Year: 2009

The Height of Alexander

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 1 Comment

A review of Simon Sebag-Montefiore , Heroes: History’s Greatest Men and Women at Mercator.net concludes thusly:

There was one glaring error: Alexander the Great’s height is given as 4’ 6”; but would make him the same height as the crippled poet Alexander Pope, and is never mentioned by the ancient authorities; surely the author means 5’ 6”, similar to Napoleon’s and quite a respectable stature?

I’m not sure we know what height Alexander was … over at Pothos.org there’s a reasonable guess of 5’6” or 5’7” …

This Day in Ancient History

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

ante diem xi kalendas martias

Parentalia (Day 7) — the period for honouring the dead continues

198 A.D. — death of emperor wannabe Clodius Albinus

1806 — death of Elizabeth Carter (Classicist who translated Epictetus)

Archimedes and ‘Pure Science’

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Speaking of Archimedes (see below),Olivia Judson incipits a piece in the New York Times thusly:

The snobbish idea that pure science is in some way superior to applied science dates to antiquity, when Plutarch says of Archimedes: “Regarding the business of mechanics and every utilitarian art as ignoble and vulgar, he gave his zealous devotion only to those subjects whose elegance and subtlety are untrammeled by the necessities of life.”

The reality appears to have been quite different, as Archimedes was not just the greatest mathematician of the ancient world, but also a clever inventor who drew inspiration from numerous practical problems — and based on the historical record, few historians today accept Plutarch at his word. Archimedes was one of the first to think deeply about fluid physics, and while many people know the famous story about his discovery of the principle of buoyancy (he saw the water level rise as he stepped into the bath, then ran naked through the streets yelling “eureka”) few know exactly what he was looking for (“eureka” means “I found it” in ancient Greek). In fact, this discovery is intimately linked with a practical problem he had been asked to solve: King Hiero wanted to know if he had been cheated by an unscrupulous jeweler who may have given him a crown that was not solid gold. Archimedes solved this problem by measuring the density of the crown via its buoyancy. His practical contributions to fluid physics also include the invention of a screw pump that became widely adopted for irrigation.

Archimedes Palimpsest Redux

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

There have been a pile of news reports about the Archimedes Palimpsest this week … near as I can tell, what is new in these reports is the revelation that Archimedes’ thoughts on infinity in the palimpsest are different than previously thought. The salient excerpt (via the Live Science version):

“Scholars are now talking about some new words which are emerging in the reconstruction of the evidence in introduction to the Method, that Archimedes’ concept of infinity was rather different from what was previously thought,” Bergmann said.

In fact, the new reading reveals that Archimedes was engaged in math that made conceptual use of actual infinity, as Netz describes on the Web site ArchimedesPalimpsest.org. The calculations involved adding infinite numbers of sums, such as the number of triangles inside a prism, as well as the number of lines inside a rectangle. Archimedes tried to argue that these values are equal to each other, making a statement about actual infinity, not just potential infinity, Nets writes.

The project website mentioned above (which I wasn’t aware of) has a pile of interesting stuff, including a digital version of the palimpsest and interviews etc. with those involved. You could easily kill an hour or so there.