CHAPTER XXIV

THE STORY OF NECTANEBUS OR THE ALEXANDER LEGEND IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES[2293]

The _Pseudo-Callisthenes_—Its unhistoric character—Julius Valerius—Oriental versions—Medieval epitomes of Julius Valerius—Letters of Alexander—Leo’s _Historia de praeliis_—Medieval metamorphosis of ancient tradition—Survival of magical and scientific features—Who was Nectanebus?—A scientific key-note—Magic of Nectanebus—Nectanebus as an astrologer—A magic dream—Lucian on Olympias and the serpent—More dream-sending; magic transformation—An omen interpreted—The birth of Alexander—The death of Nectanebus—The Amazons and Gymnosophists—_The Letter to Aristotle_.

[Sidenote: The _Pseudo-Callisthenes_.]

The oldest version of the legend or romance of Alexander is naturally believed to have been written in the Greek language but is thought to have been produced in Egypt at Alexandria. But the Greek manuscripts of the story are all of the medieval or Renaissance period; indeed, none of them antedates the eleventh or twelfth century. Furthermore, they differ very considerably in content and arrangement, so that the problem of distinguishing or recovering the original text of the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_, as the work is commonly called, and of dating it, is one with which various scholars have grappled. It has been held that the original Greek text which lies back of the later versions was written not later than 200 A. D. But Basil, writing in Greek in the fourth century and well-versed in Greek culture, is apparently unfamiliar with the story of Nectanebus, since he says, “Without doubt there has never been a king who has taken measures to have his son born under the star of royalty.”[2294] Fortunately we are less interested in the original version than in the medieval development of the tradition. It should, however, perhaps be premised that certain features of the Alexander legend may be detected in embryo in Plutarch’s _Life_ of him.

The true Callisthenes was a historian who accompanied Alexander upon his Asiatic campaigns but then offended the conqueror by opposing his adoption of oriental dress, absolutism, and deification, and was therefore cast into prison on a charge of treason, and there died in 328 B. C. either from ill treatment or disease.[2295] Since Callisthenes was also a relative and pupil of Aristotle, his name was an excellent one upon which to father the romance. However, the oldest Latin version of it professes to employ a Greek text by one Aesopus, possibly because Aesop’s fables accompany the story of Alexander in some of the manuscripts. Yet other versions cite an Onesicritus,[2296] and the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_ has also been attributed to Antisthenes, Aristotle, and Arrian.

[Sidenote: Its unhistoric character.]

Perhaps no better single illustration of the totally unhistorical and romantic character of the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_ can be given than the perversion of Alexander’s line of march in most of the Greek and all of the Latin versions. He is represented as first proceeding to Italy and receiving royal honors at Rome; then he goes to Carthage and reaches the shrine of Ammon by traversing Libya; next he passes through Egypt into Syria and destroys Tyre, after which he crosses Arabia and has his first battle with Darius. Presently he is found back in Greece sacking Thebes and dealing with Corinth, Athens, and Sparta. Then his Asiatic conquests are resumed.

[Sidenote: Julius Valerius.]

The oldest Latin version of the Alexander romance is the _Res gestae Alexandri Macedonis_ of Julius Valerius. Who he was and when he lived are matters still veiled in obscurity; but it is customary to place him in the early fourth century on the basis of Zacher’s contention that the _Res gestae_ is copied in certain portions of the _Itinerarium Alexandri_, which was written during the years 340-345 A. D. This dating would also serve to explain why Basil, writing in Greek before 379, had never heard of a king who had taken steps to have his son born under the star of royalty, while Augustine, writing in Latin between 413 and 426, mentions the story of a sage who selected a certain hour for intercourse with his wife in order that he might beget a marvelous son. This would also suggest that the Latin version was older than the Greek, as in fact the extant manuscripts of it are. The oldest manuscript of Valerius, however, is a badly damaged palimpsest of the seventh century at Turin. Other manuscripts are one at Milan of the tenth century and another at Paris dating about 1200.[2297] The text of Valerius differs considerably from the Greek _Pseudo-Callisthenes_ and was to undergo further alteration in later medieval Latin versions.

[Sidenote: Oriental versions.]

Before speaking of these we may mention other oriental versions of the story. An Armenian text dates from the fifth century. A Syriac version, which dates from the seventh or eighth century and was “much read by the Nestorians,” was itself derived from an earlier Persian rendering. It seems to make use of both the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes and Julius Valerius since it includes incidents from either which are not found in the other. And it omits a considerable section of the Greek version besides adding episodes which are not found in it, although contained in Julius Valerius. We hear further of Arabic and Hebrew versions of the romance, while manuscripts of recent date supply an Ethiopic version of the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_ of unknown authorship and date, together with other Ethiopic histories and romances of Alexander. These are based partly upon Arabic and Jewish works but take great liberties with their sources in making alterations to suit a Christian audience, omitting for example, as Budge points out, Alexander’s victory in the chariot race, and transforming Philip and Alexander into Christian martyrs, or the Greek gods into patriarchs and prophets like Enoch and Elijah. Even the Greek version did not remain unaltered in the Byzantine period when two recensions in prose and two more in verse are distinguished. Indeed, none of the Greek manuscripts of the work antedates the eleventh or twelfth century, they differ greatly, and some of them ascribe the romance to Alexander himself.

[Sidenote: Medieval epitomes of Julius Valerius.]

Such variations in the eastern versions of the story of Alexander illustrate how the middle ages made the classical heritage their own and prepare us for similar alterations in the Latin account current in western Europe. The work of Julius Valerius, though written in the rhetorical style characteristic of the declining Roman Empire and composed almost on the verge of the middle ages, was to undergo further alterations to adapt it more closely to medieval taste and use. By the ninth century, if not earlier, two epitomes of it had been made, and, beginning with that century, manuscripts of the shorter of these epitomes become far more numerous than those of the original Valerius.[2298]

[Sidenote: Letters of Alexander.]

Two sections of the Alexander legend were omitted in the Epitome, not because medieval men had lost interest in them but because they had become so fond of them as to enlarge upon them and issue them as distinct works. They often, however, accompany the Epitome in the manuscripts. One of these was the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle on the Marvels of India.[2299] It is longer than the corresponding chapter of Valerius[2300] where a letter of Alexander to Aristotle is quoted and also differs from any known Greek text. The fact that reference is made to it in the longer Epitome leads to the conclusion that the Letter is older. This would also seem to be the case with the other work, a short series of letters interchanged between Alexander and Dindimus, the king of the Brahmans, since the Epitome omits the two chapters of Valerius which tell of Alexander’s interview with the Brahmans. It is believed that Alcuin, who died in 804, in one of his letters to Charlemagne speaks of sending these epistles exchanged between Alexander and Dindimus along with the equally apocryphal correspondence of the apostle Paul and the philosopher Seneca. No such letters are found in the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_, for the ten chapters on the Brahmans found in one Greek codex are interpolated from the treatise of Palladius, likewise in the form of a correspondence.[2301] Julius Valerius does not even mention Dindimus, but a third epistolary discussion of the Brahmans exists in Latin, _De moribus Brachmannorum_, ascribed to St. Ambrose.[2302]

[Sidenote: Leo’s _Historia de praeliis_.]

Leo, an archpriest of Naples, who went to Constantinople about 941-944 on an embassy for two dukes of Campania, John and Marinus, brought back with him a _History containing the conflicts and victories of Alexander the Great, King of Macedon_. Later Duke John, who was fond of science, had Leo translate this work from Greek into Latin, in which tongue it is entitled _Historia de praeliis_. We learn these facts from its prologue which is found only in the oldest extant manuscript, a Bamberg codex of the eleventh century,[2303] and in a manuscript of the twelfth or thirteenth century at Munich. The location of these two manuscripts suggests that the work was early carried from Italy to Germany, lands then connected in the Holy Roman Empire. Of the _De praeliis_ apart from the prologue there came to be many copies, but most of them date from the later middle ages, and the importance of the work as a source for the vernacular romances of Alexander has been somewhat overestimated, since Meyer has shown that no manuscript of it is found in France until the thirteenth century and since the manuscripts of the Epitome are far more numerous.[2304]

[Sidenote: Medieval metamorphosis of ancient tradition.]

In the foregoing observations we may seem to have digressed too far from our main theme of science and magic into the domain of literary history. But the development of the Alexander legend, which happens to have been traced more thoroughly than perhaps any other one thread in the medieval metamorphosis of ancient tradition, throws light at least by analogy upon many matters in which we are interested: the state of medieval manuscript material, the continuity and yet the alteration of ancient culture during the early middle ages, the process of translation from the Greek which went on even then, and the varying rapidity or slowness with which books circulated and ideas permeated.

[Sidenote: Survival of magical and scientific features.]

Moreover, the story of Alexander, especially as adapted by the middle ages, contained a large amount of magic and science, more especially the former. The Epitome might omit a great deal else, but it kept intact the opening portion of the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_ and of Julius Valerius concerning the adventures of Nectanebus, the sage and magician from Egypt, the astrologer and the natural father of Alexander. Indeed, the titles in some manuscripts suggest that Nectanebus came to rival Alexander for medieval readers as the hero of the story. Thus we find a _History of Alexander, King of Macedon, and of Nectanebo, King of Egypt_,[2305] or an account _Of the Life and Deeds of Neptanabus, astronomer of Egypt_,[2306] or a Latin metrical version by “Uilikinus” or Aretinus Quilichinus of Spoleto in 1236 entitled, _The History of the Science of the Egyptians and of Neptanabus their king who afterwards was the true father of Alexander_.[2307]

[Sidenote: Who was Nectanebus?]

Pliny in the _Natural History_ describes the obelisk of Necthebis, king of Egypt, whom he places five centuries before Alexander the Great.[2308] Plutarch, however, in his life of Agesilaus and Nepos in his life of Chabrias mention a Nectanebus II who struggled against Persia for the throne of Egypt about 361 B. C. and later was forced to flee to Ethiopia. In the Alexander romance, however, it is to Macedon that Nectanebus retreats. A Nectabis is listed as a magician along with Ostanes, Typhon, Dardanus, Damigeron, and Berenice, by Tertullian, writing about 200 A. D.[2309] As a matter of fact, in the Thirtieth Dynasty were two kings named respectively Nektanebes or _Nekht-Har-ehbēt_, who ruled 378 to 361 B. C., and Nektanebos or _Nekhte-nebof_, who ruled 358 to 341 B. C. Both have left considerable buildings.[2310] It is the latter who was forced by the Persians to flee to Ethiopia nine years before Alexander conquered Egypt and who is the hero of our story. The stele of Metternich is covered with magical formulae ascribed to Nectanebo.[2311]

[Sidenote: A scientific key-note.]

A note suggestive of both natural science and occult science is struck by the opening passage of the Latin epitomes and of the oldest Greek manuscript; the first page of Julius Valerius is missing and has to be supplied from the epitomes. The first words are “The Egyptian sages,” and the first sentence describes their scientific ability in measuring the earth and in tracing the revolutions of the heavens and numbering the stars. “And of them all Nectanabus is recognized to have been the most prudent ... for the elements of the universe obeyed him.” In the opening sentences of the oldest Greek version and of the Ethiopic version even more emphasis is laid than in the Epitomes upon the learning of the Egyptians in general and of Nectanebus in

## particular, and of the close connection of that learning with astrology

and magic.[2312] We read, “Now there lived in the land of Egypt a king who was called Bektanis, and he was a famous magician and a sage, and he was deeply learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians. And he had more knowledge than all the wise men who knew what was in the depths of the Nile and in the abysses, and who were skilled in the knowledge of the stars and of their seasons and in the knowledge of the astrolabe and in the casting of nativities.... And by his learning and by his observations of the stars Nectanebus was able to predict what would befall anyone who was about to be born.”[2313] In one Latin manuscript of the fifteenth century the _History of Alexander the Great_ begins with the

5 sentence, “Books tell us how powerful the race of the Egyptians were in mathematics and the magic art.”[2314]

[Sidenote: Magic of Nectanebus.]

Next we are told, and the account is practically the same in all the versions of the story, how by means of his basin filled with water, his wax images of ships and men, his rod or wand of ebony, and the incantations with which he addressed the gods above and below, Nectanebus had been hitherto able to destroy all the armies and to sink all the fleets that had come against him. But when one day he found his magic unavailing to save him, he shaved his head and beard and fled to Macedon, where in linen garb he plied the trade of an astrologer.

[Sidenote: Nectanebus as an astrologer.]

In this he soon became so celebrated that the fame of his predictions reached the ears of the queen Olympias, who consulted him during an absence of Philip. When she asked Nectanebus by means of what art he divined the future so truthfully, he answered that there were many varieties of divination. Julius Valerius and the Latin epitomes mention specifically only interpreters of dreams and astrologers, but the Greek, Syriac, and Ethiopic versions give more elaborate lists of various kinds of diviners.[2315] Nectanebus next produced an astrological tablet adorned with gold and ivory and with each planet and the horoscope represented by a different stone or metal. With the aid of this he read the queen’s horoscope and told her that she would have a son by the God Ammon and would be forewarned soon to that effect in a dream. Olympias replied that if such a dream came to her, she would no longer employ Nectanebus as a _magus_ but honor him as a god.

[Sidenote: A magic dream.]

Nectanebus thereupon sought for herbs useful to command dreams, plucked them, and pressed a syrup out of them. He placed a wax image of the queen inscribed with her name upon a little couch, lighted lamps, and poured his syrup over the wax figure, muttering a secret and efficacious incantation the while. By this means he brought it about that the queen would dream or think she dreamed whatever he said to the wax image of her. Later Nectanebus himself played the part of the god Ammon, announcing his coming beforehand to Olympias by making by his “science” a dragon which glided into her presence.

[Sidenote: Lucian on Olympias and the serpent.]

Lucian of Samosata in the second century tells us that it was a common story in his time that Olympias had lain with a serpent before giving birth to Alexander. He suggests as the explanation of how this tale originated the fact that at Pella in Macedonia there is a breed of large serpents, “so tame and gentle that women make pets of them, children take them to bed, they will let you tread on them, have no objection to being squeezed, and will draw milk from the breasts like infants.... It was doubtless one of these that was her bedfellow.”[2316] As is apt to be the case in ancient efforts to give a natural explanation of what purports to be miraculous or supernatural, Lucian’s biology is only slightly less incredible than Nectanebus’s magic transformations.

[Sidenote: More dream-sending: magic transformation.]

As the queen became pregnant, “Nectanebus consecrated a hawk and told it to go to Philip,” who was still absent, “to stand by him through the night and to instruct him in a dream as it was ordered.”[2317] The vision in question was explained by an interpreter of dreams to Philip as signifying that his wife would have a son by the god Ammon. Nevertheless Philip was somewhat suspicious and hastened to bring his wars to a close and hurry home. Nectanebus, however, rendering himself invisible by means of the magic art, continued to deceive both king and queen. Once he terrified the court by appearing again in the form of a huge hissing serpent, but put his head in Olympias’s lap and then kissed her. Thereupon he turned from a serpent into an eagle and flew away. Philip was then really convinced that his wife’s lover was the god Ammon.

[Sidenote: An omen interpreted.]

Before the birth of Alexander the following omen befell Philip. As he sat absorbed in thought in a place where there were many birds flying about, one of them laid an egg in his lap. It rolled to the ground, the shell broke, and a snake issued forth. It circled about the egg-shell but when it tried to re-enter the shell was prevented by death. When Antiphon, the interpreter of omens, was consulted concerning this portent, he said that it signified that a son should be born who would conquer the world but die before he could regain his native land.

[Sidenote: The birth of Alexander.]

The day of Olympias’s delivery now approached and Nectanebus, in his office of astrologer, stood by her side to tell her when the favorable moment had arrived for the birth of her child. Once he urged her to wait, since a child born at that moment would be a slave and a captive. Again he bade her restrain herself, for at that moment an effeminate would be born. At last the favorable instant came for the birth of a world conqueror, and Alexander was born amid an earthquake, thunder, and lightning. In this case, therefore, the moment of birth is regarded as controlling the destiny. Many astrologers, however, considered the moment of conception as of greater importance; we have already heard Augustine tell of the sage who chose a certain hour for intercourse with his wife in order to beget a marvelous son; and in the thirteenth century Albertus Magnus, in his treatise on animals, informs us that “Nectanebus, the natural father of Alexander, in having intercourse with his mother Olympias, observed the time when the sun was entering Leo and Saturn was in Taurus, since he wished his son to receive the form and power of those planets.”[2318]

[Sidenote: The death of Nectanebus.]

The death of Nectanebus was as closely in accord with the stars as was the birth of Alexander. At the age of twelve Alexander found Nectanebus in consultation with Olympias and, attracted by his astrological tablet, made him promise to show him the stars at night. Then as Nectanebus walked along star-gazing, Alexander pushed him into a steep pit which they chanced to pass, and Nectanebus lay there with a broken neck. When he asked Alexander the reason for his act, the boy replied that it was in order to convince him of the futility of his art, since he gazed at the stars unmindful of what threatened him from the ground. But Nectanebus rebuts this revised version of the maid servant’s taunt to Thales by telling Alexander that he had been forewarned by the stars that he should be killed by his own son, and by revealing to Alexander the secret of his birth.[2319]

In concluding the story of Nectanebus it is perhaps worth while to emphasize the fact that the epitomes and Julius Valerius often use the word _magus_ of Nectanebus as an astrologer and that in general magic, astrology, and divination are indissolubly connected.

[Sidenote: The Amazons and Gymnosophists.]

Some account is given both in Julius Valerius and the longer epitome of Alexander’s exchange of letters with the Amazons and of questions which he put to the Gymnosophists of India (i. e. the Brahmans) and their replies. Neither of these promising themes, however, results in the introduction of any magic or occult science. We also find in the _Stromata_ of Clement of Alexandria[2320] a list of ten questions which Alexander propounded to ten of the Gymnosophists of India and their ingenious answers given under pain of death if their responses proved unsatisfactory.

[Sidenote: The letter to Aristotle.]

Nor does Alexander’s letter to Aristotle on the marvels of India reveal many specific instances of superstition that are at all interesting. For the most part it recounts his marches, the sufferings of his army from thirst, combats with wild beasts, serpents, and hippopotamuses, and the treasures which he captured. Alexander states that “in former letters I informed you about the eclipse of the sun and moon and the constancy of the stars and the signs of the air.”[2321] He tells now, however, of a place where there are two trees of the sun and moon, speaking Indian and Greek, one masculine and the other feminine, from which one may learn what the future has in store for good or evil. As to this Alexander was inclined to be incredulous, but the natives swore that it was true, and his companions urged him “not to be defrauded of the experience of so great a thing.” Accordingly he made his way to the spot despite the innumerable beasts and snakes which beset his path. Chastity was essential in order to approach the trees, and he also had to lay aside his rings, royal robes, and shoes. The sun tree then told him at dawn that he would never see home or his mother and sisters again. At eventide the moon tree added that he would die at Babylon.[2322] The third and final response, vouchsafed by the sun tree, was that his death would be from poison, but the name of the poisoner the oracular tree refused to divulge lest Alexander try to kill him first and thus cheat the three Fates. Alexander has consequently had to content himself, as he informs Aristotle in the closing sentence of his letter, with building a monument to perpetuate his name among all mortals.[2323]

Of other spurious treatises ascribed to Alexander in the middle ages, works of alchemy and works of astrology, we shall treat in a later chapter on the Pseudo-Aristotle.

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