Thomas was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford; but the details of his university career are doubtful owing to the defectiveness of the university and college registers.
Doubtless, however, he returned to Rome after a long sojourn in Alexandria, a fact which explains the defectiveness of his information about the countries to the east of his native land, and renders it possible for him to have made use of the " chorography " of Agrippa, a map of the Roman Empire and adjacent countries set up by order of Augustus in the Porticus Vipsaniae.
We may assume that increased stature and breadth imply some sort of inherent physical superiority, and if such an assumption is valid we have in man evidence that albinism is correlated not with constitutional defectiveness but with greater perfectness.
From certain expressions used in astrological texts that are earlier than the 7th century B.C. it would appear, indeed, that the beginnings at least of the calculation of sun and moon eclipses belong to the earlier period, but here, too, the chief work accomplished was after 400 B.e., and the defectiveness of early Babylonian astronomy may be gathered from the fact that as late as the 6th century B.C. an error of almost an entire month was made by the Babylonian astronomers in the attempt to determine through calculation the beginning of a certain year.
