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2Introduction
3The study of the science of the ancient Greco-Roman world falls between two academic stools: on the one hand, the history of science privileges the period opened by the inventions of the telescope and microscope; on the other, “classics” (i.e., Altertumswissenschaft) privileges the works of literary figures such as Homer or Sophocles, Horace or Vergil. The paradigm of classics since Antiquity has been to focus strongly on a single author or even work and to read closely the texts, leading to rich commentaries; however, that paradigm fails to consider larger-scale patterns over time or space. This paradigm persists despite extensive recent flux in the field, especially around literary theory. Thus, scientific works are considered subliterary and neglected, or else they are studied in isolation. Conversely, since the Renaissance, the paradigm of science and its history has been creative destruction, both of theories and of evidence, leading to rapid evolution and diversification. That paradigm fails to consider longer-term trends and traditions, so that the history of many sciences focuses on the most recent few generations, and, for all sciences, scarcely any attention is paid to developments before the Renaissance. Some scholars of ancient science privilege one or more of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine as being somehow more similar to modern science, especially in their results: that distinction is less clear than such a privileging would presume. Although ancient astronomy did determine that the moon shines by reflected sunlight, that eclipses were syzygies of sun, moon, and earth, and that the sun was much larger and more distant from the earth than was the moon, most of the rest of its agreed model, as well as the range of debate, was by modern standards entirely misplaced. Likewise in medicine, if items such as the role of diet and regimen in health, the craniocentric model of cognition, and the ability to treat some injuries and illnesses were genuine accomplishments, much of the practice and theory was misplaced and even damaging. On the other hand, sciences such as geography, mechanics, biology, and even alchemy also produced a comparable corpus of reliable and still valid accomplishments. The range of topics explored in ancient science, as seen in the outline, is quite broad, and includes studies that were sciences within the ancient framework, but would not now pass muster as scientific. Most topics are designated by a suitable ancient term, though modern categories are also used for clarity of presentation. (For the reception and transformation of Greek science by the Romans, see the section on Roman Science.)
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5General Overviews
6The study of the history of science is constantly challenged to explain the known evolution of concepts, while avoiding the twin extremes of relativism and teleological progressivism. Much of the study of early Greek science has been characterized by teleological progressivism, as already seen in Aristotle’s approach of interpreting all the “pre-Socratics” plus Plato as somehow leading up to his theory. Since more nuanced and insightful accounts of those early Greek workers are now available, and since early Greek science is remarkable, this article provides a section devoted to those scholarly efforts, Origins and Early Development. Correlatively, some accounts of the history of science, ancient or later, too much dismiss or neglect the results of science and explain all scientific activity as being primarily the seeking of power or as rhetorical display, an approach pioneered by Nietzsche. Therefore, a section of this article, Surveys, is devoted to surveys and syntheses of Greek science that give due credit to accomplishments, without falling into Aristotle’s error of teleological progressivism. The aims and methods of ancient Greek science represent an early stage in a long and still ongoing evolution, but they are recognizably consonant with what we would demarcate as science. Any evolutionary track of sufficient length will display a greater and greater variety of species occupying a greater and greater number of niches, and so it is with science that we see a greater and greater range of coverage, of understanding, and of results.
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8Origins and Early Development
9An unusual confluence of cultural factors promoted the evolution of scientific activity in ancient Greece by the early 7th century BCE. Already ancient Greeks themselves extensively debated those factors, as seen in Zhmud 2006. Modern scholars invoke the “Presocratic philosophers” as influential individuals, either generally (Furley 1989, Long 1999, and Gregory 2007) or especially Pythagoras (Zhmud 1997). But the phenomenon is likely largely social, as argued in Lloyd 1979 and Lloyd 1987. Keyser 2013 builds on these works, arguing that it is reasonable to suppose that science will be more actively pursued in more prosperous societies since the prerequisite resources for the practice of science will be more available in such societies. Many Greek cities, and several of the empires that emerged from the wars waged by Alexander, were very prosperous indeed, and a strong correlation can be shown between prosperity and scientific achievement in Greek antiquity. The unusual degree of Greek prosperity depended largely on commercial activities: especially trade within the Greek cultural zone, but also outside it. That observation points to the second factor, the relative openness of commercial societies to innovation and change. Science proceeds by proposing new theories, acquiring new data, and making new discoveries, so it is reasonable to suppose that science will be more actively pursued in societies that are more open to innovation and, thus indeed, commercial societies. Societies whose economy is primarily extractive—i.e., producing goods from the land via agriculture, herding, fishing, or mining—will value stability in order to maintain the productivity of their extractive activities. Ancient Greek commercial societies, whether city-state or empire, were marked by contentious public debate about many topics, so that one can fairly speak of a trade in ideas. Those debates were remarkably open, admitting concepts and participants to an unusual degree. That third factor is relevant because science is more broadly pursued in any society where more of the members participate in public discourse on a wider range of concepts. A greater diversity of hypotheses and innovations will emerge from such a discourse, and, moreover, the greater variety of skills and knowledge deployed by the greater diversity of participants will tend to produce more innovations in science as in other areas. Lloyd 1996 studies parallels with, and divergences from, early Chinese science.
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11Furley, David J. 1989. Cosmic problems. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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15Furley reprints sixteen of his essays, adding two new contributions, on everything from infinity to the void (half concern atomism), especially the dynamics of the centrifocal theory, Anaxagoras’s system, motion in the void, the anti-teleological rainfall example in Aristotle, Physics 2.8, and the decisive difference between atomists and Aristotelians about cosmology. Available online for purchase.
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19Gregory, Andrew. 2007. Ancient Greek cosmogony. London: Duckworth.
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23Greek theories of the generation of the cosmos were greatly diverse and opened debates that persisted. In fourteen chapters, Gregory concisely surveys those theories, as found in myths, early philosophers and those of the 5th century BCE (e.g., Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the atomists), Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Christians and Neoplatonists of Late Antiquity.
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27Keyser, Paul T. 2013. The name and nature of science: Authorship in social and evolutionary context. In Writing science: Medical and mathematical authorship in ancient Greece. Edited by Marcus Asper, 17–61. Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Cultures 1. Berlin: De Gruyter.
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29DOI: 10.1515/9783110295122Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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31Keyser argues that prosperity in commercially oriented Greek cities, and their practice of open debate, promoted the more rapid evolution of science. The Greek cultural space provided an unusually rich marketplace of ideas and practice, with a continuing flow of new data and ideas, in which science flourished. Available online for purchase.
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35Lloyd, G. E. R. 1979. Magic, reason and experience: Studies in the origin and development of Greek science. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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39Lloyd studies the relation between “traditional” and “scientific” thought in Greek society, starting with the criticism of magic found in some texts, and how dialectic and politically motivated rhetoric promoted the development of scientific debate and then of empirical research. He makes heavy use of the Hippocratic corpus, Plato, and Aristotle.
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43Lloyd, G. E. R. 1987. The revolutions of wisdom: Studies in the claims and practice of ancient Greek science. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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47Lloyd’s Sather Lectures at Berkeley are here published as six chapters, in which he deepens Lloyd 1979 and studies how the Greek inquiry about nature diverged from, and adhered to, its antecedents. Lloyd focuses on the aims and ambitions of the ancient investigators, and their deployment or avoidance of dogmatism, metaphors, measurement, idealization, and simplification. Available online for purchase.
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51Lloyd, G. E. R. 1996. Adversaries and authorities: Investigations into ancient Greek and Chinese science. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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55Lloyd here compares and contrasts the Greek and Chinese developments of science, gathering and updating published or delivered papers on topics such as causes and correlations, (in)finitude, heavenly harmonies, the politics of the body, and the title essay on adversaries and authorities. The sciences addressed are mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Available online for purchase.
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59Long, A. A., ed. 1999. Cambridge companion to early Greek philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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61DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521441226Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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63The essays cover the Presocratic philosophers and major topics they raise: Long, warning against anachronism, opens by exploring the scope of their work, to give an account of the cosmos; other notable contributions include Algra on the beginnings of cosmology, Huffman on the Pythagoreans, Taylor on the atomists, and Vegetti on the important role of Herodotos and the Hippocratic corpus.
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67Zhmud, Leonid J. 1997. Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion im frühen Pythagoreismus. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
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71See pp. 129–257. Zhmud provides an optimistic yet well-informed reading of the fragmentary sources, covering in the cited pages mathematics, harmonics, acoustics, astronomy, botany, and medicine. He credits Pythagoras with about as much as can reasonably be granted; other scholars would be more skeptical.
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75Zhmud, Leonid J. 2006. The origin of the history of science in classical antiquity. Berlin: De Gruyter.
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79In this work centered on Eudemos’s fragmentary books on the history of geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy, Zhmud attempts to reconstruct their origin and contents and to situate the Peripatetic historiographical project in its context, showing that Eudemos adhered to teleological progressivism. Zhmud narrows the history of science to investigations that would still pass muster as science. Translated and updated from the Russian original. Available online for purchase.
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83Surveys
84Much of the study of ancient Greek science has centered on one or more of: the works of various early natural philosophers (the “Presocratics”), Plato, Aristotle, or especially the four chief schools of Hellenistic philosophy. These four schools set the terms of the debate, and they dominated the intellectual world, from c. 300 BCE to c. 200 CE: the Academy (i.e., Platonists), the Peripatos (i.e., Aristotelians), the Stoa (Stoics, i.e., followers of Zeno of Citium), and the Garden (Epicureans, i.e., followers of Epicurus). For the early thinkers, such questions as “what is everything made of?” or “what is the large-scale structure of the cosmos?” seemed primary. Later, as consensus evolved toward certain models in each field, the questions came to focus on issues within, or at the edges of, those consensus models. Only in Late Antiquity did a single unifying model emerge, which had the effect of reducing the range of questions available for debate. O’Meara 1989 and Sorabji 1990 survey the Late Antique period; and the transition to this period can be seen in the life and work of Galen: see Gill, et al. 2009. For surveys of the earlier periods, i.e., origins to 2nd century CE, see Bowen 1991 and Rihll 1999. A different kind of survey is one that covers one or another of the four main schools, such as Dillon 2003 on the Academy, Leunissen 2010 on the Peripatos, Hahm 1977 on the Stoa, and Asmis 1984 on Epicurus.
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86Asmis, Elizabeth. 1984. Epicurus’ scientific method. Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 42. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
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90Asmis argues that Epicurus proposed a coherent scientific method, starting from self-evident perceptible data and proceeding to observations based directly thereon, which are, in turn, signs of what is unobserved. Asmis then surveys the Epicurean results obtained by that method: atoms and the void, the boundless universe, the nature of motion, etc.
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94Bowen, Alan C., ed. 1991. Science and philosophy in classical Greece. Essays from a conference, “The interaction of science and philosophy in fifth and fourth century Greece,” held by the Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and Science in 1986. Sources and Studies in the History and Philosophy of Classical Science 2. New York: Garland.
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98Bowen edits twelve essays presented at a conference on Plato and Aristotle (Mourelatos, Owens, Turnbull), mathematics (Fowler, Knorr, Mueller), harmonics (Barker, Bowen), astronomy (Berggren), and medicine (Lennox, Lloyd). Kahn opened with “Some Remarks on the Origins of Greek Science and Philosophy,” defending the old thesis that the Milesian philosophers created it.
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102Dillon, John M. 2003. The heirs of Plato: A study of the old Academy, 347–274 B.C. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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106Primarily on the early scholarchs, i.e., Speusippos (chapter 2: interested in classification, number, and physical theory), Xenokrates (chapter 3: systematizer of Platonism), and Polemon (chapter 4), as well as Philippos of Opous (astronomy and mathematics), Hermodoros of Syracuse, Herakleides of Pontus (astronomy), and Crantor of Soloi (all in chapter 5).
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110Gill, Christopher, Tim Whitmarsh, and John Wilkins, eds. 2009. Galen and the world of knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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112DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511770623Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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114A baker’s dozen articles from a conference held at the University of Exeter in 2005 broadly surveying the intellectual role and world of Galen; includes contributions by Nutton on Galen’s library, by Manetti on Galen’s use of Hippocrates, by Chiaradonna on Galen’s relation to “Middle” Platonism, by van der Eijk on Galen’s relation to Aristotle’s school, by Tielemann on Galen’s relation to the Stoics, etc.
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118Hahm, David E. 1977. The origins of Stoic cosmology. Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press.
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122The cyclic cosmology of Zeno was widely accepted from c. 300 BCE to c. 200 CE, and Hahm attempts to deduce its parentage; he traces the Stoic conception of nature as craftsman to Aristotle’s pervasive crafts analogy, the cyclic return to Pythagoreans, and the role of pneuma to medical theories.
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126Leunissen, Mariska. 2010. Explanation and teleology in Aristotle’s science of nature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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128DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511762499Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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130Beginning with Aristotle’s Physics, Leunissen explores that and five more of his works, On the Soul, Parts of Animals, On the Heaven, Generation and Corruption, and Meteorologica, investigating how his teleology informs and produces his accounts of the physical world. Available online for purchase.
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134O’Meara, Dominic J. 1989. Pythagoras revived: Mathematics and philosophy in late antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon.
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138O’Meara studies how the Pythagorean belief in the mathematical foundation of reality led Iamblichus to reinterpret Plato’s works via a version of Pythagoreanism; see especially chapters on “Varieties of Pythagoreanism in the Second and Third Centuries AD” and on the results as seen in “Mathematics and Physics in Proclus.”
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142Rihll, Tracey E. 1999. Greek science. Greece & Rome: New Surveys in the Classics 29. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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146This fine brief survey introduces readers to the range of Greek sciences, with chapters on physics (matter and its transformations), mathematics, astronomy, geography, and biology and medicine. Rihll opens with an insightful essay on the nature of Greek science, covers her material magisterially, and chooses her examples eclectically.
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150Sorabji, Richard, ed. 1990. Aristotle transformed: The ancient commentators and their influence. London: Duckworth.
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154Sorabji edits twenty studies (six new, five revised) on the commentators from Alexander of Aphrodisias (c. 200 CE) through Plotinos (c. 260 CE) and Porphyry (c. 280 CE) to Philoponus (c. 540 CE) and Simplicius (c. 535 CE). Two studies are by Sorabji; see also Sharples on Alexander, P. Hadot on Porphyry, and I. Hadot on Simplicius.
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158Editions of Texts
159Making the texts of the works available is the first challenge, and the necessary foundation for any reliable results, of the study of ancient Greek science. Moreover, to make a given work as widely available as possible, a good translation, with suitable explanatory commentary, is needed. The process of creating an edition of an ancient text must take into account a wide variety of accidents, of transmission and preservation, and of alterations (“corruptions”) that occur when manuscripts are copied, and it is thus a complex, difficult, and tedious endeavor. We cannot know what the ancient writers meant until we can read what they wrote—but it can be very difficult to determine what they wrote if we do not understand what they meant. For works that came to be regarded as canonical, such as Plato’s Timaeus or Euclid’s Elements, good texts have long been available, but for many works the only edition is very old or not reliable. Likewise, reliable English translations are available only for a minority of the texts. The works listed here are recent exemplary efforts toward producing reliable texts, translations, and commentaries. Two series of editions (with translations) include scientific works, the Loeb from Harvard (as in Johnston and Horsley 2011) and the “Budé” from Paris (as in Rashed 2005). The Theophrastus project, ably led by Fortenbaugh, has produced not only numerous conferences on Peripatetics, but also a magisterial edition of the fragments of Theophrastus (Fortenbaugh, et al. 1992–1993). The series Studies in Ancient Medicine, ably edited by Scarborough, van der Eijk, and Hanson, and recently also by Ziegler, publishes not only monographs and collections of essays, but also editions (as in Craik 2009). Huffman 2005 has produced a careful edition of a key but neglected figure, Archytas, to whom Winter 2007 (cited under Mechanics Including Pneumatics) assigns the extant pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanics; Staden 1989 is a magisterial edition of an influential Hellenistic medical writer. Two collections of texts round out the list: Long and Sedley 1987–1989 includes Hellenistic philosophers and Thesleff 1965 gathers neglected Pythagorean texts. Because the corpus of ancient medicine is so very large, a separate section, Medicine: Editions of Texts, is included.
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161Craik, Elizabeth M. 2009. The Hippocratic treatise On Glands. Studies in Ancient Medicine 36. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
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163DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004175631.i-172Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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165Craik provides a text, facing-page English translation, and commentary on this mostly neglected work (c. 400–380 BCE), arguing that its author also wrote the treatises in Lonie 1981 and Potter 2012 (cited under Medicine: Gynecology). The author locates “glands” in the kidneys, the tonsils, the armpits, the groin, and the brain, and knows of the lymphatic system. Available online here and here for purchase, with a link to online content for subscribers.
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169Fortenbaugh, William W., Pamela Huby, Robert W. Sharples, and Dimitri Gutas, eds. 1992–1993. Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his life, writings, thought and influence. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
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173Fortenbaugh and his team provide a thorough edition with facing-page English translation of the numerous fragments of Theophrastus on a wide variety of scientific topics; subsequent volumes (appearing 1994–2010) provide ample commentary. Theophrastus wrote more works of science than Aristotle, but most are lost. See also Coutant 1971 (cited under Alchemy) and Coutant and Eichenlaub 1975 (cited under Meteorologika). Available online for purchase.
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177Huffman, Carl A. 2005. Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, philosopher and mathematician king. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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179DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511482533Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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181In this first book-length study of Archytas, Huffman offers a careful and critical reading of the sources, with edition, translation, and commentary on the extant fragments, that treat geometry, harmonics, optics, and medicine. Archytas, c. 380 BCE, influenced Plato and others, but his works did not survive past Late Antiquity, although Winter 2007 (cited under Mechanics Including Pneumatics) argues that one did. Available online for purchase.
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185Johnston, Ian, and G. H. R. Horsley. 2011. Galen: Method of medicine. 3 vols. Loeb Classical Library 516–518. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press
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189The Loeb Library offers pocket-sized editions with facing-page English translation of Greek and Latin texts of Greek and Roman antiquity; besides Galen, eleven other volumes of Greek science, including Hippocrates and Theophrastos are available. This work by Galen is an account of his principles of therapy, including case studies. Available for purchase in the Loeb Classical Library online: Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3.
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193Long, A. A., and David N. Sedley. 1987–1989. The Hellenistic philosophers. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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197The most comprehensive collection in English of these key texts, primarily Epicurean (physics, §4–15) and Stoic (physics, §43–55), with editions and some explanatory notes; translation and edition are fresh. Epicureans and Stoics strongly influenced ancient science, but their texts are almost wholly lost, so these fragments provide key evidence. See Volume 1, Translations of the Principal Sources, with Philosophical Commentary, available online, and Volume 2, Greek and Latin Texts with Notes and Bibliography, available online, both for purchase.
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201Rashed, Marwan. 2005. Aristote: De la génération et de la corruption. Rev. ed. Collection des Universités de France: Série grecque 444. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
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205This series (often called the “Budé”) offers editions with facing-page French translation of Greek and Latin texts of Greek and Roman antiquity; besides works of Aristotle, the series includes some works of Archimedes, Nicander, and Theophrastos, and of astronomy, geography, optics, alchemy, and medicine. This work by Aristotle concerns the four elements and their transformations. Available for purchase in the “Belles Lettres” series online: online.
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209Staden, Heinrich von. 1989. Herophilus: The art of medicine in early Alexandria. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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213Comprehensive collection of the fragments, with translations, arranged by work and topic, and provided with commentary. Herophilos (c. 270 BCE) was an influential innovative physician in Alexandria who pioneered dissection, demonstrated the function of the nerves, and advanced pulse theory. Part II (pp. 445–578) lists and discusses the fragments of members of his school. Available online for purchase.
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217Thesleff, Holger. 1965. The Pythagorean texts of the Hellenistic period. Acta Academiae Aboensis, Series A, Humaniora 30.1. Ã…bo, Finland: Ã…bo Akademi.
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221Many texts composed in the Hellenistic era were purported to be by early Pythagoreans (especially Timaios of Lokri), and they played a role in the development of science. This is the only complete edition of the surviving texts of that kind. The scientific aspects are primarily mathematical and astronomical.
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225Scholarly Aids
226The few scholarly aids for this field are gathered together here rather than separated by type (textbooks or anthologies or bibliographies). Classicists or philosophers have produced all of them, although Keyser, e.g., also has training in science. Because of that origin, most of them emphasize ancient texts. Moreover, consensus about results in the field is insufficient for scholars to produce textbooks, and anthologies of ancient texts directed at students are rare. On the whole, more scholarly aids are greatly needed, especially items that provide a genuinely synoptic survey, although some topical books were intended as, or have been used as, textbooks: e.g., Evans 1998 (cited under Astronomy), Grmek 1989 (cited under Medicine: Hippocrates), or Jackson 1988 (cited under Roman Science: Medicine, Imperial). One anthology of ancient texts directed at students is Irby-Massie and Keyser 2002; another sourcebook is Newmyer 2010 (cited under “Biology” (Plants and Animals). Kirk, et al. 1983 (“KRS”), an anthology that has been several times updated, is very valuable for the “Presocratics,” but it offers more philosophy than science. The primary ongoing bibliography of classics is the L’année philologique (Association Guillaume Budé and Société international de bibliographique classique 1924–), which despite its name includes archaeology, history, philosophy, and even science. The topical essays in the “ANRW” (Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt) often include extensive bibliography (see Temporini 1987–1996), as do the entries on philosophers in the “DPA” (Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques; see Goulet 1989–). The ANRW was intended to provide a comprehensive and even encyclopedic survey of the Roman world, and most of its essays provide a valuable snapshot of their topic, but the selection of topics, at least for science, is somewhat ad hoc. Like KRS and the DPA, the focus of the Routledge History of Philosophy (see Taylor 1997 and Furley 1999) and of the ongoing online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is philosophy; but—also like KRS and the DPA—they both include significant ancient science. The sole encyclopedia wholly devoted to ancient science is Keyser and Irby-Massie 2008.
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228Association Guillaume Budé and Société international de bibliographie classique. 1924–. L’année philologique: Bibliographie critique et analytique de l’antiquité gréco-latine. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
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232The latest volume is 82 (2011); available to subscribers online. Indexes books and articles by ancient author and by topic, with sections on ancient scientific writers and on some of the topics of ancient science. Includes brief abstracts (in French, English, German, etc.) of indexed items and partial lists of reviews of books. This is still more comprehensive than google-scholar, the Science Citation Index (SCI), or the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI).
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236Furley, David J., ed. 1999. Routledge history of philosophy. Vol. 2, From Aristotle to Augustine. London: Routledge.
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240Covers Aristotle’s science (by Furley), his students (by Sharples), Epicurus (by Everson), Zeno the Stoic (by Inwood), mathematics and astronomy (by Bowen), and biology (by Hankinson). Available online for purchase.
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244Goulet, Richard, ed. 1989–. Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Vol. 1. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
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248The latest volume is 5b (2012); there are also three supplement volumes. Includes articles on all known ancient philosophers, thus many ancient scientists, with copious bibliography and ample discussion but often neglecting scientific aspects of their work; the bibliography cited is mainly French. Available online for purchase.
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252Irby-Massie, Georgia L., and Paul T. Keyser. 2002. Greek science of the Hellenistic era. London and New York: Routledge.
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256The editors provide translations (a third of them being entirely new) of more than one hundred scientific authors active from 320 BCE to 230 CE, in eleven topical chapters (mathematics, astronomy, astrology, geography, mechanics, optics, pneumatics, alchemy, biology, medicine, and “psychology”) with contextualizing introductions. This volume in large measure replaces Morris R. Cohen and I. E. Drabkin, A Sourcebook in Greek Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948), outdated and marred by teleological progressivism. The introduction by Keyser offers an early version of Keyser 2013 (see General Overviews: Origins and Early Development). Available online for purchase.
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260Keyser, Paul T., and Georgia L. Irby-Massie. 2008. Encyclopedia of ancient natural scientists. London: Routledge.
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264Approximately 120 contributors have created a comprehensive encyclopedia of all known (more than 2,000) ancient scientists up to 650 CE. Long entries on Aristotle and Galen adjoin brief notes on obscure figures cited once (all scientists cited in this article appear here), each with a brief orienting bibliography. There are extensive appendixes (gazetteer, glossary, timeline), plus indexes, enabling study. Available online for purchase.
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268Kirk, Geoffrey S., John E. Raven, and Malcolm Schofield. 1983. The Presocratic philosophers: A critical history with a selection of texts. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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272Philosophically oriented but with good material on ancient science, this work covers the precursors of philosophy and science, the early thinkers such as Anaximenes, the early Greek-Italian thinkers such as Empedocles and Philolaus, as well as Anaxagoras and the atomists. Greek texts are provided with English translations and extensive discussions. Available online for purchase.
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276Taylor, Christopher C. W., ed. 1997. Routledge history of philosophy. Vol. 1, From the beginning to Plato. London: Routledge.
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280Volume one covers the earliest Greek thinkers of whom we know, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes (the “Milesians”), by Schofield, then Anaxagoras (by Taylor), Empedocles (by Wright), Plato (by several authors), and the Pythagoreans (by Hussey); there is also an essay on mathematics by Mueller, see Mathematics. Available online: From the Beginning to Plato.
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284Temporini, Hildegard, ed. 1987–1996. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung II: Principat. Vols. 36–37. Berlin: De Gruyter.
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288The seven parts of volume 36, and the three parts of volume 37, of this massive work (abandoned after 1998) contain numerous lengthy articles (German, French, English, and Italian) on selected aspects of ancient science. These volumes are available online for purchase. The table of contents is available online and the searchable index is also available online.
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292Zalta, Edward N., ed. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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296Offers lengthy articles on major figures of ancient philosophy, including scientific aspects, e.g., Alcmaeon, plus topical entries, e.g., Ancient Atomism; its coverage extends to Late Antiquity, e.g., Olympiodorus.
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300Journals
301Although no journal appears to be devoted solely to ancient science, articles occasionally appear in many journals of Greek and Roman studies; moreover, journals of the history of mathematics, journals of the history of medicine, and journals of ancient philosophy likewise sometimes treat ancient science. Better coverage is given by the following journals, most of which have a specific topical focus. Ambix focuses on alchemy (and chemistry), a topic appearing rarely in other journals. The focus of Apeiron has depended upon its editorship, now at the Humboldt, but consistently treats ancient philosophy and often science, especially if there is some relation to philosophy. The Archive for History of Exact Sciences concentrates on “hard” sciences; similar but even more focused is the Journal for the History of Astronomy. Two of the journals focus on medical topics, the Bulletin of the History of Medicine and the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. Probably the most influential English-language journal of the history of science is Isis, which occasionally includes ancient science. The new journal SCIAMVS: Sources and Commentaries in Exact Sciences is published in Japan. It is held in few libraries but covers ancient science broadly. The absence of a journal focused on ancient science, and the scattered and partial representation of ancient science in journals of classics and of the history of science, derives from the marginal position of ancient science in the academy, as noted in the Introduction.
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303Ambix. 1937–.
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306
307Covers all areas relevant to the history of alchemy, including ancient (but most articles concern medieval, Arabic, or Renaissance alchemy). The sole scholarly journal focused on the history of alchemy. Content available online.
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311Apeiron. 1966–.
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313Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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315Covers ancient philosophy, ancient science, and especially problems that concern both fields; the focus has varied over the years with changes in the editorship.
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317Find this resource:
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319Archive for History of Exact Sciences. 1960–.
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321Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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323Explores and analyzes the history of mathematical and quantitative thought and precise theories of nature, plus anything that can be treated as experimental science. Editorial standards are very high, and articles are typically lengthy. Most articles concern modern sciences, and whether ancient or modern, the topics are mathematics, mechanics, astronomy, and optics.
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327Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 1933–.
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330
331Covers social, cultural, and scientific aspects of the history of medicine for all periods and areas; thus, articles on ancient medicine are sparse but, when present, of high quality. Content to issue 74 (2000) is available for purchase online; and from issue 70 (1996) online.
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335Isis. 1912–.
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337Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
338
339Founded by George Sarton (b. 1884–d. 1956) and dedicated to the history of science and its cultural influences; probably the premier history of science journal, at least in the Anglophone world. Despite Sarton’s own comprehensive view of science, articles on ancient science are rare.
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343Journal for the History of Astronomy. 1970–.
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346
347Covers the history of astronomy from the earliest times (indeed articles on Paleolithic astronomy have appeared) up to the present (the focus of most of the articles). Although rare, articles on ancient astronomy here are of high quality. Complete content, but with poor user-interface, is available online; and content up to issue 31 (2000) also available online.
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350
351Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 1946–.
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354
355Covers all aspects of the history of medicine, based on texts (i.e., not on archaeology or palaeopathology), both what was done (medical practice) as well as how it was received (by patients and peers). Medical professionals are perhaps more interested in the history of their science than most other modern scientists, yet here too articles on medicine before William Harvey (b. 1578–d. 1657) are rare.
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359SCIAMVS: Sources and Commentaries in Exact Sciences. 2000–.
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362
363Covers the history of the exact sciences before 1600 CE, including primarily mathematics and astronomy. Many of the articles are quite lengthy and important, but the journal, published in Japan, is hard to obtain elsewhere.
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366
367Mathematics
368Greek mathematics is often declared the primary or even sole success story of ancient Greek science. Moreover, mathematics is presented as having been universally honored (if not universally practiced) in Greek society, as a perpetual touchstone of the highest achievement of the human mind. It must, however, be kept in mind that Greek geometry arbitrarily restricted its methods (the “straight-edge and compass” rule), rarely engaged with motion or change, and is—like all ancient fields of study—known to us through an unfortunately small proportion of its works. Furthermore, several important schools of thought either rejected geometry (the Epicureans) or else seem to have neglected it (the Peripatetics), and what the Platonists and Pythagoreans made of it seems to most modern mathematicians to have been largely numerology. Nevertheless, much of the geometry was at an impressively advanced level, and the chief surviving works—Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonios—inspired mathematicians of the Renaissance and were used as textbooks through the 19th century, in Europe and the Americas at least. The damaged and partial state of our knowledge of Greek mathematics may be seen in these three observations. The Method of Archimedes, recently more completely recovered in Netz, et al. 2011, accomplishes most of the basic practical results of the integral calculus (allowing computation of the areas and volumes of figures defined by complex curves through the summation of infinite series). Likewise, Archimedes and Hipparchus, as well as others, studied combinatorics of the sort later developed by Blaise Pascal (b. 1623–d. 1662) and others, i.e., computations of the number of ways of arranging a specified set of objects under some constraints. Finally, our earliest extant evidence of Greek “algebra,” the manipulation of linear and nonlinear arithmetical equations with one or more unknowns, derives from Diophantos, of the mid-3rd century CE—but undoubtedly earlier works, now lost, did exist. Berggren 1984 surveys the state of research in the field, and Cuomo 2001 surveys what is currently known about the results of ancient mathematics. Mueller 1997 offers an account of the development of Greek mathematics up to Euclid, although one must take note of the challenging alternative reconstruction in Fowler 1999. Knorr 1989 on Euclid, Netz 2009 on Archimedes (and others), Decorps-Foulquier 2000 on Apollonios, and Jones 1986 on Pappus each carefully studies one key collection of mathematical texts.
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370Berggren, J. L. 1984. History of Greek mathematics: A survey of recent research. Historia Mathematica 11.4: 394–410.
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372DOI: 10.1016/0315-0860(84)90024-7Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
373
374Berggren emphasizes that despite many publications, important issues in Greek mathematics are still disputed; he surveys work done on methods, on irrationals, and on Archimedes, identifying the basic papers and issues in each—the works of Fowler, Knorr, and Mueller play key roles.
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378Cuomo, Serafina. 2001. Ancient mathematics. New York: Routledge.
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381
382Cuomo treats four eras of ancient Greek mathematics, “early” (up to c. 330 BCE), Hellenistic (especially Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonios), Greco-Roman (especially Vitruvius, Heron, Nicomachos, and Ptolemy), and Late Antiquity (3rd to 6th centuries). For each, Cuomo first presents a selection of the evidence, then a chapter of open-ended questions. Available online for purchase.
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386Decorps-Foulquier, Micheline. 2000. Recherches sur les Coniques d’Apollonios de Pergé et leurs commentateurs grecs: Histoire de la transmission des livres I–IV. Paris: Klincksieck.
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389
390Decorps-Foulquier exploits Eutocius’s commentary (c. 520 CE) on Apollonios’s Conics (c. 200 BCE), plus the evidence of Serenus of Antinoeia (c. 215 CE) and Pappus of Alexandria (c. 305 CE), to elucidate how the work was used and altered in the seven centuries after Apollonios. Decorps-Foulquier also discusses the reception of Eutocius’s edition.
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393
394Fowler, David H. 1999. The mathematics of Plato’s Academy: A new reconstruction. 2d ed. Oxford and New York: Clarendon.
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398First published in 1987. Fowler infers a central place for ratio theory in Plato’s Academy, and he argues that early Greek mathematics used lengths not numbers, often via the “Euclidean algorithm” (for least common denominators); the computation of continued fractions plays a key role. The second edition revises chapter 5 and adds chapters 10–11. Available online for purchase.
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402Jones, Alexander. 1986. Pappus of Alexandria, book 7 of the collection. 2 vols. Sources in the history of mathematics and physical sciences 8. New York: Springer.
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404DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4612-4908-5Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
405
406Pappos (c. 310 CE) wrote various mathematical (and astronomical and geographical) works, among which Collection 7 concerns analysis of geometrical problems, from Euclid (Data and Porisms) and Apollonios (the Conics and six lost works). Jones provides an edition with facing-page English translation (Vol. 1), and careful mathematical commentary (Vol. 2). Available online for purchase.
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410Knorr, Wilbur R. 1989. Textual studies in ancient and medieval geometry. Boston: Birkhäuser.
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412DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4612-3690-0Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
413
414Knorr studies the redaction history of three groups of mathematical texts, both to recover what was actually written and to understand textual distortions in ancient and medieval study of Greek mathematics. The groups are: (1) duplications of the cube, (2) Arabic texts on angle trisection and cube duplication, (3) Archimedes’ Dimension of the Circle.
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418Mueller, Ian. 1997. Greek arithmetic, geometry, and harmonics: Thales to Plato. In The Routledge history of philosophy. Vol. 1, From the beginning to Plato. Edited by Christopher C. W. Taylor, 271–322. London: Routledge.
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421
422Surveys the accomplishments of Greek mathematics, organized around its earliest extant work, Euclid’s Elements: Eudoxos is discussed under Books 5 and 12, Theaitetos under Books 10 and 13. Mueller then covers harmonics, arithmetic, and geometry before Euclid, focusing on Pythagoras, Hippasos of Metapontion, and Hippocrates and Oinopides of Chios.
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426Netz, Reviel. 2009. Ludic proof: Greek mathematics and the Alexandrian aesthetic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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428DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511581472Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
429
430Netz supplements his The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), which explored the lettered-diagram-and-formulaic-language style of Greek proofs (especially in Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonios), with a study of the aesthetic nature of such mathematics. He argues that Hellenistic mathematics was “ludic,” like contemporary poetry, in playing with mathematical concepts and in enjoying surprise. Available online for purchase.
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434Netz, Reviel, William Noel, Natalie Tchernetska, and Nigel Wilson, eds. 2011. The Archimedes palimpsest. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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436Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
437
438Volume 1 of this magnificent book offers a detailed codicological description; a three-part reconstruction of the tangled history of the book from 1229; explanations of the imaging techniques exploited; and how this palimpsest fits into Archimedes scholarship (by Netz). Volume 2 offers facing-page high-quality images and diplomatic transcriptions of the texts: Archimedes, Hyperides, and the Aristotle commentary. Images available online for purchase.
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441
442Harmonics
443The Greek science of harmonics explored the principles governing the arrangement of pitches, in instruments and songs, i.e., concords, harmonies, tunings, etc. The goals of this science were to identify and explain the tonal structure of music, whereas other studies covered rhythmic and metrical aspects of music. Modern “classical” music, i.e., the European post-Renaissance tradition, relies on two scales, namely “major” and “minor,” whereas Greek music deployed seven or more modes, such as the “Dorian,” the “Lydian,” and the “Phrygian.” Greek musical writers assumed that harmonics could be mathematized, but they disputed how to do so—some depended upon the human ear to perceive concords, whereas others measured lengths of strings or dimensions of other resounding objects as a proxy for the “speed” of the sounds (higher pitches being “faster”). Greek music held that only the octave, the fifth, and the fourth were concords, and most writers on music alleged ethical aspects to different modes, so much so that Aristophanes jokes about it in the Clouds. An early and highly influential theorist was Aristoxenos of Taras (c. 330 BCE); Ptolemy the astronomer also wrote on harmonics; and a Late Antique writer, Aristides Quintilianus (c. 300 CE), was widely read in the Byzantine period. The work of Barker has been instrumental in making Greek music more widely understood and studied: Barker 2004 gathers all the extant texts; Barker 2016 provides a valuable précis; and Barker 2007 presents a magisterial synthesis. Mathiesen 1999 also offers a synthesis, oriented more to the later writers and showing how Greek music influenced medieval music. The essays in Huffman 2012, an edited volume, study the whole work of Aristoxenos, who was not solely a harmonic theorist. Creese 2010 studies the primary instrument exploited by ancient theorists for their musical experiments; Pöhlmann and West 2001 gathers all extant scores of Greek music, most of them fragmentary, as data for an analysis of actual music.
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445Barker, Andrew D. 2016. Music. In the Oxford Classical Dictionary. Digital ed. Edited by Sander Goldberg. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
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447DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.4294Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
448
449In this unusually long and thorough article on ancient science in a reference work of classics, Barker surveys all aspects of ancient Greek music, instruments, history, theory, harmonics, rhythmics, notation, and the nature of the surviving evidence for music generally and scores in particular. Originally published in 1996, in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3d ed., edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, 1003–2012 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press).
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453Barker, Andrew D. 2004. Greek musical writings. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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456
457Volume 2 of this sourcebook of texts in translation (Harmonic and Acoustic Theory) is more relevant to ancient science, covering harmonics from Pythagoras and Archytas to Late Antiquity, with copious notes and introductory essays on each text. The longest texts are complete: Aristoxenos, the Sectio Canonis, Nicomachus, Ptolemy, and Aristides Quintilianus. Available online: Volume 1, The Musician and His Art, is available online, and Volume 2 is available online, both for purchase.
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460
461Barker, Andrew D. 2007. The science of harmonics in classical Greece. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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463DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511482465Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
464
465Barker thoroughly covers Aristoxenos of Taras, the primary extant Greek musical theorist, plus also Pythagorean harmonics (i.e., Philolaus and Archytas), Plato, and Aristotle. Barker explains how Aristoxenos set his field on a new more empirical and scientific foundation, whereas Pythagoreans had linked music to numbers and the cosmos. Available online for purchase.
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469Creese, David. 2010. The monochord in ancient Greek harmonic science. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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471Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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473The monochord was a stringed instrument with adjustable bridge(s); it was used as a scientific instrument to demonstrate the geometry of concords. Creese studies how writers on Greek harmonics from Pythagoras to Ptolemy used the device to argue about claims, and how they dealt with the necessary inexactitude of a physical instrument. Available online for purchase.
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477Huffman, Carl A., ed. 2012. Aristoxenus of Tarentum. Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 17. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
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479Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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481Eleven papers from the “Project Theophrastus” colloquium (2007), three of which concern harmonics: Barker (musical history), Creese (musical ethos), and Rocconi (music therapy); the others concern Aristoxenos as Peripatetic, especially as biographer of philosophers. The series is available online, and the volume is available online, both for purchase.
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483Find this resource:
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485Mathiesen, Thomas J. 1999. Apollo’s lyre: Greek music and music theory in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press.
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487Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
488
489Covers types of music (hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, etc.: pp. 29–157), types of instruments (strings, winds, and percussion: pp. 159–286), and harmonic theory (pp. 287–607), from Aristoxenos through 2nd-century CE writers and into Late Antiquity, especially Aristides Quintilianus (pp. 521–582), fundamental for medieval music. Available online.
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493Pöhlmann, Egert, and Martin L. West. 2001. Documents of ancient Greek music: The extant melodies and fragments edited and transcribed with commentary. Oxford: Clarendon.
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496
497This is an edition, translation, and commentary of all known fragments of Greek musical scores. The earliest are for Euripides, but may be 3rd-century BCE scores, and two-thirds are from the Roman period (up to the 4th century CE). The most extensive are the eight scores of Mesomedes, 2nd century CE. Available online for purchase.
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501Optics
502Greek optics was primarily geometrical, although various thinkers propounded theories of color and light. For Greeks, seeing was always closely allied to believing, as they explicitly stated and as is apparent from many metaphors in Greek. There were three chief theories of vision. Democritus and other atomists, including Epicurus, claimed that “images” (eidola) streamed forth from objects, an atomically thin layer peeling off again and again, and were intercepted by our eyes, thus explaining how we formed images (and making “light” merely a special kind of image, eidolon). Aristotle argued that light was the actualization of the potential state of being that was called “transparency,” and thus he had trouble explaining many aspects of optics. Plato and others proposed that rays emanated from our eyes, which then mingled with external fire and light to produce sight, thus making vision a sense that, like taste and touch, involved contact. All three theories had as their result that vision was, on the whole, a reliable source of data about the world. Thus, the mathematically confirmed results of geometrical optics provided a welcome support for claims that sight (and implicitly other senses) are reliable; as Smith 1982 shows, that assumption blinded Ptolemy to the consequences of his results in investigating refraction. His work has been very insightful in explaining ancient optics, and Smith 1996 provides a thorough investigation of a key but difficult text, whereas Smith 1999 is a useful survey of the whole field. Burton 1945 and Toomer 1976 make key early texts available in English. Brownson 1981, Knorr 1991, and Berryman 1998 explore the consequences and significance of optical theories.
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504Berryman, Sylvia. 1998. Euclid and the sceptic: A paper on vision, doubt, geometry, light and drunkenness. Phronesis 43.2: 176–196.
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506DOI: 10.1163/15685289860511078Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
507
508Berryman argues that the skeptical challenge to theories of perception provoked an exploration of how errors occur, especially what we would call optical illusions, and Euclid’s Optics offers a model of perception that includes a step of mental reconstruction, along with geometrical explanations of error formation.
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512Brownson, Carol Don. 1981. Euclid’s Optics and its compatibility with linear perspective. Archive for History of Exact Sciences 24.3: 165–194.
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514DOI: 10.1007/BF00357417Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
515
516Brownson argues that the canonical claim that ancient optics is incompatible with linear perspective is unfounded; Brownson further argues that neither of the geometrical structures, ancient optics or linear perspective (allegedly first discovered in the Renaissance), is arbitrary or conventional. The article sparked great debate within the history of ancient optics.
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518Find this resource:
519
520Burton, Harry E. 1945. Euclid’s Optics. Journal of the Optical Society of America 35.5: 357–372.
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522DOI: 10.1364/JOSA.35.000357Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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524Still the only complete translation of Euclid’s Optics into English, the article includes a few notes; the diagrams are also translated (with G for Γ, e.g.).
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526Find this resource:
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528Knorr, Wilbur R. 1991. On the principle of linear perspective in Euclid’s Optics. Centaurus 34.3: 193–210.
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530DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0498.1991.tb00694.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
531
532Knorr argues against Brownson that there is little explicit textual support in Euclid’s Optics for actual linear perspective, and that the sole textual basis, proposition 10, has probably suffered textual alteration. (He does not address Brownson’s claim that Euclid’s optics is compatible with linear perspective.)
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534Find this resource:
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536Smith, A. Mark. 1982. Ptolemy’s search for a law of refraction: A case-study in the classical methodology of saving the appearances and its limitations. Archive for History of Exact Sciences 26.3: 221–240.
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540Ptolemy performed experiments on refraction, apparently intending to elicit a law of refraction, and published his results. Smith shows that Ptolemy’s mathematical and philosophical assumptions, such as that any law would be expressible in terms solely of geometrical optics, blinded him to the regularities in his data, which conform well to Snell’s law.
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544Smith, A. Mark. 1996. Ptolemy’s theory of visual perception: An English translation of the “Optics” with introduction and commentary. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 86.2. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
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546Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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548Ptolemy’s Optics (in which he studied refraction) survives only in a damaged medieval Latin translation; Smith translates this into English and provides an orienting and thorough introduction.
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552Smith, A. Mark. 1999. Ptolemy and the foundations of ancient mathematical optics: A source based guided study. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 89.3. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
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554Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
555
556Smith studies all the main topics of ancient geometrical optics: (1) theories of perception, especially “eidola” versus “vision rays”; (2) perspectival optics; (3) “catoptrics”: plane and curved mirrors and the law of reflection; (4) “dioptrics”: lenses and no law of refraction; and (5) the rainbow and burning mirrors.
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560Toomer, Gerald J. 1976. Diocles on burning mirrors. Sources in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences 1. Berlin: Springer.
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562DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-80981-1Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
563
564Besides this text, Diocles is primarily known from brief remarks in Arabic sources. Toomer provides an edition and facing-page translation (pp. 34–113, with reconstructed figures) of the Arabic translation of the lost Greek work, photographs of the manuscript (pp. 114–137), and commentary (pp. 138–175); he shows that the Greek of Eutokios paraphrases Diocles §7–8 and 10–13. Available online for purchase.
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567
568Astronomy
569Greek astronomy, along with Mathematics and Medicine, is often cited as one of the success stories of ancient Greek science. Moreover, a central intellectual role is claimed for astronomy. Indeed, ancient astronomy did determine that the moon shines by reflected sunlight, that eclipses were syzygies of sun, moon, and earth, and that the sun was much larger and more distant from the earth than was the moon. However, most of the rest of its agreed model, as well as the range of debate, were by modern standards entirely misplaced, so that the “success” of Greek astronomy must be viewed in a qualified way. Plato and others did advance claims for the central importance of astronomy, but those same thinkers viewed the planets as exemplary divine beings. Not all Greeks praised astronomy: Epicureans pursued it only far enough to eliminate anxiety about heavenly events, rejected the theory of the spherical earth, and denied that we could be certain about eclipses, lunar light, or even the size of the sun. Greek astronomy is notable for attempting mundane and deterministic models of the heavens. Early models were very diverse, including both the theory of Xenophanes that the sun coalesced daily from clouds or sparks, and also Philolaus’s model in which the earth, sun, and all the planets orbited an unseen central “Hearth.” The consensus evolved to a geocentric model, with the moon orbiting innermost and the fixed stars outermost, but otherwise debate persisted. In the 4th century BCE, a concentric-spheres model was popular, propounded by Eudoxos, augmented by Callippus, and advocated by Aristotle. By about 200 BCE that model had been largely replaced by the epicyclic model, later fully developed by Ptolemy (c. 150 CE), see Toomer 1998. Babylonian data, based on centuries of observations, were incorporated by Hipparchus (c. 150 BCE) and perhaps earlier. The Greeks themselves began to record careful dated observations in the early 3rd century BCE (Goldstein and Bowen 1991), and scattered traces of careful and precise observations are found in Aristotle. Moreover, Archimedes records that Aristarchus proposed a heliocentric model of the heavens, a theory rejected as unsupported by the evidence and impious to the goddess Earth. Jones 1999 and Kidd 1997 provide texts that widen the range of Greek astronomy; Bowen and Wildberg 2009 provides papers that explore a key astronomical work of Aristotle. Three significant and indispensable accounts of the history of Greek astronomy are Dicks 1970, Neugebauer 1975, and Evans 1998.
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571Bowen, Alan C., and Christian Wildberg, eds. 2009. New perspectives on Aristotle’s De Caelo. Philosophia Antiqua 117. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
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574
575Ten papers on various aspects of Aristotle’s influential work on the structure of the cosmos, covering, among other topics, his geocentric theory (Matthen), his spherical cosmos (Pellegrin), and his views on the four elements and their “natural” motions (Gill, Hankinson). Available online for purchase.
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579Dicks, D. R. 1970. Early Greek astronomy to Aristotle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
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582
583Dicks constructs a skeptical account of early astronomy, strictly eschewing retrojection, and shows how that makes more sense of the evidence. Chapter 1 presents a clear summary of the basic principles of Greek astronomy, and he then surveys Homer and Hesiod, Anaxagoras and contemporaries, Pythagoreans and contemporaries, Plato, Eudoxus, and Aristotle and Callippus.
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587Evans, James. 1998. The history and practice of ancient astronomy. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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590
591In seven chapters, Evans guides the reader through all the key concepts and procedures of ancient astronomy, exploiting ancient texts and methods. He starts with the “birth of astronomy” (in Babylon and Hesiod) and moves through the celestial sphere, sundials and astrolabes, calendars, solar theory, the fixed stars, and planetary theory. Available online for purchase.
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595Goldstein, Bernard R., and Alan C. Bowen. 1991. The introduction of dated observations and precise measurement in Greek astronomy. Archive for History of Exact Sciences 43.2: 93–132.
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597DOI: 10.1007/BF00375347Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
598
599Bowen and Goldstein have jointly and individually published a valuable suite of papers, eschewing retrojection and advocating a skeptical approach to Greek astronomy; here they critically examine the means, nature, and purpose of dated astronomical observations, the earliest being those that Ptolemy records that Timokharis made in 295 BCE.
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603Jones, Alexander. 1999. Astronomical papyri from Oxyrhynchus. 2 vols. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 233. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
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606
607Jones edits and translates more than 180 papyri from Oxyrhynchus that reflect the practice of technical (rather than descriptive) astronomy, including sixteen fragments of theoretical or instructional texts, more than one hundred tables, and almost seventy horoscopes. Those form Volume 2; the commentaries form Volume 1, showing the non-Ptolemaic character of the tables. Available online for purchase.
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609Find this resource:
610
611Kidd, Douglas. 1997. Aratus’ Phaenomena: Edited with introduction, translation and commentary. Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 34. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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614
615Aratos of Soloi (c. 275 BCE) composed a long poem on the sky and weather signs; it was probably the most popular work of science in Antiquity. Kidd provides an edition and facing-page English translation (pp. 72–157) and a commentary treating both literary and scientific aspects (pp. 166–577). Available online for purchase.
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617Find this resource:
618
619Neugebauer, Otto. 1975. A history of ancient mathematical astronomy. 3 vols. Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences 1. New York: Springer.
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621DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-61910-6Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
622
623Magisterial survey of all mathematical aspects of ancient astronomy, departing from Ptolemy’s Almagest (including Apollonios and Hipparchos), then covering Babylonian astronomy and early Greek astronomy and astronomy of the Greco-Roman period and Late Antiquity. Neugebauer uses ancient methods and sexagesimal numbers, but modern notation, to analyze and interpret ancient evidence. Available online for purchase.
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625Find this resource:
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627Toomer, Gerald J. 1998. Ptolemy’s Almagest. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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629Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
630
631Toomer translates the culminating product of ancient astronomy, with reconstructed diagrams and brief notes. Ptolemy started from Hipparchan trigonometry (Book 1), and proceeded through spherical astronomy (Book 2), solar theory (Book 3), lunar theory (Books 4–5), eclipses (Book 6), the fixed stars (Books 7–8), to the longitudinal (Books 9–11) and the “non-uniform” (Books 12–13) planetary motions. Available online for purchase.
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633Find this resource:
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635Astrology
636For most of us, the alleged influence of the planetary positions upon earthly life seems unlikely or absurd. It was otherwise in Antiquity. To people who view the earth as central, the orbiting sun and moon clearly bestow influence upon the earth, and chronological correlations would easily seem causal. Our industrial economy is not fundamentally seasonal, but all agricultural and prior economies were, and in Greece—as in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China—celestial omens presaging seasonal events were widely accepted. The early Greek poet Hesiod offered a farmers’ almanac correlating agricultural activities with astral events, sometimes writing as if the stars had agency, and viewing lunar phases as ominous. Moreover, the geocentric cosmos seemed rather tightly coupled, so that both Herodotos and Aristotle could describe some heavenly events as caused by the winds or by “exhalations” rising from the earth. The Hippocratic corpus considers environment crucial to health, and that environment included celestial events marking and causing seasonal transitions. Plato advocates viewing the planets as gods, the same gods as found associated with the planets in Babylonian traditions, and those associations persist via the Romans in our own names for the planets. A leading role in promoting the belief in astrology was played by the Stoic model of the cosmos as deeply interconnected by the all-pervading pneuma. Initially, stellar omens were applied to whole regions (“there will be a drought” or the like), and the casting of individual horoscopes in Greek (or Latin) appears to have commenced in the lst century BCE. Most surveys of astrology thus privilege the Latin sources (cf. Roman Science: Astrology and Cosmology), but see the somewhat underdigested mass of data in Gundel and Gundel 1966. Pingree 1976 and Obbink 2006 are editions of the fragments of the works of several early Greek astrologers who wrote in verse. Vettius Valens is one of the earliest extant Greek astrologers, and provides much data on practice, see Riley n.d.; and one relatively well-studied text is in Latin, by Firmicus Maternus, see Bram 2005. Much of our early evidence for astrology derives from horoscopes preserved on papyri recovered from excavations in Egypt: see Neugebauer and van Hoesen 1959.
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638Bram, Jean Rhys. 2005. Ancient astrology theory and practice: Matheseos Libri VIII by Firmicus Maternus. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes.
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640Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
641
642First edition 1975. Bram translates the Latin text of the Teubner edition (1913) and P. Monat, Firmicus Maternus: Mathesis, 3 vols. (Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”, 1992, 1994, 1997) should also be consulted. Firmicus’s book (c. 340 CE) is the most extensive practical treatise of astrology to survive. Bram (and Monat) provide brief explanatory notes.
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644Find this resource:
645
646Gundel, Wilhelm, and Hans-Georg Gundel. 1966. Astrologumena: Die astrologische Literatur in der Antike und ihre Geschichte. Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner.
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648Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
649
650The father Wilhelm having died, the son completed his annotated compendium of valuable data on Greek (and Roman) astrologers, which is marred by an overemphasis on Egyptian origins and by the neglect both of Babylonian origins and of Arabic and Sassanian evidence. (See Pingree in Gnomon 40.3 [1968]: 276–280.)
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652Find this resource:
653
654Neugebauer, Otto, and H. B. van Hoesen. 1959. Greek horoscopes. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 48. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
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656Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
657
658The editors provide edition, translation, and commentary and analysis on almost two hundred horoscopes, followed by extensive analysis and discussion; supplemented by eighteen papyri in Donata Baccani, Oroscopi greci (Messina, Italy: Sicania, 1992), and sixty-nine in Jones 1999 (cited under Astronomy). Horoscopes preserve valuable data about astronomical concepts and methods of calculating planetary positions before Ptolemy.
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660Find this resource:
661
662Obbink, Dirk. 2006. Anubio: Carmen astrologicum elegiadum. Leipzig: Teubner.
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664Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
665
666Obbink provides an edition of this fragmentary astrological poet of the late lst century CE, preserved on papyrus scraps and a late antique partial prose paraphrase, and heavily exploited by Firmicus Maternus (on whom see Bram 2005). Available online for purchase.
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668Find this resource:
669
670Pingree, David E. 1976. Dorothei Sidonii Carmen Astrologicum: Interpretationem Arabicam in Linguam Anglicam versam una cum Dorothei fragmentis et Graecis et Latinis. Leipzig: Teubner.
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672Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
673
674Pingree edits and translates the Arabic version, itself based on a 3rd-century Pahlavi version of the lost Greek original; a few fragments of the Greek verses survive (pp. 323–427). Dorotheus wrote his influential astrological poem c. 50 CE, explaining the alleged influences of various planetary configurations upon human life. Available online for purchase.
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676Find this resource:
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678Pingree, David E. 1978. Yavanajātaka of Sphujidhvaja. 2 vols. Harvard Oriental Series 48. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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680Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
681
682This one small part of Pingree’s life-long project, to make Sanskrit science accessible outside India, is an edition (Vol. 1) and translation with commentary (Vol. 2) of a versified astrological text, 269–270 CE, based on a Greek (“Yavana–”) original. Pingree here shows how Greek works influenced Sanskrit science.
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684Find this resource:
685
686Riley, Mark. n.d. A survey of Vettius Valens. Sacramento: California State Univ. Press.
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689
690Vettius wrote a lengthy compendium of astrology (c. 165 CE), providing numerous precisely worked examples (including his own birthdate, 8 February 120). The editors had accepted this valuable survey on Vettius, covering his life, faith in astrology, and book (which cites many predecessors), into the Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung II: Principat 37.5, although as noted in Scholarly Aids, the series appears abandoned.
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692Find this resource:
693
694Geography
695Geography begins as an attempt to give an account of the shape and content of the land around us. Early Greeks—like early people everywhere—viewed the earth as flat; another common theme is to view one’s homeland as somehow central or ideal. The figure of Odysseus (the traveler who knows many cities and peoples) is typical and prototypical of Greek explorations and understandings of their world. Egyptians and Babylonians created maps, more or less schematic, of the world they knew, and Anaximander (c. 580 BCE) is said to have done the same. Herodotos laughs at the schematic circular maps he has seen, and he offers a portrait of the flat earth as extreme at its edges (Romm 1992). From the 6th century BCE and later, various travelers or merchants gathered their experiences into accounts known as periploi (“sailings around”), and Shipley 2011 is an edition of the earliest extant example; a much later one, clearly by a merchant, is made available in Casson 1989. The data available to Greek geography was vastly expanded by the conquests of Alexander and the travelers and merchants who exploited and explored the affected regions. The Peripatetic scholar Dikaiarkhos (“Dicearchus”) measured the heights of several Greek mountains of fabled height (a little while before Timokharis made the earliest extant dated and precise observations, see Astronomy). The earliest extant work devoted solely to geography was by Eratosthenes, who also provided the first careful measurement of the circumference of the spherical earth; Roller 2010 gathers the remains of his work. The work of Eratosthenes elicited a reply by Hipparchus, whose geographical fragments are collected in Dicks 1960. The earliest extant work of geography is a very large work by Strabo, written under the “Pax Romana,” which, like the conquests of Alexander, led to an increase in the available geographical data: on Strabo, see Dueck, et al. 2005. The work of geography that became standard in the ancient world, and continued to influence geography through the Arabic period and the Renaissance, was by Ptolemy, on which see Stückelberger, et al. 2006–2009. Dueck 2012 provides a brief survey of ancient geography.
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697Casson, Lionel. 1989. The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with introduction, translation, and commentary. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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699Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
700
701Casson’s text and facing-page English transition is augmented with two very precise commentaries, “general” and textual. The anonymous work (c. 55 CE) is a merchant’s guide to maritime trade down the Red Sea and across to India, replete with information about towns, peoples, and goods; the author shows a lively curiosity. Available online for purchase.
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703Find this resource:
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705Dicks, D. R. 1960. Geographical fragments of Hipparchus. University of London Classical Studies 1. London: Athlone.
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707Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
708
709Dicks offers the most recent edition, with facing-page English translation and extensive commentary, of the sixty-three fragments of Hipparchus’s sole book of geography. Hipparchus sought to provide accurate data as a basis for the work of future scientists, and he wrote about a dozen works of astronomy (including the extant commentary on Aratos’s Phainomena).
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711Find this resource:
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713Dueck, Daniela. 2012. Geography in classical antiquity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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715DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139027014Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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717Chapter 4 by Kai Brodersen concerns cartography, whereas Dueck covers descriptive geography (chapter 2: in histories and in periploi and itineraries), mathematical geography (chapter 3: the spherical earth, zones, and latitudes), and geography in practice (chapter 5: travel by land and sea). Available online for purchase.
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719Find this resource:
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721Dueck, Daniela, Hugh Lindsay, and Sarah Pothecary, eds. 2005. Strabo’s cultural geography: The making of a kolossourgia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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723DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511616099Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
724
725Sixteen essays on various aspects of the largest extant geographical work from Greco-Roman antiquity, Strabo (c. 20 sCE); some essays concern his cultural context, others focus more on his geographical work, especially Pothecary on European provinces of the Roman Empire, Panichi on Cappadocia, and Braund on the Euxine (Black) Sea. Available online for purchase.
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727Find this resource:
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729Roller, Duane W. 2010. Eratosthenes’ Geography: Fragments collected and translated, with commentary and additional material. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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731Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
732
733Roller provides the first translation into English, with commentary, of the fragments of this leading geographer (c. 220 BCE), who first carefully measured the diameter of the earth and created an early square-root-extracting slide rule. The work of Eratosthenes gave way, in turn, to that of Hipparchus (c. 130 BCE) and then to Ptolemy. Available online for purchase.
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735Find this resource:
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737Romm, James. 1992. The edges of the earth in ancient thought: Geography, exploration, and fiction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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739Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
740
741Greek geography studied well-known regions and also regions remote from Greece. Romm considers how the boundaries of the earth, the remote peoples of the earth, the lands conquered by Alexander, and the utter north (Thule) were depicted and understood. Those explorations extend from Herodotos (c. 425 BCE) to Roman times. Available online for purchase.
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743Find this resource:
744
745Shipley, Graham, ed. 2011. Pseudo-Skylax’s Periplous: The circumnavigation of the inhabited world: Text, translation and commentary. Exeter, UK: Bristol Phoenix.
746
747Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
748
749Shipley offers the first edition since 1878, followed by the first published English translation, and a detailed commentary, of this anonymous geographical work (c. 335 BCE). The ancient author described the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts as a systematic account of the scale and parts of the known world.
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751Find this resource:
752
753Stückelberger, Alfred, Gerd Grasshoff, and Florian Mittenhuber, eds. 2006–2009. Klaudios Ptolemaios Handbuch der Geographie. 3 vols. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe.
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755Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
756
757Ptolemy’s Geography was a canonical text of Greek geographical knowledge. This first complete edition in 150 years includes a German translation and beautifully printed reconstructed maps (Vol. 2). Volume 3 contains essays on Ptolemy’s sources, methods, and results, plus an edition of one of his sources, the Canon of Important Cities. Available online (2006) and online (2009) for purchase.
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760
761Meteorologika
762Much of what the early thinkers, i.e., the “Presocratics,” propounded about the nature of the cosmos was understood to be the study of “elevated things,” i.e., “meteoro-logy,” even though many of the topics were in some way or another quite “down to earth.” Our words for “meteor” and “meteorite” preserve that ambiguity: The meteorite is the meteor that has fallen to earth. Anaxagoras (c. 455 BCE) had suggested that numerous whirling bodies surrounded the earth, the sun being one such body, a stone heated yellow hot by its motion, and on the basis of that theory “predicted” the fall of a meteorite that fell at Aegospotami. Besides meteors and meteorites, the field covered comets, lightning, winds, the sea, and earthquakes. Perhaps the unifying concept was the study of events in the realms of Zeus and Poseidon? The earliest extant work on the topic is a volume by Aristotle (see Louis 1982, in which it is edited and annotated), that preserves fragments of works by earlier thinkers on comets and earthquakes. Freeland 1990 explores the ways in which that work fits into Aristotle’s overall scientific program. Aristotle’s student Theophrastus wrote a small work in one book, On Winds, which is available in Coutant and Eichenlaub 1975. The topic of meteorologika remained of interest well into Late Antiquity, and the Aristotelian commentator Philoponus wrote a partially preserved commentary on Aristotle’s book, explaining how it was read in his era and offering some alternatives: see Kupreeva 2011. Hine 2002 explores how two specific topics, earthquakes and eruptions, were studied over time. Much of ancient “meteorology” treated phenomena that we would also file under that term, i.e., weather phenomena, lightning and thunder, unusual storms, and even ordinary rain; Taub 2003 explores that rich body of evidence. This field of ancient science has been relatively less well studied than better-known fields such as Astronomy or Geography.
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764Coutant, Victor C. B., and L. V. Eichenlaub. 1975. Theophrastus De Ventis. Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press.
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767
768Coutant and Eichenlaub provide an edition, facing-page English translation, and brief commentary; they argue that his observations are generally very accurate. Theophrastus builds upon Aristotle’s Meteorlogica 2.4–6 (359b27–365a13) and often argues against Aristotle’s conclusions; the material is also treated at comparable length in the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems 26.
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770Find this resource:
771
772Freeland, Cynthia A. 1990. Scientific explanation and empirical data in Aristotle’s Meteorology. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 8:67–102.
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774Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
775
776Freeland focuses on key steps that precede (gathering opinions) and follow (use of “signs” and “proofs”) the definitions of the phenomena Aristotle studies; the latter step approximates to abduction, i.e., arguing from explanatory success to the validity of the underlying analysis: i.e., Aristotle is concerned with the pragmatics of explanation.
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778Find this resource:
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780Hine, Harry M. 2002. Seismology and vulcanology in antiquity? In Science and mathematics in ancient Greek culture. Edited by C. J. Tuplin and T. E. Rihll, 56–75. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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782Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
783
784Quakes were a standard part of meteorologika, and Hine investigates the scattered writings on the two topics to determine their coherence; earthquakes received repeated attention from an early date and were systematically recorded by some, but Hine sees less continuity in writing about volcanoes (whose eruptions are rarer than earthquakes). Available online for purchase.
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786Find this resource:
787
788Kupreeva, Inna. 2011. Philoponus: On Aristotle, Meteorology 1.1–3. London: Bristol Classical.
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790Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
791
792See also Philoponus: On Aristotle, Meteorology 1.4–9, 12 (London: Bristol Classical, 2012). Kupreeva translates and comments upon all extant portions of Philoponus’s commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorologika, which discuss the four elements and “aither” in the cosmos (first volume) and phenomena caused by the “dry exhalation” (1.4–8: irregular astronomical phenomena: meteors, aurorae, comets, the galaxy) and the “wet exhalation” (1.9. . .12, hail and the like).
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794Find this resource:
795
796Louis, Pierre, ed. 1982. Aristote: Météorologiques. 2 vols. Collection des Universités de France: Série grecque 289–290. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
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798Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
799
800Books 1–3 of Aristotle’s work concern meteorologika, particularly events in the upper atmosphere (including winds), earthquakes, and the rainbow. Aristotle’s unifying theory involves two “exhalations,” the dry and the wet, that arise from the earth and induce events. Louis provides an edition, facing-page French translation, and brief notes. Available for purchase online: the series; Volume 1 and Volume 2.
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802Find this resource:
803
804Taub, Liba Chaia. 2003. Ancient meteorology. London: Routledge.
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806Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
807
808Taub attempts to reconstruct a brief and confessedly incomplete history of meteorologika, primarily the subset concerned with weather. Taub treats, in turn, weather calendars (parapegmata); the explanatory strategies employed by Aristotle and Theophrastus in their works of meteorologika; meteorology in Lucretius, Manilius, Seneca, and the pseudo-Aristotelian On the Cosmos; and Pliny’s encyclopedia. Available online for purchase.
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810Find this resource:
811
812Mechanics Including Pneumatics
813By “mechanics” the Greeks meant the study of how things move and how machines work, levers and wheels and more complex compound devices. By “pneumatics,” they referred to the study of moving air or water within devices. The common element is the production of motion that is surprising, whether because its causes are unseen (either hidden or opaque), because the motion exhibits some anomaly, or because the motion is large compared to the initiating motion. That is the origin of Archimedes’ famous boast, “give me a place to stand and I could move the earth,” i.e., because there is no mathematical limit to the mechanical advantage of the lever or other machines. Already in the early epics, automata are mentioned as evidence of divine skill, and Daedalus in myth was credited with an ornithopter. Marvelous machines were created to produce dramatic effects on, or above, the stage in the Athenian theater. Other machines were used to set bones, when the power of the surgeon’s hands did not suffice, as attested in the Hippocratic corpus and in later fragments, as discussed in Drachmann 1963. To shoot arrows or sling stones farther, artillery was invented, and many texts describing those machines survive: see Marsden 1999a, Marsden 1999b, and Garlan 1974 (also Rihll 2007, cited under Roman Science: Mechanics and Metrology). Other kinds of machines proved critical in the numerous wars of the era: see Whitehead 2010 and Whitehead and Blyth 2004. In the intervals when wars abated, the built environment of the city was created using machines for lifting burdens or moving water: see Drachmann 1963. The techniques around the production of motion and other surprising results of the motions of air and water, i.e., the elements Air and Water, were studied and exploited: see Drachmann 1948 and Prager 1974. Archimedes was instrumental in developing the theory of the lever and in inventing the screw or worm gear: see Drachmann 1963. For us, to say that something is “mechanical” can speak to a philosophical outlook, i.e., a Cartesian machine-like deterministic world; however, as Berryman 2009 shows, that does not seem to have been how most Greeks viewed matters.
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815Berryman, Sylvia. 2009. The mechanical hypothesis in ancient natural philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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817DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511605284Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
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819In this carefully documented book, Berryman argues that mechanics emerged slowly and unsystematically before 300 BCE, but more vigorously at Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE, although even there the discipline was unified only gradually and partially. Archimedes, Heron, and others extrapolated beyond accomplishments, and motion and its causes were mathematized. Available online for purchase.
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821Find this resource:
822
823Drachmann, Aage G. 1948. Ktesibios, Philon and Heron: A study in ancient pneumatics. Acta Historica Scientiarum Naturalium et Medicinalium 4. Copenhagen: Munskgaard.
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825Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
826
827Despite its age, still the best comprehensive treatment of the three chief Greek writers on pneumatics (the motions and effects of moving fluids). Drachmann carefully analyzes the machines of Ktesibios (pump, organ, clocks), of Philon (with discussion of the Latin and Arabic versions), and, at greater length, the manifold devices of Heron.
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829Find this resource:
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831Drachmann, Aage G. 1963. Mechanical technology of Greek and Roman antiquity. Copenhagen: Munskgaard.
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834
835Drachmann provides an extended reading of Heron’s Mechanics, extant in Arabic and a few Greek fragments (pp. 19–140), plus briefer readings of the pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanics, Vitruvius, Oreibasios (on medical machines), and the various writers on artillery, with a view to extracting from them an understanding of the machines they built.
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837Find this resource:
838
839Furley, David J. 1985. Strato’s theory of the void. In Aristoteles: Werk und Wirkung: Paul Moraux Gewidmet. Vol. 1, Aristoteles und seine Schule. Edited by Jürgen Wiesner, 594–609. New York: De Gruyter.
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842
843Furley explores the reports (of doxographers and Simplicius) on Straton’s theory that microscopic voids exist in matter, which explains some of their mechanical properties (such as compressibility, flexibility, miscibility, and transparency); Straton (c. 280 BCE) was arguing explicitly against Aristotle, who denied all void. Reprinted in Furley 1989 (cited under Overviews: Origins and Early Development), pp. 149–160. Available online for purchase.
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845Find this resource:
846
847Garlan, Yvon. 1974. Recherches de poliorcétique grecque. Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 223. Athens, Greece: École Française d’Athènes.
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849Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
850
851Garlan offers a history of siege-techniques and machines from Pericles to Demetrios (c. 305 BCE), to which he appends an edition with facing-page French translation of Philon’s book(s) on fortifications, followed by a lengthy commentary.
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853Find this resource:
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855Marsden, Eric W. 1999a. Greek and Roman artillery: Historical development. Oxford: Clarendon.
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858
859First edition 1969. Based on the texts and his full-scale models, Marsden describes the origins, development, and effects of artillery from 399 BCE to c. 400 CE. (Rihll 2007, cited under Roman Science: Mechanics and Metrology, provides a more artifact-based account.)
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861Find this resource:
862
863Marsden, Eric W. 1999b. Greek and Roman artillery: Technical treatises. Oxford: Sandpiper.
864
865Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
866
867First edition 1971. In his second volume, Marsden edits, with facing-page English translation and extensive commentary, the texts of Philon, Biton, Vitruvius, and Heron. The commentary is detailed and helpful, and the editions remain standard.
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869Find this resource:
870
871Prager, F. D. 1974. Philo of Byzantium: Pneumatica: The first treatise on experimental physics: Western version and eastern version: Facsimile and transcript of the Latin manuscript, CLM 534: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich; Translation and illustrations of the Arabic Manuscript, A. S. 3713, Aya-Sofya, Istanbul. Wiesbaden, Germany: Reichert.
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874
875Philon (c. 200 BCE) wrote a compendium of Mechanics (see Garlan 1974), which included this book on Pneumatics, that now survives only in short Latin and long Arabic versions. Prager, a patent lawyer, provides a “transcript” of the twenty-one Latin chapters, and translates the sixty-five Arabic chapters (twenty are medieval).
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877Find this resource:
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879Whitehead, David. 2010. Apollodorus Mechanicus: Siege-matters (Πολιορκητικά). Historia Einzelschriften 216. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
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881Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
882
883Whitehead edits and provides the first English translation (on facing pages) of this early-2nd-century treatise on siege craft, especially tortoises and towers used against hill-forts. The text was repeatedly augmented in Antiquity (and after), and Whitehead makes careful attempts to indicate the accretions. He provides an extensive linguistic and technical commentary. Available online.
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885Find this resource:
886
887Whitehead, David, and P. H. Blyth. 2004. Athenaeus Mechanicus: On Machines. Historia Einzelschriften 182. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
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889Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
890
891Whitehead and Blyth offer a detailed and technical commentary to explain the concise work of this philosopher who wrote, for Augustus’s nephew, a work remarkably similar to Vitruvius 10.13–16; they translate the old text of Schneider from 1912 (printed on the facing pages): a more recent text (with Italian translation and commentary) is available in Maurizio Gatto, Il Peri mechanematon di Ateneo meccanico (Rome: Aracne, 2010).
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893Find this resource:
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895Winter, Thomas Nelson. 2007. The mechanical problems in the corpus of Aristotle. Faculty Publications, Classics and Religious Studies Department. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska.
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898
899Winter briefly argues that the Mechanics in the Aristotelian corpus was written by Archytas, on the basis that Vitruvius 10.3 summarizes Mechanics 3–6, 20, and 26–27; that the work must predate Straton (c. 270 BCE) and does not even mention catapults; and that Vitruvius 7.pr.14 names as his sources for machines only twelve authors, of whom only Archytas precedes Straton and catapults. Winter provides a full translation with analytic notes.
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901Find this resource:
902
903“Biology” (Plants and Animals)
904Every culture somehow classifies the plants and animals with, and upon, which they live. Moreover, most cultures either attribute some human characteristics to animals or view some humans as being somehow like animals. The Greeks did both and that fact influenced the development of their science of plants and animals, for which they never developed a common name. In the early epics, warriors are often compared to one or another dangerous animal, and in those epics and in fables, humans become animals or animals act human. Some plants and small animals seemed to spring up spontaneously in certain environments, which led to theories about invisible and pervasive seeds that were not refuted until the 19th century. Empedocles and Pythagoras proposed that the human soul is separable and can return in animal form—did the apparent relation between animals and humans inspire this? The Hippocratic corpus On the Nature of the Child (see Medicine: Gynecology) contains an extended analogy between plant growth and the growth of the fetus. Elsewhere in the same body of texts, i.e., the Hippocratic Regimen, we find the earliest extant systematic classification of animals in Greek, made in terms of domicile (land, air, sea), relation to humans (tame or wild), and properties as food. Further classificatory work was done by Plato (who in the Timaeus explained animals as degenerated humans) and then by two of his students, Speusippos (his successor at the Academy) and Aristotle (for whom animals were imperfect humans). More of Aristotle’s extant writings concern animals than any other single topic. Pellegrin 1986 explains his classificatory system; Lloyd 1983 studies Aristotle’s role in the development of biology; Gotthelf and Lennox 1987 offers essays on the philosophy of Aristotle’s biology; and Vinci and Robert 2005 advises against seeing his work as any kind of anticipation of modern biology. Aristotle’s data about animals are collected in the large work History of Animals, Balme 2002 provides a more recent edition of the text; as Aristotle himself said, in his Parts of Animals: “We ought to study their nature as joyfully and zealously as we do mathematics and astronomy, since Nature’s purposive operation is here most clearly visible and beautiful.” Aristotle’s student Theophrastus turned his attention to plants, producing two large works that remained standard until Carl Linnaeus (b. 1707–d. 1778): see Einarson and Link 1976–1990. The later forms of the debate about the relation between animals and humans, especially whether they are rational, can be studied in Terian 1981 and Sorabji 1993. Newmyer 2010 provides a wide-ranging compact sourcebook on animals.
905
906Balme, D. M., ed. 2002. Aristotle: Historia animalium. Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 38. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
907
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909
910Prepared for publication by Allan Gotthelf. Balme restored the manuscript order (8, 9, 7) of those books of the work and argued that Book 10 was not part of the work, but was Aristotelian; recently, Lesley Dean-Jones, “Clinical Gynecology and Aristotle’s Biology: The Composition of HA X,” Apeiron 45 (2012): 180–199, has argued that Book 10 is an anonymous work annotated by Aristotle. The text here is translated in Aristotle: History of Animals, vol. 3 (Loeb [1991], see), with brief notes. Available online for purchase.
911
912Find this resource:
913
914Einarson, Benedict, and George K. Link. 1976–1990. Theophrastus: De Causis Plantarum. 3 vols. Loeb Classical Library 471, 474–475. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
915
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917
918Einarson and Link provide an edition, with facing-page English translation, and numerous brief botanical notes. Also in the Loeb is Hort, Theophrastus: Enquiry into Plants (1916), with extensive botanical appendixes needing some updating. The Enquiry presents the data based on which Theophrastus constructs the explanations offered in this work. The series is available for purchase online; Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3 also available.
919
920Find this resource:
921
922Gotthelf, Allan, and James G. Lennox, eds. 1987. Philosophical issues in Aristotle’s biology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
923
924DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511552564Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
925
926Sixteen essays, two each by the editors, four by Balme, and one each by eight others, including Freeman (on bodies, matter, and potentiality), Lloyd (on empirical research), and Furth (Aristotle’s biological universe), scrutinize many aspects of Aristotle’s extensive work on biology; four essays study Aristotle’s use of differentiae, three his views on teleology. Available online for purchase.
927
928Find this resource:
929
930Lloyd, G. E. R. 1983. Science, folklore and ideology: Studies in the life sciences in ancient Greece. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
931
932Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
933
934Lloyd studies two issues in the development of Greek biology (from the 6th century BCE to the 2nd century CE): the assimilation and criticism of traditional beliefs and the challenge to prevailing ideologies that science raised. Lloyd’s topics are taxonomy of animals, “gynecology” (see Medicine: Gynecology), and innovations in terminology and knowledge vis-à-vis traditional knowledge.
935
936Find this resource:
937
938Newmyer, Stephen. 2010. Animals in Greek and Roman thought: A sourcebook. London: Routledge.
939
940Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
941
942Newmyer translates passages from Greek and a few Latin texts, with analytic introductions and suggestions for further reading, on the intellect of animals (pp. 3–26), human-animal kinship (pp. 27–36), animal behaviors (pp. 37–69), and in Part 2, the ethical aspect of human-animal relations (pp. 73–115). Available online for purchase.
943
944Find this resource:
945
946Pellegrin, Pierre. 1986. Aristotle’s classification of animals. Translated by Anthony Preus. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
947
948Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
949
950Originally published in French in 1982. Pellegrin argues that Aristotle’s empirical classification scheme, based on parts and functions, works well as a foundation for his teleological biology but did not originate as a taxonomic project. Available online for purchase.
951
952Find this resource:
953
954Sorabji, Richard. 1993. Animal minds and human morals: The origins of the western debate. Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 54. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
955
956Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
957
958Sorabji studies the relations between human and animal perception and cognition in Part 1, and in Part 2 the ethical issues arising therefrom. Empedocles and Plato allowed for deep similarities between animals and humans, whereas Aristotle is ambiguous, and the animal-as-machine concept originates with the Stoics and prevailed after Iamblichos. Available online for purchase.
959
960Find this resource:
961
962Terian, Abraham. 1981. Philonis Alexandrini de Animalibus. Chico, CA: Scholars Press.
963
964Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
965
966Philon of Alexandria (c. 30 CE), who wrote in Greek primarily on the Torah and also on philosophy, composed a zoological book discussing animal rationality, which survives only in an Armenian translation and that is reprinted here from its first edition by Aucher (1822), with the first English translation, and extensive commentary. Philon attempts to refute his nephew Alexander’s arguments favoring rationality.
967
968Find this resource:
969
970Vinci, Tom, and Jason Scott Robert. 2005. Aristotle and modern genetics. Journal of the History of Ideas 66.2: 201–221.
971
972DOI: 10.1353/jhi.2005.0041Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
973
974Vinci and Robert argue that Aristotle’s model of conception should not be taken to “anticipate” modern genetics and, furthermore, that the modern model of development should not be described in terms of “DNA instructions” but rather as an “epigenetic affair” involving a wide variety of factors. To explain how Aristotle could imagine that the “form” of the offspring is “in” the male seed, a substance that clearly lacks the expressed form of an adult male, they introduce a hierarchy of formal causes. Available online by purchase.
975
976Find this resource:
977
978Medicine
979The theories and practices of ancient Greek medicine persisted until the middle of the 19th century, at least in Europe and the Americas, and they are pervasively implicit in the “classics” of European literature from Shakespeare to Cervantes to Molière to Goethe. That may explain why some historians of ancient science privilege ancient medicine as being somehow more similar to modern medical science or even more scientific than other ancient sciences (usually such privileging grants a similar status to Mathematics and Astronomy). Nevertheless, if items such as the role of diet and regimen in health, the craniocentric model of cognition, and the ability to treat some injuries and illnesses were genuine accomplishments, much of the practice and theory was misplaced and even damaging. People of all cultures experience illness and seek remedies, which are often special foodstuffs, known or believed to alleviate pain, nausea, or fever. Many cultures practice what might be called simple gross restorative surgeries: replacing displaced bones, removing foreign objects, and retaining leaking blood. Early Greek theories of disease often emphasized “balance,” seeing fever and chills, wasting and bloating, hardness and softness, as extremes between which health was the mean. Theories that emphasized elemental fluids developed early, and they settled on the famous four: blood, bile, phlegm, and “black bile.” Some early doctors are named, but for those we have only the merest traces of writings; others are anonymous, and paradoxically for those we have some five or six dozen extensive treatises gathered into a collection attributed by librarians at Alexandria to Hippocrates, a historical figure of c. 440–370 BCE; a few works were later added to the collection. Those treatises exerted a powerful influence in ancient medicine and, indeed, through the middle of the 19th century; thus, they warrant a section, Hippocrates. In the 4th century BCE and especially in the Hellenistic era, there was rapid ramification of medical practice and theory, warranting a section Hellenistic, Galen, Byzantine. Greek medicine tended to favor certain approaches, and many of its practitioners explicitly stated that diet and regimen are the primary mode of maintaining and restoring health, the second class of interventions being drugs, and the third and final being surgery (the Hippocratic Oath even prohibits surgery). Thus, sections on Dietetics and Regimen, Pharmacy, and Surgery are included. Finally, there were several special practices within ancient medicine that warrant a separate look, and works dealing with these fields appear under Gynecology, Physiognomy, and Veterinary.
980
981Editions of Texts
982For other texts of ancient science, as in the main section Editions of Texts, making the texts of the medical works available is the first challenge, and the necessary foundation for any reliable results, of the study of ancient Greek medicine. Moreover, to make a given work as widely available as possible, a good translation, with suitable explanatory commentary, is needed. The process of creating an edition of an ancient medical text must take into account a wide variety of accidents, of transmission and preservation and of alterations (“corruptions”) that occur when manuscripts are copied, and thus it is a complex, difficult, and tedious endeavor. We cannot know what the ancient doctors meant until we can read what they wrote—but it can be very difficult to determine what they wrote if we do not understand what they meant. The situation is, in one respect, better and, in another respect, worse than for other ancient sciences. Because medicine until the middle of the 19th century, at least in Europe and the Americas, largely followed the practices and theories of ancient medicine, the texts of the medically canonical authors, Hippocrates and Galen, were continuously available in adequate form. At the very end of ancient medicine, each was edited by a medical scholar for use as teaching texts in medical schools: see Kühn 1821–1833, an edition of Galen, and Littré 1839–1861, an edition of the Hippocratic corpus. (In 1861 Semmelweis published his book on puerperal fever, and in 1862 Pasteur pioneered and later published his technique.) However, because the development of the germ theory of disease, and of the modern atomic theory of matter, rendered much of ancient medicine moot, the texts were thereafter largely neglected, and many have not been edited since then. Some texts have been edited ad hoc when scholars take an interest in the issues they raise, e.g., Furley and Wilkie 1984. The French “Budé” series now includes both Hippocrates and Galen in its Greek section: see Boudon-Millot 2007. The German Corpus Medicorum Graecorum aims to publish editions of “all” of ancient Greek medicine and is slowly approaching its goal, e.g., Nickel 2001. The series Studies in Ancient Medicine, ably edited by Scarborough, van der Eijk, and Hanson, and recently also by Ziegler, includes a number of editions of the Hippocratic corpus, such as Laskaris 2002, or of other medical writers, such as Diocles (van der Eijk 2000–2001), and for the fragments of the Methodist school (on which see Medicine: Hellenistic, Galen, Byzantine), see Tecusan 2003.
983
984Boudon-Millot, Véronique. 2007. Galien. Vol. 1: Introduction générale: Sur l’ordre de ses propres livres: Sur ses propres livres: Que l’excellent médecin est aussi philosophe. Collection des Universités de France: Série grecque 453. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
985
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987
988Boudon-Millot provides an edition with facing-page French translation of three texts, written late in his career, that offer a good introduction to Galen’s medical ideas. Galen always portrayed himself as a philosopher-doctor and was at pains to promote his own works and to prevent or suppress forgeries. Available online for purchase: the series and the volume.
989
990Find this resource:
991
992Furley, David J., and James S. Wilkie, eds. 1984. Galen On Respiration and the Arteries. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
993
994Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
995
996Furley and Wilkie edit, translate, and provide careful notes on several works by Galen on the “use” and the “cause” of breathing, on the pulse, and on whether there is blood in the arteries. Much ancient medicine claimed that the arteries contained only pneuma, which Galen disproved by animal vivisection.
997
998Find this resource:
999
1000Kühn, Carl G. 1821–1833. Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia. 20 vols. in 22 parts. Leipzig: Knoblauch.
1001
1002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1003
1004Kühn’s edition, often reprinted, especially by Olms (in Hildesheim) was created for the use of practicing physicians, when humoral medicine was still the dominant theory; despite its age it is the most recent edition for many of Galen’s works, which are cited by “volume.page.” Kühn provides a Latin translation at the foot of the page.
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1006Find this resource:
1007
1008Laskaris, Julie. 2002. The art is long: On the sacred disease and the scientific tradition. Studies in Ancient Medicine 25. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
1009
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1011
1012Laskaris provides an edition, English translation, and commentary on this work, which argued that the “sacred disease” (usually, epilepsy) was no more “divine” than any other disease, and that its causes could be sought among ordinary material sources. The treatise accepts the brain as the location of thought and will. Available for purchase online: the series and the volume.
1013
1014Find this resource:
1015
1016Littré, Émile. 1839–1861. Oeuvres complètes d’Hippocrate. 10 vols. Paris: Baillière.
1017
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1019
1020Littré’s edition, often reprinted, was created for the use of practicing physicians, and he provides a facing-page French translation and copious notes. Although many of the texts have been edited since then, works of the Hippocratic corpus are still cited by “volume.page” of Littré.
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1022Find this resource:
1023
1024Nickel, Diethard. 2001. Galen: Ãœber die Ausformung der Keimlinge. Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 5.3.3. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
1025
1026Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1027
1028The Berlin academy has been slowly editing Greek and Latin medical texts since 1908; many of the more recent editions include a translation and even commentary. Nickel provides an exemplary edition and facing-page German translation, along with extensive commentary. Galen’s concern is to demonstrate his theory of formation, namely liver then heart then brain. Available online: the series and the volume.
1029
1030Find this resource:
1031
1032Tecusan, Manuela. 2003. The Fragments of the Methodists, Volume One: Text and translation. Studies in Ancient Medicine 24.1. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
1033
1034Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1035
1036Tecusan collects the scattered fragments of the Methodist school of medicine and provides a facing-page translation of each item; the texts are Greek and Latin and span more than five centuries. The Methodists advocated a simple therapeutic system and eschewed theory; Galen strenuously attacked them. Available for purchase online: the series and the volume.
1037
1038Find this resource:
1039
1040van der Eijk, Philip J. 2000–2001. Diocles of Carystus: A collection of the fragments with translation and commentary. 2 vols. Studies in Ancient Medicine 22–23. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
1041
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1043
1044Van der Eijk provides a careful edition of the numerous fragments (Greek, Latin, Arabic), with facing-page English translation and an extensive commentary. Diocles was an influential doctor of the 4th century BCE, whose complete fragments are collected here for the first time. Available for purchase online: the series and Volume 1 and Volume 2.
1045
1046Find this resource:
1047
1048Hippocrates
1049Hippocrates of the island of Kos was a historical person (active c. 440–370 BCE) whose ideas about the practice of medicine influenced his contemporaries; see Longrigg 1989. Beyond that, little that is certain can be said, although there are rich biographical traditions from Antiquity, extensively exploited in Jouanna 1999, but compare Smith 1990 and Pinault 1992 for more skeptical views. It is fair, but rare, to view Hippocrates and many of the items in the Hippocratic corpus as members of the “Presocratics” and contributors to the debates about the nature of science and the cosmos. When the librarians in Alexandrian acquired books from all over the Greek world, dozens of treatises by a wide variety of authors were assigned to Hippocrates; however, at most only a few of them could possibly be by the historical Hippocrates. Nevertheless, that corpus remained influential, and it even increased its influence through being canonized. Nearly all subsequent ancient medical writers defined themselves and their work by reference to the Hippocratic corpus, and some later works (notably the books On the Heart and the Oath) were inserted into the corpus. Temkin 1991 provides a good example of a study of that history of reception; Smith 1990 studies the process whereby certain later works came to be added to the corpus. Two studies of the influence and use of the ideas in the Hippocratic corpus are Grmek 1989 and van der Eijk 2005. The study of the Hippocratic corpus continues as a chief component of the study of ancient medicine: the L’année philologique (see Scholarly Aids) lists an average of more than forty entries per year since 1990 for “Hippocrates” (some of those touching on the Hippocratic corpus only peripherally), far more than the dozen or so per year on mathematicians (Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonios together) or the twenty or so per year on astronomy (Aratos, Geminus, Cleomedes, and Ptolemy together)—these estimates are very rough, but they are indicative.
1050
1051Grmek, Mirko D. 1989. Translated by Mireille Muellner and Leonard Muellner. Diseases in the ancient Greek world. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
1052
1053Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1054
1055Grmek applies palaeopathology to ancient Greek medicine and obtains fascinating insights on diseases pervading the Hippocratic corpus, such as phthisis (tuberculosis) and kausos (malaria), examines several Hippocratic cases in Epidemics 1 and 6, and explores the Pythagorean bean-prohibition and the post-classical spread of leprosy. He is optimistic about retrospective diagnosis.
1056
1057Find this resource:
1058
1059Jouanna, Jacques. 1999. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Hippocrates. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
1060
1061Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1062
1063Jouanna engagingly reconstitutes the figure of Hippocrates as a leading physician of his era, placing him on Kos and supplying from the evidence a biography, with birth, education, travels, and philosophy. Jouanna, despite the work of Smith 1990 (and earlier), accepts the ancient legends about schools at Kos and Knidos.
1064
1065Find this resource:
1066
1067Longrigg, James. 1989. Presocratic philosophy and Hippocratic medicine. History of Science 27.1: 1–39.
1068
1069Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1070
1071Longrigg argues that the Hippocratic corpus—especially Sacred Disease, Nature of Man, Ancient Medicine, and Airs, Waters, Places—shows evidence of seeking unifying hypotheses and materialistic explanations, which aligns them with the Ionian philosophers, Empedocles, and Diogenes of Apollonia. Others see less rationalistic trends in the corpus, including those works.
1072
1073Find this resource:
1074
1075Pinault, Jody R. 1992. Hippocratic lives and legends. Studies in Ancient Medicine 4. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
1076
1077Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1078
1079Pinault studies the biographical fictions that sprouted around Hippocrates, especially how he cured the Athenian plague, how he detected King Perdiccas’s lovesickness, and how he refused to serve the Persian king Artaxerxes. Available for purchase online: the series and volume.
1080
1081Find this resource:
1082
1083Potter, Paul. 1988. A short handbook of Hippocratic medicine. Sillery, QC: Éditions du Sphinx.
1084
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1086
1087Potter provides a very useful short introduction to the contents, nature, and study of the Hippocratic corpus. He provides capsule summaries of each work and a systematic overview of the notable features of Hippocratic medicine.
1088
1089Find this resource:
1090
1091Smith, Wesley D., ed. and trans. 1990. Hippocrates: Pseudepigraphic works. Studies in Ancient Medicine 2. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
1092
1093Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1094
1095Smith edits and translates the letters attributed to Hippocrates and shows how they influenced the biographical tradition. As he did in his Hippocratic Tradition (Smith [1979]), Smith is careful with evidence, and he rejects many later developments: we know less about Hippocrates than we think. The series is available online for purchase.
1096
1097Find this resource:
1098
1099Temkin, Owsei. 1991. Hippocrates in a world of pagans and Christians. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
1100
1101Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1102
1103Temkin studies the reception of Hippocrates in the lst to 6th centuries CE. Hippocrates remained exemplary for writers like Soranos or Galen, and the Hippocratic legends (cf. Pinault 1992) were widely received. Christian authors begin to grapple with Hippocratic concepts in the 2nd century CE, but ascetics disparaged medicine.
1104
1105Find this resource:
1106
1107van der Eijk, Philip J. 2005. Hippocrates in context: Papers read at the XIth International Hippocrates Colloquium, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 27–31 August 2002. Studies in Ancient Medicine 31. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
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1109Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1110
1111The twenty-nine papers of this conference very thoroughly explore five kinds of context of “Hippocrates”: epistemological (e.g., on the nature of causation, of human beings, of science), social, non-Hippocratic medical (e.g., Diocles, Praxagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and Theophrastus), discursive, and later reception (e.g., in the papyri, in Aretaios, and in Galen). Available for purchase online: the series and the book.
1112
1113Find this resource:
1114
1115Hellenistic, Galen, Byzantine
1116Two facts dominate Greek medicine of the Hellenistic era and after: the development of numerous competing schools of medicine and Galen. After the “closing” of the Hippocratic corpus, several medical writers achieved some influence: for extracts see Longrigg 2001. Among these are especially Diocles of Karystos (see van der Eijk 2000–2001, cited under Medicine: Editions of Texts) and Praxagoras of Kos (c. 300 BCE; last edited and translated in 1958 by Steckerl). Apparently working under the sponsorship of the Ptolemies in Alexandria, the physician Herophilos of Khalkedon (c. 270 BCE) made significant discoveries in anatomy, especially about the nerves (thus more firmly establishing the craniocentric model of cognition) and systematized pulse lore into a useful diagnostic technique; see Staden 1989 (cited under Medicine: Editions of Texts). Herophilos also founded a school of physicians that existed until the early lst century CE, focused on pulse lore and Hippocratic exegesis. His slightly younger contemporary Erasistratos of Ioulis (c. 250 BCE) was connected with the Peripatetics but founded his own medical school, still active in Galen’s time, which Galen repeatedly attacked. Erasistratos advocated a mechanical model of the body, with the heart functioning as a pump (he hypothesized the capillaries but not the circulation of the blood), and he rejected phlebotomy. Around the same time, Philinos of Kos founded a school of medicine called “Empiricist” because its members rejected most theoretical formulations, Hippocratic or otherwise, and adhered to “empirical” results and tested therapies, especially drugs (see Frede 1988); Galen also attacked them. The mild remedies prescribed by Asklepiades of Bithynia garnered him many patients, but his anti-teleological theories ensured that Galen and others would reject his books; see Vallance 1990. One of his students, Themison of Laodikaia, seems to have founded the school of medicine called “Methodist”; their program was a brief and efficient medical education and simple remedies, mostly drugs; see Tecusan 2003 (cited under Medicine: Editions of Texts); they too were attacked by Galen. Finally, Athenaios of Attaleia (c. 50 CE) founded a school of medicine that focused on the role of the pneuma (as propounded by the Stoics), and hence came to be called “Pneumaticist.” Galen, who saw himself as mastering all of medicine and who advocated a harmony of Plato and Hippocrates, is our primary and often sole source for much of Hellenistic medicine. He wrote more surviving Greek than any prior writer. Johnston 2006 provides an exemplary edition and translation of one work; Singer 1997 translates fifteen. Nutton 2013 surveys all of ancient medicine and is especially good on Galen; and Hankinson 2008 provides a broad and deep survey of Galen.
1117
1118Frede, Michael. 1988. The empiricist attitude towards reason and theory. Apeiron 21.2: 79–97.
1119
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1121
1122Frede points out that a kind of continuum exists between practical and theoretical knowledge, since something must motivate the first successful trial, and that the Empiricists disagreed about how much one ought to accept or seek theoretical knowledge. He thinks it likely that Empiricist attitudes evolved over time. Available online.
1123
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1125
1126Hankinson, R. J., ed. 2008. The Cambridge companion to Galen. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
1127
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1129
1130Hankinson and eleven others contribute fourteen studies, among which see especially Hankinson on Galen’s philosophy of nature, Rocca on his anatomy, Debru on his physiology, van der Eijk on his therapy, and Vogt on his pharmacy.
1131
1132Find this resource:
1133
1134Johnston, Ian. 2006. Galen on diseases and symptoms. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
1135
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1137
1138Johnston introduces and translates four works on the systematic study of the nature and causation of diseases and symptoms: Differentiae of Diseases, Causes of Diseases, Differentiae of Symptoms, and the three books of Causes of Symptoms. Diseases are related to tissues and organs, but symptoms are classified by affected function. Available online for purchase.
1139
1140Find this resource:
1141
1142Longrigg, James. 2001. Greek medicine: From the heroic to the Hellenistic age: A source book. London: Duckworth.
1143
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1145
1146Longrigg provides translations of texts, primarily from the 5th to 3rd centuries BCE; there is good representation of Alcmaeon, the Hippocratic corpus, Philistion, Plato, Diocles, Aristotle, Praxagoras, Herophilos, and Erasistratos. Texts are presented in their preserved context, and the translations are often annotated.
1147
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1149
1150Nutton, Vivian. 2013. Ancient medicine. 2d ed. London: Routledge.
1151
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1153
1154Magisterial survey of the whole field, organized chronologically, with three chapters on Hippocrates, one covering “Plato to Praxagoras,” two on Hellenistic medicine, two on medicine under Rome, one each on Methodists and Pneumaticists, and two on Galen. Chapters on medicine in Late Antiquity and before Hippocrates complete the presentation. Available online for purchase.
1155
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1157
1158Scarborough, John, ed. 1985. Symposium on Byzantine medicine. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 38. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
1159
1160Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1161
1162Scarborough advances the study of Byzantine medicine through the twenty-one papers he solicited for the symposium, especially Duffy on the teaching and practice of medicine in the 6th and 7th centuries, Stannard on materia medica, Bliquez on surgical instruments and practice, and Savage-Smith on ophthalmology.
1163
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1165
1166Singer, Peter N., trans. 1997. Galen: Selected works. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
1167
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1169
1170Singer translates, with brief notes, fifteen short works: the three in Boudon-Millot 2007 (cited under Medicine: Editions of Texts), several on regimen, the Pulse for Beginners, two on the relation of soul to body, Fetal Formation, two protreptic works, and the three books of the work On Mixtures.
1171
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1173
1174Vallance, John T. 1990. The lost theory of Asclepiades of Bithynia. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
1175
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1177
1178Vallance reconstructs from the fragments the theory enunciated by Asklepiades in the early lst century BCE: balanced and regular motion of microscopic particles in the body constitutes health and irregularities or blockages explain disease, which can be alleviated with mild treatments, primarily of regimen. Available online for purchase.
1179
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1181
1182Dietetics and Regimen
1183All human cultures classify their foods, some being considered better in one way or another and others worse, either to be eaten only faute de mieux or else not to be eaten at all. Typically, local and native foods are classified as good, familiar, and healthful, whereas foreign or exotic foods are dangerous or unethical; too narrow a diet is widely regarded as deleterious. Very often, the specification of which animals are edible is highly marked. Some of these preferences are firmly physiological, arising from small differences in digestive capacity (e.g., the East Asian avoidance of animal milk). Greek medicine from the beginning, and in every school, emphasized the key role of proper diet and regimen to the maintenance of health and the cure of disease. Within that agreed framework, extensive debates were held on just which diet was correct for which person, at what time, and under what circumstances. Moreover, various theories were developed to explain the role of diet, such as the humoral theory (in which foods tended to create different humors, and so diet must be balanced to produce a humoral balance), theories by Erasistratos or by Athenaios centered on pneuma (in which proper functioning of the pneuma depended on proper diet), or the “corpuscular” theory of Asklepiades (in which free and clear passage of the corpuscles meant health and was achieved by a balanced diet). Although the modern germ theory of disease does not ipso facto negate dietary theories of health, modern medicine has tended to de-emphasize the role of diet until very recently; somewhat ironically, modern studies increasingly show that a “Mediterranean” diet is the most healthful. Joly 1967–1972, plus Joly and Byl 2003, make available the key texts on diet from the Hippocratic corpus. Grant 2000 translates Galen’s primary works on diet and regimen; and Grant 1997 translates Oribasius’s dietary advice, mostly concocted from Galen. Copious data on food in the Greco-Roman world, mostly based on Greek medical writers (and Roman agronomists, see Roman Science: Agronomy), is provided in dictionary form in Dalby 2003, and in digested and organized form in Wilkins and Hill 2006.
1184
1185Dalby, Andrew. 2003. Food in the ancient world from A–Z. London: Routledge.
1186
1187Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1188
1189Dalby covers primarily c. 700 BCE to c. 500 CE in this comprehensive dictionary of food items, spices, authors, and related topics (e.g., Cynics, Drunkenness, Furniture, Humoral Theory, Kottabos, Luxury, Nutrition, Pompeii, Symposion, Triclinium, Vomiting, and Women); each entry is supplied with a bibliography. Greek, Latin, and Linnaean indexes of the foods are included. Available for purchase online
1190
1191Find this resource:
1192
1193Grant, Mark David. 1997. Dieting for an emperor: A translation of books 1 and 4 of Oribasius’ Medical Compilations with an introduction and commentary. Studies in Ancient Medicine 15. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
1194
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1196
1197Oribasius’s compilation was based largely on Galen and dedicated to Emperor Julian; Books 1 and 4 concern baked goods, fruits, and vegetables. Grant explains how diet fit into the system of humoral medicine, investigates the system of dietary recommendations given by Oribasius, and provides a detailed index of the foodstuffs. Available for purchase online: the series and volume.
1198
1199Find this resource:
1200
1201Grant, Mark David. 2000. Galen on food and diet. London: Routledge.
1202
1203Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1204
1205Grant translates and annotates the pseudo-Galenic On the Humours and five dietetic works: On Black Bile, On Uneven Bad Temperament (on the effects of imbalanced regimen), Causes of Disease, On Barley Soup, and the three books of On the Powers of Foods, which is Galen’s most important dietetic work. Available online for purchase.
1206
1207Find this resource:
1208
1209Joly, Robert. 1967–1972. Hippocrate. Vol. 6.1–2. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
1210
1211Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1212
1213The works here edited and translated, Regimen, Regimen in Acute Diseases, Nutriment, and Use of Liquids, are the primary texts of Greek dietetic medicine, likely written by a variety of authors: Regimen in Acute Diseases and Use of Liquids offer healing diets. Joly provides an orienting introduction, an analysis of the work On Regimen (v. 6.1; see Joly and Byl 2003), and an edition with facing-page French translation of the four works, supplemented with notes. Available for purchase online: the series, Tome VI, 1re partie and Tome VI, 2e partie.
1214
1215Find this resource:
1216
1217Joly, Robert, and Simon Byl. 2003. Hippocrate: Du Régime. 2d ed. Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 1.2.4. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
1218
1219Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1220
1221Written c. 400 BCE and addressed to men of wealth and leisure. The four books of the work cover human origins, human health (environment, diet, lifestyle), regimen (bathing and exercise), and dreams. The dietary prescriptions are adjusted for work habits, age, season of the year, and weather. Joly provides an edition, facing-page French translation, and extensive notes; Byl updated the volume. Available for purchase online: the series and the volume.
1222
1223Find this resource:
1224
1225Wilkins, John M., and Shaun Hill. 2006. Food in the ancient world. Oxford: Blackwell.
1226
1227Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1228
1229Topical survey of the contexts and kinds of food used in Antiquity, including chapters on food in ancient thought and in medical practice as well as types of food (grains and pulses, meat and fish, and wine).
1230
1231Find this resource:
1232
1233Pharmacy
1234When faced with illness, all human cultures selectively prescribe plants or other substances not normally eaten: Sometimes these special plants and substances are consumed (“drugs”), sometimes they are applied to the surface of the body, especially at the sites of pain or damage (“plasters”). There is no strict demarcation between foods and drugs in ancient cultures: Mesopotamian drugs were dissolved in beer; Egyptian recipes often included honey; and Greek pharmaka included many herbs commonly found on food; cf. Dalby 2003 (cited under Medicine: Dietetics and Regimen). Most cultures prescribe both “simples” (a single plant or substance) as well as “compounds” (mixtures of varying complexity and differing justification). The early Greek epics record a few “simples,” including a likely import, the “no-pain” of Odyssey Book 4. The use of exotics and imports becomes a common theme throughout Greek medicine. The Hippocratic corpus in several places offers lists of remedies, and Totelin 2008 is a study of their content and structure, including their use of exotics. Herophilos considered drugs a powerful form of remedy, and Hellenistic pharmacology developed increasingly complex remedies, many of them preserved in extensive extracts by Galen: see Fabricius 1972 and Debru 1997. Galen himself developed an elaborate theory of the “degrees” of hot/cold and wet/dry of drugs, which persisted as the model for many centuries. Although the lists in the Hippocratic corpus and in Galen’s extracts are extensive, the earliest extant herbal in its own right is by Dioscorides, which has been extensively studied: see Scarborough and Nutton 1982 and Riddle 1985. One of the earliest and most beautiful manuscripts preserved from Antiquity is the “Vienna Dioscorides,” on which see Gerstinger 1970 and Brubaker 2002. Scarborough has been studying Greek pharmacy for many years, covering a wide range, and much of his work is gathered in Scarborough 2010.
1235
1236Brubaker, Leslie. 2002. The Vienna Dioskorides and Anicia Juliana. In Byzantine garden culture. Edited by Antony Littlewood, Henry Maguire, and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, 189–214. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
1237
1238Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1239
1240Brubaker explores the manuscript, supplying many images, which for a given simple (herb or substance) normally provides a single image facing a corresponding page of text and has some annotations derived from Krateuas (c. 80 BCE) and Galen. Brubaker shows that it was used by readers interested in its contents and was not merely a display copy.
1241
1242Find this resource:
1243
1244Debru, Armelle, ed. 1997. Galen on pharmacology: Philosophy, history and medicine: Proceedings of the Vth International Galen Colloquium, Lille, 16–18 March 1995. Studies in Ancient Medicine 16. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
1245
1246Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1247
1248Thirteen papers in German, French, and English on various aspects of Galen’s pharmacy, such as Jacques on compound medicines, Nutton and Stein each on theriac, Keyser on sympathy and efficacy, and Ihm on poisons. Available for purchase online: the series and volume.
1249
1250Find this resource:
1251
1252Fabricius, Cajus. 1972. Galens Exzerpte aus älteren Pharmakologen. Ars Medica/Abteilung 2, griechisch-lateinische Medizin 2. Berlin: De Gruyter.
1253
1254DOI: 10.1515/9783110816761Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1255
1256Fabricius demonstrates through careful structural analysis of Galen’s pharmacological works that they are largely composed of nearly verbatim extracts of pharmacists, primarily Apollonios “Mus” (c. 10 BCE), Heras (c. 10 BCE), Andromachos Jr. (c. 75 CE), Damokrates (c. 80 CE), Asklepiades the pharmacist (c. 95 CE), Kriton (c. 100 CE), and Arkhigenes (c. 105 CE). Available online for purchase.
1257
1258Find this resource:
1259
1260Gerstinger, Hans. 1970. Codex Vindobonensis med. Gr. 1 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek. 2 vols. Codices selecti phototypice impressi 12. Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.
1261
1262Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1263
1264Beautiful photographic printing of the Codex Anicia Iuliana from 512 CE, an illustrated and alphabetized edition of Dioscorides (plus the Carmen de Virtutibus Herbarum, c. 250 CE, several works by Euteknios, c. 350 CE, and others); Volume 1 is a commentary by Gerstinger. See also Brubaker 2002. Available online for purchase.
1265
1266Find this resource:
1267
1268Riddle, John M. 1985. Dioscorides on pharmacy and medicine. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.
1269
1270Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1271
1272Riddle analyzes the five books of the herbal of Dioscorides (c. 65 CE) and discerns the drug affinity system latent in the text, which groups herbs that have similar observed physiological effects. This influenced the later system of drug “intensities” (of hot/cold and wet/dry) used by Galen, but the accurate pharmacognosy of Dioscorides was otherwise neglected.
1273
1274Find this resource:
1275
1276Scarborough, John. 2010. Pharmacy and drug lore in antiquity: Greece, Rome, Byzantium. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
1277
1278Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1279
1280Scarborough gathers fourteen of his papers on ancient pharmacy (published 1977–2002), with twenty-four pages of addenda and corrigenda, making them all more accessible. Two concern Byzantine herbal pharmacy, two concern Roman medicine, and one each treat Kriton, Soranos, and Galen; the others focus on Greek pharmacy (Hippocrates, Theophrastus, or Nicander).
1281
1282Find this resource:
1283
1284Scarborough, John, and Vivian Nutton. 1982. The Preface of Dioscorides’ Materia Medica: Introduction, translation, and commentary. Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia 4.3: 187–227.
1285
1286Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1287
1288The writers offer a thoroughly documented introduction, demonstrating the importance of Dioscorides’ work, and they produce the first English translation in over three centuries and an extensive commentary on the history, language, and pharmacy; more recently, Lily Y. Beck, De material medica (Hildesheim, Germany: Olms-Weidmann, 2005), is a translation of the whole. Scarborough and Nutton set Dioscorides in his context and supply the foundation for understanding his work.
1289
1290Find this resource:
1291
1292Totelin, Laurence. 2008. Hippocratic recipes: Oral and written transmission of pharmacological knowledge in fifth- and fourth-century Greece. Studies in Ancient Medicine 34. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
1293
1294Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1295
1296Totelin studies the numerous pharmaceutical recipes in the Hippocratic corpus and shows the likely large role of oral transmission. Other topics include the role of “exotic” ingredients and of symbolism (i.e., sympathetic magic) in the choice of ingredients. Available for purchase online: the series and volume, with link to online content for subscribers.
1297
1298Find this resource:
1299
1300Surgery
1301Greek medicine always maintained that surgery should be the last resort; the Hippocratic Oath even banned it entirely. The development of powerful inhalational anesthetics (chloroform, ether, and nitrous oxide) in the middle of the 19th century, and their subsequent wide use, has tended to efface the prior history of anesthesia and, thus, to suggest that surgery was avoided because surgeons had no means of anesthesia. However, it is clear that opium, henbane, mandrake, and other substances were used as painkillers in Antiquity. The known risk of “suppuration” (i.e., what we would recognize as infection) no doubt contributed to a desire to avoid surgery. But likely the primary Greek motivation for eschewing surgery was that it was invasive and damaging, and Greek cultural values included a strong distaste for mutilation. Nevertheless, bones were set, wounds cleaned and closed, and skull fractures treated, some by trepanation (the drilling of a hole to remove damaged bone); on that form of surgery, see Hanson 1999. Other surgical works in the Hippocratic corpus include instructions on reducing dislocations and setting fractures, using in some cases mechanical devices. One lightly invasive surgical practice became extremely widespread in Greek medicine: phlebotomy, which was opposed by Erasistratos and his school and avoided by some other later doctors; see Brain 1986. The practice was justified on the theoretical ground that some diseases involved fever and redness, i.e., an excess of the hot and wet humor, which was blood, and thus those diseases could be cured or treated by removing blood; the practice persisted into the early 19th century. Dean-Jones 1994 (cited under Medicine: Gynecology) has suggested that the original justification was to induce in men the same sort of healthful bleeding that occurs naturally in women. Hellenistic medicine advanced surgical procedure, based on the anatomical explorations of Herophilos and Erasistratos, and as shown in the Hellenistic treatise On the Heart included in the Hippocratic corpus: Harris 1973. The works of the Hellenistic surgeons are preserved only in small fragments, gathered in Michler 1968 from citations (mainly in Celsus, Galen, and Oribasius) and in Marganne 1998 from papyri. Galen’s surgical experience was broad, and he wrote many works of anatomy: part of his major summary is in Duckworth 1962; and for briefer instructional works, see Garofalo and Debru 2005. Majno 1991, written by a surgeon, offers a medical view of the accomplishments of the ancient surgeons.
1302
1303Brain, Peter, trans. 1986. Galen on bloodletting: A study of the origins, development and validity of his opinions, with a translation of the three works. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
1304
1305DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511753565Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1306
1307Brain translates three works of Galen on phlebotomy and explores the development of Galen’s views on the treatment. Phlebotomy enters Greek medicine c. 460 BCE and, by the end of the century, is a standard practice; but Erasistratos opposed it, and four centuries later Galen is eager to refute him. Available online for purchase.
1308
1309Find this resource:
1310
1311Duckworth, W. L. H. 1962. Galen: On anatomical procedures, the later books. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
1312
1313Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1314
1315Galen, late in his career, wrote a work in fifteen books on anatomy and dissection, of which books 9–15 survive only in a 9th-century Arabic version, which is here translated. They cover brain, face and pharynx, larynx, generative organs, veins and arteries, cranial nerves, and spinal nerves.
1316
1317Find this resource:
1318
1319Garofalo, Ivan, and Armelle Debru, eds. 2005. Galien. Vol. 7, Les os pour les débutants: L’anatomie des muscles. Collection des Universités de France: Série grecque 441. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
1320
1321Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1322
1323Garofalo and Debru provide an edition with facing-page French translation of two shorter works on anatomy, On Bones for Beginners and The Anatomy of Muscles, which are instructional rather than (as so often with Galen) polemical. Available for purchase online: the series and volume.
1324
1325Find this resource:
1326
1327Hanson, Maury. 1999. Hippocrates: On head wounds. Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 1.4.1. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
1328
1329Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1330
1331Hanson, himself a retired surgeon, provides an edition, English translation, and commentary in a work that is sensitive both to the ancient modes of thought and to the surgical realities. The Hippocratic author distinguishes three kinds of skull fracture: the “break,” the “crush,” and the “in-crush” (depressed), and prescribes sensible diagnostics and interventions for each. Available online: the series, volume.
1332
1333Find this resource:
1334
1335Harris, Charles R. S. 1973. The heart and the vascular system in ancient Greek medicine from Alcmaeon to Galen. Oxford: Clarendon.
1336
1337Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1338
1339Chronological survey of what the Greeks knew or believed about the heart and the vessels connected to it, including discussions of the cardiocentric theories of Aristotle, Diocles, and Praxagoras, as well as the discoveries of Herophilos (sensory and motor nerves leading to the brain) and Erasistratos (pump action of the heart).
1340
1341Find this resource:
1342
1343Majno, Guido. 1991. The healing hand: Man and wound in the ancient world. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
1344
1345Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1346
1347See pp. 141–206 and 313–338. First edition 1975. Majno surveys what is known of surgery and wound treatment among the Greeks (other cultures in other chapters) and offers incisive medical analysis of the various conditions, of the procedures, and of the medicines used on wounds. Available online for purchase.
1348
1349Find this resource:
1350
1351Marganne, Marie-Hélène. 1998. La chirurgie dans l’Égypte gréco-romaine d’après les papyrus littéraires grecs. Studies in Ancient Medicine 17. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
1352
1353Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1354
1355Marganne provides an introduction on ancient surgery, then an edition with facing-page French translation of seven revealing surgical papyri, followed by a chapter on other medical papyri that mention surgery. Available for purchase online: the series and volume.
1356
1357Find this resource:
1358
1359Michler, Markwart. 1968. Die Alexandrinischen Chirurgen: Eine Sammlung und Auswertung ihrer Fragmente. Die Hellenistische Chirurgie 1. Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner.
1360
1361Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1362
1363Michler collects, edits, and translates into German the fragments of forty-two surgeons from Herophilos (c. 270 BCE) and Erasistratos (c. 250 BCE) to the 1st century CE; many of the fragments are pharmaceutical recipes for wound treatments, but there are also significant procedural fragments (excision of cancers and bladder stones, obstetrical interventions).
1364
1365Find this resource:
1366
1367Gynecology
1368Greatly debated is the degree to which one may speak of human nature as being composed of distinct male and female natures; however, it seems to be agreed that the ancient Greeks (and Romans) definitely considered that men and women were distinct in important and essential ways. (Every ancient culture of which we have definite knowledge can be shown to have a similar outlook, differing perhaps in degree or precise scope of its notions as to where the distinctions are to be seen.) That outlook affected every aspect of Greek and Roman thought, including their medical thought. As far as we can tell, men wrote all surviving works of Greek medicine, although many of those works are anonymous, and there are twenty-one female medical or pharmaceutical writers listed in Keyser and Irby-Massie 2008 (cited under Scholarly Aids), p. 1029. It is thus no surprise that Greek medicine presumes that the “ordinary” patient is male (in fact, many of the treatises seem to presume that the ordinary patient is a wealthy male of leisure). Moreover, only in texts concerned with reproduction are female patients considered; in these, a variety of unquestioned assumptions are made about the female body in contrast to the male body (see Dean-Jones 1994). Nevertheless, three Hippocratic treatises on reproduction, which are likely to have originally formed parts of one work, do call into the question some widespread Greek assumptions about the processes of reproduction, and, e.g., propose that both men and women contribute something like seed to form the fetus; see Lonie 1981 and Potter 2012. In addition, Lloyd 1983 is a study of the role of those treatises within the overall Hippocratic discourse. Another treatise of gynecology that survives, by Soranos of Ephesos, is edited in Ilberg 1927 and translated into English in Temkin 1956; see Burguière, et al. 2003 for a French translation. Finally, Flemming 2000 primarily studies Roman views of women, but many of the sources used are Greek writers, and they are thus informative about Greek views as well.
1369
1370Burguière, P., Danielle Gourevitch, and Yves Malinas. 2003. Soranos d’Éphèse: Maladies des femmes. 4 vols. Collection des Universités de France: Série grecque 315, 331, 365, 396. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
1371
1372Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1373
1374The editors provide a text and facing-page French translation, plus explanatory notes. The preserved Greek text is quite damaged, and Ilberg 1927 has attempted a restoration; these editors prefer a quite different ordering (based on Caelius Aurelianus, Mustio, and Aëtios), but alas do not always provide a concordance to Ilberg. Available for purchase online: series, volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4.
1375
1376Find this resource:
1377
1378Dean-Jones, Lesley. 1994. Women’s bodies in classical Greek science. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
1379
1380Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1381
1382Dean-Jones explores the representations of the female body in the Hippocratic corpus and Aristotle and shows how menstruation was central to their concepts of the female body, with respect to physiology, pathology, and reproduction. Available online through subscription from University of Michigan.
1383
1384Find this resource:
1385
1386Flemming, Rebecca. 2000. Medicine and the making of Roman women: Gender, nature, and authority from Celsus to Galen. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
1387
1388Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1389
1390Flemming translates and comments upon selected texts about women in the medical writers (Part 2: before Galen; Part 3: in Galen), revealing what they show about Roman views of women and women’s roles in medicine as patients and practitioners. In Part 1, Flemming also provides an introduction to Roman medicine.
1391
1392Find this resource:
1393
1394Ilberg, Johannes, ed. 1927. Sorani Gynaeciorum libri IV. Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 4. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
1395
1396Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1397
1398Ilberg edits and indexes the surviving texts of the Methodist physician Soranos of Ephesos (c. 120 CE), especially his work on women’s health and disease, which primarily focuses on reproductive medicine. This text is translated in Temkin 1956; Burguière, et al. 2003 provides a differently ordered text. Available online: series and volume.
1399
1400Find this resource:
1401
1402Lloyd, G. E. R. 1983. Science, folklore and ideology: Studies in the life sciences in ancient Greece. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
1403
1404Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1405
1406Lloyd’s study of two issues in the development of Greek biology (assimilation and criticism of traditional beliefs, and challenges to prevailing ideologies) includes, as the second of its three topics, medical and biological theories about women in the Hippocratic corpus (where some treatises question traditional beliefs) and in Aristotle (who rationalizes traditional beliefs). (See also “Biology” (Plants and Animals)).
1407
1408Find this resource:
1409
1410Lonie, Iain M. 1981. The Hippocratic treatises “On Generation,” “On the Nature of the Child,” “Diseases IV.” Ars Medica: Texte und Untersuchungen zur Quellenkunde der Alten Medizin 2.7. Berlin: De Gruyter.
1411
1412DOI: 10.1515/9783110863963Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1413
1414Lonie translates and comments upon the three treatises, providing extensive medical interpretation, shows how they are a unity, and what is their relation to the rest of the corpus; the book made these texts far more accessible in English than previously. Available online.
1415
1416Find this resource:
1417
1418Potter, Paul. 2012. Hippocrates, volume 10: Generation: Nature of the Child: Diseases 4: Nature of Women and Barrenness. Loeb Classical Library 520. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
1419
1420Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1421
1422This volume, by an expert on Hippocrates, provides a text and a new English translation of key works of Hippocratic gynecology. The double treatise Nature of Women and Barrenness is likely by a different author than the triad now labeled Generation and Nature of the Child and Diseases 4, and provides numerous pharmaceutical recipes (including for abortion), with a very different outlook on gynecology. Available for purchase online: the series and book.
1423
1424Find this resource:
1425
1426Temkin, Owsei. 1956. Soranus’ Gynaecology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
1427
1428Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1429
1430Temkin provides a translation of the text of Ilberg 1927, for the first and only time into English, hewing close to the Greek and eschewing modernisms. There is an extensive index of materia medica, and brief notes. Soranos’s concern is strongly focused on the mother, and he contraindicates aggressive interventions.
1431
1432Find this resource:
1433
1434Physiognomy
1435To us, the human face is very individual and expressive, and we feel that we can infer mood, intent, and even character by closely “reading” the faces of those about us. Mesopotamian divination records similar practices, and the widespread custom of wearing ritual masks is an implicit evidence of the same understanding. Ancient Greeks too believed that faces were revelatory, and not only faces, but also gestures, posture, walk, and the whole habitus of the body. Just as animals and humans were compared, especially for character (see “Biology” (Plants and Animals)), so in the physiognomy of humans, animal metaphors were exploited and imputed animal characters were inferred. Cicero preserves an anecdote about Socrates upon whom an otherwise unknown Zopyros practices physiognomy, and, in any case Aristotle, in his History of Animals, offers numerous analogies of character. Greek philosophers, having inferred the existence of a human soul separate from the body, thereupon developed theories to explain how the soul and body conform to one another, a move that provided a theoretical basis for physiognomy: see Tsouna 1998. The earliest extant treatises of physiognomy are part of the Aristotelian corpus, and they seem to have been written by Peripatetics in the early 3rd century BCE: see Vogt 1999. Animal analogies continued to play an important role: see Stok 1998 and Zucker 2006. The 2nd century CE saw a revival, or at least a broad application, of physiognomy, especially by the orators of that era, notably Polemon: see Barton 1994, Gleason 1994, and especially Swain 2007. Doctors continued to be interested, as Galen shows (see Debru 2003). The practice persisted in the Islamic world (Polemon is primarily preserved in Arabic) and into the Renaissance, but it seems to have been thoroughly discredited by the modern travesties of phrenology and then craniometry.
1436
1437Barton, Tamsyn S. 1994. Power and knowledge: Astrology, physiognomics, and medicine under the Roman Empire. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
1438
1439Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1440
1441Provides a Foucauldian reading of the three topics, examining physiognomy (pp. 95–131) as practiced by Polemon, who indeed exploited physiognomy in his rhetoric to defeat opponents; but it must be noted that his success was contingent upon the social acceptance of the contents and results of the scientific practices.
1442
1443Find this resource:
1444
1445Debru, Armelle. 2003. L’animalité des parties du corps chez Galien. In Rationnel et irrationnel dans la médecine ancienne et médiévale. Edited by Nicoletta Palmieri, 99–110. Centre Jean Palerne: Mémoires 26. Saint-Étienne, France: Université de Saint-Étienne.
1446
1447Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1448
1449Galen uses animal analogies to explain the process of digestion and assimilation: The stomach and other organs and parts are each like an animal that chooses, attracts, and seizes its proper food; this remains an analogy, although Plato and Aristotle had spoken of the animal-like nature of the heart and the generative organs.
1450
1451Find this resource:
1452
1453Gleason, Maud W. 1994. Making men: Sophists and self-presentation in ancient Rome. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
1454
1455Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1456
1457Studies the rhetorical practice and self-presentation of Polemon (and Favorinus), showing among other results how Polemon exploited physiognomic concepts in his oratory.
1458
1459Find this resource:
1460
1461Stok, Fabio. 1998. La fisiognomica tra teoria e pratica. In Sciences exactes et sciences appliquées à Alexandrie. Centre Jean-Palerne: Mémoires 16. Edited by Gilbert Argoud and Jean-Yves Guillaumin, 173–187. Saint-Étienne, France: Université de Saint-Étienne.
1462
1463Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1464
1465Stok explores the extent to which biographers exploited physiognomic concepts and concludes that whereas Plutarch did not, Suetonius did practice physiognomy, but on a basis different from that propounded in the extant physiognomic treatises.
1466
1467Find this resource:
1468
1469Swain, Simon, ed. 2007. Seeing the face, seeing the soul: Polemon’s physiognomy from classical antiquity to medieval Islam. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
1470
1471Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1472
1473Four texts are edited, two Arabic versions of Polemon, plus Adamantius and the “Anonymous Latinus”; and there are three contributions on ancient physiognomy by Boys-Stones, Swain, and Elsner as well as English translations by Hoyland, Ghersetti, and Repath. (There are also three contributions on Arabic physiognomy.)
1474
1475Find this resource:
1476
1477Tsouna, Voula. 1998. Doubts about other minds and the science of physiognomics. Classical Quarterly 48.1: 175–186.
1478
1479DOI: 10.1093/cq/48.1.175Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1480
1481Physiognomy attempted to detect persistent mental state, i.e., character and disposition, not transient mental state; physiognomical data were signs indicating an interior reality and, as such, not infallible; that is because the mind and body influence one another over time so that the face, e.g., comes to resemble the soul. Available online by subscription.
1482
1483Find this resource:
1484
1485Vogt, Sabine. 1999. Aristoteles, Physiognomonika. Aristoteles Werke in deutscher Ãœbersetzung 18.6. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
1486
1487Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1488
1489The treatise on physiognomy in the Aristotelian corpus is actually two treatises (neither by Aristotle), the second with a more practical focus. Vogt translates both, in the standard German series, and provides an extensive and careful commentary plus a thorough (pp. 35–186) introduction to physiognomy.
1490
1491Find this resource:
1492
1493Zucker, Arnaud. 2006. La physiognomonie antique et le langage animal du corps. Rursus 1.58.
1494
1495DOI: 10.4000/rursus.58Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1496
1497Physiognomers from Aristotle onward often deployed animal examples because, argues Zucker, they were implicitly exploiting the kind of comparative anatomy seen in Aristotle’s works on animals (and already implicit in Plato’s account of animal origins). Zucker explains this as an instance of analogy, but he denies that it was anthropomorphism.
1498
1499Find this resource:
1500
1501Veterinary
1502Medicine may be considered the practical application to human health of knowledge gained about biology, i.e., the effects of things eaten and the activities of the body. Wherever people have kept animals, they have been concerned about the health of those animals. One of the earliest Egyptian medical papyri, the Kahun papyrus, records veterinary treatments of herd animals, and early Mesopotamian sources show the existence of specialists in veterinary medicine. Most of the evidence for Greek (and Roman) veterinary science concerns equids and bovines, the most valuable animals in their economy. The earliest extant Greek text to discuss veterinary medicine is by Xenophon, although a fragment of the 5th-century writer Simon is preserved: see Widdra 1965. Due to factors as yet unclear, the evidence for Greek and Roman veterinary medicine is very sparse from that time until the 4th century CE, and even the 4th-century Greek texts are primarily preserved in several 9th-century Byzantine compilations: see Fischer 1988, and see also the survey of Doyen 1981. (As noted, in Editions of Texts, the primary preliminary task in studying ancient science is to obtain a reliable text: for the veterinary medical texts, that has yet to be completed.) Nevertheless, the science and its texts must have existed, as the scattered evidence shows, e.g., the Roman writer Varro, Country Matters 2.1–3, 2.10, mentions the medicus of the animals who will have writings (scripta) on the subject, and he cites dozens of names of lost Greek writers on agronomy, some of whom likely wrote on veterinary medicine, as Fischer 1988 argues. Moreover, the Roman writer Columella includes veterinary matters in Books 6–7 of his work (see Roman Science: Medicine, Imperial), and several Latin veterinary treatises are extant, see Roman Science: Medicine, Late Antique—all are likely based in part on lost Greek sources. Recent work has made these extant but hitherto obscure Greek texts more accessible: see McCabe 2007 and Doyen-Higuet 2006; see also the special study Doyen-Higuet 2012.
1503
1504Doyen, Anne-Marie. 1981. Les textes d’Hippiatrie grecque: Bilan et perspectives. L’Antiquité Classique 50:258–273.
1505
1506DOI: 10.3406/antiq.1981.2009Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1507
1508Doyen surveys the manuscripts available, and the problems of the chronology of the authors; a useful preliminary for any edition. Available online by subscription.
1509
1510Find this resource:
1511
1512Doyen-Higuet, Anne-Marie. 2006. L’epitomé de la collection d’hippiatrie grecque: Histoire du texte, édition critique, traduction et notes. Vol. 1. Publications de l’Institut orientaliste de Louvain 54. Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Université catholique de Louvain, Institut orientaliste.
1513
1514Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1515
1516Alongside the extensive collection of horse-medicine (McCabe 2007), there is also a shorter epitome, in multiple versions, of which this volume (providing introduction, history of the text, and bibliography) commences the first edition. The versions relate in complex ways, which are laid out in documents on a CD included with the book.
1517
1518Find this resource:
1519
1520Doyen-Higuet, Anne-Marie. 2012. Contribution à l’étude du lexique hippiatrique grec. In Le cheval, animal de guerre et de loisir dans l’antiquité et au Moyen Âge. Edited by Stavros Lazaris, 213–222. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.
1521
1522Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1523
1524In addition to the many precise terms and distinctions of medical vocabulary for the horse, Doyen-Higuet here demonstrates a similar richness and complexity for terms concerning all aspects of the foot of the horse.
1525
1526Find this resource:
1527
1528Fischer, Klaus-Dietrich. 1988. Ancient veterinary medicine: A survey of Greek and Latin sources and some recent scholarship. Medizinhistorisches Journal 23.3–4: 191–209.
1529
1530Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1531
1532Fischer has headed a research group exploring the corpus of veterinary medicine for many years and here surveys the surviving texts (their content and structure), the existing scholarship (with analytic bibliography), and the open problems. Available online by purchase or subscription.
1533
1534Find this resource:
1535
1536McCabe, Anne. 2007. A Byzantine encyclopaedia of horse medicine: The sources, compilation, and transmission of the Hippiatrica. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
1537
1538Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1539
1540McCabe provides a thorough and detailed study of the evolution of the large and complex, but unified, corpus of the Hippiatrica, which Byzantine excerptors and synthesizers created from earlier texts for practical use. She analyzes the sources, form, and evolution of the corpus, with chapters on seven of its component authors.
1541
1542Find this resource:
1543
1544Widdra, Klaus, ed. 1965. Xenophon Reitkunst. Schriften und Quellen der Alten Welt 16. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
1545
1546Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1547
1548Widdra edits and translates the fragment by Simon of Athens (c. 435 BCE), as well as the complete text of Xenophon (c. 380 BCE); although both writers focus on riding, especially in cavalry, they also refer to the care of the horse, and Simon’s fragment is preserved in the Hippiatrica.
1549
1550Find this resource:
1551
1552Alchemy
1553Human mastery of fire has long been considered pivotal in the development of our culture(s), and early humans exploited fire to alter materials and even produce new materials. Annealing flint for knapping, and cooking food for eating, are each transformations and improvements induced by fire. The creation of pottery, bread, metals, and glass, each from substances with properties unlike the end product, are the distant roots of the science of materials that was later called alchemy. Early Greek thinkers accepted the challenges of explaining observable changes of stuff, and they included some attempt to explain the kinds of changes that produce pottery, bread, metals, or glass. Herakleitos hypothesized a key dynamic role for fire, probably to explain natural transformations by analogy with those produced by human agency. To explain material transformations, Empedocles hypothesized four “roots,” which later became the four “elements” of Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. Plato, in the Timaeus, accepts those four, analyzes them by geometry, and thereby explains how they transform one into another; for him, metals are a kind of purified water, gold being the most pure. Aristotle reconfigured the analysis, using instead perceptible properties that he held to be more fundamental than the elements, namely the pairs of opposites hot/cold and wet/dry, which combine and rearrange to form elements and compounds: see Bolzan 1976 and de Haas and Mansfeld 2004. Our concept of “element” is radically distinct from the ancient Greek concept, as is our concept of “metal”: Halleux 1981 explores the complexity underlying “metal.” Aristotle’s successors explored the natures of elements, especially Theophrastus in works (now lost) on water and on metals, as well as two extant works, On Fire (Coutant 1971) and On Stones (Eichholz 1965). The fusion of these theories with long-practiced techniques resulted, by the 2nd century BCE, in the discipline called alchemy, although the precise origins remain disputed. The earliest extant texts are c. 300 CE, for example the papyri edited in Halleux 1981, or the partially preserved encyclopedia of Zosimos, but they refer to earlier workers, such as Maria (see Patai 1982). Those texts show us that the alchemists developed many techniques that remain in use, such as the bain-marie (Patai 1982) or various forms of distillation apparatus (Wilson 2002). The model of materials that was created by these scientists persisted throughout Antiquity and into the Renaissance. Antoine Lavoisier (b. 1743–d. 1794) first proposed the modern concept of an element in 1783, and the revived atomic theory of John Dalton (b. 1766–d. 1844) was only slowly accepted over the course of the 19th century.
1554
1555Bolzan, J. E. 1976. Chemical combination according to Aristotle. Ambix 23.3: 134–144.
1556
1557DOI: 10.1179/amb.1976.23.3.134Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1558
1559Building on the work of Joachim, Journal of Philology (1903), and based on a close reading of Aristotle’s Generation and Corruption, Bolzan argues that Aristotle’s theory of combination allows for differences in degree of the principles hot/cold and wet/dry, and that homoimerous compounds contain their constituents in definite proportions.
1560
1561Find this resource:
1562
1563Coutant, Victor C. B. 1971. De Igne: A post-Aristotelian view of the nature of fire. Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum.
1564
1565Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1566
1567Coutant edits this work on the element Fire, which Theophrastus argues is quite distinct from the elements Air, Water, and Earth, for example, in being generated, dynamic, and variable, in requiring fuel, and in suffering extinction; Coutant provides a facing-page English translation (oddly, on the left), and a brief commentary.
1568
1569Find this resource:
1570
1571de Haas, Frans, and Jaap Mansfeld, eds. 2004. Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption I. Oxford: Clarendon.
1572
1573Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1574
1575The editors offer a dozen papers on the chapters of the first book of Aristotle’s work on the elements and their transformations, which primarily focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of elemental transformation; the essays are primarily philosophical in approach.
1576
1577Find this resource:
1578
1579Eichholz, D. E. 1965. Theophrastus: De Lapidibus. Oxford: Clarendon.
1580
1581Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1582
1583Theophrastus wrote treatises On Fire (cf. Coutant 1971), On Water (lost), On Winds (cf. Coutant and Eichenlaub 1975, cited under Meteorologika), On Metals (lost), and this work On Stones, i.e., on substances that are made from the element Earth (metals are made from Water). Eichholz edits the text, with a facing-page English translation plus extensive introduction and commentary.
1584
1585Find this resource:
1586
1587Halleux, Robert. 1974. Le problème des metaux dans la science antique. Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège 209. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
1588
1589Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1590
1591Halleux investigates the evolving concept of “metal” in the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Straton of Lampsakos, and a variety of Hellenistic authors. Although Greeks knew about such materials as antimony, copper, electrum, gold, iron, lead, mercury, silver, and tin, their concepts about these fusible and malleable substances do not map neatly onto our modern term “metal.”
1592
1593Find this resource:
1594
1595Halleux, Robert. 1981. Les alchimistes Grecs. Vol. 1, Papyrus de Leyde: Papyrus de Stockholm: Fragments de recettes. Collection des Universités de France: Série grecque 281. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
1596
1597Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1598
1599The two lengthy papyri (c. 290 CE) are the most copious extant sources for alchemical recipes; Halleux provides an edition, facing-page French translation, explanatory notes, and a very useful lexicon of alchemical terms. The Leiden papyrus contains primarily recipes for silver; the Stockholm papyrus recipes for gemstones and fabric dyes. Available for purchase online: the series and book.
1600
1601Find this resource:
1602
1603Patai, Raphael. 1982. Maria the Jewess: Founding mother of alchemy. Ambix 29.3: 177–197.
1604
1605DOI: 10.1179/amb.1982.29.3.177Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1606
1607Most data about Maria derives from Zosimos of Panopolis (c. 300 CE), who cites her work On Furnaces and Instruments, which included the “bain-marie” and the “tribikos” (triple-outlet still); based on those passages, Patai elucidates her procedures and doctrines: Nature is a unity, humans are analogous to metals, and both undergo transformation.
1608
1609Find this resource:
1610
1611Wilson, C. Anne. 2002. Distilling, sublimation, and the four elements: The aims and achievements of the earliest Greek chemists. In Science and mathematics in ancient Greek culture. Edited by C. J. Tuplin and T. E. Rihll, 306–322. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
1612
1613Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1614
1615Wilson gives a précis of ancient alchemy, closely based on the texts and the chemical possibilities, focusing on the Phusika kai Mustika text, and evidences from the Hellenistic period for distillation of water, wine, pitch, and mercury.
1616
1617Find this resource:
1618
1619Paradoxography
1620Hellenistic authors beginning with Callimachus (c. 265 BCE) began to collect accounts of marvels and wonders of the natural world, which they called paradoxa, thus creating the discipline of paradoxography. Earlier writers had included natural marvels in their works, such as the marvelous lands and creatures in the Odyssey, the extreme items from the extremes of the earth in Herodotos (on which see Romm 1992, cited under Geography), or the anomalous cases included in the Hippocratic corpus, Epidemics, and the Aristotelian corpus, Problems. The novelty in paradoxography was the gathering of solely marvels, without any narrative or discursive framework, into self-standing works. Their intent is not very clear but probably included the desire to show the full range of phenomena in the world as well as to provide difficult or edge cases to spark further thought. Several works are extant, but each was revised and edited numerous times in Antiquity, so none of them can be precisely dated or uniquely attributed; three are entirely anonymous, and the one attributed to Aristotle cannot be earlier than c. 250 BCE. Those uncertainties, of intent, content, and origin, probably explain why little work has been done on these texts. Giannini 1966 provides an edition of the corpus, and a survey of the works is provided in Giannini 1964. A more recent survey—Schepens and Delcroix 1996—attempts an analysis of the characteristics of the genre. Dorandi 1999, a careful edition of Antigonus, makes some of the problems of attribution and text clear.
1621
1622Dorandi, Tiziano, ed. 1999. Antigone de Caryste: Fragments. Collection des Universités de France: Série grecque 393. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
1623
1624Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1625
1626Dorandi edits, and provides a facing-page French translation of, the fragments most certainly attributable to the 3rd-century BCE writer of biographies and art history; he discusses the attribution to this man of homonyms of various paradoxographical works. Available for purchase online: the series and book.
1627
1628Find this resource:
1629
1630Giannini, Alexander. 1964. Studi sulla paradossografia greca II. Acme: Annali della Facoltà di lettere e filosofia dell’Università degli studi di Milano 17:99–140.
1631
1632Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1633
1634Giannini briefly surveys paradoxographers from Callimachus through Bolos, Philostephanos, Archelaos of Chersonesos, Antigonos of Carystos, Myrsilos, Philon of Heraclea, and many others to the Imperial era, and includes the historians Ephoros and Theopompos.
1635
1636Find this resource:
1637
1638Giannini, Alexander, ed. 1966. Paradoxographorum Graecorum Reliquiae. Classici Grecie Latini 3. Milan: Istituto Editoriale Italiano.
1639
1640Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1641
1642Giannini edits and provides a facing-page Latin translation of the fragments and texts of paradoxographers, especially the longer texts, attributed to Antigonos (pp. 32–109), Apollonios (120–143), and Phlegon (pp. 169–220), plus the pseudo-Aristotelian Mirabilia (pp. 221–314).
1643
1644Find this resource:
1645
1646Schepens, Guido, and Kris Delcroix. 1996. Ancient paradoxography. In La letteratura di consumo nel mondo Greco-Latino. Edited by Oronzo Pecere and Antonio Stramaglia, 373–460. Cassino, Italy: Università degli Studi di Cassino.
1647
1648Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1649
1650The authors delineate the salient characteristics of paradoxogrphy: wonders that are reliably attested (therefore attributed to an authority), often excerpted from longer or fuller works (thus contingent upon extensive libraries), intended as cases to be studied, and systematically arranged. Paradoxography proper is Hellenistic, but Herodotos is its grandfather.
1651
1652Find this resource:
1653
1654Roman Science
1655Roman science here means science in Latin based on Greek science. (Alternatively, one might classify all Roman-era science, whether written in Greek or in Latin, as “Roman.”) By any definition, it is something of an anomaly. Members of other ancient cultures who encountered Greek science either eschewed it entirely, or practiced it in Greek. Likewise, outsiders rarely adopted the science of ancient cultures other than the Greeks. The anomaly of Roman science can be explained by noting two things: that Greek science is far less bound to specifics of Greek culture than were the sciences of other ancient cultures encountered by the Romans; and that Roman culture was unusually prone, among ancient cultures that encountered the Greeks, to assimilate, i.e., bring home and master, the cultural products of its subjected peoples. Roman culture privileged authorities and centers, founders and origins, plus utility and security. Roman authorities encountering Greek sciences thus preferred to assimilate what was established as certain, what promoted their own power, and what served their own ends. Thus, some sciences were scarcely assimilated, such as mathematics, optics, and harmonics; others were adopted in partial ways, such as astrology (for its alleged predictive value) and cosmology (for its view of an ordered and hierarchical cosmos), but not so much astronomy (which “merely” predicted the positions of orbiting bodies): see Roman Science: Astrology and Cosmology. Likewise, descriptive geography was useful because territory to be ruled must be known, whereas mathematical geography was out of scope: see Roman Science: Geography. Those sciences most fully utilized by the Romans include agronomy, architecture, mechanics, and medicine. In some early cases, the man of authority assimilated the science by composing a work, e.g., Varro (see Cardauns 2001) or especially Cato (see Roman Science: Agronomy), but more often the Roman expert is the client of some man of authority, as, for example, Vitruvius (see Roman Science: Architecture) or Mela (see Roman Science: Geography) or Musa (see Roman Science: Medicine, Imperial). Foreign wisdom represented a risk to Romans, since it might undermine their own authority; thus, it must be managed carefully, either by exclusion, as often for astrology (see Cramer 1954, cited under Roman Science: Astrology and Cosmology), or by transformation into something that would support Roman ways, as Lucretius attempted to do with Epicureanism (see Gigon 1978; Melville, et al. 1997; Sedley 1998). Nicolet 1997 surveys some of the ways in which Romans assimilated various sciences. Rawson 1985, Wallace-Hadrill 1988, and Keyser 2010 attempt to explain the whole phenomenon of Roman assimilation of Greek science. Conversely, Greek writers of the Roman era, although explicitly continuing the tradition of Greek science, were deeply influenced by their new context. Thus, many Greek scientific texts of the Roman era reflect to some degree Latin patterns of thought and argument: Lehoux 2012 studies how scientific writers of the Roman era, primarily Cicero, Seneca, Ptolemy, and Galen, presented science to themselves and their readers. It is possible to follow him and categorize all Greek writers of the Roman era as examples of Roman science: see, among others, the Greek writers Dioscorides in Pharmacy; Galen in Hellenistic, Galen, Byzantine, Heron in Mechanics Including Pneumatics, Ptolemy in Astronomy, Geography, Harmonics, and Optics; and Soranos in Gynecology; note also the works by Flemming 2000, cited under Medicine: Gynecology; Grant 1997 and Grant 2000, cited under Medicine: Dietetics and Regimen; and Barton 1994, Gleason 1994 and Swain 2007, cited under Medicine: Physiognomy. (Similarly, Greek writers of the early Byzantine period can be seen as reflecting later Roman developments, in addition to being seen as building upon the long Greek tradition.) For scholarly aids, see Scholarly Aids; for journals, see Journals.
1656
1657Cardauns, Burkhart. 2001. Marcus Terentius Varro: Einführung in sein Werk. Heidelberg, Germany: Winter.
1658
1659Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1660
1661Cardauns knows the work of Varro well, and here he provides a short introduction to all its aspects, including the agronomy, i.e., the work On Country Matters (“De Re Rustica,” pp. 14–29) and the encyclopedic works (pp. 77–81). Each section provides orienting bibliography and a summary of the content.
1662
1663Find this resource:
1664
1665Gigon, Olof, ed. 1978. Lucrèce: Huit exposés, suivis de discussions. Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique 24. Vandoeuvres-Geneva, Switzerland: Fondation Hardt.
1666
1667Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1668
1669The Fondation Hardt sponsors resident scholars and symposia, which are published in the series Entretiens available online; this volume focuses on Lucretius, with essays by, e.g., Furley (history of humanity), Schrijvers (argument by analogy), and Gigon (debt to Ennius).
1670
1671Find this resource:
1672
1673Keyser, Paul T. 2010. Science. In The Oxford handbook of Roman studies. Edited by Alessandro Barchiesi and Walter Scheidel, 859–881. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
1674
1675DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199211524.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1676
1677The Romans uniquely adopted Greek science into their own language, assimilating and exploiting the more pragmatic results in the fields of agronomy, mechanics, and medicine, either by a wise leader (as Cato) or under the auctoritas of a patron (as Vitruvius under Augustus), always preferring authoritative founders, prescriptive answers, and mastery (or exclusion) of foreign wisdom.
1678
1679Find this resource:
1680
1681Lehoux, Daryn. 2012. What did the Romans know? An inquiry into science and worldmaking. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
1682
1683DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226471150.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1684
1685Lehoux explores the fundamentally ethical universe of Roman thinkers, showing how that assumption contextualized and formed their knowledge of nature; he focuses on Roman efforts aimed at understanding and exploring the natural world. Lehoux emphasizes the role of Roman forensic oratory in the presentation of scientific evidence and theories, but Greek forensic oratory had long been an influence, especially on Greek medical texts. Available to subscribers online.
1686
1687Find this resource:
1688
1689Melville, Ronald, Don Fowler, and Peta Fowler. 1997. Lucretius on the nature of the universe. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
1690
1691Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1692
1693Melville (a retired civil servant) translated Lucretius’s poem as a labor of love, and his translation is augmented with a brief introduction and notes by the erudite and sensitive Latinists Fowler and Fowler. They set the work in its sociopolitical and literary context, showing how it negotiates with a wide variety of antecedents.
1694
1695Find this resource:
1696
1697Nicolet, Claude, ed. 1997. Les littératures techniques dans l’antiquité romaine: Statut, public et destination, tradition: Sept exposés, suivis de discussions. Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique 42. Vandoeuvres-Geneva, Switzerland: Fondation Hardt.
1698
1699Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1700
1701This volume of the Entretiens contains essays by, e.g., Gros (illustrations in Vitruvius), Fleury (mechanics, primarily in Vitruvius), and De Laine (the genre and political context of the work of Frontinus, an administrative handbook). Available for purchase online.
1702
1703Find this resource:
1704
1705Rawson, Elizabeth. 1985. Intellectual life in the late Roman Republic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
1706
1707Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1708
1709In the two-part work, Rawson first composes a synthesis of the intellectual world of c. 100–50 BCE in Rome, often citing Varro; Part 2 treats various disciplines in turn, e.g., mathematics including optics, harmonics, and astronomy (but not astrology: chapter 11), medicine (chapter 12), architecture and allied subjects (chapter 13), and geography (chapter 17).
1710
1711Find this resource:
1712
1713Sedley, David. 1998. Lucretius and the transformation of Greek wisdom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
1714
1715DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511482380Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1716
1717Sedley studies the origins and structure of Lucretius’s poem: the poet used Epicurus, especially his book On Nature, rather than more recent Epicureans, and he drew poetic inspiration from Empedocles as an epic and didactic poet. Lucretius carefully deploys language to stress the universality of his message for his Roman audience. Available online with subscription.
1718
1719Find this resource:
1720
1721Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. 1988. Review article: Greek knowledge, Roman power. Classical Philology 83.3: 224–233.
1722
1723DOI: 10.1086/367110Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1724
1725In an essay-review of Rawson 1985, Wallace-Hadrill argues that Romans were ready to learn from the Greek wisdom they had pillaged because they understood that knowledge is power, and their absorption of disciplines was not homogenous; they neglected or despised the mathematical arts of arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music as well as geography and “physics.” Available to subscribers online.
1726
1727Find this resource:
1728
1729Editions of Texts
1730Making the texts of the works available is the first challenge, and the necessary foundation for any reliable results of the study of ancient Roman science. Moreover, to make the work as widely available as possible, a good translation, with suitable explanatory commentary, is needed. For works that came to be regarded as canonical, such as Cato, Celsus, Lucretius, or Varro, good texts have long been available, but for many works the only edition is very old or not reliable. Likewise, reliable English translations are available only for some of the texts. The works listed here are exemplary efforts in that direction. The two earliest extant texts of Roman science, Cato’s On Agriculture and Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things, are each regarded as “classics” and thus have long been available in good editions: for Cato see Mazzarino 1982 and Flach 2005 (cited under Roman Science: Agronomy); for Lucretius see Bailey 1947. Similarly well treated are Varro On Country Matters (see Flach 1996–2002) and the imperial-era medical writer Celsus (see Marx 2002); and for Manilius, see Goold 1977 (cited under Roman Science: Astrology and Cosmology). Recent editions of Late writers of Late Antiquity have appeared in several series: in the Corpus Medicorum Latinorum series, see Bendz and Pape 1990–2002; in the “Budé” series, see Maire 2002; and in the Loeb series, see Kaster 2011.
1731
1732Bailey, Cyril. 1947. Lucretius: De rervm natvra libri sex, ed. with prolegomena, critical apparatus, translation, and commentary. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon.
1733
1734Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1735
1736Volume 1 contains a lengthy introduction, the text and facing-page translation, whereas the extensive commentary fills volumes 2–3; the work also includes a brief appendix translating the Arabic version of the Syriac version of a fragment of Theophrastus, Meteorology. Bailey’s work and text remain standard and impressive.
1737
1738Find this resource:
1739
1740Bendz, Gerhard, and Ingeborg Pape. 1990–2002. Caelii Aureliani Celerum passionum libri III, Tardarum passionum libri V. 2 vols. Corpus Medicorum Latinorum 6.1. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
1741
1742Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1743
1744The Berlin academy has been slowly editing the texts of Latin and Greek medicine; the first Latin edition was Marx, ed. Celsus (Leipzig: Teubner, 1915). This is the most recent Latin text to appear, with facing-page German translation, and extensive indexes. Caelius Aurelianus (c. 445 CE) translated the Greek of Soranos, providing numerous citations of earlier medical writers. Available free online: the series; these volumes.
1745
1746Find this resource:
1747
1748Flach, Dieter. 1996–2002. Marcus Terentius Varro: Gespräche über die Landwirtschaft. 3 vols. Texte zur Forschung 65–67. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
1749
1750Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1751
1752Flach provides a thorough edition, careful German translation, and extensive commentary. This supersedes the “Budé” edition by Heurgon (Vol. 1, 1978) and Guiraud (Vols. 2–3, 1995, 1997), which in turn superseded the very old edition in the Loeb (1934). An updated one-volume version appeared (2006), without the commentary.
1753
1754Find this resource:
1755
1756Kaster, Robert A., ed. 2011. Macrobius: Saturnalia. 3 vols. Loeb Classical Library 510, 511, 512. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
1757
1758Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1759
1760The Loeb Library offers pocket-sized editions with facing-page English translation of Greek and Latin texts of Greek and Roman antiquity; besides Macrobius there are over a dozen other volumes of Roman science, including agronomists, Celsus, Frontinus, Lucretius, Pliny, and Seneca. This work by Macrobius is an encyclopedic dialogue retailing obscure data. Available for purchase: the series, volume 1; volume 2; and volume 3.
1761
1762Find this resource:
1763
1764Maire, Brigitte. 2002. Gargilius Martialis: Les remèdes tirés des légumes et des fruits. Collection des universités de France: Série latine 367. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
1765
1766Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1767
1768This series (often called the “Budé”) offers editions with facing-page French translation of Greek and Latin texts of Greek and Roman antiquity; the series includes Boethius, Frontinus, Martianus Capella, Pomponius Mela, Seneca, Vitruvius, agronomists, astrologers, encyclopedists, and other medical writers. This work by a North African (c. 245 CE) provides practical remedies based on traditional lore. Available for purchase: the series and volume.
1769
1770Find this resource:
1771
1772Marx, Friedrich. 2002. A. Cornelii Celsi quae supersunt. Corpus Medicorum Latinorum 1. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
1773
1774Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1775
1776Originally published in 1915. Marx includes the fragments of the lost portions of Celsus’s encyclopedia as well as the whole of the section On Medicine. Despite its age, not yet superseded, although a missing segment of the text has been found: U. Capitani, “Il recupero di un passo di Celso in un codice del De medicina conservato a Toledo,” Maia 26 (1974): 161–212. Available free online: the series and volume.
1777
1778Find this resource:
1779
1780Mazzarino, Antonio. 1982. M. Porci Catonis De Agri Cvltvra. Leipzig: Teubner.
1781
1782Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1783
1784Cato’s brief work is written in an archaic form of Latin, and the best manuscript was last seen in the 16th century, so the editor is faced with extra challenges. Cato gives advice both scientific and economic addressed to the wealthy landowner running a productive country estate. See also Flach 2005 (cited under Roman Science: Agronomy).
1785
1786Find this resource:
1787
1788Agronomy
1789Every culture that practices agriculture builds up over time a body of knowledge about the crops they raise and the factors affecting the raising of those crops. Traditional cultures usually attribute much of the process to various divinities, as did the early Greeks; but already Hesiod attempts to set forth a list of rules by which farmers can reliably regulate their activities for a successful harvest. Greeks after Hesiod wrote extensively about the theory and practice of agriculture; however, essentially every such work is lost and all that remains is an early Byzantine collection, the “Geoponica,” which contains bits and pieces of earlier works. The Romans too built up a body of knowledge, some of which can be perceived in the De Agri Cultura of Cato (c. 160 BCE); see Boscherini 1970, Astin 2000, and Flach 2005; for additional bibliography, see Suerbaum 2004. When the Romans sacked Carthage in 146 BCE, they made sure to preserve the massive work of Mago, and they had it translated into Latin; that too is lost, but the deed tells the tale: The Romans were eager to assimilate knowledge that was possibly useful, and surely Mago’s data were useful for the new territory and province of “Africa” (roughly Tunisia and eastern coastal Algeria) that the Romans then began to rule and farm. Latin writers in the 2nd and lst centuries BCE (some influenced by the Greek writings that were then becoming available) were also numerous, and their works are now almost entirely lost, except for scraps preserved by later authors; these are surveyed in Martin 1971 and edited in Speranza 1971. After Cato, the earliest extant Roman writer of agronomy was the polymath M. Terentius Varro, whose work Country Matters explains how he operated his estate; see Cardauns 2001 (cited under Roman Science) and Martin 1971. Although Vergil is primarily received as a writer of literary works, his Georgics was composed as an exploration of the science of farming, as Ross 1987 demonstrates. Later authors continued the tradition, with variation, such as Columella in the middle of the lst century CE (Noè 2002) and the land surveyors of the 2nd century and later (Campbell 2000).
1790
1791Astin, Alan E. 2000. Cato the censor. Oxford: Clarendon.
1792
1793Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1794
1795Originally published in 1978. Astin composes a political and social biography of Cato, who reached the highest ranks of Roman politics, and provides two chapters (9 and 11) on aspects of his work De Agri Cultura, which conveys his experience running a large farm staffed by slaves, producing olive oil or wine and operated for profit.
1796
1797Find this resource:
1798
1799Boscherini, Silvano. 1970. Lingua e scienza greca nel de Agri Cultura di Catone. Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo.
1800
1801Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1802
1803Despite Cato’s self-presentation as purely Roman, his work on agriculture extensively exploited Greek scientific traditions, both for content and for expression. Boscherini provides an extensive yet compact survey of those, e.g., even Cato’s notorious encomium of cabbage has a Greek origin (pp. 63–78).
1804
1805Find this resource:
1806
1807Campbell, J. Brian. 2000. The writings of the Roman land surveyors: Introduction, text, translation and commentary. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.
1808
1809Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1810
1811Campbell provides an edition and facing-page English translation, with commentary, for the surveyors (gromatici) who laid out fields: Frontinus (on whom see Roman Science: Architecture), Agennius (c. 400 CE), Hyginus agrimensor (c. 100 CE), Siculus Flaccus (c. 150 CE), Hyginus gromaticus (c. 200 CE?), and Balbus (c. 105 CE?), most or all of whom are seldom studied.
1812
1813Find this resource:
1814
1815Flach, Dieter. 2005. Marcus Porcius Cato: Ãœber den Ackerbau. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
1816
1817Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1818
1819Flach argues that Cato deliberately used archaistic Latin, redolent of the “Twelve Tables” laws, and thus produces a new edition, with following German translation and brief notes, and modern reconstructed drawings of his olive press, his wine press, and the structure containing both.
1820
1821Find this resource:
1822
1823Martin, René. 1971. Recherches sur les agronomes Latins et leurs conceptions économiques et sociales. Paris: Société d’Édition “Belles Lettres”.
1824
1825Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1826
1827Martin surveys agronomic writings, from the fragmentary authors who preceded Cato, especially Saserna, through Vergil and Varro to Columella and Pliny. The evolution of agricultural economy and practice, in particular the growth of grand estates, drove the evolution of the treatises.
1828
1829Find this resource:
1830
1831Noè, Eralda. 2002. Il progetto di Columella: Profilo sociale, economico, culturale. Como, Italy: Edizioni New Press.
1832
1833Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1834
1835Noè studies the agronomy of Columella from an economic and social outlook, arguing that his relation to innovation and tradition can be explained on economic grounds and that his intended audience was much wider than wealthy elites.
1836
1837Find this resource:
1838
1839Ross, David O., Jr. 1987. Virgil’s elements: Physics and poetry in the Georgics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
1840
1841Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1842
1843Treating the four books of Vergil’s Georgics in sequence, Ross shows how Vergil took ownership of the Greek scientific tradition and popular conceptions so that there is rarely a single source for any specific datum. The four elements are the basis of the science exploited by Vergil.
1844
1845Find this resource:
1846
1847Speranza, Felicianus. 1971. Scriptorum Romanorum De Re Rustica Reliquiae. Messina, Italy: Università degli Studi.
1848
1849Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1850
1851This rather rare book offers an edition of the fragments of the agronomists who wrote before Varro, especially the Latin translation commissioned by the Senate of the Carthaginian (Punic) work of Mago.
1852
1853Find this resource:
1854
1855Suerbaum, Werner. 2004. Cato Censorius in der Forschung des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine kommentierte chronologische Bibliographie für 1900–1999 nebst systematischen Hinweisen und einer Darstellung des Schriftstellers M. Porcius Cato (234–149 v. Chr.). Hildesheim, Germany: Olms.
1856
1857Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1858
1859Suerbaum provides a thorough and annotated bibliography, collecting works published primarily in classics venues, and he organizes them by category (works that appear in multiple categories are fully cited only once).
1860
1861Find this resource:
1862
1863Architecture
1864The name of this discipline, derived from Greek, is explained as meaning the chief (archi–) of the construction or building (tekto–); Vitruvius exploits that notion and presents his work as showing how the good architect can take charge of all aspects of the work (see especially Book 1.1). By the time of Vitruvius, Roman culture already had a well-developed tradition of building, especially the roads and the aqueducts. A notable early road and aqueduct were built in 312 BCE under the authority of Ap. Claudius Caecus (i.e., “Appius . . .”), hence named the “Appian Road” (Via Appia) and the “Appian Aqueduct” (Aqua Appia); both were built under military pressure during an early phase of Rome’s conquest of Italy. It is unclear how much Greek (or Etruscan) influence contributed to the design of that system. However, the Aqua Appia was essentially a subterranean tunnel, such as had been used for hundreds of years all around the Mediterranean and as built by Eupalinos on Samos (and described by Herodotos); the first raised aqueduct built by Romans was the Aqua Marcia (144 BCE). The subterranean tunnel style of aqueduct lacked an “inverted siphon,” whose principle had first been addressed by Philon, c. 200 BCE (see Mechanics Including Pneumatics), and was exploited in the aqueduct of Pergamon built under Eumenes II, c. 180 BCE. For Vitruvius, not only were the techniques of town planning and building construction part of the architect’s profession, so also were matters of water supply (his Book 8), the measurement and display of time (Book 9), and machines for use in building—and in war (Book 10). On the last topic, see also Roman Science: Mechanics and Metrology. Apparently only Vitruvius saw all these as a unity, or at least no other similarly comprehensive work is known from Antiquity. Vitruvius has remained a “classic” especially for those interested in the artistry of architecture, and many editions and studies are available; for the text, see Callebat, et al. 1969–2009; for a translation and commentary, see Rowland and Howe 1999; for a recent study, see McEwen 2003. A little more than one century after Vitruvius, another Roman, Iulius Frontinus, composed a work of “architecture,” in particular on the aqueducts of Rome. This book contains less material on construction and more on regulation and water flow, and scholars have debated its intent: Peachin 2004 and Rodgers 2004 arrive at differing conclusions.
1865
1866Callebat, Louis, Marie-Thérèse Cam, Philippe Fleury, et al., eds. 1969–2009. Vitruve: De l’architecture. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
1867
1868Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1869
1870This long-interrupted multivolume, multi-editor series was completed after forty years with the appearance of Volume 5 (each volume covers one of Vitruvius’s ten books, which each treat a different topic); Volume 8 (1973) and Volume 9 (1969) are now seriously out of date. This is an edition, with facing-page French translation, plus extensive and illustrated explanatory notes. Available online for purchase.
1871
1872Find this resource:
1873
1874McEwen, Indra Kagis. 2003. Vitruvius: Writing the body of architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
1875
1876Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1877
1878Argues that Vitruvius intended his work to be the means by which Augustus’s body would become congruent with his domain. The four chapters are: the “Angelic body” (the form of the book itself), the “Herculean body” (Vitruvius himself), the “body beautiful” (proportion and geometry in architecture), and the “body of the emperor” (Augustus’s building program and his “Prima Porta” statue).
1879
1880Find this resource:
1881
1882Peachin, Michael. 2004. Frontinus and the curae of the curator aquarum. Heidelberger Althistorische Beiträge und Epigraphische Studien 39. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
1883
1884Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1885
1886Peachin argues that Frontinus’s work constituted a political pamphlet, advocating cooperation with Frontinus’s administrative reform that all concessions of aqueduct water to individuals should be proper imperial grants. According to Peachin, such a pamphlet would be more in accord with the typical ad hoc Roman procedures.
1887
1888Find this resource:
1889
1890Rodgers, Robert H. 2004. Frontinus: De Aquaeductu Urbis Romae: Edited with introduction and commentary. Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 42. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
1891
1892Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1893
1894Iulius Frontinus was appointed by Nerva as curator of the aqueducts, and he wrote this treatise as an aide-memoire and for the benefit of his successors in the office, providing history and technical data. Rodgers provides a new edition and extensive commentary, with tables summarizing technical details (pp. 350–358).
1895
1896Find this resource:
1897
1898Rowland, Ingrid D., and Thomas Noble Howe. 1999. Vitruvius: Ten books on architecture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
1899
1900Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1901
1902Rowland provides the translation and Howe the extensive commentary and lavish and very clear illustrations. Vitruvius composed his ten books c. 25 BCE. They cover siting, materials, temples in general, types of temples, public buildings, private buildings, finishing, water, sundials and clocks, and machines (for building and war). Books 9–10 extensively exploit Greek material.
1903
1904Find this resource:
1905
1906Astrology and Cosmology
1907The Romans, like all cultures in the temperate zone, struggled to regulate an annual, i.e., solar, calendar that contained lunar months; by their own account, they did not solve this problem until Iulius Caesar introduced in 45 BCE a Greek calendar constructed by Sosigenes on the basis of earlier Greek calendars created by astronomers in Alexandria, and one that was specialized for the Roman people. Before they began to grapple with Greek astronomy, little or no evidence exists that they had any special interest in the planets, and their use of the fixed stars was similar to that recorded for Greeks (e.g., in Hesiod and Aratos) as markers of agricultural seasons. Among the various schools of Greek thought (see General Overviews: Surveys), although Lucretius had explained Epicurus in a manner congenial to Romans, most Romans seem to have found the Stoa, the school of Zeno of Citium, the most congenial. An influential member of that school in the early lst century BCE was Poseidonios of Apamea, a friend of Cicero, and a strong advocate of the Stoic doctrines of fate and necessity—and of the consequent validity of divination, including astrology. That early influence, and other factors, resulted in Stoic views of the cosmos and of astrology dominating at Rome. An account of that influence, and the varying responses at Rome, may be found in Cramer 1954, although other factors, such as, for example, Nigidius, who is studied in Della Casa 1962, must be considered. Works on astrology or cosmology in Latin include notably Manilius’s poem explaining determinism in the cosmos, edited and translated in Goold 1977, Germanicus’s translation of Aratos’s poem, in turn edited and translated in Le Boeuffle 1975, and Hyginus’s summary of astral mythology, likewise edited and translated in Le Boeuffle 1983. Two later works of the same sort, but not from a strictly Stoic point of view, are Apuleius’s translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian On the Cosmos, on which see Harrison 2000, and Censorinus’s gift-book, edited in Rapisarda 1991 and translated in Parker 2007).
1908
1909Cramer, Frederick H. 1954. Astrology in Roman law and politics. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 37. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
1910
1911Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1912
1913Cramer provides a comprehensive survey of the growth of astrology in the Hellenistic era and its transmission to Rome, and he explores its social and political role until the early 3rd century. In Part 2, Cramer exploits the often-neglected evidence of laws prohibiting astrology. Although outdated in many details, this remains a useful synthesis.
1914
1915Find this resource:
1916
1917Della Casa, Adriana. 1962. Nigidio Figulo. Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo.
1918
1919Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1920
1921Della Casa attempts to reconstruct the life and works of this influential but now mysterious thinker, who according to Cicero revived Pythagoreanism for the Romans, promoted astrology, and seems to have written works on biology and on meteorologika.
1922
1923Find this resource:
1924
1925Goold, George P. 1977. Manilius Astronomica. Loeb Classical Library 469. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
1926
1927Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1928
1929This earliest extant astrological treatise in Greek or Latin was written by Manilius around 15 CE, and its five books of hexameters present a Stoic conception of a world bound by fate. Goold edits and provides a facing-page English translation, with brief notes, and an extensive introductory analysis. Available for purchase: series; volume.
1930
1931Find this resource:
1932
1933Harrison, Stephen J. 2000. Philosophical exposition: De Mundo and De Platone. In Apuleius: A Latin sophist. By Stephen J. Harrison, 174–195. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
1934
1935Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1936
1937Apuleius, among other works, composed (c. 160 CE) a Latin translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian On the Cosmos, which became very popular in the West during Late Antiquity. Harrison provides a systematic introduction to the work, its date, structure, and differences from the original. Available online for purchase.
1938
1939Find this resource:
1940
1941Le Boeuffle, André. 1975. Germanicus: Les phénomènes d’Aratos. Collection des universités de France: Série latine 219. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
1942
1943Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1944
1945The poem of Aratos was repeatedly translated into Latin, and this is the earliest extant version, by Germanicus Iulius Caesar (c. 15 CE), adoptive son of Tiberius. This is an edition with facing-page French translation, plus notes, and an introduction exploring the relation of Germanicus’s version to the others; another exploration of that relation is G. Maurach, Germanicus und sein Arat (1978). Available for purchase: series; this volume.
1946
1947Find this resource:
1948
1949Le Boeuffle, André. 1983. Hygin: L’astronomie. Collection des universités de France: Série latine 262. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
1950
1951Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1952
1953Iulius Hyginus (c. 10 BCE), freedman of Augustus, wrote a treatise on agriculture, and this work in four books: (1) cosmography; (2) legends about constellations, planets, and the Milky Way; (3) description of the constellations; (4) the topics of Greek spherics. Le Boeuffle edits the work, with facing-page French translation and extensive introduction and notes. Available for purchase: the series; this volume.
1954
1955Find this resource:
1956
1957Parker, Holt N. 2007. The birthday book: Censorinus. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
1958
1959Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1960
1961Parker translates the work of Censorinus and provides helpful notes; see Rapisarda 1991 for the text.
1962
1963Find this resource:
1964
1965Rapisarda, Carmelo A. 1991. Censorinus: De die natali Liber ad Q. Caerellium. Edizioni e saggi universitari di filologia classica 47. Bologna, Italy: Pàtron.
1966
1967Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1968
1969Censorinus wrote this book about time, calendars, human growth, and the power of the stars as a birthday present for his friend in 238 CE, and Rapisarda provides an edition followed by an Italian translation, plus an extensive commentary on the wide variety of data provided by Censorinus.
1970
1971Find this resource:
1972
1973Encyclopedism
1974Greek science was marked from its origin by vigorous debates and dissents; although some matters were generally agreed (the central role of logic, the geocentric model, health as somehow a balance), much was in dispute, even items that we casually consider to have been agreed. It was therefore characteristic of Greek writing about science to collect opinions for various purposes, for example as Aristotle does at the start of many investigations. Theophrastus composed a work, Physical Opinions, that simply listed existing opinions on many topics; many later writers did the same. Epicurus attempted to summarize all his physical theories in one long book, On Nature, and some members of the Stoic school appear to have attempted the same. Romans seeking to assimilate Greek learning were not attracted to the endless debate. Instead, they sought settled answers and authoritative reliable results. It thus became characteristic for Romans to compose encyclopedias, summarizing “all” knowledge on a given topic. Vitruvius’s work On Architecture advertises itself as the summary of all that the architect needs to know, and already Varro had attempted to summarize all that was worthwhile in Greek thought in the nine books of his Disciplines, on grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, medicine, and architecture: see Cardauns 2001 (cited under Roman Science). The work of Celsus, On Medicine, constitutes the surviving books of his encyclopedia, organized approximately on Varro’s plan: see Schulze 2001 and Spencer 1935–1938, cited under Roman Science: Medicine, Imperial. The work of Seneca, Natural Questions, offers an encyclopedic coverage of one topic of Greek science: see Hine 2010. The grandest of the extant Roman encyclopedias, thirty-six books plus index, covering everything, arranged as if by a quartermaster, is by the old soldier Pliny, who died in the eruption of Vesuvius while trying to study it and rescue people; for various forms of analysis of Pliny’s book, see Beagon 1992, French and Greenaway 1986, and Murphy 2004. The production of encyclopedias by Romans continued through the end of Antiquity: Ampelius in the 3rd century, edited and translated in Arnaud-Lindet 1993; Martianus Capella perhaps c. 480 CE, studied in Bovey 2003; Cassiodorus c. 580 CE, translated with notes in Halporn and Vessey 2004; and the textbook of the Latin Middle Ages, the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, c. 625 CE, translated and annotated in Barney, et al. 2006.
1975
1976Arnaud-Lindet, Marie-Pierre. 1993. Ampelius: Aide-mémoire (Liber memorialis). Collection des Universités de France, Série latine 308. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”.
1977
1978Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1979
1980Ampelius summarized Roman knowledge c. 180 CE for his student, the later emperor Macrinus (thus ensuring the survival of the book); it describes the five zones and four elements of the earth (§1), descending from fire, i.e., the stars (§2–3), through air, i.e., the winds (§4–5), to earth (§6) and water (§7). Available for purchase: the series; this volume.
1981
1982Find this resource:
1983
1984Barney, Stephen A., W. J. Lewis, Jennifer A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof. 2006. The etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
1985
1986DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511482113Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1987
1988Isidore wrote an encyclopedia (c. 625 CE) in twenty topical books, organized around etymologies, assuming that names are keys to natures. It was intended for the educated man who lacked extensive libraries, and it dominated medieval Western European learning. This is the first complete English translation and comes with an explanatory introduction. Available online for purchase.
1989
1990Find this resource:
1991
1992Beagon, Mary. 1992. Roman nature: The thought of Pliny the Elder. Oxford: Clarendon.
1993
1994Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
1995
1996Pliny composed the largest extant Roman encyclopedia, published 77 CE. Beagon seeks to view Pliny not as a mere compiler, but as an author with some outlook and intent, and she sees the unifying principle of his work as the relationship between nature and the pinnacle of creation, humanity, as Stoicism taught. Available online for purchase.
1997
1998Find this resource:
1999
2000Bovey, Muriel. 2003. Disciplinae cyclicae: L’organisation du savoir dans l’oeuvre de Martianus Capella. Polymnia: Studi di Filologia Classica 3. Trieste, Italy: Edizioni Università di Trieste.
2001
2002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2003
2004Martianus composed an encyclopedic work (c. 480 CE?) organized as a myth about the marriage of Philology to the god Mercury; Books 6–9 concern geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and harmonics. Bovey interprets the work as a theological rereading of pagan culture, unifying the human and divine realms via scholarship.
2005
2006Find this resource:
2007
2008French, Roger, and Frank Greenaway, eds. 1986. Science in the early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, his sources and influence. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble.
2009
2010Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2011
2012French and Greenaway present a dozen essays on aspects of science in Pliny, e.g., Nutton on medicine, Scarborough on pharmacy, Morton on plants, Bodson on animals, Healy on minerals and metals, and Pedersen on astronomy.
2013
2014Find this resource:
2015
2016Halporn, James W., and Mark Vessey. 2004. Cassiodorus: Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning, and On the Soul. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool Univ. Press.
2017
2018Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2019
2020Vessey provides the introduction to Halporn’s annotated translation of the two works; the encyclopedic Institutions (c. 580 CE) surveys Christian learning in Book 1 and secular learning much more briefly in Book 2, covering the “trivium” (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and the “quadrivium” (arithmetic, music, geormetry, astronomy), all seven declared subordinate to Bible study.
2021
2022Find this resource:
2023
2024Hine, Harry M. 2010. Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Natural Questions. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
2025
2026Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2027
2028Seneca’s book (c. 62 CE) treats topics that formed the ancient discipline, in Greek science, of meteorologika: rivers, weather, winds, earthquakes, meteors and comets, and lightning and thunder, with unusually frequent citations of predecessors. Hine provides a fresh English translation of the work, with brief notes. Preview available online.
2029
2030Find this resource:
2031
2032Murphy, Trevor. 2004. Pliny the Elder’s Natural History: The empire in the encyclopedia. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
2033
2034Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2035
2036Murphy analyzes the structure and purpose of Pliny’s “36+1” book encyclopedia: the prefixed analytical index facilitated browsing through the thirty-six books of facts arranged like trophies on parade, displaying Rome’s hegemony over the geographical world and the world of natural facts. The numerous marvels illustrate the diverse powers of nature and of Rome over nature.
2037
2038Find this resource:
2039
2040Geography
2041Early Romans, like all peoples everywhere, knew well their own neighborhood, but as they expanded their conquests through the Italian Peninsula and began to tie their empire together with roads, they needed ways to record and understand their larger land. Conquered land was laid out for retired soldiers in surveyed grids, but, until the lst century BCE, no hint survives of geography more elaborate than descriptions of trips taken. In the lst century BCE Cicero briefly considered a geographical work but was defeated by the need for mathematics. Varro produced a long-lost periplous of the Mediterranean and provided, there or elsewhere, geographical data occasionally excerpted by Pliny. Caesar divided Gaul into three regions, laid out as for conquest, and Sallust included geographical excursuses in his Iugurtha and in his now-fragmentary Histories (one of the excursuses in the Histories was a periplous of the Black Sea). The Romans had adopted the Greek genre of descriptive geography, including especially the periplous. Early in the imperial era, Vipsanius Agrippa constructed a map of the new realm: see Grilli 1990. That map remains a rare exception, and the evidence for Roman geography suggests that Roman conception of space was primarily “hodological,” i.e., arranged by routes and paths rather than cartographic, although it is unlikely that the distinction was absolute: see Brodersen 1995, plus Talbert and Brodersen 2004. A hodological view of the world could be seen as an advantage for those whose experience and use of space is primarily to reach known destinations along known routes. The earliest extant Roman geographical book, by Mela, is a periplous of the entire inhabited world: see Romer 1998. Based on data about early Roman geography, Nicolet 1991 studies how concepts of space and empire interacted in the early Roman Empire. In Late Antiquity, and possibly before, Romans created itineraria (“itineraries”), annotated lists of stopping places with distances between them; Adams and Laurence 2001 studies the genre, and Talbert 2007 studies an early extant itinerarium. From Late Antiquity we also have the “Peutinger” map, a horizontally stretched map of the Roman Empire that seems to be an illustrated version of an itinerary: see Talbert 2010.
2042
2043Adams, Colin, and Ray Laurence, eds. 2001. Travel and geography in the Roman Empire. London: Routledge.
2044
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2046
2047Adams and Laurence present six essays, showing the importance of itineraria: Broderson on the presentation of geographical knowledge; Salway on itineraria; Laurence on Roman Britain; Kolb on the cursus publicus (imperial transport system); Coulston on the evidence from Trajan’s column; and Adams on travel within Egypt. Available online for purchase.
2048
2049Find this resource:
2050
2051Brodersen, Kai. 1995. Terra Cognita: Studien zur römischen Raumerfassung. Spudasmata 59. Hildesheim, Germany: Olms.
2052
2053Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2054
2055Brodersen studies the ways in which Romans conceived of space and concludes that cartography took second place to a hodological outlook (i.e., based on routes or itineraries). This is true at all scales and draws a connection between Roman geography and the methods and practices of the gromatici (as in Roman Science: Agronomy).
2056
2057Find this resource:
2058
2059Grilli, Alberto. 1990. La geografia di Agrippa. In Bimillenario di Agrippa. Pubblicazioni dello Dipartimento di Archeologia, Filologia Classica e loro Tradizioni ns 132. Edited by Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, 127–146. Genoa, Italy: Università di Genova.
2060
2061Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2062
2063Vipsanius Agrippa (c. 15 BCE) wrote a book of geography and constructed a world map, which probably resembled the Peutinger map (see Talbert 2010); Pliny cites his work, for various distances. Grilli studies what little can be known about Agrippa’s geography.
2064
2065Find this resource:
2066
2067Nicolet, Claude. 1991. Space, geography, and politics in the early Roman Empire. Jerome Lectures 19. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
2068
2069Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2070
2071Translated by Hélène Leclerc from L’inventaire du monde: Géographie et politique aux origines de l’empire romain (Paris: Fayard, 1988). Nicolet studies the imperial ideology within the geography found in Augustus’s Res Gestae, Agrippa’s fragmentary work, the Roman census, and other sources, to elucidate the awareness by the Romans of the territorial reality of the empire and its representation as a world empire. Available online for purchase.
2072
2073Find this resource:
2074
2075Romer, Frank E. 1998. Pomponius Mela’s description of the world. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan.
2076
2077Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2078
2079Mela composed three books of descriptive geography (c. 43 CE); they describe the interior coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas and then (Book 3) the exterior coast of the inhabited world (i.e., Eurasia and Africa), much of which was barely known to Mediterranean peoples. Romer translates this earliest extant Latin geography into English, with numerous notes.
2080
2081Find this resource:
2082
2083Talbert, Richard. 2007. Author, audience and the Roman Empire in the Antonine Itinerary. In Herrschen und Verwalten: Der Alltag der römischen Administration in der Hohen Kaiserzeit. Kölner historische Abhandlungen 46. Edited by Rudolf Haensch and Johannes Heinrichs, 256–270. Cologne: Böhlau.
2084
2085Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2086
2087This anonymous collection of itineraries was composed c. 300 CE, and Talbert reflects upon the work as a whole, repetitious yet patchy and disruptively organized. Talbert suggests it was compiled, perhaps from expense records, for private use, although no explanation so far suggested explains its survival.
2088
2089Find this resource:
2090
2091Talbert, Richard. 2010. Rome’s world: The Peutinger map reconsidered. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
2092
2093DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511686863Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2094
2095The map first published by Peutinger is a medieval copy of an early-4th-century CE Roman “map” that shows the Roman highways linking towns, in the fashion of an itinerary (and greatly stretched east-west for display on a wall). Talbert argues that it was probably produced to celebrate Diocletian’s restoration of peace and order. Available online for purchase.
2096
2097Find this resource:
2098
2099Talbert, Richard, and Kai Brodersen, eds. 2004. Space in the Roman world: Its perception and presentation. Antike Kultur und Geschichte 5. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
2100
2101Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2102
2103The editors present five papers that together explore how space was perceived and presented among the Romans: Geus discusses the work of Eratosthenes and Stückelberger that of Ptolemy in order to set up a cartographic contrast to the itineraria discussed by Salway, the pilgrim’s narratives discussed by Hunt, and the Peutinger map discussed by Talbert.
2104
2105Find this resource:
2106
2107Mechanics and Metrology
2108The skill of the Romans in building is widely recognized and is still visible in their aqueducts, roads, and walls. Such buildings required, or at least would benefit from having, the use of machines such as cranes, pulleys, and winches. Plutarch records that when the Romans besieged Syracuse in the late 3rd century BCE, they were impressed by the ability of the defenders to deploy machines of war. Certainly during their wars against Pyrrhos in south Italy, as well as against the Carthaginians in Sicily or when Hannibal came to Italy, it is probable that the Romans found themselves faced with catapults. It thus seems very likely that their reception and assimilation of Greek mechanical science could have been more eager than for other sciences. And indeed, in writing about architecture, Vitruvius includes a book on machines as well as one on clocks, including mechanical devices (plus one on working with water that includes mechanical water-lifting devices). All three of those books draw heavily on Greek sources. Fleury 1993 explores the devices of Vitruvius; compare also Drachmann 1963 (cited under Mechanics Including Pneumatics), which devotes some space to Vitruvius. The Roman land surveyors used a pair of simple devices, the libra and the groma, as well as a Greek device, the dioptra: Lewis 2001 surveys the available evidence on those devices. Perhaps due to the misfortune of lost texts, no other Latin work on mechanics appears to exist before the late 4th century, when the mysterious (and anonymous) work On Military Matters (“De Rebus Bellicis”) was composed; scholars disagree about its intent and the practicality of the devices described: see Giardina 1989 and Liebeschuetz 2006. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Romans gladly exploited catapult technology, and Rihll 2007 provides a good exploration of that story. Related to mechanics is the task of measuring, whether to weigh a stone for a catapult (or a sack of grain for sale) or to measure the length of a road (or a portion of a building). Many Greeks wrote works, now mostly lost, detailing conversions between units. A Latin work on the topic from Late Antiquity takes the form of a poem, and it provides a rare description from Antiquity of the process of determining density, the discovery of which by Archimedes is recounted by Vitruvius (the earliest extant account). Geus 2007 provides an edition and facing-page German translation, with commentary, of the poem.
2109
2110Fleury, Philippe. 1993. La mécanique de Vitruve. Caen, France: Université de Caen.
2111
2112Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2113
2114Fleury gives an amply illustrated analytical reading of Vitruvius, Book 10, organized topically, as follows: first, theoretical mechanics and its fundamental elements and, then, practical mechanics, in seven chapters. Fleury’s practical mechanics consists of civil engineering, water-lifting devices, the watermill, the water organ, the hodometer, artillery, and siege engines.
2115
2116Find this resource:
2117
2118Geus, Klaus. 2007. [Remmius Favinus], Gedicht über Gewichts- und Maßeinheiten (Carmen de ponderibus et mensuris). Oberhaid, Germany: Utopica.
2119
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2121
2122This brief didactic poem of 208 verses is of uncertain date (Geus says “6th c.,” but it could be much earlier, and Geus tentatively suggests 350–400 CE) and describes measures of weight and volume, then the method of determining specific gravity using a balance and immersion.
2123
2124Find this resource:
2125
2126Giardina, Andrea, ed. 1989. Le cose della guerra: De rebus bellicis. Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.
2127
2128Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2129
2130The anonymous treatise on machines (c. 370 CE) proposes various reforms, including to military machines, often argued to be fantastical. Giardina edits the text, with facing-page Italian translation, and provides color plates of the manuscript illustrations plus a commentary. Noteworthy is that the author from Late Antiquity is explicitly proposing innovations.
2131
2132Find this resource:
2133
2134Lewis, M. J. T. 2001. Surveying instruments of Greece and Rome. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
2135
2136DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511483035Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2137
2138Lewis explores the range of devices constructed in antiquity for surveying; most of the data derive from Roman sources, although the sole complete extant text is Heron’s Dioptra (a Greek text of the 1st century CE). The primary devices are the dioptra, the two Roman devices libra and groma, and the hodometer (in Vitruvius). Practical applications included the construction of roads, aqueducts, and tunnels.
2139
2140Find this resource:
2141
2142Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G. 2006. Realism and phantasy: The Anonymous de rebus bellicis and its afterlife. In Decline and change in late antiquity: Religion, barbarians and their historiography. Edited by J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
2143
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2145
2146Liebeschuetz argues that the treatise is a playful treatment of genuine problems (the proposals for financial and military reform are trite or else vague), and the author introduces the mechanics proposals “to relieve boredom.” It is neither a technical manual nor an introduction to military science but a book of very imaginative marvels. Reprinted from The Roman and Byzantine Army in the East, edited by Edward Dabrowa (Cracow, Poland: Drukarnja Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 1994), pp. 119–139.
2147
2148Find this resource:
2149
2150Rihll, Tracey. 2007. The catapult: A history. Yardley, PA: Westholme.
2151
2152Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2153
2154Rihll traces the history of the Greco-Roman catapult to 600 CE, based closely on the sources and archaeology. Rihll grants more to development and use than most historians of science or technology and suggests several new views, e.g., that the one-armed catapult was a 4th-century BCE invention that preceded the “classic” two-armed torsion catapult.
2155
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2157
2158Medicine, Imperial
2159Early Roman medicine, like early Greek medicine, was likely composed of traditional remedies and charms or prayers. Every culture discovers plants that are believed to heal certain ailments, and such simple remedies surely existed in Italy. Moreover, early Romans surely practiced simple gross restorative surgeries: replacing displaced bones, removing foreign objects, and retaining leaking blood. All of these interventions, and whatever else was practiced, is known to have been the province of the man of authority, i.e., respectively, the leader of the army or the paterfamilias (head of the household). It seems likely that beginning in the 3rd century BCE, during their wars against the Greeks of south Italy and then of Syracuse, the Romans would have encountered Greek doctors and possibly used their services. Pliny does record that the first city-doctor of Rome was hired at the end of the 3rd century. Cato’s On Agriculture emphasizes his preference for native Roman remedies dispensed under the authority of the paterfamilias, and Pliny records that Cato stridently warned his son to avoid the murderous Greek doctors. By c. 100 BCE, when Asklepiades of Bithynia was practicing in Rome (see Vallance 1990, cited under Medicine: Hellenistic, Galen, Byzantine), Greek medicine was the preferred medicine. Fragments of Latin writers from the lst century BCE attest to a growing study of Greek medicine by Romans (e.g., Musa, see Michler 1993), and the two earliest extant Latin works on medicine, Celsus’s eight books from his encyclopedia (see Spencer 1935–1938 and Schulze 2001; for the edition, see Marx 2002, cited under Roman Science: Editions of Texts), and Scribonius’s brief handbook of pharmaceutical recipes, edited in Sconocchia 1993, both confirm that impression. Several scholars have written useful surveys of Roman medicine: see Scarborough 1976, Jackson 1988, and Cruse 2004. The papers in Mudry and Pigeaud 1991 provide insights on a variety of specific issues in Roman medicine of this era.
2160
2161Cruse, Audrey. 2004. Roman medicine. Stroud, UK: Tempus.
2162
2163Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2164
2165Cruse surveys the social and material context of Roman medicine, with copious images (more than thirty in color), exploiting archaeological evidence primarily from Britain, in eight chapters: two on Greek antecedents; one on materia medica; one on aqueducts, sewers, baths, and hospitals; two on religious and medical healing, respectively; one on the palaeopathology of Romans; and one on the Roman doctors.
2166
2167Find this resource:
2168
2169Jackson, Ralph. 1988. Doctors and diseases in the Roman Empire. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press.
2170
2171Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2172
2173Jackson offers a topical survey of Roman medicine, with an archaeological imprint, bringing material evidence to bear on regimen, doctors, gynecology, military medicine, magic, and death. Translated extracts and numerous photographs supplement one another to produce an informative narrative whose chronological focus is the lst century BCE to the lst century CE.
2174
2175Find this resource:
2176
2177Michler, Markwart. 1993. Principis medicus: Antonius Musa. In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung II: Principat. Vol. 37.1. Edited by Hildegard Temporini, 757–785. Berlin: De Gruyter.
2178
2179Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2180
2181Musa was a student or follower of Asklepiades (c. 105 BCE), who, like the latter, typically prescribed baths, mild diets, and mild medicines and who thus saved the sickly Augustus in 23 BCE. Michler surveys what can be known of his life and medical practice. Available online for purchase.
2182
2183Find this resource:
2184
2185Mudry, Philippe, and Jackie Pigeaud, eds. 1991. Les écoles médicales à Rome. Université de Lausanne: Publications de la Faculté des Lettres 33. Geneva, Switzerland: Librairie Droz.
2186
2187Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2188
2189Mudry and Pigeaud edit eighteen essays on Roman medicine from a conference (in French, English, and Italian), a minority on Latin medicine in Late Antiquity. See especially Pigeaud on the foundations of Methodist theory, Capitani on the short-lived Pythagorean school of the vegetarian Sextius at Rome, and Scarborough on Methodist pharmaceutics.
2190
2191Find this resource:
2192
2193Scarborough, John. 1976. Roman medicine. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
2194
2195Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2196
2197Originally published in 1969. This amply illustrated, still standard, and valuable survey explores Greek antecedents, Cato and medical encyclopedists, and the pragmatic deployment of medicine in the Roman realm; four appendixes broaden the focus to, e.g., veterinary medicine. Scarborough seeks the Roman view of medicine, and his interpretations are founded on a good knowledge of the medical data.
2198
2199Find this resource:
2200
2201Schulze, Christian. 2001. Celsus. Studienbücher Antike 6. Hildesheim, Germany: Olms.
2202
2203Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2204
2205Schulze concisely surveys Celsus’s books on medicine, including his preliminary sketch of medical history, his four books on regimen (including remarks on anatomy), two books on pharmacy, and two books on surgery. Schulze appends a bibliography of 512 items (pp. 97–150), indexed by an outline.
2206
2207Find this resource:
2208
2209Sconocchia, Sergio. 1993. L’opera di Scribonio Largo e la letteratura medica del 1 sec. d.C. In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung II: Principat. Vol. 37.1. Edited by Hildegard Temporini, 843–922. Berlin: De Gruyter.
2210
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2212
2213Sconocchia, who has edited Scribonius for Teubner (1983), here surveys his presence and role in contemporary Latin medicine, especially in Celsus (c. 25 CE), and his work as a reflection of actual practice. (There is also a long section on his use of Latin.) Available online for purchase.
2214
2215Find this resource:
2216
2217Spencer, Walter G. 1935–1938. Celsus: On Medicine. 3 vols. Loeb Classical Library 292, 304, 336. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
2218
2219Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2220
2221This is the most recent translation of Celsus into English (no longer under copyright, see online). Celsus composed an encyclopedia on various topics, including five books on agriculture, and the only surviving portion, these eight books on medicine, which cover dietetics, pharmacology, and surgery; he is more explicit in his citation of sources than are most ancient authors. Available for purchase online: series; volume 1; volume 2; volume 3.
2222
2223Find this resource:
2224
2225Medicine, Late Antique
2226A sufficient number of significant Latin texts on medicine from Late Antiquity exist to warrant their own section. By the early 4th century CE the Roman Empire was significantly Christian; by the end of the century, the urban areas were predominantly Christian. The Christian reaction to, reception of, and assimilation of, Greco-Roman culture, including science, constitute a vast and complex topic. But these texts indicate that in the Latin West, medical science continued, albeit in altered form. (Similar conclusions can be reached about Greek medicine in the Greek eastern area of the empire.) The contributors to Langslow and Maire 2010 study many aspects of this period and its transformation of medicine. The transformation can already be seen in the (probably pagan) writer Gargilius Martialis of the mid-3rd century CE: see Riddle 1984. One of the major texts of late Latin medicine is Caelius Aurelianus’s large work, which is in part (and perhaps mainly) a translation of the Greek of Soranos of Ephesos (c. 120 CE): Caelius is edited in Bendz and Pape 1990–2002 (cited under Roman Science: Editions of Texts); he is translated in Drabkin 1950; and he is studied by the contributors to Mudry 1999 and in van der Eijk 1999. Another Latin doctor of this era was Theodorus Priscianus, who composed a pharmaceutical handbook: see Fraisse 2003. Evidence exists of an active school of medicine in Ravenna, one of whose representatives was Agnellus, whose teaching, like that of the scholars in Alexandria (see Sorabji 1990, cited under Surveys), involved composing commentaries on the great figures of the past, in this case, Galen: see Palmieri 2005. Veterinary medicine played a significant role in the late Latin medical texts, notably the work of Pelagonius, edited in Fischer 1980. (On veterinary medicine, see also Medicine: Veterinary.)
2227
2228Drabkin, Israel E. 1950. Caelius Aurelianus: On Acute Diseases and on Chronic Diseases. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
2229
2230Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2231
2232Drabkin edits and on the facing pages provides the sole English translation of this Latin translation (and adaptation?) of Soranus’s two lost Greek works from Late Antiquity on diseases acute (sudden and short-term) and chronic (enduring); the edition is superseded by Bendz and Pape 1990–2002 (cited under Roman Science: Editions of Texts).
2233
2234Find this resource:
2235
2236Fischer, Klaus-Dietrich, ed. 1980. Pelagonii Ars veterinaria. Leipzig: Teubner.
2237
2238Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2239
2240The book of Pelagonius (c. 375 CE) is the earliest extant Latin work specifically on horse medicine; it takes the form of thirty-five letters to friends, each on a specific topic, with pharmacological (not surgical) remedies. Fischer edits this and provides a linguistic and medical commentary.
2241
2242Find this resource:
2243
2244Fraisse, Anne. 2003. Médecine rationnelle et irrationnelle dans le livre I des Euporista de Théodore Priscien. In Rationnel et irrationnel dans la médecine ancienne et médiéval. Centre Jean Palerne: Mémoires 26. Edited by Nicoletta Palmieri, 183–192. Saint-Étienne, France: Université de Saint-Étienne.
2245
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2247
2248Theodorus Priscianus (c. 370 CE) adheres to the Greek “Rational” school of medicine: He cites and exploits doctors such as Hippocrates and Galen, explains diseases using humors, and prescribes interventions such as purges, diet, and venesection. However, he also prescribes many quasi-magical drugs. (The volume also offers five essays on Galen.)
2249
2250Find this resource:
2251
2252Langslow, David, and Brigitte Maire, eds. 2010. Body, disease and treatment in a changing world: Latin texts and contexts in ancient and medieval medicine. Lausanne, Switzerland: Éditions BHMS.
2253
2254Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2255
2256Langslow and Maire edit twenty-six essays on three topics: medical language, Latin transformations of earlier texts, and specific sets of medical terms; most focus on Latin works of Late Antiquity, especially Maire on Mustio the gynecologist, Cronier on the alphabetic Latin version of Dioscorides, and Gitton-Ripoll on the preparation of medicines. Available online.
2257
2258Find this resource:
2259
2260Mudry, Philippe, ed. 1999. Le traité des maladies aiguës et des maladies chroniques de Caelius Aurelianus: Nouvelles approches. Nantes, France: Université de Nantes.
2261
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2263
2264Mudry presents eleven papers on Caelius and his work, including, e.g., Stok on the structure and sources of his works, van der Eijk on his Methodism, and Gourevitch on diseases of women; connections with his source, Soranus, are explored throughout.
2265
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2267
2268Palmieri, Nicoletta, ed. 2005. Agnellus de Ravenne: Lectures galéniques: Le “De pulsibus ad tirones.” Centre Jean Palerne: Mémoires 28. Saint-Étienne, France: Université de Saint-Étienne.
2269
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2271
2272Agnellus taught and practiced medicine at Ravenna (c. 605 CE), emphasizing both preventative and curative interventions. Palmieri edits (with the assistance of Ivan Garofalo), and provides a facing-page French translation (oddly, on the left), and extensive commentary, for Agnellus’s commentary, which oscillates between theory and practice, i.e., his instructions on pulse-lore.
2273
2274Find this resource:
2275
2276Riddle, John M. 1984. Gargilius Martialis as a medical writer. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 39.4: 408–429.
2277
2278DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/39.4.408Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
2279
2280Gargilius wrote a partly surviving work on remedies from readily available plants, e.g., radish or pomegranate, addressed to wealthy landowners: see Maire 2002, cited under Roman Science: Editions of Texts. Riddle here studies what can be known of the life and work of Gargilius, who emphasized experiential medicine in contrast to Greek theory.
2281
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2283
2284van der Eijk, Philip J. 1999. Antiquarianism and criticism: Forms and functions of medical doxography in Methodism (Soranus and Caelius Aurelianus). In Ancient histories of medicine. Edited by Philip J. van der Eijk, 397–452. Studies in Ancient Medicine 20. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
2285
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2287
2288Members of the Methodist school of medicine were active medical historians and yet also lacked respect for authority and valued independence of mind; moreover, their “official” doctrines were in a constant state of revision. That fact is clarified by this study of the two extant Methodist writers. Available for purchase: the series and volume.