In the old days, the earth was drawn as a circle, with Greece in the center, and Delphi, as the navel of the earth, in the center of Greece. Democritus was the first to perceive it as being oblong, half as long again as it is wide (Agathemerus Geography 2.1).
Theophrastus records that Plato, when he grew older, regretted attributing to the earth the central position in the universe, as being a position it does not merit (Plutarch Platonic Questions 1006c).
The earth stays in the air without anything to hold it up, remaining fixed because it is equidistant from all other things…. We do not feel the heat of the stars because they are so far away…. The sun is bigger than the Peloponnese (Anaximander, quoted at Hippolytus Refutation of All Heresies 1.6, 1.8).
Aristarchus of Samos proposes that the fixed stars and the sun remain motionless, and that the earth goes around the sun on the circumference of a circle (a momentous suggestion recorded at Archimedes The Sand Reckoner 1), but the geocentric ideas of Aristotle and Claudius Ptolemy prevailed for two millennia. In the 16th century Copernicus revived the idea that the earth revolves around the sun, and astronomical proof was first obtained in 1727.
The moon resembles the earth in that its surface is inhabited. The animals and plants, however, are bigger and more attractive than those here; the animals there are fifteen times as big and do not void excrement (Philolaus frg. 20).
Anaximander maintains that human beings were originally created from animals that were of a different species. He reasons that the other animals are quickly able to find their own food, but humans alone need a long period of nursing, and if they had been like that from the beginning, they could not have survived (Plutarch frg. 179). More specifically, Anaximander asserts that humans were first formed among fish, but having developed like dog sharks and become able to help themselves, they then came out of the sea and took possession of the land (Plutarch Table Talk 730e).
According to Aristophanes, as recorded by Plato at Symposium 190c, there were originally three types of human beings, male, female, and androgynous. People were originally round, with their back and sides forming a circle. They had four hands, four feet, one head with two faces, four ears, two sets of private parts, and so on. They could move very quickly, forward or backward, rolling along on their eight limbs. The gods were afraid of their strength and considered annihilating them. But Zeus said:
“I think I have a plan that will allow humans to continue living, but will weaken them and make them less disorderly. I shall cut each of them in two, making them not only weaker, but also more useful to us because there will be more of them to offer sacrifices. But, if they are still insolent and refuse to live peacefully, I’ll split them again, and they’ll hop about on one leg.”
After saying this he cut humans in two, the way apples are split for pickling, or eggs are sliced with a hair.
When Zeus fashioned humans, he told Hermes to pour sense into them. Hermes made the same amount of sense for each person and started to pour it in. Smaller people were filled up by their allocation of sense and became intelligent, whereas tall people, since their allocation of sense reached only as far their knees, were less intelligent (Aesop Fable 110). Aesop may have derived personal satisfaction from the fable just cited: Aesop, the writer of fables, was a great benefactor to mankind, but ill fortune made him a slave. He was disgusting to look at, rotten at his duties, potbellied, with a pointed head and a snub nose, swarthy, deformed, stunted, bandy-legged, with weasel [i.e., short] arms, a squint, and twisted lips (Life of Aesop 1).
Why are humans the most thoughtful of all animals? Is it because they have very small heads in proportion to their body size? … People with small heads are more thoughtful than people with large heads (Ps.-Aristotle Problems 955b).
Why is it that no one can tickle himself? Is it for the same reason as that tickling by another person has more effect if done without warning? (Ps.-Aristotle Problems 965a).
It is an observable fact that human beings are, in general, getting smaller, and that very few people are taller than their parents. This is because the cycle of the ages is now approaching a period of great heat, and that exhausts the fertility of our semen…. Nearly a thousand years ago, the great poet Homer constantly lamented that people were physically smaller than in former times (Pliny Natural History 7.73).
Are we not to suppose that there have been all sorts of climate changes, during which it is likely that animals have changed in very many different ways? (Plato Laws 782a).
Xenophanes says that the land was once mixed with the sea…. As proof of this, he points out that shells are found far inland and on mountaintops (Xenophanes frg. 33).
The very troublesome problem about the egg and the bird was brought up for discussion. Which of them came first? My friend Sulla refused to take part in the debate, saying that with this little problem, as with a tool, we were opening up a serious and momentous controversy, namely the creation of the universe (Plutarch Table Talk 636a).
At Panopeus in central Greece there is a small building made of unbaked brick, and in it there is a statue of Pentelic marble, which some say represents Asclepius, others Prometheus. In support of their claim, the latter group point to two rocks lying in the ravine, each big enough to fill a cart. These rocks are the color of clay, not earthy clay, but rather such as is found in a gorge or a sandy stream. They smell just like human skin, and people say that they are the remnants of the clay from which Prometheus molded the whole human race (Pausanias Guide to Greece 10.4).
The Stoics maintained that, when the planets return to their original alignment, the universe will be destroyed in a great conflagration, and then everything will happen again in exactly the same way as before. Socrates, Plato, every person will exist again, with the same friends and fellow citizens. The same things will happen to them … and every city, village, and field will appear again just as before. This restoration of the universe does not happen just once; it recurs ad infinitum (Nemesius On Human Nature 38). Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoa, concedes that there may be slight variations; birthmarks and freckles may not reappear the next time around (Logic and Physics frg. 624). The Peripatetic philosopher Sosigenes calculated that it takes 648,483,416,738,640,000 years for all the heavenly bodies to return to their original alignments, completing a “perfect year” (Proclus On Plato’s Republic 2.23).
Some people think that everything has its origin in atoms and void. This idea is wrong, but it causes no actual wounds, or tumors, or distracting pain (Plutarch On Superstition 164f).
INVENTIONS
I am Isis, the ruler of all lands. Hermes educated me, and with Hermes I invented letters, both hieroglyphic and demotic, so that the same script should not be used for writing everything (Greek Inscriptions 12.14, inscribed on a pillar in Memphis).
The god Theuth invented numbers, calculation, geometry, astronomy, checkers, dice playing, and also writing. He showed his inventions to Thamous, the god who ruled all of Egypt…. When he told him that writing would make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories, since it is a drug that provides both memory and wisdom, Thamous replied: “Theuth, you are very ingenious, but the inventor of a skill is not the best person to judge the good or harm it may cause. As the indulgent father of writing, you have claimed the opposite of what it can actually do. Writing will make people forgetful, for they will neglect their memories…. They will hear a lot and seem to know a lot without learning anything, and will generally know nothing. They will be tedious to be with, seeming to be wise without actually being so” (Plato Phaedrus 274c).
Palamedes invented dice playing and checkers as a way to console the Greek expeditionary force at Troy when it was suffering from starvation. A stone on which they played checkers used to be displayed there (Polemon Periegesis frg. 32).
The elder Pliny gives a very long list of inventors at the end of Book Seven of his Natural History, including these examples:
• The Athenian brothers Euryalus and Hyperbius i
nvented brick-kilns and houses. Before then people lived in caves.
• Inspired by swallows’ nests, Toxius invented the technique of building with mud.
• Thread and nets were invented by Arachne.
• Laundering was invented by Nicias of Megara.
• Shoemaking was invented by Tychius of Boeotia.
• The Spartans invented slavery.
• Aristaeus of Athens discovered honey.
• Anchors were invented by Eupalamus, masts and sail-ropes by his son Daedalus, sails by his grandson Icarus.
Ajax and Achilles playing dice or a board game, with Athena looking on.
In the 6th century B.C., Perillus of Athens constructed a metal bull for Phalaris, the tyrant of the Sicilian city of Acragas. When you wish to punish anyone, shut him up in the bull, attach these tubes to its nostrils, and light a fire under it. Your victim will shriek and yell in unremitting pain, but his cries will reach you through the tubes as wonderfully sweet music, with poignant pipe-accompaniment and mournful mooing. He will be punished while you enjoy the music (Lucian Phalaris 11). Phalaris made Perillus the bull’s first victim. Epicurus maintained that a virtuous person, even if shut up in the Bull of Phalaris, will declare, “How pleasant this is!” (Cicero Tusculan Disputations 2.17).
When Queen Semiramis of Babylon was fighting the Indians, she realized that her forces were inferior, so she had model elephants made to terrorize the enemy, who thought elephants did not exist outside India. She had exact models made, filled with straw and covered with the hides of three hundred thousand black cattle. Inside each model there was a camel and a man to look after it, the idea being that, when the camel moved, it would look from a distance like a real elephant. Work on the dummies was carried out in a well-guarded stockade, so that the Indians would not hear about the scheme (Diodorus Siculus The Library 2.16).
Archytas the Pythagorean [who ruled Tarentum in the 4th century B.C.] is said to have constructed a wooden dove that flew. It was balanced with weights and moved by means of a current of air hidden inside it (Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 10.12).
A procession in Athens in honor of Demetrius of Phalerum was led by a mechanical snail that went along of its own volition, spitting out a trail of slime (Polybius Histories 12.13). As well as ruling Athens from 317 until 307 B.C., Demetrius was a significant orator and philosopher, and in his later years he played an important role in the establishment of the Museum and Library at Alexandria. He deserves to be better known than he is today.
Nabis usurped power in Sparta at the end of the 3rd century B.C. When he was unable to extort money from the citizens, he resorted to a mechanical figure of a woman, splendidly dressed and made to look like his wife, Apege. “Maybe I myself can’t persuade you, but I think my Apege will.” At this point, the device was brought in. The victim offered her his hand and embraced her when he had helped her rise from her chair. But her arms and hands, and her breasts as well, were covered in iron nails, concealed under her dress. Nabis then placed his hands on his wife’s back, releasing springs that increased the pressure on the victim and gradually drew him closer to her breasts, making him agree to anything (Polybius Histories 13.7).
The Pneumatica of Hero of Alexandria, written in the 1st century A.D., gives instructions (in varying degrees of detail) on how to construct seventy-eight mechanical devices, most of which are ingenious but with little practical application. They include a cup that fills with water when a five drachma coin is inserted (21), a bowl that dispenses different varieties of wine through the same tube depending on which of several lead balls is inserted (32), and two variations on a device that opens doors automatically (37, 38). Some are rather endearing. For example:
At a fountain, or in a cave, or anywhere at all where there is running water, figures of several birds are set up, and near them there is an owl that turns automatically to look at them and then looks away again. When it looks away, the birds sing, but, when it looks at them, they stop. (14)
In some place where there is running water, make an animal out of bronze or any other material. When a cup is offered to it, it drinks noisily, giving the impression of thirst. (29)
A little tree with a snake coiled around it is fixed on a stand. Heracles is standing nearby with his bow, and there is an apple lying on the stand. If anyone lifts the apple off the stand, Heracles shoots his arrow at the snake and it hisses. (41)
When a thief named Eurybatus was in prison, the guards started drinking with him. They untied his bonds and urged him to show them how he scaled up buildings. At first he refused, but eventually they persuaded him, and so he attached sponges [perhaps to deaden the noise during a burglary?] and spikes to his feet and ran up the walls. While the guards were looking up in admiration of his skill, he made a hole in the thatched roof and jumped down, escaping before they could circle around and catch him (Aristotle frg. 84). At a spectacle in 3rd-century A.D. Rome the crowd were entertained by a “wall-walker,” who ran up a wall to escape from a bear (Historia Augusta Lives of Carus, Carinus and Numerian 19).
After losing a court case with his neighbor, Zeno, over the violation of a building permit, a Byzantine architect named Anthemius plotted revenge. He ran pipes up through the building’s walls to the roof beams and paneling of Zeno’s apartment. He then heated water in large cauldrons and forced steam under high pressure up the pipes, causing the beams and paneling to shake and creak. Zeno and his dinner guests ran headlong out into the street, terrified by what they thought was an earthquake (Agathias Histories 172).
Sophocles invented the bent walking stick
(Satyrus Life of Sophocles 5).
XIX
ART
When the art of painting was just starting out, still as it were breastfeeding and in diapers, artists drew such clumsy images of animals that they used to write on them “this is a cow,” “that’s a horse,” “this is a tree”
(Aelian Miscellaneous History 10.10).
You go all the way to Olympia to see the works of Phidias and think it a great misfortune to die before getting to know them (Epictetus Discourses 1.6.23). The greatest of Phidias’s sculptures at Olympia was the cult statue in the temple of Zeus, regarded as one of the Wonders of the World.
The Athenian painter Parrhasius bought an old man when Philip was selling the captives he had taken at Olynthus. He brought him to Athens, where he tortured him and used him as his model for Prometheus [who had his liver eaten by an eagle every day]. The Olynthian died under the torture, and Parrhasius dedicated the painting in the temple of Athena (Seneca the Elder Controversies 10.5).
Zeuxis [Parrhasius’s great rival] flaunted the wealth he had acquired through his paintings when he appeared at Olympia wearing a cloak embroidered with his name in gold letters, and later he made a practice of giving his works away because he regarded them as beyond price (Pliny Natural History 35.62).
A man called Cleisophus fell in love with a statue of Parian marble on the island of Samos and locked himself up in the temple where it stood, thinking he could have sex with it. But he could not, because of the coldness and unyielding nature of the stone, so he gave up his desire and satisfied himself with a small piece of meat instead (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 605f; the text and precise sense of the last few words are uncertain). Similar tales are told involving other temple statues, most notably Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Cnidos.
Phryne had asked Praxiteles to give her his most beautiful work. Being in love with her, he had agreed, but refused to say which work he thought the most beautiful. One day one of Phryne’s slaves rushed in, declaring that fire had broken out in his studio and most, but not all, of his works were lost. Praxiteles ran out through the door at once, shouting that all his labor had gone for nothing if the flames had snatched his Satyr and his Eros. Phryne told him to stay where he was and not to worry, for nothing bad had happened: he had simply been tricked into declaring which of his works were the most beautiful. That is how Phryne obtained Praxiteles’s
Eros (Pausanias Guide to Greece 1.20).
Apelles was probably the most highly regarded artist in antiquity. Alexander the Great would allow no one else to paint his picture. Descriptions of some of his paintings have come down to us, but not a single one has actually survived. His Aphrodite Rising from the Waves, for which the model may have been Phryne (see above), was one of the most influential ancient paintings. It inspired, among many other works, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, for which the model is reputed to have been Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci, who was a distant relative by marriage of Amerigo Vespucci, after whom the Americas are named.
Piraeicus ranks as one of the most skillful of all artists. It may be that he owes his fame to his subject-matter, for he preferred to paint mundane things, and that gave him a very high reputation. He painted barber’s shops, shoe factories, donkeys, dishes of food, and such like, and hence he earned the nickname Rhyparographos [Painter of Sordid Things]. Some of his paintings are exquisite and fetch higher prices than the largest works of many other artists (Pliny Natural History 35.112).
Myrmecides from Miletus and Callicrates the Spartan have created some amazing miniature works: a four-horse chariot hidden under a fly’s wing, a couplet of poetry written in gold letters on a sesame seed. But I doubt if any serious person will approve of this, for what is it but a sheer waste of time? (Aelian Miscellaneous History 1.17). The name Myrmecides is highly suitable, for it means literally “son of an ant.” The word for “ant,” μύρμηξ [myrmex], is perhaps related to its Latin equivalent, formica, and the splendid regional English “pismire,” thought to be inspired by the tendency of anthills to smell like urine.
A Cabinet Of Greek Curiosities Page 17