Euclid

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In the Commedia Euclid is cited in Inferno IV, 142, in the catalogue of the great spirits who dwell in Limbo without being punished, reserved for the unbaptized who lived in the pre-Christian age or in territories outside grace. The verse mentions him together with Ptolemy as a pair of scientists; the notes to the passage specify that the following tercet gathers together scientists, mathematicians, and physicians of antiquity, placing Euclid as the celebrated Greek mathematician, father of geometry. He is numbered, alongside Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, and Averroes, among the representatives of scientific knowledge welcomed among the ancient philosophers.