Alexander of Lycopolis was a pagan philosopher from Egypt who lived in the late third century CE. He is known only from a single surviving work, which identifies him as a thinker trained in the traditions of Plato and Aristotle. According to modern scholars, he was likely a teacher or scholar operating within this Hellenic philosophical tradition.

His only known work is a treatise titled Against the Doctrine of Mani. This text is a systematic critique of Manichaeism, a major dualistic religion founded by the prophet Mani. Alexander’s work is significant because it is one of the earliest known pagan analyses of this emerging faith. Rather than using religious argument, he applied Aristotelian logic and Platonic metaphysics to challenge Manichaean ideas about cosmology, the nature of good and evil, and the soul.

His treatise provides valuable contemporary testimony about early Manichaean doctrines from an educated outsider’s perspective. For historians, it serves as an important source for understanding how Hellenic philosophy was used in religious debate during Late Antiquity. It illustrates the intellectual encounter between traditional Greco-Roman thought and new religious movements of the time.