PTOLEMY’S SYNTAX IS 
275 
(died 901), is extant in part, as well as the version by Nasirad- 
din at-Tusi (1201-74). 
The first edition to be published was the Latin translation 
made by Gherard of Cremona from the Arabic, which was 
finished in 1175 but was not published till 1515, when it was 
brought out, without the author’s name, by Peter Liechten 
stein at Yenice. A translation from the Greek had been made 
about 1160 by an unknown writer for a certain Henricus 
Aristippus, Archdeacon of Catania, who, having been sent by 
William I, King of Sicily, on a mission to the Byzantine 
Emperor Manuel I. Comnenus in 1158, brought back with 
him a Greek manuscript of the Syntaxis as a present; this 
translation, however, exists only in manuscripts in the Vatican 
and at Florence. The first Latin translation from the Greek 
to be published was that made by Georgius ‘ of Trebizond ’ for 
Pope Nicolas V in 1451; this was revised and published by 
Lucas Gauricus at Venice in 1528. The editio princeps of the 
Greek text was-brought out by Grynaeus at Basel in 1538. 
The next complete edition was that of Halma published 
1813-16, which is now rare. All the more welcome, there 
fore, is the definitive Greek text of the astronomical works 
of Ptolemy edited by Heiberg (1899-1907), to which is now 
added, so far as the Syntaxis is concerned, a most valuable 
supplement in the German translation (with notes) by Manitius 
(Teubner, 1912-13). 
Summary of Contents. 
The Syntaxis is most valuable for the reason that it con 
tains very full particulars of observations and investigations 
by Hipparchus, as well as of the earlier observations recorded 
by him, e.g. that of a lunar eclipse in 721 b.c. Ptolemy 
based himself very largely upon Hipparchus, e.g. in the 
preparation of a Table of Chords (equivalent to sines), the 
theory of eccentrics and epicycles, &c.; and it is questionable 
whether he himself contributed anything of great value except 
a definite theory of the motion of the five planets, for which 
Hipparchus had only collected material in the shape of obser 
vations made by his predecessors and himself. A very short 
indication of the subjects of the different Books is all that can 
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