Nativitas et victoria Alexandri Magni regis explained

The Navitas et victoria Alexandri Magni regis (The Birth and Victories of King Alexander the Great) is a lost tenth-century Latin translation of the Greek Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes, produced from a copy of a Greek manuscript discovered in Constantinople by Leo the Archpriest. Leo had undertaken a mission commissioned to him by John III of Naples. According to Domenico Comparetti, John III was a duke with an interest in the collection of letters and writings from wherever they could be found, of both secular and religious content. It is in this context that Leo was one of John's chief agents in the collection of Greek manuscripts followed by their translation into the Latin vernacular.^[1]

The translation is believed to have been produced between 951 and 969, as it was commissioned after the death of John IIIs wife, Theodora, which took place in 951, and it must have been completed before Leo himself died in 969.

Leo's translation was based on the α recension of the Alexander Romance. Though originally titled the Navitas, it came to later be known as the Historia de preliis, a title which refers to not one but three independent Latin versions or recensions on Leo's translation that came to attract considerable popularity in the European Middle Ages and made Alexander a household name.^[2]

Despite being lost, a manuscript close to Leo's text is known, it is known from:^[3]

• A manuscript from the cathedral library in Bamberg founded by Emperor Henry II. It is known as Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS E. III.14 (Ba) — or Bambergensis E.111.4 — composed c. 1000 in southern Italy. It also contains several other Alexander treatises, such as the Commonitorium Palladdii.
• A thirteenth-century manuscript known as MS 342 (L) from the Lambeth Palace Library, containing five-eighths of Leo's text.
• The Historia de preliis, ultimately based on Leo's translation, especially I¹ (for which a critical edition was published in 1992^[4]).

See also

• Alexander the Great in legend
• Qissat al-Iskandar

Notes and References

1. Book: Stoneman, Richard . Latin fiction: the Latin novel in context . 2004 . Routledge . 978-0-415-14722-4 . Hofmann . Heinz . London . 201–202 . The Medieval Alexander.
2. Book: Stoneman, Richard . A history of Alexander the Great in world culture . 2022 . Cambridge University Press . 978-1-107-16769-8 . Stoneman . Richard . Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY . 7–8 . Introduction: Formation and Diffusion of the Alexander Legend.
3. Book: Stoneman, Richard . A companion to Alexander literature in the Middle Ages . 2011 . Brill . 978-90-04-18345-2 . Zuwiyya . Zachary David . Brill's companions to the Christian tradition . Leiden Boston . 17–18 . Primary Sources from the Classical and Early Medieval Periods.
4. Book: Leo . The history of Alexander's battles: Historia de preliis, the J1 version . Pritchard . R. Telfryn . 1992 . Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies . 978-0-88844-284-0 . Mediaeval sources in translation . Toronto, Ont . 7–8.