Works
The Suda makes no attempt to list his works, asserting that he composed books "beyond number".
Alexander's most important treatise consisted of forty-two books of historical and geographical accounts of nearly all the countries of the ancient world. These included 5 books On Rome, the Aigyptiaca (at least 3 books), On Bithynia, On the Euxine Sea, On Illyria, Indica and a Chaldæan History. Another notable work is about the Jews this reproduces in paraphrase relevant excerpts from Jewish writers, of whom nothing otherwise would be known (see below). As a philosopher, Alexander wrote Successions of Philosophers, mentioned several times by Diogenes Laërtius in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. None of Alexander's works survive as such: only quotations and paraphrases are to be found, largely in the works of Diogenes Laertius. Eusebius extracted a large portion in his Chaldean Chronicle.
One of Alexander’s students was Gaius Julius Hyginus, Latin author, scholar and friend of Ovid, who was appointed by Augustus to be superintendent of the Palatine library. From what Laërtius describes or paraphrases in his work, Alexander recorded various thoughts on contradictions, fate, life, soul and its parts, perfect figures, and different curiosities, such as advice not to eat beans.
Read more about this topic: Alexander Polyhistor
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast
crowned him with glory and honor.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm VIII (l. VIII, 5–6)
“Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)