**ALEXANDER of Abonoteichos.** — Born at Abonoteichos on the Black Sea c. 115 AD, died c. 175. A contemporary of Lucian of Samosata, with whom he had personal disputes, Alexander belonged to that school of pseudo-miracle workers who succeeded in gaining an extraordinary reputation throughout Asia Minor. According to Lucian, Alexander was trained as a boy in the school of a physician from Tyana, who was one of those who had profited from relations with Apollonius of Tyana (q.v.). After various adventures, he returned to his homeland and around 150 AD established, on the basis of the religion of the mysteries, a new cult centered on the god Glycon, born from an egg, in the form of a serpent with a human head. The mysteries he instituted lasted three days and concluded with the hierogamy of Alexander and Selene, echoing the myth of Endymion and the Moon: according to the interpretation of the astral theology of the time, this symbolized the pious soul (Endymion) drawn to the Moon, where it ascends to rest as in an intermediate station before passing to another existence. This myth adumbrated the post-mortem fate of the initiates and was therefore frequently reproduced on sarcophagi. Alexander himself claimed to be a mediator of the god and of divine lineage. Some time later, he went to Italy and inaugurated his mysteries with ceremonies and processions, preceded by solemn announcements against the Epicureans and Christians, who, prejudiced against superstitions, refused to believe in his impostures. Lucian, who is the main source for knowledge of Alexander, describes him as a false prophet.
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MARIO SCADUTO
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**ALEXANDER of Aphrodisias.** — Peripatetic philosopher of Caria and celebrated commentator on Aristotle. He lived at the end of the 2nd century AD and the beginning of the 3rd, under the empire of Septimius Severus. A pupil of Aristotle of Mytilene, he was the last great representative of the Aristotelian school in Athens.
The following works of certain attribution have come down to us: 1) the commentary on Books I-V of the Metaphysics (since the part concerning Books VI-XIV is by another, later author, perhaps Michael of Ephesus); 2) the extensive exposition of Book I of the Prior Analytics; 3) the commentary on the Topics (the one attributed to him on the Sophistical Refutations is by Michael of Ephesus); 4) the commentary on De sensu; 5) the exposition of the Meteorology; 6) a treatise in two books On the Soul; 7) a treatise On Fate dedicated to the emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla (thus written between 198 and 211); 8) a treatise On Mixture and Growth. Lost are the commentaries on the Categories, On Interpretation, Book II of the Prior Analytics, the Posterior Analytics, the Physics, On the Heavens, and On Generation and Corruption, some of which were certainly known to the Arabic Peripatetics. Alexander’s aim was to expound the doctrine of the Stagirite and defend it against objections from adversaries, notably the Stoics. For this he earned the title from other Greek expositors of “the commentator” par excellence and was considered a “second Aristotle.” His influence on later Greek and Arabic commentators was considerable, so much so that even Averroes, who often opposed him, does not deny that he “was one of the good expositors” of Aristotelian thought and informs us that his contemporaries considered no philosopher perfect “nisi qui est Alexandreus” (Averroes, De anima, III; comm. 14).
Insisting on Aristotle’s critique of Plato’s separate Ideas, Alexander asserts that universal concepts would be nothing if not thought. This has led some to see in him a nominalist. He does not, however, reject Aristotle’s theory of abstraction. According to him, this is accomplished through the action of the active intellect, which is a separate substance containing the ideas and forms of all things; indeed, he even calls it “the first cause,” i.e., God. As he heard from Aristotle of Mytilene, this intellect penetrates into things according to their mode and properties. Before being in matter, the forms are in the active intellect. Through abstraction, the human intellect contemplates pure forms, freed from matter, by the light of the active intellect that unites with II. But what is the human intellect? With Aristotle, he distinguishes a threefold intellect: the intellect that is pure potentiality or disposition to understand, which he calls natural (φυσικός) or material (ὑλικός) intellect, by analogy with matter which is potentially all things; the acquired intellect, already actualized by the idea and ready to understand and reason; and the active intellect, which is the active cause by which the material intellect passes from potentiality to actuality. While the natural or material intellect is a disposition or faculty of the soul, which is the form of the body, and is thus in us, as is also the acquired intellect, the active intellect is outside us, entering and operating from without. But since the soul, of which the material intellect is a capacity, is a form of the body and inseparable from it, it follows that when the body perishes, its form also perishes, and nothing remains of the material intellect or the acquired intellect, i.e., that which corresponds to individual consciousness. Only the active intellect is immortal and eternal. This interpretation of Aristotle’s thought was contested by Themistius, Averroes, and St. Thomas Aquinas, from quite different viewpoints. It was, however, embraced by those who called themselves Alexandrists. It should be noted, moreover, that Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, in the first of his eight Conclusiones secundum Alexandrum Aphrodisium, and Agostino Steuco of Gubbio (Perenn. Philos., Basel 1542, I. IX, cols. 21-22), attempted to vindicate Aphrodisius from the charge of having denied the immortality of the soul.
All the surviving writings of Aphrodisius, already printed in Greek and Latin translations at the end of the 15th and in the first half of the 16th centuries, have been published in critical editions in Berlin in the Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca, I-III (the commentaries), and in the Supplementum aristotelicum (the minor works and special dissertations), II.
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