egends,
not merely in Greek and Latin, not merely in AEthiopic or Coptic, but
in Armenian and Syriac, in Hebrew and Arabic, in Persian and perhaps
in Turkish: and it is possible that, either indirectly before the
Crusades, or directly through and after them, the legend as told in
the West received additions from the East.

As a whole, however, the Pseudo-Callisthenes, or rather his Latin
interpreter Julius Valerius,[72] was the main source of the mediaeval
legend of Alexander. And it is not at all impossible (though the old
vague assertions that this or that mediaeval characteristic or
development was derived from the East were rarely based on any solid
foundation so far as their authors knew) that this Alexander legend
did, at second-hand, and by suggesting imitation of its contents and
methods, give to some of the most noteworthy parts of mediaeval
literature itself an Eastern colouring, perhaps to some extent even an
Eastern substance.

[Footnote 72: Most conveniently accessible in the Teubner collection,
ed. Kuebler, Leipzig, 1888.]

[Sidenote: _Latin versions._]

Still the direct sources of knowledge in the West were undoubtedly
Latin versions of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, one of which, that ascribed
to Julius Valerius, appears, as has been said, to have existed before
the middle of the fourth century, while the other, sometimes called
the _Historia de Proeliis_, is later by a good deal. Later still,
and representing traditions necessarily different from and later than
those of the Callisthenes book, was the source of the most marvellous
elements in the Alexandreids of the twelfth and subsequent centuries,
the _Iter ad Paradisum_, in which the conquerer was represented as
having journeyed to the Earthly Paradise itself. After this, connected
as it was with dim Oriental fables as to his approach to the unknown
regions north-east of the Caucasus, and his making gates to shut out
Gog, there could be no further difficulty, and all accretions as to
his descent into the sea in a glass cage and so forth came easily.

[Sidenote: _Their story._]

Nor could they, indeed, be said to be so very different in nature from
at least the opening part of the Callisthenes version itself. This
starts with what seems to be the capital and oldest part of the whole
fabulous story, a very circumstantial account of the fictitious
circumstances of the birth of Alexander. According to this, which is
pretty constantly preserved in all th