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.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 329 of 1256
Words from 89859 to 90130 of 342071