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The Greek Alexander Romance (Penguin Classics)

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This is a visionary reimagining of the conquests of Alexander the Great as a cosmological journey to the boundaries of the known world of the second century a.d. when the text was composed. As such, it has nothing to do with, nor is it in any way affiliated to, such attempts at historical accuracy as Arrian's Campaigns. This is the story of Alexander caught in the process of transformation into the stuff of myth and legend. Indeed, the lineaments of the narrative have all the elements of the life of a World Savior, like the Gospels or the Pali canon texts of the Buddha's life: he is born, for instance, as part of a modified Virgin Birth, in which the last Egyptian pharaoh, Nectanebo, contrives to sleep with Alexander's mother while Philip is away on campaign. Nectanebo convinces Olympias that he is a god, and one, moreover, capable of transforming into a serpent, so that the traditional imagery of the classic Virgin Birth by the descent of a bird from above--i.e. Leda and the Swan; Mary and the angel Gabriel--is reversed to an insemination by a serpentine divinity from below. By the time the narrative closes, moreover, we are told that Alexander was born in the month of January and died in April, the same two points of the year which are of significance for the Christ myth. Here, Alexander, like Christ before him, is being deified.

Alexander's journeys in this narrative have a cosmological significance that puts the story squarely in the tradition of other such cosmological narratives as the Irish Voyage of Brendan, or the Estonian Kalevipoeg, or indeed, even the Gilgamesh Epic. We witness Alexander pushing into strange lands populated by monsters and demons, men with the heads of dogs and women vampires. We see him descend in a prototypal submarine to the depths of the sea, and ascend on the wings of eagles into the heavens, where he is approached by an angelic being who tells him to turn back. We journey with him to India, where he discourses with Hindu sages, and follow him on to the Nubian kingdom of Meroe, where he encounters Queen Candace and nearly succumbs to her manipulations. There is even a scene involving Amazons who volunteer to become part of his army.

It is all very exhilaratingly told, and best of all, it is short. The comparison with the Gilgamesh Epic, it is worth noting, seems appropriate in certain respects, although the two stories are exactly opposed in both sense and significance, for whereas the whole point of the Alexander Romance is to show him constructing a gigantic world megalopolis--founding one Alexandria after the next as he goes along--the point of the Gilgamesh Epic had concerned its hero's disillusionment with life under urban conditions followed by a desire, then, to leave the city behind in quest of a cosmic religious experience.

For myth scholars, the Alexander Romance is essential. For Alexander scholars, it serves as yet another text with a different point of view on their hero. For everyone else, it is just a good, entertaining romp through the universe before it was redecorated by Copernicus and Galileo.

--John David Ebert, author of "The New Media Invasion."

A very nice and easy book to read.The Alexander Romance is based on myth,legends and part of history.It is really up to the reader, who knows a lot of Alexander's history to decipher which is truth and which is myth.
Otherwise read it with a grain of salt.

This is a very interesting Greek romance, very famous and popular. I recommend the book. But I want that the translator mentioned on Arabic-Persian version of Iskandar legends also comperably, since PSEUDO-CALLISTHENES's story is too much famous for us Japanese.