Lucius Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor was a Greek scholar who was enslaved by the Romans during the war of Sulla 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. Alexander's most important treatise consisted of 42 books of historical and geographical accounts of nearly all the countries of the ancient world. His other notable work is about the Jews; 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 Philosophers’ Successions, 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 do not eat beans).

(1911EB version)

Alexander Cornelius, Greek grammarian, surnamed Polyhistor from his great learning, born at Miletus or Myndus in Caria, flourished about 70 B.C. He was taken prisoner in the Mithridatic war by Sulla, from whom (or from Cornelius Lentulus ) he received his freedom and assumed the name Cornelius. He accompanied Crassus on his Parthian campaigns, and perished at the destruction by fire of his house at Laurentum . He is said to have written "books without number," chiefly on historical and geographical subjects. Of the extant fragments (Müller, Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, iii:) those relating to the Jews are important as containing quotations from lost Jewish authors.

External links

• Life and Works
• Example of Alexander's Work