I’ve spoken elsewhere about ancient stories moving from culture to culture and acquiring new elements. The prime example of this is the Alexander Romance, shorthand for a series of different stories of Alexander the Great across time and many cultures, inclusive of Europe and the Mediterranean stretching all the way to Central Asia. But today I’m interested in turning to a much lesser known story, and tracing its origins. This story is not one that originates from within the Greco-Roman world, and instead came to them from the outside.

We begin with the Achaemenid Persians. Like any other culture the Persians had their stories and legends. Many of their earliest are either lost to us completely, or are only preserved by late sources. But one we are fairly confident was an oddly subversive little story that probably came from the mid 5th century BC or perhaps later. We don’t know what it was originally called, or who wrote it, but we do know the subject- a Greek princess (never mind that the Greeks didn’t have many kings) falls in love with a Persian warrior. Due to his inherent Persian virtue he eventually makes the Greek princess his wife, and goes on to serve his king faithfully. The subversive element is mostly that in order to woo this woman the warrior actually has to tell a few half-truths directly to his king. But it’s essentially a happy tale. All we know of this stage of its history is the outline. But it was not the end of the story.

The basic structure of this original story is mostly preserved by what is in fact a Latin adaptation. But it is very clear that this Latin adaptation comes from a Greek ancestor. From fragmentary comments on the text by various ancient authors we know the Greek version had altered the Persian original. The princess was specifically a daughter of King Leonidas, and therefore Spartan (Spartan women having a particular interpretation in Greek culture). By this point we also have a name, Eurydice. But the Persian had himself shifted as well- he was specifically an Immortal. I have commented elsewhere that ‘Immortals’ had no single counterpart in the real Persian military of this era, but the Greeks absolutely assumed that there was. His name by this point is Dompuldasta, which we think is an abridgement of an Old Persian original Dahmpuldorâsta (the meaning is currently unknown). The Latin plot, if unaltered, seems to indicate that whilst Eurydice does still marry Dompuldasta she ‘hellenises’ him to a certain extent. It’s also been interpreted that Eurydice willingly marrying a virtuous Persian was a critique on Greek morals of the era, this era likely being the early 4th century BC. Perhaps most importantly, we now have a name; Athanatoi, ‘Immortal’.

Much has been mentioned of the Latin summary from which so much of our surviving information of the Greek version comes. It deserves to be mentioned in its own right; it seems that the story had become popular during the Hellenistic era as a kind of vision of virtuous orientals engaging with civilized Greeks. Earlier Roman references indicate the story had transmitted earlier than this but the summary itself dates to the Early Empire. This is likely due to a similar trend in Roman society, especially high society, in the post-Augustan era. The summary was written by one Curiatius Maternus, who proved an unfortunate victim of Domitian’s more dictatorial moods. His summary of the Roman version of ‘Immortal’ is a great help given that no actual preserved version of the story from this era survives. It seems to have been performed as a play at some point, given that the summary mentions specifically (and intriguingly) that playwrights were split about adapting the story as a tragedy or a comedy.

The story is more completely known from Late Antiquity, but by this point it had already begun to morph wildly. Both Ambrose of Milan and John Crysotom preserve versions of the story, and for the first time we have an actual story rather than simply a summary of its general idea. But in their versions Eurydice is now firmly a Christian, and her goal becomes to convert Dompuldasta (often now rendered as Domboldestus) to the ways of God (which she succeeds in doing). The two versions mostly disagree in their characterisation of Dompuldasta- Ambrose’s version indicates that only through acceptance of Christianity did the Persian gain morality, whereas John Crysotom’s version instead opines that Dompuldasta was always a moral man but had never been exposed to Christian teachings.

And from here the versions of the story are as numerous as the cultures that found it appealing. Of those I’m only going to deal with one, and that is the Anglo-Saxon version. As with the other versions the story had morphed to fit a more period-specific understanding of the world. The princess Eurydice was now herself the daughter of a Roman Emperor rather than being a Greek, and Dompuldasta was now a Saracen warrior. As with Beowulf our first preserved manuscripts come from after the Anglo-Saxons had converted to Christianity. But like Beowulf there’s only a distant mention of Christian principles, which contrasts quite distinctly with the two versions from Late Antiquity I mentioned earlier. It seems to suggest that it was first adapted by pagan Anglo-Saxons, and not by Christians. Here Dompuldasta never actually converts to Christianity properly but he instead dies a virtuous death defending Eurydice from her evil father, and Eurydice bears his child who then becomes a great and Christian Roman Emperor. And here the name has shifted as well; rather than simply being ‘Immortal’, the name had shifted to Mine Undeathlicmann. It seems to have fallen out of favour in the subsequent era, but I hear the author Tara Gillesbie has been doing her best to revive it, and frankly I wish her all the best of luck.

My major source for this has been My Immortal: the story of an ancient and noble story by W. Flywheel, but additional information can be found in Posing a Preparatory Thesis on the Ancient Romance: From Goths to Glasgow, a work on ancient stories and their interpretations which is a precursor to a larger work I anticipate with eagerness.

WARNING THIS IS TOTALLY A JOKE NONE OF THIS IS REAL. READ MOD NOTE HERE