"Ptolemy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the world on chance; and next to these, Zeno, Diogenes, and that good leech The herb-collector, Dioscorides. Orpheus I saw, Livy and Tully, each Flanked by old Seneca's deep moral lore, Euclid and Ptolemy, and within their reach Hippocrates and Avicenna's store, The sage that wrote the master commentary, Averois, with Galen and a score Of great physicians. But my pen were weary Depicting all of that majestic plain Splendid ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... inscriptions are no longer legible, and great part of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus, the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Ptolemy, boasts of the only harbor on the Esterel. On one side is the Pointe d'Antheor and on the other Cap Dramont. Right behind the harbor rises the Rastel d'Agay, a jagged mass of copper rock a thousand feet high, climbing which is an excellent preparation for ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... 4. Pelusium, on the E. side of the easternmost mouth of the Nile. 5. cum sorore Cleopatra. By his father's will, Ptolemy ruled jointly with his sister for three years, 51-48 B.C., when he expelled her. Cleopatra raised an army in Syria and invaded Egypt. The two armies were encamped opposite each other when Pompeius landed to seek the help ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... woven of The warp and woof of circumstance, and all Are much alike. We spring from out the mantle, Earth, And hide at last beneath it; in the interim Our acts are less of us than it. We are No judge, then, of thy sins, thou ending link Of Ptolemy's chain. Forsooth, we are too much O'erfilled with wondering how like to thee We all had been, inclipt and dressed in thine Own age ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... original speech, which is classified by Sir G. Grierson as Mundari or Kolarian. He says: "The most southerly forms of Munda speech are those spoken by the Savars and Gadabas of the north-east of Madras. The former have been identified with the Suari of Pliny and the Sabarae of Ptolemy. A wild tribe of the same name is mentioned in Sanskrit literature, even so far back as in late Vedic times, as inhabiting the Deccan, so that the name at least can boast great antiquity." [628] ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... of antiquity was built by Sostratus, by order of Ptolemy Philadelphus. It was a species of tower, erected on a high promontory or rock, on the above mentioned island, then situated about a mile from Alexandria. It was 450 ft. high, divided into several stories, each ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... order to comfort myself as well as I could. If, then, our inquiry is after truth, death withdraws us from evil, not from good. This subject is indeed so copiously handled by Hegesias, the Cyrenaic philosopher, that he is said to have been forbidden by Ptolemy from delivering his lectures in the schools, because some who heard him made away with themselves. There is, too, an epigram of Callimachus[20] on Cleombrotus of Ambracia, who, without any misfortune ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... circle was possibly suggested by the spurred circle which was used for ten.[199] It has also been thought that the omicron used by Ptolemy in his Almagest, to mark accidental blanks in the sexagesimal system which he employed, may have influenced the Indian writers.[200] This symbol was used quite generally in Europe and Asia, and the Arabic astronomer Al-Batt[a]n[i][201] (died 929 A.D.) used a similar symbol in ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... This portion, filling about fifteen pages, is followed by another of double the length, describing a war with Nicolas, King of Cesarea, an unhistorical monarch, who in the Callisthenic fiction insults Alexander. He is conquered and his kingdom given to Ptolemy. Next Alexander threatens Athens, but is turned from his wrath by Aristotle; and coming home, prevents his father's marriage with Cleopatra, who is sent away in disgrace. And then, omitting the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... read greedily all the great geographers, ancient and modern, and all the other important books bearing on African exploration. If he became an authority on Herodotus, Pliny, Ptolemy, Strabo, and Pomponious Mela, he became equally an authority on Bruce, Sonnini, Lacerda, the Pombeiros, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... it true that the Regent's Canal falls into Lake Michigan, thence running uphill to Omaha, as related by Ptolemy, thence spirally to Melbourne, where it joins the delta of the Ganges and becomes an affluent of the Albert ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... the Roman emperors took the titular name of Caesar. After Solomon's time, the titular name Pharaoh never occurs alone, but only as a forename, as Pharaoh Necho, Pharaoh Hophra, Pharaoh Shishak. After the division of Alexander's kingdom, the kings of Egypt were all called Ptolemy, generally with some distinctive after-name, as Ptolemy Philadelphos, Ptolemy Euerget[^e]s, Ptolemy Philop[)a]tor, etc.—Selden, Titles ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Changes (I ching) no more constituted monism the philosophy of China than did the steam-driven machinery mentioned by Hero of Alexandria constitute the first century B.C. the 'age of steam.' Similarly, to take another example, the idea of the earth's rotundity, though conceived centuries before Ptolemy in the second century, did not become established before the sixteenth century. It was, in fact, from the I ching that the Chinese derived their dualistic (not their ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... Socrates and Plato both I mark'd, Nearest to him in rank; Democritus, Who sets the world at chance, Diogenes, With Heraclitus, and Empedocles, And Anaxagoras, and Thales sage, Zeno, and Dioscorides well read In nature's secret lore. Orpheus I mark'd And Linus, Tully and moral Seneca, Euclid and Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galenus, Avicen, and him who made That commentary vast, Averroes. Of all to speak at full were vain attempt; For my wide theme so urges, that ofttimes My words fall short of what bechanc'd. In two The six associates part. Another way My sage guide leads me, from that air ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Human Learning before he was Ten years old; then he studied Logick and Arithmetick, and read over Euclid without any help, only his Master show'd him how to demonstrate the first five or six Propositions; Then he read Ptolemy's Almagest, and afterwards a great many Medicinal Books; and all this before be was sixteen years old. He was not only a great Philosopher and Physician, but an excellent Philologer and Poet. Amongst other of his Learned Works, he wrote an Arabick Lexicon; but it ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... as follows: Shortly after his marriage to Berenice, Ptolemy went on an expedition into Syria. To insure his safe return to Egypt Berenice vowed to consecrate her beautiful hair to Venus. On his return she fulfilled her vow in the temple; but on the following day her ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... she whom I met at dinner last week, With eyes and hair of the Ptolemy black, Who still of this find in Fayoum would speak, And to Pharaohs and scarabs still carry us back? A scent of lotus about her hung, And she had such a far-away wistful air As of somebody born when the Earth was young; And she wore of ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... men, disappear; but the curtain is drawn up which concealed the heavenly hosts. There they shine and there they move, as they moved and shone to the eyes of Newton and Galileo, of Kepler and Copernicus, of Ptolemy and Hipparchus; yea, as they moved and shone when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. All has changed on earth; but the glorious heavens remain unchanged. The plough has passed over the remains of mighty cities, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Visit to Duke Ephraim. The Priests of Duke Town. Mourning amongst the Natives. Attack of an Alligator. The Thomas taken by a Pirate. Departure from Fernando Po. Death of the Kroomen. Arrival in England. Advantages of the Expedition. Investigation of the Niger. Course of the Niger. Ptolemy's Hypothesis of the Niger. Sources of the African Rivers. Benefit ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... necessary to determine the scale-ratio. Our magnitudes for the stars emanate from PTOLEMY. It was found that the scale-ratio—giving the ratio of the light-intensities of two consecutive classes of magnitudes—according to the older values of the magnitudes, was approximately equal to 21/2. When exact photometry ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... wild, and live in abject poverty. They have no arms, no horses, no dwellings; they live on herbs, they clothe themselves in skins, and they sleep on the ground. Their only resources are their arrows, which for the lack of iron are tipped with bone." Strabo and the great geographer, Ptolemy, also mention this curious people. There is evidence that at one time they were spread over large portions of ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... letter preserved by Clement of Alexandria in the second book of the Stromata, has been thought to contain references to the gospels of Matthew and Luke; but the fact is doubtful. Nor has Henrici proved that Valentinus used John's gospel.(143) But his followers, including Ptolemy (180 A.D.) and Heracleon (185-200 A.D.), quote the Gospels and other portions of the New Testament.(144) From Hippolytus's account of the Ophites, Peratae, and Sethians, we infer that the Christian writings were much employed by them. They rarely cite an ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... mixture of the scriptural winds issuing from the bags of Aeolus, see a map of the twelfth century in Leon Gautier, La Chevalerie, p. 153; and for maps showing additional winds, see various editions of Ptolemy. For a map with angels turning the earth by means of cranks at the poles, see Grynaeus, Novus Orbis, Basileae, 1537. For the globe kept spinning by the Almighty, see J. Hondius's map, 1589; and for Heylin, his first ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... book on Arabia from every point of view—scientific, literary, and missionary. It is well illustrated, especially by such maps as Ptolemy's, Niebuhr's, Palgrave's and plans of Mecca, Medina, besides maps of Arabia as it now is, and of the islands of Bahrein."—The Scottish ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... of 5,000 or, according to another way of calculating, of 6,000 volumes, for the use of the members of the Curia, which became the foundation of the library of the Vatican. It was to be preserved in the palace itself, as its noblest ornament, the library of Ptolemy Philadelphus at Alexandria. When the plague (1450) drove him and his court to Fabriano, whence then, as now, the best paper was procured, he took his translators and compilers with him, that he might run ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... and others too tedious to name, on Grammar we have compared him with Grammarians: what he has said on Rhetoric, with Cicero and Aquila; on Logic, with Porphyry, Aristotle, Cassiodorus, Apuleius; on Geography, with Strabo, Mela, Solinus, Ptolemy, but chiefly Pliny; on Arithmetic, with Euclid; on Astronomy, with Hygin, and the rest who have treated that subject; on ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... geographers of repute supposed that there was not nearly so large a distance as there proved to be, in truth, between Europe and Asia. Thus, in the geography of Ptolemy, which was the standard book at that time, one hundred and thirty-five degrees, a little more than one-third of the earth's circumference, is given to the space between the extreme eastern part of the Indies and the Canary Islands. In fact, as we now know, the distance ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... a philosopher as a man of action with literary tastes, standing thus in marked contrast to Pyrrhus, who "cared as little for knowledge or culture as did any baron of the Dark Ages." When he was engaged in a difficult negotiation with Ptolemy Philadelphus he allowed himself to be mollified by a quotation from Homer, who, as Plato said, was "the educator of Hellas." Although not himself an original thinker, he encouraged thought in others. He surrounded himself with men of learning, and even received at ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Byfleet, &c. The Latin word flevus is of the same kind, and is derived from the same source; for, instead of Hareflot and Huneflot, some old records have Hareflou and Huneflou, and some others Barfleu, terms approaching flevus, which is also called by Ptolemy, fleus, and by Mela, fletio. It is highly improbable, that these two last terms should have been coined subsequently to the time of the Romans becoming masters of Gaul, and it is equally unlikely that the Saxon ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... traveller, 'I am sorry to see a gentleman of your learning and gravity labouring under such strange blindness and delusion. Will you place the brief, the modern, and, as I may say, the vernacular name of Isaac Newton in opposition to the grave and sonorous authorities of Dariot, Bonatus, Ptolemy, Haly, Eztler, Dieterick, Naibob, Harfurt, Zael, Taustettor, Agrippa, Duretus, Maginus, Origen, and Argol? Do not Christians and Heathens, and Jews and Gentiles, and poets and philosophers, unite in allowing ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... yet such as it is, it has come to us from the Greeks and Romans, and it came to them from Babylon. The sexagesimal division is peculiarly Babylonian. Hipparchos, 150 B.C., adopted it from Babylon, Ptolemy, 150 A.D., gave it wider currency, and the French, when they decimated everything else, respected the dial-plates of our watches, and left them with their ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... and turrets, Tycho set Statues with golden verses in the praise Of famous men, the bearers of the torch, From Ptolemy to the new Copernicus. Then, in that storm-proof mountain of the stars, He set in all their splendour of new-made brass His armouries for the assault of heaven,— Circles in azimuth, armillary spheres, Revolving zodiacs with great brazen rings; Quadrants of ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... Augustus. Of the poets named in his proem, Antiphanes, Euenus, Parmenio, and Tullius have no date determinable from internal evidence. Antigonus has been sometimes identified with Antigonus of Carystus, the author of the {Paradokon Sunagoge}, who lived in the third century B.C. under Ptolemy Philadelphus or Ptolemy Euergetes; but as this Anthology distinctly professes to be of poets since Meleager, he must be another author of the same name. Antipater of Thessalonica, Bianor, and Diodorus are of the Augustan ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... also a distinguished navigator. The islanders fully believed in the existence of lands in the western Atlantic. West winds had brought to them strange woods curiously carved, huge cane-brakes like those of India described by Ptolemy, peculiarly fashioned canoes, and corpses with skin of a hue ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Dynasty of the Ptolemies. Egypt and Asia were now closely connected, and at several periods during this phase of Egyptian history the Asiatic province came under the control of the Pharaohs. The wars of Ptolemy I. in Syria were conducted on a large scale. In the reign of Ptolemy III. there were three campaigns, and I cannot refrain from quoting a contemporary record of the King's powers if only for the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... out to make the Book speak the current tongue. For one hundred and fifty years the work went on, and what we call the Septuagint was completed. There is a pretty little story which tells how the version got its name, which means the Seventy—that King Ptolemy Philadelphus, interested in collecting all sacred books, gathered seventy Hebrew scholars, sent them to the island of Pharos, shut them up in seventy rooms for seventy days, each making a translation ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... there was Who lived up in a tower, Named Ptolemy Copernicus Flammarion McGower. He said: "I can prognosticate With estimates correct; And when the skies I contemplate, I know what to expect. When dark'ning clouds obscure my sight, I think perhaps 'twill rain; And ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... opposite side; and the result was, that there was not one. Considering, then, that nobody followed the Copernican doctrine, who had not previously held the contrary opinion, and who was not well acquainted with the arguments of Aristotle and Ptolemy; while, on the other hand, nobody followed Ptolemy and Aristotle, who had before adhered to Copernicus, and had gone over from him into the camp of Aristotle;—weighing, I say, these things, I began to believe that, if any one who rejects an opinion which he has imbibed with his milk, and which ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... eclipses—dependent as such a calculation is, not only on the determination of the period of recurrence, but on the true projection also of the track of the Sun's shadow along a particular line over the surface of the earth—may be inferred from our finding that in the astronomical canon of Ptolemy, which was compiled from the Chaldean registers, the observations of the Moon's ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... soon sprang, phoenix-like, from the fire, though history leaves it in darkness to enjoy a lull of 200 years. In the early part of the second century Ptolemy, the geographer, speaks of it as a city of the Kentish people; but Mr. Craik very ingeniously conjectures that the Greek writer took his information from Phoenician works descriptive of Britain, written ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Alexander was dead and his government had been divided among many, Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, by treachery seized Jerusalem, and took away many captives to Egypt, and settled them there. His successor, Ptolemy Philadelphus, restored to freedom 120,000 Jews who had been kept in slavery at the instance of Aristeus, one of his most intimate friends. He ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the Persian empire, took possession of Egypt, and annexed it, among the other Persian provinces, to his own dominions. At the division of Alexander's empire, after his death, Egypt fell to one of his generals, named Ptolemy. Ptolemy made it his kingdom, and left it, at his death, to his heirs. A long line of sovereigns succeeded him, known in history as the dynasty of the Ptolemies—Greek princes, reigning over an Egyptian realm. Cleopatra ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... outraged Boadicea, who marched directly upon London as the chief centre of power and civilization. Though why the latter condition should have been resented it is still difficult to understand. Ptolemy, who, however, got much of his information second-hand, refers to London in his geography of the second century as Londinion, and locates it as being situate somewhere south of the Thames. All this is fully recounted in the ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... stupendous object. It is a vastly extensive branching and looped nebula, in the centre of the densest part of which is [Greek: e] Argus, itself a most remarkable star, seeing that from the fourth magnitude which it had in Ptolemy's time, it has risen (by sudden starts, and not gradually) to such a degree of brilliancy as now actually to surpass Canopus, and to be second only to Sirius. One of these leaps I myself witnessed when in the interval of ceasing ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... these words is supplied by a speech of Phalerius, librarian to Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt. Urging the king by all means to secure copies of the sacred books of the Jews for his great library ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... court of the founder of the Lagid dynasty, where by his daring and downright character, and his soldierly spirit thoroughly despising everything that was not military, he attracted the attention of the politic king Ptolemy no less than he attracted the notice of the royal ladies by his manly beauty, which was not impaired by his wild look and stately tread. Just at this time the enterprising Demetrius was once more ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... three main streams, one flowing from Jerusalem, another from Babylon, the third from Egypt. Alexandria soon took precedence of existing settlements of Jews, and became a great centre of Jewish life. The first Ptolemy, to whom at the dismemberment of Alexander's empire Egypt had fallen,[2] continued to the Jewish settlers the privileges of full citizenship which Alexander had granted them. He increased also the number of Jewish inhabitants, for following his conquest of Palestine ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... if he learnt some smattering of the geography of the earth and the heavens after the crude notions of an older day, he could have done no other, at that time, in the most enlightened Universities. Ptolemy's Geographia was still the text-book, and the so-called "Ptolemaic Theory" still the astronomical creed of scholars. Copernicus was, indeed, a man of forty when Holbein was painting this Signboard ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... illustration how the clear light of truth is discolored and refracted by an atmosphere where the cloud of war still lingers. Soon must this cloud be dispersed. From war to peace is a change indeed; but Nature herself testifies to change. Sirius, brightest of all the fixed stars, was noted by Ptolemy as of reddish hue, [Footnote: Almagest, ed. et tr. Halma, (Paris, 1816- 20,) Tom. II. pp. 72, 73.] and by Seneca as redder than Mars; [Footnote: Naturales Quaestiones, Lib. I. Cap. 1.] but since then it has changed to white. To the morose remark, ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... aim of supplying influential example to improve the French language for literary purposes. Their peculiar appellation, "The Pleiades," was copied from that of a somewhat similar group of Greek writers, that existed in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Of course, the implied allusion in it is to the constellation of the Pleiades. The individual name by which the Pleiades of the sixteenth century may best be remembered is that of Ronsard ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... several well written Latin works. The young man, on whose shoulder he leans, is his son, Alexander, who is also very learned. Before him is seated Abraham Ortelius, the great geographer, who is regarded as the Ptolemy of his age. Beside Ortelius is his friend and fellow-laborer Gerard, also a learned geographer, and one of the luminaries of the day. The only one whose dress indicates his Italian birth is Louis Guicciardini, a Florentine gentleman, who is here for the purpose of collecting ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... nearly extinct, and are for the most part of a very immoral kind. He wrote some verses against Philadelphus Ptolemy, and was, in consequence, put into a cage of lead and thrown ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... that the third day, in our case, should be reckoned into the number, though Christ rose at the very beginning of it. It is more strange to reckon whole years in this manner; and yet this is the constant method observed in Ptolemy's canon, the most valuable piece of ancient chronology, next to the Bible, now extant. If a King lived over the first day of a year, and died the week after, that whole year ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... his works, is his 'Elements of Geometry,' which is in use at the present day. He established a school at Alexandria, which became so famous, that, from his time to the conquest of Alexandria by the Saracens, (A. D. 646,) no mathematician was found, who had not studied at Alexandria. Ptolemy, King of Egypt, was one of his pupils; and it was to a question of this King, whether there were not a shorter way of coming at Geometry, than by the study of his Elements, that Euclid made the celebrated answer, "There is no royal way, or ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... of England. A great protruding backbone of chalk rocks projects far into the North Sea at Flamborough Head, and makes one of the most prominent landmarks on all that rugged, iron-bound coast. This is the Ocellum Promontorium of Ptolemy, and its lighthouse is three hundred and thirty feet above the sea, while far away over the waters the view is superb. From Flamborough Head northward beyond Whitby the coast-line is a succession of abrupt white ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... flying with the Christian Knight. This so enraged the King that, yielding to the suggestions of the wicked Almidor, he agreed to send him, with treacherous intent, to the court of Egypt, as bearer of a sealed letter, in which document he entreated King Ptolemy to take an early opportunity of destroying one who was a despiser and uprooter of their ancient belief. Summoning Saint George, with expressions of great esteem, while Almidor stood at his right hand, glancing unutterable hatred from his large eyes, the King informed him ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... [Footnote 85: Ptolemy and Strabo, with the modern geographers, fix the Isthmus of Suez as the boundary of Asia and Africa. Dionysius, Mela, Pliny, Sallust, Hirtius, and Solinus, have preferred for that purpose the western branch of the Nile, or even the great Catabathmus, or descent, which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... out, but I began to make other inquiries in regard to his astronomical knowledge, when a member of the company, who had never as yet opened his mouth, whispered in my ear, that for information on this head, I had better consult Ptolemy (whoever Ptolemy is), as well as one Plutarch ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... certain sense of awe, Mr. Rickaby, when I touch this wonderful thing. To think, sir, to think! that this bauble once rested on the bosom of that marvellous woman; that Mark Antony must have seen it, may have touched it; that Ptolemy Auletse knew all about it, and that it is older, sir, than the Christian ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... speaking. And what has not been said is easy to say, while what has been once said can never be recalled. I have heard of myriads who have fallen into the greatest misfortunes through inability to govern their tongues. Passing over the rest, I will mention one or two cases in point. When Ptolemy Philadelphus married his sister Arsinoe, Sotades said, "You are contracting an unholy marriage."[30] For this speech he long lingered in prison, and paid the righteous penalty for his unseasonable babbling, and had to weep a long time for making ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Peripatetics; peaks of Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the nodes of the planets by figures and numbers; there Paul reveals the mysteries; there his neighbour Dionysius arranges and distinguishes the hierarchies; there the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... conclave of learned professors devoting their time to the examination and discussion of Aristotle's writings is about as edifying as to see a geographical society devoting its time to discussing the geography of Ptolemy. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... Greece he could afford to postpone for a few years the arduous pleasures of the great festival. Herodes Atticus had gone this year, and upon his return brought with him for a visit a group of very distinguished men, including Lucian and Apuleius and the Alexandrian astronomer, Ptolemy. Paulus was astonished and proud to receive, with Gellius, an invitation to a dinner in their honour given ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... two)—though far more celebrated and more extensive than the library at Pergamon—need not, from my point of view, detain us for more than a moment, for we are told very little about their position, and nothing about their arrangement. The site of the earliest, the foundation of which is ascribed to Ptolemy the Second (B.C. 285-247), must undoubtedly be sought for within the circuit of the royal palace, which was in the fashionable quarter of the city called Brucheion. This palace was a vast enceinte, ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... gained from the Jews a knowledge of the true God, are more unreliable still. Plato lived in the fourth century before Christ (born B.C. 430), and there is no good evidence of the existence of a Greek version of the Old Testament before that of "the Seventy" (Septuagint), made by order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 270. Jeremiah, the prophet of Israel, lived two centuries before Plato; consequently any personal intercourse between the two was simply impossible. Greek philosophy was unquestionably a ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... others dispersed and destroyed by the cruel incursions of war, others rotted and spoiled as much by the rigour of time as by carelessness to collect and preserve them; whereof the ancient Histories and Annals furnish a sufficient example in the memorable library of that great King of Egypt, Ptolemy Phila-delphus, which had been formed with the sweat and blood of so many notable philosophers, and maintained, ordered, and preserved by the liberality of that great monarch. And yet in less than a day, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, who appears to be the first extant writer to employ the name in this form (i.e. assuming Max Mueller's view that he belongs to the 1st century); hence also the Sinae and Thinae of Ptolemy. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... The book of Ptolemy the astronomer, which formed the canon of astrological science in ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... almost stampeded; still, it was decked all over with gold, had purple housings and a richly jewelled bridle, the spoil of Darius' or Cambyses' treasury, if not of Cyrus' own. As for the man, a few laughed at him, but most shrank as from a monster. Ptolemy realized that the show was a failure, and the Egyptians proof against mere novelty, preferring harmony and beauty. So he withdrew and ceased to prize them; the camel died forgotten, and the parti-coloured man became the reward of Thespis ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... mainland, and at that time I was on the island of Guadeloupe, and also I heard it from others of the island of Sancta Cruz and of Sant Juan, and they said that in it there was much gold, and, as your Highnesses know, a very short time ago, there was no other land known than that which Ptolemy wrote of, and there was not in my time any one who would believe that one could navigate from Spain to the Indies; about which matter I was seven years in your Court, and there were few who understood it; and finally the very great courage ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... who, though he had been as deep as Duns Scotus, would have had his reasoning marred by that cup too much; or Romeo in his sudden taking for Juliet, wherein any objections he might have held against Ptolemy had made little difference to his discourse under the balcony. Yet all love is not such, even though potent; nay, this passion hath as large scope as any for allying itself with every operation of the soul: so that it shall acknowledge an effect from the imagined light of unproven firmaments, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of whales in the east, all heading towards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert with peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a grand embodiment of adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in Persia, the home of the fire worshippers. As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African elephant, I then testified of the whale, pronouncing him the most devout of all beings. For according to King Juba, the military elephants of antiquity often hailed the morning with their trunks ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... began here and there, somewhat timidly and tentatively, to rebel against the tyranny of antiquity, or rather to prepare the way for the open rebellion which was to break out in the seventeenth. Breaches were made in the proud citadel of ancient learning. Copernicus undermined the authority of Ptolemy and his predecessors; the anatomical researches of Vesalius injured the prestige of Galen; and Aristotle was attacked on many sides by men like Telesio, Cardan, Ramus, and Bruno. [Footnote: It has been observed that the thinkers who were rebelling against the authority of Aristotle—the most dangerous ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... cuneiform texts our knowledge of its history, however, was scanty and questionable. Had the native history of Berossus survived, this would not have been the case; all that is known of the Chaldaean historian's work, however, is derived from quotations in Josephus, Ptolemy, Eusebius and the Syncellus. The authenticity of his list of 10 antediluvian kings who reigned for 120 sari or 432,000 years, has been partially confirmed by the inscriptions; but his 8 postdiluvian ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... carrying with them as presents for them gowns bordered with purple, and golden bowls weighing three pounds each. Marcus Atilius and Manius Acilius were also sent as ambassadors to Alexandria, to king Ptolemy and queen Cleopatra, to revive and renew the treaty of friendship with them, carrying with them as presents a gown and purple tunic, with an ivory chair for the king, and an embroidered gown and a purple vest for the queen. During the summer in which these transactions took place, many prodigies ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... natives pronounce "Aman," is the region best known by its capital Maskat. These are the Omana Moscha and Omanum Emporium of Ptolemy and the Periplus. Ibn Batutah writes Amman, but the best dictionaries give "Oman." (N.B.—Mr. Badger, p. 1, wrongly derives Sachalitis from "Sawahily": it is evidently "Sahili.") The people bear by no means the best character: Ibn Batutah (fourteenth century) says, "their wives ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... as he breathed a sigh of relief, "what a glorious day! We've beat 'em! Won't the Directory be glad? M. Barras will be more M. Barrassed than ever." Then, turning and tapping on the door of the massive pile, he whispered, softly: "Ah! Ptolemy, my man, it's a pity you've no windows in this tomb. You'd have seen a pretty sight this day. Kleber," he added, turning to that general, "do you know why Ptolemy inside this pyramid and I ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... diadechesthai], to receive from another), i.e. "Successors," the name given to the Macedonian generals who fought for the empire of Alexander after his death in 323 B.C. The name includes Antigonus and his son Demetrius Poliorcetes, Antipater and his son Cassander, Seleucus, Ptolemy, Eumenes and Lysimachus. The kingdoms into which the Macedonian empire was divided under these rulers are known as Hellenistic. The chief were Asia Minor and Syria under the SELEUCID DYNASTY (q.v.), Egypt under ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... fourth century B.C., Egypt was conquered by Alexander the Great, who left it under the rule of the Ptolemies. The next century after the Alexandrian age the philosophy and literature of Athens was transferred to Alexandria. The Alexandrian library, completed by Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the third century before Christ, was formed for the most part of Greek books and it also had Greek librarians; so that in the learning and philosophy of Alexandria at this time, the Eastern and Western systems were combined. ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... no reason to doubt that these are the islands slightly known to the ancients under the name of Fortunate: though the mistake of Ptolemy concerning their latitude has led one of the commentators on Solinus to contend, that this title belongs rather to the Islands of Cape Verd. Pliny mentions Canaria, and accounts for that name from ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... uninhabitable on account of snow. Then there is a land inhabited by man-eating Scythians, then deserts, then Scythians again, then deserts with wild animals to a mountain ridge rising out of the sea, which is called Tabin. The first people that are known beyond this are the Seri. PTOLEMY and his successors again supposed, though perhaps not ignorant of the old statement that Africa had been circumnavigated under Pharaoh Necho, that the Indian Ocean was an inland sea, everywhere surrounded by land, which united southern Africa ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... can find pleasure in reading of how a great tower full of knights sails away across the sea like a ship with a fair wind, and will be to-night in Lombardy and to-morrow morning in the land of Prester John of the Indies, or some other that Ptolemy never described nor Marco Polo saw? And if, in answer to this, I am told that the authors of books of the kind write them as fiction, and therefore are not bound to regard niceties of truth, I would reply that fiction is all the better the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... or Culross, as placed in Strath-h-Irenn in the Comgalls, between Slieve-n-Ochil and the Sea of Giudan? or identify for us the true sites of the numerous rivers, tribes, divisions, and towns—or merely perhaps stockaded or rathed villages—which Ptolemy in the second century enters in his geographical description of North Britain? or particularise the precise bounds of the Meatae and Attacotti, and of the two Pictish nations mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus, namely, the Dicaledonae and Vecturiones? or trace out for us the course of Agricola's ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... observations were afterwards confirmed, and other astronomers profited by them. Ptolemy in the second century, and the Arabian Aboul Wefa in the tenth, completed the remarks of Hipparchus on the inequalities that the moon undergoes whilst following the undulating line of its orbit under the action of the sun. Then Copernicus, in the fifteenth century, and Tycho Brahe, in ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... Elements of Euclid, whose voice comes floating down through the ages, in that one significant rejoinder,—"Non est regia ad mathematicam via." It is the reply of the mathematician, quiet-eyed and thoughtful, to the first Ptolemy, inquiring if there were not some less difficult path to the mysteries. But the Greek Geometry was in no wise confined to the elements. Before Euclid, Plato is said to have written over the entrance to his garden,—"Let no one enter, who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... probably the wind had drifted it from the west, it might have come from some unknown land in that direction. A brother-in-law of Columbus had likewise found a similar piece of wood drifted from the same quarter. Reeds of enormous size, such as were described by Ptolemy to grow in India, had been picked up, and trunks of huge pine-trees had been driven on the shores of the Azores, such as did not grow on any of those islands. The bodies of two dead men, whose features ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... have read, that Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, one day, amongst the many spoils and booties which by his victories he had acquired, presenting to the Egyptians, in the open view of the people, a Bactrian camel all black, and a party-coloured slave, in such sort as that the one half of his body was black and the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... trying to number the stars. Hipparchus counted one thousand and twenty-two; Ptolemy one thousand and twenty-six; and it is easy to number those visible to the naked eye. But the Bible said, when there were no telescopes to make it known, that they were as the sands of the sea, "innumerable." Science has appliances of enumeration unknown to other ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... most eminent. It is full, however, of a grandeur which is more dazzling than genuine; and, indeed, we could expect nothing else from a cento of Lucan's hyperbolical antitheses. These bravuras of rhetoric are strung together on the thread of a clumsy plot. The intrigues of Ptolemy, and the ambitious coquetry of his sister Cleopatra, have a petty and miserable appearance alongside of the picture of the fate of the great Pompey, the vengeance-breathing sorrow of his wife, and the magnanimous compassion of Caesar. Scarcely has the conqueror paid the last honours ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... her territories, together with a part of Armenia and Asia Minor. Thus her dominions extended from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, and over all those vast and fertile countries formerly governed by Ptolemy and Seleucus. Jerusalem, Antioch, Damascus, and other cities famed in history, were included in her empire, but she fixed her residence at Palmyra, and in an interval of peace she turned her attention to the further adornment ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... privateer; and a sea fight under this commander was the means of bringing him ashore in Portugal. Meanwhile, however, he was preparing himself for greater achievements by reading and meditating on the works of Ptolemy and Marinus, of Nearchus and Pliny, the Cosmographia of Cardinal Aliaco, the travels of Marco Polo and Mandeville. He mastered all the sciences essential to his calling, learned to draw charts and construct spheres, and thus fitted himself to become a consummate ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... same mistake regarding Soul 122:30 and body that Ptolemy made regarding the solar system. They insist that soul is in body and mind therefore tribu- tary to matter. Astronomical science has destroyed the 123:1 false theory as to the relations of the celestial bodies, and Christian Science will surely destroy the greater error as 123:3 to our terrestrial ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the time that the Colossus was set astride the Rhodian harbor, King Ptolemy Philadelphus caused a noble tower of superb white stone, four hundred feet high, to be erected by an architect named Sostrasius, son of Dixiphanes, at the entrance to the port of Alexandria, which was a bran-new busy city in ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... the globe of Ulpius, to which the year 1542 is assigned, "de Pinos" is clearly marked. Bellero's map, 1550, has an island "de pinolas." Naturally, map-makers were slow to adopt new names, and in the numerous editions of Ptolemy the label St Iago was retained almost to the end of the century.{3} On the Agnese map there are two islands, one named "S. Tiago," the other "pinos," which introduced a new confusion, though he was not followed by most geographers until Wytfliet, 1597, gave ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... accomplishment which proved very useful to me in a peculiar circumstance, the particulars of which I will give in good time. The excellent doctor, who was in no way a philosopher, made me study the logic of the Peripatetics, and the cosmography of the ancient system of Ptolemy, at which I would laugh, teasing the poor doctor with theorems to which he could find no answer. His habits, moreover, were irreproachable, and in all things connected with religion, although no bigot, he was of the greatest strictness, and, admitting everything ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... that is undoubtedly a development of the very art practised in the days of Ptolemy, Rameses, and Cleopatra. They do not use their patchwork to adorn quilts, since these are unknown in the warm Nile valley, but as covers for cushions, panels for screens, and decorations suitable for wall hangings. Generally but two kinds of material are employed in its construction: a rather ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... of one of the best families of Lesser Armenia, and born a Melitene, which Strabo and Pliny place to Cappadocia; but Ptolemy, and all succeeding writers, in Lesser Armenia, of which province it became the capital. The saint, in his youth, made fasting and mortification his choice, to the midst of every thing that could flatter the senses. His conduct was uniform and irreproachable, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... itself is a remarkable granite rock, about a mile in circumference and 250 feet high. It was referred to by Ptolemy, and is supposed to have been the island Iclis of the Greeks, noticed by Diodorus Siculus as the place near the promontory of Belerium to which the tin, when refined, was brought by the Britons to be exchanged ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... approaches nearer and nearer, and therefore by ever-lessening circles reaches the tropics and the equator every year a little sooner. They measure months by the course of the moon, years by that of the sun. They praise Ptolemy, admire Copernicus, but place Aristarchus and Philolaus before him. They take great pains in endeavoring to understand the construction of the world, and whether or not it will perish, and at what time. ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... down the troops of their own side. The Romans only used them subsequently to terrify barbaric people, and as features in military processions. But Eastern nations used them extensively in war. In A.D. 217 Antiochus the Great brought 217 elephants in his army against 73 employed by Ptolemy, at what was called "the Battle of the Elephants." The battle commenced by the charging head to head of the opposing elephants and the discharge of arrows, spears and stones by the men in ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... on with ever-increasing rapidity during the last century. After the great age of Rome had passed, the boundaries of knowledge shrank, and in many cases it was not until well-nigh our own times that her domain was once again pushed beyond the ancient landmarks. About the year 150 A.D., Ptolemy, the geographer, published his map of central Africa and the sources of the Nile, and this map was more accurate than any which we had as late as 1850 A.D. More was known of physical science, and ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... science of mechanics had to grow out of this notion; and slowly at last came the full application of mechanical principles to the motions of the heavenly bodies. We trace the progress of astronomy through Hipparchus and Ptolemy; and, after a long halt, through Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler; while from the high table-land of thought occupied by these men, Newton shoots upwards like a peak, overlooking all others from his ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... by Ptolemy, who, however, after much thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final. His own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning bugs; and he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that the locusts ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... any preceding or contemporary hypothesis, in the extent of observational and experimental basis on which it rests, in its rigorously scientific method, and in its power of explaining biological phenomena, as was the hypothesis of Copernicus to the speculations of Ptolemy. But the planetary orbits turned out to be not quite circular after all, and, grand as was the service Copernicus rendered to science, Kepler and Newton had to come after him. What if the orbit of Darwinism should be a little too circular? ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... after Christ, Ptolemy, a Greco-Egyptian, but not of the royal line of Ptolemies, published his great book, "The Almagest." For over fourteen centuries it was the textbook for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... the spiritual attitudes of various ages and races towards love. Theocritus has been compared to Canticles, by some on the ground of certain Orientalisms of his thought and phrases, as in his Praise of Ptolemy. But his love poems bear no trace of Orientalism in feeling, as Canticles shows no trace of Hellenism in its conception of love. The similarities are human, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... offered gifts, and, as tradition asserts, even worshiped the God of the Jews. On the conquest of Persia, Judea came into the possession of Laomedon, one of the generals of Alexander, B.C. 321. On his defeat by Ptolemy, another general, to whom Egypt had fallen as his share, one hundred thousand Jews were carried captive to Alexandria, where they settled and learned the Greek language. The country continued to be convulsed by the wars between the generals ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... my Antioch, my city! Queen of the East! my solace, my delight! The dowry of my sister Cleopatra When she was wed to Ptolemy, and now Won back and made more wonderful by me! I love thee, and I long to be once more Among the players and the dancing women Within thy gates, and bathe in the Orontes, Thy river and mine. O Jason, my High-Priest, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... work of Ptolemy on geometry and astronomy. Ricciolus adopted the term in 1651 for his Body of Mathematical Science. It became ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... famous in astronomy, having been generally followed by Hipparchus and Ptolemy. It is believed to have been in use from the very time of its origin; for the observations of eclipses which were collected in Chaldaea by Callisthenes, the general of Alexander, and transmitted by him to Aristotle, were for the greater ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... city was traced by Alexander himself, but it was not completed until the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. It continued to receive embellishments from nearly every monarch of the Lagian line. Its circumference was about fifteen miles; the streets were regular, and crossed one another at right angles, and were wide enough to admit both carriages and foot passengers. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Athenian, is said to have been so devoted to his art that he could think of nothing else: he would ask his servants if he had bathed or eaten, not being able to remember for himself. He was very rich, and when King Ptolemy of Egypt offered him more than sixty thousand dollars for his picture of Ulysses in the under-world, he refused this great sum, and gave the painting to his native city. Nikias seems to have greatly exalted and respected his art, for he contended that ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... long duration; for there is not the mention of a single city in Ammianus Marcellinus, who wrote on the wars of the Romans in Germany. The names of places in Ptolemy (ii. 11) are not, therefore, those of cities, but of scattered villages. The Germans had not even what we should call towns, notwithstanding Caesar asserts ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... that the waters of the tropics boiled, that demons and monsters awaited explorers to the westward, and that the earth was a great flat disk, did not pass current among well-informed geographers. Especially since the revival of Ptolemy's works in the fifteenth century, learned men asserted that the earth was spherical in shape, and they even calculated its circumference, erring only by two or three thousand miles. It was maintained repeatedly that the Indies formed the western boundary of the Atlantic Ocean, and that ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Edmund Spenser; the only perfect copy known of the first edition of the Paradyse of Daintie Devises; and remarkably complete sets of the works of Churchyard, Breton, Greene, Dekker, Wither and Brathwaite. Other notable books in this splendid library are a copy on vellum, with coloured maps, of Ptolemy's Cosmographia, printed at Ulm in 1482, and bound by Derome; the Aldine edition of Poliphili Hypnerotomachia, in the original binding, and an unique copy of the English translation printed in London by Samuel Waterson in 1592; a fine and ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... flourished not long after the death of Moses, confirms the Bible account of the origin of the world and of many men and places mentioned in the Pentateuch. Berosus, the Chaldean, and Manetho, the Egyptian, who lived in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, represent several circumstances known in the accounts given by Moses. They wrote about the time when the Old Testament was translated into Greek. Their evidence, to say the least, shows the honor that was paid by ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... country. No better proof of previous ignorance of this river could be desired than that an untraveled gentleman, who had spent a great part of his life in the study of the geography of Africa, and knew every thing written on the subject from the time of Ptolemy downward, actually asserted in the "Athenaeum", while I was coming up the Red Sea, that this magnificent river, the Leeambye, had "no connection with the Zambesi, but flowed under the Kalahari Desert, and became lost;" and "that, as all the old maps asserted, the Zambesi ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... our Morley's mind inspired, To find the remedy your ill required; As once the Macedon, by Jove's decree, Was taught to dream an herb for Ptolemy: Or Heaven, which had such over-cost bestow'd, As scarce it could afford to flesh and blood, So liked the frame, he would not work anew, To save the charges of another you. Or by his middle science did he steer, And saw some great contingent good appear, 140 Well worth a miracle to keep you here: ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... his wit and eloquence, he could not contrive to make of the grand-daughter of Henry the Seventh, a Pericles, or an Alexander, or a Ptolemy, or an Augustus, or an encourager of anything that did not appear to be directly connected with her own particular ends, he did succeed in making her indirectly a patron of the literary and scientific development which was then beginning to ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... us, therefore, that we have no security for the future against the prevalence of any theological error that ever has prevailed in time past among Christian men. We are confident that the world will never go back to the solar system of Ptolemy; nor is our confidence in the least shaken by the circumstance, that even so great a man as Bacon rejected the theory of Galileo with scorn; for Bacon had not all the means of arriving at a sound conclusion which are within our reach, and which secure people ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... recorded an eclipse to the nearest hour, and the early Alexandrian astronomers thought it superfluous to distinguish between the edge and center of the sun. By the introduction of the astrolabe, Ptolemy, and the later Alexandrian astronomers could determine the places of the heavenly bodies within about ten minutes of arc. Little progress then ensued for thirteen centuries, until Tycho Brahe made the first great step toward accuracy, not only by employing better instruments, but even more by ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Alexander marched into India, about three centuries before the birth of Christ, many learned Greeks accompanied him on this memorable expedition; and we are further informed that, two centuries after this period when the persecutions and cruelties of Ptolemy Physcon expelled great numbers of learned and pious Greeks and Egyptians from the city of Alexandria, they travelled eastward in search of an asylum among the Persians and the Indians; so that there is nothing extraordinary ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... perceived that it was following the line of a trade-route much more ancient than the Persian monarchy. [Footnote: Ramsay, The Historical Geography of Asia Minor, chap. i.] The harbor of Berenice, named after the mother of Ptolemy Philadelpnus, was built by him as a place of transit for goods from India which were to be carried from the Red Sea to the Nile. [Footnote: Hunter, Hist. of British India, I., 40.] Roman roads followed ancient lines through Asia Minor and Syria, and medieval routes in turn, ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... and intelligent; with large almond-shaped eyes, a Grecian nose, teeth like pearls, and a hand like your own, countess—a fit hand to hold a scepter. See, here is a diamond which she gave me, and which she had had from her brother Ptolemy; she wore it ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Arts armed with the birch; in the next he is promoted to Priscian. Then follow the other subjects of the Trivium and the Quadrivium each subject being represented by its chief exponent—logic by Aristotle, arithmetic by Boethius, geometry by Euclid, etc. Ptolemy, the philosopher, who represents astronomy, is confused with the kings of the same name. Pliny and Seneca represent the more advanced study of physical and of moral science respectively, and the edifice is crowned by Theology, ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... is gained by dragging in an allusion to Mr. Shorthouse's John Inglesant in a description of the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius; and when we are told that the superb Pavilion erected in Alexandria by Ptolemy Philadelphus was a 'sort of glorified Holborn Restaurant,' we must say that the elaborate description of the building given in Athenaeus could have been summed up in a better ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... that small heavenly space, Ringed with the tree-trunk's leafy grace, While upward grins his ghastly face As if some wild-wood Satyr, Some gnomish Ptolemy should dare Up that dark optic tube to stare, As all unveiled she floated there, Poor ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Ptolemy Auletes first appealed to the senate (B.C. 57) to restore him to the throne of Egypt, it appears that a resolution was passed authorizing the proconsul of Cilicia to do so; but as Pompey wished to have the business, the ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... with which my researches of this nature were received by many of my new colleagues, I was tempted for a moment to treat in one comprehensive work of the weights and measures in use at Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy Auletes (80-52). I soon recognised, however, that a subject so general could not be dealt with by the really profound student, and that positive science could not approach it without running a risk of incurring all ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... magnitude; and if the excess of a magnitude above a given magnitude has a given ratio to another magnitude, this other magnitude together with a given ratio to the first magnitude,"—I own to a slight confusion of my intellectual faculties, and a perfect contempt for John Buteo and Ptolemy. Then, there is Butler's "Analogy"; an excellent work it is, I have been told,—a charming work to master,—quite a bulwark of our faith; but as, in my growing days, it was explained to me, or rather was not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... on any subject, material, intellectual, or social, undergo a thorough change in consequence of new observations, I call that movement of the mind REVOLUTION. If the ideas are simply extended or modified, there is only PROGRESS. Thus the system of Ptolemy was a step in astronomical progress, that of Copernicus was a revolution. So, in 1789, there was struggle and progress; revolution there was none. An examination of the reforms which were attempted ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... been said, by Andrea Pisano. In the first Luca made Donato teaching grammar; in the second, Plato and Aristotle, standing for philosophy; in the third, a figure playing a lute, for music; in the fourth, a Ptolemy, for astrology; and in the fifth, Euclid, for geometry. These scenes, in perfection of finish, in grace, and in design, were far in advance of the two made, as it has been said, by Giotto, in one of which Apelles, standing for painting, is working with his brush, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... the researches of Copernicus, the orthodox scientific creed averred that the earth was stationary, and that the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies were real movements. Ptolemy had laid down this doctrine fourteen hundred years before. In his theory this huge error was associated with so much important truth, and the whole presented such a coherent scheme for the explanation of the heavenly movements, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... of Alexander and of the geographers, Mela, Strabo, and Ptolemy, was the land of promise, the home of the spices, the inexhaustible fountain of wealth. The old routes of commerce thither had been closed one by one to the Christians; the overland trade had fallen into the hands of the Arabs; and at the fall of Constantinople, 1453, the commerce of the Black ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... for the use of humanity 25,868 years after the map is done—that is, that period will furnish the first opportunity for the utilization of a truly laborious task. There is no glory in it. The difference between glory and hard work in astronomy is just the difference between Ptolemy and Hipparchus. The one made a great noise in the world and got up an atheistic solar system which put science back a thousand years, while the other stayed on his island and mapped stars to the best of his ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... Ptolemy and the Almagest,' said the hermit smiling, 'to understand the circuits of those wandering stars—Coeli enarrant ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beneath a pith helmet was stooping over the siftings from those baskets, intent upon the stream of sand through the wire screens. Patiently he discarded the unending pebbles, discovering at rare intervals some lost bead, some splinter of old sycamore wood, some fragment of pottery in which a Ptolemy had sipped his wine—or a kitchen wench ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... waters, as far as the eye can reach both in length and breadth. Its entire circuit, if one should measure it as one would measure an island, sailing along its shores, is 23,000 furlongs according to Eratosthenes, Hecataeus, and Ptolemy, and other accurate investigators of subjects of this kind, resembling, by the consent of all geographers, a Scythian bow, held at ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... western coasts, is somewhat more particular and authentic: it adds nothing, however, to our acquaintance with the interior. The Greeks, under the government of the Ptolemies, navigated the Red Sea, and carried on a trade with Egypt; and some settlements were made by them in that country. Ptolemy Euergetes conquered part of Abyssinia, and established a kingdom, of which Axum was the metropolis; and remains of Grecian architecture have since been found in that quarter. To the two districts we have mentioned, the knowledge which the ancients possessed of Africa ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... set with it. Astrology was brought into great prominence by the visit of the magi, the zodiacal constellation Virgo, the "woman with a child," ruling Palestine, in which country Bethlehem is situated. The great astronomer and astrologer, Ptolemy, judged the character of countries from the signs ruling them, as to this ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Some say that this was an assumed name, for he seems to have been snub-nosed ([Greek]), and that his father was Praxagoras, and his mother Philinna. He became the pupil of Philetas and Asclepiades, of whom he speaks (Idyl VII), and flourished about the time of Ptolemy Lagus. He gained much fame for his skill in bucolic poetry. According to some his original name was Moschus, and Theocritus was a name ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... about an hour and an half distant from us. To our right we saw marshy ground extending northwards, which the people informed me was full of salt; it is called, like all salt marshes, Szabegha (Arabic). At the end of thirteen hours we crossed a low and narrow Wady, perhaps the remains of the canal of Ptolemy; and at fourteen hours and a half, alighted in Wady Redjel (Arabic), where there were many Talh trees, and plenty of ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... deficiencies in conversation with Muhammadans of high rank and education, when we are called upon to talk upon subjects beyond the everyday occurrences of life. A Muhammadan gentleman of education is tolerably acquainted with astronomy, as it was taught by Ptolemy; with the logic and ethics of Aristotle and Plato; with the works of Hippocrates and Galen, through those of Avicenna, or, as they call him, Abu-Alisina;[5] and he is very capable of talking upon all subjects of philosophy, literature, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... June 15.—RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN back to-night, after long absence. Been up the Nile, calling on PTOLEMY and PHARAOH, and visiting scenes connected with the early life of Brother JOSEPH. Much enjoyed the trip; entered House to-night full of life and energy; suddenly pulled up; hair rose; flesh crept; blood chilled. Was it true? Could it be possible? Yes; no doubt about ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... knowing as much about it as its name. But while watching a sunset he sheds his belief; he sees the sun as a small and useful object, the servant of his needs and the witness of his ascending effort, sinking slowly behind a range of mountains, and then he holds the system of Ptolemy. He holds it without knowing it. In the same way a poet hears, reads, and believes a thousand undeniable truths which have not yet got into his blood, nor will do after reading Mr. Bourne's book; he writes, therefore, as if neither ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... denomination, as Bahar Sudan is the Arabic for the interior lake called the Sea of Sudan; but whether this sea of Sudan will ultimately prove to be situated[261] as I have described it, fifteen journies[262] east of Timbuctoo, or 450 English miles, or as Ptolemy has described it, or in the intermediate distance between the two extremes, must be left ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... west, emptying itself into the ocean, though many were of opinion that it lost itself in an inland marsh, or in the desert, while others supported the opinion of its identity with the Nile of the Egyptians. The researches of Ptolemy and the Arabian geographers on the Nile of the Negroes, and in later times the travels of Leo Africanus, who was a Moor of Grenada, demonstrated the absurdity of this opinion; and how extraordinary that, in the boasted perfection of human intellect, it should have been broached several centuries ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various |
