"Euclid himself is an elusive figure. We know nothing of him from contemporary references … Euclid’s Elements, which is believed to have been compiled around 300 BC, gives us an edited and anonymous treatment of some of the mathematics of Euclid’s predecessors, in a text that has passed through the hands of an unknown number of further scribes and editors before arriving at the versions that we now possess. ...Our evidence concerning pre-Euclidean mathematics is so indirect and fragmentary that the greatest part of the stories that are now told about the period must be invention."