![]() For Ptolemy this decline represented a unique opportunity to summarise nearly a millennia of Greek geography. By Ptolemy’s time the library, like the Hellenic culture it represented, was in decline, ravaged by warfare, neglect and looting. Some of the greatest classical scholars worked there, including the mathematicians Euclid (c325–265 BC) and Archimedes (c287–212 BC), the poet Callimachus (c310–240 BC) and the astronomer – and one of the earliest librarians at Alexandria – Eratosthenes (c275–194 BC). What is known is that Ptolemy worked at the Alexandria Library, founded in c300 BC, the repository of all written knowledge, which held thousands of manuscripts from across the Greco-Roman world. ![]() Taking the name ‘Ptolemaeus’ suggests he had Greek ancestors, and ‘Claudius’ indicates he possessed Roman citizenship. ![]() He was a native of Ptolemaic Egypt, which, during his lifetime, was already under the control of the Roman empire. What little we know about him is based on later Byzantine sources. The basic principles of Ptolemy’s map projections remain in use to this day – even Google’s ‘Earth’ application uses a projection first invented by him – and yet his life as well as his methods remain a mystery. ![]()
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