CLAUDIUS PTOLEMAEUS of Alexandria, mathematician, astronomer, and geographer, who gave his name to the Ptolemaïc system of the heavens, flourished in the latter half of the second century. His chief works are the {Megale Suntaxis tes Astronomias} in thirteen books, known to the Middle Ages in its Arabian translation under the title of the /Almagest/, and the {Geographike Uphegesis} in eight books. He also wrote on astrology, chronology, and music. A single epigram of his on his favourite science is preserved in the Anthology. Another commonplace couplet under the name of Ptolemaeus is probably by some different author. LUCIAN of Samosata in Commagene, perhaps the most important figure in the literature of this period, was born about A.D. 120. He practised as an advocate at Antioch, and travelled very extensively throughout the empire. He was appointed procurator of a district of Egypt by the emperor Commodus (reigned A.D. 180-192) and probably died about A.D. 200. Besides his voluminous prose works he is the author of forty epigrams in the Anthology, and fourteen more are ascribed to him on doubtful or insufficient authority. To some part of this period appear to belong ALPHEUS of Mitylene, author of twelve epigrams, some school-exercises, others on ancient towns, Mycenae, Argos, Tegea, and Troy, which he appears to have visited as a tourist; CARPYLLIDES or CARPHYLLIDES, author of one fine epitaph and another dull epigram in the moralising vein of this age: GLAUCUS of Nicopolis, author of six epigrams (one is headed "Glaucus of Athens," but is in the same late imperial style; and in this period the citizenship of Athens was sold for a trifle by the authorities to any one who cared for it: cf. the epigram of Automedon (/Anth. Pal./ xi. 319)); and SATYRUS (whose name is also given as Satyrius, Thyïlus, Thyïllus, and Satyrus Thyïllus), author of nine epigrams, chiefly dedications and pastoral pieces, some of them of great delicacy and beauty. [1] The spelling /Lucillius/ is a mere barbarism, the /l/ being doubled to indicate the long vowel: so we find {Statullios}, etc. V. Byzantine period; from the transference of the seat of empire to Constantinople, A.D. 330, to the formation of the Palatine Anthology in the reign of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, about the middle of the tenth century. For the first two centuries of this period hardly any names have to be chronicled. Literature had almost ceased to exist except among lexicographers and grammarians; and though epigrams, Christian and pagan, continued to be written, they are for the most part of no literary account whatever. One name only of importance meets us before the reign of Justinian.