Science in classical antiquity

Science in classical antiquity encompasses inquiries into the workings of the world or universe aimed at both practical goals (e.g., establishing a reliable calendar or determining how to cure a variety of illnesses) as well as more abstract investigations belonging to natural philosophy. Classical antiquity is traditionally defined as the period between the 8th century BC (beginning of Archaic Greece) and the 6th century AD (after which there was medieval science). It is typically limited geographically to the Greco-Roman West, Mediterranean basin, and Ancient Near East, thus excluding traditions of science in the ancient world in regions such as China and the Indian subcontinent.

A

• Discovery attends on every quest,
  Except for renegades who shirk the toil.
  Now certain men have pushed discovery
  Into the sphere of heaven. Some part they know,—
  How planets rise and set and wheel about,
  And of the sun’s eclipse. If men have probed
  Worlds far remote, can problems of this earth,
  This common home to which we’re born, defy them?
  • Fragment of a lost comedy of Alexis (Tr. T. F. Higham: "The Confident Scientist")

• Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.
  • Archimedes, as quoted by Diodorus Siculus, XXVI, Fragment 18 (Tr. F. R. Walton)

C

• For out of olde feldes, as men seith,
  Cometh al this new corn fro yeer to yere;
  And out of olde bokes, in good feith,
  Cometh al this newe science that men lere.
  • Chaucer, Parlement of Foules, 22–25

L

• All things that are of perishable body must needs have been consumed by infinite time and ages past. But if through that space of time past there have been bodies from which this sum of things subsists being made again, imperishable indeed must their nature be; therefore things cannot severally return to nothing.
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura, I, 232–7 (Tr. W. H. D. Rouse)

• There is so great a difference and distinction in these things that what is one man's meat is another man's rank poison.
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura, IV, 634–5 (Tr. W. H. D. Rouse)

• There is a fault in this regard which you should earnestly crave to escape, and shun error with exceeding fearfulness—do not suppose that the clear senses and light of the eyes was made in order that we might made be able to see before us; or that the ends of the thighs and calves were jointed and placed upon the foundation of the feet, only to enable us to march forward with long forward strides; that the forearms again were fitted upon sturdy upper arms, and ministering hands given on either side, only that we might be able to do what should be necessary for life. Such explanations, and all other such that men give, put effect for cause and are based on perverted reasoning; since nothing is born in us simply in order that we may use it, but that which is born creates the use. There was no sight before the eyes with their light were born, no speaking of words before the tongue was made; but rather the origin of the tongue came long before speech, and the ear was made long before sound was heard, in a word all the members, as I think, existed before their use: then they could not have grown up for the sake of use.
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura, IV, 820–8 (Tr. W. H. D. Rouse)

• By what law all things were made, how bound they are to abide in it, how impotent to annul the strong statutes of time.
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura, V, 56 (Tr. W. H. D. Rouse)

• A part of the soil again is reduced to dissolution by rain, and the scraping rivers nibble their banks away. Besides, whatever she takes her part in nourishing, she increases [and is herself diminished; but when the nursling perishes, it is all] given back; and since beyond all doubt she is seen to be at once the mother of all and the universal sepulchre, therefore you see that the earth is diminished and is increased and grows again.
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura, V, 255–60 (Tr. W. H. D. Rouse)

• I now return to the world’s infancy, what first the fields of earth in their tender age thought fit to bring forth into the regions of light with new birth-throes and to commit to the wayward winds.
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura, V, 777–84 (Tr. W. H. D. Rouse)

• Even now many living creatures arise from the earth, formed by the rain and the warm heat of the sun, so that it is less wonderful if then more and larger ones arose, which grew up when earth and air were young. First the race of winged things and the different birds issued from their eggs being hatched in the springtime, even as now in summer the cicalas of their own accord leave their flimsy husks, to seek life and living. Then first, look you, the earth gave forth the generations of mortal creatures. For there was great abundance of heat and moisture in the fields.
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura, V, 794–803 (Tr. W. H. D. Rouse)

• Many species of animals must have perished at that time, unable by procreation to forge out the chain of posterity: for whatever you see feeding on the breath of life, either cunning or courage or at least quickness must have guarded and kept that kind from its earliest existence; many again still exist, entrusted to our protection, which remain, commended to us because of their usefulness. Firstly, the fierce brood of lions, that savage tribe, has been protected by courage, the wolf by cunning, by swiftness the stag.
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura, V, 852–60 (Tr. W. H. D. Rouse)

• When they had got them huts and skins, and fire, and woman mated with man was appropriated to one, [and the laws of wedlock] became known, and they saw offspring born to them, then first the human race began to grow soft. For the fire saw to it that their shivering bodies were less able to endure cold under the canopy of heaven.
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura, V, 1008–13 (Tr. W. H. D. Rouse)

• When a wind gathering together from some one quarter through the hollow places beneath the earth throws itself forward, and bears hard, thrusting with great force into the lofty caverns, the earth leans over in the direction of the wind's headlong force. Then those buildings which are built up above the earth, and each all the more, the more they tower up towards heaven, lean suspended, pushing forward in the same direction, and the beams dragged forward hang over ready to go. And yet people fear to believe that this great universe has waiting for it some period of destruction and ruin, although they see the earth's mighty mass leaning over. Yet if the winds should never blow backwards, no force could curb the world back or hold it back in its rush to perdition. As it is, because in turns they do blow back gathering force, and rally as it were and come back, and then are driven back in retreat, for this reason the earth more often threatens to fall than it does fall; for it inclines forward and then again springs back, and brings back its overhanging weights to their proper place. This then is how all buildings totter, the top more than the middle, the middle than the foundation, the foundation the merest trifle.
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura, VI, 558–77 (Tr. W. H. D. Rouse)
  • In 373 or 272 BC Helice and Bura were destroyed by earthquake; Aegium is the chief Achaean town in the neighbourhood.

O

• Neu regio foret ulla suis animantibus orba,
  Astra tenent cæleste solum, formæque deorum.
  • Creation nowhere lacks inhabitants:
    Heaven has its stars, and moving shapes of gods.
    • Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 72 (Trans. W. F. H. King)

Bibliography

• W. F. H. King, ed. Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), nos. 1680, 2138