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The Romance of Alexander is any of several collections of legends concerning the mythical exploits of Alexander the Great. The earliest version is in the Greek language, dating to the 3rd century. Several late manuscripts attribute the work to Alexander's court historian Callisthenes, but the historical person died before Alexander and could not have written a full account of his life. The unknown author is still sometimes known as Pseudo-Callisthenes. The text was transformed into various versions between the 4th and the 16th centuries, in Medieval Greek, Latin, Armenian, Syriac, Hebrew and most medieval European vernaculars. ==Versions of the romance== Alexander was a legend during his own time. In a now-lost history of the king, the historical Callisthenes described the sea in Cilicia as drawing back from him in proskynesis. Writing after Alexander's death, another participant, Onesicritus, invented a tryst between Alexander and Thalestris, queen of the mythical Amazons. (According to Plutarch, when Onesicritus read this passage to his patron Lysimachus, one of Alexander's generals who later became a king himself, Lysimachus quipped "I wonder where I was at the time."〔Plutarch, ''Life of Alexander'', XLVI.〕) Throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the ''Romance'' experienced numerous expansions and revisions exhibiting a variability unknown for more formal literary forms. Latin, Armenian, Georgian and Syriac translations were made in Late Antiquity (4th to 6th centuries). The Latin ''Alexandreis'' of Walter of Châtillon was one of the most popular medieval romances. A 10th-century Latin version by one Leo the Archpriest is the basis of the later medieval vernacular translations in all the major languages of Europe, including Old French (12th century), Middle English, Early Scots (''The Buik of Alexander'') (13th century), Italian, Spanish (the ''Libro de Alexandre''), Central German (Lamprecht's ''Alexanderlied'' and a 15th-century version by Johannes Hartlieb), Slavonic, Romanian, and Hungarian. The Syriac version generated Middle Eastern recensions, including Arabic, Persian (the ''Iskandarnamah''), Ethiopic, Hebrew (in the first part of Sefer HaAggadah), Ottoman Turkish(14th century), and Middle Mongolian (13th century). The story of Dhul-Qarnayn in the Quran (Sura ''al-Kahf'' 18:83-98) matches the Gog and Magog episode of the ''Romance'', which has caused some controversy among Islamic scholars (see Alexander the Great in the Quran). Alexander was identified in Persian and Arabic-language sources as "Dhû-'l Qarnayn", Arabic for the "Horned One", likely a reference to the ram horns the image of Alexander wears on coins minted during his rule to indicate his descent from the Egyptian god Amun. Islamic accounts of the Alexander legend, particularly in Persia, combined the Pseudo-Callisthenes material with indigenous Sasanian Middle Persian ideas about Alexander. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alexander romance」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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