Note 204 — Chapter II · THE CONTRIBUTION OF WESTERN CHRISTENDOM BEFORE 1100 A. D.

The various Latin versions of the Romance of Alexander were destined to exert much influence on the form which the legend was to assume in the twelfth century and later. The earliest version of the Latin Pseudo-Callisthenes was made in the fourth century of our era by Julius Valerius; but this was little read in later centuries, and only three manuscripts of it are now extant. The work upon which most of the medieval versions of the Romance were based was an Epitoma, or abridgment, of Julius Valerius’ translation, made perhaps in the ninth century. In addition to Valerius’ version and the Epitoma, we have a Letter from Alexander to Aristotle describing the marvels of India. Longer, though corresponding essentially to chapter 17 of the third book of Valerius, it did not form part of the Epitoma, but was widely circulated as an independent booklet. A correspondence between Alexander and Dindimus concerning the Brahmins is also found in a ninth-century Latin form, perhaps translated by Alcuin from a Greek original. See Meyer, Alexandre le grand, 1886, vol. ii, passim; Thorndike, Magic, 1923, vol. i, pp. 551–557.

In the tenth century a wholly new version of the legend, also derived from the Pseudo-Callisthenes, appeared in the West. This was the Historia de praeliis, the Greek original of which was said to have been brought from Constantinople by a certain “Leo Archipresbyter” and translated by him into Latin. See Landgraf, Die Vita Alexandri, 1885, and Krumbacher, Geschichte, 1897, pp. 849–852.