Open AccessEPIGRAPHIC EVIDENCE FOR THE PHILOSOPHER ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS
Author(s) -
CHANIOTIS ANGELOS
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
bulletin of the institute of classical studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.108
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 2041-5370
pISSN - 0076-0730
DOI - 10.1111/j.2041-5370.2004.tb00242.x
Subject(s) - history , classics , philosophy
Inscriptions often provide information about great figures of ancient literature. This applies to Arrian, Plutarch and Tacitus no less than to the poet Nikandros of Colophon or Aristotle. A new find from the city of Aphrodisias in Asia Minor in 2001 now adds some important biographical information on the city's most known author and one of the greatest philosophers of the Imperial period. This new inscription will be published together with other recent epigraphic finds from Aphrodisias in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Archaeology; as the news about this text has already spread among scholars interested in the history of ancient philosophy, it seemed appropriate to present this text as soon as possible in a journal more likely to be read by scholars interested in classical literature. The new inscription is written on the marble rectangular base of a statue dedicated by Alexander to his father. The stone was re-used as a trough, but luckily the side which has been destroyed is not the inscribed one. The base (height 1.14 m, width 48.5cm, depth 52.5cm) was found in the town of Karacasu in 2001, but it had originally stood in Aphrodisias. The text reads: