Beiträge zur Geschichte der Medizin 2 (1925); M. Stoffregen, Eine frühmittelalterliche lateinische Übersetzung des
byzantinischen Puls- und Urintraktats des Alexandros. Text, Übersetzung, Kommentar (Diss. Med. Berlin 1977).
Thorndike and Kibre (1963) 1004; Dimitriadis (1971) 28–29; F. Wallis, “Signs and Senses: Diagnosis
and Prognosis in Early Medieval Pulse and Urine Texts,” Social History of Medicine 13 (2000)
265 – 278; BNP 1 (2002) 485 (#30), V. Nutton.
Alain Touwaide
Alexander Sophiste ̄s (400 – 600 CE?)
Two unpublished treatises are attributed to “Alexander Sophiste ̄s”: one on embryology (MS
Paris, BNF, suppl. gr. 165, ff.116– 117 V: Costomiris 97–98); the other on sacred plants
(MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Baroccianus 150, ff. 67V–68) (Costomiris 98; see also Ch.
Daremberg, Notices et extraits des manuscrits médicaux grecs, latins et français. Ire partie: manuscrits
grecs d’Angleterre, 1853: 39), resembling the treatise published by M. Thomson, Textes grecs
inédits relatifs aux plantes, 1955: 80–87. The distinctive qualification Sophiste ̄s scarcely proves
the same man composed both works. Moreover, there is reason to doubt the attribution of
the sacred botany treatise, since a similar text is explicitly attributed to an “Alexander the
King” (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Roe 15, ff.103, 105), and the author discusses plants (e.g.,
bryony and mandrake) characteristic of the largely anonymous and freely circulating corpus
of iatromagics.
G.-A. Costomiris, “Études sur les écrits inédits des anciens médecins grecs. Troisième série,” REG 4
(1891) 97–99; Diels 2 (1907) 11.
Alain Touwaide
Alexander of Aphrodisias (T. Aurelius Alexander) (ca 200 CE)
The most influential commentator on A in antiquity, and the first whose works
are well known to us. Son of an homonymous philosopher, Alexander acquired Roman
citizenship through connection with the imperial family, and was appointed in Athens by
Septimius Seuerus between 198 and 211 CE (most probably before 209) as professor and
scholarch in Aristotelian philosophy. His commentaries are “continuous” in their devotion
to careful sentence-by-sentence explanations of the whole of Aristotle’s texts. He com-
mented on most of Aristotle’s logical and theoretical works, the latter on the basis of the
former. He tends to reshape the treatises’ contents into syllogisms and other forms of argu-
ments described by Aristotle’s Organon, reducing them to a standard terminology. By con-
trast with Aristotle’s flexible way of thinking and lexical usages, Alexander produced a
coherent and consistent system of thought, suitable for teaching. Alexander also wrote
original treatises, more pedagogical in character, and a number of shorter discussions of
various kinds, always focused on Aristotelian exegesis. When this procedure is difficult and
where no convenient consensus has been reached, problems (aporiai) are openly discussed
and more than one solution may be kept, either within the commentaries or in separate
opuscula (aporiai kai luseis, the so-called Quaestiones). Altogether, Alexander is the main repre-
sentative of a distinctively Aristotelian commentary tradition, which was to be the basis for
subsequent exegesis by Neo-Platonic, Arabic, and Renaissance commentators.
Some theoretical assumptions seem original to Alexander or scarcely expressed before.
He explained circular heavenly motions as due to desire of imitating the eternal perfection
of the Unmoved Mover. As for the origin of soul, which is form and perfection of the living
beings, it derives from a divine power (theia dunamis) exerted by the movement of the celestial
ALEXANDER SOPHISTE ̄S