INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITIONNEW FINDINGS ON PHILOPONUS

PART 1 - THE CLASSROOMS EXCAVATED

RICHARD SORABJI

Since 1987, when the first edition of this book appeared, there have been new findingsboth about Philoponus' thought and about his milieu. In this Introduction to the secondedition, I will start with the milieu. There has been a major archaeological discovery,nothing less than the lecture rooms of the Alexandrian school. 1 It was announced in 2004that the Polish archaeological team under Grzegorz Majcherek had identified the lecturerooms of the 6th century Alexandrian school surprisingly well preserved.' Although thefirst few rooms had been excavated 25 years earlier, the identification had becomepossible only now. By 2008, 20 rooms had been excavated. 20 is the number of roomsreported:' by a 12th century source writing in Arabic, Abd el-Latif, but there may be more.

Some of the rooms had been rebuilt after an earthquake presumed to be that of 535 AD,so that they would have been there only in Philoponus' later years. But others are dated tothe late fifth century, so belong to the time of his teacher, Ammonius. Even the laterrooms may be a guide to the structure of the earlier ones. Further reconstruction orrefurbishment in the late 6th to very early 7th centuries is suggested by the ceramic in thecement of one room.

1 I am very much indebted to Roger Bagnall and to Grzegorz Majcherek, for making it possible forme to attend the conference held on March 16-18, 2005 at and near the site in Alexandria, and toinvite Majcherek to speak at a conference on the classrooms and the use in general of classroomsheld by myself and Charlotte Roueche at the Institute of Classical Studies in London on April 26-27,2005. I learnt more from a conference addressed by Majcherek, and hosted by the Oxford Centre forLate Antiquity, on March 8, 2008. I shall include with acknowledgement points made by others atthe three conferences, as well as drawing on Majcherek's report and personal communication andmy own impressions. The proceedings of the Alexandria conference are published as TomaszDerda, Tomasz Markiewicz, Ewa Wipszycka, eds, Auditoria of Kom El-Dikka and late antiqueeducation (Warsaw 2007).

2 G. Majcherek, 'Excavations and preservation work 2002/2003', Polish archaeology in theMediterranean XV (2004), 25-38; id. and W. Kolataj, 'Alexandria, excavations and preservationwork, 2001/2', Polish archaeology in the Mediterranean XIV (2003), 19-31. There are web reportson Majcherek's excavation in Polish in Histmag for 19 May 2004 by Lord Lothar atwww.histmag.org and in English in Al-Ahram for 20-26 January 2005 at http://weekly.ahram.org.egby Jill Kamil.

3 lowe this information to Judith Mckenzie.

2 PHILOPONUS

The Alexandrian classroom excavated in 2005

One very good specimen of a room, which is illustrated here, has four tiers of seats in ahorseshoe, enough to accommodate 30 students, with a professor's throne (thronos)elevated up six steps at the back of the horseshoe, and a stone stand out at the front of thehorseshoe. One stand has a hole in, which Majcherek takes to be for a lectern to beinserted. The speaker would have stood there. 20 rooms of similar or smaller size couldhave accommodated 400 to 500 students. The stand is not found in most rooms, but thethrone was eventually recognised in all, although it sometimes took the form of one step,or a block covered with plaster or in one case marble. More rooms are rectangular thanhorseshoe, and some have only one tier of seats.

The position of the stone stand for a lectern isolated in front gives us a sense of theextent to which the speaker, often a student, would have been exposed to interrogationfrom professor and students. We can also imagine many different tasks that a speakermight perform there. The different environment of Plotinus' Rome did not necessarilyhave a room of the same structure. But we can imagine how the Alexandrian rooms couldhave been put to use, when we think of Porphyry, newly arrived as a student at Plotinus'seminar in the 3rd century AD. He had to rewrite his essay three times, and face criticism

RICHARD SORABJI: INTRODUCTION - NEW FINDINGS I 3

from another research student, Amelius, until he was persuaded to change his view. Wemight picture a student reading out his revised essay at the stand, although it was actuallyAmelius who was asked to read aloud Porphyry's." Plotinus also started his classes byhaving commentaries and texts read to him by a student. 5 At a very much earlier date, inAthens of the second century BC, Cameades, the head of the Platonic Academy, had astudent summarise his previous lecture at the beginning of the next, and criticised him forgetting it wrong.6

The professor's throne or thronos, by contrast, being at the back, gave him a much lessexposed position than the modem Western professor tends to have, unless he chose tocome out in front. Raffaella Cribiore has very well explained the throne or thrones.' Platocaricatures the sophists at Protagoras 315C, when he has Socrates go to see the sophistHippias of Elis holding forth on a thronos, with listeners sitting round him on benches(bathra). Plutarch comments that Socrates did not use a thronos nor set out benches. 8

Ammonius is caricatured in the work named after him, Ammonius, which is written by oneof his Christian students, Zacharias. Ammonius is presented as being interrupted in alecture on Aristotle's physics by his Christian students who refute him on the questionwhether the universe had a beginning. Ammonius is represented as sitting on a high stepor seat (bema) and expounding Aristotle's doctrine in a very sophistic and swaggeringway," which suggests that Ammonius' lecture arrangements made a similar provision.Cribiore suggests that the caricature is partly drawn from Plato's Protagoras. MossmanRoueche has pointed out to me an Ethiopic text, which reports that earlier in Alexandria,Hypatia, the woman mathematician murdered in 415 AD, had been forced off a high seator lofty chair before being dragged away to her death. 10 Cribiore and Majcherek havedrawn attention to the fourth century rhetorician Libanius describing the terror of arhetoric student required to deliver his composition in front of the teacher who sitsfrowning 'on a high place'. J1 The tallest set of professorial steps surviving in theAlexandrian excavation is six steps high. Comparison has been made with the minbar of alater period, the flight of steps leading up to the speaker in Islamic mosques.

4 Porphyry Life ofPlotinus 18.19.

5 Porphyry, Life ofPlotinus 14.10. This is the interpretation of the passive voice aneginosketo autoiin H. G. Snyder, Teachers and texts in the ancient world (London 2000), from whom I draw theseexamples.

6 Philodemus Index ofAcademic philosophers (Herculaneum papyrus) col. xxii(35)-xxiii(2).

7 At conferences on the excavation in Alexandria, and Budapest and at the Institute of ClassicalStudies in London. Her paper, 'The school of Alexandria and the rivalry between rhetoric andphilosophy', will be published in the Budapest Proceedings.

8 Plutarch Whether old men should engage in public life 796D-E.

9 Zacaharias Scholasticus, Ammonius, or De mundi opijicio, Patrologia Graeca vol. 85, cols1028-29, and Colonna, Ammonio (Naples 1973), lines 92-99.

10 Chronicle ofJohn, Bishop ofNikiu, Chapter 84.

11 Libanius, ed. Foerster, vol. VIII, Chreia 3.7.

4 PHILOPONUS

As regards the rounded shape, it has been pointed out that Elias, head Alexandrianphilosopher later in the 6th century CE, explains its purpose. 12 Seminar rooms (diatribai)are rounded so that students can see each other and the teacher. In a passage to bediscussed in the next chapter, Philoponus attaches importance to seeing the students'faces, to tell whether or not they have understood.P Nothing prevents the teacher frommoving to the front, if he wants a clearer view of faces while he delivers a talk. But thelayout seems to have been designed to ensure a lot of student participation. The roundedshape may have been recalled in the lecture rooms refurbished by Julian, Emperor inConstantinople from 361 to 363, and used earlier in the century by his hero, theNeoplatonist lamblichus. A mosaic preserved on the site shows Socrates surrounded bycolleagues in a curve to either side of him. I know of no evidence that the curved shapewas still used in Islamic teaching, and Yahya Michot has drawn attention to Islamicpictures of disorderly seating." But some orderly arrangement would fit with those casesfor which it is reported that the Islamic professor put his best pupil and aspirant successorto sit next to him, demoting him ifnext year's entry contained an even better student. IS

A closer analogue is the bishop's throne in Christian basilicas, sited in the centre of thecurved apse. 16 The most striking example 1 know is that of the cathedral of Torcello offthe coast of Venice (see facing page). Not only is the throne in the centre of the apseelevated above steep steps, but to either side of it is a horseshoe of six tiers of curvedstone benches for the presbyters, extraordinarily like those in the lecture rooms of sixthcentury Alexandria. The term 'high place' used by Libanius for the throne of the frowningprofessor of rhetoric, is a term still used in eastern churches for the bishop's throne in theapse. From the same fourth to early fifth centuries there are pagan and Christian mosaicsof teacher with disciples in a horseshoe around him. One, which I have discussedelsewhere, is the mosaic installed in 360-362 CE in the Platonist school in Apamea inwhat is now Syria by the Emperor Julian, who was trying in his brief two-year reign torestore pagan religion and was here commemorating the devout pagan PlatonistIamblichus." The mosaic shows Socrates surrounded in a horseshoe by his disciples, butwithout a throne, since, as already mentioned, Socrates did not imitate the practice ofprofessorial enthronement. A Christian mosaic that has been dated to 410-417 CE from

12 Elias, Commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge 21,30: Majcherek acknowledges Elzbieta Szabat ashaving pointed this out.

13 Philoponus in Phys. 7, trans from Arabic by Lettinck, 771,21-772,3, repr. in Richard Sorabji, Thephilosophy of the commentators 200-600 AD (London and Ithaca New York 2004), vol. 1 (=Psychology Sourcebook) 6a (54).

14 Yahya Michot, talk at the Oxford conference of March 2008.

15 W. Montgomery Watt, The irifluence ofIslam on medieval Europe (Edinburgh 1972).

16 I thank the art historian Christine Verzar for a wealth of information about bishop's thrones, whichis what enabled me to see the relevance of Torcello and make the suggestion below about SanClemente as a missing link.

17 Richard Sorabji, Introduction (available also in French) to his (ed.) Aristotle Transformed: TheAncient Commentators and Their Influence (London, Duckworth, and Cornell University Press,1990) at pp. 9-10.

RICHARD SORAHJI : INTRODUCTION - NEW FINDINGS I

Bishop's throne with curved benches in Cathedral ofTorcello

5

the apse of Santa Prudenziana in Rome shows Christ on a gilded throne surrounded bydisciples in a horseshoe.

There is an even more unexpected continuity of design. One of the basilicas with athrone in the centre of the apse, dated by an inscription to a cardinal of 1108, is that of SanClemente in Rome. But this is the very basilica that contains the 15th century fresco (seefrontispiece), depicting the structure of the 6th century Alexandrian lecture rooms. Thisfresco, dating from 1425 AD, shows Saint Catherine of Alexandria in the third century BCrefuting the Alexandrian philosophers. Masolino da Panicale, the artist, portrays hercounting off the points against them on her fingers, while they look very refuted. Theprofessor is elevated at the back, while she stands in front, and the listeners are on benchesto either side. How did Masolino depict so accurately Alexandrian lecture rooms of a typeonly now brought to light by archaeology? Could the bishop's throne in the apse of thisbasilica have supplied him with the missing link? The chief difference from Alexandria andTorcello is that he has portrayed the benches in front of the throne as straight. He may havebased his straight benches on the church's choir stalls which by his day had been installedoutside the apse and separated from it by a canopied altar.

Another depiction, by Sodoma (see book cover image), from the first half of the 16th

century is in Monte Olivetto Maggiore. It shows a similar structure in a lecture room of

6 PHILOPONUS

Lecture room with separate apse, excavated 2004

Philoponus' period. Here Philoponus' contemporary Saint Benedict is tiptoeing out of aseminar, so as to avoid being corrupted by the pagan professor, who is again at the backon an elevated throne, while the listeners are seated to either side. 18

One of the excavated lecture rooms illustrated here has a unique structure. The fourstudent tiers are facing each other, but instead of a complete horseshoe there is an apse atthe back where we might have expected the professor's throne to be. The apse wouldaccommodate only a few people, and is separated off by a low, curved wall in front, sothat it is not easily visible from the closest of the student seats. The area cut off is roughlycircular. My present inclination is to wonder if there could have been an aperture in theroof leaving the apse open to the sky. Only the two banks of student benches would haveneeded roofing. There is a report by Simplicius 19 about his former teacher in Alexandria,Ammonius, that he looked through a 3-dimensional 'astrolabe' and confirmed that the'fixed' star Arcturus had moved one degree from its supposedly fixed position over theprevious 100 years. Philoponus wrote the only extant ancient treatise on the astrolabe. Inthat treatise, he describes" how delicately you have to hoist the instrument by its ring,shut one eye to make sure you are looking through both holes, angle it to the right plane,swivel its ruler, and mark your findings with charcoal or wax on its face. You could nothave done all this if hoisting it by hand. It must have required a very stable platform, and

18 I thank Maurice Pope for showing me the reproduction and its relevance, which I had not fore­seen on my pre-excavation visit to the frescoes.

19 Simplicius in Cae1462, 12-31, trans. Ian Mueller, Simplicius On Aristotle On the heavens 2.1-9.

20 Chapter 5 in Hases text reproduced by Segonds with French translation (Paris 1981), chapter 4 inthe translation of Robert T. Gunther, in The astrolabes ofthe world, vol. I (Oxford 1932).

RICHARD SORABJI: INTRODUCTION - NEW FINDINGS 1 7

the low wall in the front of the apse or the ground in the centre of the apse would havesupplied one. Only one student could look at a time, so the line of sight from the studenttiers across to those queuing in the apse to take a look would not matter. Nor would itmatter in those astronomy classes that were held at night. The one described inPhiloponus' chapter 5 (Segonds' edition) is held in the day, but that would not be true ofAmmonius'observation of Arcturus. There are two excavated rooms with an apse, andMajcherek tells me that they alone face East-West. That would fit with the interest ofastronomers in observing at sunrise and sunset.

Another anomaly in four of the lecture rooms is a trench which shows signs only in onecase of having had a lined bottom capable of holding water. I was at first reminded ofGalen's dramatic demonstrations of animal vivisection, which might well have required adry place to stow the animal before the vivisection. In Galen's case, dry stowage wouldhave been needed afterwards as well, since he prided himself on stitching the animalsback up alive. 2 1 But I am told that surviving medical texts of the period expound onlyanatomy, not 'anatomical procedures'. Only the latter would have involved vivisection.This could suggest that the classes too only described anatomy. On the other hand, it maybe that the descriptive classes were the ones most often represented in books, becausemore elementary and easier to record in writing than vivisections.

Zacharias wrote not only about Ammonius, but also about his fellow-student Severus,in the Life ofSeverus, which survives in Syriac. He there gives an eye-witness account ofhow in the mid-480s twenty camel-loads of pagan idols were transported after a raid on asecret temple of Isis at Menuthis and, before being burnt, were paraded by the Christiansin Alexandria, together with imprecations against the Alexandrian Horapollo, with whomDamascius had been studying rhetoric, and who was accused of converting students topaganism. It has been suggested that it may be the burnt idols from this incident that werereported by Elizabeth Rodziewicz as having been found at a site close to the newlyidentifed lecture rooms.r"

When the young Damascius studied in Alexandria, he is described as wearing therhetorician's (not the philosopher's) gown (tribOn). Talk of wearing the philosopher'sgown is very common.r' and, although the practice of wearing academic robes has beensaid to come to Europe from Islarrr" I think the idea may have reached Islam from ancientGreek practice.

Damascius was to flee after the subsequent persecution of 488-89 by AlexandrianChristians, and having turned to philosophy, was to become head of the AthenianNeoplatonist school, only to have it closed by the Christian Emperor Justinian in 529. Theonly notable pagan Neoplatonist who stayed behind in Alexandria was Ammonius and

21 Heinrich von Staden, 'Anatomy as rhetoric: Galen on dissection and persuasion', Journal of thehistory ofmedicine and allied sciences, 50, 47-66.

22 Christopher Haas Alexandria in late antiquity (Baltimore 1997) Ch. 9, note 109; PolymniaAthanassiadi, Damascius, The philosophical history (Oxbow Books, Oxford 1999) 27-29.

23 As well as Damascius The philosophical history 1220, Athanassiadi, see e.g. Epictetus Dis­courses 4.8.12; Plutarch How to profit by one's enemies 87A; On tranquillity 4670; Eusebius Demartyribus Palaestinae 52.

24 W. Montgomery Watt, The influence ofIslam on medieval Europe (Edinburgh 1972).

8 PHILOPONUS

Damascius accused him of doing a sordid deal with the Christian authorities.P It has beena mystery what the deal was, but I have argued that on his side Ammonius agreed to teachpagan Neoplatonism without emphasising religious practice, while the Christianauthorities on their side funded his teaching." As regards the first side of the bargain, Ihave cited Ammonius' commentary on Aristotle On interpretation, where he claims tofollow his Athenian teacher Proclus. But the strange thing is that Proclus had argued, pageafter page, for the natural character of divine names, by claiming the power of paganpriests to motivate the gods by the correct use of their names. Ammonius, at the corresp­onding point in his account, omits all mention of divine names and mentions only thenatural force in magic of human names, and that as the opinion not of any Neoplatonistphilosophers, but of an obscure Egyptian priest, Dousareios. As regards the funding ofAmmonius' teaching, the evidence is not direct. The Christian authorities of Alexandriahad funded the philosophy chair of his father, Hermeias, and on the father's death, hadmade an unparalleled offer to his esteemed widow to fund the philosophical training ofAmmonius, who went to study with Proclus at the pagan Neoplatonist school in Athens.The Christian authorities wanted Alexandria to remain a world centre for pagan learning,so long as Christian students were not being proselytised. Moreover, the other philo­sophers were seen as anti-Christian, had become personae non gratae and had fled. Buthow was Ammonius to continue without funding? The lavish character of the school'srebuilding after the earthquake of 535 seems to me to confirm that the Christianauthorities would have been willing to pay for Ammonius' teaching. Ammonius' reticenceabout religious practice will have brought him back from the devotional enthusiasm ofIamblichus, and of the Athenian school notably under Proclus, and 1 believe this givestruth to the controversial claim that the Alexandrian school was different in character fromthe Athenian.

Often philosophy teaching was privately arranged in antiquity. The extent of publicprovision for philosophy in Alexandria and the range of subjects will have beenunparalleled for the time. It has been pointed out that in the capital at Constantinople, theEmperor Theodosius set up only one public philosophy post in 425 AD, against 20 ingrammar, 8 in rhetoric and 2 in law.27 Ammonius was in a better position in Alexandria.He taught at least four of the leading philosophers of the 6th century, Philoponus,Simplicius, Asclepius and Olympiodorus. Three of these went on to edit Ammonius'lectures and/ or to teach in Alexandria, although only Olympiodorus held an Alexandrianchair of philosophy. Philoponus' official post was only as a teacher of grammar, as hispagan enemy Simplicius liked to emphasise, but that would not have prevented him fromteaching philosophy too, since it was common to teach more than one subject. We shallsee that some of the teachers of medicine were also teaching philosophy. So philosophymay have used many of the public teaching rooms.

25 Damascius The philosophical history 118B, Athanassiadi, referring to E. Rodiewicz, 'Remains ofa chryselephantine statue in Alexandria', BSAA (1991), 119-30.

26 Richard Sorabji, 'Divine names and sordiddeals in Arnmonius' Alexandria', in The philosopherand society in late antiquity, ed. Andrew Smith(Cardiff2005)203-13.

27 Cod Theod XIV, 9, 3, which is repeated in the Cod lust. as 11.19.1, cited by Dennis Feissel inhis paperat the Alexandria conference.

RICHARD SORABJI: INTRODUCTION - NEW FINDINGS 1 9

When Ammonius died some time before 526, Philoponus did not succeed him. His wasby far the most brilliant mind. But it was pagan philosophy teaching that the Christianauthorities wanted to offer, and the curriculum was not Christian in philosophy or in anyof the other subjects either. In order to get a discussion of the Christian belief in God'sCreation, in Zacharias' fictional work, the students have to interrupt Ammonius' lectureon Aristotle's physics. Philoponus by contrast was not only a Christian, but was by agradual process presenting Aristotle in a more and more unconventional way, with ideasof his own, culminating in a Christian attack on the pagan beliefs of Proclus in 529, theyear in which Damascius' school in Athens, where Proclus had taught, was closed. Hewould not have fulfilled the role of continuing the heritage of pagan learning.

Philoponus taught more subjects than philosophy and grammar, to judge from hiswritings. These include not only a massive philosophical output along with a grammaticaltreatise on Greek accents, but also a work on Nicomachus' arithmetic, and the astrono­mical treatise on the astrolabe which is directed at students telling them how to use it. Thesubjects taught in the school included philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, mathematics,astronomy and medicine, a wider range than the three provided for in Constantinople byTheodosius. The written commentaries which reflect lectures on standard texts have asimilar structure in different disciplines, which suggests that the lectures also had patternsin common. Thus in law and medicine.i" as in philosophy, the commentaries can bedivided into lectures (praxeis) about a text, which is quoted in lemmata or excerpts, and inwhich a statement of the doctrine tprotheoria, theoriay of a passage is separated from adiscussion of the exact wording of the passage (lexis in philosophy, paragraphe in law).In medicine as in philosophy, at the beginning of a course before the first text is broached,there are prolegomena, which cover a standard number of frequently asked questions, anddiscuss definitions of the discipline. The practice is also followed in both disciplines ofadvanced students writing up the seminar 'from the voice of the master.

Evidence has been assembled for a two-way interaction in which medical studentswere required to study logic and medical teachers taught some philosophy." Already inZacharias' Ammonius, the doctor Gessios is treated as studying the issue whether theuniverse had a beginning, and Ammonius' philosophical pupil Asclepius says in hiscommentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics that the medical Asclepius was his fellow­student. At the end of the 6th century, there is a question whether the medical Stephanus isthe same person as the philosopher Stephanus.i" and Westerink commented that pseudo­Elias' Prolegomena to philosophy with commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge shows morecompetence in medicine than in philosophy.

28 I am indebted for law to the paper by Simon Corcoran and for medicine to the paper by RebeccaFlemming at the London conference.

29 L. G. Westerink, 'Philosophy and medicine in late antiquity', Janus 51, 1964, 169-77; MossmanRoueche, 'Did medical students study philosophy in Alexandria?', Bulletin of the Institute ofClassical Studies 43 (1999) 153-69.

30 The most recent treatment currently is that of William Charlton on pp. 2-10 of the introduction tohis translation of Stephanus On Aristotle On interpretation and of part of the disputed 'Philoponus'On Aristotle On the Soul 3, which he attributes to Stephanus.

10 PHILOPONUS

The person who got the chair of philosophy after Ammonius is the little-knownEutocius, who is recorded as writing on the logical works of Aristotle, a politically safesubject. Most of his works were on mathematics, which was equally safe and had been astrong Alexandrian tradition. Eutocius was followed by Olympiodorus, who, moreenterprisingly, wrote commentaries still extant not only on Aristotle's logical texts, butalso on Aristotle's Meteorology and Plato's Gorgias, First Alcibiades and Phaedo. But hewas less cautious than Ammonius when, for example, in the last work he said that paganpriestcraft or theurgy could bring you to the pagan Neoplatonist ideal of mystical unionwith the divine world of intelligibles."

Olympiodorus was still teaching in 565, but he was the last pagan professor and wassucceeded by Christians of whom the first two, Elias and David, confined themselves intheir extant writings to Aristotle's logical works. We need not, however, believe ibnRidwan of Cairo (died 1041), when he says that the Christians confined the syllabus to thefirst four books of Aristotle's logic. Apart from his having been discredited.V we have toaccommodate the Christian Stephanus who wrote on one of Aristotle's logical works, butto whom some scholars ascribe the Greek commentary on Aristotle On the Soul 3 attrib­uted by others to Philoponus or to a pupil of Philoponus.t' We need to know Stephanus'date and whether any lectures on Aristotle On the Soul were given by the Stephanusrecorded as being in Alexandria between 581 and 584, and whether they would representa re-expansion after the time of Elias and David. We also need to know other things abouthim. 34 Whatever the verdict, Ammonius' skill had kept his school open much longer thanthe one at Athens. The archeological evidence is not yet decisive on whether lecturerooms were still in use in the late 7th century, despite the Persian and Arab invasions of616 and 640.

31 OIympiodorus Commentary on Plato's Phaedo, Lecture 8, para. 2, lines 1-20, Westerink. Otherexamples of his less compromising position are given in the magisterial introduction to Westerink'sAnonymous prolegomena to Platonic philosophy, pp. 328-336 of the English version of part of thesecond edition in Aristotle transformed, ed. Richard Sorabji, (London and Ithaca New York 1990).

32 Sarah Stroumsa, 'Al-Farabi and Maimonides on the Christian philosophical tradition: a re­evaluation', Der Islam 68 (1991),263-87.

33 On this see the translation by William Charlton, 'Philoponus' On Aristotle On the soul 3.1-8, inthe series Ancient commentators on Aristotle, and Mossman Roueche, 'Why the monad is not anumber: John Philoponus and the commentary In De Anima 3', Jahrbuch der OsterreichischenByzantinistik 52 (2002) 95-133.

34 Is he identical with the medical Stephanus of Athens, and with the Stephanus of Alexandria whowas called to the chair in Alexandria in 610 and who is probably the one who wrote on astronomy,astrology, and alchemy? On the last, see Maria K. Papathanassiou, 'L'ceuvre alchimique deStephanos d'Alexandrie: structures et transformations de la matiere, unite et pluralite, l'enigme desphilosophes', in L 'alchimie et ses racines philosophiques, ed. Cristina Viano (Paris 2005) 113-33.