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

Particularly disappointing is that
nearly each of the catalogue’s sentences contains mistakes – thus, the earth in
Anaximander’s system is said to move about the middle of the cosmos. These
errors, even if we put some of them down to Theon, are too numerous to relate
Dercyllides’ evidence directly to the
History of Astronomy. He is more likely to
have used someone’s excerpt from this work and contributed to the corruption
of the original text himself. To judge from Dercyllides’ allusion to Eudoxus’
hippopede and his mention of Callippus and Menaechmus, the context of his
source must have been much wider.
How often such excerpts migrated from one book to another may be seen
from Ps.-Hero’s
Definitions, which contains a section coinciding, except for
several trivial variations, with the passage in Dercyllides–Theon (166.23–
31
To be sure, in Eudoxus and Callippus there were neither retrograde spheres (in the
Aristotelian sense), nor the term @nelíttousai sfa$rai (pace Lasserre. Léodamas,
549), so that Dercyllides anachronistically associates this Aristotelian innovation
with Eudoxus’ students. The Peripatetic Adrastus (ca. 100 AD), on whose treatise
Theon heavily relies, was not sure whether retrograde spheres come from Aristotle
or from Eudoxus and Callippus (
Exp., 180.5–12).
32
See above, 171f.
33
See above, 171f., and below, 264f.

---

Chapter 7: The history of astronomy
236
168.12). Entitled tí~ tí e0ren ën maqhmatiko$~;, this section is part of a larger
quotation from a rather superficial ‘introduction to arithmetic’ by the Peripa-
tetic Anatolius.
34
Anatolius must have borrowed this passage from Theon (or
Dercyllides), to be quoted in turn by Ps.-Hero. It should be noted that the head-
ing “Who discovered what in mathematics?”, adequately reflecting the subject-
matter of Eudemus’ works on the history of science, hardly fits the contents of
the passage in question: the latter deals only with discoveries in astronomy,
whereas Anatolius’ introduction was related, on the whole, to geometry and
arithmetic.
Hence, to the five authors who used evidence from the
History of Astronomy
we can add four more: Dercyllides, Sosigenes, Anatolius, and Ps.-Hero. Of
these four, Sosigenes was the only one to have relied on Eudemus directly.
There are grounds to believe that Alexander also made use of Eudemus in his
lost commentary on
De caelo, either directly or through his teacher Sosi-
genes.
35
All these authors belong to the same late period as the other sources
that contain references to Eudemus. But whereas the
History of Geometry was
used by Eratosthenes and probably by Archimedes, the fate of the
History of
Astronomy in the Hellenistic period remains obscure; besides, there are no
traces of its use by the
mathe¯matikoi. The first of these circumstances can be
explained by the fact that the little of Hellenistic astronomical literature that has
survived does not show any particular interest in early astronomy.
36
But why
was the
History of Astronomy chiefly cited in popular historico-philosophical
compendia (Clement, Diogenes Laertius), commentaries on Plato’s and Aris-
totle’s philosophical works (Alexander, Proclus, Simplicius), mathematical
handbooks for the readers of Plato (Dercyllides, Theon), and introductions to
mathematics for beginners (Anatolius)? Even Sosigenes’ treatise, apparently
the most technical among these works, has, on the whole, a historico-critical
character. Quotations from the
History of Geometry in professional or almost
professional works are found more often: Pappus’ mathematical encyclopaedia
and his commentary on Euclid’s
Elements X, Eutocius’ commentary on Archi-
medes, and, finally, Porphyry’s and Proclus’ commentaries on Euclid’s
El-
ements I.
37
In the case of Eratosthenes and probably of Archimedes, Eudemus’
34
^Ek tõn ^Anatolíou (ibid., 160.8–168.12). Anatolius’ book (cf. above, 63 n. 82)
contained the following divisions: Who gave mathematics its name? What is mathe-
matics? How many parts does mathematics consist of? What parts of mathematics
are related to each other? Who discovered what in mathematics? The last heading is
found also in Theon’s manuscripts, but it is generally believed that these headings
are interpolations.
35
See above, 234 n. 27.
36
See above, 185 n. 79. In any case, the ‘catalogue of astronomers’ in Dercyllides, as
well as the mentions of Thales in Clement and Diogenes (Eud. fr. 143–144), must go
back to the Hellenistic literature.
37
Porphyry quoted the
History of Arithmetic in his commentary on Ptolemy’s Har-
monics (6.1).

---

1. Eudemus’
History of Astronomyand its readers
237
material is used for properly mathematical ends, not only as commentary on
ancient mathematicians. In contrast, none of the creators of astronomy showed
any particular interest in the
History of Astronomy, as far as we know.
In part, this difference can be explained by the agonistic spirit that sur-
rounded the famous problems of doubling the cube and squaring the circle, al-
most until the very end of Greek geometry. This lent topicality to the solutions
of these problems reported by Eudemus, particularly if the original sources
were already inaccessible.
38
A further reason was the early appearance in ge-
ometry of such an authoritative summarizing work as Euclid’s
Elements, whose
commentators did their best to find evidence of the origin of its separate theor-
ems and books. The discoveries described in the
History of Astronomy – such as
the causes of solar and lunar eclipses, the order and number of planets, the cen-
tral position of the earth, the obliquity of the ecliptic, etc. – were, in contrast, by
the second part of the fourth century universally recognized and have belonged
ever since to the history of astronomy, which was of little interest – and of little
help – to astronomers themselves.
39
None of the astronomical works of the
fourth century could, on the other hand, claim the status of Euclid’s
Elements.
The theory of homocentric spheres was soon superseded by the theory of epi-
cycles, so that Eudoxus’
On Velocities was not widely read any longer. Euclid’s
and Autolycus’ treatises on the movement of the heavenly sphere had indeed
survived, but, popular as they were in late Antiquity, they did not attract any
commentator’s particular attention.
40
Even granting a role to sheer chance, we
can suppose these factors to have been operative in gradually making the
His-
tory of Geometry somewhat more topical for professionals than the History of
Astronomy.
The differences in the reception of Eudemus’ various works on the history of
science should not, however, be overstated. In all three cases, we are dealing
mostly with the same milieu of the late philosophical schools – Peripatetics,
Platonists, and Neopythagoreans – in which knowledge of mathematics was