Alexander Polyhistor
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Lucius Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor was a Greek scholar who was enslaved by the Romans during the Mithridatic War and taken to Rome as a tutor. After his release, he continued to live in Italy as a Roman citizen. He was so productive a writer that he earned the surname polyhistor. The majority of his writings are now lost, but the fragments that remain shed valuable light on antiquarian and eastern Mediterranean subjects.
Cornelius was born at Miletus or Myndus in Caria, and flourished about 70 BC. Taken prisoner by Sulla, he assumed the name Cornelius upon receiving his freedom. He accompanied Crassus on his Parthian campaigns, and perished at the destruction by fire of his house at Laurentum.
[edit] Works
Alexander's most important treatise consisted of forty-two books of historical and geographical accounts of nearly all the countries of the ancient world. His other notable work is about the Jews (Müller, Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, iii); it reproduces in paraphrase relevant excerpts from Jewish writers, of whom otherwise nothing would be known. 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. As a philosopher, Alexander Polyhistor wrote Successions of Philosophers, mentioned several times by Diogenes Laertius in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. From what Laertius 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.
His Chaldæan History was based on Sibylline oracles, Book III, especially for the account of the Tower of Babel.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
