"Ptolemy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is displayed in the discussions; but to see a 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
... nevertheless to 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 ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the other. They hold that the sun 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. They believe that the true oracle of Jesus Christ is by the signs in the sun, ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... 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
... music whose works, with those of six others, were collected and published with a commentary and explanatory notes (Antiquae Musicae Auctores Septem, Amstel., 1652), by Mark Meibomius (1630-1711). He is said to have written before Euclid and Ptolemy; and Cassiodorus arranges his Introduction to Music between those of Nicomachus and Gaudentius. The work consists solely of a list of symbols of the various scales and modes, and is probably only ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the universe is known by the name of the Ptolemaic System, because it was first set forth in definite terms by one of the most famous of the astronomers of antiquity, Claudius Ptolemaeus Pelusinensis (100-170 A.D.), better known as Ptolemy of Alexandria. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... people, or in painting or sculpturing people, or in acting people, or in anything of that sort?' Possibly the patient answered yes, and mentioned somebody, of whom Sir Barnet had no more personal knowledge than of Ptolemy the Great. Sir Barnet replied, that nothing on earth was easier, as he knew him very well: immediately called on the aforesaid somebody, left his card, wrote a short note,—'My dear Sir—penalty of your eminent position—friend at my house naturally desirous—Lady ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... 'Ah! thou shouldst know 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
... convinced of Heraclitus his doctrine; or the philtre-bred passion of Tristan, 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 ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... 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 was also the first to observe the effect ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... permitted to refer to the older cartography of New Mexico in general. Until the beginning of the seventeenth century these maps are very defective and incomplete. It is almost as if the Ptolemy of 1548 had served as a basis for them. Even the large and beautiful globe constructed at St. Gall in Switzerland in 1595, and now in the Swiss National Museum at Zuerich, places Tiguex near the Pacific coast. It is through the work of Benavides that more correct ideas ...
— Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction • Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier
... that I am a novice in the guard of the temple of Ra in Memphis, serving neither Cleopatra nor her brother Ptolemy, but only the high gods. We went a journey to inquire of Ptolemy why he had driven Cleopatra into Syria, and how we of Egypt should deal with the Roman Pompey, newly come to our shores after his defeat ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... 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, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... 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 ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... Spain he had read the wonderful "Relation" (or Narrative) of Marco Polo; the "Imago Mundi" (Image of the World) by Cardinal d'Ailly; the "Historia Rerum" (History of Things) by Pope Pius II.; and he had studied Ptolemy's "Geography." From this small library came all the scientific knowledge, true and false, that Christopher ever had. From these he built up whatever theories of the universe he may have laid ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... 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 ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... 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 ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... Pompey fled to Greece Caesar followed him and defeated his followers near Pharsalus. Pompey sailed across the Mediterranean and escaped to Egypt. When he landed he was murdered by order of young king Ptolemy. A few days later Caesar arrived. He found himself caught in a trap. Both the Egyptians and the Roman garrison which had remained faithful to ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... four thousand 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 at ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... 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
... his "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 ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... work 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 decreasing in size; the ground story was hexagonal, the sides alternately ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... undoubtedly the third, part of which is preserved in the writings of Theophilus of Antioch, and originally consisted of one thousand verses, most of which we possess. It was probably composed at the beginning of the Maccabean period, about 146 B.C., when Ptolemy VII. (Physcon) had become king of Egypt, and the bitter enemy of the Jews in Alexandria, and when the Jewish nation in Palestine had been rejoicing in their independence, through the overthrow of the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... 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 ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... In a new city named after himself, Europe, Asia and Africa were 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, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... Ptolemy Philopater ordered all the Jews who applied to be enrolled as citizens of Alexandria to have the form of an ivy leaf (the badge of his god, Bacchus) impressed upon them with a hot iron, under pain of ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... 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 Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... 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 ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... 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 to ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... sphere, Were fix'd, conglobate in his soul; and thence Shone through his body, with sweet influence; Letting their glories so on each limb fall, The whole frame render'd was celestial. Come, learned Ptolemy[3] and trial make, If thou this hero's altitude canst take: 40 But that transcends thy skill; thrice happy all, Could we but prove thus astronomical. Lived Tycho[4] now, struck with this ray which shone More bright i' the morn, than others' beam at noon. He'd take his astrolabe, and seek out ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... not necessary to 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 Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... times, and are supposed to have been found first in the 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 ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... 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 headlands, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... ensuing chapters 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 ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... however, was terrified by the camel and 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 the fluteplayer for ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... statistical tablet of Karnak (Trans. R. Soc. Lit., 1847, p. 369, and 1863, p. 65) refers to an armed invasion of Armenia by Thothmes III., and the payment of a large tribute of antelopes and birds. When Ptolemy Philadelphus feted the Alexandrians (Athenoeus, v.), the Ethiopians brought dogs, buffaloes, bears, leopards, lynxes, a giraffe, and a rhinoceros. Doubtless this description of gifts was common. Live beasts are the one article of curiosity and amusement that barbarians ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Yonaraja—the "Ionian King Antiochus" apparently,—Atiochus Theos, Selecus Nicator's granson: as is supposed; nor yet the other four kings mentioned in the same instricption in a Sanskrit disguise as contemporaries, Ptolemy Philadelphos of Egypt (285-247); Magas of Cyrene (285-258); Antigonus Gonatas of Macedon (277-239), and Alexander of Epirus, who began to reign in 272;—if all these identifications should fall to the ground, let no one be surprised. There are passages ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... 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 more of the ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... 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 the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... astronomer, 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 ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... 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. ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... improvement as the Parthenon, appear the 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 is unacquainted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... 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 miscalculation ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... of the great roads of the Romans we must study the Itinerary of Antoninus, written by an officer of the imperial Court about 150 A.D. This valuable road-book tells us the names of the towns and stations, the distances, halting-places, and other particulars. Ptolemy's Geographia also affords help in understanding the details of the Itinerary, and many of the roads have been very satisfactorily traced. The Romans made use of the ancient British ways, whenever they ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... 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, it became a military and commercial ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... 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 ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... misled to believe that the new lands he proposed to go in search of formed an extension of the India, which was known to the ancients; and still impressed with that idea, occasioned by the eastern longitudes of Ptolemy being greatly too far extended, he gave the name of West Indies to his discovery, because he sailed to them westwards; and persisted in that denomination, even after he had certainly ascertained that they were interposed between ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... of Phenicia, who is supposed to have 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 ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... 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. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... as by 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 ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... 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.), ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... France, with the express 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 the poet, associated ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... a little 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
... 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 ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... people was 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 [Greek: Ouenedai par holon ton Ouenedikon ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... 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 a Roman having ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... tous les nuages, et concilier tous les dissentiments;" and I suppose some fifty years hence, somebody, still more luminous, will doubtless start up and demolish Dumarsais and his system on this weighty affair, as if he were no better than Ptolemy or Copernicus and comments of no more consequence than astronomical calculations. I am happy to say, "la longueur de la dissertation" of Mr. D. prevents Mr. G. from saying any more on the matter. A better poet ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... still retain their 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] As to the origin of the name Savar, General Cunningham says that it must be ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... answered. "Now look! The largeness of our globe is at the equator. The great Ptolemy worked out our reckoning. Twenty-four hours, fifteen degrees to each, in all three hundred and sixty degrees. It is held that the Greeks and the Romans knew fifteen of these hours. They stretched their hand from Gibraltar and Tangier, calling them Pillars of Hercules, to mid-India. Now in our ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... retained in its purity their original national name."—According to Schaffarik's later 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. ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... better. If this saying were really uttered—which there are strong reasons to doubt—it is probable that the king had no blasphemous intention in view, but that he was merely ridiculing the then received system of Ptolemy." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... With just contempt, around the injured world. But fortune spared the dead; and partial fate, For ages fixed his Pha'rian empire's date. [Footnote: Pharian. An allusion to the famous light-house, the Pharos of Alexandria, built by Ptolemy Philadelphus, son of Ptolemy Soter, who succeeded Alexander ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Troglodytes. Thence, by way of the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, they arrived at the shores of India within the Ganges, where now there is the very great trading station and the kingdom of Calicut. Hence they sailed to Taprobane which is now called Zamatara [Sumatra]. For where Ptolemy, Pliny, and other geographers placed Taprobane, there is now no island which can possibly be identified with it. Thence they came to the Golden Chersonesus, where now stands the well-peopled city of Malacca, the principal place of business of the East. After this they penetrated into ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... north-east. A subsequent voyage in 1841 gained the information that the stream descended past Barry, and there can be no doubt that another, if not the chief branch, comes from the south-east, in the bearing which Ptolemy gave it, and, as he states, from amongst mountains covered with perpetual snow, of which Bruce also heard, and which we now learn from Major Harris really stand in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... should have accepted the fables of Manetho as history, that he should not have suspected the fact that the Egyptian priest wrote from motives of personal spite and jealousy, and with the object of poisoning the mind of Ptolemy against the learned Jews with whom he stood on terms of personal friendship. Thus he not only accepts the story that the Hebrews were expelled from Egypt because of the almost universal spread of leprosy among them, but explains ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... 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, 1652, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... personal appearance, as Physcon and Grypus; good qualities, Euergetes and Philadelphus; good fortune, Eudaemon, the title of the second Battus. Several monarchs have also had names given them in mockery, as Antigonus was called Doson, and Ptolemy, Lathyrus. This sort of title was yet more common among the Romans. One of the Metelli was surnamed Diadematus, because he walked about for a long time with a bandage on his head, to conceal a scar; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... AEngus the Culdee speaks (about A.D. 800) of Cuilenross, 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, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... that extraordinary virtues should be in one person united, when one virtue makes a man extraordinary? Alexander is eminent for his courage; Ptolemy for his wisdom; Scipio for his continence; Trajan for his love of truth; ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... [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, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Veneti, in the Gulf of 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, ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... character of divine titles appears as early as the fifteenth century, when Queen Hatshepsut is officially declared to be the daughter of Amon. By such an official procedure Alexander, though not akin to any Egyptian royal house, was declared to be the son of Amon; Ptolemy Philadelphus became the son of the sun-god, and his wife Arsinoe was made a goddess by a solemn ceremony. Possibly the recognition of the divine title, in educated Egyptian circles, as a conventional form began at a relatively ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... 481)] Ptolemy, nicknamed Philadelphus, king of Egypt, when he learned that Pyrrhus had fared poorly and that the Romans were growing, sent gifts to them and made a compact. The Romans, accordingly, pleased that a monarch living so very far away should have come to respect ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... bought on 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 of ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... any respect to chastity. After these are the nations called Pyrei, Sathiodaphintae, Odrangi, Mimaces, Lynxamator, Dolones, Agangince, Leuci Ethiopes, Xilicei Ethiopes, Calcei Ethiopes, and Nubi. These last have the same situation in Ptolemy, which is now given to the kingdom of Nubia, where there are certain Christians under the dominion of the great emperor of Ethiopia, called Prester John. From these towards the west was a great nation called Aphricerones, inhabiting, as far as we can ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... between brothers and sisters were allowed in ancient Egypt. The Ptolemaic princes adopted this, which was contrary to the Macedonian customs. When Ptolemy II. Philadelphus married his sister Arsinoe, it seems to have been thought necessary to excuse it by the relative positions of Venus and Saturn at that period, and the constraining ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of 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 had in his eye certain expressions of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... When just ready to sail, he acquainted the captains with the 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... 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 ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... at the objects around her. She knew nothing, of course, of the history of Alexandria, once the first city in the world, where Euclid presided over the school in mathematics, and Aristotle studied and gave instruction. Here stood those vast libraries founded by Ptolemy Soter, which were subsequently destroyed, and here St. Mark presided over the church of Africa. Yet all this was unknown to Kitty, who was much more interested in the good dinner set before her at the hotel, with its dessert of fresh dates ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... "Ptolemy Soter, King of Egypt B. C. 285, had been careful to improve himself in public literature, as was evident by his compiling the life of Alexander, which was greatly esteemed by the ancients, but is now entirely ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... 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 and ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... 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 from the ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... and recognized him as their master—a certain Philip of Bethsaida; Nathanael, son of Tolmai or Ptolemy, of Cana, perhaps a disciple of the first period;[1] and Matthew, probably the one who was the Xenophon of the infant Christianity. The latter had been a publican, and, as such, doubtless handled the Kalam more easily than the others. Perhaps it was this that suggested to him the idea ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... 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 ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... who went to them (to Sumatra at least), and who wrote afterward the relation of his voyage. He gave therein detailed information of the number of the islands, of their inhabitants, of their writing, navigation, etc. Ptolemy mentions three islands in his geography, which are called Sindae in the Latin text. They are inhabited by the aginnatai. Mercator interprets those islands as Celebes, Gilolo, and Amboina. Ptolemy also mentions the island agajou daimonoc (Borneo), five baroussai ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... 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
... may be a very bad division, 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 1529—call it "Y de Pinos," and on 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 ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... from door to door at Christmas is called wassailing—a relic of the 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
... inquiry 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 the Hebrew Scriptures. This was for the use of the Alexandrian Jews. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... strange compound of 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 ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the city of Antwerp, and the author of 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, ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... 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 ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... it has been by Dryden's famous ode, appears to rest on the sole authority of Cleitarchus, one of the least trustworthy of the historians of Alexander, and is in all probability a mere fable." After the death of Alexander, Thais became the wife of Ptolemy Lagus. ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... the earliest founders of the science of anatomy, Erasistratus and Herophilus, who lived in the age of Ptolemy Soter, taught that the brain was the seat of sensation and intellect, and that there was therein a certain degree of localization of function. Galen later taught that the brain is the seat of the soul and intellect. From these facts of history the system of ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... on our map. The language and culture of Alexander were Greek, and he carried these and settled them with the most determined policy in every available quarter. After his death his empire broke up into kingdoms, but those kings who succeeded him—every Antiochus of Syria and every Ptolemy of Egypt—were Greek. Their court was Greek, and Hellenism was everywhere the fashion in life, thought, letters, and art. All round the coasts, in all the great cities, on all the main routes, up all the great river valleys of these eastern kingdoms, this graecizing proceeded. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... 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 in Alexandria, ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... Socrates were next his knee, Then Heraclitus and Empedocles, Thales and Anaxagoras, and he That based 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 with many an antique dignitary. ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... sailed with Colombo el Mozo, a bold sea 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 spheres, and thus fitted ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various |
