Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son ... - Historia Antigua

NOTES TO PAGES 201–205 299
50. Bosworth 1988b: 109.
51. Bosworth 1988a: 152; see Brunt on Aristobulus as a source (1976–
83: i, 556–57).
52. Critical reactions to Alexander’s pothos (or Latin cupido) are not
rare: the king’s acceptance of his human limits is a major theme of the
Alexander Romance; Quintus Curtius describes Alexander as “forgetful
of his mortal state” ( humanae sortis oblitus) when he questions the priest
at Siwah (4.7.25; cf. Baynham 1998: 161). I do fi nd it striking, however, in
a generally encomiastic and war-themed work like the Anabasis.
Chapter 18
1. A strong case could also be made for Alexander’s encounter with
the dead pharaoh Sesonchosis in the “cave of the gods” at AR 3.24 as a
variety of katabasis.
2. This is made explicit twice: AR 2.39 and 2.41( β).
3. The relevant portion of the Armenian translation is §209, at Wolohojian
1969: 115–16. The tendency to regard the water-of-life motif as a
late insertion tout court into the Romance tradition, as found at Friedländer
1910, Jouanno 2002: 268–71, accordingly seems precarious. For the
general dating of the recensions see Stoneman 1996: 601–09, 2007:
lxxiii–lxxxiii, 2008: 230–32 and Jouanno 2002: 247–465. For the personal
names and their signifi cances see Stoneman 2008: 146–47 and
Jouanno 2002: 271–80: Ounna means “Hun”; the name Neraida, as it
stands, is built on what we know as the modern Greek term for water,
nero. Note also, more broadly, Stoneman 2008: 154–69 for the important
reception of this episode of the Romance in the Arabic tradition (superseding
Dawkins 1937). I thank Richard Stoneman for his direct advice
on these matters and for giving me access to his work in advance of publication
on these points and much else in this paper, but the views it
expresses are not his.
4. Hes. Op. 169–72, Pind. Ol. 2.68–72 (more—and different?—on
reincarnation from Pindar at Threnodies F133 Snell-Maehler = Pl. Meno
81b–c), Pl. Grg. 523ab (the last simultaneously sending the unjust to Tartarus).
Indeed in the eighth century A.D. recension ε of the AR, the birdlike
creatures tell Alexander that it is forbidden for him to tread not upon the
Land but actually upon the Isles of the Blessed ( makarōn n ēsoi).
5. For a recent reassertion of the fundamentally Orphic nature of the
tablets, see Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal 2008: 179–205.
6. Graf and Johnston 2007 no. 39 (properly excluded from Bernabé
and Jiménez San Cristóbal 2008) hails from Manisa in Asia Minor, but
cannot be securely identifi ed as belonging to the Orphic set.