Ptolemy's treatise on the meteoroscope recovered (original) (raw)
The Stars in the Classical and Medieval Traditions, ed. by Alena Hadravová, Petr Hadrava, and Kristen Lippincott, 2019
The study of ancient astronomy calls to arms a number of disciplines: philology, codicology, algebra, geometry, illumination and art history, astrology, and of course astronomy itself. This book admirably succeeds in bringing together outstanding specialists from these different fields and in addressing several questions: How many are the fixed stars? How can astronomy help discover the geographical coordinates of a city? How do you construct an Aratean sphere? How is the representation of the sky rendered in illustrations ranging from medieval manuscripts to 18th-century sculpture gardens? How does the ancient mechanism of catasterism work? How are pagan constellations interpreted in Christian settings? This collection of essays provides new editions and new interpretations of astronomical texts from such diverse authors as Eratosthenes and Manilius, Aratus, Germanicus and al-Sūfī, Ptolemy and Carolingian scholars. Readers with diverse interests will benefit from this book.
Sir Isaac Newton has the following remarks in regard to the origin of Astrology:--"After the study of Astronomy was set on foot for the use of navigation, and the Ægyptians, by the heliacal risings and settings of the stars, had determined the length of the solar year of 365 days, and by other observations had fixed the solstices, and formed the fixed stars into asterisms, all which was done in the reigns of Ammon, Sesac, Orus, and Memnon," (about 1000 years before Christ), "it may be presumed that they continued to observe the motions of the planets, for they called them after the names of their gods; and Nechepsos, or Nicepsos, King of Sais," [772 B.C.], "by the assistance of Petosiris, a priest of Ægypt, invented astrology, grounding it upon the aspects of the planets, and the qualities of the men and women to whom they were dedicated *1; and in the beginning of the reign of Nabonassar, King of Babylon, about which time the Æthiopians, under Sabacon, invaded Ægypt" [751 B.C.], "those Ægyptians who fled from him to Babylon, carried thither the Ægyptian year of 365 days, and the study of astronomy and astrology, and founded the a era of Nabonassar, dating it from the first year of that king's reign" [747 B.C.], "and beginning the year on the same day with the Ægyptians for the sake of their calculations. So Diodorus: 'they say that the Chaldæan in Babylon, being colonies of the Ægyptians, became famous for astrology, having learned it from the priests of Ægypt.'"--Newton's Chronology, pp. 251, 252. The arcana of Astrology constituted a main feature in the doctrines of the Persian Magi; and it further appears, by Newton's Chronology, p. 347, that Zoroaster (although the æra of his life has been erroneously assigned to various remoter periods) lived in the reign of Darius Hystaspis, about 520 B.C., and assisted Hystaspes, the father of Darius, in reforming the Magi, of whom the said Hystaspes was Master. Newton adds, p. 352, that "about the same time with Hystaspes and Zoroaster, lived also Ostanes, another eminent Magus: Pliny places him under Darius Hystaspis, and Suidas makes him the follower of Zoroaster: he came into Greece with Xerxes about 480 B.C., and seems to be the Otanes of Herodotus. In his book, called the Octateuchus, he taught the same doctrine of the Deity as Zoroaster." The world is divided into two parts, the elemental region and the æthereal. The elemental region is constantly subject to alteration, and comprises the four elements; earth, water, air and fire. The æthereal region, which philosophers call the fifth essence, encompasses, by its concavity, the elemental; its substance remains always unvaried, and consists of ten spheres; of which the greater one always spherically environs the next smaller, and so on in consecutive order. First, therefore, around the sphere of fire, GOD, the creator of the world, placed the sphere of the Moon, then that of Mercury, then that of Venus, then that of the Sun, and afterwards those of Mars, of Jupiter, and of Saturn. Each of these spheres, however, contains but one star: and these stars, in passing through the zodiac, always struggle against the primum mobile, or the motion of the tenth sphere; they are also entirely luminous. In the next place follows the firmament, which is the eighth or starry sphere, and which trembles or vibrates (trepidat) in two small circles at the beginning of Aries and Libra (as placed in the ninth sphere); this motion is called by astronomers the motion of the access and recess of the fixed stars." (Probably in order to account for the procession of the equinoxes.) "This is surrounded by the ninth sphere, called the chrystalline or watery heaven, because no star is discovered in it. Lastly, the primum mobile, styled also the tenth sphere, encompasses all the before-mentioned æthereal spheres, and is continually turned upon the poles of the world, by one revolution in twenty-four hours, from the east through the meridian to the west, again coming round to the east. At the same time, it rolls all the inferior spheres round with it, by its own force; and there is no star in it. Against this primum mobile, the motion of the other spheres, running from the west through the meridian to the east, p. 3 contends. Whatever is beyond this, is fixed and immovable, and the professors of our orthodox faith affirm it to be the empyrean heaven which GOD inhabits with the elect."--Cosmographia of Peter Apianus (named Benewitz), dedicated to the Archbishop of Saltzburg, edited by Gemma Frisius, and printed at Antwerp 1574. The practice of observing the stars began in Ægypt in the days of Ammon, as above, and was propagated from thence, in the reign of his son Sesac, into Afric, Europe, and Asia, by conquest; and then Atlas formed the sphere of the Libyans" [956 B.C.], "and Chiron that of the Greeks [939 B.C.]; and the Chaldæans also made a sphere of their own. But astrology p. xii was invented in Ægypt by Nichepsos, or Necepsos, one of the Kings of the Lower Ægypt, and Petosiris his priest, a little before the days of Sabacon, and propagated thence into Chaldæa, where Zoroaster, the legislator of the Magi, met with it: so Paulinus;
Journal for the History of Astronomy, 2021
In this paper, a proposal is made that the Anonymous Commentary to Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos (Anon. in Ptol.) was composed not before 467 and not after 575 AD. In establishing the terminus post quem and the terminus ante quem, the Author relies on astronomical data provided by the Anonymous himself in his commentary to Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos (=Ptol. Tetr.) II.10 (p. 76, ll. 16-29 Wolf). In this passage, he reports that his master completely succeeded in interpreting the appearance of a celestial beam (δοκός) as a sign of a great loss of trunks, after which a naval battle took place where many ships were sunk; moreover, the master of the anonymous commentator predicted that the comet would remain visible until the end of Mercury’s retrogradation, and so it happened. As will be seen below, it is possible to crosscheck all this data to obtain a precise date of the comet’s appearance: 467 AD, 1 year before the naval battle of Cape Bon (468 AD). These years are also consistent with the dating that can be obtained from one of the horoscopes transmitted by the anonymous commentary (p. 98 Wolf), which corresponds to a birth that actually took place in Lower Egypt on 25 June 448 AD.
Core to this essay is the matching of a single classical text source to the imagery of the Rosette folio and the discussion of the method in this context (block paradigm, introduced by Nick Pelling). The strength of this method lies in the fact that it does not rely or discuss a single match but a comprehensive matching of an entire single classical text source against the Rosette folio network of imagery. Furthermore the inclusion of secondary text resources including commentaries provides an independent and unbiased view and it is suggested that a substantial part of the Rosette folio presents a selective display of meteorological phenomena as described in Aristotle's 'Meteorologica'. By using this different methodological approach this essay refines the previously by Wastl & Feger suggested 'climate' proposition for the Rosette folio in the Voynich Manuscript. It offers a deeper understanding of the complex imagery in the Rosette folio and suggests an explanation for the relation and network of some of the imagery in this single folio. This essay will emphasise selected areas ('micro-images') of the Rosette folio: the central disc, the top right corner disc and the importance of the display of two suns. More results throughout the entire area of the folio will be presented in an extended results section (forthcoming) where the results are cross-referenced via hyperlinks to different sections of the file for quick reference and comparison. Figure 1: The Rosette folio with highlighted selected image details ('micro-images'). Focus in this essay is particularly on the central disc, the top right corner disc and the suns (see text for further details and colour coding) that are suggested to display meteorological phenomena and further details as described in Aristotle's 'Meteorologica'.
Hellenistic Astronomy: The Science in Its Contexts edited by Alan C. Bowen and Francesca Rochberg
Aestimatio: Sources and Studies in the History of Science, 2021
One of the daunting challenges involved in reviewing a 750-page standard tome on a subject like astronomy is being able to evaluate all aspects of the volume, covering technical data as well as any possible impact of subject matter on other disciplines. The editors, mindful of their readership consisting of both “insiders” and “outsiders”, have taken decisive steps towards making Hellenistic astronomy accessible and comprehensible, with an appropriate balance between complex graphs and arithmetic equations and more general topics, as well as a glossary of technical terminology. The present reviewer, an unrepentant “outsider”, will attempt to focus on some key issues involving the connections between Babylonian and Greek astronomy in the period in question, as well as the impact of astronomy as a whole. Reviewed by: M. J. Geller, Published Online (2021-08-31)Copyright © 2021 by M. J. GellerThis open access publication is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-...