Aesopus ( Gr. ) was a Greek historian who wrote a life of

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...

. The original is lost, but there is a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

translation of it by Julius Valerius, of which Franciscus Juretus had, he says, a manuscript. It was first published, however, by A. Mai from a manuscript in the

Biblioteca Ambrosiana The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is a historic library in Milan, Italy, also housing the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Ambrosian art gallery. Named after Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan, it was founded in 1609 by Cardinal Federico Borromeo, whose agen ...

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

in 1817. The title is ''Itinerarium ad Constantinum Atigustum, etc. : accedunt Julii Valerii Res gestae Alexandri Macedonis,'' etc. The time when Aesopus lived is uncertain, and even his existence has been doubted. Mai, in the preface to his edition, contended that the work was written before 389 AD, because the temple of

Serapis Serapis or Sarapis is a Graeco-Egyptian deity. The cult of Serapis was promoted during the third century BC on the orders of Greek Pharaoh Ptolemy I Soter of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt as a means to unify the Greeks and Egyptians in his r ...

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...

, which was destroyed by order of

Theodosius I Theodosius I ( grc-gre, Θεοδόσιος ; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also called Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. During his reign, he succeeded in a crucial war against the Goths, as well as in two ...

, is spoken of in the ''translation'' as still standing. But serious objections to this inference have been raised by Letronne, who refers it to the 7th or 8th century, which the weight of internal evidence would rather point to. The book contains many factual errors, and is discredited by many historians.; Note: The 1853 text has the error Letronno instead of the name of the famous French archaeologist and scholar Letronne.

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External links

* * Hellenistic-era historians Historiography of Alexander the Great Ancient Greek historians known only from secondary sources {{AncientGreece-writer-stub