ALEXANDER, LECEND on. A famous but largely fictitious account of the adventures of Alexander the Great, which was the basis of many romantic works in the 'Middle Ages. It origin ated probably at Alexandria, in Egypt. The his torical narrative of Callisthenes (q.v.) having been lost, there appeared about 200 A.D. under his name (sometimes referred to as the pseudo-C'al listhenes) a Greek story. which represented Alex ander as really the son of Neetanebus, the last king of Egypt. and credited him with a fabulous series of exploits in connection with his actual conquests. This was translated into Latin early in the fourth century by Julius Valerius. His version was subsequently abridged. particularly in the account called Historia de Pra-liis, by Archbishop Leo, about the end of the tenth cen tury. About the twelfth century, the period of the Chansons dc gcste of the cycle of Charle magne, several French poems were built upon the Alexander Legend; the earliest. was that of Al belie of Besancon, of which only the beginning is extant; the best known is the great Chanson d'Alexandrc, by Lambert Ii Core and Alexandre de Bernay. The twelve-syllable lines in which
this was written gave its name to the Alexan drine verse. The Alexander of the Middle Ages was essentially a medheval knight depicted in the manner of the romancer's own ideals. 11e be came one of the worthies," and one of the four "kings" in the game of cards. More or less original versions of the legend appear in poems of nearly every European country, and even in the Orient, where the story of the pseudo-Callis thenes was rendered into Syrian and Armenian as early as the fifth century. Some of the Slavic forms of the tale go bac': through Byzantium to this Eastern version. Of those in Western Europe, most notable after the French poems are per haps those in German by Lamprecht, who trans lated that of Alherie, and by Rudolph of Bohe nems, of the thirteenth century. An old English version of Julius Valerius is the poem called. King Alisaunder. Consult: Paul Meyer, Alexan dre le Grand, histoire de la legend(' d'Alexandre dans lee pays romains (Paris, 1886) ; Spiegel. Dic .4 lexandersage bci den, Oricntalen (Leipzig, 1851 ) •