A history of Greek mathematics - Wilbourhall.org

126 APOLLONIUS OF PERGA
for the other two conies, the hyperbola and parabola, and we
can scarcely avoid the inference that Archimedes was equally
aware that the parabola and the hyperbola could be found
otherwise than by the old method.
The first, however, to base the theory of conies on the
production of all three in the most general way from any
kind of circular cone, right or oblique, was Apollonius, to
whose work we now come.
B. APOLLONIUS OF PERGA
Hardly anything is known of the life of Apollonius except
that he was born at Perga, in Pamphylia, that he went
when quite young to Alexandria, where he studied with the
successors of Euclid and remained a long time, and that
he flourished (yeyove) in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes
(247-222 B.C.). Ptolemaeus Chennus mentions an astronomer
of the same name, who was famous during the reign of
Ptolemy Philopator (222-205 B.C.), and it is clear that our
Apollonius is meant. As Apollonius dedicated the fourth and
following Books of his Conies to King Attalus I (241-197 B.C.)
we have a confirmation of his approximate date. He was
probably born about 262 B.C., or 25 years after Archimedes.
We hear of a visit to Pergamum, where he made the acquaintance
of Eudemus of Pergamum, to whom he dedicated the
first two Books of the Conies in the form in which they have
come down to us ; they were the first two instalments of a
second edition of the work.
The text of the Conies.
The Conies of Apollonius was at once recognized as the
authoritative treatise on the subject, and later writers regularly
cited it when quoting propositions in conies. Pappus
wrote a number of lemmas to it ; Serenus wrote a commentary,
as also, according to Suidas, did Hypatia. Eutocius
(fl. a.d. 500) prepared an edition of the first four Books and
wrote a commentary on them ; it is evident that he had before
him slightly differing versions of the completed work, and he
may also have had the first unrevised edition which had got
into premature circulation, as Apollonius himself complains in
the Preface to Book I.