120 THE EARLIEST GREEK GEOMETRY. THALES 
is said to have wished to burn all his writings. On the other 
hand (1) the style of the summary is not such as to point 
to Proclus as the author; (2) if he wrote it, it is hardly 
conceivable that he would have passed over in silence the dis 
covery of the analytical method, ‘ the finest ’, as he says else 
where, of the traditional methods in geometry, ‘ which Plato is 
said to have communicated to Laodamas’. Nor (3) is it 
easy to suppose that Proclus would have spoken in the 
detached way that the author does of Euclid whose Elements 
was the subject of his whole commentary : ‘ Not much younger 
than these is Euclid, who compiled the Elements . . . * This 
man lived in the time of the first Ptolemy . . On the whole, 
therefore, it would seem probable that the body of the sum 
mary was taken by Proclus from a compendium made by some 
writer later than Eudemus, though the earlier portion was 
based, directly or indirectly, upon notices in Eudemus’s History. 
But the prelude with which the summary is introduced may 
well have been written, or at all events expanded, by Proclus 
himself, for it is in his manner to bring in ‘the inspired 
Aristotle’ (o SaiyovLos ’ApLaToriXrjs)—as he calls him here and 
elsewhere—and the transition to the story of the Egyptian 
origin of geometry may also be his: 
‘ Since, then, we have to consider the beginnings of the arts 
and sciences with reference to the particular cycle [of the 
series postulated by Aristotle] through which the universe is 
at present passing, we say that, according to most accounts, 
geometry was first discovered in Egypt, having had its origin 
in the measurement of areas. For this was a necessity for the 
Egyptians owing to the rising of the Nile which effaced the 
proper boundaries of everybody’s lands.’ 
The next sentences also may well be due to Proclus: 
‘ And it is in no way surprising that the discovery of this as 
well as the other sciences had its beginning in practical needs, 
seeing that everything that is in the course of becoming pro 
gresses from the imperfect to the perfect. Thus the transition 
from sensation to reasoning and from reasoning to under 
standing is only natural.’ 
These sentences look like reflections by Proclus, and the 
transition to the summary proper follows, in the words : 
‘Accordingly, just as exact arithmetic began among the