Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus)

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Ptolemy From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Claudius Ptolemaeus (Greek: Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος; after 83 – 161 CE), known in English as Ptolemy, was an ancient mathematician, geographer, astronomer, and astrologer. He lived in Roman Egypt, and was probably born there in a town in the Thebaid called Ptolemais Hermiou; he died in Alexandria in 161 CE.

Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises, three of which would be of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise is now known as the Almagest (in Greek, Η Μεγάλη Σύνταξις, "The Great Treatise", originally Μαθηματικἠ Σύνταξις, "Mathematical Treatise"). The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise known as the Tetrabiblos ("Four books") in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day.

Beyond his being considered a member of Alexandria's Greek society, few details of Ptolemy's life are known. He wrote in Ancient Greek; some scholars have concluded that Ptolemy was a Greek, and others, a Hellenized Egyptian. He was often known in later Arabic sources as "the Upper Egyptian", suggesting that he may have had origins in southern Egypt. Ptolemy is also known to have used Babylonian astronomical data.

Ptolemy's treatise on astrology, the Tetrabiblos, was the most popular astrological work of antiquity and also enjoyed great influence in the Islamic world and the medieval Latin West. The Tetrabiblos is an extensive and continually reprinted treatise on the ancient principles of horoscopic astrology in four books (Greek tetra means "four", biblos is "book"). That it did not quite attain the unrivalled status of the Almagest was perhaps because it did not cover some popular areas of the subject, particularly electional astrology (interpreting astrological charts for a particular moment to determine the outcome of a course of action to be initiated at that time), and medical astrolog

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