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from Part I - Individual Characters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
Quo tendit tua, Magne, fames? quis finis habendi,
Querendi quis erit modus aut que meta laborum?
Nil agis, o demens. licet omnia clauseris uno
Regna sub imperio totumque subegeris orbem,
Semper egenus eris.
Great One, where will your hunger lead? What end
will come of grasping? Pray, what bounds are set
unto your search? Where stands your labor's goal?
Madman, your works are naught. Though you enclose
all kingdoms in one empire, and subdue
the entire world, a pauper you remain
forever.
Thus Walter of Châtillon, writing in the period 1171–81, upbraids Alexander the Great in what proved to be one of the most successful long Latin poems composed in the Middle Ages, the Alexandreis. At this point in the account of his career, Alexander has returned to Babylon after conquering Asia and is poised to begin a new campaign in the west, after which, as he has told us earlier in the poem (in IX.563–70), he intends to seek the other world of the Antipodes because one world alone is too small for him. Walter's censure runs on for fourteen lines in all, ringing the changes on the madness of never being satisfied, and culminating in the ironic announcement that a single drink will soon put an end to all Alexander's desires, for a plot to poison him is already afoot.
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