Leonid Zhmud The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity

Busiris does not belong to Isocrates’ serious works, it is in this epi-
deictic speech, laying no claim on trustworthiness (
Bus. 9), that the rhetorician
expands on the subject, so important for later classical thought, of Greek cus-
toms, laws, philosophy, and exact sciences as having been borrowed from
Egypt.
60
Many elements of Isocrates’ story are close not only to the passage in
Phaedrus that attributes the invention of astronomy, arithmetic and geometry
to Thoth, but to other Platonic dialogues as well, particularly to the
Republic,
with its vast program of mathematical education for future guardian-philos-
ophers, the main of the three classes of the Platonic polity. In spite of Isocrates’
light tone, subsequent philosophical and historical thought took most of the
things he describes quite seriously,
61
and the idea of Pythagoras’ traveling to
55
Hecataeus makes Danaus the inventor of the alphabet (
FGrHist 1 F 20), which also
points to Egypt.
56
ëfhñre … pessoù~ kúbou~ te (Soph. fr. 438 Nauck); pessoú~ te scol4~ Álu-
pon diatrib2n (Gorg. Palam. 30 = DK II, 302.2); Herodotus, referring to the Ly-
dians, attributes to them the invention of dice (I, 94), leaving the invention of
draughts to the Greeks, however.
57
Heitsch,
op. cit., 197 n. 436.
58
tà mèn Daidálœ
katafan4 gégonen, tà dè ^Orfe$, tà dè Palam2dei (677d).
59
The commentators of
Phaedrus point, in particular, to Plato’s polemic against two of
Isocrates’ speeches,
Against the Sophists and Helen (Heitsch, op. cit., 257ff.).
60
See above, 52f.
61
Aristotle (
Met. 981b 20f.), Eudemus (fr. 133), Aristoxenus (fr. 23). Aristotle, in par-
ticular, mentions priests’ leisure (cf. Isoc.
Bus. 21). See also scol2 in Plato (Crit.
109d–110a).

---

3. The origin of number
227
Egypt, first put forward explicitly in
Busiris, became a commonplace in bio-
graphical tradition.
Going back to Aristoxenus, let us note again that he, like Eudemus, dis-
cerned two distinct stages in the development of mathematics: first, the birth of
practical arithmetic, probably in the Orient, and second, Pythagoras’ trans-
forming it into a theoretical science. A similar variant of a theory on the origin
of culture is found in Philip’
Epinomis, to which the second version of the ori-
gin of numbers related by Aristoxenus refers: “and others derived numbers
from the circular paths of the divine luminaries”.
62
According to the
Epinomis,
the necessary técnai, which appeared first, were followed by those that serve
pleasures, then by the ‘defensive’ ones, and finally by the ëpist2mh, based on
the notion of number.
63
Following Plato, Philip considered the knowledge of
number to be a gift of the deity, whom he identified with the visible universe
(978b 7f.). The inhabitants of Egypt and Syria were the first to observe the
movements of heavenly bodies, while the Greeks turned astronomy into real
wisdom, owing to their ability to bring to perfection everything they borrowed
from others (987d 3f.).
Our digression into the sources of notions, popular in the fourth century, of
the Oriental origin of sciences, in particular arithmetic, once again demon-
strates that the Peripatetics’ approach to this problem, serious as it is, does not
rule out the use of information that had figured previously in genres and con-
texts that were far from historically reliable. To be sure, Aristoxenus, while
mentioning Thoth, refers to Egyptians, thereby distancing himself from this
version (to immediately offer another one), while Eudemus does not mention
the divine discoverers at all. His version of the origin of arithmetic in Phoenicia
(fr. 133), however, is hardly original either: it seems to be suggested in Herodo-
tus,
64
while Plato makes a direct mention of the Phoenicians (along with the
ubiquitous Egyptians) in the passage that relates to teaching arithmetic (
Leg.
747b–c). Eudemus’ words clearly reflect a rationalist construction based on a
well-known eÛresi~–mímhsi~ kind of logic: practical arithmetic serves, first
and foremost, the needs of merchants, of whom the Phoenicians were the most
prominent. It does not really matter whether the author of the construction was
Eudemus, Plato, or Herodotus. What matters is that
all versions relating the ori-
gin of Greek science to Egypt, Babylon, or Phoenicia, whatever source they
may come from, belong to a similar type of construction.
62
See above, 112f. A similar view on the origin of number from the circulation of
heavenly bodies is found in the