The majority of his writings are now lost, but the fragments that remain shed valuable light on antiquarian and eastern Mediterranean subjects.
[2] He was born in Miletus, Asia Minor, between 110 and 105 BC and educated by Crates of Mallus in Pergamon, before being captured in the Mithridatic War and brought to Rome as a slave.
[6] One of Alexander's students was Gaius Julius Hyginus, Latin author, scholar and friend of Ovid, who was appointed by Augustus to be superintendent of the Palatine library.
From what Laërtius describes or paraphrases in his work, Alexander recorded various thoughts on contradictions, fate, life, soul and its parts, perfect figures, and different curiosities, such as advice not to eat beans.
Louis Ginzberg wrote of Alexander's work nearly 2000 years later: “Although these excerpts reveal their author as nothing but a compiler without taste or judgment, and bereft of all literary ability, they possess, even in their meagerness, a certain value.” In his compilation Jewish and non-Jewish sources are cited indiscriminately side by side; and to Alexander, therefore, the world is indebted for information on the oldest Jewish, Hellenic, and Samaritan elaboration of Biblical history in prose or poetry.
The epic poet Philo, the tragic writer Ezekiel, the historian Eupolemus, the chronicler Demetrius, the so-called Artapanus, the historian Aristeas, and Theodotus the Samaritan, as well as an unnamed fellow countryman of the latter often confused with Eupolemus, the rhetorician Apollonius Molon (an anti-Jewish writer)—all of these authors are known to posterity only through extracts from their works which Alexander embodied verbatim in his.
Of some interest for the ancient history of the Jews is his account of Assyria-Babylonia, frequently drawn upon by Jewish and Christian authors; in it extracts are given, especially from Berossus, and also from the Chronicles of Apollodoros and the Third Book of the Sibyllines.