Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

XXX
INTRODUCTION.
disgraceful thing for the Greeks having fought
and overcome men to allow themselves to be
vanquished by women.' Elsewhere' Alexander says
that he has neither seen nor does he desire to see
the wife of Darius, who was said to be a most
beautiful woman, and that he has not allowed any
man to speak of her beauty in his presence.
These facts, in whole or in part, must have
found their way all over the East, and they no
doubt, greatly impressed the Oriental imagination;
with only the historical account of Alexander's
youthful virtues before him the Christian translator
would have no difficulty whatsoever in transforming
the hero into a Christian king. Having become
a Christian king in the hands of his Ethiopian
biographer, Alexander must necessarily issue procla-
mations full of Christian ideas and sentiments, and
he must improve every occasion of imparting
Christian doctrine, otherwise his history would
become a means of amusement only and not of
edification; and this is what has happened. When
Alexander has taken his army and set out for the
east, his first act is to found Alexandria, and having
made due acknowledgements to "God, the Most
' ttXi'iv aicrxpov ecrriv tiiua? toui; avbpaq viKiicraviaq
UTTO TuvaiKLuv iiTTr|9fivai; see Miiller, p. 78 (Bk. ii. chap. 17).
This incident forms one of the ''amusing" stories of Bar-
Hebraeus, who gives it thus: T20r