The Alexandreis

Walter of Châtillon’s Latin epic on the life of Alexander the Great was a twelfth- and thirteenth-century “best-seller:” scribes produced over two hundred manuscripts. The poem follows Alexander from his first successes in Asia Minor, through his conquest of Persia and India, to his progressive moral degeneration and his poisoning by a disaffected lieutenant. The Alexandreis exemplifies twelfth-century discourses of world domination and the exoticism of the East. But at the same time i…