Alex & The Bathyspheres

No, not another obscure indie rock band I happen to be championing. This (eventually) is the true myth of a mighty Macedonian, the world's  first  submariner (and his cat, his cock, his cur and his faithless concubine).

When down in London late last year, we went to an exhibition at the British Library celebrating Alexander the Great, man and myth, as told through literary works across 2,000 years. On display was a fabulous and priceless array of books and manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, French, German and English, many of them beautifully illustrated, telling of the life and exploits of Alexander.

He was born in Macedonia in 356 BC and by the time of his death aged only thirty-two, he had built a vast empire that stretched from Greece through Egypt and Persia and as far as India. 

His wasn't the first historical empire. The Akkadian, the Assyrian and the Persian empires had preceded it, but his was the most extensive the world had known at the time. He wasn't even the first Alexander of Macedon. The son of King Philip of Macedon, Alexander III succeeded his father to the throne in 336 BC aged just twenty. 

Within ten years Alexander had conquered the Persian Empire and held rule over all the territory from Greece to Punjab, earning himself the epithet 'Great'.  He was certainly a master military tactician on his horse Bucephalus, but he was also a philosopher-king, seeking knowledge and immortality. In his youth he'd learned statecraft, philosophy, ethics, astrology, alchemy and medicine under the guidance of his mentor Aristotle (than whom there was surely none better). As the ruler of conquered territories he sought to connect cultures and faiths, and in his personal life he was polygamous, his principal wives being Roxana and Stateira (Persian princesses by birth).

He was still pushing the empirical boundaries when his homesick troops prevailed upon him in 323 BC to let them return home. Retreating from Punjab through the desert to Babylon he became fatally ill and died there. His body was transported to Egypt where he was buried in a magnificent mausoleum in the city that now bears his name. 

Not by coincidence, Alexandria was also the site of one of the great libraries of antiquity - but there again it wasn't the first, just the most famous. Alexander got the idea for its creation after visiting the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh (capital of Assyria). There had been even earlier libraries in the Syrian cities of Mardikh and Ugarit over a thousand years before.

After Alexander's sudden demise, legends grew up around him in ensuing decades and centuries and a mythical Alexander took on a life of his own, in which he is reputed to have travelled to the limits of the world in search of new experiences and the key to immortality.

Those limits included underseas exploration, and I believe the tales of Alexander as submariner, although mosttly written in the Middle Ages, would claim he was the first mortal to adventure into the deep, centuries before Beowulf and millennia before Jules Verne.

The origin of the several tales of Alexander's underwater exploits appears to be the 'Problemata ' (Προβλήματα), an ancient Greek text contentiously credited to Aristotle (though more likely dating from a couple of centuries later). In it the philosopher tells how his student Alexander the Great descended to the depths of the sea (below) in “a very fine barrel made entirely of white glass”. 

bathysphere take one - the glass barrel

The reasons for this descent differed in retellings across time. For some, it was to scout submarine defences surrounding the city of Tyre during its siege. In the 'Roman d'Alexandre ' (written in verse in French circa 1170 AD), Alexander explored the world beneath the waves in a glass bathysphere or diving bell. He is alleged to have been looking to conquer the depths but emerged shaken and chastened by a vision of the great chain of being, stating that “the world is damned and lost. The large and powerful fish devour the small fry”.

In a 14th century German rendition of the tale, Alexander ordered a concubine to hold onto the chain so the bathysphere didn't drift too far. But no sooner had he disappeared beneath the waves than his mistress, seeing an opportunity to be with her true love, promptly threw the chain into the sea. (Some variants of the story say that the woman in question wanted revenge because Alexander had killed her father and forced himself upon her.)

What appealed to me most about several of these stories was the incidental detail provided to explain how this fantastical underwater business all worked. My favourite (as illustrated below) explained that Alexander was submerged in his glass barrel with a cat, a cockerel and a dog... why wouldn't you? And of course they all got on with each other and were impeccably behaved beneath the waves.

bathysphere take two - with cat, cock and cur

The purpose of the cockerel was to keep track of time - presumably it crowed the hours down in the murky depths. The job of the cat was to "purify the atmosphere", for it was an ancient belief that cats breathed in stale air and magically exhaled it fresh again. As for the poor cur, its body became a sort of dog-air-bag propelling Alexander in his bathysphere upwards when he wanted to resurface.

I'll leave that fabulous slab of pre-historic sci-fi there for you to reflect on and will finish this Saturday's blog with a cautionary new poem that I've devised, appropriately in Alexandrine form - and that is a first! The Alexandrine, thought to be named in deference to the aforementioned 'Roman d'Alexandre ', was first popularised in medieval France. It was composed in lines of twelve syllables, or more accurately half-lines of six syllables (often with  a caesura), and most commonly though not perforce in rhyming couplets.

bathysphere take three - feeding frenzy

Alexandrine

Inscrutable as is the crafty crocodile

there played upon her lips a hieroglyphic smile.

Alexandrine the wile with opportunity

to venge her defiling and be forever free

sat softly in mid-ship held his fate in her hand

this mighty warrior and king of all the land

from western Macedon to orient India.

Suspended down below with cat and cock and cur

in a fantastical glass bubble bathysphere

her lord and master always seeking pastures where

no one had grazed before determined to explore

the world beneath the waves down to its sandy floor

trusting his loyal crew and dark-eyed concubine

to haul him from the depths when he should give the sign.

He gazed in wonder at big fish consuming small

recalled what he'd been taught of pride before a fall

by his mentor Aristotle. Growing pensive

now in his submarine bell and apprehensive

though he knew not quite why he gave a single tug

upon the pendant chain assuming they would lug

him forthwith to the surface. Imagine his surprise

at plummeting when he'd been expecting to rise

while on her part Alexandrine feigned sudden shock

as the chain slipped from her grasp. Mindful not to rock

the boat she flung herself decorously prostrate

in a simulated faint at this twist of fate...

no more Great Alexander freedom hers at last

sweet Eau de Nil erasing her coercive past.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)