Adamantius Judaeus

Adamantius, known as "the Jew" (Judaeus), was a Greek-writing author of a treatise on physiognomy, the art of reading character from bodily appearance. His Physiognomonica, in two books, abridges and reworks the earlier, lost Greek physiognomic writings of Polemon of Laodicea, and survives in the Greek manuscript tradition. A Jewish convert who lived in the eastern Roman/early Byzantine world, he is conventionally placed in the 4th century CE, perhaps at Constantinople or Alexandria, though his exact dates and biography are poorly documented. He is valued today mainly as a witness to the ancient physiognomic tradition.