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:
“There is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and country, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials; that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells the horse, but builds the school; works early and late, takes two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)