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

The orientalizing revolution, Cambridge, Mass. 1992; West, op. cit.,
ch. 1.
82
E.g. weights, measures, the chariot, the olive tree, musical instruments, etc. Writing
was widely but by no means universally acknowledged to have been taken from
Phoenicians. See above, 26 n. 10.
83
Neugebauer.
HAMA II, 589ff.

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Chapter 1: In search of the first discoverers
42
Thus, the model ‘invention – imitation’ was a rational, though unsuccessful
attempt to account for such wide range of phenomena as the unprecedented so-
cial and cultural creativity of the archaic and classical epochs, the character and
paths of influences from the Orient, the correlation of indigenous and borrowed
in Greek culture. If even modern scholarship still fails to explain some of these
things adequately, the ancient Greek scheme obviously could offer, at best, only
a very approximate answer to the question of ‘who discovered what’.
On the whole, by the turn of the fifth century BC, when heurematography
created its own particular genre, a kind of catalogue of achievements under the
standard title Perì eûrhmátwn,
84
Greek thought had already acquired a per-
sistent tendency to associate a considerable share of its own civilization with
the influence of neighbors, especially Oriental neighbors.
85
It is not always
possible to figure out in each particular case why Greek authors gave prefer-
ence to foreign
pro¯toi heuretai. While the version of the invention of the alpha-
bet by Cadmus the Phoenician leaned, in the final analysis, on historical tradi-
tion,
86
Ephorus’ idea of the invention of the anchor and potter’s wheel by An-
acharsis seems to be utterly absurd.
87
Admittedly, Ephorus, known for his ex-
treme idealization of the Scythians, may have chosen Anacharsis because the
legendary Scythian was an itinerant sage, i.e., a person who combined ‘imi-
tation’ and ‘invention’ and thus exemplified the ideal of a
Kulturträger. Orien-
tal sages did not visit Greece often, so more often than not the role of a
Kultur-
träger was performed by a Greek sage: after traveling to the Orient, he brought
some discoveries home, adding to them some of his own. Eudemus’
History of
Geometry, for instance, attributes its discovery to the Egyptians, in full agree-
ment with Herodotus and Aristotle (
Met. 921b 23). It is said, further, that
Thales, having traveled to Egypt, was the first to bring this science to Greece
and to discover in it some important things (fr. 133–135). Repeatedly reiterated
in the later tradition, such constructions reveal their genetic kinship with heure-
matography; at the same time they demonstrate how narrow was the range of
means available to Greek historiography of culture.
The fact that the history of science was practiced in the Lyceum along with
heurematography testifies that, by the fourth century, interest in
pro¯toi heuretai
had grown more differentiated and the paths of the two genres had parted.
88
84
Simonides of Keos the younger (second half of the fifth century) is mentioned as the
author of Eûr2mata (FGrHist 8 T 1). Scamon of Mytilene (the son of Hellanicus of
Lesbos) is considered one of the earliest authors of Perì eûrhmátwn (Athen. XIV,
637b;
FGrHist 476 F 4). See Jacoby, F. Skamon von Mytilene, RE 3 AI (1927) 437.
85
Kleingünther,
op. cit., 151.
86
Edwards, R. B.
Kadmos the Phoenician, Amsterdam 1979, 174f.
87
FGrHist 70 F 42. No wonder this idea was soon contested by Theophrastus (fr. 734
FHSG).
88
Heraclides Ponticus (fr. 152), Theophrastus (fr. 728–734 FHSG), and Strato
(fr. 144–147) were the authors of works Perì eûrhmátwn. Aristotle also wrote on

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3. Inventors and imitators. Greece and the Orient
43
Theophrastus’ and Strato’s heurematography is little different from the earlier
specimens of the genre; its preoccupation with the prehistoric past precluded in
itself a critical approach to facts, so that the names of first discoverers and
thought patterns remain the same. In Theophrastus’