33). Wilson still, however believes that catena is …show more content…
It was a very big part of scholarly activity when it existed. It was destroyed though during Caesar’s military in 48-47BCcausing the loss of many pieces of work (p. 42). Theon wrote a commentary on the Handy Tables by Ptolemy and is perhaps proved most useful to successive generations of Byzantines says Wilson (p. 42). “The purpose of the Tables was to permit elementary astronomical calculations, such as the time difference between various towns” (p. 41). As Wilson says the other two book written by Theon one for competent astronomers and the other “explicitly designed for those who were incapable of understanding the reasoning and mathematics procedures lying behind the calculations” (p. 42). His daughter was Hypatia who also wrote commentary on the mathematician Diophantus and was later killed by Christians, she is better known says Wilson than her father Theon (p.42). Hesychius is another well know scholar. Hesychius complied works bringing together and explaining rare words that can be found in some classical texts. Wilson says that “Hesychius’ purpose was to provide for the educated reader a dictionary which would help him not only with Attic literature but with dialect texts as well” (p. 43). Eutocius of Ascalon was another scholar in Alexandria. “The existence if Eutocius’ commentary may well have helped to guarantee the survival of the first four books (Apollonius) in the original