STEPHANUS (OR STEPHEN) OF ALEXANDRIA

(fl. first half of seventh century a.d.),

philosophy, mathematics,astronomy, alchemy.

Stephanus was a public lecturer in Constantinople at the court of Emperor Heraclius (A.D. 610–641). Although primarily a mathematician, he apparently also taught philosophy, astronomy, and music in addition to arithmetic and geometry. Commentaries on Aristotle have come down to us under his name, but Stephanus is also reported to have written on other subjects, including astronomy. He has been identified, probably incorrectly, by some authorities with Stephanus of Athens, a medical writer; and commentaries on Galen and Hippocrates have been attributed to both these authors. The Opusculum apotelesmaticum, ascribed to Stephanus of Alexandria but probably dating from the eighth century, deals with Islam in astrological terms.

Considerable attention has been given to a long Greek treatise on alchemy, De chrysopoeia, which has been ascribed to Stephanus and which was much praised by later alchemists. Consisting of nine mystical lectures, this uncritical, rhetorical, and theoretical document gives no evidence of experimental work. Indeed, in the first lecture the author writes, “Put away the material theory so that you may be deemed worthy to see the hidden mystery with your intellectual eyes.” The work may be dated later than the seventh century, but it is mentioned in an Arabic bibliography of A.D. 987, Kit?b–al–Fithrist, where the author is known as Stephanus the Elder, who is said to have “translated for Kh?lid ibn Y?zid alchemical and other works.” This Umayyad prince, much interested in science and especially alchemy, died in A.D. 704.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. See Demoritus Abderita, De arte magna, sive de rebus naturalibus. Nec non Synesii,et Pelagii, et Stephani Alexandri, et Michaelis Pselli in eundem commentaria, Dominic Pizimentus, ed. (Padua, 1573); “De chrysopoeia,” Julius L. ldeler, ed., in Physici et medici graeci minores. II (Berlin, 1842), 199–253; Opusculum apotelesmaticum, Hermann Usener, ed. (Bonn, 1879); “In librum Aristotelis de interpretatione commentarium,” Michael Hayduck, ed., in Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca, XVIII, 3 (Berlin, 1885); “Anonymi et Stephani in artem rhetoricam commentaria,” H. Rabe, ed., ibid., XXI, 2 (Berlin, 1896); and “The Alchemical Works of Stephanos of Alexandria,” trans. and commentary by F. Sherwood Taylor, in Ambix, the Journal of the Society for Study of Alchemy and Early Chemistry, 1 (1937), 116–139; 2 (1938), 38–49.

II.Secibdary Literature. See Marcellin P. E. Berthelot, Les origines de l’alchemie (Paris, 1885), 199–201 and passim; Introduction áétude de la chimie des anciens et du moyen age (Paris, 1938), 287–301 and passim; Lucien Leclerc, Histoire de la médecine arabe (Paris 1876; New York, 1961); Hermann Usener, De Stephano Alexandrino (Bonn, 1880); Edmund O. von Lippmann, Enstehung und Ausbreitung der Alchemie (Berlin, 1919), 103–105; and George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, I (Baltimore, 1927), 472–473.

Karl H. Dannenfeldt