Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/259

Rh APOLLONIUS. 18 that of Brunck. (Argentomt. 1700, in 4to. and 8-0.) The edition of Bock (Leipzig, 171)7, 8vo.) is incomplete, and the only volume which appeared of it contains the text, with a Lfitin translation and a few critical notes. G. Schacfer published an edition (Leipz. 1810 — 13, 2 vols. 8vo.), which is an improvement upon that of Brunck, and is the first in which the Paris Scholia are printed. The best edition is that of Wellauer, Leipzig, 1828, 2 vols. 8vo., which contains the various readings of 13 MSS., the ScholijL, and short notes. Besides the Argonautica and epigrams (Antonin. Lib. 23), of which we possess only the one on Callimachus, Apollonius wrote several other works which are now lost. Two of them, Ilepl 'Apxi- Xov (Athen. x. p. 451) and trpds ZrjvdSoTov (Schol. Venet. ad Horn. ll. xiii. 657), were probably gram- matical works, and the latter may have had reference to the recension of the Homeric poems by Zenodotus, for the Scholia on Homer occasion- ally refer to Apollonius. A third class of Apol- lonius' writings were his Hrria^is, that is, poems on the origin or foundation of several towns. These poems were of an historico-epical character, and most of them seem to have been written in hexa- meter verse. The following are known : 1. 'PtiSoi; ktI(tis, of which one line and a half are preserved in Stephanus of Byzantium (s. v. Awriov), and to which we have perhaps to refer the statements contained in the Scholiast on Pindar. (01. vii. 86 ; Pyfh. iv. 57.) 2. NauKporews ktIctis, of which six lines .are preserved in Athenaeus. (vii. p. 283, &c.; comp. Aelian, Hist. An. xv. 23.) 3. 'AA.6|ai'- dpfias kt'ktis. (Schol. ad Nicand. fher. 11.) 4. Kavvou KTL(Tis. (Parthen. Erot. 1 and 11.) 5. Kvi- 5tjs kt'ktis. (Steph. Byz. s. v. ^vKr-^pios.) Whether the last three were like the first two in verse or prose is uncertain, as no fragments are extant. 6. Kai/wTToy, which may likewise have been an account of the foundation of Canopus. It was written in verse, and consisted of at least two books. Two choliambic lines of it are extant. (Steph. Byz. s. iw. Xu/pa, K6pivdos.) (Compare E. Gerhard, Lectiones Apollonianae^ Leipzig, 1816, 8vo. ; Weichert, Ueber das Lehen und Gedicht des Apollonius von Rhodiis^ Meissen, 1821, 8vo.) 24. A Syrian, a platonic philosopher, who lived about the time of Hadrian, and who had inserted in his works an oracle which promised to Hadrian the government of the Roman world. (Spartian. Hailr. 2.) 25. TvANEUS. See below. 26. Of Tyre, a stoic philosopher, who lived in the reign of Ptolemy Auletes, is mentioned by Diogenes Laertius (vii. 1, 2, 24, and 28) as the author of a work on Zeno. Strabo (xvi. p. 757) mentions a work of his which he calls 7rtVa| ruv dirb Ziva)vos (piocr6(pc>)u koI tuv jSt^A./wv, and which appears to have been a short survey of the philosophers and their writings from the time of Zeno. Whether this Apollonius is the same as the one who wrote a work on female philosophers (Phot. Cod. 161), or as the author of the chronolo- gical work (xpovLKo.) of which Stephanus Byzan- tius (s. V. XaKK-nrSpiou) quotes the fourth book, cannot be decided. 27. King of Tyre, is the hero of a Greek ro- mance, the author of which is unknown. Barth {Adtvrsar. Iviii. 1) thought that the author was a Christian of the name of Symposius. About the 3'ear a. d. 1500, the romance was put into so- APOLLONIUS. 241 called political verse by Constantinus or GabnVJ Contianus, and was printed at Venice, 1603, 4to. A Latin translation had been published before that time by M. Velserus, under the title, ** Narratio eorura quae acciderunt Apollonio Tyrio," Aug. VindeL 1595, 4to. During the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries this romance was very popular, and was translated into most of the European lan- guages. [L. S.] APOLLO'NIUS, sumamed PERGAEUS,from Perga in Pamphylia, his native city, a mathemati- cian educated at Alexandria under the successors of Euclid. He was bom in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes (Eutoc. Comm. in Ap. Con. lib. i.), and died under Philopator, who reigned B. c. 222 — 205. (Hephaest. ap. PJiot. cod. cxc.) He was, therefore, probably about 40 years younger than Archimedes. His geometrical works were held in such esteem, that they procured for him the ap- pellation of the Great Geometer. (Eutoc. I. c.) He is also mentioned by Ptolemy as an astronomer, and is said to have been called by the sobriquet of 6, from his fondness for observing the moon, the shape of which was supposed to resemble that letter. His most important work, the only con- siderable one which has come down to our time, was a treatise on Conic Sections in eight books. Of these the first four, with the commentary of Eutocius, -are extant in Greek ; and all but the eighth in Arabic. The eighth book seems to have been lost before the date of the Arabic versiono. We have also introductory lemmata to all the eight, by Pappus. The first four books probably contain little more than the substance of what former geometers had done ; they treat of the de- finitions and elementary properties of the conic sections, of their diameters, tangents, asymptotes, mutual intersections, &c. But Apollonius seems to lay claim to originality in most of what follows. (See the introductory epistle to the first book.) The fifth treats of the longest and shortest right lines (in other words the normals) which can be drawn from a given point to the curve. The sixth of the equality and similarity of conic sections; and the seventh relates chiefly to their diameters, and rectilinear figures described upon them. We learn from Eutocius {Comm. in lib. i.), that Heraclius in his life of Archimedes accused Apol- lonius of having appropriated to himself in this work the unpublished discoveries of that great mathematician ; however this may have been, there is truth in the reply quoted by the same author from Geminus : that neither Archimedes nor Apollonius pretended to have invented this branch of Geometry, but that Apollonius had in- troduced a real improvement into it. For whereas Archimedes, according to the ancient iftethod, con- sidered only the section of a right cone by a plane perpendicular to its side, so that the species of the curve depended upon the angle of the cone ; Apol- lonius took a more general view, conceiving the curve to be produced by the intersection of any plane with a cone generated by a right line passing always through the circumference of a fixed circle and any fixed point. The principal edition of the Conics'is that of Halley, " Apoll. Perg. Conic, lib. viii.,&c.," Oxon. 1710, fol. The eighth book is a conjectural restoration founded on the introductory lemmata of Pappus. The first four books were translated into Latin, and published by J. Bapt. Mcmus (Venice, 1537), and by Commandine