Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- BOOK ONE
- BOOK TWO
- Appendix 1 How Nectanebus fathered Alexander [from the 13th-century Prose Alexander]
- Appendix 2 Aristotle's advice to Alexander [an interpolation into Wauquelin's text]
- Appendix 3 Jacques de Longuyon's excursus on the Nine Worthies [from Les Voeux du Paon (‘The Vows of the Peacock’), c.1310]
Appendix 3 - Jacques de Longuyon's excursus on the Nine Worthies [from Les Voeux du Paon (‘The Vows of the Peacock’), c.1310]
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- BOOK ONE
- BOOK TWO
- Appendix 1 How Nectanebus fathered Alexander [from the 13th-century Prose Alexander]
- Appendix 2 Aristotle's advice to Alexander [an interpolation into Wauquelin's text]
- Appendix 3 Jacques de Longuyon's excursus on the Nine Worthies [from Les Voeux du Paon (‘The Vows of the Peacock’), c.1310]
Summary
In striving to fulfil the vow he'd made before the peacock, Porus is performing such exceptional feats in the battle against Alexander (above, p.125) that…
…since God chose to make Adam, no knight was ever born who endured so much fighting in a single day.
It's true that Hector was immeasurably worthy; as the poets record, when King Menelaus came with all his forces to besiege the noble King Priam at Troy to win back his beloved wife Helen who'd been abducted by Paris, Hector took charge of the city, and in the sorties launched at his instigation he slew nineteen kings in hand-to-hand combat – and, I believe, more than a hundred emirs and counts – before he was treacherously killed by Achilles.
Most worthy, too, was Alexander, of whom I'm telling in this story; he vanquished Nicolas and Darius the Persian and slaughtered all the vermin in the deserts of the East, and captured Babylon, that great and mighty city where he later died by poison; in twelve years with his awesome vigour he conquered everything to be found beneath the heavens – and still he wasn't satisfied: he told his barons in council one day that he was ruler of very little land!
A long while ago Caesar conquered England, commonly known as Britain, and brought King Cassivelaunus under Rome's dominion; waging war on his brother-in-law Pompey he defeated him in Greece along with greater numbers than any man alive had ever seen; then he captured Alexandria, that magnificent city of mighty wealth, and Africa, Arabia, Egypt and Syria likewise, and the isles of the sea to the furthest West.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Medieval Romance of AlexanderThe Deeds and Conquests of Alexander the Great, pp. 305 - 306Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012