THE LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 189 



expect the honour of a visit from Jupiter Ammon 

 himself, and, dressing in the horns and hieratic 

 robe proper to the character he assumed, became, by 

 her whom he seduced, the father of Alexander the 

 Great. The child was born amid thunder and 

 lightning, and was soon committed to the care of 

 Nectanebus who became his tutor : a clear point 

 of connection with Aristotle, who really filled that 

 office. One day tutor and pupil walked on the 

 edge of a cliff, when the philosopher uttered a 

 prophecy to the effect that Alexander was fated to 

 kill his own father. The boy, who fancied that 

 Philip was meant, took the words so ill that he 

 flung his tutor over the rock, and thus instantly 

 fulfilled the prediction. This tale can be traced 

 from its appearance in the Pseudo-Callisthenes 

 through the series of Byzantine chroniclers 

 Syncellus, Glycas, John Malala, and the author of 

 the Chronicon Pascale to the later romances 

 where it is repeated and amplified. The whole 

 Middle Age believed it. Not till the fourteenth 

 century did a doubt of its truth appear, 1 and that 

 it was current in the west of Europe at the time 

 of which we write appears plainly in the preface to 

 the Secret a Secretorum, which has the following 

 significant remark, ' which Alexander is said to 

 have had two horns.' 2 The real meaning of the 

 legend probably lay in a patriotic desire to vindi- 

 cate for Egypt, though subdued by Alexander, the 

 honour of having originated the Greek philosophy. 3 



1 In the poem of Alberic de Besangon. 



2 St. Chrysostom (A.D. 398) speaks of the custom of using brass coins 

 of Alexander as amulets. 



3 It is a curious fact that under the historic Nekhtneb (362-45 B.C.) 

 the Greek philosophers Eudoxus and Chrysippus spent eleven years in 

 Egypt to learn the astronomical secrets of the priests. 



