Alexander Polyhistor - Life

Life

Alexander flourished in the first half of the 1st century B.C. According to the Suda he was a pupil of Crates and a Milesian, whereas Stephanus of Byzantium claims he was a native of Cotiaeum in Lesser Phrygia and a son of Asklepiades, while the Etymologicum Magnum agrees in calling him Kotiaeus. It is possible that two different Alexandroi have been merged or confused. He became a Roman prisoner of war, was sold into slavery to a Cornelius Lentulus as his teacher (paedagogus) and was later freed. As a Roman freedman his name was Cornelius Alexander. The nomen may come from the Corneli Lentuli or from Sulla Felix, as he received the citizenship from Sulla. He died at Laurentum in a fire which consumed his house, and his wife Helene is said by the Suda to have responded to the news of his loss by hanging herself.

Read more about this topic:  Alexander Polyhistor

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    “The welfare, the happiness, the energy and spirit of the men and women who do the daily work ... is the underlying necessity of all prosperity.... There can be nothing wholesome unless their life is wholesome; there can be no contentment unless they are contented.”
    —Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)

    “The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “There was never a revolution to equal it, and never a city more glorious than Petrograd, and for all that period of my life I lived another and braved the ice of winter and the summer flies in Vyborg while across my adopted country of the past, winds of the revolution blew their flame, and all of us suffered hunger while we drank at the wine of equality.”
    —Norman Mailer (b. 1923)