Late Ancient

Exhibit items from the Late Ancient period.

Exhibit Items

	Works, Ptolemy Ptolemy, (1541) For this first edition of Ptolemy’s collected works, Johann Honter drew constellation figures after the manner of Albrecht Dürer. The figures appear in contemporary dress rather than in a classical style.
1	The Book on Air Hero of Alexandria, (1575) Once an altar is lighted, the temple doors open automatically. Hero fashioned all sorts of marvelous automata using steam, air pressure, hydraulics and falling weights. Devices included an automatic wine dispenser, siphons, garden fountains, engines, pumps, steam-powered toys, and magic tricks...
1	Works of Hippocrates Hippocrates, (1588) Greek edition of Hippocrates by a friend of Galileo: Mercuriale collected the various Greek texts of the Hippocratic corpus and published them here in Greek with parallel Latin translations.
1	Almagest, ed. Regiomontanus Ptolemy, Claudius (1496) Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaios) lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the second century. Ptolemy’s technical work on astronomy, originally written in Greek, was titled Almagest (“The Greatest”) by its Arabic translators.
1	The Marriage of Philology and Mercury Capella, Martianus (1499) Capella described the seven liberal arts. The first three are grammar, logic or dialectic, and rhetoric. Then come the mathematical sciences, geometry and arithmetic. Geometrical circles in motion make astronomy. Numbers in motion make music.
1	The City of God Augustine, (1489) The frontispiece shows Augustine in his study. Augustine taught that the language of Scripture was accommodated to the understanding of ordinary readers and therefore not well-suited to teach the theories of natural science.
2	Ethiopian Bible Augustine served as the Bishop of Hippo in the Roman province of Africa, or present-day Algeria. The formative influence of northern Africa upon later European culture was both immense and diverse.
2	Almagest, ed. Reinhold Ptolemy, Claudius (1549) Erasmus Reinhold, a professor at Wittenberg who was sympathetic to Copernicus, published the first Greek edition of Ptolemy’s Almagest.
3	On the Dream of Scipio Macrobius, (1521) This work by Macrobius (5th century) illustrates the wealth of ancient and early medieval literary sources relevant to cosmology. Macrobius here comments upon a classic story of Cicero which described a vision given to the Roman general Scipio.
3	Four Books Ptolemy, Claudius (1610) The most popular ancient work on astrology was Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, as it was known in Greek, or Quadripartitum in Latin. Astrology provided the context in which astronomy was pursued.
4	Harmonics Ptolemy, Claudius (1682) Ptolemy’s influential music theory was related to his astronomy. Through sight, we apprehend beauty through astronomy. Through hearing, we apprehend beauty through harmony.
4	Pliny, “Natural History” Pliny the Elder, (1601) Pliny’s Natural History defined the scope and breadth of the field of natural history. Natural history meant the description (or “historia”) of nature, as opposed to explaining its causes (or “natural philosophy”). Pliny died in 79 CE while investigating the eruption of Mt.
5	Universal Geography Ptolemy, Claudius (1545) Although best known for his astronomy, Ptolemy (2nd century) brought the same mathematical methods to bear on various topics, including optics, geography, and astrology. This is the first printed edition of his geography, which established mathematical methods in cartography.
5	Natural Questions Seneca, (1522) Seneca’s Natural Questions covered a similar scope of subject matter as Aristotle’s Meteorology. Seneca differed from Aristotle by insisting that even sublunar phenomena follow the same natural laws and have the same intelligibility as the rest of the universe.
8	On the Sphere, 1511 Proclus, (1511) This work was attributed to Proclus (5th century), one of the most important Neoplatonic philosophers of late antiquity. It became one of the most popular introductions to astronomy during the Italian Renaissance, appearing in more than 70 16th-century editions.
10	Commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics Philoponus, (1504) In the 6th century, the Greek physicist and theologian Philoponus constructed an anti-Aristotelian theory of motion. For Philoponus, an “impressed incorporeal motive force” explains the motion of a top, a projectile, and falling bodies.