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

In Eucl, 111.
20f.).
71
Eutoc.
In Apollon. Con., 168.17f. Another such note (ibid., 170.4f.), on the history
of the theorem on the equality of the angles of the triangle to two right angles, is
based on a misunderstanding (see above, 198).
72
Pappus mentions him once (
Coll. VIII, 1026.8), Eutocius thrice (In Archim. de plan.
aequil., 266.1; In Apollon. Con., 168.17, 170.25).
73
A partial exception is Posidonius’ follower Cleomedes, who lived most probably be-
tween 50 BC – 200 AD (Bowen, A. C., Todd, R. B.
Cleomedes’ lectures on astron-
omy. A translation of The Heavens with an introduction and commentary, Berkeley
2004, 2ff.). His work
On the Orbits of the Heavenly Bodies related to Stoic cosmol-
ogy and physics and includes some glimpses of mathematical astronomy and
geography. Thus, he describes in detail Posidonius’ and Eratosthenes’ methods of
measuring the earth’s circumference (I, 7).

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2. Biography and doxography
293
study of its own;
74
a brief overview of them would hardly add anything substan-
tial to what we have said above on different occasions. Let us return, then, to the
beginnings of Hellenism and consider the extent to which the material of the
history of science was represented in biography and doxography.
2. Biography and doxography
The first biographies, written by Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus, dealt with two
groups of celebrities: philosophers and poets. Clearchus of Soli (fr. 30–31) and
Phanias of Eresus (fr. 11–13) added to them the politicians. Biography emerged
as a genre complementary to doxography (where biographical data were re-
duced to a minimum), addressed to a wider audience and, accordingly, more
free. The biography of a philosopher was not expected to include a more or less
detailed exposition of philosophical, let alone scientific, doctrines.
75
The fact
that Pythagoras and Archytas, who turned out to be the heroes of Peripatetic bi-
ography, were also scientists, did not influence the development of the genre in
the least.
In the third and the second centuries, the biography continued to flourish, in-
cluding in the Lyceum, so that the very name ‘Peripatetic’ begins to denote a
‘biographer’. Thematically, biography remained practically unchanged: Nean-
thes, Satyrus, Hermippus of Smyrna, Antigonus of Carystus, Sotion, Herac-
lides Lembos, and Antisthenes of Rhodes continued to write of philosophers,
poets, and politicians, to whom Hermippus added lawgivers and orators. In An-
tiquity, a scientist (
mathe¯matikos) qua scientist had never become an object
worthy of a biographical description, unless, like Archytas, Eudoxus, or Ara-
tus, he was also a philosopher, a politician, or a poet. To all appearances, the bi-
ographies of Euclid, Eratosthenes, Apollonius, Hipparchus, Hero, and Pto-
lemy, not to mention dozens of the less eminent scientists, were never written.
76
Physicians and grammarians proved more lucky.
77
74
For a valuable comparison of Pappus and Eutocius, see Knorr.
TS, 225ff. On Pappus,
see also Cuomo.
Pappus.
75
Mejer, J.
Diogenes Laertius and his Hellenistic background, Wiesbaden 1978, 90ff.
76
Biographical evidence of Hypatia (ca. 355–415) has been preserved in her pupil
Synesius of Cyrene and in a short note by Socrates Scholasticus (
Hist. Eccl. VII, 15),
who does not mention her mathematical works (cf.
Suda. s.v. Hypatia). Unlike other
eminent representatives of the Neoplatonic school in Alexandria, Hypatia was not
favored with a separate biography. In the biography of his teacher Isidore of Alex-
andria (ca. 490), Damascius notes: “Isidore was much more distinguished than Hy-
patia, not only in the way that a man is than a woman, but also as the true philosopher
is than the geometer.” (