ndia, and gave them the first glimpses
of that magnificence and splendor which has dazzled and captivated
their imagination for more than two thousand years. See Freeman's
"Historical Essays" (2d series, 1873), and Mahaffy's "Alexander's
Empire" (1887).

The wonderful element in the campaigns of Alexander, and his tragical
death at the height of his power, threw a rare romantic interest
around his figure. It is ever the fate of a great name to be enshrined
in fable, and Alexander soon became the hero of romantic story,
scarcely more wonderful than the actual, but growing from age to age
with the mythopoeic spirit which can work as freely in fact as
fiction. The earliest form of the story which we know is the great
romance connected with the name of Callisthenes, which, under the
influence of the living popular tradition, arose in Egypt about 200
A.D., and was carried through Latin translations to the West, through
Armenian and Syriac versions to the East. It became widely popular
during the middle ages, and was worked into poetic form by many
writers in French and German. Alberich of Besancon wrote in Middle
High German an epic on the subject in the first half of the twelfth
century, which was the basis of the German "Pfaffe" Lamprecht's
"Alexanderbuch," also of the twelfth century. The French poets Lambert
li Court and Alexandre de Bernay composed, between 1180 and 1190, a
romance of Alexander, the twelve-syllable metre of which gave rise to
the name _Alexandrines_. The German poem of Rudolf of Ems was based on
the Latin epic of Walter of Chatillon, about 1200, which became
henceforward the prevailing form of the story. In contrast with it is
the thirteenth century Old English epic of Alexander (in vol. i. of
Weber's "Metrical Romances," 1810), based on the Callisthenes version.
The story appears also in the East, worked up in conjunction with
myths of other nationalities, especially the Persian. It appears in
Firdusi, and among later writers, in Nizami. From the Persians both
the substance of the story and its form in poetical treatment have
extended to Turks and other Mohammedans, who have interpreted
Alexander as the _Dsulkarnein_ ('two horned') of the Koran, and to the
Hindus, which last had preserved no independent traditions of
Alexander.

HANNIBAL

By WALTER WHYTE

(247-183 B.C.)

[Illustration: Hannibal.]

Hannibal (the grace of Baal, the Hanniel of Scripture) was the son of
the great Carthagi