APOLLONIUS BERGEUS, one of the most distin guished of the ancient mathematicians, was born at Perga, in Pamphylia, and flourished about 200 years before the Christian xra. Alter studying at Alexandria, under the disciples of the celebrated Euclid, lie com posed a variety of works on geometry, which gained him, from his contemporaries, the honourable appella tion of the Great Geometer. None of these works have completely escaped from the ravages of time ; but even the fragments which have been transmitted to the pre sent day display the fine taste and inventive genius of their author. His treatise on conic sections, excepting one book, has been completely preserved. Only the first four books, however, have reached us in the original Greek. The other three were found in Arabic, into which they were translated about the year 1250. The eighth book was restored by Dr Halley, who published a magnificent edition of the whole at Oxford in 1710, ac companied with the Lemmas of Pappus and the Com mentaries of Eutocius. The first four books of Apollo nius contain the principal properties of the conic sec tions, and the method of deriving these figures from the section of a cone. The other books contain a variety of
new theorems and problems, equally curious and pro found, which completely justify the proud title conferred by his contemporaries, and confirmed by the unanimous voice of posterity.
We regret that we have nothing to communicate re specting the life and character of this great man. He has been charged by Heraclius with appropriating to himself several of the discoveries of Archimedes; but his commentator Eutocius has completely repelled this unfounded accusation. According to Pappus, Apollo nius wrote upon the following subjects: 1. Proportional Sections, two books ; 2. The Section of a Space, two books ; 3. Determinate Sections, two books; 4. The Tangencies, two books ; 5. The Inclinations, two books ; 6. The Loci Plaid, two books.
See Bossut's Essai stir L' Hist. Gen. des Mathemat. vol. i. p. 54--58. Montucla. Hist. de Math. tom. i. p. 243. Fabricius, Bibl. Griec. lib. iii. cap. 22. § 17. Vos sius, De Scient. Math. Simson's Con. Sect. prefat., and Hutton's Math. Dict. vol. i. p. 124. See also CONIC