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Browsing Department of Humanities by Subject "Alexander Romance"
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Item Alexander’s gate and the unclean nations: translation, textual appropriation, and the construction of barriers(2016) Garstad, BenjaminThe Alexander Romance and the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius deserve a place in any discussion of the impact of the translator’s work on the construction of memory in multicultural societies. Both works are remarkable as the products and the objects of translation throughout the middle ages. Successive recensions of the Alexander Romance were translated, either from the original Greek or from Latin translations, into numerous vernacular languages until there were popular versions of the Romance in circulation from Iceland to Indonesia. The Apocalypse was first written in Syriac at the isolated monastery of Singara, but under the impulse of the initial Arab conquests it was translated into Greek and then Latin for a readership that stretched from one end of the Mediterranean to the other; translations into various vernaculars were made throughout the middle ages in places as far apart as England and Russia. The remarkable extent to which translation made both the Romance and the Apocalypse available to ever wider audiences has long been recognized. What has not necessarily been appreciated to the same extent is the cultural impact of these translations, especially in regard to the contact and conflict of cultures. I would like to redress this neglect by drawing attention to the implications of a single episode, one borrowed from the Apocalypse into a later recension of the Romance and perhaps the most famous incident in either work: Alexander walling up the Unclean Nations, the agents of the End Times, beyond the Mountains of the North. Up to the appearance of this incident Alexander had been seen, as he perhaps still is, as a conqueror who extended not only his own realm, but the cultural sphere of the Greeks as well, drawing barbarian peoples into the civilized world of the oikoumene. Under the impact of the Arab conquests, I will argue, Alexander was given the very different, but just as formidable, task of excluding foreign and exotic peoples from a world which was ideally homogeneous, represented by his confining of the Unclean Nations. This act symbolizes the reaction which characterized the next several centuries of Byzantine strategy, of retrenchment, defense of the frontiers, and assimilation of all deviant groups (pagans, heretics, and Jews) within the borders. The memory of Alexander inspired by repeated translations of the Romance and Apocalypse spawned this xenophobic response not only in Byzantium, but throughout Europe, until the Turks were at the gates of Vienna in 1683. Perhaps its legacy can still be discerned today in the inclination toward eschatological hysteria provoked by the perceived aggression of the Muslim world.Item Alexander’s return to Greece in the Alexander romance(2016) Garstad, BenjaminThe Alexander Romance, a largely fictional account of Alexander the Great, is full of odd and arresting discrepancies with the more trustworthy historical accounts of the conqueror’s career. The route of the campaign described in the Romance is not the least of these inconsistencies, taking Alexander, as it does, along roads he never traveled and to places he never saw. Perhaps the oddest and most remarkable deviation from the historical record in the Romance’s version of Alexander’s itinerary is not a visit to some unlikely, exotic, or fabulous locale, but his return to Greece in the midst of his eastern campaign. Whereas, in fact, Alexander crossed the Hellespont never to see Macedonia or Greece again, in the Romance he comes back to put down an uprising of the Greeks and lay waste Thebes before he finally defeats Darius and completes the conquest of the Persian Empire. As Stoneman notes, the narrative here is “[l]ike a film running in reverse,” and the effect can be just as comical and disconcerting.Item The goat from the southwest in Theodotion’s Daniel translation, Theodoret’s commentary, and the Alexander romance(2017) Garstad, BenjaminAccording to Theodotion’s translation of the Book of Daniel, in one of Daniel’s visions a he-goat, interpreted as the king of Greece, is said to attack a ram, the king of Media and Persia, from the southwest, while the Septuagint translation says from the west. Theodoret of Cyrrhus, basing his commentary on Theodotion’s translation, explains this verse as referring to Alexander’s march from Egypt to his final battle against Darius at Gaugamela. In so doing, he must disregard the remainder of Alexander’s campaign against the Persians (of which he is clearly aware). He also eschews as a source the Alexander Romance, which offered a point of origin for Alexander’s attack on the Persian Empire perfectly consistent with Theodotion’s ‘from the southwest’, but was thoroughly unreliable as an historical source. It is possible, nevertheless, that the translation of Theodotion was itself influenced by the Alexander Romance on this point.Item The location of the Candace episode in the Alexander Romance and the chronicle of John Malalas(2023) Garstad, BenjaminThe Alexander Romance is vague about Alexander's passage from India to the realm of Candace of Meroë, but seems to suggest it is accomplished swiftly and easily. The earliest versions of the Romance, moreover, indicate there were close relations between Candace's kingdom and India, even that her ancestors once held power over India. If Candace's realm is identified as Ethiopia, this is a perplexing state of affairs. But it seems to have taken on a plausibility with the rise of the kingdom of Aksum. In the De Vita Bragmanorum Palladius depicts Aksum as a province of a vast empire centred on Sri Lanka. But it is John Malalas, in his universal chronicle, who modifies the story of Alexander and Candace to explicitly locate it in Aksum, or the land of the 'Inner Indians', as distinct from both India and Ethiopia. This modification not only made sense of several details in the Alexander Romance, but was also consistent with shifting attitudes toward Ethiopians and Aksumites in Late Antiquity.Item Rome in the Alexander Romance(2015) Garstad, BenjaminAccording to The Alexander Romance, the great Macedonian conqueror went to and received the submission of the city and its people, who provided troops and funds in support of his campaign against the Persians. This is, of course, one of the countless details in the Romance tradition which does not merely deviate from reliable history but runs counter to it. This corruption of the historical record might be of no interest to those who are chiefly concerned with the career of Alexander, but it is worth the attention of those who are concerned with his legacy. The inclusion of the Romans in Alexander's empire seems to have its basis in a number of rhetorical and historical traditions: reports of Roman diplomatic contacts with Alexander, rumors about Alexander's plans for the future, the invasion of Italy by Alexander Molossus at the same time as his nephew's expedition to Asia, and Roman counterfactual speculation about what would have happened if Alexander had made war on Rome. These are worth noting as the constituents of historical data in some late antique compositions. The passages which make Rome part of Alexander's domain also tell us something of how their authors wished Rome to be seen in relation to Alexander, the goals he pursued, and the ideals he represented.