Ptolemy, and his intellectual descendants, didn't actually use epicycles-on-epicycles. Just a single epicycle on a deferent. Although "epicycles-on-epicycles" might be traditionally emblematic of "incorrectly formulated over-complicated theories", it has no sound basis in the history of astronomy.

The Ptolemaic model, while ineffective at meeting the measurements of planetary movement, was a fairly simple, and elegant, mathematical model.