"Ptolemy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Morbihan, and if the megalithic monuments of Carnac were then there, would they not have arrested the attention of the great captain? This silence is the more inexplicable as one of the earliest geographers mentions the stone of Iapygia; Ptolemy speaks of a similar stone on the shores of the ocean; Strabo, of a group of dolmens near Cape Cuneus; Quintus Curtius, of an important alignment in Bactriana; Pliny, who mentions a leaning pillar in Asia Minor, says nothing of the megalithic monuments of Gaul, which ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... surviving daughter of the great King Ptolemy of Egypt, Cleopatra was seventeen years old when her ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... of b, b of c, and c of d, a would be a mark of d, which last conclusion was not thought of by those who laid down the premises. A system of propositions as complicated as geometry might be deduced from assumptions which are false; as was done by Ptolemy, Descartes, and others, in their attempts to explain synthetically the phenomena of the solar system on the supposition that the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies were the real motions, or were produced in some way more or less different from the true one. Sometimes the same thing is knowingly ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... astronomer of eminence after Hipparchus was PTOLEMY (130 A.D.), who resided at Alexandria. He was skilled as a mathematician and geographer, and also excelled as a musician. His chief discovery was an irregularity of the lunar motion, called the 'evection.' He ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... Ekkjals-bakki is clearly Oykel's Bank, the high bank or [Greek: ochthe hypsele] of Ptolemy. "Ochill" is the same word. As for Bakke, see Coldbackie ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... 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 ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... only in those that are intelligent. In the popular sense notwithstanding, speaking in accordance with appearances, we must say that the soul depends in some way upon the body and upon the impressions of the senses: much as we speak with Ptolemy and Tycho in everyday converse, and think with Copernicus, when it is a question of the rising and the ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... the Old Testament was performed at the request, and under the patronage, of Ptolemy Philadelphus, it were not to be wondered if Theocritus, who was entertained at that prince's court, had borrowed some part of his pastoral imagery from the poetical passages of those books. I think it can hardly be doubted that the Sicilian poet ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... we have endeavoured to sketch the lives and the work of the great philosophers, by whose labours the science of astronomy has been created. We shall commence with Ptolemy, who, after the foundations of the science had been laid by Hipparchus, gave to astronomy the form in which it was taught throughout the Middle Ages. We shall next see the mighty revolution in our conceptions ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... four centuries, since the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, had priestesses of Ceres walked and called aloud their admonitions through this city; though of late years men had come to know that what the sacred basket held was a live snake, supposed to be the author of ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... Herodotus tells us, used to pursue with stones and curses the embalmers as soon as they had performed their unpleasant office; and though Herophilus and Erasistratus are said to have dissected many subjects under the protection of Ptolemy Soter in Alexandria itself: yet the public feeling of the Greeks as well as of the Romans continued the same as that of the ancient Egyptians; and Galen was fain—as Vesalius proved—to supplement his ignorance of the human frame by describing that of an ape. Dissection was equally forbidden ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... now so obligingly to our perspectives that we no longer seem to travel through them, but to carry them with us, shooting them out or weaving them about us according to some native fatality, which is left unexplained. We seem to have reverted in some sense from Copernicus to Ptolemy: except that the centre is now occupied, not by the solid earth, but by any geometrical point chosen for the origin of calculation. Time, too, is not measured by the sun or stars, but by any "clock"—that is, by any recurrent rhythm taken as a standard of comparison. It would seem that ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... Egyptian and Greek characters. This tablet, called the Rosetta Stone, was sent to France and submitted to the orientalists for interpretation. The inscription was found to be a decree of the Egyptian priests in honor of Ptolemy Epiphanes (196 B.C.), which was ordered to be engraved on stone in sacred (hieroglyphic), common (demotic), and in Greek characters. Through this interpretation, Champollion (1790-1832), after much study, discovered and established the alphabetic ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... cynicism and credulity; but I should have fancied that you and Sir Philip would have been congenial spirits, when I found, among his favourite books, Van Helmont and Paracelsus. Perhaps you, too, study Swedenborg, or, worse still, Ptolemy and Lilly?" ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... remain European in their outlook. Land's End has a different attitude; it looks westward, and the migratory instinct of European races has ever taken them towards the West. It is the Bolerion of Ptolemy, the Bolerium of Roman writers, the Penwith of the Celts. Adding a Saxon affix, Simeon of Durham named it Penwithsteort, the "tail of Penwith." There is some doubt about the true meaning of Penwith; Mr. Baring-Gould gives it as "headland of blood," which it might well be as the last battle-ground ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... to meet and hold communion." The School of Alexandria became, after the decay of Greek culture, the centre of learning for the world, and when the Empire of Alexander the Great was subdivided, the Egyptian share fell to the first Ptolemy, who, under the direction of Aristotle, founded the Alexandrian Library, containing at first fifty thousand, and finally seven hundred thousand volumes. Every student who came to the University of Alexandria, and possessed a book of which there was ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... thousand volumes or rolls. There also was the museum or university, in which many learned men were at work. The best known of these men was Euclid, who perfected the mathematics which we call geometry, and Ptolemy, whose ideas about geography and the shape and size of the globe Columbus carefully studied before he set out on his great voyage. Alexandria was also a center of trade and commerce. From Alexandria, because its ships were the first foreign ships to be admitted to a Roman port, the ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... Ptolemy, the king (of Egypt), assembled seventy-two elders of Israel and lodged them in seventy-two separate chambers, but did not tell them why he did so. Then he visited each one in turn and said, "Write out for me the law of Moses your Rabbi." ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... opinion, as expressed in his Antiquities, the appellation Slavi, Slaveni, or Slovenians, is derived from one of their seats, that is, the country on the Upper Niemen, where the Stloveni or Sueveni of Ptolemy lived. It is said to be called by the Finns Sallo (like every woodland); by the Lithuanians, Sallawa, Slawa; in old Prussian, Salava; by the neighbouring Germans, Schalauen; in Latin, Scalavia. But it seems a more natural conclusion, that vice versa the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... sure 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 bestowed 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, Well worth a miracle to keep you ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... 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 no ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... them they could clasp Alexander's generals; then Pauline Hayes gave their names—Cassander, Lysimachus, Antiognus, Seleucus and Ptolemy. Marjorie had that to tell Miss Prudence. Miss Prudence lived through her own school days that winter with Marjorie; the girl's enthusiasm reminded her of her own. Master McCosh, who never avoided personalities, observed as ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... captain and 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 ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... than conjecture upon this subject, and the continent called Lemuria is as mythical as the Ethiopia of Ptolemy and the Atlantis of Plato. It is a convenient theory, as it places the cradle of the race near the five great rivers, the Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, Ganges, and the Nile. The supposed home also lies in a zone in which the animals most resembling ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... object of his expedition, that they might know where to rendezvous in case of separation. Setting sail from Goa on the 18th of February 1513, the armament arrived safe at Aden. This city, called Modocan by Ptolemy, is situated on the coast of Yemen or Arabia Felix, in lat. 12 deg. 45' N. near the mouth of the Red Sea, and looks beautiful and strong from the sea, being rich and populous owing to the resort of many nations for trade. But Immediately ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Winds," see Charton, Voyageurs, tome ii, p. 11; also Ruge, as above, pp. 324, 325; also for a curious 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 folio, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Darius, king of the Persians, who made some progress with the work, but abandoned it when he learned that, if the isthmus was dug through, all Egypt would be inundated, as the level of the Red Sea is higher than that of the soil of Egypt. At last Ptolemy II. (Philadelphus) completed the undertaking; having adapted an ingenious contrivance to the ingress of the canal, which was opened when a vessel was about to enter, and afterwards closed. Experience ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... strong and fierce Hercules to enterprise in his life so many great incomparable labours and perils? Certainly nought else but that for his great merit immortality might be given him of all folk.... Why moved and stirred Phalerius the King Ptolemy oft and diligently to read books? Forsooth for no other cause but that those things are found written in books that the friends dare not show to the prince[46]." This is of course far from being the full-blown ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... among a crowd of Lawyers, Physicians, Scholars, Poets, Critics, Booksellers, &c. exercising his old faculty; for which, gentlemen, he is as particularly famed in these parts, as Herostratus for firing the famous Temple, or Barthol Swarts, for the invention of Gunpowder. He is head journey-man to Ptolemy, who keeps a Bookseller's shop here, and rivals even Jacob Tonson in reputation among ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... 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 ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... the King made her joint heir to the throne with her brother Ptolemy, several years her junior. And according to the custom not unusual among royalty at that time, it was provided that Ptolemy should ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... 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, For I have made thee so, and thou art ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the "Rata" of Ptolemy, was near the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris, on the Arabian side of the river. It was one of the oldest cities ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... 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 eclipse ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... inspired with hope of obtaining some return for their losses. Cleopatra also, on account of the detachment she had sent to Dolabella, was granted the right to have her son called King of Egypt. This son, whom she named Ptolemy, she also pretended was sprung from Caesar, and she was therefore wont to ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... now forming the shires of Aberdeen and Banff was originally peopled by northern Picts, whom Ptolemy called Taixall, the territory being named Taixalon. Their town of Devana, once supposed to be the modern Aberdeen, has been identified by Prof. John Stuart with a site in the parish of Peterculter, where there are remains of an ancient camp at Normandykes, and by Dr W. F. Skene with ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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
... record all the Syrian wars of the 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 splendour ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... Hipparchus of Rhodes was the first to note the astronomical positions with any precision, one hundred and thirty years before our era. He classified the stars in order of magnitude, according to their apparent brightness; and his catalogue, preserved in the Almagest of Ptolemy, contains 1,122 stars ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... Labarah, mentioned by Arab authors, which had been abandoned for centuries. In the excavations in the mountain Cailliaud found the lamps, crowbars, ropes, and tools used in working these mines by men in the employ of Ptolemy. Near the quarries the traveller discovered the ruins of a little town, which was probably inhabited by the ancient miners. To prove the reality of his valuable discovery he took back ten pounds' weight ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... have seemed natural for Palestine to have belonged to Syria, but the Greek King of Egypt, whose name was Ptolemy Lagos, contrived to secure it. He entered Jerusalem on the Sabbath-day, when the Jews thought it wrong to fight, and so he gained the city without a blow; but this was no great misfortune to them, for the first Ptolemies were milder masters than the Seleucidae, and did not oppress their subjects. ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... his own territory, and even to establish his rule in Palestine, Phoenicia, and Coele-Syria, but to avoid extensive schemes of conquest. Cyrenaica, on the west of Egypt, and the intermediate Lybian tribes, he subdued. Ptolemy was an absolute monarch, but he retained prominent features in the old Egyptian administrative system, gave offices to Egyptians, and protected their religion. The most important civil stations and all military offices were reserved for Graeco-Macedonians: Alexandria was a Greek city. From the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Don Quixote, "for of the three hundred and sixty degrees that this terraqueous globe contains, as computed by Ptolemy, the greatest cosmographer known, we shall have traveled one-half when we come to the line I ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... love run smoothly, AEschines! But should'st thou really mean a voyage out, The freeman's best paymaster's Ptolemy. ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... Heaven and the World, which is in the second of the Books on Natural History. In fact, he excuses himself for this in the twelfth book of the Metaphysics, where he clearly proves himself to have followed also another opinion where he was obliged to speak of Astrology. Ptolemy, then, perceiving that the eighth sphere is moved by many movements, seeing its circle to depart from the right circle, which turns from East to West, constrained by the principles of Philosophy, which of necessity desires a Primum Mobile, a most simple one, supposed another Heaven to be outside ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... These three verses were elegantly applied by Sostrates in mitigating the intemperate language which Antigonus would fain have addressed to Ptolemy Philadelphus. See Sextus Emp. adv. ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... William Bredon, parson or vicar of Thornton in Buckinghamshire, was living, a profound divine, but absolutely the most polite person for nativities in that age, strictly adhering to Ptolemy, which he well understood; he had a hand in composing Sir Christopher Heydon's Defence of Judicial Astrology, being that time his chaplain; he was so given over to tobacco and drink, that when he had no tobacco, he would cut the ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... "tera que soy descuberta per pertonnes," on an Old Portuguese map of 1520, declares it to be a country discovered by the Bretons. It is undoubtedly the oldest French name on any part of North America. On Gastaldo's map in Mattiolo's Italian translation of Ptolemy, 1548, the name of Breton is applied both to Nova Scotia and to the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... question suggests itself. How did Ptolemy hear of the two lakes which he considered were the sources of the Nile? It is obvious he could not have done so by the channel of the Nile, for the Anthropophagi barred all communication in that direction. Here, however, the route from Zanzibar to the Tanganyika Lake and the Victoria ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Mediterranean. The levels given by a French engineer, who visited Egypt in 1801, during the French invasion, indicated a difference between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean of something like thirty-two feet. It was suggested that if the old canal of Ptolemy were opened again, a current might be established between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, which would not impede steam navigation, and would at the same time scour the canal and enable a perfect channel to be maintained. However, after investigation, he and the other engineers found that, instead ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... selection—the discovery of this vera causa sets him to my mind in a different region altogether from all his predecessors—and I should no more call his doctrine a modification of Lamarck's than I should call the Newtonian theory of the celestial motions a modification of the Ptolemaic system. Ptolemy imagined a mode of explaining those motions. Newton proved their necessity from the laws and a force demonstrably in operation. If he is only right Darwin will, I think, take his place with such men as Harvey, and even if he is wrong his sobriety ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... 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
... be observed, that D'Anville, following Ptolemy and other writers whom he considers as the best informed on the internal geography of Africa, is satisfied that there are two considerable rivers, the Niger and the Gir; both of which are said to terminate in the same quarter of Africa, and precisely in the ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... rescued Greece from the sway of Ptolemy and Cassander, B.C. 307. He passed the following winter at Athens, where divine honours were paid to him under the title of "the Preserver" ([Greek: o(Sote/r]). He was "the shame of Greece in peace," by reason of his profligacy—"the citadel was so polluted ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Lismore may be reached by car or train. It was the home of learning of old, and to-day, not only its beautiful position but historic Castle command attention. It is the birthplace of Boyle, the philosopher. Ptolemy is asserted very confidently by some authorities to have mentioned this place and its river. It is certain, however, that the place was long in existence in 631, when St. Carthage, of Rahan, fled thither. Nothing could be prettier than ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... 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 uplifted in ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... 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 of your Highnesses caused it to be tried, against ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... From which humanity is cut is 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 ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the whole wide world. Where are the Greek merchants that came through the pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with gold and Tyrian purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries, Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second to none, our farfamed horses even today, the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties for the right to fish in our waters. What ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... who have wrought strongly upon opinion or practice in science, Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, Euclid, Archimedes, Roger Bacon, Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Ramus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Napier, Descartes, Leibnitz, Newton, Locke. I take none but names known out of their {6} fields of work; and all were learned as well as sagacious. I have chosen my instances: ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... and greatest difficulty is that it is impossible both to be in a centre and to be far from it. If the earth move in a circle it cannot remain in the centre of the zodiac; but Aristotle, Ptolemy and others have proved that it is in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... mines of ancient Egypt. They were considered amongst the rarest and the most costly of gems, and it was the custom, when conferring lavish honour, to engrave or model emeralds for presentation purposes. Thus we find Pliny describes Ptolemy giving Lucullus, on his landing at Alexandria, an emerald on which was engraved his portrait. Pliny also relates how the short-sighted Nero watched the fights of gladiators through an eye-glass made of an emerald, and in ancient times, in Rome, Greece, and Egypt, eye-glasses ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... these, astronomy, was a favorite. He made it a particular point to search out and encourage the translation of such books as had not previously been translated from Greek into Arabic. While he provided a translation of Ptolemy he also had translations made of Aristotle ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... triumphal arches moldered to dust; nor can the king or pope be found, upon whom the privilege of a lasting name can be conferred more easily than by books. A book made renders succession to the author; for as long as the book exists, the author, remaining immortal, can not perish; as Ptolemy witnesseth; in the prolog of his Almagest,[4] he (he says) is not dead, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... agates, sapphires, and turquoise matrix. But its beauty was chiefly suggestive. There were gorgeous sunsets—poetry there, but more poetry still in the wonderful mirages. Why, here, hung above the earth, were scenes from every age: Cleopatra's galleys, Alexander's legions, the pomp of the Mamelukes, Ptolemy and Pompey, Napoleon and Gordon—their times and deeds were all pictured here. Perhaps the spirit world has its "movies," and only here in the desert mirage is the "screen" of stuff that can ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... 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 number of large dogs which the island contained; a circumstance which some ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... 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, that the Ptolemaic theory was not seriously questioned until ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the cosmography of the miniature world will be shown to you in the same manner as Ptolemy in his cosmography. And so I will divide it afterwards into limbs as he divided the world into provinces; then I will explain the function of the parts in every direction, and put before your eyes a description of ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... time of Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, when he subverted 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
... pole, it would not be possible to detect more than from six to seven thousand stars with the naked eye. From a single viewpoint, even with the keenest vision, only two or three thousand can be seen. So many of these are at the limit of visibility that Ptolemy's "Almagest," a catalogue of all the stars whose places were measured with the simple instruments of the Greek ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... relations between the statements of the geographer of Saint-Die, Hylacomilus (Martin Waldseemuller), the first who gave the name of America to the New Continent, and those of Amerigo Vespucci, Rene, King of Jerusalem and Duke of Lorraine, as also those contained in the celebrated editions of Ptolemy of 1513 and 1522. See my 'Examen Critique de la Gegraphie du Nouveau Continent, et des Progres de l'Astronomie Nautique aux 15e et 16e ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... countries with modern accuracy from the modern map, and then scatters ancient names over them! Such maps are worse than useless. In dealing with the discovery of America one must steadily keep before one's mind the quaint notions of ancient geographers, especially Ptolemy and Mela, as portrayed upon such maps as are reproduced in the present volume. It was just these distorted and hazy notions that swayed the minds and guided the movements of the great discoverers, and went on ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... 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 Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the 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 ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... lively, 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 ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... came under the dominion of this great conqueror, who favored the Jews, and on his death, 323 B.C., it fell to the possession of Laomedon, one of his generals; while Egypt was assigned to Ptolemy Soter, son of Lagus. Between these princes a war soon broke out, and Laomedon was defeated by Nicanor, one of Ptolemy's generals; and Palestine refusing to submit to the king of Egypt, Ptolemy invaded Judaea, besieged Jerusalem, and took it by ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... Before the decipherment of the 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 dynasties are difficult to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... hereabouts. [Footnote: It is represented with two towers in Peutinger's Tables. But these, says an editor, should have been given to the neighbouring Scilatio, for Caulon was in ruins at the time of Pliny, and is not even mentioned by Ptolemy. Servius makes another mistake; he confuses the Calabrian Caulon with a locality of the same name near Capua.] It contains some ten thousand inhabitants, amiable, intelligent and distinguished by a philoxenia ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... which were names of the Ptolemies: or from their success, as Eudaemon (the Fortunate), a name given to the second king of the race of Battus. Some princes have even had names given them in jest, as Antigonus was called Doson (the Promiser), and Ptolemy ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... spread over those countries. Itzenplitz, the name of a family once of great consequence in the Mark of Brandenburg is ultra-Wendish. It will, therefore, excite no wonder that we find, even in Tacitus, Veneti along their coasts and Ptolemy, who wrote about a century and a half later than Strabo or Livy, seems to have improved the terminology of the ancients in the interval; for, speaking of the Sarmatian tribes, he calls these Veneti ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... been written about the chronology of Alexandrian literature and the famous Library, founded by Ptolemy Soter, but the dates of the chief writers are still matters of conjecture. The birth of Apollonius Rhodius is placed by scholars at various times between 296 and 260 B.C., while the year of his death is equally uncertain. In fact, we have very little ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... influence on the Prince's education. 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 poisoning of Philip by Olympias and her paramour, which generally figures, the Romance goes ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... TO PTOLEMY.—It will be observed that the Greek geographer regarded the Indian Ocean as a landlocked body of water, while he appears to have some knowledge of the so ces of the Nile. The general tendency of the map is to extend Asia very much to the east, which led to the ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... dupes! who, smit with sacred lore, Mosaic dreams in Genesis explore, Doat with Copernicus, or darkling stray With Newton, Ptolemy, or Tycho Brahe! To you I sing not, for I sing of truth, Primeval systems, and creation's youth; Such as of old, with magic wisdom fraught, Inspired LUCRETIUS ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... in Italy, to the south of the Macra and the Rubicon, owned the supremacy of Rome. She had now become one of the first powers in the ancient world. The defeat of Pyrrhus attracted the attention of the nations of the East; and in B.C. 273, Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, sent an embassy to Rome, and concluded a treaty ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... after his return from Sicily, is defeated, and compelled to quit Italy. The censors hold a lustrum, and find the number of the citizens to be two hundred and seventy-one thousand two hundred and twenty-four. [Y. R. 479. B. c. 273.] A treaty of alliance formed with Ptolemy, king of Egypt. Sextilia, a vestal, found guilty of incest, and buried alive. Two colonies sent forth, to Posidonium and Cossa. [Y. R. 480. B. C. 272.] A Carthaginian fleet sails, in aid of the Tarentines, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... received their reward. With his successors the worship became more official. Seleucus, Ptolemaeus, Antigonus, Demetrius, all in different degrees and different styles are deified by the acclamations of adoring subjects. Ptolemy Philadelphus seems to have been the first to claim definite divine honours during his own life. On the death of his wife in 271 he proclaimed her deity and his own as well in the worship of the Theoi Adelphoi, the 'Gods Brethren'. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... 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 ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... years ago—for what is time?—I was the authorised magician at the Court of Ptolemy Patriarchus. I had a rival—the noted witch Theodolite. In an evil hour she won me by a show of false affection, and, taking advantage of my passion, mummified me alive. To this I owe my remarkable state of preservation ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... intention, if possible, of discovering Cathay, taking a course through other climates than those the Portuguese use in reaching it by the way of Calicut, but going towards the northwest and north, entirely believing that, although Ptolemy, Aristotle and other cosmographers affirm that no land is to be found towards such climates, he would find it there nevertheless. And so God has vouchsafed him as he distinctly describes in a letter of his to this S. M.; OF WHICH, IN THIS, THERE IS A COPY. And for want of provisions, ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... 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 ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... 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
... modern archaeologists until it was 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
... down to meals without saying grace; and Josephus says that when the seventy-two elders were invited by Ptolemy Philadelphus to sup at the palace, Nicanor requested Eleazer to say grace for his countrymen, instead of those Egyptians to whom that duty was committed ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 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 ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... are the two common readings; as the situation of neither the Isle of Naxos nor that of Chios, would suit the course of the ship, as stated in the text. He thinks that the Isle of Ceos, or Cea, is meant, which Ptolemy calls Kia, and which he thinks ought here ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... animals dead, he goes to a distance from it, and by his cries and groans indicates that he has found the animal dead. This superstition is so deeply rooted in the minds of the Egyptians, and the respect they bear these animals is so profound, that at the time when their king, Ptolemy, was not yet declared the friend of the Roman people—when they were paying all possible court to travellers from Italy, and their fears made them avoid every ground of accusation and every pretext for making war upon them—yet ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... the numerous legends with regard to the existence of a British city on the site now occupied by Chester, the earliest authentic information relating to its history is furnished by the works of Ptolemy and Antoninus. As the Roman station of Deva it was probably founded about A.D. 48 by Ostorius Scapula, and from its advantageous position, both as the key to communication with Ireland and as a bulwark against the hostile tribes of the north, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... onwards, Jews were industrious translators of all the important masterpieces of scientific and philosophical literature. Their zeal included the works of the Greek astronomers and mathematicians, Ptolemy, Euclid, Archimedes, and many others. Alfonso X commissioned several Jews to co-operate with the royal secretaries in making new renderings of older Arabic works on astronomy. Long before this, in 959, the monk Nicholas joined the Jew Chasdai in translating Dioscorides. Most of the Jewish ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... the sun. Then it was that he burst forth in his memorable rhapsody:—"What I prophesied twenty-two years ago, as soon as I discovered the five solids among the heavenly orbits,—what I firmly believed long before I had seen Ptolemy's harmonics,—what I had promised my friends in the title of this book, which I named before I was sure of my discovery,—what sixteen years ago I urged as a thing to be sought,—that for which I joined Tycho Brahe, for which I settled in Prague, for which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... 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
... at work forging the Annals of Tacitus; for we find him earnestly plying for books that were indispensable for any one writing the history of the early Roman Emperors. In a letter to Niccoli dated Rome, the 6th of November, 1423, he begs his friend to do all he can to get him some map of Ptolemy's Geography; to bear it in mind in case one should happen to fall in his way; also not to forget Suetonius and the other historians, and, above all, Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Characters: "Vellem aliquam Chartam Ptolemaei Geographiae, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... 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 more it looks like truth, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 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
... Seventy years 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
... existence any native work that can be regarded as a history of Egypt. The only known attempt in ancient times to write a history of Egypt was that made by Manetho, a skilled scribe and learned man, who, in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (289-246 B.C.), undertook to write a history of the country, which was to be placed in the Great Library at Alexandria. The only portion of this History that has come down to us is the List of Kings, which formed a section of it; this List, in a form more or less accurate, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... ecclesiastical, educational, commercial, military and railroad enterprises of the kingdom. It is the residence of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and it claims a high antiquity, having been in existence since the time of Ptolemy. In the ninth century it was taken by the Danes, who held sway for over two hundred years. In 1169 it was taken back by the English, and seven years later, its history began to be identified with that ...
— Shepp's Photographs of the World • James W. Shepp
... [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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 decreasing in size; the ground story was hexagonal, the sides alternately concave ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... 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] As to the origin of the name Savar, General Cunningham says that it must be sought ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... 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, ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... 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
... letters, written some months ago, I received by the hand of an English merchant; others came by the care of the Lord Bishop of Dunkeld, together with the Indian balsam. The last were from Scoto, who sent at the same time your most scholarly comments on that difficult work of Ptolemy.[166] To all that you have written to me I have replied fully in three or four letters of my own, but I know not whether, out of all I have written, any letter of mine has reached you. But now I have directed that a servant of mine, who ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... all that I have named, Ptolemy, as the latest, possessed the greatest extent of knowledge. Thus, towards the North, his knowledge carries him beyond the Caspian, and he is aware of its being shut in all round like a lake,—a fact which was unknown in the days of Strabo and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... 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, not a separate building, ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... MUSEUM OF ALEXANDRIA.—The great Libraries, Observatories, Botanical Gardens, Menageries, Dissecting Houses.—Its Effect on the rapid Development of exact Knowledge.—Influence of Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Apollonius, Ptolemy, Hipparchus, on Geometry, Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... motion; but in imagination only. His daring surmise was, however, confirmed in 1718, when Halley announced[3] that Sirius, Aldebaran, Betelgeux, and Arcturus had unmistakably shifted their quarters in the sky since Ptolemy assigned their places in his catalogue. A similar conclusion was reached by J. Cassini in 1738, from a comparison of his own observations with those made at Cayenne by Richer in 1672; and Tobias Mayer drew up in 1756 a list showing the direction and amount of about fifty-seven ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... sense had been among the attributes of their omniscience. What they did do was something very different. It was as if, when the new astronomy began to be taught, the professors of that science in all the universities of Europe had met together and decided that Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles were eternal verities; that the theory of the rotation of the earth was and must be a damnable heresy; and had invited the civil authorities to help them in putting down by force all doctrines but their own. This, or something very like it, was the position taken up ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... when the doctrine of the immortality of the soul first came out of the school of Plato; when it first diffused itself among the Greeks, it caused the greatest ravages; it determined a multitude of men, who were discontented with their condition, to terminate their existence: Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, seeing the effect this doctrine, which at the present day is looked upon as so salutary, produced on the brains of his subjects, prohibited the teaching of it under the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... was not destined to carry out his own magnificent project. That was left for the general whom he most esteemed, and to whose personal prowess he had once owed his life; a man than whom history knows few greater, Ptolemy, the son of Lagus. He was an adventurer, the son of an adventurer, his mother a cast-off concubine of Philip of Macedon. There were those who said that he was in reality a son of Philip himself. However, he rose at court, became a private friend of young Alexander, and at last his Somatophylax, ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... 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. During the first century ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... Ptolemy Philopator of Egypt is said to have built a gigantic ship with no less than forty tiers of oars, one above the other! She was managed by 4000 men, besides whom there were 2850 combatants; she had four rudders and a double prow. Her stern was decorated with splendid paintings of ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... Apuleius, Albricus, 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 Music, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... of the plague. The migration of the Phocian colony to Asia Minor is succinctly told in the [Greek: phoche], or seal, which followed the early Mayflower stamped upon one of the earliest of the Grecian coins. The late coins of the Grecian series, with the portraits of Alexander, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and others, have lent to the historian a fresh and life-like picture of those stern days, and have been silent but incontrovertible witnesses of the truth of the records which have come down to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "History of Frederick the Great," book ii. chap. vii. that this saying of Alphonso about Ptolemy's astronomy, "that it seemed a crank machine; that it was pity the Creator had not taken advice," is still remembered by mankind,—this and no other of his ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... to the canonical books, and rejecting all fanciful traditions, it is known that about 286 or 285 B.C., Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, probably at the instance of his librarian, Demetrius Phalereus, caused seventy-two Jews, equally learned in Hebrew and in Greek, to be brought to Alexandria, to prepare a Greek version of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... which it remains for me to treat in this work, is that of the successors of Alexander, and comprehends the space of two hundred and ninety-three years; from the death of that monarch, and the commencement of the reign of Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, in Egypt, to the death of Cleopatra, when that kingdom became a Roman ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... nation, but 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 of Alexander, and fell into the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... 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
... 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, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... books that the knowledge of the ancient world has been preserved. The greatest works in botany, medicine, geography, astronomy were written not in Latin but in Greek, even in the most flourishing times of the Roman power. It is sufficient to mention such names as Dioscorides, Galen, Strabo, Ptolemy. The greatest works in history, biography, travel, antiquities, ethics, philosophy were also written in Greek. Such names as Polybius, Plutarch, Josephus, Pausanias, Dionysius, Epictetus, Lucian will give the reader means of proof. Fronto could not prevail with a Roman emperor, ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... familiar with Correo, her sister's husband, 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 unknown to ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... advances in astronomy; for notwithstanding that the art of observation was still in its infancy, we are indebted to the labours and speculations of ancient Greek philosophers for raising astronomy to the dignity of a science. The complicated but ingenious hypotheses of the Greek Ptolemy prepared the way for the discovery of the elliptic form of the planetary orbits and other astronomical laws by the German Kepler, which again conducted our English Newton to the discovery of the law of gravitation. I am not, however, desirous of giving this meeting a lecture on ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... is Alphonso King of Castille, Alphonso the Wise, whose saying about Ptolemy's Astronomy, "That it seemed a crank machine; that it was pity the Creator had not taken advice!" is still remembered by mankind;—this and no other of his many sayings and doings. He was wise enough to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... of Assur-bani-pal's death is not furnished by any Assyrian monument, but is inferred from the Canon of Ptolemy, where Saosduchin or Shamash-shumukin and Chinaladan or Assur-bani-pal each reigns forty-two years, from 668 or 667 to 626 or 625 B.C. The order of succession of the last Assyrian kings was for a long time doubtful, and Sin-shar- ishkun was placed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... seek the advice herein of such as make profession in cosmography, Ptolemy, the father of geography, and his eldest children, will answer by their maps with a negative, concluding most of the sea within the land, and making an end of the world northward, near the 63rd degree. The same opinion, when learning chiefly flourished, was received in the ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... Rosetta Stone. This valuable relic, a heavy block of black basalt, is now in the British Museum. It holds an inscription, written in hieroglyphic, in demotic, and in Greek characters. Champollion, a French scholar, by comparing the characters composing the words Ptolemy, Alexander, and other names in the parallel inscriptions, discovered the value of several of the symbols; and thus were opened the vast ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... first shelves of the cases 40, 41, from Etruria; upon the third shelf are fragments of large bronzes, including the staff of AEsculapius with the serpent; and the bronze groups distributed upon the fourth shelf include three figures of Hercules; and two figures supposed to be a Ptolemy and his queen arrayed as Fortune. The cases 42-45 are filled with bronze weapons, including spear-heads from the sepulchres of Etruria; arrow-heads and bronze swords of the Roman time; standards with the famous Roman eagles; helmets, including a famous one ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... Some writers say that Ptolemy Philadelphus, the king of Egypt of that time, having heard the Jews speak of their Book, and wishing to have a copy of it to place in his great library, sent all the way to Jerusalem for seventy learned scribes who should translate the ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... 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 to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... reason of his natural complexion. But the majority of men are led by the passions, which the wise alone resist. Consequently, in the majority of cases predictions about human acts, gathered from the observation of heavenly bodies, are fulfilled. Nevertheless, as Ptolemy says (Centiloquium v), "the wise man governs the stars"; which is a though to say that by resisting his passions, he opposes his will, which is free and nowise subject to the movement of the heavens, to such like effects of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... 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; ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... the most tangled woods of genealogy and political adjustment, is relieved from tedium by the procession of the half-forgotten host of German worthies,—St. Adalbert and his mission; old Barbarossa; Leopold's mystery; Conrad and St. Elizabeth; Ptolemy Alphonso; Otto with the arrow; Margaret with the mouth; Sigismund supra grammaticam; Augustus the physically strong; Albert Achilles and Albert Alcibiades; Anne of Cleves; Mr. John Kepler,—who move on the pages, more ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... complimented 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is dead. Would you write and tell me what instruments and the like he has left, and also where our Stabius' prints and wood-blocks are to be found? Greet Herr Pirkheimer for me. I hope to make him a map of England, which is a great country, and was unknown to Ptolemy. He would like to see it. All those who have written about England have seen no more than a small part of it. You cannot write to me any longer through Hans Pomer. Pray send me the woodcut which represents Stabius as S. Koloman.[70]I have ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... that the Euritic statues of old Egypt such as that of Khufu (Cheops) in the Bulak Museum were drilled by means of diamonds. AthenFus tells us (lib. v.) that the Indians brought pearls and diamonds to the procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus; and this suggests cutting, as nothing can be less ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... eastern shore 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 cliffs and bold ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... of learning, mentioned in this poem, affords an opportunity of mentioning the chief periods of literary history, of which this writer reckons five: that of Alexander, of Ptolemy Philadelphus, of Augustus, of Leo the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... ancient time when wassail was a common word. When I was a boy, among other out-of-the-way pursuits, I took an interest in astrology. The principal work on astrology, from which all the others have been more or less derived, is Ptolemy's 'Tetrabiblos,' and there, pointing out the mysterious influence of one thing upon another, it mentions that the virtues of the magnet may be destroyed by rubbing it with garlic. This curious statement has been thrown against Ptolemy and held to invalidate his theories, because upon ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... that Antiochus, who was called Epiphanes, had a quarrel with the sixth Ptolemy about his right to the whole country of Syria, a great sedition fell among the men of power in Judea, and they had a contention about obtaining the government; while each of those that were of dignity could not endure to be subject ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... Lualaba East, came from Lualaba West in about twelve days: these two Lualabas may form the loop depicted by Ptolemy, and upper and lower Tanganyika be a third arm ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... mentioned that so late as the reign of Ptolemy Epiphanes, pretenders of native blood, one of whom was named Harmachis, are known to have advanced their claims to the throne of Egypt. Moreover, there was a book of prophecy current among the priesthood which ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... although occasionally the dead have been disposed of by sinking in springs or water-courses, by throwing into the sea, or by setting afloat in canoes. Among the nations of antiquity the practice was not uncommon, for we are informed that the Ichthyophagi, or fish-eaters, mentioned by Ptolemy, living in a region bordering on the Persian Gulf, invariably committed their dead to the sea, thus repaying the obligations they had incurred to its inhabitants. The Lotophagians did the same, and the Hyperboreans, with a commendable degree of forethought ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... 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 ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... by the documents of the archives of Simancas. Hist. del Nuevo Mundo volume 1 page 17. Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura.) The most ancient monument we possess of the geography of the New Continent,* is the map of the world by John Ruysch, annexed to a Roman edition of Ptolemy in 1508. (* See the learned researches of M. Walckenaer, in the Bibliographie Universelle volume 6 page 209 article Buckinck. On the maps added to Ptolemy in 1506 we find no trace of the discoveries of Columbus.) We there find Yucatan and Honduras (the most ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt |
