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5 - Alexander's Entry into Jerusalem in The Wars of Alexander

Thorlac Turville-Petre
Thorlac Turville-Petre
Affiliation:
Thorlac Turville-Petre is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham.
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Summary

The author of The Wars of Alexander is one of the most versatile of the alliterative poets. Like Morte Arthure, the Wars recounts events of the distant past and portrays a hero driven to destruction by his sense of the role allotted to him. The work is a careful translation of the Historia de preliis, an expanded version of Nativitas et victoria Alexandri Magni. Among the stories that the Historia de preliis adds is the entry of Alexander into the city of Jerusalem, the source of which is Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities. Alexander has demanded that Jadus, high priest of Jerusalem, should switch sides and pay him the tribute formerly paid to the Persian king Darius. Jadus refuses, but then hears to his horror that Alexander is approaching Jerusalem to exact revenge. He calls the citizens together for three days of fasting and prayers. An angel instructs him in a dream not to fear, but to decorate the streets and lead a procession all dressed in white out of the city to greet Alexander:

When he had woken from his sleep he called the Jews together and told them all that he had seen while he was asleep, and ordered them to act in the manner revealed to him. Going out of the city at once, together with the priests and the throng of the people, he reached a place called ‘Scopolus’ from where the Temple and the whole city could be seen, and there they awaited the arrival of Alexander the Great. Alexander, approaching the place called ‘Scopolus’, and perceiving the crowd of people wearing white clothes, the priests adorned in robes of shining white, and the high priest of the Jews dressed in a gold and hyacinth-blue robe and an elegant head-dress above, and above that a plate made of gold and jacinth on which was written the name of the highest god ‘Tetragramaton’, immediately ordered all his men to stand back. He went ahead alone to the Jews and leapt off his horse to the ground and worshipped the name of God that he saw written there. And immediately all the Jews began to greet Alexander and to cry out with loud voices saying: ‘Long live the great Alexander! Long live the great emperor! Long live the unvanquished conqueror of all and the most glorious of all the princes of the world.

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Description and Narrative in Middle English Alliterative Poetry
, pp. 79 - 96
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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