Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes,of Cyrene (c.285–194 BC), pupil of Callimachus and Lysanias of Cyrene. After spending several years at Athens, where he came under the influence of Arcesilaus and Ariston of Chios, he accepted the invitation of Ptolemy III Euergetes to become royal tutor and to succeed Apollonius of Rhodes as head of the Alexandrian Library. He thus became a member of the Cyrenaean intelligentsia in Alexandria, of which the central figure was Callimachus. His versatility was renowned and criticized, and the eventual Alexandrian verdict was to describe him as bēta, ‘B-class’ (that is to say, not ‘second rate’ but ‘next after the best specialist in each subject’), and pentathlos, an ‘all-rounder’. Others, more kindly, called him ‘a second Plato’ (see Plato). In more than one field, however, and particularly in chronology and...
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