Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/664

Rh 640 ROMANCE Fates are duennas watching Proserpine ; the entrance to Pluto's castle is watched by the giant Cerberus. Hercules conquers Spain and takes Merida from Geryon. The book is translated into English as Hercules of Greece (n.d. ). The marquis de Villena took from the same source his prose Libro de los Trabajos de Hercules (Zamora, 1498), and Fernandez de Heredia wrote Trabajos de Hercules (1682), also in prose. Le Faliche d'Ercole (1475) is a romance in poetic prose by Pietro Bassi, and the Dodeci Travagli di Ercole (1544), a poem by J. Perillos. Jason. Les fais etprouesses du noble et vaillant chevalier Jason was composed in the middle of the 15th century by Lefevre on the basis of Benoit, and presented to Philip of Burgundy, founder of the order of the Toison d'Or. Jason is shown as a foremost figure in tournaments, overthrowing all competitors at one held by the king of Bceotia to celebrate the knighting of his son Hercules. The two become staunch friends and attend the marriage ceremony of Hippodamia. Centaurs interrupt and are exterminated by Jason. He performs other knightly exploits, and on his return is malici- ously sent by his uncle _Peleus (Pelias) on the Argonautic expedition. The narrative of the journey to Lemnos and Colchos, the love of Medea, and the episode of the Golden Fleece follows the classical traditions. When Jason returns to the country of the Myrmidons, Medea by enchantment restores the old king to youth and brings about the death of Peleus. For this last good deed Medea is banished, with Jason's consent, and is carried off by four dragons. She soars long over Greece before she is able to find her lover ; at length she discovers that he is going to wed the princess of Corinth. She descends amid thunder and lightning, kills the two children she bore to Jason, and allows her attendant dragons to destroy with fire Corinth and all its inhabitants. She then inveigles the old Egeus, king of Athens, into marriage, but is banished upon suspicion of attempting to poison her new son-in-law Theseus. Meeting with Jason, who had escaped the burning of Corinth, she becomes reconciled to him, and, abjuring magic, on the death of Eson becomes a good wife and queen. The manners and senti- ments of the 15th century are made to harmonize with the classical legends after the fashion of the Italian pre-Eaphaelite painters, who equipped Jewish warriors with knightly lance and armour. The story is well told ; the digressions are few ; and there are many touches of domestic life and natural sympathy. The first edition is believed to have been printed at Bruges in 1474 ; the type is the same as that used in the first edition of the JKecueil. Caxton translated the book at the command of the duchess of Burgundy. A Dutch translation appeared at Haarlem in 1495. M. Paulin Paris doubts whether the romance was written by Lefevre, whose authorship is distinctly asserted by Caxton. Montfaucon refers to a MS. by Guido delle Colonne, Historia Medeie r.t Jasonis (unpublished). There is a Histoire de la Thoison d'Or (1516) by Guillaume Fillastre, written about 1440-50. CEdipus. A kind of introduction to the Recueil is Le Roman tfCEdipus, Fits de Layus (n.d.), written in the 15th century by an unknown pen. The story follows the fable told by the Greek poets, adapted, of course, to the taste and habits of later times. The sphinx is drawn as a giant of great subtlety and ferocity. Histories 2. The wonders revealed through the Asiatic expedition if Alex- O f Alexander gave rise to a remarkable development of mder - the marvellous in historical composition. The histories of Onesicritus, Aristobulus, and Clitarchus, themselves mem- bers of the expedition, were so full of unheard-of things that they soon fell into disrepute. Callisthenes, another companion of Alexander, also wrote an account, which is lost, but his name remains connected with a spurious work in which were crystallized all the fabulous tales of the con- queror. The life of Alexander had every quality to appeal to the imagination. His marvellous career, his genius as a soldier and ruler, the beauty of his person, his early death, were subjects for legend almost in his own day; and a cloud of mythical story soon floated round his memory. Quintus Curtius, who drew from some of these suspicious sources, is a more critical authority, though he allowed rhetorical fancy to embellish his narration. It is a great fall from the Latin historian to the Pseudo- Callisthenes. The work we possess under the latter title represents the second stage of the Alexander myth. Some of the MSS. attribute it to Aristotle, Ptolemy, and ^Esop, as well as to Callisthenes, all with equal verisimilitude. To reconstruct the true from the spurious work is an im- possible task after the increased vogue given to the latter by the re-opening of the East to Europe by the Romans, when all the traditions became remoulded in the form they now possess. Among the histories separate from Pseudo- Callisthenes and subsequent to Quintus Curtius is an Itinerarium Alexandri, in Latin, but of Greek origin, which is little else than an amplification of the apocryphal letter of Alexander to Aristotle. It is dedicated to Con- stans, son of the emperor Constantine. Similarities be- tween the Itinerarium and the Latin version of Pseudo- Callisthenes prove that the stories were current in the 4th century, and may have emanated from the same source but, while the Itinerarium is inferior in authority to Quintus Curtius, it is less a collection of mere fables than is Callisthenes. The Greek text of the latter is supposed to have been written in Alexandria at the commencement of the third century, and to have been translated into Latin by Julius Valerius before 340. The translation was abridged in Latin some time before the 9th century. Much of the work is a running travesty of the true history of the conqueror. The first book deals with his birth and early exploits. The trace of Alexandrian influence is to be found in the pretence that his actual father was Nec- tanebus, a fugitive king of Egypt. The latter was a great magician, able, by operating upon waxen figures of the armies and ships of his enemies, to obtain complete power over their real actions. He was obliged, however, to fly to Pella, where he established himself as a doctor and was visited by Queen Olympias to get advice upon her con- tinued sterility. He promised that Jupiter Ammon should perform the cure in the shape of a dragon. To make quite sure Nectanebus himself took the place of the animal, and nine months afterwards Philip became the father of the future Alexander. At first there was some unpleasant- ness, but a reappearance of the dragon convinced every- body that the infant really was the son of a god, so that the putative father could no longer object. Alexander was small and somewhat deformed, but of great courage and intelligence. He was educated under the supervision of Nectanebus, who at last died through a fall into a pit, into which he had been playfully pushed by his royal pupil. The second book continues the various conquests, and the third contains the victory over Porus, the relations with the Brahmans, the letter to Aristotle on the wonders of India, the histories of Candaces and the Amazons, the letter to Olympias on the marvels of Further Asia, and lastly the account of Alexander's death in Babylon. Callisthenes was translated into Syriac and Armenian in the 5th century. A second Latin abridgment is known as Historia de Praeliis. The letter from Alexander to Aristotle on the marvels of India, the correspondence between the king and the wise Brahman Dindimus, and De Gentibus Indiat, ascribed to Palladius, are different parts of the same legend. The myth had a wider circulation than any of the others we have yet dealt with, and the East contributed its share as well as the West. Persians and Arabs told the deeds of Iskander ; and Firdousi made use of the story in the Shah-Namah. Another early Persian poet, Nizami, made the story specially his own. The crusaders brought back fresh developments ; Gog and Magog (partly Arab and partly Greek) and some Jewish stories were then added. In the llth century Simeon Seth, protovestiarius at the Byzantine court, translated the fabulous history from the Persian back into Greek. In the following century was built up the Geste dAlexandrc by the successive labours of Lambert le Cort, Alexandre Bernai, Jehan le Nevelais, Gautier de Cambrai, Pierre de Saint -Cloud, Brisebarre, <fec. Alexander becomes then a knightly king, surrounded by his twelve paladins. Bernai says that the foundation was Latin (1 Valerius or some other Latin version of Pseudo-Callisthenes) : "Un clerc de Casteldun, Lambert li Cors 1'escrit, Qui del Latin le traist, et en Roman le mit. "