The Almagest is a 2nd-century mathematical and astronomical treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths, written by Claudius Ptolemy in Koine Greek. One of the most influential scientific texts in history, it canonized a geocentric model of the Universe that was accepted for more than 1,200 years from its origin in Hellenistic Alexandria, in the medieval Byzantine and Islamic worlds, and in Western Europe through the Middle Ages and early Renaissance until Copernicus. It is also a key source of information about ancient Greek astronomy.
Table of contents to a 1528 copy of Almagest, translated to Latin from Greek by George of Trebizond
Ptolemy's Almagest became an authoritative work for many centuries.
Picture of George of Trebizond's Latin translation of the Syntaxis Mathematica or Almagest
1528 copy of a Latin translation of "Almagestum", translated from Greek by George of Trebizond
Greek mathematics refers to mathematics texts and ideas stemming from the Archaic through the Hellenistic and Roman periods, mostly from the 5th century BC to the 6th century AD, around the shores of the Mediterranean. Greek mathematicians lived in cities spread over the entire region, from Anatolia to Italy and North Africa, but were united by Greek culture and the Greek language. The development of mathematics as a theoretical discipline and the use of deductive reasoning in proofs is an important difference between Greek mathematics and those of preceding civilizations.
Pythagoras with a tablet of ratios, detail from The School of Athens by Raphael (1509)
A fragment from Euclid's Elements (c. 300 BC), considered the most influential mathematics textbook of all time
