Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

INTRODUCTION.
"awe or reverence, forbore to touch her; and
"herein shevv'd himself no less a pattern of true
"continency, than he had before done, of heroic
"fortitude."^ The next idea in the mind of the
writer, who was probably a monk, was to Christianize
every act of Alexander's life. The "Christian Ro-
mance" consists of thirty-three chapters and an
introduction, in which, after a fitting prayer to
the Deity, we are told that he "removed from himself
"the lust of the flesh, that is to say, the thought
"of fornication, and by cleanness of mind he over-
Aiexander "came the lust of the flesh" (p. 438); next he is
^"''"g^'gti'c compared unto Elijah the Tishbite, and John the
Baptist, and the Emperor Honorius. Because of
his asceticism and continuance in fasting and prayer
he was able to shut in the nations of Gog and
Magog, to penetrate the mountains of the Land
ofDarkness, and to obtain dominion over a thousand
kingdoms. The contents of the chapters of the
work may be thus described:
summaryof Chap. 1. Address to wives and warnings to women
tian Ro- unfaithful to their husbands. Philio of Macedon
mance
discovers what is to happen by means of the
astrolabe,^ and learns from it that if his son, who
' Rooke's Translation^, vol. i. p. 259.
" For a full description of the astrolabe see W. H. Morley,
Description of a Planispheric astrolabe constructed for Shah
Sultan Husain Safawi, King of Pa-sia, and norc preserved
in the British Museum : Comprising an account of the astrolabe
generally, London, 1S56, fol. The names of the Arabic and
Persian treatises consulted by the writer are given on p. 23
of his work.