[1] A comparison of Lamprecht's opening lines with the fragment preserved of the French original shows that he followed his source with tolerable fidelity, adding, however, occasional moralizing comments or remarks of a learned nature.
[1] Besides Albéric's poem, which itself is based on Valerius, Lamprecht used also the Historia de preliis and an "Iter ad paradisum", especially in the narration of the marvels seen by Alexander in the Far East, and in the account of the hero's journey to Paradise.
Thus the close of the poem is distinctly moralizing in tone; the career of the great conqueror is but an illustration of the dictum concerning the vanity of earthly things.
The poem seems to have been written in Middle Rhenish territory about 1130, at a time, therefore, when the crusades had brought the East nearer to the Western world, and when stories of its marvels were sure to find an eager audience.
A modern German translation by Richard Eduard Ottmann appeared in "Hendels Bibliothek der Gesamtlitteratur" (Halle, 1898).