Euclid's Elements of Geometry, Plane and Solid

...and the teacher of Aristotle, and Aristotle himself, were distinguished for their knowledge of Mathematics. When a certain person, unskilled in Geometry, wished to be his student, he said, "Go away, for you do not have the handles of Philosophy."

But what shall I say of Aristotle? All his books are replete with Mathematical topics, from which Blancanus compiled a single volume. From the school of Aristotle, two are especially celebrated: Eudemus and Theophrastus. The latter wrote two books on numbers, four on Geometry, and one on indivisible lines; the former founded a history of Mathematics, from which Proclus and others borrowed their own material. We owe the books on solids primarily to Aristaeus, Isidorus, and Hypsicles, the most subtle of geometers. Finally, Euclid collected, organized, augmented, and demonstrated the inventions of others more accurately, and left us those elements by which youth are now instructed in Mathematics everywhere in the world. He died in the year 284 before Christ. Eratosthenes and Archimedes followed Euclid almost a hundred years later. The name of Eratosthenes was especially famous, but his writings have perished [very many of them, but not all]. Of Archimedes, we have many, but many we have lost.

But when I name Archimedes, I conceive in my mind a certain pinnacle of human subtlety and the completion of the entire Mathematical discipline. Polybius, Plutarch, Tzetzes, and others have brought forth his admirable inventions. Conon the geometer and astronomer was a contemporary of Archimedes, and Archimedes laments his death in his book On the Quadrature of the Parabola. Following Archimedes and Conon after no great interval is Apollonius of Perga, another prince of Geometry, who was called the Great Geometer with the encomium of singular praise. His four [or rather, seven] most subtle books on Conics are extant.