Tracing Alexander the Great's Own Heroes through the Centuries

Everyone needs someone to look up to. Even, it turns out, Alexander the Great. Throughout the divers Alexander tales, Alexander is inspired by and pays homage to various mythological and religious figures. These episodes serve as a window into the motivations behind the stories themselves. What better way to promote the ascendancy of your own civilization than having Alexander the Great venerate your cultural icons? Alexander emulates Achilles in Greco-Roman tales, reveres Abraham’s descendants in the Shahnameh, and uses Christian figures as the ultimate honor in the Alexandreis. The evolution of these characters, Alexander’s own “heroes,” reflects the development and assimilation of the Alexander narrative itself.

Many of the earlier histories of Alexander stem from the Greek literary tradition and portray him consciously following in the footsteps of that national Greek hero, Achilles. Plutarch describes Alexander making sacrifices to the heroes of the Iliad upon reaching the site of Troy. Afterwards, Alexander anointed Achilles’ grave with oil, “ran a race by it with his companions, naked, as is the custom, and then crowned it with garlands,” before searching for the lyre of Achilles (Plutarch’s Lives, p. 263). Arrian adds that Alexander took “some of the dedicated arms yet remaining from the Trojan war; these, it is said, his bodyguard bore before him into battle” (Anabasis, p. 51). Finally, the Pseudo-Callisthenes Alexander Romance relates Alexander reaching the River Scamandar and leaping into it, as Achilles was said to have done (Alexander Romance, p. 77). By glorifying and imitating Achilles, both Alexander and the authors of these stories hearken back to the Iliad, a time of Grecian supremacy and dominance over Asia.

By contrast, the Arabo-Persian Shahnameh never mentions Achilles, instead depicting Alexander as a defender of the Islamic faith dominant in ancient Iran when the Shahnameh was written. In the midst of his many battles, Alexander still finds time to make a pilgrimage to the Ka’abeh; “with drums rolling and trumpets blaring, he came to the house made with such toil by Abraham, the son of Azar” (Shahnameh, p. 597). When a descendant of Abraham, Nasr, comes to greet Alexander, Alexander welcomes Nasr and assigns him “a splendid place in his entourage” (Shahnameh, p. 597). Once Alexander hears from Nasr that Abraham’s descendants are being persecuted by a dictator Jeza’, “he sought out everyone he could find from the family of Jeza’ and had them killed: the children’s souls were parted from their bodies, and not one of his race was left alive. With the help of his army he freed the Hejaz and Yemen from their unjust rulers, and exalted the tribe of Ismail” (Shahnameh, p. 597). Rather than sacrificing at Troy, Alexander now visits the Ka’abeh, in the process becoming almost fanatic in his support for Abraham’s descendants.

Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis, written in twelfth-century France, once again revises the storyline, as Alexander now pays homage to the Christian faith. In the tale, Alexander decides to give Darius’ wife the most fantastic burial he can upon her death. So, her tomb is carved “with a wondrous scheme: beside the names of Grecian kings, he set the holy tales of Genesis, beginning when first the world was born” (Alexandreis, p. 65). Interestingly, the Greek tradition is noted here, but only in one line, before a 150-line, detailed narrative of the Old Testament. The choice of a Christian burial for Darius’ wife, unlikely to have been a Christian herself, adds a triumphal note of conversion to Alexander, or at least represents another method of Christian victory over Darius and his “barbarous crowds” (Alexandreis, p. 69). The scene eventually ends with Alexander exalting the Christian carvings and sacrificing before them.

Over the course of many tellings, the mythological figures whom Alexander calls upon provide a vehicle for various civilizations to assert their own cultural ideologies. Alexander begins as a scion of Achilles, before completing the Hajj, and then essentially leading a Christian crusade against the heathens. Perhaps it is this very flexibility of the Alexander story that is its greatest strength. By providing such an irresistibly adaptable narrative, at least the legend of Alexander has survived thousands of years past his early death in Babylon so long ago.