Pappus and the Collection

Abstract

In the later Hellenistic period, after several hundred years of progress, the main stream of Greek mathematics, synthetic geometry, experienced a deep and permanent decline. The subject did not stop being studied and taught, but original discoveries became less and less frequent and important. The causes and even the date of this decadence are obscured by the fewness of our sources for the period between Apollonius, about 200 B.C, and the fourth century A.D. But although the conditions under which ancient books were transmitted to us naturally favored (if we except a few ‘classics’ by the great Hellenistic geometers) later texts over earlier ones, we learn from reports at second hand that authors such as Geminus, Menelaus, and Heron in the first century A.D. were already excerpting, reediting, and commenting on older works.