Ptolemaeus Chennus

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Ptolemaeus Chennus or Chennos ("quail"), of Alexandria, was a Greek grammarian during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian.

According to the Suda, he was the author of an historical drama named Sphinx, of an epic, Anthomeros, in 24 books (both lost) and a Strange History. The last is probably identical with the work of which an abridgment has been preserved in Photius (cod. 190). It contains a medley of all sorts of legends and fables belonging to both the mythological and historical periods. It is probable that Chennus was also the author of a lost treatise on the life and works of Aristotle, ascribed to "Ptolemaeus" in an Arabic list of his works, taken from a Syriac version of the Greek original (Anton Baumstark, Aristoteles bei den Syrern vom v.-viii. Jahrh., Leipzig, 1900).

See editions of Photius's abridgment by J. Roulez (1834); and in A. Westermann, Mythographi graeci (1843); R. Hercher, Über die Glaubwürdigkeit der neuen Geschichte des Ptolemaus Chennus (Leipzig, 1856); JE Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (2nd ed., 1906).

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• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.