Georgia Lynette Irby-Massie - Greek Science of the Hellenistic Era: A Sourcebook

More of Greek science survives than does any other category of ancient Greek literature, and yet much of that is obscure even to classicists. This source-book aims at treatment of that problem, not cure. No consensus on the nature of modern science exists, much less on the nature of ancient Greek science we have therefore preferred inclusion to omission. Although the kosmos is vast and time endless, books and lives are not these selections are a tiny fraction of the texts. Selection and translation distort and disappoint but a warped mirror and dim candle are better than no view at all. A book twice or more the length of this one (as Cohen and Drabkin 1958) and in Greek would be a far better representation and much less read. Most experts will find some favored passage absent.

Division and definition whether of objects or concepts remains a deep conundrum, but our chapter divisions separate segments of Greek science at joints we believe natural. Terminology is a famous difficulty, but various Greek terms did exist which more or less cover the semantic range of science, as well as most of the chapter titles (except psychology, which is thus always in quotation marks). In their synthesis (on which see ), mathematics are foundational and unite astronomy, geography, and physics (mechanics, optics, and pneumatics), while the non-mathematical sciences of natural phenomena (alchemy, biology, medicine, and psychology) stood apart until astrologers proposed planetary sympathy with body-parts, plants, and stones. Since the soul and the heavens were both seen as made of aither, such a framework provided a path to harmony and fulfillment, both individual and social. Other chapter distributions are possible: e.g., fusing astronomy and astrology, and even geography (or else separating cosmology from astronomy); fusing mechanics and pneumatics, and even optics (or else separating out music); fusing biology and medicine, and even psychology (or else splitting biology into botany and zoology), etc. These and other independent possibilities allow for hundreds of choices we cannot please every reader.

Within each field (chapter) we eschew fine distinctions of topic as misleading and arbitrary: each reader will find their own relevant passages. We have preferred fewer longer extracts and a broader range of authors: those readily , thus strictly excluding Aristotle (and the pseudo-Aristotelian corpus) at one end, and all but one Aristotelian commentator at the other. (Hanno and Putheas may stretch the bounds before, while Anatolios and Zosimos extend a bit later.)

Most material is reprinted, but we include over three dozen authors and works hardly found in English (in every chapter save that on pneumatics). Explanatory material in the chapter prolegomena and notes to authors and texts does not argue but states, and experts will readily see where choices were made. (We also assume readers will know or can easily access data on Greek and Greco-Roman culture.) We have also preferred to include more text at the expense of some notes, believing that there is greater value in having more material available, and given that even book-length commentaries on some of these texts would not suffice. The bibliography includes only works in English, appropriate to our intended readership (though experts will recognize that we have studied scholarly literature in German, French, and Italian).

All reprinted translations originally published before 1976 (and a few more recent), except for one papyrus horoscope, have been revised, the better to accord with the Greek (especially those from Stevenson [1932], Cohen and Drabkin [1958], and Bruin and Vondjidis [1971], which are practically new versions). One work is extant only in Armenian, which was checked by G. M. Browne; nine are extant only in Arabic, eight of which were checked by G. M. Browne and Petra M. Sijpesteijn. We have carefully considered their reports but final responsibility for the translations rests with us. (One Arabic text has never been printed, and we were unable to obtain a photograph: Menelaus,