The general consensus is that Euclid was a real historical figure. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid concludes on the hypothesis that Euclid was not a real person,
"This hypothesis is not well accepted by scholars and there is little evidence in its favor". Recently I came across a paper by C. K. Raju http://ckraju.net/papers/Euclid.pdf. In this paper Raju opines that
"If one discounts later Arab sources, as Heath does, our belief in the historicity of Euclid rests wholly and solely on a single remark attributed to Proclus. In this remark, Proclus is not particularly definite about Euclid, for his language admittedly shows that he is the first to speak of Euclid, and is proceeding on speculative inferences about events some seven centuries before his time."
Same argument is also advanced later in his book "Euclid and Jesus".
If Raju is right then it casts serious doubts about historicity of Euclid given how influential Euclid's Elements has been in Greek mathematics and culture. I am surprised that no other scholar has taken note of this and has accepted Euclid as real historical figure.
My question : is Raju's above comment correct? Is there no reference of Euclid before Proclus other than later Arabic sources?
