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Alexander of Aphrodisias

Alexander of Aphrodisias

c. 165 CE–c. 220 CE · Athens

Alexander of Aphrodisias was a Greek philosopher active around 200 CE who held a public chair of Aristotelian philosophy, probably at Athens. He is the most important ancient commentator on Aristotle, earning the later title 'the Exegete,' and he also wrote independent treatises, including an influential work on the soul and a defense of fate and free will. His commentaries deeply shaped how Aristotle was understood in later antiquity and the medieval world.

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AthensAttica (Greece)

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About Athens

Athens, the capital of Greece since 1834, was the leading intellectual centre of the classical Greek world. Socrates taught there, and four major philosophical schools took root in the city: Plato's Academy, founded around 387 BCE, Aristotle's Lyceum, the Stoa of Zeno, and Epicurus' Garden. Under Hellenistic and Roman rule Athens remained a place of study that drew students from across the empire; in the 4th century CE the Christian writers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus studied there together, while Neoplatonist teachers kept lecturing. Emperor Justinian's ban on pagan teaching of philosophy in 529 is generally taken to mark the end of the city's ancient history.

In Athens at the same time

Alcinous, Lucian of Samosata, Julius Pollux, Philostratus Sophista, Philostratus the Athenian, Dexippus

Across the traditions, in Athens at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Alexander of Aphrodisias’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Alexander of Aphrodisias’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(11)