History of geometry Euclid (c. 325-265 BC), of Alexandria, probably a student at the Academy founded by Plato, wrote a treatise in 13 books (chapters), titled "The Elements of Geometry", in which he presented geometry in an ideal axiomatic form, which came to be known as Euclidean geometry. The treatise is not a compendium of all that the Hellenistic mathematicians knew at the time about geometry; Euclid himself wrote eight more advanced books on geometry. We know from other references that Euclid’s was not the first elementary geometry textbook, but it was so much superior that the others fell into disuse and were
Pappus of Alexandria the time (but see below) at which he himself wrote. If no other date information were available, all that could be known would be that he was later than Ptolemy (died c. 168 AD), whom he quotes, and earlier than Proclus (born ), who quotes him. The "Suda" states that Pappus was of the same age as Theon of Alexandria, who active in the reign of Emperor Theodosius I (372–395). A different date is given by a marginal note to a late 10th-century manuscript (a copy of a chronological table by the same Theon), which states, next to an entry