Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemaeus (Greek: Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος; ca. 100 – ca. 178), known in English as Ptolemy, was an ancient Greek geographer, astronomer, and astrologer who probably lived and worked in Alexandria, off the coast of Egypt.

Sourced

• We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible.
  • Ptolemy attributed by James Franklin (2001) The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Chap 9. p. 241

Almagest

• I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.
  • Penned in the margins.

Tetrabiblos

• Everything that is hard to attain is easily assailed by the generality of men.
  • Book I, sec. 1

• The length of life takes the leading place among inquiries about events following birth.
  • Book III, sec. 10

• As material fortune is associated with the properties of the body, so honor belongs to those of the soul.
  • Book IV, sec. 1

• There are three classes of friendship and enmity, since men are so disposed to one another either by preference or by need or through pleasure and pain.
  • Book IV, sec. 7

About Ptolemy

• Ptolemy's Geography is the only book on cartography to have survived from the classical period and one of the most influential scientific works of all time.
  • Ptolemy, J. Lennart Berggren, Alexander Jones (2001) Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters

External links

• Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos at LacusCurtius (English translation, with introductory material)
• Ptolemy's Geography at LacusCurtius (English translation, incomplete)