De utilitate mathematicae
Smyrna
T
Theon Smyrnaeus
Theon Smyrnaeus
c. 70 CE–c. 135 CE · Smyrna
Theon of Smyrna (active early 2nd century CE) was a Greek mathematician and Platonist philosopher, author of a work explaining the mathematics (arithmetic, music, and astronomy) considered useful for understanding the writings of Plato. His treatise is an important source for ancient mathematical and astronomical ideas in the Platonic tradition. He is distinct from Theon of Alexandria, the later mathematician.
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SmyrnaIonia (Asia Minor)
We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.
About Smyrna
Smyrna, modern İzmir on the Aegean coast of Turkey, was an ancient Greek city refounded in the fourth century BCE and, under Rome, a leading port of the province of Asia. It was a centre of rhetoric: the sophist Marcus Antonius Polemon taught there, the orator Aelius Aristides was closely associated with it, and it was one of several places claiming to be Homer's birthplace. Its church is one of the seven addressed in the Book of Revelation, and its second-century bishop Polycarp, to whom Ignatius of Antioch wrote and whom Irenaeus knew in his youth, was martyred there. The mathematician Theon of Smyrna and the epic poet Quintus Smyrnaeus take their names from the city.
In Smyrna at the same time
Across the traditions, in Smyrna at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Theon Smyrnaeus’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Theon Smyrnaeus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.