Online Encyclopedia

Make a correction

Your email address will not appear on the site. Note, comments may take some time to be approved.

Back to article: PTOLEMAEUS

Your email: Article name: Article content:

PTOLEMAEUS, of Alexandria, surnamed Chennus, Greek grammarian during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. According to Suidas, he was the author of an historical drama named Sphinx, of an epic, Anthomeros, in 24 books (both lost) and a Strange History. The last is probably identical with the work of which an abridgment has been preserved in Photius (cod. 190). It contains a medley of all sorts of legends and fables belonging to both the mythological and historical periods. It is probable that Chennus was also the author of a lost treatise on the life
and works of Aristotle, ascribed to " Ptolemaeus " in an Arabic list of his works, taken from a Syriac version of the Greek original (A. Baum-stark, Aristoteles bei den Syrern vom v.-viii. Jahrh., Leipzig, 1900).
See editions of Photius's abridgment by J. Roulez (1834) ; and in A. Westermann, Mythographs graeci (1843) ; R. Hercher, Ober die Glaubwiirdz keit der neuen Geschichte des Ptolem¢us Chennus (Leipzig, 1856) ; J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship (2nd ed., 1906).