Since the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC there has been no age in history, whether in the West or in the East, in which his name and exploits have not been familiar. And yet not only have all contemporary records been lost but even the work based on those records though written some four and a half centuries after his death, the "Anabasis" of Arrian, was totally unknown to the writers of the Middle Ages and became available to Western scholarship only with the Revival of Learning Renaissance. The perpetuation of Alexander's fame through so many ages and amongst so many peoples is due in the main to the innumerable recensions and transmogrifications of a work known as the "Alexander Romance" or "Pseudo-Callisthenes".