An Epitome of Biblical History

An epic of some 5500 lines on the life of Alexander the Great, Walter of Chatillon's Alexandreis stood, from the late twelfth century till the close of the Middle Ages, among the most successful and widely read works of Latin literature. This volume presents one free-standing version of the more or less 'standard' commentary on a uniquely celebrated passage from the poem. The lines in question, 176-274 of Book 4, describe a tomb commissioned by Alexander for the wife of Darius, after her death in captivity to the Greek commander. The painter Apelles devises for the tomb an iconographical schema largely devoted to rehearsal of the Hebrew Scriptures. The commentary elucidates Walter's compressed biblical references to the fictive tomb's illustrative cycle through extensive paraphrase of episodes from the Hebrew Bible.