Article
J. T. Vallance
Article
G. J. Toomer and Reviel Netz
Hypsicles, of *Alexandria (1), mathematician and astronomer (fl. c. 150
It is the earliest Greek work to use the 360-degree division of the circle. *Diophantus (ed. Tannery 1. 470) quotes a definition of a polygonal number from a lost work of Hypsicles. Also lost is a work on the harmony of the spheres (*Achilles Tatius(2), ed. Maass, Comm. in Arat. 43).
Article
Courtney Ann Roby
Ancient Greek and Roman scientific and technical works, especially in the exact sciences, were much more commonly illustrated than texts in other genres. The images in those texts ranged from the relatively abstract diagrams in mathematical, astronomical, and harmonic texts to the more pictorial images of botanical, medical, and surveying texts. For the most part, the images that survive are found in medieval manuscript copies. Although there are often striking variations from one manuscript to another, and the parchment or paper codex offers very different possibilities for illustrations than the papyrus rolls on which the ancient texts would originally have been composed, the texts themselves often offer clues about the author’s intentions for the images that accompanied the text.
Illustrations ranging from schematic diagrams to veristic pictorial images are found in surviving copies of many Greek and Roman works on mechanics, harmonics, surveying, medicine, zoology, pharmacology, and other technical subjects.
Article
Oliver Davies and David William John Gill
Article
David John Furley
Leucippus (3), originator of the atomic theory in the second half of the 5th cent.
Of the Democritean works (see
Article
Nicholas Purcell
Article
Esther Eidinow
Article
Heinrich von Staden
Article
Donald Emrys Strong and Hazel Dodge
Article
Marcellinus (1), author of an extant work Περὶ σφυγμῶν, which incorporates much earlier work on the pulse.
Article
Antony Spawforth
Article
William David Ross and V. Nutton
Marinus (c. 130
(1) Ἀνατομικαὶ ἐγχειρήσεις (‘Practical Anatomy’); (2) an Anatomy in 20 books; (3) a book on the roots of the nerves; (4) an Anatomy of the muscles; (5) a commentary on aphorisms.
Article
Reviel Netz
Like all other people the Greeks counted, measured and taught such skills to their young. Such practices in the classical Mediterranean were mostly continuous with those of the ancient Near East. The Babylonian base 60 found its way into Greek coin values, the Near Eastern Abacus— probably a Semitic word—was widely used, and mathematical education in Hellenistic Egypt (as seen in papyri) was closely related to that of Ancient Mesopotamia. At the same time, μαθηματική, at the latest from *Plato(1)'s time onwards, came to refer to something different. Midway between the modern terms ‘mathematics’ and ‘exact sciences’, this was primarily a new genre. It was never pursued by more than a handful of experts (even educated Greeks would know very little about the contents of this genre, though many could know about its existence). This genre formed a radical departure, both externally (from the Ancient Near East) and internally (from other Greek genres). It survived throughout antiquity and essentially remained unchanged in Arabic and Latin forms in the Middle Ages, forming the basis for modern science. Its major achievement was the deductive method: reading a Greek mathematical proof, one finds its validity irresistibly compelling. It may be for this reason that Greek culture, with its emphasis on persuasion, was the one to invent the mathematical genre (Lloyd 1990).
Article
Sylvia Berryman
Article
William David Ross and V. Nutton
Medicina Plinii, an extant compilation made (probably 300–50
Article
J. T. Vallance
Article
Melampus (2) (3rd cent.