The Alexandrine Scripts: A Stretch of Sand and Other Stories by Daniel Ray

The Alexandrine Scripts: A Stretch of Sand and Other Stories Reviews

• 
  Jane

  Five delightful stories written as the conceit that these were works not destroyed in the Library of Alexandria fire and were considered good enough to translate into English. Although the author [ahem, editor] considers the 19th century translation good, he's seen fit to modernize the language somewhat.
  
  Herein is a quiet, smily-type humorous piece [ "Sacred Geese of Juno"], straight biography: ["Life of Hannibal" purportedly written by his secretary], two others that point up the results of intolerance, treason, or greed ["The Traitors" and the "Edibles War"].
  
  We end with "Stretch of Sand", title story which I consider the best one and a should-be classic, an anti-war story set in North Africa: Nova Hippo--colony of Carthage--and the rival Cyrene. The two cities dispute land boundary and two useless deaths result. As the author, Philaenus of Carthage laments:

  "I do believe it is a sin before all the gods of heaven, if we the people lay down the lives of our boys for no more than a stretch of sand."

  
  
  This is one collection that I've found in which each story is worthwhile.
  
• 
  Keith Currie

  Now this really is obscure. The author professes to make `more accessible to the general reader' the Victorian translation of five otherwise unknown pieces of ancient literature which apparently were `among those manuscripts which survived the destruction of the library of Alexandria and the mass book burnings of the early Christian era'. Five short pieces follow: `The sacred geese of Juno' by Aulus Paulus Anser (from the Latin), `The Traitors' by Apollonius of Scythopolis (from the Greek), `The Edibles War' by Xanthippus of Locri (from the Greek), `Life of Hannibal' by Callisthenes the Saguntine and `A Stretch of Sand' by Philaenos of Carthage.
  
  I love this sort of thing. The central conceit of modernising slightly stilted translations of obscure ancient works is very well done. There is much sly humour - Aulus Paulus Anser forsooth! The stories themselves are ingenious and in the case of `A stretch of Sand' a moving revelation on the grief and folly caused by war, professedly written by the repentant warmonger from the perspective of old age and profound disillusionment.
  
  I know nothing about the author, except that he is American, was living in Ireland when he wrote this book and that he appears to have written nothing since. I imagine the book is designed for a rather select clientele, but it is rarely that I have seen this sort of pastiche so well done.