Alexander (correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium)

Alexander is known only as a correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium, who in five surviving letters addresses him both as "the Poet" and as a presbyter, suggesting a man of letters within Isidore's clerical and literary circle in the early-to-mid 5th-century Pelusium milieu of the eastern Nile Delta. The letters show him as a cultivated reader of classical poetry - Isidore notes that he constantly carries a line of Homer's Odyssey on his lips - and as someone who argued over the morality of pagan art, prompting Isidore's defense of depicting the Graces naked and unclothed as virtuous rather than wanton. As a presbyter he is corrected for an over-eager habit of referring the whole Old Testament to Christ, which Isidore warns hands ammunition to pagans and heretics, and in another letter he is rebuked for ingratitude, accusing where he ought to give thanks. He is otherwise unattested, surviving only through the moral and exegetical instruction Isidore directs at him.