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ALEXANDER AND THE POISON GIRL

■ Introduction
A long time ago I learned in a history class that Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) was a man of small stature but of great action. Everything about this man was supposed to be special, even the age at which he died: 33 years. On moral grounds my history teacher - I was at a Roman Catholic school - omitted same other details: that Alexander's mother Olympias was a very temperamental lady with a predilection for conjurations and magical rituals where she used to dance with snakes coiled around her neck and head (Keller, 1913, page 286-287). How she was seduced and impregnated by the sorcerer Neptanabus who had taken the shape of a dragon (draco = python) and his father Philippus must have I been a simpleton not to have noticed anything. Fortunately, later on I had the opportunity to take notice of these most interesting facts.


■ Alexander and the poison girl
One can measure the quality of someone's achievements in two ways, One can indicate on a map all the areas someone has conquered, in the case of Alexander quite a big area has to be coloured on.a.historial map: Another way is to look at what ways adversaries have tried to eliminate him. In this case you will also come to the justifiabie conclusion that Alexander fully deserved bis epithet 'the Great'. The most remarkable attempt ever made on Alexanders life was what the Queen of India did to prevent the conquest of her land. She sent him a gorgeous girl who had been fed poison since the day she was bom, so that she had developed into an unprecedented lethal weapon. I came across this intriguing story in One of the books of Jacob van Maerlant.


■ Alexander's quest
Alexander's actions have had such a tremendous influence, and have appealed to the imagi- nation of the people so much that even in 1260 it was worth the effort for a devotee to have Jacob van Maerlant make a Middle Dutch translation of a French example of Alexander's adventures. Maerlant called this translation 'Alexander's quests'; the notion 'quests' is derived from the French word 'geste' and means 'conduct of war' and also 'heroic deed'. Maerlant's translation of Alexander's heroic deeds is one of many versions, many others exist in quite a lot of languages. Well then, the attempt which may be interesting to other herpetologists is described by Maerlant in the first part of his 'biography' of Alexander the Great. I just give you the translation of the Middle Dutch in modern English (Alexander's Quests I, vss. 1150-1180):
Shortly after the Queen of India sent [to Alexander] a courtly and free (i.e. non- predial) virgin so perfect in mind and limb that in her days one could not have found her equal. She was indeed so pretty, that everyone who saw her with his own eyes said that nobody was as perfect as she. Moreover, she was so excellent, that she could tell her message in Greek. Alexander instantly fell in love with her and wished to make her his mistress at once. He ordered his shield bearer to release her. As Aristotle saw this, he noticed something strange about her behaviour and he discovered by cunning - since he was very wise - that she had been raised since her youth on snakes and poison. He drew the king's attention to this and showed him that anyone, no matter how strong he was, would die before the ninth hour if he had anything to do with her. Therefore the king would have been dead if his master had not prevented it.
Obviously Alexander bas inherited his mother's temperament. He bas hardly seen the pretty girl and already the fire of love bas to be extinguished. This time he would not have come off so weIl as the girl would have poisoned him.

■ Questions
Although Maerlant devotes thousands of lines to Alexander, unfortunately he does not waste any more words on this story. However, we would like to know more about this poison girl; what exactly was her food, and in what way would the poisoning of Alexander have taken place? How exactly did Aristotle, the greatest of all philosophers, discover th at the girl was perilous for his pupil? And what happened to the girl afterwards?

■ Answers
The answers have to be collected from various versions and translations of the Alexander story. Fortunately this labour bas already been done in 1893 by the German scientist Wilhelm Hertz. In the following I will gratefully take advantage of bis information. According to one of the versions the female present could have killed Alexander merely by her breath. Her exclusively poisonous food supposedly enabled her to do sa. A look at her eyes had the same effect (she resembles the dreadful basiliscus, a monster which terrorised ancient and medieval times - Van der Voort, 1993, page 42-55). The intention of the Queen of India was that the mere sight of this gorgeous girl would kill Alexander. Aristotle could only avert this threat by putting a special herb in the mouth of bis Lord. The name of this herb has not been handed down.

Another version tells how the girl entered while Alexander was sitting at the table. She was so indescribably beautiful that Alexander could not take bis eyes off her, which would have meant a certain death foT him. Fortunately, Aristotle asked bis Lord to follow him, withdrawing him from the lethal gaze. Aristotle told him that the girl had been fed viper meat since the day she was bom and due to this she obtained her lethal powers. Obviously Aristotle's remarks we re investigated. In those days this happened as follows, Alexander ordered in a condemned man, he made the girl bite the man, who died immediately. In another version merely a kiss of the girl sufficed to kill the condemned man. Quod erat demonstrandum.

In another variation the poison girl is one of the persons given to Alexander as a sign of submission: made up seductively she is sent to Alexander together with four other gorgeous girls and slaves. Alexander, after all he has inherited bis mother's sensuality, immediately wants to embrace the most beautiful alle, but Aristotle stopped him. Two slaves are drummed up and they die immediately after having kissed the young lady. The same thing happens to dogs and harses as she touches them. Immediately Alexander bas the girl decapitated and her body burned. In the course of that evening a lot of knights who had not been able to control their libido and had given in to their desire to kiss the girl before she was admitted to Alexander, died.

According to same philosophers the active poison was napellus (see appendix and Thomasset, 1982, page 89). In another version this poison was the cause that the girl was exposed as a murderess; at the table she refuses all dishes and asks for napellus. To Aristotle this is a clear indication. He observed her and he can almost see the poison coming out of her eyes. He advises his Lord not to spend the night with her, but to leave that to others. WeIl, there were plenty of candidates, but next morning they were all lying dead on the bed.

Interesting too is a story that goes into detail about the birth and upbringing of the poison girl. In this land where snakes occurred that could swallow a deer Gust like the Ancient and Medieval 'boa' - see Van der Voort, 1993, pages 56-62), a queen put a newborn baby girl in a snake's egg. In those days the eggs of giant snakes had the size of a bushel, about 1 decalitre, so this should not have been a problem. She let the mother snake breed her eggs and the baby girl is born a second time, together with her snake brothers and sisters. The mother also gives them snake food. The child cannot speak, only hiss. When her snake mother decides it is time for her to go and live on her own, the queen puts her in a cage in the palace. There she teaches the girl to speak and to accept normal food. Many years later this girl is offered to Alexander, but once again it is Aristotle who discovers the snakelike nature of this present and warns bis lord. Aristotle then carries out a test in order to convince him. He has pulverized a bucketful of dictam and with the juice which is released he draws a circle around a vessel under which a dangerous snake is lying. As the vessel is removed and the snake released, it can only crawl along the line of the circle, not being able to cross it. It has to crawl continuously until it eventually dies. The poison girl is also put in the circle, together with the two other girls and when Alexander tells them to walk towards hifi the two normal girls can do this, but the poison girl cannot. She desperately tries to find a way out of the circle and eventually she dies in the same way as the snake before her. There are many variations on this theme; the gaze of the girl is supposed to be as poisonous as that of the basiliscus, even her sweat is supposed to be poisonous and she leaves a trace of her victims in history.


■ Acknowledgement
I wish to express my thanks to the people of the Public Library of Asten, where I live, who managed to obtain the microfilms of the precious book of Hertz.

■ References
Hellemont, J. van, 1988. Fytotherapeutisch compendium. Utrecht.
Hertz, W., 1893. 'Die Sage vom Giftmädchen'. München. Aus den Abhandlungen der k. bayer. Akademie der Wiss. I. CL XX. Bd. I Abth.
Keimer, L., 1947. Histoires de Serpents dans l'Egypte ancienne et moderne. Le Caire.
Maerlant, Jacob van, 1882. Alexanders Geesten. Opnieuw uitgegeven door dr. Johannes Franck. Leiden.
KeIler, 0., 1909-1913. Die antike Tierwelt. 2 Vols. Leipzig
Penzer, N., 1952. Poison-damsels and other essays in folklore and anthropology. London. Thomasset, Cl., 1982. Commentaire du dialogue de Placides et Timéo. Genève.
Voort, M. van der, 1993. Van serpenten met venine. Jacob van Maerlant's boek over slangen hertaald en van herpetologisch commentaar voorzien. Hilversum.

First published in Litteratura Serpentium 15, 1995, 100-104.

Translation by Paul Schotten.
English corrections by John Weir.