Agathodaemon

Who is Agathodaemon?

Agathodaemon was a native of Alexandria, Egypt. All that is known of him is that he was the designer of some maps to accompany Ptolemy's Geographia. Copies of these maps are found appended to several manuscripts of Ptolemy. One of these is at Vienna, another at Venice. At the end of each of these manuscripts is the following notice:

Ἐκ τῶν Κλαυδίου Πτολεμαίου Γεογραφικῶν βιβλίων ὄκτο τὴν οἰκουμένην πᾶσαν Ἀγαθοδαίμων Ἀλεξανδρεὺς ὑπετύπωσε

Agathodaemon of Alexandria delineated the whole inhabited world according to the eight books on Geography of Claudius Ptolemeaus

The Vienna manuscript of Ptolemy is one of the most beautiful extant. The maps attached to it, 27 in number, comprising 1 general map, 10 maps of Europe, 4 of Africa, and 12 of Asia, are colored, the water being green, the mountains red or dark yellow, and the land white. The climates, parallels, and the hours of the longest day, are marked on the East margin of the maps, and the meridians on the North and South.

We have no evidence as to when Agathodaemon lived, as the only notice preserved respecting him is that quoted above. He may be the same person as the 3rd century alchemist Agathodaimon. There was also a grammarian of the same name, to whom some extant letters of Isidore of Pelusium are addressed in the 5th century. Some have thought him to be the Agathodaemon in question. Other writers, however, consider the delineator of the maps to have been a 2nd-century contemporary of Ptolemy, who mentions certain maps or tables, which agree in number and arrangement with those of Agathodaemon in the manuscripts.