s Valerius; but this
work had probably been lost sight of, and it was in the 10th century that
they were re-imported from Byzantium to Italy by the Archpriest Leo, who
had gone as Envoy to the Eastern Capital from John Duke of Campania.[17]
Romantic histories on this foundation, in verse and prose, became diffused
in all the languages of Western Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia,
rivalling in popularity the romantic cycles of the Round Table or of
Charlemagne. Nor did this popularity cease till the 16th century was well
advanced.

The heads of most of the Mediaeval Travellers were crammed with these
fables as genuine history.[18] And by the help of that community of legend
on this subject which they found wherever Mahomedan literature had spread,
Alexander Magnus was to be traced everywhere in Asia. Friar Odoric found
Tana, near Bombay, to be the veritable City of King Porus; John
Marignolli's vainglory led him to imitate King Alexander in setting up a
marble column "in the corner of the world over against Paradise," i.e.
somewhere on the coast of Travancore; whilst Sir John Maundevile, with a
cheaper ambition, borrowed wonders from the Travels of Alexander to adorn
his own. Nay, even in after days, when the Portuguese stumbled with
amazement on those vast ruins in Camboja, which have so lately become
familiar to us through the works of Mouhot, Thomson, and Garnier, they
ascribed them to Alexander.[19]

Prominent in all these stories is the tale of Alexander's shutting up a
score of impure nations, at the head of which were Gog and Magog, within a
barrier of impassable mountains, there to await the latter days; a legend
with which the disturbed mind of Europe not unnaturally connected that
cataclysm of unheard-of Pagans that seemed about to deluge Christendom in
the first half of the 13th century. In these stories also the beautiful
Roxana, who becomes the bride of Alexander, is _Darius's_ daughter,
bequeathed to his arms by the dying monarch. Conspicuous among them again
is the Legend of the Oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon, which with
audible voice foretell the place and manner of Alexander's death. With
this Alexandrian legend some of the later forms of the story had mixed up
one of Christian origin about the Dry Tree, _L'Arbre Sec_. And they had
also adopted the Oriental story of the Land of Darkness and the mode of
escape from it, which Polo relates at p. 484 of vol. ii.

[Sidenote: Injustice long done to Polo.