Parallel (geometry) as a pair of straight lines in a plane which do not meet appears as Definition 23 in Book I of Euclid's Elements. Alternative definitions were discussed by other Greeks, often as part of an attempt to prove the parallel postulate. Proclus attributes a definition of parallel lines as equidistant lines to Posidonius and quotes Geminus in a similar vein. Simplicius also mentions Posidonius' definition as well as its modification by the philosopher Aganis. At the end of the nineteenth century, in England, Euclid's Elements was still the standard textbook in secondary schools. The traditional treatment of geometry was being
Ptolemy IV Philopator major antagonist of the apocryphal 3 Maccabees, which describes events following the Battle of Raphia, in both Jerusalem and Alexandria. Ptolemy IV's reign was also marked by trade with other contemporaneous polities. In the 1930s, excavations by Mattingly at a fortress close to Port Dunford (the likely Nikon of antiquity) in present-day southern Somalia yielded a number of Ptolemaic coins. Among these pieces were 17 copper mints from the reigns of Ptolemy III, Ptolemy IV and Ptolemy V, as well as late Imperial Rome and Mamluk Sultanate coins. Ptolemy IV Philopator Ptolemy IV Philopator (, "Ptolemaĩos Philopátōr" "Ptolemy, lover of