All Alexander's Women
Page 16
In his turn he was copied and ‘interpreted’ by Diodoros of Sicily (who moreover cited at length from Hieronymos), Plutarch, Curtius and Justin. A later rip-off by an anonymous writer known as ‘the pseudo-Kallisthenes,’ around 220 AD, became thé bestseller of the Middle Ages.
On the other hand, Arrian found books written by eyewitnesses: the memoirs of Ptolemy, Aristoboulos and Nearchos, about the years when they were a general, an engineer and an admiral in Alexander’s inner circle. Now these books are no longer extant.
With his own experience, Arrian was capable of judging all of them on their merits. He considered Kallisthenes self-serving and untrustworthy, and Kleitarchos a sensationalist — with all authors of their school, called the ‘Vulgate’, equally biased. Reading Diodoros and Curtius, or the later version by Justin, it is easy to see why. They were writers who did not let the truth stand in the way of a juicy story.
It is not known why Arrian decided not to use Hieronymos, who seems to have been a rather neutral informant, not notably biased in favor of, or against Alexander. But his close relation with Eumenes might have made him suspect. So in the end, Arrian based his biography mostly on Ptolemy, Aristoboulos and Nearchos.
Plutarch of Chaironea (45-120 AD), who wrote one generation earlier than Arrian, drew on an even wider variety of sources, and loved to show that off. For example, in his annotation about Alexander and the Amazons in Alexander, 46, 1–6 (time and place are 330 BC, in North-West Persia):
“Alexander routed an army of the Scythians, and after having crossed the Orexartes river he received the visit of the queen of the Amazons. A visit that is recorded in most writers, such as Kleitarchos, Polykleitos, Onesikritos, Antigenes and Ister. But Aristoboulos and Chares the Chamberlain are joined by Hekataeus of Eritria, Ptolemy, Antiklides, Filon of Thebes, Filippos of Theangela, Filippos of Calchis and Duris of Samos in claiming that this visit is a fiction.”
Arrian disparages this myth, saying he does not believe Amazons ever existed. In the tradition of the oriental ‘Alexander Romances’, however, the Amazons and other legends would live on for centuries. In the 12th-century Persian Romance Darab-Nama, Alexander fights against, but finally marries, a woman warrior with goddesslike powers. The theme strives to mix Hellenistic elements (Hippolyta, Penthesileia) and Old-Persian traditions (the heroine symbolises the goddess Anahita, and is the one who officially proclaims him King of Persia) - but within a Muslim culture, for together they conquer India to spread Islam there.
THE ORIENTAL SOURCES
The various oriental Alexander romances had been ‘canonized’ by one of the greatest Persian poets, Abu Muhammad bin Yusuf. Under his pen name Nizami Ganjavi, he published this work in 1203 AD, dedicated to his king in Tabriz. It is usually called the Sikandar-Nama.
Nizami needed all 216 couplets of Chant 64 to present the Auspicious Horseman as a brave warrior, and then to reveal him as a woman. “In battle, his helmet fell down from his head; a spring-blooming face appeared beneath the helmet, much more beautiful and tender than the tulip-leaf”. Another 170 couplets in Chant 67 describe the Amazon’s seduction of Alexander, and their love-night together.
For an abridged quote to taste the flavour of this elaborate poem, we begin at verse 62 of Chant 67, “Sikandar’s Toying with the Damsel given by the Khan of Chin(a)”. She is speaking:
“The King seized the world’s throne — Oh wonder!
I captivated him, Sikandar, who captured the world.
If he cast an arrow by the power of his army,
mine is a glance of eye, arrow-casting.
If he brings a heavy mace of gold on his shoulder,
my two locks about the ear are two maces.
If through pre-excellence he became sovereign of the world,
by soul-cherishing I am sovereign of the lovely ones!
When I cast up my veil from my face,
I purchase the world for a single hair of mine.
…
Him I fascinate by remedy: union,
and consume with pain: separation.
She am I who does this;
save me, no one did this!
…
Of the door of chastity of my hidden garden,
no-one save the gardener Sikandar knows the key.
When I reveal the grace of my limbs,
I render defective the brain.
A little of the sorcery of my eyes reached Babylon,
from which issue these magic arts.
...
By giving a particle of perfume from my tress,
I take tribute: place the wax-seal with the sovereignty of Chin;
strike five drums for the plunder of Rum [the empire of the West].
…
On that I am intent, that I may employ song;
may draw him, Sikandar, like my harp, into my bosom;
may sometimes give a kiss to his intoxicated eye;
may sometimes give my tress into his hand.”
…
“The King, through love of that sweet and graceful one,
came like a white falcon to that young partridge, the Damsel.
A night of privacy and a beauteous one like that!
From her, how can one draw the rein?
…
The two lovers became two jewels of coral,
and dashed the two particles of one kind together.
When the ruby pierced the unpierced gem,
the gem indeed rested, and the ruby indeed slept.
At that fountain of life,
Sikandar enjoyed much happiness and joyousness.”
(Translation: H. Wilberforce Clarke)
Nizami wrote his epic in two parts. Only the first one, also known as the Shah-Nama, has been translated into English, by H. Wilberforce Clarke. In his 840-page edition of 1880, the Amazon story occupies no less than 40 pages.
It has been demonstrated that the Sikandar-Nama and the earlier oriental tales about Alexander’s exploits, also found in Firdausi’s Shah-Nama (1010 AD), are heavily indebted to translations of the text of the pseudo-Kallisthenes. They all transmit such typical ‘pseudo-Kallisthenes mistakes’ as making Roxane a daughter of the Persian High King Darius. But Nizami corrects some of its errors, so he must have drawn on other classical sources too.
On Alexander’s origins, Firdausi contradicts even himself. In his epic on the succession of Persia’s mythical and historical kings, he first describes Alexander as a Persian prince of the Kiyani branch, with legitimate rights to the ‘Divine Glory’ of a High King. But later, when the epic has moved on to the era of the Sassanid rulers, Firdausi follows another tradition, with a ferocious condemnation of Alexander as Persia’s enemy. Here he depicts him as a usurper, and the culprit of the physical destruction of the sacred taqdis, the mythological throne of the Persian High Kings.
Curiously, Firdausi’s doublethink about Alexander has endured into the present age. For example, we read this lament in a recently published Persian Myths, by the Iranian author Vesta Sarkhosh:
“It is surprising, though not impossible to explain, that this foreign conqueror could be acclaimed as a great man by his friends. Though a usurper, Alexander actually became known in Persian literature and history chronicles as a great philosopher and statesman. Only very sparsely there are descriptions of the negative aspects of his character or his bad deeds; like the destruction of the mythological Persian throne, and the burning of the Avesta, which the 10th century historian Tabari considered ‘one of the most depraved acts ever committed’.
In spite of everything, Alexander was accepted in Iran’s national epics as a true hero and a legitimate heir to the throne. That legitimacy must have come about as a result of political necessity, because only sovereigns with genuine rights to the Royal Glory were elected to reign over Iran. For a foreign usurper there would be no place in the history of the nation; so in order to legitimise Alexander, the Shah-Nama considers him as a half-brother of the
last Achaemenid king.”
Nizami keeps closer to the historical truth of Alexander’s biography, beginning the Sikandar-Nama at his birth in Greece, and then relating his conquest of the world (though he ends this part with a myth of Alexander returning to Greece). He rejects the embroidered versions in Firdausi, where Alexander is given either a divine birth or a convoluted fathering by Darius, and simply states he was the son of the Greek king Philip II.
The second part of Nizami’s epic, usually known as the Iqbal-Nama, elevates Alexander above world-conqueror status, to prophet and philosopher. The text describes his erudite relations with wise men and scientists. But at the end of this book, trying to come back to biographical style, Nizami stumbles again into the ‘pseudo-Kallisthenes’ tradition.
Here, he transmits Alexander’s fake Last Will, known in the West as the Liber de Morte. This is a typical propaganda theme to please all sorts of rulers who glorify themselves as descendants of the heroes among whom Alexander himself, according to this ‘testament’, had distributed his realm. Faked history to legitimise the kingdoms that these warlords had carved out for themselves from different parts of the empire.
ALEXANDER THE DHU-’L-QARNAIN, IN THE KORAN
The reason why Nizami sees fit to elevate Alexander to ‘prophet’ status is that his fame has given him the ultimate triumph in the Islamic world: he is canonised in the Holy Koran. The 18th Sura, verses 82-102, has prophet Muhammad answering a question on Dhu’l-Qarnain (literally: ‘the Two-Horned’). He states that Allah himself let it be known that “Verily, we made him powerful in the earth, and gave him means to accomplish everything he pleased. And Dhu’l-Qarnain said: ‘This is a mercy from my Lord’.” (Then the Two-Horned One goes on to praise Allah’s mercy, and to threaten all unbelievers with hell).
Modern exegesis explains that the sanctified words of Allah’s prophet were prompted by questions of unbelievers in Mecca, and that there is no doubt he was referring to the historical Alexander the Great. This means that, in 7th century Mecca, both the unbelievers and Muhammad’s followers still were avid readers of Arab translations of the old tales about the Two-Horned world-conqueror.
The prophet Muhammad himself also was a warrior leader. So his God-given approval for Alexander/Iskander as a ruler “powerful in the earth” elevated him to the status of a perfect forebear for new conquering dynasties in the Islamic world. Its effects reached out to its furthest frontiers.
Nearly two thousand years after Alexander’s death, new Islamic kings on the Indonesian island of Sumatra elaborated just such a theory to legitimise their rule. They assured that the Dhu’l-Qarnain himself had sent one of his sons to continue his dynasty in this part of the world. And so, when the warrior kingdom of Acheh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, was at the peak of its power and wealth around 1620 AD, its brilliant and ruthless sultan had himself proclaimed as ‘Iskandar Muda’, that is, “the Young Alexander.”
Nizami offers various explanations about the nickname of Dhu’l-Qarnain, as it has become a title fit to be mentioned in the Holy Koran. One is to describe Alexander as a famous ‘world-traveller’, through an etymology of the Arab word qarn as “the sun’s upper border when it rises above the horizon”. So this ‘double rising sun’ would mean that Alexander had seen the sun rise both in West and East.
A second etymology explains qarn as equivalent of “generation”, so it would make Alexander ‘a hero who lived through two generations’. A third etymology translates qarn as “hair lock,” and here Nizami has a funny story of Alexander trying to hide his too big ears under his hair.
The fourth etymology correctly identifies qarn as “horn,” and goes on to explain that “The Two-Horned” meant (although Nizami does not specify why) that Alexander was protected by the ancient gods.
The “Two-Horned” nickname allows Nizami to tell the following fable: “Alexander was ashamed of his big ears, and hid them under his golden crown. Only the slave who was his barber knew the secret, but when the slave died a successor had to be appointed. When the new barber arrived, the king warned him first of all he would have to keep the secret of the too-big ears. If not, Alexander would tear his ears off him and have him killed. The new slave, totally terrified, lost the power of speech. The burden of the secret made him sick, and so one day he left the palace, went out into the countryside and found a profound well-hole. He stuck his head inside and screamed out the secret of the king’s big ears. That eased his mind, and he returned to palace.
But from the well, a bamboo-stalk containing the secret grew up and up. A shepherd passing by cut the stalk to make a flute; and one day, Alexander walking about in the countryside heard a shepherd’s flute performing a song about his too-big ears. Deducing that his barber slave had revealed the secret, he interrogated him. The slave, though knowing his life was at stake, explained the truth: unable to carry the burden of the secret alone, he had sought out the safest place –so he thought– to scream it into.
Alexander then pardoned the slave, because he understood the lesson that, in the end, all secrets end up being exposed.”
THE SOURCE OF THE ALEXANDER ROMANCE
These oriental Alexander Romances were derived, like their Western counterparts, from a Greek source in Alexandria now known as ‘the pseudo-Kallisthenes’. He achieved one of the strangest success stories in world literature.
Scholars qualify him as a rather ignorant scribe, who tried to profit from a renewed Alexander-rage in the reigns of the Roman emperors Caracalla (211-217) and Alexander Severus (222-235). Living around that time in Alexandria, the scribe composed a patchwork with various texts he had found: an ancient biography –probably a bastard child of Kleitarchos, who had also lived in this city–; a series of forged letters between Alexander, Olympias and other protagonists, that circulated under the last Ptolemies; and the faked Last Will now known as the Liber de Morte.
He also quoted a letter supposedly written by Darius’ mother and daughter to thank Alexander for his chivalrous treatment:
“Greetings to King Alexander! We implore the Gods in heaven, who have thrown down the name of Darius and the glory of the Persians, that they designate you as the lasting king of the civilised universe; and that you may distinguish yourself by your reasons, your prudence and your power.
We know very well that in your arms we will live with dignity, as you never abused of us as your prisoners. We implore the heavens above to give you happy times and innumerable years of power. Your deeds testify to your highest birth. Now, we will no longer live as prisoners of war, and we know that in Alexander we have a new Darius. We prostrate ourselves with reverence before Alexander, who will not submit us to outrages.
And we have written to everywhere: ‘Peoples of Persia, know that at the moment of his death, Darius found in Alexander a magnificent king. Fortune now makes Roxane marry Alexander, the King of the whole universe. You all should behave towards Alexander in accordance with his benevolence, because the glory of the Persians is now arising again. Be happy, like we are, in acclaiming Alexander as the greatest of all Kings’. This is what we have openly told the Persians.
We send you our best greetings.”
Another noteworthy passage in the pseudo-Kallisthenes describes an attempt by queen-mother Sisygambis to broker an agreement between her firstborn Darius and her newfound son Alexander, in order to avoid further bloodshed. Sisygambis is on record here as having written a secret letter.
The story tells correctly that the High King, after the last pitched battle he has lost “on the shores of the Tigris”, flees into Northeast Persia. But he goes on sending orders to his satraps and vassals to levy a new army. Then, the pseudo-Kallisthenes continues:
“As the mother of Darius heard about these events, she sent him a secret message which she had written as follows: ‘I greet my son Darius. I have heard you are gathering many men with the intention to make war again on Alexander. Do not put the universe upside down, my son, for the future is uncertain. So you
should rather leave your expectations for a better occasion; do not put to risk your life, by forcing such an ambiguous situation.
As about us, we are receiving the highest honours as we are in the power of king Alexander. And he did not make me prisoner as the mother of his enemy, but has given me a respectable personal guard. Therefore I trust that you both can arrive at a good compromise’.”
So from some earlier source, the Alexandrian scribbler has picked up that the Persian queen-mother had the means (which he does not explain) to write and send letters in secret. Plus, that she had sufficient political experience and status to counsel the High King on such state matters as negotiations over a possible agreement with Alexander, and trusts her proposals will be attended to.
Centuries later, in the Byzantine Empire, an ignorant patriarch confounded this author with Alexander’s official historian Kallisthenes. Through lack of a better description, the nickname of pseudo-Kallisthenes would stick. Not because of their literary or historical qualities, but on the wings of Alexander’s fame, the scribblings of this pseudo-Kallisthenes spread wide and far.
They were copied and translated, often in mangled forms, into some seventy versions and dozens of languages. The first was a translation into Latin by Julius Valerius, consul in 338 AD; followed by versions in Syriac, Pahlevi Persian, Hebrew, Georgian, Armenian (5th century), Turkish, Arab, Coptic, and Ethiopic. After a ‘remake’ in the Vulgar Latin of the 10th century, there flourished a new spate of manuscript copies in Romanic and other European languages: Italian, French, Spanish, German, English, Swedish, Polish, Hungarian, Rumanian, Serb, Bulgarian, and Russian. Meanwhile, via India, the tales had also found their way into Siamese, Malay, and Javanese.
Until the advent of the Gutenberg press, no other text –apart from the Bible– was more widely reproduced than these Life and Deeds of Alexander. The last popular editions were still reprinted in Venice in the 19th century.