scholarly journals COUNTING ON EPIC: MATHEMATICAL POETRY AND HOMERIC EPIC IN ARCHIMEDES' CATTLE PROBLEM

Ramus ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 200-221
Author(s):  
Max Leventhal
Keyword(s):  
The Sun ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Numerical Aspect

In 1773, the celebrated enlightenment thinker G.E. Lessing discovered in Wolfenbüttel's Herzog August Library a manuscript which contained a previously unknown Ancient Greek poem. The manuscript identified the author as Archimedes (c.287-212 BCE), and the work became known as the Cattle Problem (henceforth CP). On the surface, its twenty-two couplets capitalise on Homer's depiction of the ‘Cattle of the Sun’ in Book 12 of the Odyssey and its numerical aspect. A description of the related proportions of black, white, brown and dappled herds of cattle, which are then configured geometrically on Sicily, creates a strikingly colourful image. The author's decision to encode a number into the figure of the Cattle of the Sun styles the poem as a response to, and expansion of, Homer's scene. Reading through the work, though, it becomes clear that the mathematics is more complex than that of Homer's Odyssey.

The Early Years of the Royal Society

1960 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-382
Author(s):  
Harold Spencer Jones
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Physical Basis ◽  
Mathematical Representation ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Universe

This year the Royal Society celebrates the third centenary of its foundation. In this paper Sir Harold Spencer Jones, the late Astronomer Royal, who was the Institute's first President, describes the early years of the Society and shows how closely some of its work was related to navigation.For some two thousand years, until well into the seventeenth century, the writings of the ancient Greek philosophers, and in particular those of Aristotle, were regarded as the supreme fountain of wisdom and the source of all knowledge. The break with the Aristotelian dogma may be said to have started with the publication by Copernicus in 1543 of his De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium whereby the Earth was displaced from proud position as the centre of the Universe, fixed and immovable, and asserted to be not only rotating around an axis but also to be merely one of a system of planets revolving around the Sun as a centre. Copernicus had refrained for thirty years from publishing his theory as he knew that it would be received with ridicule, not merely because it was not in accordance with Aristotelian dogma but also because it would be held to be against the Scriptures. The Copernican theory met, in fact, with widespread opposition and more than a century elapsed before it came to be generally accepted; for long it was regarded as merely a convenient mathematical representation of the motions of the planets without any true physical basis.

ΛΕΥΚΑΣ ΠΕΤΡΗ

1985 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-232
Author(s):  
J. D. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
British Library ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Many ◽  
Greek Scholar ◽  
Land Of Dreams

In the second Nekyia Hermes conducts to Hades the souls of the suitors slain by Odysseus:Even in antiquity the identification of the Λευκ⋯ς πέτρη was a conundrum. It would seem that no ancient Greek scholar could plausibly locate this rock. According to the scholion in the codex Venetus Marcianus 613, one of the many reasons Aristarchos gave for athetising the whole of the second Nekyia was ⋯λλ' οὐδ⋯ ἔοικεν εἰς Ἅιδου λευκ⋯ν εἶναι πέτραν. Certainly Hades had πέτραι, but traditionally they were ‘black-hearted’ or ‘blood-red’, not λευκαί. As an example of the lengths to which scholiasts were driven to justify the epithet Λευκάς, the scholion in the British Library codex Harley 5674 has the unhelpful explanation οἱ γ⋯ρ νεκροί ⋯κλείψαντος το⋯ αἵματος λευκοειδεῖς ⋯ρ⋯νται. Eustathios' attempt is not much better; he writes ἰστέον δ⋯ ὅτι Λευκάδα μέν πέτραν ⋯ μ⋯θος πρ⋯ς τῷ Ἅιδῃ πλάττει ἢ κατ⋯ ⋯ντίɸρασιν, μ⋯λας γ⋯ρ ⋯κεῖ σκότος, ἢ κα⋯ δι⋯ τούς ⋯σχάτους τ⋯ς ⋯κεῖ γ⋯ς τόπους, οὓς εἰκ⋯ς τ⋯ν ᾓλιον ἔτι διαλευκαίνειν δυόμενον. At Od. 10.515, in commenting on the πέτρη where the Pyriphlegethôn and the Kôkytos flow into the Acherôn, he ventures the suggestion ἴσως δ⋯ εἴη ἂν αὕτη ⋯ ⋯ν τοῖς μετ⋯ τα⋯τα λεχθησομένη Λευκ⋯ς πέτρα, which is obviously a mere guess. It would be a waste of time to record the conjectural attempts of modern scholars to locate the Λευκ⋯ς πέτρη in Hades, for if the ‘Rock Leukas’ was across the Ocean, near the ‘Gates of the Sun’ and the ‘Land of Dreams’, we cannot reasonably hope to identify it.

‘Master the chariot, master your Self’: comparing chariot metaphors as hermeneutics for mind, self and liberation in ancient Greek and Indian sources

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Schlieter
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Cognitive Analysis ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Inner Self ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
Abstract Domains ◽  
Embodied Self

Chariots in both Greece and India involved danger and intense experience in their various uses, and were used metaphorically for the interpretation of various abstract domains. They were vehicles of gods such as the sun, and symbols of royal power and prestige. Similar use (actual and metaphorical) of chariots in Greece and India had already been established before they provide a metaphor in both cultures for the inner self and its liberation. Cognitive analysis of the metaphor (and of its differences in the two cultures) brings out philosophical preconceptions prevalent in abstract domains associated with the inner self. In late antiquity, which saw the end of the light and fast chariot and of a certain ideal of embodied self-mastery, chariot imagery ceased to be fully 'functional'.

scholarly journals A Model of the Cosmos in the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Freeth ◽  
David Higgon ◽  
Aris Dacanalis ◽  
Lindsay MacDonald ◽  
Myrto Georgakopoulou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Computed Tomography ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
New Model ◽  
X Ray ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
X Ray Computed

AbstractThe Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical calculator, has challenged researchers since its discovery in 1901. Now split into 82 fragments, only a third of the original survives, including 30 corroded bronze gearwheels. Microfocus X-ray Computed Tomography (X-ray CT) in 2005 decoded the structure of the rear of the machine but the front remained largely unresolved. X-ray CT also revealed inscriptions describing the motions of the Sun, Moon and all five planets known in antiquity and how they were displayed at the front as an ancient Greek Cosmos. Inscriptions specifying complex planetary periods forced new thinking on the mechanization of this Cosmos, but no previous reconstruction has come close to matching the data. Our discoveries lead to a new model, satisfying and explaining the evidence. Solving this complex 3D puzzle reveals a creation of genius—combining cycles from Babylonian astronomy, mathematics from Plato’s Academy and ancient Greek astronomical theories.

The Continuity of Hellenism

1971 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Thomson
Keyword(s):  
The Sun ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Full Life ◽  
Greek Civilization

InThe Twelve Lays of the Gipsy, one of the masterpieces of modern Greek poetry, Palamás puts into the mouth of his Gipsy these words, addressed to the Beautiful Immortals, who symbolize the achievements of ancient Greek civilization:What if you are immortal ? Your life is over,The full life that you lived in full bodily vigourIn the sun and air of the blissful country of your birth.Now there is another sun, another air, and you are onlyApparitions.

scholarly journals Living Outside with the Sun

IDEA JOURNAL ◽  
1969 ◽  
pp. 117-126
Author(s):  
Christina Mckay
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Ultraviolet Rays ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Native Population ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Living Well ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This paper reflects upon the history of design of outdoor living spaces, a typology that blends interior directly with landscape. In Australasia, outdoor living is a symbol of contemporary life style but it must adapt to the danger of over-exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Tempering openness to the summer sky is not just a choice but rather a survival strategy. The relationship of European descendents to the Antipodean sun has fluctuated over time. In Victorian times, hats, copious clothing and villa verandahs protected prized pale complexions. Tanned skin branded the labouring classes and the native population. In the 1920s, the ancient Greek practice of heliotherapy was hailed as beneficial for the treatment of tuberculosis. Concurrently architecture clipped verandahs and proposed open sun terraces, sometimes scantily clad by a pergola. The negative consequences of this sun-worship were not known until the 1980s when the relation between ultraviolet rays and skin cancer was made and the recognition that one in three Australasians will be affected. Living outside with the sun therefore requires modification. Sunscreen is prescribed for application every two hours; hats, clothing and sun-glasses protect the body but hinder communication between people and their surroundings. Traditional solid shade shields direct rays, but deny the warmth of the sun, which is often so welcome in temperate New Zealand. Open shade sails fail to acknowledge the fact that ultraviolet rays scatter. Living well outside is not simple.

Chromospheric activity as a function of age in main-sequence stars

1966 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 40-43
Author(s):  
O. C. Wilson ◽  
A. Skumanich
Keyword(s):  
Main Sequence ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Main Sequence Stars ◽  
Tentative Conclusion ◽  
Chromospheric Activity ◽  
General Field ◽  
Large Clusters

Evidence previously presented by one of the authors (1) suggests strongly that chromospheric activity decreases with age in main sequence stars. This tentative conclusion rests principally upon a comparison of the members of large clusters (Hyades, Praesepe, Pleiades) with non-cluster objects in the general field, including the Sun. It is at least conceivable, however, that cluster and non-cluster stars might differ in some fundamental fashion which could influence the degree of chromospheric activity, and that the observed differences in chromospheric activity would then be attributable to the circumstances of stellar origin rather than to age.

Galactic orbits of stars

1966 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 93-97
Author(s):  
Richard Woolley
Keyword(s):  
Globular Cluster ◽  
Potential Field ◽  
High Velocity ◽  
Velocity Vector ◽  
Variable Stars ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Proper Motions ◽  
Rr Lyrae ◽  
The Galaxy

It is now possible to determine proper motions of high-velocity objects in such a way as to obtain with some accuracy the velocity vector relevant to the Sun. If a potential field of the Galaxy is assumed, one can compute an actual orbit. A determination of the velocity of the globular clusterωCentauri has recently been completed at Greenwich, and it is found that the orbit is strongly retrograde in the Galaxy. Similar calculations may be made, though with less certainty, in the case of RR Lyrae variable stars.

Seti Space Missions

1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 761-776 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Maccone
Keyword(s):  
Electromagnetic Waves ◽  
Space Missions ◽  
Gravitational Lens ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Space Antenna ◽  
Focal Distance ◽  
Large Space ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Space Antennas ◽  
New Space

AbstractSETI from space is currently envisaged in three ways: i) by large space antennas orbiting the Earth that could be used for both VLBI and SETI (VSOP and RadioAstron missions), ii) by a radiotelescope inside the Saha far side Moon crater and an Earth-link antenna on the Mare Smythii near side plain. Such SETIMOON mission would require no astronaut work since a Tether, deployed in Moon orbit until the two antennas landed softly, would also be the cable connecting them. Alternatively, a data relay satellite orbiting the Earth-Moon Lagrangian pointL2would avoid the Earthlink antenna, iii) by a large space antenna put at the foci of the Sun gravitational lens: 1) for electromagnetic waves, the minimal focal distance is 550 Astronomical Units (AU) or 14 times beyond Pluto. One could use the huge radio magnifications of sources aligned to the Sun and spacecraft; 2) for gravitational waves and neutrinos, the focus lies between 22.45 and 29.59 AU (Uranus and Neptune orbits), with a flight time of less than 30 years. Two new space missions, of SETI interest if ET’s use neutrinos for communications, are proposed.

A Search for Dyson Spheres around Late-Type Stars in the Solar Neighborhood II

1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 707-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Jugaku ◽  
Shiro Nishimura
Keyword(s):  
Solar Neighborhood ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Late Type ◽  
Solar Type

AbstractWe continued our search for partial (incomplete) Dyson spheres associated with 50 solar-type stars (spectral classes F, G, and K) within 25 pc of the Sun. No candidate objects were found.

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