XIV. Lamprecht’s Lay Of Alexander

A free translation, made about 1130 by a priest living in the Middle Rhine country, of a French poem by Alberic de Besançon. It consists of 7302 verses in short couplets. Except 105 verses at the beginning the French original is lost. It was itself a versification of a highly fabulous old saga current in Latin prose. As the 105 French verses correspond to 192 verses in the German, it is evident that Lamprecht did not follow Alberic slavishly and that he drew in part upon some other source, perhaps the Latin original. The selections below are from a letter which Alexander writes, toward the end of his career, to his mother Olympias and his teacher Aristotle. In this letter he recounts at length (1670 verses) the wonderful things that he has seen.