To think about the projection, let's make a little right triangle like this, where what was the height of our spherical rectangle is the hypotenuse, and its projection is one of the legs.
They all came up with elegant proofs for the famous Pythagorean theorem; the rule that says for a right triangle, the square of one side plus the square of the other side is equal to the square of the hypotenuse.
And so what they thought, and this is what the ancient historians described, is that they effectively tried to draw a right angle triangle with the two entrances at each end of the hypotenuse.
They all came up with elegant proofs for the famous Pythagorean theorem, the rule that says for a right triangle, the square of one side plus the square of the other side is equal to the square of the hypotenuse.