Article

While many literary works translated into the Syriac did not have much of an impact on Syriac literature in general, the texts dealing with the igure of Alexander, together with other works of Persian origin such as Kalīlah wa-Dimnah, raised a great deal of interest not only in the West (L. Braccesi, L’Alessandro occidentale. Il macedone e Roma Roma, 2006), but also in the East (See R. Macuch, “Pseudo-Callisthenes Orientalis and the Problem of D̠u l- qarnain,” Graeco-Arabica 4 (1991), 223–264), which gave rise to several textual traditions. In Syriac literature, diferent genres developed around the igure of Alexander, ranging from the wisdom literature of the “Sayings” (S.P. Brock, “he Laments of the Philosophers over Alexander in Syriac,” Journal of Semitic Studies 15 (1970), 205–218) to the narrative of the “Romance,” without forgetting the recensions and poetry in the manner of the homiletic hymns known as mēmrē. All these textual traditions, drawing on the igure of Alexander the Great, became run of the mill in the Syriac context within the Christian communities from the 7th century A.D. forward.

1. Authorship and Biographical Information
2. The Alexander romance and the so-called Alexanderlied, anonymous in both cases, are two diferent texts in Syriac literature. the original Greek of the Alexander romance is traditionally attributed to an author from the late Hellenistic age (K. Czeglédy, “he Syriac Legend concerning Alexander the Great,” Acta Orientalia 7 (1957), 231–232). Regarding the identity of the translator of the Syriac version of the PC, we have scarcely any knowledge. the most logical thing to be inferred from the Syriac production of the seventh century would be that the translator was a monk in one of the Nestorian monasteries lying in the northern area of Mesopotamia. The interpolated Christian elements, frequently inaccurate, make us think that this could have been the case (See E.A. Wallis Budge, he History of Alexander the Great, Being the Syriac Version of the Pseudo Callisthenes).

Far from being a translation of an Arabic text done between the 7th and 9th centuries, as Wright and Budge suggested, for whom the Syriac version seemed to have been made from the Arabic translation of a Greek text by a Christian priest (Budge, he History of Alexander the Great, pp. lx–lxiI), the Syriac Alexander romance, stricto sensu, spawned from the Greek version of the PC through a translation done from a Middle Persian (Pehlevi) Vorlage in the early 7th century, which must have been in fact a Nestorian (Nöldeke, Beiträge, p. 17. See A. Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur (Bonn, 1922, reed. Berlin, 1968), p. 125; K. Czeglédy (1957), pp. 231–249) product from north Mesopotamia belonging to the period ca. 628 A.D. Such a text must have been done with purely propagandistic purposes shortly ater the winning campaigns of Heraclius against the Persians (G.J. Reinink, “Die Entstehung der syrischen Alexanderlegende als politischreligiöse Propagandaschrit für Herakleios’ Kirchenpolitik,” in C. Laga, J.A. Munitiz and L. van Rompay (eds.), Ater Chalcedon. Studies in heology and Church History Ofered to Professor Albert van Roey for his Seventieth Birthday (Louvain, 1985), pp. 263–281. See S.P. Brock, A Brief Outline of Syriac Literature (Kotayyam, India, 1997), p. 51). Thus, while we do not know who the authors might have been of either the Alexander romance or of the reworking of it known as “Exploits of Alexander,” we do know something about the clergyman who is the alleged author of the mēmrā of the “History of Alexander,” Jacob of Se rūgh (d. 521). He was a monophysite bishop of the town of Se rūgh (of modern Turkey), who died in 521 A.D. We know of three biographies of this man, namely, one written by Jacob of Edessa (Josephus Simonius Assemanus, Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana. I. Sriptoribus Syris Orthodoxis (Rome, 1719, reed. Piscataway, NJ, 2002), p. 286), a second one anonymous, and the third ascribed to one of his disciples called George, while others attribute the third biography to an 8th century writer called George of Se rūgh who died in 708 (R. Duval, La littérature syriaque, p. 352).

Additionally, he composed six homilies in prose (turgamē), of which 43 epistles sent to the Christians of Naǧrān survive, as well as several madrāšē (odes) and sugyātē̠ (hymns). Moreover, the Maronite baptismal service is also attributed to him (Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur, pp. 148–158. See also R. Duval, La littérature syriaque, pp. 352–354; William Wright, A Short History of Syriac Literature (London, 1894), pp. 67–72; W. Stewart McCullough, A Short History of Syriac Christianity to the Rise of Islam (Chico, CA, 1982), p. 79; Brock, A Brief Outline, pp. 36–37).

Dating

As we have argued above, the dating of the textual tradition ascribed to the Syriac versions of the Alexander romance and the Alexanderlied difer. he latter, as noted, harks back to a metrical discourse (mēmrā) concerning Alexander by Jacob of Se rūgh and belongs to the epoch of this monophysite bishop, i.e. the 6th century. On the other hand, the Syriac Alexander romance is a translation from a lost Neo-Persian Vorlage in the early 7th century (Nöldeke, Beiträge, pp. 11–17). This Syriac version seems to have been translated in Nestorian circles (Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur, p. 125) in the northern part of Mesopotamia in the late sixth or the early seventh century according to Nöldeke, although Brock has recently proposed a more plausible date around the year 629–630, shortly ater the victorious campaigns of Heraclius against the Persians in the heyday of the Arab-Islamic expansion (Brock, A Brief Outline, p. 51) as can be inferred from the seventh-century Syriac works on Alexander the Great.

Manuscripts

The textual tradition of the metrical discourse (mēmrā) concerning Alexander by Jacob of Serūgh, the so-called Alexanderlied, consists of ive Syriac MSS grouped in three recensions:

1. Sources
2. Textually speaking, the Alexander romance is ailiated with the oldest Greek recension, but it also shows some interesting additions. We may, in the text that concerns us here, address two types of sources:
   • 1. A primary, the result of the causal relation of the Syriac translation with respect to the original Greek through the Neo-Persian intermediate text, which shows the apparent primary connections of two interrelated texts;
   • 2. A secondary, which can be inferred from various parallelisms (structural, thematic, tropological, etc.) established among diferent texts as produced by a number of inluences. Logically, this second type can be further extended depending on the number of relationships established between the Syriac Alexander romance and other works.

The Syriac version of the Alexander romance is the translation of the PC starting from the Neo-Persian version in the early 7th century (C.A. Ciancaglini, “Gli antecedenti del Romanzo siriaco di Alessandro,” in R.B. Finazzi and A. Valvo (eds.), LDECETM, pp. 55–93, and F.A. Pennacchietti, “Qundāqōr: un hapax siriaco del Romanzo di Alessandro tra ilologia e archeologia,” in M. Lamberti and L. Tonelli (eds.), Afroasiatica Tergestina. Papers from the 9th Italian Meeting of Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) Linguistics, Trieste, April 23–24, 1998 (Padua, 1999), pp. 71–82). This Syriac version, judging by the copies of the MSS that have reached us, seems to have been generated in Nestorian circles from north Mesopotamia ( Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur, p. 125; Czeglédy, “he Syriac Legend . . . ,” pp. 231–249; N.V. Pigulevskaya, “Sirijskaya legenda ob Aleksandre Makedonskom,” Palestinskii Sbornik 3 (1958), 75–9). The Alexander legend (“A Christian Legend Concerning Alexander,” according to the title given by Budge in his edition) is a substantially reshaped form of the Alexander romance, ampliied with the apocalyptic topos of Gog and Magog, which is of great importance to the study of apocalyptic literature of the Middle Ages (G.J. Reinink, “Political Power and Right Religion in the East Syrian Disputation between a Monk of Bēt Ḥālē and an Arab Notable,” in E. Grypeou, M. Swanson, and D. homas (eds.), he Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam (Leiden – Boston, 2006), p. 163).

1. Thus, for instance, besides the interpolations made by a Christian hand, the origins of which do not seem to be other than a Christian work, we have the two most famous legends of the Greek recension, such as the “Legend of the Water of Life”59 and the “Legend of the Bronze Gate in the Frontier of Gog and Magog” (Czeglédy, “Monographs on Syriac and Muhammadan Sources . . . ,” pp. 31–39). Neither of them appears in the Syriac version, but they have been added at the end of the work as if they belonged to another cycle. he reason that they were kept apart from the whole body of the work does not seem to be other than the fact that, while the main character is a pagan king in Alexander the Great, it is either a Jewish king or a Christian king in the two legends, and their acts are guided by God.
2. Structure
3. The Alexander romance text we know in the current MSS consists of three neatly diferentiated sections that coincide in turn with the tripartite division of Codex A of the Greek textual tradition of the PC, as well as with the Latin translation by Julius Valerius. In spite of such structural similarity, the Syriac translation, as we have noted above, was not made directly from a Greek text. The Syriac Alexander romance has no proper prologue. he very incipit of the work consists of a very brief introitus whose central element is the title itself (“he History of Alexander the Son of Philip King of the Macedonians,” Taš‖ītā d-’Aleksandrōs bar Fīlīpōs, malk̠ā d-māqdūniyē). We do have a conclusion, nonetheless, represented by the genre of “discourse of the adieu” that appears in chapter XXII of Budge’s edition,75 and ending up with a brief account of his death and his bequest. The format of the narrative material of the Syriac version of Alexander romance, as can be seen, proves quite arbitrary in some cases. Nevertheless, the apparent lack of balance of the three sections is a consequence of the narrative imbalance that results from the incoherent division set up by the editors. he actual division of texts, as was the custom amongst ancient writers, is dictated by the actual development of the events narrated. hose events, assembled by topoi of various kinds (battles, geo- anthropological information, biographical elements, etc.) shape the sub-thematic elements that serve to give form to the cycle of Alexander.

Therefore, the sequence of those narratological elements represents the narrative units by means of which the author designed the textual order preserved in the Syriac version, together with the shits and variations involved in all translation and textual development. In this sense, the textual design of the narrative material in the irst section of the Syriac version difers from the Greek text of the PC. Also, in the second section eight chapters are missing, probably due to a bowdlerization sufered in the Syriac version as a consequence of the loss of two signatures of the Syriac translation which originated in the Greek textual tradition. he third section, however, follows the order of the Greek text while omitting even the ten chapters inserted in the Greek text of Codex A.T

1. First section:
   • Prologue (chapters I–XI). Egypt, a traditional country associated with practical magic and power, is the ruler of the world through its visible head, Nectanebus. he appearance of Nectanebus’s enemies, as a result of the treason plotted by the Egyptian gods against him, make him lee to Macedonia where Olympias and Philip beg for Nectanebus’s interpretative skills so that he could interpret two dreams for them concerning their love relationship and her pregnancy.
   • Youth (chapters XII–XIII). Birth of Alexander under the sign of a favorable star, the early years of the young man and his education. – Adulthood and irst exploits (chapters XIV–XVII). At twelve, Alexander is educated in the arts of horseback riding and war, as well as in astronomical secrets. Fate leads him to make his irst decisions.
   • First victory (chapters XVIII–XIX). he irst cart race in which Alexander takes part ends in Alexander’s competitive victory.
   • Family problems (chapters XX–XXII). he repudiation of Alexander’s mother by Philip, her husband who wishes to marry a woman called Cleopatra, is the cause of an initial mutual confrontation, but their reconciliation also brings about the reunion of Philip and Olympias.
   • First war exploits and the death of Philip (chapters XXIII–XXIV). he irst war descriptions of Alexander show him as peacemaker of internal rebellions, as he put down the rebellions both in Metone ̠ and in Armenia. Upon his return from the second campaign he arrests one heodosius, a rich dwarf who is in love with his mother Olympias, and he delivers him to Philip who kills him with a sword. Ater this Philip dies and is buried by Alexander.
   • Uprising against Persian domination (chapters XXIII–XXIV). his block includes a series of sagas around the topic of the war of Persia that can be structured in a related yet also independent way:
     • Exhortation to war and building of an army. (chapters XXV–XXVI)
     • Sea voyage of Alexander and his army across the Mediterranean until the founding of Alexandria. (chapters XXVII–XXXII)
     • Letter of Aristotle to his disciple Alexander so as to persuade him not to build Alexandria, not being heeded by him. (chapter XXXIII)
     • Alexander claims in Egypt that he is Nectanebus’s son and incites the Egyptians to rebel against Persian rule. (chapter XXXIV)
     • He arrives in Syria through the port of Tyre and ater a second battle he beats the Tyrians and founds Tripoli. (chapter XXXV)
     • First contact of Alexander and Darius through mail correspondence (chapters XXXVI–XLI). Darius, informed of Alexander’s skills, writes him a letter threatening him with cruciixion. This generates an epistolary relationship full of invectives and insults, only interrupted when Alexander has to come back to Macedonia where Olympias is seriously ill. Alexander promises to destroy Darius upon his return.
     • Alexander comes back to Macedonia where his mother recovers her health (chapters XLII–XLIII)
     • Peace-making, conquest, and reconstruction of the Greek territory (chapters XLIV–XLVII)
2. Second section:
   • Problems in the Athens religious-political structures under the rule of Alexander (chapters I–V)
   • Alexander marches against Darius’s army and beats it (chapters VI–XI)
   • Darius’s death at the hands of two hired assassins. Alexander buries him with emperor’s honors and avenges his death by crucifying his assassins (chapters XII–XIII)
   • Alexander becomes protector of Darius’s family and marries his daughter (XIV)
3. Third Section:
   • War against Porus’s Indian army (chapter I–V). Porus (also named Pōl in some Syriac sources),84 King of Indians, who received a call to help from Darius, thinks that there is no sense in ighting Alexander now that the Persian king is dead. He returns to India.85 Alexander gathers his powerful army, now formed by Macedonians and Persians and marches against Porus and his fearful army. Ater twenty exhausting days of ierce ighting Alexander challenges Porus to decide victory in a hand-to-hand combat between the two. Porus accepts and is defeated by Alexander, and is later buried by him.
   • Description of the Brahman way of life (chapters V–VI).
   • Letter to Aristotle where Alexander tells about his exploits (chapters VII–VIII/1). It is a long digression and serves to summarize the exploits of Alexander through the lands of the Far East.
   • The episode of Candace, queen of Ethiopia, and Alexander (chapters VIII/2–XIII), gathers in ive and a half chapters a narrative saga with its correspondent sub-topic variations.86
   • Serapis’s oracle (chapter XIV), through which Alexander learns about his return to Alexandria, is a transition in the narrative thread.
   • Alexander and the Amazons (chapters XV–XVII/1) is a brief description concerning the search and discovery of these ierce women. – Letter of Aristotle to Alexander and letter in turn of the latter to his mother Olympias where he tells about what happened ater his arrival to Asia (chapters XVII/2–XVIII).
   • Alexander’s death prophecy (chapter XIX) begins a inal narrative saga around the death of Alexander as a conclusion to the work.87
   • The conspiracy plot to kill Alexander that leads to an uprising of the Macedonian army who believes him dead, is eventually put down by Alexander himself (chapters XX–XXI).
   • Alexander’s testament (chapter XXII).
   • Alexander’s death whereupon his body is brought to Alexandria and buried by Ptolemy88 (chapter XXIII). – Appendix (chapter XXIV): Alexander’s chronology, the battles, the cities founded by him, and the day of his death.

A) Main characters

• a) in favor: Nectanebus (representing Amon, Heracles, Dionysus), Olympias, Philip
• b) against: Darius, Porus, Qerātōr, Antipater, Iollas, Cassander.

B) Secondary

• a) Transitional: Pythia, Zintōs, Nicolaus, Cleopatra, Lysias, heosidos, Guštāzaf, Sābāntār, Clitomachus, Aeschines, Demades, ̣ Demosthenes, Pasargēs, Bāgīz, ～Ānābdēh, Gundāfār, Paryōg, Prīsqōs, Ptolemy.
• b) Authoritative: Aristotle.
• c) Digressive: the Brahmans, the Amazons, Candace.
• d) Prophetic: Antiphon the augur, the woman with the fourheaded monster (III,19).
• e) Residual: Rōšnāq, Yirāndūk̠t, ～Estehar (Darius’s daughter, ̣ mother, and wife, respectively).