1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ptolemaeus

PTOLEMAEUS, of Alexandria, surnamed Chennus, Greek grammarian during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. According to Suïdas, he was the author of an historical drama named Sphinx, of an epic, Anthomeros, in 24 books (both lost) and a Strange History. The last is probably identical with the work of which an abridgment has been preserved in Photius (cod. 190). It contains a medley of all sorts of legends and fables belonging to both the mythological and historical periods. It is probable that Chennus was also the author of a lost treatise on the life and works of Aristotle, ascribed to “Ptolemaeus” in an Arabic list of his works, taken from a Syriac version of the Greek original (A. Baumstark, Aristoteles bei den Syrern vom v.-viii. Jahrh., Leipzig, 1900).

See editions of Photius's abridgment by J. Roulez (1834); and in A. Westermann, Mythographi graeci (1843); R. Hercher, Über die Glaubwürdigkeit der neuen Geschichte des Ptolemaus Chennus (Leipzig, 1856); J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship (2nd ed., 1906).