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Description
Book VI of the Mathematical Collection is a collection of comments or notes about various points treated in parts of a collection of other texts sometimes known as the “Little Astronomy.” Pappus uses these works as sources and frequently quotes from them in this book. In the teaching of mathematical astronomy in late antiquity, and this would include the time of Pappus, the “Little Astronomy” is often understood to have been a follow-up to Euclid’s Elements and a preliminary to the study of the Almagest of Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 100–165 CE). The “Little Astronomy” included works by a group of Classical and Hellenistic authors including Autolycus of Pitane (ca. 360–290 BCE), Euclid of Alexandria (ca. 300 BCE), Aristarchus of Samos (ca. 310–230 BCE), Hypsicles (ca. 190–120 BCE), and Theodosius of Bithynia (ca. 160–100 BCE). Some of these were clearly what we would call elementary textbooks and Pappus’s Book VI seems to have been written as a sort of “guide for the perplexed” addressing subtle points that Pappus thought had not been treated sufficiently clearly or completely in those sources. In the introductory paragraph at the start, in fact, he says somewhat polemically, “many of those teaching astronomy, when they understand statements in a more careless way, include some things as necessary, while omitting others as unnecessary.”
Publication Date
3-2025
City
Worcester, MA
Keywords
Mathematics, Greek--Early works to 1800; Mathematics--Early works to 1800; Mathematicae collectiones; Plane geometry; Solid geometry
Disciplines
Classics | Geometry and Topology | Mathematics
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Repository Citation
Little, John B. and Pappus of Alexandria, "Book VI of the Mathematical Collection of Pappus of Alexandria, translated by John B. Little" (2025). Holy Cross Bookshelf. 66.
https://crossworks.holycross.edu/hc_books/66
