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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
[14
INTRCDUCTION
~
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io
5th century ;* they were translated into Armenian, Arabic,
Hebrew, and Syriac ; and were reproduced in the verses of
Firdusi and various other Persian Poets ; spreading eventually
even to the Indian Archipelago, and finding utterance in
Malay and Siamese. At an early date they had been ren-
dered into Latin by Julius Valerius ; but this work had prob-
ably been lost sight of, and it was in the 1 oth century that
they were re-imported from Byzantium to Italy by the Arch-
priest Leo, who had gone as Envoy to the Eastern Capital
from John Duke of Campania.- Romantic histories on this
foundation, in verse and prose, became diffused in all the
languages of Western Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia,
rivalling in popularity the romantic cycles of the Round Table
or of Charlemagne. Nor did this popularity cease till the
16th century was well advanced.
The heads of most of the Medieval Travellers were
crammed with these fables as genuine history.+ And by the
help of that community of legend on this subject which they
found wherever Mahomedan literature had spread, Alexander
Magnus was to be traced everywhere in Asia. Friar Odoric
found Tana, near Bombay, to be the veritable City of King
Porus ; John Marignolli's vainglory led him to imitate King
Alexander in setting up a marble column "in the corner of
the world over against Paradise," i.e. somewhere on the coast
of Travancore ; whilst Sir John Maundevile, with a cheaper
ambition, borrowed wonders from the Travels of Alexander
to adorn his own. Nay, even in after days, when the Portu-
guese stumbled with amazement on those vast ruins in Cam-
boja, which have so lately become familiar to us through the
works of Mouhot, Thomson, and Garnier, they ascribed them
to Alexander.
Prominent in all these stories is the tale of Alexander's
shutting up a score of impure nations, at the head of which
were Gog and Magog, within a barrier of impassable moun-
,OE
* [On the subject of Moses of Chorene and his works, I must refer to the clever
researches of the late Auguste Carrière, Professor of Armenian at the Ëcole des
Langues Orientales. —H. C. ]
1. Zacher, Forschungen zur Critik, &'c., der Alexandersage, Halle, 1867, p. 108.
$ Even so sagacious a man as Roger Bacon quotes the fabulous letter of Alexander
to Aristotle as authentic. (Opus Majus, p. 137.)
§ J. As. sér. VI. tom. xviii. p. 352.
M
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