Ancient text
Syriac Alexander Poem
A text for line-by-line reading, with transliteration, translation, and resources.
Poetic work about Alexander and life-water, distinct from the long Romance and prose Legend; attribution and date require examination.
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- Edition
- 2
Text
Pages 170–175 of Budge’s1889translation describe testing life-water with a salted fish that revives, and the king’s failure to find where to bathe. Those pages do not themselves establish the cook’s immortality. [7]
Attribution to Jacob of SerughJacob of SerughSyriac author of the late fifth and early sixth centuries, credited with a homily on the youths of Ephesus.Glossary · Click to read the explanation in a title is not independent proof of authorship; Brock offers a model after629–630. The diagram compares fish motifs in different texts; it is not an ancient manuscript. [8]
References and notes
- Six translation pages; no independent Syriac collation. E. A. Wallis Budge, The History of Alexander the Great (1889), metrical Discourse, pp. 170–175; PDF 292–297 Return to the text ↑
- Brock: distinct works and proposed Poem dating. Sebastian P. Brock, Alexander Cycle, GEDSH (2011); complete electronic entry Return to the text ↑
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IL Archive, «Syriac Alexander Poem», Edition 2, https://ilarchive.com/en/texts/syriac-alexander-poem