FORVM`s Classical Numismatics Discussion Board
Numismatic and History Discussion Forums => Ancient Coin Forum => Topic started by: William J Bligh on October 11, 2003, 04:30:21 pm
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Hey folks. A few notes on this subject - There are numerous references on Imperial coinages regarding globes - The Tiberius Globe/rudder as, in particular. Also, looking at later artifacts, the giant bust of Constantine the Great in the Capitoline museum had Constantine holding a sword in one hand and a globe in the other, "to show his dominance over the entire world" as the caption said. Now....correct me if I'm wrong, but medieval society spent several centuries under the impression that the earth was flat. I imagined Romans thought the same. Does anyone have any thoughts/facts on this?? Did the Romans know we lived on a giant globe? If so, how the devil did something that momentous get 'forgotten' by the Christians??
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They are countless later coins, which show the Emperor receiving a globe from Jupiter, which I can only think it means the Emperor received the power, the rule of the world from Jupiter himself. Also Sol holds a globe in his hand and so on. It is clear that a globe on a coin represents the world, but I dont know if the symbol is perfectly equal to what they had in mind. Maybe they tought its flat but represented it with a globe. What is clear is the the symbol passed to the medieval people, they used it as a world representation while thinking it is actually flat. Dont ask me why didnt they change it to a eating plate or some other dish :)
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Since Eratosthenes worked out the diameter of the Earth some time in the 3rd Century BC, some Romans at least must have been aware of it. That's a long way from saying that every Roman knew it though. Look at the disputes which still go on about religious and scientific views of creation; back then, the 'scientific' view would have had a lot less to back it up. The Old Testament describes an Earth which appears to be flat, and even stands on pillars, but its impossible to be sure that the authors always meant what they said to be taken at face value; personally I don't think they did. I suspect most people didn't even think about it, and would have been totally gobsmacked by the idea of going all the way round a spherical Earth.
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There seems to be some evidence that the Romans thought of the world as round. It was not until the dominance of the Church that the "flat earth" began to be the main view, along with the earth centered view of the solar system.
Bruce
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I haven't got the evidence top hand, but I suspest they all thought of an earth-centred universe, whatever shape they thought the earth was. As far as I know the first person to postulate an infinite universe was Giordano Bruno, who was burnt at the stake in, I think, 1601.
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http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/Things/ptolemaic_system.html (http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/Things/ptolemaic_system.html) This is some intersting backgrounnd. But to the point, Aristotle knew the Earth was a sphere. One od the Greek mathematicians of that era, calculated it's volumne within 1% of modern calculations. I'll see if I can find the reference.
Bruce
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I'll have to find the article, but there is a pole that is depicted on a coin that was used to measure the diameter of the earth. YES the daimeter and it was measured to a very close pression to the known diameter today.
By measuring the shadow of one pole and the distance to a second pole that did not cast a shodow on that day (the sun being directly over head or should I say pole) they used geometry to find the size of the sphere they were on.
YES they knew it was round.............
I will post the link to the article when I find it again
Here is one but it is not the one I was looking for......... http://tinyurl.com/qxv1
page down to - Eratosthenes' measurement
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Hey everybody!
Tis is my very first time on the forum! ;D
Anyway, Any self respecting scholar in the middle ages knew that the world was round. Only the peasants and clergy thought it was flat...
Just something I learned in History class...
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"religion is the opiate of the masses" - Karl Marx
History technology science medicine - et al , were all present and understood - studied by the monks and scholars withing the monasteries and abbeys of the christian world. Not forgotten, just not taught to the masses , the social and politcal society of the day needed an ignorant population for simpler subjugation.
generally that why many things were "rediscovered" , as the old order bagan to recede in the wake of such political and religious upheavel of the absolution of the monasteries under H VIII, the reformations etc
The key was access to information-They controlled the information and they controlled who had access to it, they controlled how to read and how to write-it was denied by virtue of ignorance and social order
As above , with social and political upheavel of the late middle ages , scholars thinkers merchants bankers industrialists etc gave birth to the romantcism and practical reaslisation that was the renaissance. ie da vinci had access to "galens" etc etc
The irony is that without the zealous concealement of such knowledge and their meticulous efforts to both transcribe, and preserve texts , the majority of it "would" ahve been lost to time and ignorance.
this has enormous subject matter to cover, i have tried in just a few paragraphs, and impossible task , but there you go :)
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It is more than just concealment. Much of the information has been destroyed in the name of relegion, or by their authority. The library at Alexandria, the codexes of the Aztecs and writings of various new world cultures. Many of the monks and scribes that did the transscription were illiterate, hence errors were common in the transscriptions.
Bruce
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You also have to remeber that most people of the Middle Ages never traveled more than five miles in their entire life. Life was not considered something in which one finds pleasure, so very few attempts were made to learn anything except how to tend the farms and how to pray. Most people just didn't know or care that there was more to the world than their own village and the castle on the hill over there. It probably never crossed the minds of most peasants (which were by far the majority) that the world was round or flat.
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Piggy backing off of cscoppa's response....here is a lesson plan for students to measure the earth, just as Eratosthenes did years ago....funny it came to me just today from another source!
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:) There is an interesting article on this subject by Michael Morotto n the February 1998 issue of th Celator. In that article, he postulates that the knowledge was inherited from the Greeks.
He also mentions a coin of Commodus which shows on the reverse a half naked man holding a globe.
He discusses the idea that the round objects seen on many Roman coins were halos, not globes.
There is little doubt that educated people in ancient times knew the world was spherical.
Given modern astronomy and physics, it would be more difficult to prove that it was flat than that it was round.
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I think the globe depicted on coins and in other works of art is usually, maybe always, the celestial globe that we see above our heads when we look up, so is irrelevant to the question whether the ancients knew the earth was a globe.
Whenever any details are added to that globe in art, I think it is stars not geographical features that are depicted, apart from the equator and ecliptic which can be indicated on either the celestial or the terrestrial globe.
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Isn't the Romans' use of the word ORBIS to refer to the earth as well as to other round objects (circles, wheels, globes) an awfully good indication that they knew the earth's shape?
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Doesn't the expression orbis terrarum, the circle of lands, refer to the arrangement of occupied territories around the Mediterranean Sea? I have long thought this, but can find no confirmation for it in the few reference works I have pulled down.
However that may be, the Greeks and Romans knew the earth was a globe. According to the article Geographie in Der kleine Pauly, Theophrastus, cited by Poseidonios, credited Parmenides (c. 475 BC) with the discovery that the earth is a globe. Parmenides divided the earth into five zones, two icy regions at the poles, a hot zone at the equator, and two temperate zones in between, though this was mainly speculation rather than observed fact. One of the main problems posed by geographers of the following centuries was where on the globe the inhabited Mediterranean lands were located; the usual answer was the correct one, north of the equator. Eudoxos, c. 340 BC, calculated the earth's diameter at 400,000 stades, 40% too large; Eratosthenes, c. 225 BC, proposed the correct distance of 252,000 stades, based on his measurement of the difference in the angle of sunlight falling at Alexandria and Cyrene. Ptolemy's Geography (c. 75 BC) proposed a map and location of Europe, Asia, and Africa on the spherical earth, and models of the eath in the form of globes were well known according to the Roman geographer Strabo.
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That's useful, thanks; Eratosthenes was the only one of those I knew about.
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in all old times the people knew the earth is round ,spicialy through rilagen ,and those what we called as muslims the heaven rilagens(judasem,christianty,and islam),in the holey books you can find it clear that the earth is round,and the non belivers befor thought that the beast eat the moon ,just rilegens gave an explation about such things, and there are old since when you see or read about you will know that those thousands years ago people knew alot of amazing things but the problem most of the peope didnt care about what the earth look like because there where much important things to think about ,and every thing we have now is rediscoverd and pase off old since .
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There are several accounts of creation in the Old Testament, and they're all different. Those guys didn't care what it looked liked, or how and when it was made. What was important to them was the idea that God was responsible for it. They do use language which implies flatness (in one passage its described as standing on pillars), but this could very well be a case of their having used the descriptive language available to them, without intending it to be taken too literally. What is clear is that people realised it was round very early on.
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Here is a link for the Celator article by M. Marotta http://celator.com/cws/marotta.html
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The whole junk about Columbus's time beleiving the world was flat is nonsense. Greek and Roman mathemticians understood the world was round during their ages. It's a simple matter of mathematics.
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Absolutely right. The whole myth of everyone thinking the world was flat before Columbus was invented by Washington Irving.
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Of course, the ancient astronomers and geographers knew that the Earth is round, made measurements of its diameter.
They created also the model of the whole Solar system, erroneous (the Sun rotates around the Earth), but consistent with observations.
The true question is, whether it was a common knowledge. It seems, the answer is positive and the numismatics confirms
this. The Christianity wiped out this knowledge but still in XV centuries there were scientists who knew this, maybe, a few. What is about the navigators? For me, it is not clear. For the decision makers (say, kings), educated in Christian traditions, the idea was beyond the limits.
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When Satan leads Jesus on a high mountain to show him all kingdoms of the world (Mt.4, 1-11 The temptations of Jesus), then this is the suggestion of the flat earth. Otherwise it is not possible to see all kingdoms. Here we have the misbelief which became accepted in the Middle Ages.
Regards
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It could, of course, be metaphoric language, and in my view probably is. Who rules the nearest thing available to 'all the kingdoms of the earth'? Caesar, of course. In Revelation, which is virulently anti-Roman, the great beast (beasts in apocalyptic represent empires) is controlled by Satan, and I'm inclined to see a possible link.
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Certainly, it can be interpreted as a metaphor, by cultivated persons. But in Middle Ages it was not the case, for the total
majority it was a direct language.
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What do you mean the earth is round?
And I suppose you're all going to say the earth isn't the center of the universe too?
Barry Murphy
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This means that it is, roughly speaking, a ball or ellipsoid. The Claudius Ptolemy theory (II century AD) considers the Earth in the center of the Universe and this theory was accepted by the Church. His system was consistent with astronomical observations
and, less known, (I read this somewhere) gave better fit than the first tests of the Copernic system. The Ptolemy system
resisted until XVIII.
In "Dictionaire Mathematique, ou Idee Generale des Mathematiques", by Jacque Ozanam, Paris, 1691
(this was one of, if not the, most popular scientific encyclopaedias of its day; an English edition appeared in 1702 translated and abridged by Joseph Raphson), you can find a confirmation. Ozanam presents the Ptolemy system, the Tycho Brage, and, finally, the
Copernic system, saying that for scientific resons the last one should be also described though it contradicts directly to the Scripture.
[Jacques Ozanam (1640-1717) came from a Jewish family that had converted to Catholicism. He taught mathematics in Lyon before going to Paris, where his teaching brought him a substantial income. Ozanam cannot be regarded as a first-rate mathematician but he had a flair for writing and during his career he wrote a number of books, some of which were very popular, passing through many editions. His contributions consisted of popular treatises and reference works on 'useful and practical mathematics'.]
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Certainly, it can be interpreted as a metaphor, by cultivated persons. But in Middle Ages it was not the case, for the total
majority it was a direct language.
In the middle ages, certainly, but then the Gospels were written a few years before that! The reason I wonder whether the people who actually wrote the Bible took everything in the literal way some later interpreters have is simple; there are several creation accounts in the Old Testament, and they're all different. Genesis 1 has a seven-day scheme, while Gen. 2 speaks of 'the day', singular, of creation, to name one obvious one. There's an old Jewish tradition of putting contradictory stories side by side, on the grounds that both have something to contribute to the whole picture; I think something of the sort was probably at work here. Later cultures didn't always appreciate this, so we get the church trying to harmonise different passages, and suppress their differences instead. It's not my way of working.
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it was common knowledge in the roman empire that the earth was round.
ammianus marcellinus mentions this in his writings, saying it had been common knowledge for a long time
if i remember rightly he was writing in the 360s AD
sorry if i havent got the time to find the quote but its in there
regards to all
mick dale
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Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the earth in the 2nd Century BC, and went to so much trouble to do so that I would think the idea must have been fairly well established in his day. http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Eratosthenes.html
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Anyway, Any self respecting scholar in the middle ages knew that the world was round. Only the peasants and clergy thought it was flat...
Just something I learned in History class...
This is what I've been taught in history as well. Only the people still living in caves and clergy thought it was flat, so the majority of romans almost definatley knew it was round.
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Hello:
Yes they knew it was round, Robert B. is correct as to the math history. On coins the orbis points to the knowledge. No matter if the interpretation is of the celestial sphere or not. The knowledge of a spherical solar system is apparent. Also the iconographic symbol of sol invictus demonstrates the knowledge. A central sun, with rays of light enclosed in a circle (the earth around the sun) with more rays of light outside the circle. This, to me, demonstrates a clear knowledge of our position around the sun, and the fact that light travels beyond the earth to light the entire celestial sphere, all round images. Interesting that the knowledge was suppressed to ensure the Nicean Creed was not challenged. Know by the Romans and suppressed by the Romans. To me this shows that the Romans knew the power of this information and used it to further political aims. At times it was benificial to show the emperor on coins holding the orbis which supports the round world knowledge. At other times beneficient to issue Creeds that changed the perceived nature of the universe for a thousand years. Changed for no resaon other than to centralize the divinity of Christ, the center of the universe as the father the son and the holy ghost, any other reality was felt to threaten this central trinity. Ah, you have to love Rome, audacious! Pax
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Hi Pax!
To know that the earth is round is one thing, but to think the sun is the central celestial body is another thing! Where you have the proof that this was thought in ancient times?
Best regards
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Hi!
Proof, eh? Well not proof precisely, but a few thoughts from a couple of my favorites:
The meditations of Marcua Aurelius
"Either it is a well arranged universe or a chaos huddled together, but still a universe"
" Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and soul, observe how all things have reference to the center, the perception of life as one being and how all things act with one movement, and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things that exist in the universe. Observe too the spinning of our thread and the contecture of the universes web."
"How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediatley to be in all tranquility."
"Think of the universal substance, of which thou hast a very small portion, and of universal time as ruled by the sun, of which a short and indivisible interval has been assigned to you, and of that which as fixed by destiny and how small a part of it you really are."
"All things in the universe are made and perfected by reason."
"The universe is either confusion or order, either dispersion or it is unity and providence"
"Above all, all around are the movements of the elements. But the virtue of motion is none of these, it is something more divine, and is central to our sky"
"Does the sun undertake to do the work of the rain, or Aesculapius the work of the earth? And how is it with respect to each of the stars are they not different? And yet work together to the same end?"
From the Golden Sayings of Epictetus
"Death ? let it come when it will, whether it smite but a part or the whole: Fly, you tell me - fly! But whither shall I fly? Can any man cast me beyond the limits of the World? It may not be! And wherever I go, there shall I still find Moon and Stars and the Sun, there I find dreams and omens, and converse with the gods."
Asked about what commen sense was Epictetus states:
"As that may be called a common ear which distinguishes only sounds, while that which distinguishes musical notes is not common but produced by training; so there are certain things which men not entirely perverted see by the natural principles common to all. Such a constitution of the mind is called common sense"
Well, that , I think, is a fair synopsis of the stoic view of the universe and our position in it. I am going to need a little more time to provide further detail, from varied source. To me the writings of the great stoic philosophers still ring with truth. I recommend every person to read The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Plato. These are my personal favorites so I may be, or rather am, biased. I will return. :-) Pax
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Jochen,
Aristarchus of Samos proposed a model of the universe that had the sun at is centre.
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Aristarchus.html
Steve
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Hi Steve,
There you have it folks, proof ala Steve! Great link Steve, thanks for the information. You are faster than me, except in the philosophy art! :-) I actually did not know this particular mathematician and his theory, but, it is better than mine, great to learn a bit tonight, thanks. Pax
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But this not Roman astronomer but a Greek one, or better to say, Ellinistic.
A reference for more advanced reading.
http://www.fig.net/pub/cairo/papers/wshs_01/wshs01_03_lelgemann.pdf
However, we are discussing here the Roman science. Surpisingly, and this worried me a lot, Romans
did not contribute to the development of many "theorethical" branches like mathematics, astronomy of philosophy.
Despite their technological pruess, they were several stages below the Greek and Ellinistic culture. How could it happen?
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The books that I read too long ago to give you titles usually said, several of them at the least, that the Romans were not interested in ideas for their own sake but were very skillful in applying what they inherited. Something in that, but it is like the Education textbook that talks about The Child at Six or The Average Teenager. Which one(s)? In any case, I have read repeatedly just what Numerianus observes: no basic, groundbreaking advances in mathematics or in what we would call physics until the early modern period, which, depending where you look, would be the 14th to 16th century. On the other hand, if there was an application of basic science that could serve trade or ballistics or any of those wonderful things in Vitruvius, they were quick to see it and develope it. An example is vaulting in architecture, where they really took the ball and ran with it. Yet the pendentive (native to brick) exists in an Old Assyrian building of the 19th century BCE, and the Greeks used vaulting for tunnels and cisterns and, in the Hellenistic period, lovely stone arches for gates (as at Priene). It took the Romans, though, to build the Pantheon, Domitian's Palace, the Mercati Traiani, what Wm. MacDonald called the Roman Architectural Revolution, using brick and concrete to design in terms of the shapes of the volumes contained, rather than in terms basically of wall as such and post and lintel. Pat L.
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While Aristarchus may well have proposed a sun-centered system, the article states that this proposal was largely ignored or discounted even by his fellow Greeks. There doesn't seem to be any indication that his idea was commonly accepted by the later Romans at all.
And the meditations listed by Pax Orbis, while suggesting that there is order in the universe, don't seem to me to even hint at the idea that this order is in any way Copernican.
Although I've never looked for any, I would imagine there were Roman writings on astronomy. Anyone here know what they said of sun-centered vs earth-centered universe?
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Hello:
The astronomer who presented the heliocentric theory for the first time was the Greek known as of Aristarchus of Samos. He died in 270 B.C. However, his theory of the sun being at the center and of the earth revolving around it never gained popularity. That is an important point, popularity. This does not mean that the knowledge was not available, just feared by ignorant people, people who happened to be in power. Knowledge often exists long before acceptance. This fear does not negate the knowledge itself, simply causes the transistion into the new framework to slow down.
You seem to be focused on what was accepted as opposed to what was know. The age of Ptolemy was the predominate, accepted, wrong, theory. Ptolemy’s astronomical system represented the earth as the fixed center of the universe, with the sun, moon, other stars and planets revolving around it.
This geocentric theory of the universe is in conformity with the beliefs Christians developed after Jesus Christ. These beliefs were given final approval at the Council held at Nicaea, in A.D. 325. After the acceptance of Christianity by Constantine (280-337), the faith spread over Roman territory. Now vested with tremendous power, the Christians patronised, in particular, the theory of Ptolemy. The curtain of darkness fell over the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus.
Of geocentricity the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984) says:
"There was no further scope for cosmology in the model, which continued to be taught and used almost everywhere until the 17th century.
It was not until 1495 that Copernicus arrived at the conclusion that the earth was not the center of the universe. After a long period of research devoted to astronomical studies, he concluded that the planets revolved around the sun. But, fearing the opposition of the Church, he refrained from publishing his findings until 1543.
Again, knowledge proceeds acceptance.
The Muslims, however did not suffer from the error of regarding as sacred that which was non-sacred. They were in a position to reflect upon matters of scientific interest with open minds, and in a purely academic way. When discovered that the heliocentric theory was more rational, they accepted it without any hesitation.
Edward Mcnall Burns writes that the heliocentric theory developed by Aristarchus (310-230 B.C.), although destined to fall into oblivion for four hundred years, has today become an established fact. This is after many centuries of being dominated by Ptolemy’s geocentric theory.
The Muslims arriving at the correct hypothesis of the solar system’s functioning was made possible only because Islam had broken down the walls of conditioned thinking which had acted as a barrier to man’s intellectual progress. As soon as this artificial barrier was out of the way, human thought began to move on its journey with rapidity.
I do not see how the difference between accepted and known is of issue. This is common sense knowledge, hence my previous post which includes Epictetus' definition. With respect, it is irrevelant that it was not widely accepted. It was known first, rejected in favor of Ptolemy second. Re-read the meditations of Marcus, he is clearly stating that he does not believe in geocentricity. Being bound by his desire to please the mob, as all Emperors were, he is using Stoic philosophy to express his true belief, a safe method to teach the enlightened of his time, yet placate the masses by indirect challenge. Those without common sense and or education, would never have pierced the veil of Marcus Aurelius' Stoic belief. Marcus was above all an effective leader, it serves no purpose to jeapordize the stability of the Empire to force the ignorant masses to belief they were unable to accept, he was wise enough to realize this. Yet, by his meditations he revealed his desire to pursue truth, albeit in a manner that will only educate those already in possession of an education. I will continue to research more evidence of my position, Pax
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Phantastic sites, much to read and much to learn!
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Aristarchus was very much on the fringe; the Ptolemaic theory was pretty much unchallenged until the the 17th Century. It didn't really predict the minutiae of planetary motion very well. With the rise of nominalism, which takes the view that the ultimate essence of a thing is present in the thing itself, and thus the way to find out about the think is to look at it, people were taking more interest in observations like this. Earlier in medieval times, the dominant idea had been realism, which held that the things we encounter are just reflections of some ultimate reality, so the 'essence' of a thing is to be found elsewhere, and can't be observed. Observation was less important, and people sought answers in 'authoritative' sources like Aristotle or the Bible. Copernicus eventually cracked it by working out that a heliocentric Solar System explains the observations better, and Galileo found the evidence by looking at the moons of Jupiter through his telescope. Later on, it was found that Newtonian physics didn't quite predict the motion of Jupiter's moons correctly, and if I remember right, this was one of the pointers which led Einstein to relativity.
But where does the Nicene Creed say anything relevant to any of this?
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Hi Robert and all:
Robert you are a fun person to debate with thank you.
The Nicean Creed:
We believe in one God, the Father All-sovereign, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, and the only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of the Father before all the ages, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from the heavens, and was made flesh of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures, and ascended into the heavens, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and comes again with glory to judge living and dead, of whose kingdom there shall be no end:
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and the Life-giver, that proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and Son is worshipped together and glorified together, who spoke through the prophets:
In one holy catholic and apostolic church:
We acknowledge one baptism unto remission of sins. We look for a resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come.
The first sentence is the key point. To protect this belief, the church supressed all ideas that challenged the centrality of God, us in his image, and earth, Jesus, God all being connected, and central. The second sentence is the death blow to heliocentralism, it is a clear threat to the divinty of Christ on earth. Earth must be the center or the Messiah would not have manifested himself here. Why not Mars, or the Moon? Because earth and humans are the center of God's creation, as established by the Nicean Creed. Ok Robert et al, next! Come and get me! I have three debate points left to convince you! :-) This is very enjoyable. Pax
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The church still is in a very conservative stance on the issue. Not a well-known but an interesting episode.
Vladimir Arnold, a famous Russian mathematician, receiving an award from the Papal Academy asked the Pope why not to disculpate
Jordano Bruno for his idea that there are other populated worlds. The John-Paul II answer was quite significant: "We do this when you, scientists, find one more".
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... However, his theory of the sun being at the center and of the earth revolving around it never gained popularity. That is an important point, popularity. This does not mean that the knowledge was not available,......
Actually, it does mean that the knowledge was not available. If the theory was only known to a very few people, and not accepted, then it wasn't taught or advertised to the population as a whole. The vast majority of Romans never heard of Aristarchus or his ideas, and they had no easy way to acquire the knowledge of his ideas. Rome, as a generic whole, did not have knowledge of the heliocentricity of the solar system. In our times popular acceptance isn't so necessary for the spread of ideas, but in Roman times 'knowledge' was very much dependant on the spread of popularly accepted ideas. And heliocentricity was not one of those.
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Hi Bill:
I am sorry, but you are trapped in logical fallacy, your first fallacy, known as, Secundum quid. This is a fallacy arising from the general use of a proposition without the attention to the tacit qualifications which would invalidate the use made of it. You have overlooked the tacit qualifications of the concept of accepted and known. I also think you have experienced post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin, after this therefore on account of this), this is the logical fallacy in which it is argued that a consequent is caused by an antecedant, simply because of temporal realtionship. You state that simply because the masses did not accept or have access to this information first, that it did not or could not exist, this is not a sound arguement. By your logic, no new idea would exist without wide distribution. Christianity itself does not exist by this logic. Heliocentricity being available to anyone, even a few, validates the availablility of knowledge, regardless of temporal acceptance. Marcus Aurelius was a Roman, he knew that heliocentrism is correct, therefore, the knowledge existed in Rome. Finally, I am sorry to say, you have fully fallen into Ignoratio elenchi, the falacy of irrelevence, i.e. of providing a conclusion which is other than that required or does not contradict the thesis it was undertaken to refute. Basically in modern terms, with respect, you are going to have to do much better than this to prove your position, and cause me to revise mine. Pax
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I find the discussion extremely interesting since persons which are looking for a philosophical aspects are involved.
I would like to add my two cents in this discussion. The problem is with definitions. When someone asks: "Did the Roman known... ?", he should specify precisely who are these "Romans", Roman astronomers or just simple soldiers. In the empire there were libraries
and works of the Aristarchus were available for scientists. Unfortunately, the question is not correctly posed. The emperor Marcus Aurelius may know, as a person of great culture and erudition. Was this knowledge common for the designers of Roman coins, in the first century BC or the 3rd AD, it is another story. It is a rather practical one because it has an implication, for numismatics, how to decifer symbols, e.g., all this shpere which one can see in hands of emperors. By the way, coins were importnat sources of information. In modern society, the question can be viewed as correct because there is an standardized system of public education. In the Christian world the church defined what is known defined the limits and distributed the knowledge, may be erroneous. It controlled any deviation with the utmost ferocity. Please, note that even gospels were not available to a public until the XVI century.
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The first sentence is the key point. To protect this belief, the church supressed all ideas that challenged the centrality of God, us in his image, and earth, Jesus, God all being connected, and central. The second sentence is the death blow to heliocentralism, it is a clear threat to the divinty of Christ on earth. Earth must be the center or the Messiah would not have manifested himself here. Why not Mars, or the Moon? Because earth and humans are the center of God's creation, as established by the Nicean Creed. Ok Robert et al, next! Come and get me! I have three debate points left to convince you! :-) This is very enjoyable. Pax
If they did say this - I'm not necessarily saying they didn't - can you give me the original sources? All I can say is, it stretches the meaning a long way past what was originally intended; this was an antu-Arian statement, not an astronomical one. The argument can equally well be made the other way; because Christ, the true light, is all in all, the sun should therefore be the centre of the universe!
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The reason the Gospels were not available till the 16th Century (more or less) isn't that the church suppressed them, that's an old Protestant libel. The real reason is that before the invention of printing, they were too horrendously expensive for any but the very rich to own them. Even the super-rich tended to go for harmonies, which tried to combine the four canonical Gospels into one. Monasteries and universities were normally the only places which actually had such things, since they had access to copyists, and there's no evidence that I'm aware of that they tried to hide them. Martin Luther was encouraged to read the Bible himself, and presumably the same would have applied to others.
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Hi Bill:
I am sorry, but you are trapped in logical fallacy, your first fallacy, known as, Secundum quid. This is a fallacy arising .... etc., etc.
Hi Pax,
I'll go with this a little further, but don't want to drag it on too long in case others start to find it tedious. But - either I didn't present my point clearly, or I'm not understanding yours.
As Numerianus points out, the question itself does not identify who precisely is meant by "the Romans". Hence, I'll choose who I mean in my response. I'll choose "the Roman population in general", rather than "a rare and few select Roman individuals". And since time frame could be important, let's say 1st through 3rd century AD. With that in mind - no, I don't think the Romans knew the solar system was heliocentric.
You've argued that the lack of popularity of such a concept does not equal a lack of knowledge. I believe that there was more than a lack of popularity of the concept - there was no acceptance of it among those few who may have heard of it, and very few people who had ever heard of it. And hence the concept was not promoted or presented to the general public, not taught to students, not a commonly accepted belief, not a commonly discussed idea, and not "known" by the general population. (I'd go so far, if I can invent numbers without studies to back them, to suggest that this includes more than 99.9% of the population.) What a population or culture "knows" is very much dependant on what it accepts as true. What they accept as true may be incorrect, but it is still culturally "what they know." This certainly does not negate the possibility of new ideas arising. But the possibility that at any given time there may have been individual Romans pondering the idea of heliocentricity does not change the fact that "the Romans" (as designated above) did not "know" the solar system was heliocentric.
You state that simply because the masses did not accept or have access to this information first, that it did not or could not exist, ...
No, I didn't state that. I think you interpreted into my statement something that wasn't there. Let me clarify. The information (Aristarchus' thoughts on heliocentricity) did exist. Access to it does not change its existence. But acceptance of it very much affects whether that information is disseminated. If a body of people do not accept that information as true, and do not pass the information along to other members of the population, then the body of knowledge in that population may not include that information. There's a big difference between saying that an unaccepted theory is documented in an archive somewhere, and "the population knows this information". And I think that's exactly the case here. Aristarchus' unaccepted theory was recorded in some obscure archives, but the Roman people did not "know" that the solar system was heliocentric.
And one minor point I'll add - in earlier stages of this discussion the idea that the universe is heliocentric was mentioned. It isn't. I have deliberately kept my references of heliocentricity to the solar system - and the Romans almost certainly didn't know there was a solar system.
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I am not surprised that some people take a stance to be "devil's advocates" and explains that restriction of the spread of knowledge
is for good. My position is clear: the Catholic church (at least, until XVI-XVII) was the most terrible totalitarian organization.
How one can justify extermination of millions of heretics (by the way, recently, the church made an elegant move: documents were
revealed that only a few thousands were condemned by the Inquisition, without mentioning that all others were executed along by a procedure triggered by this authority). Of course, its struggle against arians is easy to explain (not that the cult of Soli invicto was not just a history in IV century). The ecclesiastic "copyright" implied that the progress was stopped for a whole millenium.
Chuch was a channel to distribute the knowledge but which one ....
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The church was never monolithic though - look at the liveliness of Medieval theological debate - and the Inquisition was never universal; the only time it was ever allowed to operate in England was specifically for the purpose of supressing the Templars. Once popular resistance gre to the point of creating breakaway peasant churches in the late Medieval period, they were completely unable to suppress them, despite persistent attempts to do so, and at times rebels had the protection of the powerful; look at Wyclif in England for instance. When they tried to arrest him, John of Gaunt's private army turned out to stop them. Eventually they had to be content with digging him up and burning his bones. I'm not saying that the desire to suppress all debate wasn't there; it undoubtedly was at times. But the means to do so were lacking, and once the invention of printing made the instant dissemination of ideas possible, revolt in northern Europe became unstoppable.
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Just a point about knowledge and dissemination of knowledge in Roman times, that a theory existed and had been rejected is evidence enough of dissemination and debate, the knowledge centers of the Roman world woudl have had copies in their libraries available to scholars, and the theories would have been spread and debated, even if not accepted. Thus I think it fair enough to say that some of the Roman intelligentsia knew the earth revolved around the sun etc, the knowledge was available to be re-examined if more evidence came to light or the ideas developed on, as they were under the Umayyyad Caliphate. Just my view on the subject.
LordBest. 8)
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They may have speculated that the Earth revolved round the sun, but can they be said to have known? They undoubtedly had evidence available to show that the Earth was round, but did they find anything to say it went round the sun? The evidence for that is a lot harder to find; it depends on extremely close observation of the planteary motions. If that had been discovered once, it's hard to see it being lost again.
It sounds like the theory of atoms; Democritus may have proposed the idea, but evidence for their existence is something modern.
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Well, some of them thought they knew, and have since been proven right.
LordBest. 8)
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It would be better not to evoke the atoms: it is a purely scholastic idea, whether the procedure of devision stopped or not.
The arguments are of the same spirit as Zenon's paradox of Achilles and the turtle.
Atom in modern sense is quite a different object/concept than that of Democritus. It is composed of "elementary particles"
which happened to be not so elementary.
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Maybe, but I think the point stands. Merely because someone posits an idea which subsequently turns out to be true, it doesn't mean that they 'know' it to be true at the time. Depending on their particular philosophy, people might look for evidence in the study of whatever it is directly, or they might look for it in authoritative tradition, but with nothing to back the idea up, it remains nothing but an idea.
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Your claim, Robert, that the heliocentricity is a theory which is difficult to verify, might be contestable. Unlike the existence of atoms,
the ancients could find strong evidences to support it using the astronomic techniques available to them. They could make mesurements
of the distance to Moon and Sun as well as the diameters. A comparison of these values with the estimate for the diameter of Earth
gives already a pice of information. In any case the consideration of Aristarchos were not just exercises in formal logic.
It would be interesting to get a commentary from astronomers on this issue.
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Seeing as how my college astronomy professor just recently lectured on this subject, I'll add my two cents to the debate.
According to him, while the Greeks seriously considered the heliocentric model of the universe, they ultimately rejected it due to the lack of observable stellar parallax angles. In other words, if the Earth is moving around the sun, you should see the patterns of stars shifting accordingly in the sky as the Earth moves. They (Aristotle for instance) didn't see this and concluded therefore that the Earth doesn't move.
What they didn't realize is that there actually is an observable parallax angle, but it is too small to be observed by the naked eye because the stars are incredibly distant (nearest star, proxima centauri, is 4 light years or 40 trillion km from Earth). It wasn't until 1838, that Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel succeeded in measuring the parallax of a nearby star.
Even among Renaissance astronomers the debate between geocentric and heliocentric was not settled quickly. Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) developed instruments capable of making observations of the planets' positions on the Celestial Sphere accurate to within 1 arc minute, and made such observations for 20 years. Yet what conclusion did he come to? That the planets orbit the Sun, which in turn orbits the Earth!
Given such confusion, and the ability of even accurate data to be misinterpreted, I find it highly unlikely that the vast majority of Greeks, Romans and other peoples of antiquity believed anything other than that the Earth was the center of the Universe.
Voz
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Double checked my sources today and was surprised to learn just how far ahead of his time Aristarchus actually was.
It turns out that not only did he propose a heliocentric model, but he also accounted for the lack of stellar parallax by suggesting that the stars were indeed incredibly far away. He was absolutely right on both counts, but the same source states that his views were not widely accepted in ancient times and weren't revived until the Copernican revolution some 1800 years later. The geocentric models of Aristotle and Ptolemy were apparently much more influential in classical times than the ideas of Aristarchus.
So the point remains--the vast majority of Greeks and Romans did not know that the Earth orbits the Sun.
Voz
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Hello:
A favorite analogy of the Athanasians: Light is
continously streaming forth from the sun. The rays of light are derived from
the sun, and not vice versa. But it is not the case that first the
sun existed and afterwards the Light. It is possible to imagine that
the sun has always existed, and always emitted light. The Light,
then, is derived from the sun, but the Light and the sun exist
simultaneously throughout eternity. They are co-eternal. Just so,
the Son exists because the Father exists, but there was never a time
before the Father produced the Son.
The analogy is further appropriate because we can know the sun only
through the rays of light that it emits. To see the sunlight is to
see the sun. Just so, Jesus says, "He who has seen me has seen the
Father." (John 14:9)
This argument used by Bishop Athanasius clearly shows he is attempting to equate Christ with the sun and the sun as focusing on the central earth.
February 8, 356 • Athanasius Exiled
Five thousand troops surrounded the church of St. Theonas in Alexandria, Egypt. Inside an all-night service had begun. Bishop Athanasius sat down and ordered a deacon to read Psalm 103. Athanasius barely escaped death this time around. The Bishop refused to leave until the people were safe. Monks seized him and dragged him from the platform. In the confusion, the monks had spirited away their venerated champion. For the third time since the Council of Nicea in 325, Athanasius went into exile.
Athanasius' was viewed as political resistance by Arian partisans. The Arians tried to seize control of the church and stifle Athanasius.
Bishop George, an Arian, was sent in Athanasius' place. Sixteen bishops were banished from Alexandria. George tried to force Egypt to accept a new creed in place of the Nicean. A price was placed on the head of Athanasius. But the Egyptians loyally hid their beloved teacher.
George was ousted. Athanasius returned. Twice more he was forced into exile, eventually he died peacefully. Not so George: When he returned to Alexandria, he was mobbed and killed. "
Eusebius, a converted Arian, author, history of first 400 yrs of the Catholic Church, Quote from Book 10
Such is the great temple (earth) which the great Creator of the universe, the Word, has built throughout the entire world, making it an intellectual image upon earth of those things which lie above the vault of heaven, so that throughout the whole creation, including rational beings on earth, his Father might be honored and adored.
Geminus
10 BC - 60 AD
Geminus wrote a number of astronomy texts, including the elementary text Isagoge or Introduction to Astronomy based on the work of Hipparchus which we referred to above. Geminus gave an historical account of earlier astronomical theories including those of Callippus and the Chaldeans. He made a significant comment on the stars, stating that:-
The main part of the work contains little mathematical astronomy. It describes the main constellations, the variation of the length of night and day at different latitudes and the length of the lunar month. The phases of the moon, solar and lunar eclipses are explained. The motion of the planets is discussed . The last chapter of Introduction to Astronomy (Chapter 18) seems rather different from the rest of the text being of a much more advanced nature.
Geminus represents observational data for the motion of the moon in longitude by means of an arithmetical function. Geminus's mathematics text Theory of Mathematics is now lost but information about it is available from a number of sources. Proclus quotes extensively from it and Eutocius and Heron also give some information. In fact Proclus relies very heavily on the work of Geminus when he writes his own history of mathematics and it is fair to say that Geminus's books are the most valuable sources available to him.
Proclus Diadochus
Born: 8 Feb 411 in Constantinople, Byzantium
Died: 17 April 485 in Athens, Greece
His belief in many religious sayings meant that he was highly biased in his views on many issues of science. For example he mentions the hypothesis that the sun is at the centre of the planets as proposed by Hipparchus but rejects it immediately since it contradicted the views of a Chaldean whom he says that it is unlawful not to believe.
He knew they theory and rejected it.
Marinus of Neapolis
Born: about 450 in Neapolis, Palestine (called Shechem in Bible, now Nablus, Israel)
Died: about 500 in possibly Athens, Greece
When Marinus felt that Proclus was in error he was quite prepared to give his own views. For example Proclus had claimed that Plato's Parmenides was concerned with gods. Marinus, quite correctly, pointed out that Plato's work in rather concerned with 'forms'
Clearly these Romans were engaged in debate.
This post is becoming very long. More to come. Pax
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Who's Proclus' Chaldean, if it's recorded, and is there any reason given as to why it's unlawful to disbelieve him? If you've got a reference I may well be able to track it down. On the face of it, it sounds like the old realist/nominalist debate; do we learn about a thing by examining it, or via authoritative sources which are supposed to access some external reality?
How far was Athanasius aware of the limits of his analogy? There undoubtedly was a tendency to conflate sun-worship with son-worship, but the fact that someone uses an analogy doesn't necessarily mean that he equates the two things uncritically.
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They could make mesurements
of the distance to Moon and Sun as well as the diameters. A comparison of these values with the estimate for the diameter of Earth
gives already a pice of information.
This is the first time that I have heard that the Greeks could measure the distance to the Moon and Sun, as well measure their diameters. What is your reference for this? I would really like to read about this, since I teach science at a community college.
Howard Cole
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See, e.g. the article to which I referred above:
http://www.fig.net/pub/cairo/papers/wshs_01/wshs01_03_lelgemann.pdf
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The article you link to makes this claim:
"It remains somewhat mysterious that modern historians such as Otto Neugebauer did not recognize that Galenus of Pergamon (129-199 A.D.) has reported in one of his many publications that Eratosthenes had provided for the distance sun/earth the value AU = 804 000 000 stadia (~10 000 earth diameter ~ 128 000 000 km), a surprisingly accurate value."
If this is true it would be noteworthy. Unfortunately, the author doesn't give a specific reference. I would like to see exactly what Galen reported about Eratosthenes. According to one online source, Eratosthenes gave 804 million stadia as the distance to the sun but also gave the moon as 780,000 stadia. If this is true he would have nearly nailed the distance to the sun (150 million km, so 85% of correct distance), while grossly underestimating the distance to the moon, which would be strange (780,000 stadia = approx. 130,000 km as opposed to moon's actual distance 380,000, so 35% of correct distance).
So far I haven't been able to find any other "reputable" sources which mention Eratosthenes and any supposed measurements of distance to the Sun and Moon. If anyone can give me a specific reference I'd be interested in investigating further.
Voz
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Hello Robert, et al,
As requested, more information, pertaining to Proculus.
PROCLUS DIADOCHUS
Proclus, who was born in Constantinople, studied at Plato's Academy under Plutarch and Syrianus (a pupil of Plutarch). After studying, Proclus became a teacher, and at the death of Syrianus, became head of the Academy. He was then called by the title Diadochus, meaning successor. He remained at the head of the Academy until his death. His philosophy was the neoplatonism of Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus. Seven of his hymns have been preserved. His Commentary on it is our major source for Euclid's Geometry.
Well cited article:
http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/PRE_PYR/PROCLUS_or_PROCULUS_AD_410_485_.html
Proculus quotes:
“This therefore is Mathematics, she reminds you of the invisible forms of the soul; she gives life to her own discoveries; she awakens the mind and purifies the intellect; she brings light to our intrinsic ideas; she abolishes oblivion and ignorance which are ours by birth.”
“On Archimedes mathematical results:] It is not possible to find in all geometry more difficult and intricate questions, or more simple and lucid explanation... No investigation of yours would succeed in attaining the proof, and yet, once seen you immediately believe you would have discovered it.”
Proculus Diadochus
Sources:
1. Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York 1970-1990).
2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Books:
3. W Beierwaltes, Proklos (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1965).
4. T L Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics (2 Vols.) (Oxford, 1921).
5. O Neugebauer, A history of ancient mathematical astronomy (New York, 1975).
6. L J Rosán, The Philosophy of Proculus (New York, 1949).
7. S Sambursky, Proklos, Prasident der platonischen Akademie, und sein Nachfolger, der Samaritaner Marinos (Berlin, 1985).
8. M Schmitz, Euklids Geometrie und ihre mathematiktheoretische Grundlegung in der neuplatonischen Philosophie des Proklos (Würzburg, 1997).
9. T Whittaker, The NeoPlatonists (Cambridge, 1928).
10. E Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen (Leipzig, 1921).
Articles:
11. E Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy 7 (London-New York, 1998), 723-731.
12. E J Dijksterhuis, Deux traductions de Proclus, Arch. Internat. Hist. Sci. (N.S.) 4 (1951), 602-619.
13. F A Medvedev, Corniform angles in Euclid's 'Elements' and Proclus's 'Commentaries' (Russian), Istor.-Mat. Issled. 32-33 (1990), 20-34.
14. G R Morrow (ed.), Proclus Appendix : Proclus' notes on definitions, postulates and axioms, in Studies on Euclid's 'Elements' (Hohhot, 1992), 235-350.
15. A E Taylor, The philosophy of Proclus, Proc. Aristotlelian Soc. 18 (1918), 600-635.
16. 635.
All right Robert, my sources on Proclus, ask and ye shall receive. Quid pro quo. Postremo nemo aegrotus quidquam somniat tam infandum, quod non aliquis dicat philosophus. Of course, another long post. Brevis esse laboro obscurus fio. Pax
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Thanks. That's led me to a good site on Neoplatonism here: http://www.kheper.net/topics/Neoplatonism/ . Unfortunately nobody to the best of my knowledge has produced an accessible collection of Neoplatonist writings, so I can't check up the exact text.
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I have read the previous posts with interest. With great diligence and fortitude I have been able to condense the bulk of it into simple layman's terms.
Q: Did the Romans know the earth was round?
A: Yes.
Alex ;D
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Reminder: Modern politics and religion are not permitted topics here. While I personally find them to be fascinating and among my favorite subjects, that is not why this board is here and we stick to our purpose.
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Didn't Plato write about the universe being a series of crystal spheres nested inside of each other? The earth being a flat surface in the inner sphere, the sun being in the next sphere out and the stars being in the next one out? I think that these Platonic theories dovetailed into Christianity -- after all, the gospels were all originally written in Greek.
If so, could the sphere in some of the coins be that inner sphere given by Jupiter. The inner sphere of human activity for Caesar. Possibly suggesting that Jupiter was in charge of the rest of the universe?
And as to the mix of Pagan and Christian religions of the time, I am reminded of the Iliad, where different characters had different patron gods. Meaning your family had certain favorites and the gods had favorite humans too. Kind of a mix and match, depending on your circumstances? Don't some ancient roman homes have alters to different dieties?
Just riffing here. Not sure if I know what I’m talking about. :-\ :-\ :-\
Bob
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I'm sure many Romans knew the Earth was round. However, it seems that poor old Tacitus wasn't one of them ;D . Here's what he said about Britain:
"The days exceed in length those of our part of the world; the nights are bright, and in the extreme north so short that between sunlight and dawn you can perceive but a slight distinction. It is said that, if there are no clouds in the way, the splendour of the sun can be seen throughout the night, and that he does not rise and set, but only crosses the heavens. The truth is, that the low shadow thrown from the flat extremities of the earth's surface does not raise the darkness to any height, and the night thus fails to reach the sky and stars."
Tacitus Agricola 12
I quote from here:http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/tacitus-agricola.html (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/tacitus-agricola.html)
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What Tacitus had in mind, what a model, it is not clear. I consulted another transalation where instead of "earth's surface" it was used
"earth's circle". The comment claimed that Greek model of the 5th century was abandoned and the Romans (Tacitus included) believed that
the Earth is a circle floating in the World Ocean.
On the other hand, it may happen that the explanation of Tacitus does not contadict to the idea that the Earth is a ball. He could deliver
in this way an information that there are no large mountains in Britain which could hide Sun in its lowest position. Of course, his knowledge in geography
was quite limited since in his description Britain and Spain has a common border.
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BTW, I am not saying everyone thought the world was flat. Rather, the un-educated might have seen it that way.
Bob
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Tacitus was hardly uneducated, but we don't know how far awareness of such rarified ideas had spread. The fact that a few were aware that the earth was round doesn't necessarily imply that it was common knowledge, even among the aristocracy.
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According to the "Wikipedia," it appears that the Earth was 'generally acknowledged' as being spherical in shape by the time of Pliny The Elder:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth
I suspect that Pliny here mentions this as a fact somewhere in his Natural History although I can't give a reference at the moment. I also suspect that he here comments on the extent to which it was 'common knowledge' in the Roman world at that time. Tacitus was in touch with Pliny The Younger I believe, and so may have had reasonable access to Pliny The Elder's work. If the above is correct, then Tacitus was evidently inclined towards his own belief.
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Tacitus's description is interesting not only for the description of what sounds like a flat earth, but also for what happens to the sun at night, and the two are obviously logically connected. If the earth is known to be round then the motion of the sun - rising in the east, and setting in the west - is easily explained by it passing behind/around the earth (whether one understands this due to motion of the sun or rotation of the earth). Tacitus's view is obviously rather different - he apparently doesn't see the setting sun sinking below the level of the earth, since he ascribes the dark sky at night to shadows thrown on the sky by mountains that block the sun (and absent at the flat extremities of the earth), rather than the sun moving behind the earth and therefore blocked by it.
Tacitus wrote "Agricola" c. 98AD, but we can see the same belief still present in another educated man - an anonymous rhetor who delivered a panegyric to Constantine at Trier in 310AD. Speaking of Britain, the place of Constantine's acclamation as Augustus (but subsequently demoted to Caesar by Galerius), the rhetor says:
"... There are no monstrous beasts in the forests, or deadly snakes on the ground, but on the contrary an immense profusion of tame animals with udders of milk, or loaded with fleeces. The main reason why life is loved is that the days are very long and no nights are without a little light, as the level extremity of those shores does not throw up shadows, and a view of the sky and it's stars overcomes the limit of the night, so that whereas the sun itself seems to us [in the mediterranean] to set, over there it appears to pass along the horizon. Gods above, why is it that always from some furthermost boundary of the earth come new manifestations of the gods to be venerated by the whole world? Thus did Mercury from the river Nile, whose source is not known, and thus did Bacchus from India, practically the place where the sun rises, present themselves to the world as mortals. Assuredly, places neighboring the sky are more sacrosanct than areas in the middle of the lands, and from there, closer to the gods, where the earth ends, was sent our emperor."
Ben
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Tacitus wrote "Agricola" c. 98AD, but we can see the same belief still present in another educated man - an anonymous rhetor who delivered a panegyric to Constantine at Trier in 310AD. Speaking of Britain, the place of Constantine's acclamation as Augustus (but subsequently demoted to Caesar by Galerius), the rhetor says:
"... There are no monstrous beasts in the forests, or deadly snakes on the ground, but on the contrary an immense profusion of tame animals with udders of milk, or loaded with fleeces. The main reason why life is loved is that the days are very long and no nights are without a little light, as the level extremity of those shores does not throw up shadows, and a view of the sky and it's stars overcomes the limit of the night, so that whereas the sun itself seems to us [in the mediterranean] to set, over there it appears to pass along the horizon. Gods above, why is it that always from some furthermost boundary of the earth come new manifestations of the gods to be venerated by the whole world? Thus did Mercury from the river Nile, whose source is not known, and thus did Bacchus from India, practically the place where the sun rises, present themselves to the world as mortals. Assuredly, places neighboring the sky are more sacrosanct than areas in the middle of the lands, and from there, closer to the gods, where the earth ends, was sent our emperor."
Ben
Well done for finding that quote! Do you think that this belief (shared by Tacitus) could still have been held by some at this later time, or could it be possible that the rhetor had simply used Tacitus' Agricola as a source with which to add colour to his poetic praise of Constantine? :-\ Interesting.
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Or... could it be Tacitus was doing all his historical writing from his couch based on stories written or given by word of mouth to him?
The problem with many ancient Roman "historians" is that they did not actually try to find out what these lands were like themselves (and had no photo/movie/sound to judge on their own) but wrote about what others told them it was like - and more than likely these were people in their own class who also did not travel to these places. And the ones that did usually embelleshed the tales to make it sound much more interesting.
Reading these guys more often than not reminds me more like I'm reading articles in the "Enquirer" or "Sun" type of tabloids where aliens have landed and other fantastic events. Though Julius Caesar's writings were largely for his own purposes in getting what he wanted out of Rome - they at least seemed accurate. I sure wish more reports from the legions in the field survived as I think these would have been much more educational. Especially from the legions of Hadrian and Trajan - now that would give an idea of the economies and peoples of the times.
Unfortunately all we are left with is the wonder and glory of the print tabloids of the time - which we are forced to call historians - because the upper classes considered them as such. Not to put down that they did not have kernels of valuable historical fact - especially when talking about their own class and the power struggles within it - but its usually buried in so much fluff and politics of the time that its hard to tell what it was really like in the world of his times. And almost totally untrustworthy when they record political enemies - though occasionally some things pan out in the archeological record.
In the end, there are "the world is flat" clubs today. There are tabloids today. There are current event reports so fogged in politics you'd be hard pressed to figure out what was really going on until 10-20 years have passed. In conclusion, Tacitus believing the world is flat while the travelers, and laymen of the time understood differently - is almost as shocking as... as.... people always believing the end times - are in their time :) As bad as news makes the world to be - its never been better in the history of man - not to say we should not point out injustices - decry attrocities - but the last people I'd believe to see their own times objectively - are the people in those times :) Me included.
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Do you think that this belief (shared by Tacitus) could still have been held by some at this later time, or could it be possible that the rhetor had simply used Tacitus' Agricola as a source with which to add colour to his poetic praise of Constantine?
The quote does seem directly inspired by Agricola or a common source, although it also goes a bit further in spelling out the belief behind it in that last sentence "places neighboring the sky are more sacrosanct than areas in the middle of the lands, and from there, closer to the gods, where the earth ends".
The comparison of Constantine to the gods from far flung corners (or rather edges!) of the world is obviously panegyrical hyperbolae, but I'd have to guess that the world view it is built on must have been assumed as a common reference with it's intended audience.
I have to imagine that belief in a round earth would have been rather esoteric knowledge held by a minority. It's easy for us post-Copernicus, post-Magellan, post-Newton, in the age of satellite imagery & space travel, to believe that the earth is round, and to understand that those "upside down" people on the other face of the world to ourselves are really right-way up in their own perspective, but this really is very counter-intuitive!
I'd have to imagine that to the man in the street the fact that earth was flat was self-evident, and the notion of a round earth, even if they had heard of it, might be considered as some philosophical absurdity rather than a hard reality (that only makes sense once many advances in knowledege had been made).
Ben
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For what it's worth, here is Pomponius Mela's take on the shape of the earth in his 'Description of the world' written in the mid 1st century:
Whatever all this is, therefore, on which we have bestowed the name of world and sky, it is a single unity and embraces itself and all things with a single ambit. It differs in its parts. Where the sun rises is designated formally as east or sunrise; where it sinks, as west or sunset; where it begins its descent, south; in the opposite direction, north. In the middle of this unity the uplifted earth is encircled on all sides by the sea. In the same way, the earth is also divided from east to wast into two halves, which they term hemispheres, and its differentiated by five horizontal zones. Heat makes the middle zone unlivable, and cold does so to the outermost ones. The remaining two habitable zones have the same annual seasons, but not at the same time.
His use of the word hemisphere clearly indicates he believed the whole was a sphere.
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If one wants to use Pliny the elder as evidence, go to book II of his Natural History:
The world appears round like a perfect sphere...The rising and setting of the sun leave us in no doubt that the world is in this shape and that it revolves eternally, without rest and at an indescribable speed, each revolution taking twenty-four hours.
Written in the 70's A.D. the above quote leaves no doubt that most learned 1st century Romans took it for granted the earth was round.
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David - thanks for those references.
After searching for more information on Pomponius Mela, I came across this page which gives a very useful list of citations on changing views on the earth's shape:
http://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/flat_earth_myth_ch5.html
I stand corrected that it does seem that (at least among intellectuals) the shape of the earth was apparently well established as round by Roman times, although there seems to have been a much longer debate about what was on the bottom side of the earth. The notion of the "antipodes" - people who inhabited the underside of the earth, walking upside down, was rejected long after it was agreed that the earth was round. Perhaps descriptions of the extremities of the earth, neighboring the sky, can therefore best be squared with this sort of transitional model where earth was round but where there was a distinct "top" where the land and people where (and maybe those odd sounding antipodes on the bottom). In this view (picture a side view of a plum pudding with custard on the top) the "edges" could indeed be considered closer to the "sky"/heavens.
However, while this knowledge appears to have been well established, that doesn't seem to have prevented others from not believing it at quite late a date, with one notable non-believer being Lactantius who was tutor to Constantine I's son Crispus. The question then remains - what did the common man in the street believe.
Ben
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I wouldn't be surprised that most Romans believed the same as Mela and Pliny. Anyone who lived near a port could watch the ships heading out to sea and see the last part of a ship to disappear over the horizon was the mast!
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I wouldn't be surprised that most Romans believed the same as Mela and Pliny. Anyone who lived near a port could watch the ships heading out to sea and see the last part of a ship to disappear over the horizon was the mast!
Some curvature is definitely self-evident, but Pliny did note a difference in opinion between learned men and the "common herd" :
"Here there is a mighty battle between learning on one side and the common herd on the other: the theory being that human beings are distributed all round the earth and stand with their feet pointing towards each other, and that the top of the sky is alike for them all and the earth trodden under foot at the centre in the same way from any direction, while ordinary people enquire why the persons on the opposite side don't fall off - just as if it were not reasonable that the people on the other side wonder that we do not fall off. There is an intermediate theory that is acceptable even to the unlearned crowd - that the earth is of the shape of an irregular globe, resembling a pine cone, yet nevertheless is inhabited all round." (Natural History, LXV - [115])
Ben
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Tacitus was acquainted with Pliny. Apparently, he was an educated person and interested
in natural science as we can conclude from his information
about certain observable l phenomena (e.g., white nights) which required explanations.
So his words should be interpreted correctly. Probably, he believed that the Earth is an ellipsoid, more flat in Polar regions.
Such a form could explain easier the difference of the durations of days and nights.
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It appears to me that Tacitus' model was based on the conditions in Britain around midsummer - around midwinter there would be more hours of darkness - an effect caused by the Earth's tilt which was not apparently discovered until hundreds of years after Tacitus. It may be fairer to Tacitus then if we assume that he had read Pliny but was unable to explain or reconcile these extreme conditions in Britain with Pliny's model, and may have simply found the phenomenon easier to explain in terms of the 'flat-Earth' model. :)
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The comparison of Constantine to the gods from far flung corners (or rather edges!) of the world is obviously panegyrical hyperbolae, but I'd have to guess that the world view it is built on must have been assumed as a common reference with it's intended audience.
Indeed. Also, those members of what Pliny describes as the "common herd" who were familiar with the 'new' theory would have been well acquainted with the idea of a flat Earth in any case. :)
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One more note about Tacitus. In this translation of Germania 45, the word "globe" appears in Tacitus' description of the Earth:
"Beyond the Suiones is another sea, one very heavy and almost void of agitation; and by it the whole globe is thought to be bounded and environed, for that the reflection of the sun, after his setting, continues till his rising, so bright as to darken the stars. To this, popular opinion has added, that the tumult also of his emerging from the sea is heard, that forms divine are then seen, as likewise the rays about his head."
I think this was written around the same time as his 'Agricola'. It would be interesting to check the Latin, to see if Tacitus did indeed describe the Earth as a sphere here.
I quote from here: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/tacitus-germanygord.html
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The description is ambiguous, to say the least, in translation at any rate. He seems to be describing an earthly sea, yet it 'bounds' and 'environs' the globe. It sounds as though it could be a situation where a minority understood, intellectually, that the earth was round, but were still trying to describe it within the parameters of flat-earth thinking.