Still the direct sources of knowledge in the West were undoubtedly Latin versions of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, one of which, that ascribed to Julius Valerius, appears, as has been said, to have existed before the middle of the fourth century, while the other, sometimes called the _Historia de Proeliis_, is later by a good deal. Later still, and representing traditions necessarily different from and later than those of the Callisthenes book, was the source of the most marvellous elements in the Alexandreids of the twelfth and subsequent centuries, the _Iter ad Paradisum_, in which the conquerer was represented as having journeyed to the Earthly Paradise itself. After this, connected as it was with dim Oriental fables as to his approach to the unknown regions north-east of the Caucasus, and his making gates to shut out Gog, there could be no further difficulty, and all accretions as to his descent into the sea in a glass cage and so forth came easily. [Sidenote: _Their story._] Nor could they, indeed, be said to be so very different in nature from at least the opening part of the Callisthenes version itself. This starts with what seems to be the capital and oldest part of the whole fabulous story, a very circumstantial account of the fictitious circumstances of the birth of Alexander. According to this, which is pretty constantly preserved in all the fabulous versions of the legend (a proof of its age), Nectanabus, an Egyptian king and magician, having ascertained by sortilege (a sort of _kriegs-spiel_ on a basin of water with wax ships) that his throne is doomed, quits the country and goes to Macedonia. There he falls in love with Olympias, and during the absence of her husband succeeds by magic arts not only in persuading her that the god Ammon is her lover, but to some extent in persuading King Philip to believe this, and to accept the consequences, the part of Ammon having been played of course by Nectanabus himself. Bucephalus makes a considerable figure in the story, and Nectanabus devotes much attention to Alexander's education--care which the Prince repays (for no very discernible reason) by pushing his father and tutor into a pit, where the sorcerer dies after revealing the relationship. The rest of the story is mainly occupied by the wars with Darius and Porus (the former a good deal travestied), and two important parts, or rather appendices, of it are epistolary communications between Aristotle and Alexander on the one hand, Alexander and Dindymus (Dandamis, &c.), King of the Brahmins, on the other. After his Indian adventures the king is poisoned by Cassander or at his instigation. [Sidenote: _Its developments._]