Ptolemy I Soter rivals after Alexander's death. For example, Arrian's account of the fall of Thebes in 335 BC ("Anabasis" , a rare section of narrative explicitly attributed to Ptolemy by Arrian) shows several significant variations from the parallel account preserved in Diodorus Siculus (17.11–12), most notably in attributing a distinctly unheroic role in proceedings to Perdiccas. More recently, J. Roisman has argued that the case for Ptolemy's blackening of Perdiccas and others has been much exaggerated. Ptolemy personally sponsored the great mathematician Euclid. He found Euclid's seminal work, the "Elements", too difficult to study, so he asked if there were an easier
Attic Greek used for the language of later writers following conventionally the accession in 285 BC of Greek-speaking Ptolemy II to the throne of the Kingdom of Egypt. Ruling from Alexandria, Ptolemy launched the Alexandrian period, during which the city of Alexandria and its expatriate Greek-medium scholars flourished. The original range of the spoken Attic dialect included Attica and a number of the central Cyclades islands; the closely related Ionic was also spoken along the western and northwestern coasts of Asia Minor in modern Turkey, in Chalcidice, Thrace, Euboea, and in some colonies of Magna Graecia. Eventually, the texts of literary Attic