Chapter 2 Olympiodorus and Greco-Alexandrian Alchemy
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The corpus of Greco-Alexandrian alchemists has transmitted to us a commentary by an Olympiodorus, ‘philosopher of Alexandria’, to a lost work by the famous alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis, the Kat’energeian (On action or According to the action). This contribution reopens the question of Olympiodorus’ possible authorship of this commentary. The hypothesis advanced here, and substantiated with reference to the Meteorology commentary, is that our current text consists of one part based substantially on a commentary by Olympiodorus with another part consisting of remarks on the main alchemical operations, accompanied by excerpta from Zosimus and other philosophers.