on various occasions of their conlict. For the peculiar divergences of the Syriac and Medieval Greek versions see below. Generally on this episode see Merkelbach 1977, pp. 51, 118; Eckard 1997; Rosenmeyer 2001, pp. 177-180; Jouanno 2002, pp. 142, 193, 203-204, 224; Stoneman 2007, pp. 553-554; Whitmarsh 2013, pp. 176-177. Two papyri preserve fragments from collections or anthologies of such ictitious epistles: both include letters of Alexander and Darius which also occur in the Alexander Romance, along with others of the same kind, related to the Macedonian king’s expedition but unattested in Pseudo-Kallisthenes. It thus becomes clear that the papyri represent broader compilations and do not derive from a version of the romance itself. One of them (P.Hamb. 129) is most probably dated to the 2nd century B.C., showing that those ictional epistolary works were already in circulation by the mature Hellenistic period. A date in the 1st century B.C. was advocated by Merkelbach 1977, pp. 11, 55 (with references to previous bibliography), and often reiterated in scholarly literature. On the other hand, Candiloro 1965, pp. 171-176, proposed an earlier dating around the middle of the 2nd century B.C., on the basis of the writing style of the papyrus. Her opinion is well founded on detailed comparisons and argumentation. Cavallo – Maehler 2008, p. 69, similarly propose the irst half of the 2nd century B.C. Cfr. Stramaglia 1996, p. 108; Jouanno 2002, pp. 19-20, 43; Jouanno 2009a, p. 8; Callu 2010, p. 28; Giuliano 2010, pp. 216-219, 222.
The author of the Alexander Romance must have used that epistolary work as one of his main sources, taking over many of its individual letters and inserting them at suitable places of his own narrative. In more recent studies Merkelbach’s theory has been criticized for its “rigidity”. Doubt has especially been cast on the German expert’s attempt to reconstruct an “original” Briefroman consistent with the actual chronology of Alexander’s campaign, by rearranging the letters of Pseudo-Kallisthenes according to the accurate sequence of historical events. In fact, it is far from certain that the initial “epistolary novel” was a full, methodical and systematic rendering of the entire history of the Asiatic campaign through a well-ordered series of perfectly consistent and complementary missives. It might conceivably have looked more like a compilation or anthology of rhetorical letter-pieces which illustrated select occasions and crucial moments of the expedition by highlighting the prosopopoeia of the protagonists. On the “epistolary novel” and its form see in general van Thiel 1974, pp. xiii, xvi, xxi-xxiv; Merkelbach 1977, pp. 11-15, 18, 48-55, 230-252; Stoneman 1991, pp. 9-11, 20; Bounoure – Serret 1992, pp. xvii-xviii, xxiv; Holzberg 1994, pp. 6-7, 49, 52; Stramaglia 1996, pp. 106-113; Fraser 1996, pp. 216-218; Franco 1999, pp. 49-50; Rosenmeyer 2001, pp. 169-192; Jouanno 2002, pp. 19-21, 42-44, 142-144, 176, 193-194; Stoneman 2007, pp. xxvi-xxviii, xxxiii, xliv-xlv, liv, lxxvii-lxxviii; Giuliano 2010; Whitmarsh 2013.
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