Ed.: Deichgräber (1930) 20, 172 (fragments), 258.
RE 23.2 (1959) 1861 (#72), A. Dihle, 1863 (#80–82), H. Diller; C.A. Viano, “Lo scetticismo antico e la
medicina,” in G. Giannantoni, ed., Lo Scetticismo antico = Elenchos 6 (1981) 2.563–656 at 640;
J. Barnes, “Ancient Skepticism and Causation,” in M. Burnyeat, ed., The Skeptical Tradition (1983)
149 – 203 at 189–190 (n. 14).
Fabio Stok
Ptolemaios of Kuthe ̄ra (100 – 120 CE)
The Souda Pi-3032 says he wrote a didactic poem on the power and marvel of the
plant psalakanthe ̄: “power” (dunamis) could be pharmacological or magical. To be dis-
tinguished from his contemporary, the polymathic paradoxographer Ptolemaios “Khennos”
(“Chennus”), son of Hephaistio ̄n, who mentioned the same plant (Pho ̄tios, Bibl. 190,
p. 150a20–37), citing a possibly-fictive line of Euboulos, fr. 27 PCG.
RE 23.2 (1959) 1859 (#68), A. Dihle.
PTK
Ptolemaïs of Kure ̄ne ̄ (ca 50 BCE? – ca 50 CE?)
Musicologist, the only surviving fragments of whose catechetic manual Pythagorean Elements
of Music (Puthagorike ̄ te ̄s mousike ̄s stoikheio ̄sis) are preserved by P in his commentary
on P’s Harmonics (22.22–24.6, 25.3–26.5 Düring). Porphurios’ source for Ptolemaïs’
writings may have been D (25.3–6).
Ptolemaïs presents the different types of musical theorists in a spectrum, arranged
according to the importance they placed on either reason or perception. On one end of the
spectrum are certain Pythagoreans who regarded reason as an autonomous criterion and
excluded sensory data altogether; on the other are the “instrumentalists” (organikoi), who
based their conclusions solely on the evidence of perception. The latter, she says, were
followers of A, though she takes care to place Aristoxenos himself more cen-
trally on account of his more balanced treatment of the necessary cooperation of the two
faculties.
Ptolemaïs also discusses kanonikoi, “canonic theorists,” who practiced a mathematical
harmonic theory which she calls “canonic science” (he ̄ kanonike ̄ pragmateia), in which the
monochord (kano ̄n) had a central role in demonstrating the numerical ratios of musical
intervals to the ear. She locates canonic science at the meeting point between reason and
perception; its fundamental postulates are drawn from the hypotheses of both the musicians
(1–3 below) and the mathematicians (4–5): (1) that there are concordant and discordant
intervals, (2) that the octave is made up of a fourth and a fifth, (3) that the tone is the excess
of a fifth over a fourth, (4) that intervals are in ratios of numbers, and (5) that a note consists
of numbers of collisions.
Ptolemaïs is an important source for our understanding of the range of approaches to
harmonic science between E and T, and for the development of
specific terminology within the discipline. She may in fact be the earliest extant author to
use the term kanonike ̄ to indicate mathematical harmonics, a label which gained common
currency among contemporary or later authors (e.g. P A, H
A, G, P Y, P, D “
”).
PTOLEMAI ̈S OF KURE ̄NE ̄