Ligabue Magazine 29

An erudite scholar of the Greek world, Monica Centanni published the first modern translation of the Hellenistic Romance of Alexander, the work which is probably the most interesting account of the life and legends of the great conqueror. She describes the Venetian connection and quotes a long excerpt from the Romance narrating Alexander’s flight in a large basket drawn by two famished gryphons enticed upwards by a piece of horse liver held above their heads on the tip of the king’s spear. The ascension to heaven is a recurrent myth in the stories of heroes and prophets, as is their divine origin. Plutarch was convinced that Alexander descended from Heracles on his father’s side and Aeacus on his mother’s side.

According to the legends, however, Alexander did not embark on this flight after death, but during his lifetime, thus committing a deed of ‘Lucifer-like pride’: after having conquered all the kingdoms of the earth, he set his sights on the sky. In addition to the bas-relief, the Venetians also brought back from Byzantium another memento of Alexander, a small enamelled disk showing the apotheosis of Alexander in flight, induced among the pearls and gems in the great gold altar screen, called the Pala d’Oro, in St. Mark’s Treasury. The crime of not having noticed this gem earlier is perhaps attenuated by the fact the guidebooks don’t mention it either. Monica Centanni boldly conduces that ‘the Alexander of St. Mark’s is not only the Alexander of the Romance but also the mythical precursor of the imperial authority of the doge of the “third Rome” (i.e. Venice).

And the image of Alexander drawn by gryphons is the temporal representation of the pantocratic power of Christ. And therefore, the flight of the princeps, basileus (king) or doge is the earthly double of the triumph and the ascension of Christ’. I hope that Monica Centanni will forgive me if I add a brief and perhaps rather fanciful digression. Recent research has revealed that the first inhabitants of Venice and its surrounding areas, who eventually became the Venetici and Veneti, probably came from Paphlagonia. I like to think of this region on the southern shores of the Black Sea as being connected to the story of Alexander the Great, since after cutting the Gordian knot, he set off to conquer Paphlagonia and Cappadocia. Although Plutarch makes no mention of it, the Paphlagonians were very skilled navigators and fleeing from Alexander they and their very beautiful women may well have reached the upper Adriatic.

We remain in the Near East to explore Cyprus’s relations with the region in antiquity in the article on page 36 by Vassos Karageorghis, professor of Archaeology at the University of Cyprus. A foreign member of the Academy of Athens, he is a great expert on the history of communications, cultures, and trade in the lands of the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. He takes us back to the days of Homer to the remarkable long-lasting trade relations between Cyprus and the peoples of continental Europe and the Middle East. Once known as Alasia, this island smaller than ten thousand square kilometres has played a key role in exchanging ideas and products since as early as the third millennium BC.

Having been passed from the Phoenicians to the Egyptians and then the Persians, the island was for a long time at odds with Greece. It also fought against the Spartans and became part of the Hellenistic world with Alexander the Great. Julius Caesar gave it back to Cleopatra… This is not the place to go into the long and tormented history of Cyprus, but for sentimental reasons we must mention its Venetian period and Queen Caterina Cornaro. But to get back to the article, we find that copper was and still is one of the island’s most precious resources: Vassos Karageorghis tells of a westward-bound Cypriot vessel, shipwrecked while on a ‘royal mission’ for the king of Alasia with a cargo of 355 copper ingots, whose overall weight was 10 tonnes. Among the other commodities exported in the Late Bronze Age were tin, glass, earthenware jars and even what were described as ‘luxury items’, not to mention the fine Cyprus wines and raisins that at a later date Venetian merchants brought to Europe.

Another source of great wonder to me is the variety and wealth of wildlife in the Venetian Lagoon. Previously I thought the only volatiles in Venice were seagulls and many, too many pigeons – plus a few blackbirds in my garden. But only a stone’s throw from the historic centre you can see elegant little egrets, hundreds of red herons, cormorants, terns and stilts like the elegant ‘knight of Italy’. Your eyes will truly be opened on page 158 by naturalist Michele Zanetti, the author of many nature books and president of the San Donà Naturalist Association. Bruno Berti is another very keen naturalist and expert on Venetian traditions. His article on page 118 may well provide directors of horror films with some inspiration. He describes some carnivorous plants which don’t actually devour people, as some ancient legends would have it, but as far as cunning and cruelty go, they certainly put a few torture gardens in the shade.

On page 66 our devoted collaborator, the writer and documentary maker Maurizio Leigheb takes us among the native American Indians of the Vale do Javarì in the state of Amazonas to meet the ethnic group called the Matses. The most characteristic feature of this people is that they cover their faces with thin sharp ornaments making them look like jaguars. A leap north-eastward and we land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (see page 94) to learn about Polynesia from the ethnologist Guido Carlo Pigliasco. Polynesian history is characterised by the natives’ incredible original skill at navigation not their colonisation by the Americans, as Thor Heyerdahl had sought to demonstrate with Kon-Tiki. This year some Polynesians demonstrated their time-honoured skills by sailing 6,000 miles in canoes over the immense ocean with no nautical charts or instruments. When it came to sailing, they were second to none!