Although the Greek writers who may have known something of the life of Euclid have little to say of him, the Arab writers, who could have known nothing save from Greek sources, have allowed their imaginations the usual latitude in speaking of him and of his labors. Thus Al-Qifṫī, who wrote in the thirteenth century, has this to say in his biographical treatise "Ta'rīkh al-Ḥukamā":
Euclid, son of Naucrates, grandson of Zenarchus, called the author of geometry, a Greek by nationality, domiciled at Damascus, born at Tyre, most learned in the science of geometry, published a most excellent and most useful work entitled "The Foundation or Elements of Geometry," a subject in which no more general treatise existed before among the Greeks; nay, there was no one even of later date who did not walk in his footsteps and frankly profess his doctrine.
This is rather a specimen of the Arab tendency to manufacture history than a serious contribution to the biography of Euclid, of whose personal history we have only the information given by Proclus.
Euclid's works at once took high rank, and they are mentioned by various classical authors. Cicero knew of them, and Capella (ca. 470 A.D.), Cassiodorius (ca. 515 A.D.), and Boethius (ca. 480-524 A.D.) were all more or less familiar with the "Elements." With the advance of the Dark Ages, however, learning was held in less and less esteem, so that Euclid was finally forgotten, and manuscripts of his works were either destroyed or buried in some remote cloister. The Arabs, however, whose civilization assumed prominence from about 750 A.D. to about 1500, translated the most important treatises of the Greeks, and Euclid's "Elements" among the rest. One of these Arabic editions an English monk of the twelfth century, one Athelhard (Æthelhard) of Bath, found and translated into Latin (ca. 1120 A.D.). A little later Gherard of Cremona (1114-1187) made a new translation from the Arabic, differing in essential features from that of Athelhard, and about 1260 Johannes Campanus made still a third translation, also from Arabic into Latin.[29] There is reason to believe that Athelhard, Campanus, and Gherard may all have had access to an earlier Latin translation, since all are quite alike in some particulars while diverging noticeably in others. Indeed, there is an old English verse that relates:
The clerk Euclide on this wyse hit fonde
Thys craft of gemetry yn Egypte londe ...
Thys craft com into England, as y yow say,
Yn tyme of good Kyng Adelstone's day.
If this be true, Euclid was known in England as early as 924-940 A.D.
Without going into particulars further, it suffices to say that the modern knowledge of Euclid came first through the Arabic into the Latin, and the first printed