Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- BOOK ONE
- Prologue
- ALEXANDER'S CHILDHOOD
- THE WAR AGAINST THE KING OF ARMENIA
- FROM ATHENS TO TARSUS
- THE SIEGE OF TYRE
- THE RAID AT GAZA
- EPHESUS
- THE VOWS OF THE PEACOCK
- MACEDON, ITALY, JERUSALEM AND EGYPT
- THE WAR AGAINST DARIUS
- 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]
ALEXANDER'S CHILDHOOD
from BOOK ONE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- BOOK ONE
- Prologue
- ALEXANDER'S CHILDHOOD
- THE WAR AGAINST THE KING OF ARMENIA
- FROM ATHENS TO TARSUS
- THE SIEGE OF TYRE
- THE RAID AT GAZA
- EPHESUS
- THE VOWS OF THE PEACOCK
- MACEDON, ITALY, JERUSALEM AND EGYPT
- THE WAR AGAINST DARIUS
- 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
Of the noble King Alexander's father and mother, and their positions and their characters.
Now, then: to explain who this most noble King Alexander was, so mighty and so valiant, and where he came from, these are the facts.
There was once a king in the land of Greece named Philip. He was king of Macedon, of all Alania, of part of Greece and all of Slavonia. In his youth he was much feared and respected, and loved and esteemed by all his neighbours – save a few who envied him, such as King Nicolas, of whom we'll speak in due course, who so resented Philip of Macedon's qualities and renown that he was finally killed by the hand of King Alexander himself, the said Philip's son.
When he was ready to marry, this King Philip, so noble and so feared, with the guidance and approval of his barons took to wife a most noble lady, good, beautiful, worthy and wise, named Olympias. She was a princess, the daughter of the king of Armenia, who was one of the mightiest and wealthiest kings then reigning in all the world – and she was his only daughter. She was well raised indeed and had acquired all honourable qualities: according to my source, had all honour been lost or expunged from the world, it could have been rediscovered in her. This lady loved and respected all worthy men and, with the utmost discernment, would give to them generously when she saw the need.
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- Information
- The Medieval Romance of AlexanderThe Deeds and Conquests of Alexander the Great, pp. 30 - 39Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012