Mensurae marmorum ac lignorum
Alexandria
D
Didymus Alexandrinus
Didymus Alexandrinus
c. 65 BCE–c. 10 CE · Alexandria
Didymus of Alexandria was a Greek metrologist and practical geometer to whom is attributed the short treatise "On the Measurement of Marbles and Timber" (Mensurae marmorum ac lignorum), a handbook for calculating the volumes and dimensions of building stone and wood. His dates are genuinely uncertain; he is usually placed in the Roman or early Byzantine period and is distinct from the better-known grammarian Didymus Chalcenterus. Almost nothing is securely known of his life, and the attribution of the metrological text rests largely on manuscript ascription rather than firm biographical evidence.
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AlexandriaEgypt
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About Alexandria
Alexandria (al-Iskandariyya) is the great Mediterranean port-city of northern Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE and a leading centre of learning in antiquity. After the Muslim conquest of Egypt (642) it remained a major commercial and scholarly hub; the Shadhili Sufi Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari (d. 1309) took his nisba from the city, and the modernist reformer Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) was active in Egypt's intellectual life there and in Cairo.
In Alexandria at the same time
Tryphon I Grammaticus, Philoxenus of Alexandria, Aenesidemus, Strabo, Aristonicus of Alexandria
Across the traditions, in Alexandria at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Didymus Alexandrinus’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
Posidonius of Apamea, Nepos, Cornelius, Cicero, Quintus Tullius Cicero, Julius Caesar, Lucretius, Tryphon I Grammaticus, Sallust, Parthenius of Nicaea, Philoxenus of Alexandria, Catullus, C. Valerius, Vitruvius, Aenesidemus, Virgil, Horace, Strabo, Augustus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Didymus Alexandrinus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.