Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

A CHRISTIAN ROMANCE. 445
thee out thou givest them money not to reveal
thine iniquity. But God Almighty shall reward
thee with the Gehenna of fire because thou hast
defiled thy body, and hast lightly esteemed the
voice of God Almighty and of thy husband; and
thou who thyself transgressest the commandment
of God dost curse thy mother Eve!
Now Alexander was undefiled, and he was holy
in mind and in body, and he prayed to God Al-
mighty his Lord. By race he was a Macedonian, Alexander's
and his father was Philip, unto whom had been^ny.
given the spirit of prophecy, and he knew that
which would come to pass long before it happened,
[p. 265] and he was wont to make observations
with the astrolabe, that is to say, an instrument
for taking the altitude of the sun. Now he married pwup of
a woman whose name was Kuestibar," and she
conceived a son, that is to say Alexander. And
he took the astrolabe, which is an instrument for
measuring the altitude of the sun, and made an
observation, and he saw therein that the child
would become king over fourteen kings, and he His astroio-
also saw that he would be pure in body. Andjes.
he made another observation to see what would
happen to a child born in the hour preceding that
in which his son was born, and he saw therein
poverty, and want, and ruin, and loathsomeness,
' The writer probably refers to Cleopatra, the sister of
Lysias, by whom Philip had certain children; see Pseudo-
CallistheneSj Bk. i. chap. 21.