Philosophy and science never flourished in Rome to the extent they did in Athens and Alexandria. Nevertheless, philosophers and scientists of the Roman era included some who were quite influential in the intellectual development of medieval Europe.
By the mid-second century B.C. Rome controlled most of the Greek-speaking world, and Roman armies conquered the remainder in the century that followed. At the same time Rome had been absorbing Greek culture, as evidenced by the development of Roman literature based on Hellenic models.
This cultural exchange accelerated after 155 B.C., when an Athenian embassy arrived in Rome to appeal an unfavorable decision made by Greek arbitrators in a dispute with the city-state of Oropus. The ambassadors were the directors of three of the four renowned philosophical schools of Athens: Carneades of Cyrene, head of the Academy; Crito-laos of Phaselis, director of the Lyceum; and Diogenes of Babylon, leader of the Stoic school. The appeal was unsuccessful and the ambassadors returned to Athens, having achieved nothing other than the stimulation of philosophical discourse in Rome. The Epicurean school was not represented in the embassy, probably because in their pursuit of happiness its members chose to avoid involvement in public life.
A decade later the Stoic philosopher Panaetius of Rhodes (ca. 185-109 B.C.) came from Athens to Rome, where he mostly remained until he returned to Athens in 129 B.C. to head the Stoa. Cicero, who was deeply influenced by Panaetius, writes of him that “he fled from the gloom and harshness [of the rigorous Stoics] and did not approve of their thorny arguments. In one branch of philosophy [ethics] he was more gentle, in the other [physics and logic] clearer. He was always quoting Plato, Aristotle, Xenocrates, Theophrastus, Dicaearchus, as his writings clearly show.”
Posidonius, one of last original thinkers of the Stoic school, studied at Athens under Panaetius before moving to Rhodes. There he attracted students from Rome, including Cicero, and was visited by leading Romans during their eastern journeys, most notably Pompey. He represented the Rhodians on an embassy to Rome in 87 B.C., and his extensive travels took him as far as Gadeira (Cadiz) in Spain, where he observed the tides of the Atlantic. He described the tides in his treatise On Ocean, where he ascribed the phenomenon to the combined actions of sun and moon. None of his wide-ranging works survive other than in fragments, though he was extremely influential in the subsequent intellectual history of the Roman world and of medieval Europe.
The Roman poet Lucretius (ca. 94-ca. 50 B.C.) is said to have followed the Epicurean maxim “Live unnoticed” so carefully that virtually nothing is known about his life. St. Jerome reports that Lucretius was born in 94 B.C.; that an overdose of an aphrodisiac drove him mad; that in his intervals of sanity he wrote several books, which were later edited by Cicero; and that he committed suicide at the age of forty-four.
Lucretius is renowned for a superb didactic poem in six books entitled De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), based on the atomic theory and teaching of Epicurus. In the first book Lucretius reveals his intention of using the atomic theory to overthrow “this very superstition which is the mother of sinful and impious deeds.” He denies creation on the grounds of the permanence of atomic matter, stating, “Nothing is ever produced by divine power out of nothing.” The void is a frame of reference for atoms in motion and “time by itself does not exist; but from things themselves there results a sense of what has already taken place, what is now going on and what is to ensue.” We must rely on our senses in studying nature, for, as he asks, “What can be a surer guide as to the distinction of true from false than our senses?”
The second book of De Rerum Natura deals with the kinetics of the atomic theory, with the random movements and collisions of the atoms bringing about the groupings and separations that form the various bodies found in nature. Lucretius followed Epicurus in saying that the reason the atoms collide is that “at quite indeterminate times and places they swerve ever so little from their course, just so much that you can call this a change in direction.” This was later interpreted to mean that the atomic theory was not deterministic, since the “swerve” made atomic motion unpredictable. The atomic theory was in this way made more acceptable for Christians, since it allowed for free will in human actions. Thus De Rerum Natura became popular in medieval Europe, which eventually led to the revival of the atomic theory in the seventeenth century.
The Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius Pollio flourished in the first century B.C. Virtually nothing is known of his life other than the internal evidence in his only known work, De Architectura, a treatise on architecture and engineering based partly on his own studies and partly on those of earlier architects, mostly Greeks. The treatise is encyclopedic in scope, dealing not only with the history and principles of architecture, but also with military and civil engineering as well as physics and astronomy, including the construction of sundials. The work of Vitruvius was revived in the European Renaissance and has been influential in architectural studies from then until the present day.
Pliny the Elder (ca. 23-79) was born at Comum (Como) and was probably educated in Rome. He was in command of the Roman fleet sent to evacuate refugees during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, when he was asphyxiated by the volcanic fumes. His only surviving work is his Natural History; he notes in the preface “that by perusing about 2,000 volumes we have collected in 36 volumes about 20,000 noteworthy facts from one hundred authors we have explored.” Pliny the Younger, his nephew and adopted son, described the Natural History as “a diffuse and learned work, no less rich in variety than nature itself.” The Natural History was widely known in medieval Europe, where, despite its uneven quality and generally low level, it represented a large fraction of the scientific knowledge available at that time.
In the opening chapters of Book XXX of the Natural History, Pliny gives an account of the origin and history of magic, which he says was disseminated in the Greek world through the works of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and Plato. He goes on to note of magic: “No one should wonder that its authority has been very great, since alone of the arts it has embraced and united with itself the three other subjects which make the greatest appeal to the human mind”—medicine, religion, and divination, particularly astrology—”since there is no one who is not eager to learn the future about himself and who does not think that this is most truly revealed by the sky.”
The Roman writer Seneca, a Stoic who flourished in the first century A.D., is best known for his dialogues, letters, and tragedies, but he is also of interest in the history of science for his Natural Questions This work deals mostly with topics in physics, meteorology, and astronomy, where his sources are principally Aristotle and Theophrastus. He writes of the low state to which general knowledge of astronomy had fallen since the days when the ancient Greeks “counted the stars and named every one,” noting that “there are many nations at the present hour who merely know the face of the sky and do not understand why the moon is obscured in an eclipse.” But he is hopeful that “the day will come when the progress of research through the long ages will reveal to sight the mysteries of nature that are now concealed.”
During the early medieval period the attitude of Christian scholars was that the study of science was not necessary, for in order to save one's soul it was enough to believe in God, as Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) wrote in his Enchiridion: “It is enough for Christians to believe that the only cause of created things, whether heavenly or earthly, whether visible or invisible, is the goodness of the Creator, the one true God, and that nothing exists but Himself that does not derive its existence from Him.”
The Greek philosopher Plotinus (205-70) is believed to have been born in Egypt; he studied at Alexandria before moving to Rome at the age of forty. His works cover the whole range of philosophy, including cosmology and physics. They embody a synthesis of Platonic, Pythagorean, Aristotelian, and Stoic thought that came to be known as Neoplatonism, the dominant philosophy in the Greco-Roman world through the rest of antiquity and on into the medieval era.
Iamblichus (250-c. 325), a scholar of Syrian origin, studied in Rome under the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry and later established his own school in Syria. His extant work consists of nine books on the Pythagoreans, including their number mysticism, as well as books on the use of arithmetic in physics, ethics, and theology. Iamblichus goes far beyond Plato in advocating the complete mathematization of nature, for he felt that mathematics was the key to understanding not only the movement of the celestial bodies, but terrestial phenomena as well.
The Roman writer Chalcidius, who flourished in the fourth century, is noted for his Latin translation of Plato's Timaeus, as well as for his own commentary on that work. These were the only sources of knowledge about Plato's cosmology available in Europe during the early medieval era. Chalcidius was also influenced by the ideas of Aristotle and transmitted them to medieval Europe as well, though in somewhat modified form. Two of the most important ideas of Aristotelian science that were thus perpetuated were the concept of the four elements and the astronomical theory of the homocentric spheres, which included the notion of the dichotomy between the terrestrial and celestial regions. Chalci dius refers to the astronomical theories of Heraclides Ponticus, who is also mentioned by the Roman Neoplatonists Macrobius and Martianus Capella.
Macrobius, who may have been from North Africa, flourished in the early fifth century. Besides his mention of the theories of Heraclides, Macrobius also writes of the number mysticism of the Pythagoreans and says that several Platonists believed that the interplanetary distances were such as to produce harmonious relations, the famous “harmony of the spheres.”
Martianus Capella was of North African origin and flourished in the years 410-39. He is the author of an allegorical work on the seven liberal arts entitled The Nuptials of Mercury and Philology In Book VIII of this work, an introduction to astronomy, he states that Mercury and Venus orbit the sun, a theory that he attributes to Heraclides Ponticus, though probably mistakenly. His work was very popular in the early medieval era in Europe, when a number of commentaries were written on it.
Proclus (ca. 410-85), the last great Neoplatonist philosopher, was born in Constantinople but moved to Athens in his youth to study at the Academy. He remained in Athens for the rest of his days, except for a brief exile due to his paganism, and was head of the Academy during his latter years. He was the last great synthesizer of Greek philosophy and as such was extremely influential in medieval and Renaissance thought. His works include a commentary on Book I of Euclid's Elements that contains a rich history of Greek geometry and a treatise entitled Outline of Astronomical Hypotheses, a summary of the theories of Hipparchus and Ptolemy.
The Roman scholar Boethius (ca. 480-524) held high office under the Ostrogoth king Theodoric, who had him imprisoned and executed. His best-known work is his Consolation of Philosophy, written while he was in prison before his execution. Boethius's other works fall into two categories: his translations from Greek into Latin of Aristotle's logical works, and his own writings on logic, theology, music, geometry, and arithmetic. His writings played a substantial role in the transmission to medieval Europe of the basic parts of Aristotle's logic and of elementary arithmetic.
Cassiodorus was another Roman who held high office under the Ostrogoths. In his Introduction to Divine and Human Readings he urged the monks of the monastery at Monte Cassino, in Italy, founded by Saint Benedict in 529, to copy faithfully the classics of ancient scholarship preserved in their libraries as a cultural heritage. He listed some of the important works of science that he thought should be preserved, and in doing so he described and thus transmitted the basic Aristotelian classification of the sciences. This classification divides philosophy into theoretical and practical areas. The theoretical areas are metaphysics, physics, and mathematics, the latter being further subdivided into arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy; the practical areas are ethics, economics, and politics. The mathematical sections of the book are briefer and more elementary, mostly dealing with definitions. There is also a section on medicine, in which Cassiodorus gives advice on the use of medicinal herbs, urging the monks to read the works of Hippocrates, Dioscorides, and Galen.
Isidore of Seville (560-636), a Visigothic bishop, wrote the first European encyclopedia, the Etymologies, which incorporated compilations of all the Roman authors to whom he had access. Despite the very low scientific level of this work, it achieved wide popularity in medieval Europe as a source of knowledge of all kinds from astronomy to medicine.
The Venerable Bede (674-735), an English monk, is noted for his De Rerum Natura, based largely on the Etymologies, to which he added Pliny's Natural History, a work that had not been available to Isidore. Although derivative, De Rerum Natura is greatly superior to the Etymologies and the Natural History because Bede's approach is much more critical than those of Isidore and Pliny. This is evident as well in Bede's De Temporum Ratione, which contains his researches on the solar and lunar cycles that he used to calculate future dates for the celebration of Easter, and that also allowed him to explain tidal action as being due to the influence of the sun and moon. Bede's two books were remarkable achievements for their time, and for centuries afterward they were Europe's principal sources of knowledge concerning nature.
Bede's work forms part of a tradition, established in English and Irish monasteries at a very early date, in which the study of science took an honored place along with theological studies, such as in the schools founded as early as the sixth century at Clonard, Bangor, and Iona. This tradition was greatly stimulated when two Greek-speaking monks—Theodore of Tarsus and Adrianus Africanus—were sent to England by Pope Vitalianus (r. 657-68), who thus instituted the study of Greek language and culture in northern Europe.
This cultural revival resulted in the founding of cathedral schools both in England and on the Continent. Alcuin (735-804) was a particularly important figure in the spread of this revival, moving from the cathedral school at York to the court of King Pepin the Short, where he was influential in sparking the Carolingian Renaissance.
Meanwhile, the center of the Roman Empire had moved eastward. This shift had been made official in 330, when Constantine the Great transferred his capital from Italy to the Greek city of Byzantium on the Bosphorus, the “New Rome,” which then came to be called Constantinople. Constantine was baptized just before he died, seven years later, the first step in establishing Christianity as the state religion of the empire, a process that was virtually completed by the second half of the following century.
During that period, imperial sovereignty was sometimes divided between emperors of the western and the eastern halves of the territory, the latter ruling in Constantinople. The third quarter of the fifth century was a chaotic period in the history of the western part of the empire. Ten men followed in turn as emperor of the western empire, the last being Romulus Augustus, who was overthrown in 476. By that time most of western Europe had been lost to the empire, and thenceforth the emperor in Constantinople was sole ruler of what remained.
Constantine had founded a university in Constantinople, and this institution was reorganized in 425 by Theodosius II. The new university, which became the most important center of learning in the empire, originally had twenty chairs of grammar, equally divided between Greek and Latin, and eight in rhetoric, five of which were in Greek and three in Latin, as well as two professorships in law and one in philosophy. By the following century Latin had fallen out of use in Constantinople and all of the professorships at the university were in Greek. This was part of the great cultural divide that developed in the early medieval era between the Latin west and the Greek east, a dichotomy that separated the newly emerging civilization of western Europe from the Byzantine world of the Balkans and Asia Minor.
Constantine had organized the first ecumenical council of the church, which had been held in 325 at Nicaea. The second ecumenical council was held at Constantinople in 381, the third at Ephesus in 431, and the fourth in 451 at Chalcedon, in the Asian suburbs of the capital, the principal business at all of these synods being doctrinal matters, particularly concerning the nature of Christ. The bishops at Chalcedon formulated what became the orthodox Christological doctrine: that Christ was both human and divine, his two natures being perfect and indivisible though separate. At the same time they condemned as heretics those who thought differently, namely the Monophysites, who believed that Christ had a single nature, and the Nestorians, who thought that he had a dual nature. The Monophysites and Nestorians, whose believers were principally in southeastern Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Egypt, then formed their own schismatic churches.
The Nestorians had already founded important schools in northern Mesopotamia at Edessa (Turkish Urfa) and Nisibis, where the language of instruction was Syriac, a Semitic language deriving from Aramaic. Among the books used at these schools were Greek treatises translated into Syriac, most notably the logical works of Aristotle. The school at Edessa was closed by the emperor Zeno in 489, whereupon the Nesto-rian scholars moved east to Nisibis, which was then in Persian territory.
The eastward migration of Nestorians eventually brought them to the Sassanid capital at Jundishapur, in western Persia, where in the late fifth century they joined the faculty of a medical school that had been founded by King Shapur I (r. 241-72). There the Nestorian faculty taught Greek philosophy, medicine, and science in Syriac translations. The school became a center for the translation of works in medicine, cosmology, astronomy, and Aristotelian philosophy; the languages involved at various times included Greek, Syriac, Sanskrit, Pahlavi, and, subsequently, Arabic.
The best of the early Syriac translators was Sergius of Reshaina (d. 536), a Monophysite priest and physician who had been educated in the Platonic school of Ammonius in Alexandria. His translations from Greek into Syriac included some of Aristotle's logical works, which were at about the same time being rendered from Greek into Latin by Boethius. He also wrote two works of his own on astronomy, On the Influence of the Moon and The Movement of the Sun, both undoubtedly based on Greek sources. Sergius was characterized by a later Syriac writer as “a man eloquent and greatly skilled in the books of the Greeks and Syrians and a most learned physician of men's bodies. He was orthodox in his opinions … but his morals [were] corrupt, depraved and stained with lust and avarice.”
The most distinguished Syriac scholar of the early medieval period was Severus Sebokht (d. 667), a Nestorian bishop who wrote on both scientific and theological subjects. His scientific writings included works on logic and astronomy as well as the earliest known treatise on the astrolabe, an astronomical instrument almost certainly of Hellenistic origin. He was also the first to use the so-called Hindu-Arabic number system. Writing in 662, he praised the Hindus and “their valuable methods of calculation, and their computation that surpasses description.” He went on to remark, “I only wish to say that this computation is done by means of nine signs,” indicating that the symbol for zero had not yet made its appearance.
By the sixth century the character of the Roman Empire had changed profoundly from what it had been in the time of Augustus, Greek having replaced Latin as the dominant language in the capital and Christianity triumphant over the old Greco-Roman gods. Modern historians consider the sixth century to be a watershed in the history of the empire, which from that time on they tend to call Byzantine rather than Roman. As the great churchman Gennadius was to say in the mid-fifteenth century, in the last days of the Byzantine Empire: “Though I am a Hellene by speech yet I would never say that I was a Hellene, for I do not believe as Hellenes believed. I should like to take my name from my faith, and if anyone asks me what I am I answer, ‘A Christian.’ Though my father dwelt in Thessaly I do not call myself a Thessalian, but a Byzantine, for I am of Byzantium.”
The peak of the Byzantine Empire came under Justinian I (r. 527-65), who reconquered many of the lost dominions of the empire, so that the Mediterranean once again became a Roman sea. Justinian also broke the last direct link with the classical past when, in 529, he issued an edict forbidding pagans to teach. As a result the ancient Platonic Academy in Athens was closed, ending an existence of more than nine centuries, as its teachers went into retirement or exile.
Those who went into exile included Damascius, the last director of the Academy, along with Isidorus of Miletus, who had been his predecessor, and Simplicius of Cilicia. They and four other scholars from the Academy were given refuge in 531 by the Persian king Chosroes I (r. 531-79), who appointed them to the faculty of the medical school at Jundishapur. The following year the seven of them were allowed to come back from their exile, six of them returning to Athens, while Isidorus took up residence in Constantinople.
Simplicius is renowned for his commentaries on Aristotle, which contain much valuable material otherwise unavailable, including fragments of the pre-Socratic philosophers. He was a staunch supporter of Aristotle's, some of whose ideas were criticized by John Philoponus, who had succeeded Ammonius as head of the Platonic school in Alexandria. Thus in the twilight of antiquity a great debate took place about the Aristotelian worldview, which was attacked by John Philoponus and defended by Simplicius. The most interesting part of this debate focused on why a projectile, such as an arrow, continues moving after it receives its initial impetus. Philoponus rejected the Aristotelian theory presented by Simplicius, which was that the air displaced by the arrow flows back to push it from behind, an effect called antiperistasis Instead Philoponus suggested that the arrow, when fired, receives an “incorporeal motive force,” an idea that was revived in Persia by Ibn Sina and later, in medieval Europe, where it was known as the “impetus theory.”
Justinian appointed Isidorus to be chief of the imperial architects, along with Anthemius of Tralles, their task being to design and build the great church of Haghia Sophia in Constantinople, whose foundation was laid in 532. Anthemius died during the first year of construction, but Isidorus carried the work through to completion, after which Justinian dedicated the church, on 26 December 537. Haghia Sophia, which some consider to be the greatest building in the world, still stands today, a symbol of the golden age of the Byzantine Empire under Justinian.
Isidorus and Anthemius studied and taught the works of Archimedes and the Archimedean commentaries of Eutocius of Ascalon. Isidorus was apparently responsible for the first collected edition of at least the three Archimedean works commented upon by Eutocius—On the Sphere and Cyclinder, On the Measurement of the Circle, and On the Equilibrium of Planes—as well as the commentaries themselves.
Later Byzantine writers added other works to this collection, most notably Leo the Mathematician (ca. 790-ca. 869). Leo's collection of the writings of Archimedes included all of the works now known, excepting On Floating Problems, On the Method, Stomachion, and The Cattle Problem Leo also transcribed Ptolemy's Almagest as well as the collection of Ptolemy's mathematical and astronomical writings known as the Little Astronomy
One of Leo's students was captured by an Arab army in 830 and ended up at the court of the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun (r. 813-33). The caliph, who was sponsoring translations of ancient Greek science and mathematics into Arabic, thus learned of Leo's accomplishments and invited him to Baghdad. But the Byzantine emperor Theophilus (r. 829-42) kept Leo in Constantinople by appointing him as the head of a new school of philosophy and science, where he had his students copy manuscripts of Archimedes and Euclid.
Thus the diaspora of classical learning brought Greek thought from Athens to Rome, Constantinople, and Jundishapur. It took root in the new civilizations that emerged in western Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic world, three streams of culture whose eventual confluence would produce a renaissance of science.