Ptolemaeus Chennus

Ptolemy Chennus or Chennos ("quail") (Template:Langx Ptolemaios Chennos), was an Alexandrine grammarian during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian.<ref name=EB1911/>

According to the Suda,<ref>see Suda On Line</ref> he was the author of an historical drama named Sphinx, of an epic, Anthomeros, in 24 books (both lost) and a Strange History. The last is probably identical with the New History in six books ascribed by Photius to Ptolemy Hephaestion, of which a summary outline has been preserved in Photius' Biblioteca (cod. 190),<ref name=EB1911/><ref>Photius, Biblioteca. English translation of Rene Harry's 1962 Collection Bude French translation.</ref> who observed sarcastically of its credulous author that he found it "a work really useful for those who undertake to attempt erudition in history," for "it abounds in extraordinary and badly imagined information." Photius goes on to say, "In any case, the majority of his stories which are free of things impossible to believe, offer a knowledge above the ordinary, but which is not unpleasing."<ref>Photius' Bibliotheca 190.2</ref>

It was dedicated to the author's lady, Tertulla, and contained a medley of all sorts of legends and fables belonging to both the mythological and historical periods.<ref name=EB1911/> An identification with Ptolemy-el-Garib has been suggested, but this is no longer accepted.<ref>Albin Lesky, A History of Greek Literature (trans. Willis and de Heer, 1966), p. 548. Hans Gottschalk, "The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators," in Aristotle Transformed (ed. Richard Sorabji, 1990), pp. 56f. n. 5.</ref>

See editions of Photius's abridgment by Joseph-Emmanuel-Ghislain Roulez (Ptolemaei Hephaestionis Novarum historiarum ad variam eruditionem pertinentium excerpta e Photio, 1834); and in Anton Westermann, Mythographi graeci (1843); Rudolf Hercher, Über die Glaubwürdigkeit der neuen Geschichte des Ptolemaus Chennus (Leipzig, 1856); John Edwin Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (2nd ed., 1906).<ref name=EB1911>{{#if: |

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