Foundations of geometry possible exception of the parallel postulate) that any theorem proved from them was deemed true in an absolute, often metaphysical, sense. Today, however, many other geometries which are not Euclidean are known, the first ones having been discovered in the early 19th century. Euclid's "Elements" is a mathematical and geometric treatise consisting of 13 books written by the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid in Alexandria c. 300 BC. It is a collection of definitions, postulates (axioms), propositions (theorems and constructions), and mathematical proofs of the propositions. The thirteen books cover Euclidean geometry and the ancient Greek version of elementary number theory.
Spherical geometry geometries exist; see elliptic geometry. The earliest mathematical work of antiquity to come down to our time is "On the rotating sphere" (Peri kinoumenes sphairas) by Autolycus of Pitane, who lived at the end of the fourth century BC. Spherical trigonometry was studied by early Greek mathematicians such as Theodosius of Bithynia, a Greek astronomer and mathematician who wrote the Sphaerics, a book on the geometry of the sphere, and Menelaus of Alexandria, who wrote a book on spherical trigonometry called "Sphaerica" and developed Menelaus' theorem. "The book of unknown arcs of a sphere" written by the Islamic mathematician Al-Jayyani