section_path: Legacy/In legend
section_name: In legend
paragraph_text: In legend
  
  Many of the legends about Alexander derive from his own lifetime, probably encouraged by Alexander himself. His court historian Callisthenes portrayed the sea in Cilicia as drawing back from him in proskynesis. Writing shortly after Alexander's death, Onesicritus invented a tryst between Alexander and Thalestris, queen of the mythical Amazons. He reportedly read this passage to his patron King Lysimachus, who had been one of Alexander's generals and who quipped, "I wonder where I was at the time."
  
  In the first centuries after Alexander's death, probably in Alexandria, a quantity of the legendary material coalesced into a text known as the Alexander Romance, later falsely ascribed to Callisthenes and therefore known as Pseudo-Callisthenes. This text underwent over one hundred recensions, translations, and derivations throughout the Islamic and European worlds in premodern times, containing many dubious stories, and was translated into twenty-five languages, for example Middle Persian, Syriac and Arabic.