Autolycus de Pitane. Histoire du texte suivie de l'édition critique des traités de la sphère enmouvement et des levers et couchers by Joseph MogenetReview by: George SartonIsis, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Jun., 1951), pp. 147-148Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/226977 .

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Obituaries '47 papyri coming from the library of Chenoboskion (al-Qasr, on the Nile) including the text of 48 unknown Gnostic books. He was born in Asyut in I906 and died in October 1949 (Chronique d'Egypte no. 50, 389-go).

PRASSITELE PICCININI (1876-1950). Ital- ian physican. Medical humanist and historian. Born in Viadana in I876, died in Milano 2

March I950. Obituary by Sergio Piccini in Rivista d storia delle scienze (anno 42, io6-ii, 1950) with portrait.

ROMANUS JOHANNES SCHAEFER (1866- 1944). German historian of medicine. Author of a study on Fabricius von Hilden. He and his wife were killed by a bomb in Darmstadt on 12 Sept. 1944, and his archives destroyed.

JAN CHRISTIAAN SMUTS (1870-1950). South African soldier, statesman, philosopher, man of science. Born on 24 May I870 on a farm near Capetown, died on ii Sept. I950 in his farm near Pretoria. Science in South Africa (1925; Isis 8, 603); Holism and evolution (1926); The scientific world picture of today (Presid. address BAAS, London 1931). Jan Smuts was the greatest gift of South Africa to the world.

EMIL STARKENSTEIN (1884-1942). Ger- man historian of herbals, pharmacy and toxicol-

ogy. Died in the concentration camp of Mau- thausen on 6 Nov. 1942.

MICHEL THIERY (1877-1950). Belgian man of science. Founder and honorary curator of the Scientific Museum for Children (now named after him) in Gent. He was born in Gent, East Flanders, in I877 and died there on 3 August I950. He wrote in Dutch many books to popu- larize the natural sciences. He was much inter- ested in the history of science as a means of sci- entific humanization.

CARL VAN DOREN (1885-1950). American man of letters, author of an excellent biography of Franklin (1938; Isis 3z, 91-94) and editor of Franklin's autobiographical writings (1945; Isis 37, 85-86). He was born in Hope, Illinois in i885, and died in Torrington, Connecticut on i8 July 1950.

HERMANN VIERORDT (1853-1943). Ger- man historian of medicine. Author of the very useful Medizingeschichtliches Hifsbuch (i9i6). Died in Tiubingen on 28 Dec. 1943.

FRANZ WEII)ENREICH (1873-1948). Ger- man anatomist and anthropologist. Main pub- lications: The skull of Sinanthropus pekinensis (Palaeontologica sinica 1943), Apes, giants and men (Chicago 1946; Isis 37, 265). Obituary in Artibus Asiae (ZZ, 239, 1948).

Reviews

JOSEPH MOGENET: Autolycus de Pitane. Histoire du texte suivie de l'Adition critique des traites de la sphere en mouvement et des levers et couchers. 336 pp. (Universite de Louvain, Revueil de Travaux d'Histoire et de Philologie, fasc. 37). Louvain Bibliotheque de l'Universite, I950.

We are very grateful to the abbe Mogenet for an exemplary edition of the two treatises on mathematical astronomy of Autolycos, the Mov- ing sphere (M) and the Risings and Settings (R), the oldest Greek mathematical works which have come down to us in their integrity. And yet, paradoxically enough, these treatises were among the last to be edited. Joseph Auria gave Latin editions of both treatises (Rome I587-88), but the Greek princeps by Friedrich Hultsch appeared only at the end of the last century (Leipzig I887). Hultsch's edition with Latin translation was very good, Mogenet's is better.

Autolycos of Pitane (Aeolis) flourished prob- ably at the end of the fourth century B.C., after Eudoxos and before Euclid; he was an aged contemporary of the latter. According to Sim-

plicios who derived this information from So- sigenes (Caesar's contemporary), Autolycos had criticized Eudoxos's theory of homocentric spheres on the ground that it did not account for the planets being at different distances from the earth at different times, an excellent objec- tion which would suffice to immortalize his name.

The two treatises of Autolycos are relatively short. According to Mogenet they contain alto- gether some 12,000 words; in his edition M covers I9 pp., R 45 pp.; to which he has added 5 pp. of scholia to M and i9 pp. to R.

Let us retrace briefly their tradition, for it is a very interesting example of its kind. The indirect tradition of the commentators in repre- sented by Euclid (III-i B.C.), Sosigenes (fl. 47 B.C.), Diogenes Laertios (III-i), Pappos (III-2) 1; the Little Astronomy, a canon of

'Pappos should perhaps be placed later than I did in my Introd. (z, 337). According to Canon Rome, his commentary on the Almagest was probably composed after 320 and his Mathe- matical Collection even later (Isis 36, 256).

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148 Reviews math. astr. treatises included between the great works of Euclid and Ptolemy (II-i) and com- pleting them; that canon was probably estab- lished by Alexandrian scholars in the third to the fourth centuries; Philoponos (VI-i), Sim- plicios (VI-Ii). Thus ends the purely Greek story. After the sixth century, MSS of Autolycos were probably preserved in Constantinople but the living tradition moved from the Greek world to the Arabic one, from Alexandria to Syria, to Harran in Mesopotamia, to Baghdad.

In the second half of the ninth century, the works of Autolycos are known to Hunain ibn Ishaq (IX-2), M is translated into Arabic by the latter's son Ishaq ibn Hunain (IX-2), R by Qusta ibn Luiqa (IX-2), both translations are revised by Thibit ibn Qurra (IX-2). Abbe Mogenet has considered only one Arabic MS of M, Topkapu 3464 (thirteenth century).

After the ninth century, the Arabic tradition disappears (or at any rate we lack sufficient documentation), and it reappears only more than three centuries later in Maragha (Adhar- biijin, E. Transcaucasia, now part of the USSR), when Na4Yr al din al-TuisT (XIII-2), is preparing a new edition of the Kitdb al-muta- wassitdt (roughly the equivalent of the Alexan- drian Little astronomy). References to Autoly- cos occur in the encyclopaedia Irshdd al-qdsid of Ibn al-Akfini (XIV-i) of 'Iraq. This late Arabic tradition is mentioned here for the sake of curiosity, for it leads nowhere. The historian of science in general (not of Eastern science) may neglect it.

Let us return to the main tradition which, after the ninth century, turned westwards and indeed moved all the way to the Far West. The old Arabic text of M was translated into Latin by Gherardo da Cremona (XII-2) in Toledo, and into Hebrew by Jacob ben Mahir ibn Tib- bon (XIII-2) in Montpellier, I273.

The Greek MSS are abundant (some 40) and almost all are of Italian provenance; the four most important are in the Vatican. The oldest of these MSS (Vat. 204) dates back to the tenth century, and perhaps even to the end of the ninth century; it was certainly written in the East and perhaps in Constantinople. Thus, it may be a copy of the MS which was sent from Constantinople to Baghdid in the time of Leon the Armenian and al-Ma'mun (IX-i) or a little later.

The discussion of Mogenet's edition must be left to philologists, but I may remark that his analysis of the Greek MSS is extremely minute and could not be improved. Let us hope that he will soon give us a French translation of the two treatises, for as far as historians of science are concerned (very few of whom are capable Hellenists) his task will not be properly done until then. It is only when his French trans- lation is published that his edition will super- sede the Hultsch edition, for the latter includes a Latin version.

GEORGE SARTON

I. E. DRABKIN (editor and translator), Cae- lius Aurelianus. On Acute Diseases and on Chronic Diseases. xxvi + vii + IOI9 pp. Chi- cago: University of Chicago Press, I950.

$I5.oo. Literary fame is very capricious. When an au-

thor is translated, the translations of his works are classified under his name; the translator's name remaining secondary and often falling into oblivion. For example, there was a time when educated Frenchmen were all reading Plutarch in the beautiful translations of Jacques Amyot, masterpieces of sixteenth-century prose; yet, they never forgot Plutarch for a moment. It was Plutarch they were reading not Amyot. The case of Caelius Aurelianus is very differ- ent; ' though he was simply a translator, philol- ogists dealt with him as if he were an original author, and Soranos' authorship was forgotten. This may be due partly to the fact that Soranos' name was not mentioned on the title pages of the early editions; it is not even mentioned in the title page of Drabkin's splendid edition. This is a real injustice which we must try to repair, but before evoking Soranos' memory let us briefly explain his spiritual ancestry.

The main medical schools of Greek antiquity were the Hippocratic, the Dogmatic and the Empirical schools.2 The first hardly needs to be defined; the Dogmatists emphasized theoretical principles, the Empiricists attached relatively more value to observation and experience. In the first century B.C. a new school developed, the Methodist, also Greek but its leaders flour- ished in Rome. The earliest was Asclepiades of

IIt is rare but not unique. I cannot quote offhand another example in classical literature. Phaedrus cannot be mentioned in this connec- tion, for his fables in verse are not simply translations and Aesopos is not a definite text. A good example is found in modern Bengali literature. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (a book which has become a kind of Hindu Bible) was written by Mahendranath Gupta (5 vols. I897-I932); English readers quote the book, however, as if it had been written by the English translator, Swami Nikhilananda (Isis 36, 2I4). Even as learned a man as my friend, Ananda Coomaraswamy, made that mistake. Such mis- understandings are often caused by the transla- tors or by the publishers who fail to put the author's name on the title page, the cover, or the spine of the book, but only the translator's name; or they put the author's name in small type, while the translator's name is written with large letters. Example: Ribera-Hague (Isis 34, 46).

2 Pneumatic School, a development of Stoic physics, began much later. It was founded by Athenaeos of Attalia (1-2) in Rome and by Claudios Agathinos (1-2) of Sparta. That was not too late, however, to influence Soranos. One might say that in Soranos' time there were three main physico-medical theories: Humoralism (Hippocratism), Pneumatism, Solidism (or Atomism). Soranos belonged to the third group but was very eclectic.

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