ALEXANDRIAN OR HELLENISTIC PERIOD 



the first century of Alexandrian influence, the most 

 remarkable coterie of scientific workers and thinkers 

 that antiquity produced. The earliest group of these 

 new leaders in science had at its head a man whose 

 name has been a household word ever since. This was 

 Euclid, the father of systematic geometry. Tradition 

 has preserved to us but little of the personality of this 

 remarkable teacher; but, on the other hand, his most 

 important work has come down to us in its entirety. 

 The Elements of Geometry, with which the name of 

 Euclid is associated in the mind of every school-boy, 

 presented the chief propositions of its subject in so sim- 

 ple and logical a form that the work remained a text- 

 book everywhere for more than two thousand years. 

 Indeed it is only now beginning to be superseded. It 

 is not twenty years since English mathematicians 

 could deplore the fact that, despite certain rather ob- 

 vious defects of the work of Euclid, no better text- 

 book than this was available. Euclid's work, of course, 

 gives expression to much knowledge that did not origi- 

 nate with him. We have already seen that several im- 

 portant propositions of geometry had been developed 

 by Thales, and one by Pythagoras, and that the ru- 

 diments of the subject were at least as old as Egyp- 

 tian civilization. Precisely how much Euclid added 

 through his own investigations cannot be ascertained. 

 It seems probable that he was a diffuser of knowledge 

 rather than an originator, but as a great teacher his 

 fame is secure. He is credited with an epigram which 

 in itself might insure him perpetuity of fame : " There is 

 no royal road to geometry," was his answer to Ptolemy 

 when that ruler had questioned whether the Elements 



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