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APOLLONIUS OF PERGA 
for the other two conics, the hyperbola and parabola, and we 
can scarcely avoid the inference that Archimedes was equally 
aware that the parabola and the hyperbola could be found 
otherwise than by the old method. 
The first, however, to base the theory of conics on the 
production of all three in the most general way from any 
kind of circular cone, right or oblique, was Apollonius, to 
whose work we now come. 
B. APOLLONIUS OF PERGA 
Hardly anything is known of the life of Apollonius except 
that he was born at Perga, in Pamphylia, that he went 
when quite young to Alexandria, where he studied with the 
successors of Euclid and remained a long time, and that 
he flourished (yeyore) in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes 
(247-222 B.c ). Ptolemaeus Chennus mentions an astronomer 
of the same name, who was famous during the reign of 
Ptolemy Philopator (222-205 B.C.), and it is clear that our 
Apollonius is meant. As Apollonius dedicated the fourth and 
following Books of his Conics to King Attalus I (241-197 B.C.) 
we have a confirmation of his approximate date. He was 
probably born about 262 B.C., or 25 years after Archimedes. 
We hear of a visit to Pergamum, where he made the acquain 
tance of Eudemus of Pergamum, to whom he dedicated the 
first two Books of the Conics in the form in which they have 
come down to us; they were the first two instalments of a 
second edition of the work. 
The text of the Conics. 
The Conics of Apollonius was at once recognized as the 
authoritative treatise on the subject, and later writers regu 
larly cited it when quoting, propositions in conics. Pappus 
wrote a number of lemmas to it; Serenus wrote a commen 
tary, as also, according to Suidas, did Hypatia. Eutocius 
(fi. a.d. 500) prepared an edition of the first four Books and 
wrote a commentary on them ; it is evident that he had before 
him slightly differing versions of the completed work, and he 
may also have had the first unrevised edition which had got 
into premature circulation, as Apollonius himself complains in 
the Preface to Book I.