Alexander the Great The Making of a Myth (original) (raw)
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Alexander the Great in Macedonian Folk Traditions
Interface, 2019
This paper focuses on the figure of Alexander the Great in a set of Macedonian folk traditions circulating in Northern Greece in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Macedonian Alexander-folk traditions represent a peculiar set among the other Hellenic folk accounts, because they convey chiefly the idea of familiarity with the hero, who seems to be still living and influencing the people’s everyday life. This bond – almost a mutual ownership between Alexander and the Macedonians – is in fact constantly highlighted by the choice of the themes treated, such as the attribution of monuments to the great conqueror and the use of his historical and mythical persona to explain local customs, features of the landscape, or toponyms. Moreover, (pseudo-)aetiologies, etymologies, and/or descriptions of facts of local interest populate these narratives which, according to their content and purpose, are here grouped into two main categories, geographical and aetiological, and into two subcategories, geographico-aetiological and aetiologico-mythological. The aim here is confined to the discussion, the categorisation, and the translation into English of the Macedonian Alexander-traditions; I hope that this paper will make this notable and lively material accessible to a wider public and help the preservation of its memory.
Alexander the Great and Three Examples of Upholding Mythological Tradition
Alexander the Great and Three Examples of Upholding Mythological Tradition, 2019
This article discusses three episodes from the history of Alexander the Great that illustrate his attitude towards ancient myths and religiosity. It is known that the great conqueror used myths for his own political goals, however, there are at least three episodes in which cultural context comes to the fore and plays a particular role in the king's ideology. First, the profana-tion of Betis' body after the seizure of Gaza. Despite many authors' rebukes of his action, it can be seen that Alexander was imitating Achilles thus trying to strengthen his authority among the troops. The second example is demolition of a Branchidae village in Bactria. Surely, it is an inexcusable act according to secular understanding, but it is righteous from the point of view of traditional religiosity of ancient Greeks and Macedonians. There is strong reason to believe that Alexander thus rather increased than lost his authority since he acted as a defender of the traditional religion. The third episode is a story of Alexander's meeting with the queen of the Amazons. It is impossible to determine whether the story is based on some historical fact, although it is often mentioned in sources. It is possible to suggest that Alexander had it staged in order to revive an ancient myth and emulate his legendary ancestor Heracles. These three episodes had no clear political meaning but carried a deeply symbolic character and placed the king into the world of ancient myths and figures. These, together with similar mythological symbols, indorsed the heroic ideology that served as the foundation for the great campaign.
Several episodes of the ancient "Alexander Romance" find striking analogues in the international folktale tradition, as well as in narrative lore of the ancient Near East. They fall in two broad categories: (1) “Tales of wit”, concerning clever heroes who display their wisdom in various circumstances. (2) “Tales of wonder”, about extraordinary adventures or marvels encountered at distant places of the earth. I have selected two such narratives for discussion in this paper. The first one (the island that was a fish, Alex. Rom. 3.17.2-7) exemplifies the fabulous “tales of wonder” in their purest form. The second one (the portent of death and the court contest, Alex. Rom. 3.30) is also based on a fantastic motif (a monstrous portent presaging the future), although in other respects it is akin to the first category: it centres upon a wise character who demonstrates his acumen by solving a puzzling problem.
From the mediterranean to universality? The myth of Alexander, yesterday and today
Mediterranean Historical Review, 1999
Few myths have had as widespread a diffusion among different civilizations as the legend of Alexander the Great. From its beginning during Alexander's lifetime, the myth aimed at illustrating special rights to universal sovereignty. For this very reason, it was of longlasting interest to various figures in Mediterranean history who, for political, ideological or religious motives, made claims to worldwide authority. But since Alexander had built his own image not as the hero of a conquering civilization, but as a universal figure mediating between various peoples, his myth could never be appropriated, and remains one of the transcultural bridges our time so dramatically needs.
The story of the water of life in the Alexander Romance (codex L 2.39-41) includes the figure of a wise old man. Alexander forbids aged people to follow his expedition, but this elderly fellow is hidden among the soldiers and at a crucial moment advises the Macedonian king how to find the way in the land of darkness. This episode is based on a widespread international folktale (ATU type 981, “Wisdom of Hidden Old Man Saves Kingdom”), already familiar in the ancient world. Graeco-Roman examples indicate that this tale type was in circulation at least since Hellenistic times. Other evidence suggests that it was known over large areas of the ancient Orient, from the Phoenician coast to Mesopotamia and India. The broader narrative about the land of darkness and the immortal fount also derives from eastern (Mesopotamian or Indian) mythical lore. The elderly man’s story is intrinsically connected with the water of life within Alexander’s legend. Demonstrating the virtues of aged people, the sagacious elder vindicates the natural course of human life; this casts an ironic light on Alexander’s wild pursuit of immortality. Pseudo-Kallisthenes’ narrative shows that the immortality desired by Alexander is of no use to the human race. Although the Macedonian conqueror misses the opportunity, there are two characters in the Greek text who do taste the magic water, become immortal, and yet this proves far from beneficial for them: the cook Andreas and Alexander’s daughter Kale. Both of them are expelled from the human world, to lead a bleak and phantasmal kind of existence. Their immortality is not a blessing but a curse. Neither enjoyment nor profit, neither glory nor wisdom can exist outside the normal evolvement of human time — the one so triumphantly exemplified by the sagacious old veteran. This is a peculiarly Hellenic idea, the distinctive contribution of Greek storytellers to the “immortal fount” traditions borrowed from the Orient. It is not present in the Mesopotamian myths about the water or plant of life. These only deplore the hero’s loss of the opportunity for immortality as a great misfortune. For the Mesopotamian mind, everlasting life is the greatest boon that has been denied to our race. If man could become immortal, he would achieve the highest ideal and the utmost felicity. The Greeks thought otherwise. In their view, immortality is not meant for humans, not in the sense of a gift withheld from mankind, but because, if men truly achieved immortal existence, this would lead them to hell rather than heaven. It was the Hellenic spirit that fashioned the myth of Tithonos: the beloved mortal youth who was granted eternal life, only to be condemned to perennial senescence and decay without death. The fate of Alexander’s cook is comparable: he will lead an endless existence bound to the bottom of the ocean, interminably drowning with a stone around his neck, suffering everlasting undeath. This is immortality under Greek eyes: inhuman, unnatural, as desolate as the sea and the desert. There is a greater disaster than losing it, and this is to gain it. The only wisdom is to live out one’s mortal life in full, ageing and acquiring experience with the natural passage of time. This is the profound meaning of Alexander’s adventure with the water of life; and the story of the hidden old man essentially contributes to it, as one of its prime narrative components. The Greek storytellers borrowed the main materials of this legend from the East. But they combined them in a new distinctive way, which helped them infuse the storyline with a characteristically Hellenic worldview. In the Greeks’ hands, the ancient oriental myth about mankind’s lost chance for immortality was transformed into a wisdom parable about the meaning of our life. Rewriting the legend of the water of life in the 20th century, Jorge Luis Borges conceived with enlightening insight that immortality is another form of non-existence. The ancient Greeks had already glimpsed the same truth. Alexander in the Romance does not attain this level of wisdom. He is only left to inconsolably mourn about the eternity he was not fated to conquer. Failing to drink the liquid of life, Alexander will die at the finale, ironically, by a drink of death: a cup of poisoned wine offered him by his cupbearer, who has conspired with many of his marshals to murder him. A second irony also marks the Macedonian king’s end: as he loathed old age, so he will die young, never reaching the mature sagacity of the elderly veteran once hidden among his soldiers. Nevertheless, Odysseus, that distant precursor of Pseudo-Kallisthenes’ Alexander, well knew the truth about immortality. He refused the eternal life proposed him on Calypso’s isle, in order to go back to his wife and home, to Ithaca and the society of his peers. In his tale, just as in the case of Alexander’s cook, immortality was a lonely spot amidst the vast humanless ocean. An appendix examines two medieval oriental offshoots ultimately dependent on the old man’s story in the Alexander Romance: an Indian folktale from Haribhadra’s Upadeśapada and a legend of the Oghuz Turks. The Greek narrative probably spread to those areas via Iran (cf. its Persian rendering in Nizami’s Iskandarnameh).