EXANDER OF APHRODISIAS, the most celebrated of the Greek commentators on the writings of Aristotle, and styled, by way of pre-eminence, 6 4=nyyrItis, the Expositor. He was a native of Aphrodisias in Caria, and taught the Peripatetic philosophy at Athens in the end of the 2d and the beginning of the 3d centuries of the Christian era. Commentaries by Alexander on the following works of Aristotle arc still extant : - The Analytica Priora, I.; the Topica; the Heteorologica; the De Soak,. and the illetaphysica, I.–V., together with an abridgment of what he wrote on the remaining books of the Hetaphysicct. His commentaries were greatly esteemed among the Arabians, who translated many of them. There are also several original writings by Alexander still extant. The most important of these are a work On Fate, in which he argues against the Stoic doctrine of necessity; and one On the Soul, in which he contends that the undeveloped reason in man is material (vas LX0(63), and inseparable from the body. He identified the active intellect (vas 7roortK6s), through whose agency the potential intellect in man becomes actual, with God. Several of Alexander's works were published in the Aldine edition of Aristotle, Venice, 1495-98; his De Fato and De Anima were printed along with the works of Themistius at Venice, 1534; the former work, which has been translated into Latin by Grotius and also by Schulthess, was edited by Orelli, Zurich, 1824; and his commentaries on the ifetaphysica by Bonitz, Berlin, 1847. Nourisson has treated of his doctrine of fate, Paris, 1870.