Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- BOOK ONE
- BOOK TWO
- ALEXANDER'S CONQUESTS IN THE WEST
- THE WAR AGAINST PORUS OF INDIA
- THE QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS
- THE END OF THE WAR AGAINST PORUS
- THE MARVELS OF INDIA
- THE CONQUEST OF BABYLON
- ALEXANDER'S DEATH
- WAR BETWEEN ALEXANDER'S BARONS
- THE AVENGING OF ALEXANDER
- 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]
WAR BETWEEN ALEXANDER'S BARONS
from BOOK TWO
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- BOOK ONE
- BOOK TWO
- ALEXANDER'S CONQUESTS IN THE WEST
- THE WAR AGAINST PORUS OF INDIA
- THE QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS
- THE END OF THE WAR AGAINST PORUS
- THE MARVELS OF INDIA
- THE CONQUEST OF BABYLON
- ALEXANDER'S DEATH
- WAR BETWEEN ALEXANDER'S BARONS
- THE AVENGING OF ALEXANDER
- 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
How after Alexander's death his barons started warring with each other.
When the burial of the noble King Alexander was complete, the barons began to leave the city of Alexandria and set out to take possession of the lands allotted and bequeathed to them by their master Alexander.
But once they'd been welcomed and installed, and worthily served and honoured by their men, then, despite Alexander's gracious deathbed plea and entreaty that they should always strive to live together in peace and harmony – and despite the clear and true examples he'd given of the dangers of doing otherwise – they paid little heed and spurned his warnings, and were soon at each other's throats. They might rightly be compared to a lion's whelps, whose nature is such that, when the lion takes its prey and has eaten its fill and tosses the remainder to its young, they rise up and attack one another, each of them wanting all for itself and not wanting its companions to have any. So it was with Alexander: having taken his prey by conquering the whole world, he had to leave it all behind when he died; but the good king, knowing his great deeds were done and not wanting his barons whom he loved so dearly to start fighting like the lion's whelps, decided to give to each his share. But when he died they weren't satisfied: each of them wanted the whole lot for himself.
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- Information
- The Medieval Romance of AlexanderThe Deeds and Conquests of Alexander the Great, pp. 280 - 287Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012