The vast conquests of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great quickly inspired the formation and diffusion of legendary material about his deity, journeys, and tales. These appeared shortly after his death, and some may have already begun forming during his lifetime. Common themes and symbols among legends about Alexander include the Gates of Alexander, the Horns of Alexander, and the Gordian Knot.
In the third century AD, an anonymous author writing in the name of Alexander's court historian Callisthenes (commonly referred to as Pseudo-Callisthenes) authored the Greek Alexander Romance. This work gave rise to a genre of literature chronicling the myths and adventures of Alexander, which evolved through over a hundred versions during premodern times and was translated into nearly every language across European and Islamic civilizations.
Greek tradition
Prophesied conqueror King Philip II had a dream in which he took a wax seal and sealed up the womb of his wife. The seal bore the image of a lion. The seer Aristander interpreted this to mean that Olympias was pregnant, since men do not seal up what is empty, and that she would bring forth a son who would be bold and lion-like.Plutarch Al. 2.2–3
After Philip took Potidaea in 356 BC, he received word that his horse had just won at the Olympic games, and that Parmenion had defeated the Illyrians. Then he got word of the birth of Alexander. The seers told him that a son whose birth coincided with three victories would always be victorious. When the young Alexander tamed the steed Bucephalus, his father noted that Macedonia would not be large enough for him.
Deification When Alexander went to Egypt, he was given the title of Pharaoh and the epithet "Son of Ra" (the Egyptian sun deity). In 331 BC in Egypt, he would visit the oracle of the Siwa Oasis (also known as the Oasis of Amun-Ra). It was at that point, legend holds, that Alexander began to refer to Zeus Ammon as his true father. Returning to Memphis after the oracle visit, he was informed that the prophetess of the Apollonian oracle, the Erythraean Sibyl, had also confirmed his divine paternity as the son of Zeus.
Apocryphal letters
Leon of Pella wrote the work On the Gods in Egypt on the basis of an apocryphal letter sent from Alexander to his mother Olympias. The Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem, described as being a letter sent from Alexander to his mentor Aristotle, concerning his adventures in India.
Plutarch Many Alexander legends are found in the writings of the Greek historian Plutarch, such as that Alexander was born in the same day that the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was burnt down, during which the god Artemis was too preoccupied with his birth to pay the requisite attention needed to save her burning temple. Later in life when Alexander offered to pay for the temple's reconstruction, he was informed that it was not appropriate for gods to dedicate offerings to other gods. In another anecdote, it was said that the priestess of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi exclaimed to him "You are invincible o young!"
In Thessalonica
In medieval Thessalonica, the largest city in the region of Macedonia, a popular legend arose among the inhabitants of the city connecting Alexander with the sculptures of a Roman-era portico of the city known as Las Incantadas ("the enchanted ones"), which had been erected long after his death. According to the legend, a Thracian king once visited Alexander, and his queen fell in love with him. They arranged to meet at night next to the portico, but the king learnt of this, and had his magician bewitch the portico so that everyone who passed near would be petrified. Alexander was notified not to go by his tutor Aristotle, but the queen and her attendants were not as lucky, and they turned all into sculptures. The king and his magician arrived later to see their work, and they were petrified too.
A popular Greek legend has it that Thessalonike became a mermaid who lived in the Aegean after the death of Alexander the Great. The legend states that Alexander, in his quest for the Fountain of Life, retrieved with great exertion a flask of immortal water. In some versions of the story, he used the water to wash his sister's hair, making her immortal; in others, he forgot to tell her the contents of the flask and so used it to water a wild onion plant.Taietti, G. D. M. (2017). The greek reception of alexander the great (Order No. 10768496). [Doctoral Dissertation, University of Liverpool] Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (2116951715). When Alexander died his grief-stricken sister attempted to end her life by jumping into the sea.Amy Richlin. (2016). "The Kings of Comedy." In Roman Drama and Its Contexts. Edited by Stavros Frangoulidis, Stephen J. Harrison, & Gesine Manuwald. (2016). De Gruyter. Instead of drowning, however, she became a mermaid who passes judgment on mariners throughout the centuries and across the seven seas. To the sailors who encounter her, she always poses the same question: "Is king Alexander alive?" (Greek: Ζει ο βασιλεύς Αλέξανδρος;), to which the correct answer would be "He lives and reigns and conquers the world" (Greek: Ζει και βασιλεύει, και τον κόσμο κυριεύει!). Given this answer, she would allow the ship and her crew to sail safely away in calm seas. Any other answer would transform her into the raging Gorgon, bent on sending the ship and every sailor on board to the bottom of the sea.
Claudius Aelianus
Claudius Aelianus in the Characteristics of Animals wrote that Scythians say that there were horned donkeys, and their horns were holding water from the river Styx. Adding that Sopater brought one of these horns to Alexander, then Alexander set up the horn as a votive offering at Delphi, with an inscription beneath it.Aelian, Characteristics of Animals, § 10.40
Jewish tradition
Josephus Josephus, a first-century historian, describes the Gates of Alexander (and is the first to mention them after Pliny the Elder). Josephus describes these gates in the context of a barbarian group called the Scythians, for whom the boundary prevents their incursion. Elsewhere, Josephus also clarifies that the Scythians were known among the Jews as Magogites, descendants of the Magog described in the Hebrew Bible. These references occur in two different works. The Jewish War states that the iron gates Alexander erected were controlled by the king of Hyrcania (on the south edge of the Caspian), and allowing passage of the gates to the Alans (whom Josephus considered a Scythic tribe) resulted in the sack of Media. Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews contains two relevant passages, one giving the ancestry of Scythians as descendants of Magog son of Japheth, and another that refers to the Caspian Gates being breached by Scythians allied to Tiberius during the Armenian War.
Talmud The Talmud also has many legends relating to Alexander, For example, it mentions that the Samaritans conspired for the destruction of the temple, but Alexander prostrated himself at the feet of the high priest Simon the Just. It also mentions many other legends on Alexander, such as the Ten Questions of Alexander to the Sages of the South, his Journey to the Regions of Darkness, the Amazons, the Gold Bread, Alexander at the Gate of Paradise, his Ascent into the Air, and Descent into the Sea.Jewish Encyclopedia, Alexander The Great
The Talmud also records a story that describes Alexander seeking the Fountain of Life, which also has versions appear in the Alexander Romance and in the Syriac Song of Alexander. In the version as it appears in the Talmud, Alexander washes a fish in a spring which immediately jumps to life upon being washed. Realizing that he has discovered the Fountain, he washes his own face in it, though the significance of this is not explained in the story. The Talmudic version differs from the other versions, insofar as only in the Talmud does Alexander succeed in accessing the Fountain, and in this story, Alexander is the one to discover it as opposed to one of his servants.
European tradition
Alexander sees the world
Wishing to see the world, Alexander was thought to have descended into the depths of the ocean in a sort of diving bell. Then in order to see the world from above he harnessed two large griffins between which he was seated. He would hold meat skewers above their heads to entice them to keep flying further up.
Around 1260, Bertold von Regensburg preached, that like Alexander believed that "he could take down the highest stars from the sky by hand, so you too would like to go up in the air if you could." But the story showed where such a climb would lead, and proved that the great Alexander "was one of the greatest fools the world has ever seen."
Rice and Boardman have both argued that the figure on the Anglo-Saxon Alfred Jewel intended to represent this scene in order to represent the notion of one coming to knowledge through sight. Boardman has also argued that the Anglo-Saxon Fuller Brooch carries a similar theme.Boardman, John, "Alfred and Alexander", pp. 137-139, in: Gosden, Christopher, Crawford, Sally, Ulmschneider, Katharina, Celtic Art in Europe: Making Connections, 2014, Oxbow Books, , 9781782976585, google books
Slavic folk tales
In the Bulgarian folk songs collection published by Dimitar and Konstantin Miladinov in 1861, under the chapter Legends, the first legend is about Tsar Aleksandar seeking the Immortal Water. The tale is recorded in what seems to be an Ohrid-Struga dialect. In the legend, Alexander finds the immortal water behind after walking three days in darkness, behind two mountains that open and close. He leaves the bottle with immortal water to his sister, who breaks it by accident. Alexander chases his sister to the sea, where she escapes and turns into a dolphin.
Arabic tradition
With the Greek Alexander Romance and its translation into numerous languages including Armenian, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, and more, an entire genre of literature was dedicated to the exploits of Alexander in both Christian and Muslim realms. Alexander was also the one most frequently identified with Dhu al-Qarnayn (Arabic: ذو القرنين; lit. "The Two-Horned One"), a figure that appears in Surah Al-Kahf in the Quran, the holy text of Islam, which greatly expanded the attention paid to him in the traditions of the Muslim world.
Arabic was introduced as the court language of the caliphate during the Umayyad Caliphate around the year 700. One of the first texts translated into Arabic was the Rasāʾil Arisṭāṭālīsa ilāʾl-Iskandar (The Letters of Aristotle to Alexander or the Epistolary Romance), which consist of a letter of apocryphal letters meant to confirm Alexander's reputation as a wise ruler. It was composed during the reign of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik (r. 724–743) from Greek sources like the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem. Part of this text became a constituent of the Kitāb Sirr al-Asrār (Book of Secret of Secrets) by Yahya ibn al-Batriq (d. 815), a Pseudo-Aristoteliean treatise which became immensely popular and was translated directly from the Arabic into many other (including European) languages. Both Alexander and Aristotle became important figures in Islamic wisdom literature, such as in the chapter dedicated to Alexander in the 9th-century Ādāb al-Falāsifa (Sayings of the Philosophers) written in the name of the famous Christian translator and physician Hunayn ibn Ishaq. Other texts in this tradition from the tenth century onward included Ṣiwān al-Ḥikma (Chest of Wisdom) of Abu Sulayman Sijistani, the al-Ḥikma al-Khālida (Everlasting Wisdom) of Miskawayh, and the al-Kalim al-Rūḥānīya fīʾl-Ḥikam al-Yūnānīya (Spiritual Sayings about Greek Maxims) of Ibn Hindu.