APPENDIX I
ACCOUNTS OF EARLY WRITERS, NAVIGATORS AND OTHERS
ALLUDED TO BY GILBERT AND NOT ALREADY DISPOSED
OF THROUGHOUT THIS “BIBLIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY”
Abano, Pietro di—Petrus Aponus, Apponensis or Apianus—called “the Reconciler” (1250–1316), was Professor of Medicine at Padua and wrote several works of importance on different subjects. The best known is “Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum ac Medicorum,” which is devoted to the reconciliation of the various medical and philosophical schools, and in which reference is made to the loadstone, as is also the case in his “Tractatus de Venenis,” published during 1490.
References.—Larousse (Pierre), “Dict. Universel,” Vol. I. p. 11; “Biographie Générale,” Vol. I. pp. 29–31; G. A. Pritzel, “Thesaurus Literaturæ Botanicæ,” Lipsiæ, 1851, p. 226; N. F. J. Eloy, “Dict. hist. de la médecine,” Mons, 1778, Art. Apono; Ludovico Hain, “Repertorium Bibliographicorum,” Art. Abano; Mazzuchelli (Frederigo), “Raccolta d’Opuscoli ...” Venetia, 1741; Pellechet (Marie), “Catalogue général des incunables,” 1897, pp. 1–4; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.
Agricola, Georgius—Bauer—Landmann—(1494–1555), is called by Dr. Thomas Thomson one of the most extraordinary men as well as one of the greatest promoters of chemistry that have ever existed, and he pronounces Agricola’s “De Re Metallica,” which was published in 1546, 1556, 1558, 1561, as, beyond comparison, the most valuable chemical work produced in the sixteenth century. Agricola is also the author of “De Natura eorum,” of “De Natura fossilium” and of “De veteribus et novis metallis,” all published at Basle in 1657.
Gilbert mentions Agricola in his De Magnete (Book I. chaps, i. ii. vii. viii.; Book II. chap. xxxviii.) and, in connection with him, alludes more particularly to Gilgil, the Mauretanian, and also to Christoph—Entzelt—Encelius, author of a book bearing the same name as Agricola’s chief work, “De Re Metallica,” published at Frankfort, 1551. Attention may as well be called here to additional authors, whose works, in the same line, are of great variety and but little known: (1) Cæsalpinus (Andreas) (1519–1603), “De Metallicis,” Romæ, 1596; (2) Morieni (Romani), who, in his “De Re Metallica,” Parisiis, 1559, treats (as does also John Joachim Beccher, 1635–1682: “Hutton’s Abridgments” Vol. I. p. 620) of the transmutation of metals and of the occult, much in same manner as Robertus Vallensis in his “De veritate et antiquitate artis chemicæ ...” 1593, 1612; (3) Bernardo Pèrez de Vargas, who, in his “De Re Metallica, en el qual se tratan de muchos diversos secretos ...” Madrid, 1569, tells how to find different kinds of minerals and metals and how to treat them to the best advantage in various industries; (4) J. Charles Faniani, “De Arte Metallicæ” 1576.
Cuvier says of Agricola: “He was the first mineralogist who appeared after the renaissance of the sciences in Europe: he was to mineralogy what Conrad Gesner was to zoology.”
References.—“Biog. Générale,” Vol. I. pp. 410–411; Larousse (Pierre), “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. I. p. 141; “Dict. hist. de la médecine” (N. F. J. Eloy), Mons, 1778, Vol. I. pp. 50–52.
Agrippa, Heinricus Cornelius—ab Netiesheyem, Nettesheim—(1486–1535), German Doctor of Medicine, also a Doctor of Divinity, a soldier—knighted for valour on the battle-field of Ravenna—a diplomatist, an astrologer, etc. He was in turns, ambassador at Paris and London, historiographer to Emperor Charles V, professor at the university of Pavia, town physician in Friburg, private practitioner at Geneva, court physician to Louise of Savoy, chief magistrate of Metz, theological delegate to the schismatic council of Pisa, etc., and for three years was engaged in a military expedition to Catalonia. He is the author of several important works, the full collection of which was published at Lyons in 1550. The one by which he is best known is “De occulta philosophia,” which was translated in French by Levasseur.
References.—Morley (Henry), “The Life of H. Corn. Agrippa,” London, 1856; Bayle (Pierre), “Dict. Hist.”; Jos. Ennemoser, “History of Magic,” London, 1854, Vol. II. pp. 253–256; G. Naudé, “Apologie”; Larousse (Pierre), “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. I. pp. 143–144; Bolton (H. C.), “Chr. Hist. of Chem.,” p. 946; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.
Albategnius—Machometes Aractensis, Muhammad Ibn Jabir—Al-Battani—(d. A.D. 929), is considered by Lalande one of the twenty greatest known astronomers. His principal work, “De scientia stellarum,” was published in 1537.
References.—Delambre (J. B), “Hist. de l’astron. moderne,” pp. 10–62; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Générale,” Vol. I. part. i. p. 467; Vol. II. p. 71; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book VI. chap. ix.; “Engl. Cycl.” Vol. I. p. 84.
Alexander Aphrodisæus—Aphrodisiensis—a celebrated Greek scientist and the oldest commentator on Aristotle, who lived at about the close of the second century after Christ, and whose works were so highly esteemed by the Arabs that they translated most of them (Casiri, “Bibl. Arab. Hisp. Escur.,” Vol. I). The list of all of his publications appears in “Biog. Générale,” Vol. I. pp. 911–914.
References.—Fabricius (Johann Albert), “Bibliotheca Græca,” Vol. V. p. 650; Ritter (Dr. Heinrich), “Geschichte der Philosophie,” Vol. IV. p. 24; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. i. and Book II. chaps. ii. xxv.
Amatus Lusitanus. See [Lusitanus Amatus].
Anaxagoras, born at Clazomenæ, one of the Greek towns of Ionia, in 500 B.C., three years before the death of Pythagoras, was a very eminent philosopher of the Ionic school, wherein he succeeded Anaximenes as a leader, and numbered among his many hearers and pupils Diogenes of Apollonia, Pericles, Euripides, Socrates and Archelaus. A very good analysis of Anaxagoras’ philosophical opinions is to be found in the “Biographical Dictionary of the Society of Useful Knowledge.” Gilbert alludes to him (De Magnete, Book II. chap. iii. and Book V. chap. xiii.) as believing that the loadstone was endowed with a sort of life, because it possessed the power of moving and attracting iron, and as declaring in fact that the entire world is endowed with a soul.
Anaxagoras is accused, by Pliny and other early writers, of having predicted the fall of aerolites from the sun, and of regarding all bodies in the universe “as fragments of rocks, which the fiery ether, in the force of its gyratory motion, has torn from the earth and converted into stars” (Humboldt, “Cosmos” 1859–1860, Vol. I. pp. 133–135, note; Vol. II. p. 309; Vol. III. pp. 11–12; Vol. IV. pp. 206–207).
Aristotle also attacks Anaxagoras for not properly etymologizing the word aether, from αιθεἲν, to burn, and on this account using it for fire. He shows that aether, which signifies to run perpetually, implies that a perpetual motion and perpetuity of subsistence belongs to the heavenly bodies (“Treatises of Aristotle,” by Thos. Taylor, London, 1807, p. 43, note).
According to Anaximenes, named above (born at Miletus about 528 B.C.), the primal principle was Aer, of which all things are formed and into which all things are resolved. He belonged to the branch called the dynamical, whose doctrines as to the heavenly bodies were opposed to those of mechanical philosophers such as Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Anaximander of Miletus (“Engl. Cycl.,” Biography, 1866, Vol. I, p. 201).
References.—Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. I. part i. pp. 401–402, and Vol. II. p. 74; “Plato,” by George Grote, London, 1865, Vol. I. pp. 49–62; “Essai théorique et pratique sur la génération des connaissances humaines,” par Guillaume Tiberghien, Bruxelles, 1844, Vol. I. pp. 181–182; Dr. Heinrich Ritter, “History of Ancient Philosophy,” London, 1846, Vol. I. pp. 281–318; Chas. Rollin, “Ancient History,” London, 1845, Vol. I. p. 376; Paul Tannery, “Pour l’histoire de la Science Hellène,” Paris, 1887, Chap. XII; Theod. Gomperz, “Greek Thinkers,” transl. of L. Magnus, London, 1901, Chap. IV. pp. 556–558, 597; Ueberweg, “Hist. of Philosophy,” transl. of Geo. S. Morris, New York, 1885, Vol. I. pp. 63–67; Alf. Weber, “Hist. of Phil.,” transl. of Frank Thilly, New York, 1896, pp. 48–53.
Aquinas—St. Thomas—also called Doctor Angelicus (born at Aquino in Naples, A.D. 1225)—“the most successful organizer of knowledge the world has known since Aristotle”—was a famous schoolman and is considered by many the greatest of Christian philosophers. He is well worthy the profound respect and high admiration in which he is held always by Gilbert, who alludes to him in Book I. chap. i. and in Book II. chap. iii. of his De Magnete. The chief work of St. Thomas Aquinas is the “Summa Theologiæ,” to which he devoted the last nine years of his life and which by many has been called the supreme monument of the thirteenth century. The first part of the “Summa Theologiæ” is said to have been originally published in 1465 and the second part in 1471, the completed work first appearing during the year 1485.[62]
One of his critics remarks that those wishing to thoroughly comprehend the peculiar character of metaphysical thought in the Middle Ages should study Aquinas, in whose writings it is seen with the greatest consistency. He is thus spoken of in Dr. Wm. Turner’s “History of Philosophy,” published by Ginn & Co., 1903: “He had a comprehensiveness of purpose which, in these modern times, seems nothing short of stupendous. It is only when, as we study the history of later scholasticism and the history of the philosophy of modern times, we shall look back to the thirteenth century through the perspective of ages of less successful attempts at philosophical synthesis, that we shall begin to realize the true grandeur of the most commanding figure in the history of mediæval thought.”
Aquinas died at the Cistercian Monastery in 1274, and was canonized forty-nine years later by Pope John XXII.
References.—Carle (P. J.), “Hist. de la vie ... de Th. d’Aq.,” 1846; Maffei (Francesco Scipione), “Vita ...” 1842; B. Hauréau, “De la Phil. Schol.,” Paris, 1850, Vol. II. pp. 104, 213; G. Tiberghien, “Essai historique ... des con. hum.,” Bruxelles, 1844, Vol. I. pp. 374–378; Dr. Fried. Ueberweg, “Hist. of Phil.,” transl. of Geo. S. Morris, New York, 1885, Vol. I. pp. 440–452; “Thomæ Aquinatis Opera Theologica,” Venice, 1745–1760, 28 vols. quarto, edited by Bernardo M. de Rossi-Rubeis; “Petri de Bergamo, Super Omnia Opera D. Thomæ Aquinatis,” Bononiæ, 1473; “Biogr. Gén.,” Vol. XLV. pp. 208–218; “Siger de Brabant et l’Averroïsme au 13e siècle,” par Pierre Maudonnet, Friburg, 1899, Chap. IV passim; “Albert the Great,” by Dr. Joachim Sighart, transl. of Rev. Fr. T. A. Dixon, London, 1876, Chap. VI. p. 63; “The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages,” by W. J. Townsend, London, 1881, pp. 199–241; Alfred Weber, “Hist. of Phil.,” transl. of Frank Thilly, New York, 1896, pp. 241–246; Dr. W. Windelband, “Hist. of Phil.,” authorized transl. by Jas. H. Tufts, New York, 1893, pp. 313–314; Paola Antonia (Novelli), “De D. Th. Aquin.”; A. Hunaci, “Oratio,” Venice, 1507; likewise Veen (Otto van), Etiro (Partenio), Rodericus de Arriaga, Frigerio (Paolo) and Thouron (V. C.) in their works on Aquinas, 1610, 1630, 1648, 1688 and 1737–1740; Henry Hart Milman, “History of Latin Christianity,” London, 1857, Vol. VI. pp. 273–278, 281–286; Pellechet (Marie), “Catal. Gén. des Incunables,” 1897, pp. 210–249; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 264; “Le Journal des Savants” for May 1851, pp. 278, 281–298 passim, and also in the issue of December 1905.
Aristarchus of Samos, one of the earliest astronomers of the Alexandrian School, who lived in the third century B.C., is referred to in Gilbert’s De Magnete, at Chaps. III and IX of book vi. Vitruvius ascribes to him the invention of a concave sundial which he calls scaphe and which is described by Martianus Mineus Capella (cited by Weidler); and Censorinus says that Aristarchus was the author of an extensive work called “Annus Magnus,” covering a period of 2484 years.
References.—Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. I. p. 623; Montucla (J. F.), “Hist. des Math.,” Vol. I. p. 721; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 77; “Engl. Cycl.,” Vol. I. p. 314.
Arnaldus de Villa Nova—Arnaldus Novicomensis—Arnaud de Villeneuve, dit de Bachuone (1235–1312), who assumed the name of Magrinus when on his way from France to Sicily, was an eminent physician, the master of Raymond Lully, who taught medicine as well as alchemy at Barcelona and whose numerous treatises upon the virtues of plants, etc., are analyzed in M. F. Hœfer’s “Histoire de la Chimie,” Vol. I. p. 385. The first edition of his works appeared at Lyons in 1504.
References.——Campegius (Laurentius), “Arnaldi Vita”; “Nouvelle Biographie Générale” (Hœfer), Vol. III. pp. 279–282; Boulay (H. de), “Hist. de l’Univ. de Padoue,” Vol. IV; Freind (John), “Hist. de la Médecine,” Vol. III; N. F. J. Eloy, “Dict. Hist. de la Médecine,” Mons, 1778, Tome III. p. 131; Astruc (Jean), “Hist, de la fac. de méd. de Montpellier”; “Journal des Savants” for June 1896, p. 342, “Testaments d’Amand de Villeneuve et de Raimond Lulle,” “L’Alchimie et les Alchimistes”; Figuier (Louis), Paris, 1860, p. 172; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.
Barbarus, Hermolaus—Barbaro Ermoleo—(1454–1495)—(Barbari Hermolai, Aquileiensis Pontificis), whose name alone Gilbert mentions, was a well-known Italian savant, Professor of Philosophy at the Padua University, and the author of many works, of which the most popular are: (1) “Castigationes Plinianæ,” Rome, 1492, wherein he boasts of having made more than five thousand corrections in Pliny’s “Natural History”; (2) “Castigationes Secundæ,” Venice, 1480; (3) “Castigationes in Pomponium Melam,” Antwerp, 1582; (4) “Compendium scientiæ naturalis ex Aristotele,” Venice, 1545.
References.—Paul Jove, “Elogia”; Boissardus (Joannes Jacobus), “Icones ... virorum illustrium”; “Giornale de’ letterati d’ Italia,” Vol. XXXVIII; “Theosaurus Litteraturæ Botanicæ,” Lipsiæ, 1851, p. 333; “Biogr. Générale,” Vol. IV. pp. 418–419.
Becanus. See [Goropius].
Benedictus—Benedetti—Joannes Baptista (1530–1590), Italian mathematician, who was considered a prodigy at the age of eighteen, and who, five years later, published in Venice a remarkable work on the solution of most of Euclid’s problems. He is also the author of treatises on navigation, astronomy, music, etc., and can justly be placed in the first rank of savants of the sixteenth century.
References.—“La Grande Encyclopédie,” Vol. VI. pp. 132–133; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. V. pp. 340–342; Libri (Guillaume), “Hist. des Sciences Mathém.,” Vol. III. pp. 121–133; Montucla (J. F.), “Hist. des Mathém.,” Vol. I. pp. 572, 693, 729; Marie (J. F.), “Hist. des Sc. Math.,” Vol. II. p. 307; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibliographie Générale,” Vol. II. p. 83; Gilbert, De Magnete, Chap. IX of book iv.
Brasavolus, Antonius Musæ (1500–1570), alluded to by Gilbert in Book I. chap. i., was a very eminent Italian physician and the author of “Examen omnium simplicium medicamentorum,” Rome, 1536, as well as of “In octo libros Aphorism. Hippocratis Comment. et Annot.,” Basle, 1541, and of several other works, including a very complete index of all the notable features of the works of Galen.
References.—Ginguené (Pierre Louis), “Histoire Litéraire d’Italie”; Baruffaldi (Girolamo), “Commentario istorico all’ inserizione ...,” Ferrara, 1704; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. VII. p. 269; “Storia della Medicina in Italia” (Salvatore de Renzi), Napoli, 1848, in Vol. III passim as per Index, Vol. V. p. 987; Pritzel (G. A.), “Thesaur. Lit. Botan.,” 1851, p. 31.
Calaber, Hannibal Rosetius. Of all the authors cited by Gilbert, this is the only one, who, thus far, cannot satisfactorily be identified, although exhaustive efforts to this end have been made by the authors of both the English translations of De Magnete. One interpretation (Hannibal, of Roseto in Calabria, shown on map at end of Vol. I. of “Briefe uber Kalabrien und Sizilien,” Göttingen, 1791), has as yet found no endorsement.
Calcagninus, Cælius, Italian philosopher and astronomer (1479–1541) is the author of “Quomodo Cœlum stet, terra moveatur ...” wherein he asserts that the earth turns around the sun, also of “De Re Nautica,” containing a good account of ancient ceremonies and observations, as well as of a Commentary on Aristotle, and of many creditable poetical effusions published 1533. His complete works appeared at Basle during the year 1544, and a list of them, fifty-six in all, is given by Jean Pierre Nicéron in his “Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des hommes illustres,” Paris, 1727–1745.
References.—Calcagnini (T. G.), “Della vita ... C. Calcag”; Ginguené (Pierre Louis), “Histoire Litéraire d’Italie,” Vols. IV, VI and VII; Paul Jove—Jovius—Giovio (b. 1483, d. 1552), “Eloges”; Borsetti, Ferranti Bolani (Ferrante Giovanni), “Historia almi Ferrariæ Gymnasii,” 1735; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. VIII. pp. 159–161; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. III. p. 109; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 98; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.
Cardanus, Hieronymus (1501–1576), who is so very frequently mentioned by Gilbert, throughout Books I, II, III and IV, was an Italian physicist whose writings are extremely numerous and are well reviewed in the best edition of his works published at Lyons during 1663. Those by which he is best known are the “Ars Magna,” “De Rerum Varietate, Libri XVII,” and the “De Subtilitate, Libri XXI,” which may be considered the exponent of all his scientific knowledge and a notably good translation of which, in French, by Richard Leblanc was published in Paris, 1556.
References.—Morley (H.), “Life of Cardan,” 1854, wherein, Vol. II. pp. 56–70, will be found a long account more particularly of the contents of “De Subtilitate”; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. III. pp. 376–377; Dr. Fr. Ueberweg, “Hist. of Philosophy,” tr. of Geo. S. Morris, 1885, Vol. II. p. 25; Walton and Cotton, “Complete Angler,” New York and London, 1847, Part I. p. 142; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 101.
Copernicus, Nicolaus—Koppernik—Zepernic—celebrated astronomer, native of Poland (1472–1543), whose studies led him to reject the Ptolemaic system of the universe, and who proposed the one now bearing his name, is the author of “De revolutionibus orbium cœlestium,” which was published May 24, 1543, a few days before his death. He is alluded to by Gilbert (De Magnete, Chaps. II, III, VI, IX, of book vi.), who calls him “the restorer of astronomy” and “a man most worthy of the praise of scholarship.” The life and labours of Copernicus are fully detailed, in chapter treating of “Discoveries in the celestial spaces” of the “Cosmos” by Von Humboldt, who, in relation to a passage in “De Revolutionibus,” makes the following very curious note: “It very singularly happens that in an otherwise instructive memoir” (Czynski, “Kopernik et ses travaux,” 1847, p. 102), “the Electra of Sophocles is confounded with electric currents. The passage of Copernicus (quoted in Latin) is thus rendered: ‘If we take the sun for the torch of the universe, for its spirit and its guide—if Trismegistes call it a God, and if Sophocles consider it to be an electrical power which animates and contemplates all that is contained in creation....’
“Four men, Gutenberg, Columbus, Luther and Copernicus, stand at the dividing line of the Middle Ages, and serve as boundary stones marking the entrance of mankind into a higher and finer epoch of its development” (Kapp (Friedrich), Geschichte, etc., I).
References.—Westphal (E. J.), “Nikolaus Kopernikus” (“Biographie des Copernicus”); Delambre (J. B. J.), “Histoire de l’astronomie Moderne”; “Journal des Savants” for February 1864 and for December 1895; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. V. pp. 66–67; Edw. S. Holden in “Pop. Sc. Monthly” for June 1904, pp. 109–131; Phil. Magazine, Vol. XIX. p. 302; Gassendi (Pierre), in “Nicolai Copernici Vita,” appended to his biography of Tycho (“Tychonis Brahei Vita,” 1655, Hagæ Comitum, p. 320); W. Whewell, “Hist. of the Ind. Sciences,” New York, 1858, Vol. I. pp. 257–290; the article at pp. 378–382, “Engl. Cycl.,” which abounds in references; Rheticus, “Narrat. prima”; Kepler (Johann), “De Temporis”; Horrebow (at A.D. 1725—the luminous process of the sun, a perpetual northern light); Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. pp. 109–113, for an extended list of authorities, and also pp. 1571–1572; Joachimus (Georgius) surnamed Rhecticus, who quotes many works on Copernicus.
Cordus, Valerius—Eberwein—celebrated German botanist (1515–1544), who is alluded to by Gilbert, Book I. chap ii. wrote a Commentary on Dioscorides, published by Egénolphe in 1549, as well as an extensive history of plants, which is to be found in the Strasburg editions of his works, issued during 1562 and 1569.
References.—“Biog. Générale” (Hœfer), Vol. XI. pp. 804–807; Larousse (Pierre), “Grand Dictionnaire Universel,” Vol. V. p. 133; Adam (Melchior), “Vitæ med. Germ.”; “Lindenius renovatus”—“Thesaur. Lit. Botan.,” 1851, pp. 52, 334; Camerarius, “Vita Melanchthon”; Linden (Joannes Antonides van der), “De Scriptis Medicis,” 1651, pp. 572–573; “Dict. Historique de la Médecine,” par N. F. J. Eloy, Mons, 1778, pp. 705–707, Vol. I.
Cortesius, Martinus, celebrated Spanish geographer who died about 1580, is the author of the well-known and extremely scarce work, “Breve compendio de la esfera, y de la arte de navegar,” Cadiz, 1546 1551, and Seville, 1556, which was translated by Richard Eden, 1561, 1589, 1609. Of the 1556 issue, Salva remarks (II, 3763): “2e édition aussi rare que la première. C’est cet ouvrage qui a revolutionné la science nautique et qui fut le premier à indiquer la déclinaison de l’aiguille. Les instructions pour construire des mappemondes ne sont la partie la moins intéressante du texte et pourraient être utiles à tous ceux qui sont incapables de comprendre le principe des roses de vents et des loxodromes, qui couvrent la surface des cartes hydrographiques anciennes. Mais c’est justement ici que l’intelligence pénétrante de Cortez a indiqué les défauts de la projection longtemps avant Mercator.”
For a reproduction of the title page and of the twelve-page text of Martin Cortez’s “Breve Compendio,” see G. Hellmann, “Neudrucke,” 1898, No. 10.
References.—Fernandez de Navarrete, “Disertacion sobre la historia de la nautica y de las mathematicas,” Madrid, 1846; “La Grande Encyclopédie,” Vol. XII. p. 1114; “Biographie Générale,” Vol. XI. p. 964; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.; Book III. chap. i. and Book IV. chap. i.
Costæus, Joannes—Giovanni Costeo—of Lodi, who died at Bologna in 1603, was an Italian physician teaching medicine at the Universities of Turin and of Bologna and the author of several valuable works, notably the “Tractatus de universali stirpium natura,” Turin, 1578; the “Disquisitionum physiol. ... Avicennæ sectionem,” Bologna, 1589; the “Annot. in Avicennæ canonem ...” Venetia, 1595; and the “De igneis medicinæ ...” published also at Venice in the last-named year.
Gilbert, who speaks of him (De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.; Book II. chap. iii.; Book VI. chap. v.) gives this as the theory propounded by Costæus regarding the powers of amber and loadstone: “There is work on both sides, result on both sides, and therefore the motion is produced in part by the loadstone’s attraction and in part by the iron’s spontaneous movement; for, as we say that the vapours given out by the loadstone do by their own nature haste to attract the iron, so, too, do we say that the air impelled by the vapours, while seeking a place for itself, is turned back, and when turned back impels and transfers the iron, which is picked up, as it were, by it, and which, besides, is exerted on its own account. In this way, there is found a certain composite movement, resulting from the attraction, the spontaneous motion and the impulsion; which composite motion, however, is rightly to be referred to attraction, because the beginning of this motion is invariably from one term, and its end is there too; and that is precisely the distinguishing character of attraction.”
References.—Eloy (N. F. J.), “Dict. historique de la Médecine”; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. V. p. 245.
Cusanus—Nicolas Khrypffs or Krebs, Cardinal de Cusa (1401–1464), an eminent German scholar, who, abandoning the study of law, entered the Church, became Archdeacon of Liége, member of the Council of Basle, and was raised, in 1448, to the dignity of Cardinal. His biographer in the ninth “Encycl. Britan.” (Vol. VI. pp. 728–729) says: “As in religion he is entitled to be called one of the Reformers before the Reformation, so, in philosophy, he was one of those who broke with scholasticism while it was still the orthodox system.” His works were published in complete form by H. Petri, 1565.
References.—Hartzheim (Josephus), “Vita N. de C.,” Trèves, 1730; Deux (M.), “Life of C. Cusa,” 1847; Scharpff (Franz Anton), “Der Cardinal und Bischof Nic. von Cusa ...” Tübingen, 1871; Dr. W. Windelband, “History of Philosophy,” auth. tr. by Jas. H. Tufts, New York, 1893, pp. 345–347; Humboldt, “Cosmos,” 1860, Vol. II; Libri (G.), “Hist. des Sciences Mathém.,” Vol. III. p. 99; Dr. F. Ueberweg, “History of Philosophy,” tr. by Geo. S. Morris, 1885, Vol. II. pp. 23–24; Ritter (Dr. Heinrich), “Geschichte der Phil.,” Vol. IX. p. 142; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. i. and Book II. chaps, iii. xxxvi.; “Journal des Savants” for January 1894; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 115; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. V. p. 687; “Biogr. Gén.,” Vol. XII. pp. 651–657.
Dominicus, Maria Ferrariensis—“Novara”—Italian savant (1464–1514), taught astronomy at Bologna, Rome and elsewhere, and had for one of his pupils the celebrated Copernicus, who, later on, became an associate in his investigations. None of his writings have reached us.
Gilbert thus alludes to Dominicus as well as to Stadius at Chap. II. book vi. of his De Magnete: “According to Dominicus Maria’s observations, the north pole is raised higher and the latitudes of places are greater now than in the past: from this he infers a change of latitudes. But Stadius, holding the directly opposite opinion, proves by observations, that the latitudes have grown less. ‘The latitude of Rome,’ says he, ‘is given in the Geographia of Ptolemy as 41⅔°; and lest any one should say that some error has crept into the text of Ptolemy, Pliny relates, and Vitruvius in his ninth book testifies, that at Rome on the day of the equinox the ninth part of the gnomon’s shadow is lacking. But recent observation (as Erasmus Rheinhold states) gives the latitude of Rome in our age as 41⅙°; so that you are in doubt whether one-half of a degree has been lost (decrevisse) in the centre of the world, or whether it is the result of an obliquation of the earth.’”
References.—Borsetti (Ferrante Giovanni), “Hist. Gymn. Ferrar.,” Vol. II. p. 50; Tiraboschi (Girolamo), “Storia della Letteratura Italiana,” Vol. XIV. p. 296; Montucla (J. F.), “Hist. des Math.,” Vol. I. p. 549; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. pp. 215–216; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XXXVIII. p. 336.
Dupuis. See Putaneus.
Empedocles, whom Gilbert merely names in Book V. chap. xii. of De Magnete, was a native of Sicily, distinguished as a philosopher as well as for his knowledge of medicine and of natural history.
Empedocles flourished about the year 442 or 460 B.C., and was pupil of Pythagoras or Anaxagoras, and, as others say, of Parmenides (“The Metaphysics of Aristotle” by the Rev. John H. McMahon, London, 1857, pp. 19–20, 34, 118).
“Rien n’est engendré, disait Empédocle, rien ne périt de la mort funeste. Il n’y a que mélange ou séparation de parties.... L’éclair, c’est le feu s’échappant du nuage où le soleil l’avait lancé. La foudre n’est qu’une plus grande quantité de feu. Le tonnerre, c’est ce même feu qui s’éteint dans le nuage humide.... Les phénomènes magnétiques viennent de la convenance parfaite des pores et des effluves de l’aimant et du fer. Dès que les effluves de l’aimant out chassé l’air que contenaient les pores du fer, le courant des effluves de fer devient si fort que la masse entière est entrainée” (“Dict. des Sc. Philos.,” Paris, 1852, Vol. II. pp. 206–214).
References.—Karsten, “Emped. Agrig. Carmin. Reliq.” in Vol. II of “Phil. Graec. vet. relig.,” Amst., 1838; and the extensive list of authorities cited in Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. VII. pp. 457–458; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. I. part i. p. 401; Ueberweg, “Hist. of Philos.” (Morris), 1885, Vol. I. pp. 60–63; “The Works of George Berkeley,” by A. C. Fraser, Oxford, 1901, Vol. III. pp. 205, 247, 254, 290; Paul Tannery, “Pour l’histoire de la Science Hellène,” Paris, 1887, Chap. XIII. pp. 304–339; “Greek Thinkers,” by Theodor Gomperz, tr. of L. Magnus, London, 1901, Chap. V. pp. 558–562, 601; “A History of Classical Greek Literature,” by Rev. John P. Mahaffy, New York, 1880, Vol. I. pp. 123–128; Vol. II. pp. 48, 73, 77; “Essai Théorique et Historique sur la génération des connaissances humaines,” par Guillaume Tiberghien, Bruxelles, 1844, Vol. I. pp. 185–187.
We are told by Alex. Aphr. (Quæst. Nat., II. 23, p. 137, Speng) that, like Empedocles, Democritus sought to explain the attractive power of the magnet, upon which the latter wrote a treatise (according to Diog. IX. 47).
Democritus was born at Abdera in Thrace about 470 or 460 B.C., and, according to Thrasyllus, the grammarian, he died 357 B.C.—the same year as Hippocrates. He was considered, by far, the most learned thinker of his age, and, according to Carl Snyder, who dedicates “The World Machine,” 1907, to Democritus, he was justly esteemed by Bacon as the mightiest of the ancients, for he wrote illuminatively upon almost every branch of natural knowledge.
The following note to “The Atomistic Philosophy” appears at p. 230, Vol. II of Dr. E. Zeller’s “History of Greek Philosophy,” translation of S. F. Alleyne, London, 1881:
“Leucippus and Democritus derive all action and suffering from contact. One thing suffers from another, if parts of the latter penetrate the empty interspaces of the former.... Democritus thought that the magnet and the iron consist of atoms of similar nature but which are less closely packed together in the magnet. As, on the one hand, like draws like, and, on the other, all moves in the Void, the emanations of the magnet penetrate the iron, and pass out a part of its atoms, which, on their side, strain towards the magnet, and penetrate its empty interspaces. The iron itself follows this movement, while the magnet does not move towards the iron, because the iron has fewer spaces for receiving the effluences.”
The attraction of the magnet, as explained by Diogenes of Appollonia, is thus given by Alex. Aphr. (Quæst. Nat., II. 23, p. 138, Speng): “Empedocles supposed that, after the emanations of the magnet have penetrated into the pores of the iron, and the air which choked them has been expelled, powerful emanations from the iron pass into the symmetrical pores of the magnet, which draw the iron to itself and hold it fast.”
It may be added that the Atomic Doctrine of Leucippus and Democritus was opposed to the Homoiomeria of Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ—the last great philosopher of the Ionian School.
References.—Ueberweg (Fr.), “History of Philosophy,” trans. of G. S. Morris, New York, 1885, Vol. I. pp. 67–71; Larousse (Pierre), “Dict. Univ. du XIXe siècle,” Paris, 1870, Tome VI. pp. 409–410; “La Grande Encyclopédie,” Paris, Tome XIV. pp. 66–69; “Nouvelle Biographie Générale” (Hœfer), Paris, 1855, Vol. XIII. pp. 566–574; Franck (Ad.), “Fragments qui subsistent de Démocrite,” in the “Mém. de la Société Royale de Nancy,” 1836; Beazley (C. Raymond), “The Dawn of Modem Geography,” Oxford, 1906, Vol. I. p. 254 (the use by Democritus of magnetic stones, mentioned by Solinus); Snyder (Carl), “The World Machine,” 1907, p. 133 (work on the magnet); Zeller (Eduard), “Philosophie der Griechen”; Ritter and Preller, “Historia Philosophiæ Græcæ” (7th ed., Gotha, 1888); Mulloch (F. G. A.), “Democriti Abderitæ operum fragmenta,” Berlin, 1843.
Erasmus, Reinholdus (1511–1553), a German savant, who taught astronomy and mathematics at Wittemberg, has left us “Commentarius Theoricæ Novæ Planetarum,” 1542, 1558, a work which, Delambre says, supplies the omissions of Purbacchius and must have cleared many of the passages of Ptolemy’s syntax. He also wrote “Almageste,” 1549;[63] made up the Prutenic (Prussian) astronomical tables (“Prutenicæ tabulæ cœlestium motuum,” 1551), from the observations of Copernicus, Hipparchus and Ptolemy, and he is believed to be the author of the anonymous work entitled “Hypotyposes orbium cœlestium ...” which appeared during the year 1568.
Gilbert’s reference to Erasmus has already been given in connection with Dominicus.
References.—Vossius (G.), “De Scientiis Mathem.,” Chap. XXXVI. p. 14; Delambre (J. B. J.), “Hist. de l’astronomie moderne,” Vol. I. pp. 142, 146, 164; Zedler (Johann Hch.); Mädler—Mædler (Johann Henrich von), Vol. I. p. 168; Bailly (Jean Sylvain), “Histoire de l’astronomie moderne ...” Vol. I. p. 366 and Vol. II. p. 71; Jöcher (Johann Friedrich), “Bibliogr. Astronom.”; Weidler (Christian Gottlieb), p. 353; “Biogr. Générale,” Vol. XLI. pp. 928–929.
Erastus, Thomas—Thomas Lieber—(1524–1583) was a native of Switzerland, notable in medicine and famous in ecclesiastical polemics, who furiously combated the medical views of Paracelsus, notably in his “Disputationum de Medicina,” Basileæ, 1572–1573. Gilbert mentions him (De Magnete, Book I. chaps. i. and vii.), merely saying that, knowing naught of the nature of the loadstone, Erastus draws from it weak arguments against Paracelsus.
His numerous works are detailed in the “Biographisches Lexikon,” Vienna und Leipzig, 1885, Vol. II. pp. 292, etc., and a very complete account thereof is to be found at pp. 561–564 of “De Scriptis Medicis,” by Joannes Antonides Van Der Linden, Amstel., 1651.
References.—Pluquet (François André Adrien), “Diction. des Hérésies”; Moreri (Louis), “Le Grand Dictionnaire Historique”; Wordsworth (Christopher), “Ecclesiastical Biography”; “New Int. Encycl.,” New York, 1903, Vol. VI. p. 828; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XXXI. pp. 174–175; “La Grande Encyclopédie,” Vol. XVI. p. 163; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. VII. p. 788; Adam (Melchior), “Vitæ Germanorum Medicorum,” pp. 107–109; Bolton, H. C., “Ch. Hist. of Chem.,” p. 981.
Evax—Euace—a Latin naturalist who lived in the time of Tiberius and said to have been King of the Arabs, is the supposed author of “De nominibus et virtutis lapidum qui in artem medicinæ recipiuntur,” treating of gems, of which the MS.—now in the Oxford Library—was used by Marbodeus to make up his own work on precious stones.
Salmasius delivers it as his opinion that, by an error of transcribers, from Cratevas, who in some copies is also named Cratevas, this Evax has arisen. (“Gen. Biog. Dict.” of Alex. Chalmers, London, 1814, Vol. XIII. p. 411.)
References.—“Journal des Savants” for June 1891 (“Traditions ... chez les Alchimistes du Moyen Age,” par Marcellin Pierre Eugène Berthelot); Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. VII. p. 1153; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book II. chap. xxxviii.
Fallopius, Gabriellus (1523–1562), was a famous Italian anatomist and one of the three who, according to Cuvier, restored or rather created anatomy during the sixteenth century. The other two were Vassalli and Eustachi. His principal work is “Observationes Anatomicæ,” Venice, 1561; a list of the others—named in “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XVII. pp. 66–69—embracing “De medicatis ... de metallis sev fossilibus ...” Venice, 1564; “De Simplicibus Medicamentis purgantibus tractatus,” 1566; “De Compositione Medicamentorum,” 1570; “Opera Genuina Omnia,” 1584, 1596, 1606. The collected edition of his complete works was published in Venice, 1584, and at Frankfort, 1600.
References.—Tiraboschi (Girolamo), “Biblioteca Modenese,” Vol. II. p. 236; Nicéron (J. P.), “Mémoires,” Vol. IV. p. 396; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chaps. i. and xv. also Book II. chap. xxxviii.; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. VIII. p. 67.
Fernelius, Joannes Franciscus (1497–1558), celebrated French physician, called the modern Galen, is the author of many works which are cited at pp. 477–483, Vol. XVII of the “Biographie Générale,” the principal ones being “De naturali parte medicinæ,” 1542, “De vacuandi ratione liber,” 1545, and “De Abditis Rerum Causis,” 1548. Gilbert alludes to the last named (De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.), saying that Fernel believes there is in the loadstone a hidden and abstruse cause: elsewhere he says this cause is celestial; and he does but explain the unknown by the more unknown. This search after hidden causes, he adds, is something ignorant, beggarly and resultless.
References.—Thou (François Auguste de), “Historiarum sui temporis”; Sc. de Sainte Marthe, “Elogia Doct. Gallorum”; Eloy, “Dict. Hist. de la Médecine,” Mons, 1778, Vol. II. pp. 208–221; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. VIII. p. 259.
Ficino, Marsilia (1433–1499), was the son of Ficino, the physician of Cosmo de Medici, and was one of the leading scholars of the Renaissance. He was celebrated as the most distinguished translator of Plato and as the reviver of Platonic philosophy in Italy. One of his biographers has said that the most important feature of his philosophy is his claim to harmonizing Platonic idealism with Christian doctrine.
Gilbert says that “Ficinus chews the cud of ancient opinions, and to give the reason of the magnetic direction seeks its cause in the constellation Ursa. Ficinus writes, and Merula copies, that in the loadstone the potency of Ursa prevails, and hence it is transferred into the iron” (De Magnete, Book. I. chap. i.; Book III., chap. i.; Book IV. chap. i.).
His complete works (published in two volumes, Venice, 1516, Basle, 1561, 1576, Paris, 1641), embrace “Theologiæ Platonicæ,” 1488; “De Vita libri tres,” 1489; “Iamblichus, de mysteriis ...” 1497; “Apologiæ in qua medicina, astrologia ...” 1498.
References.—Corsi (Raimondo Maria), “M. Ficini Vita,” Pisa, 1772; Symonds (John Addington), “Remains in Italy,” London, 1875, and “Renaissance in Italy,” New York, 1888, pp. 324–328; “English Cyclop.” (Biography), Vol. II. p. 908; “The Rise of Intellectual Liberty from Thales to Copernicus,” by Frederic May Holland, New York, 1885, pp. 279–280; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. VIII. pp. 331–332; “Journal des Savants” for May 1894; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 131; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. XVII. pp. 634–638; “The Works of Geo. Berkeley,” by A. C. Fraser, Oxford, 1901, Vols. II. p. 268; III. pp. 216–217, 221–223, 260, 296–297; “Dict. of Philos. and Psych.,” by J. M. Baldwin, New York, 1901, Vol. I. p. 381.
Fracastorio, Hieronymo (1483–1553), Italian physician and one of the most learned men of his day, is said to have been made Professor of Logic at the University of Padua when but nineteen years of age. J. B. Ramusio admitted that he owed to Fracastorio the idea and much of the material for his great work “Rac. di Navigazioni e Viaggi,” first published in 1550.
Fracastorio made many important astronomical observations, and it was he and Peter Apian who first made known in Europe the fact that comets’ tails are always turned away from the sun, so that their line of prolongation passes through its centre.
Gilbert alludes to Fracastorio (De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.; Book II. chaps. ii. iv. xxiv. xxxviii. xxxix.; Book IV. chap. i.), and to his “De Sympathia,” of which the first edition is Venet., 1546. This, says Libri, is “an important work in which universal attraction, as well as electric and magnetic motion, is attributed to an imponderable principle.”
References.—Baillet (Adrien), “Jugement des Savants,” Vol. II; Menken (F. O.), “De Vita,” Leipzig, 1731; Teissier (H. A.), “Eloges des hommes illustres,” tirés de M. De Thou; Libri, “Hist. des. Sc. Mathém.,” Paris, 1838, Vol. III. p. 100; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XVIII. pp. 418–420; Humboldt, “Cosmos,” 1849, Vol. I. p. 86; Vol. II. p. 697; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. VIII. pp. 692–693; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 135.
Garcia d’Orta—Garzia ab Horto—Garcia del Huerto—Garcie du Jardin—a Portuguese physician and the author of “Coloquios dos simples ... pello douctor Garcia Dorta,” 1563, which was translated into French and united to the works of C. d’Acosta and Nic. Monardes (Christophile de la Coste et M. Nicholas Monard) in 1567, 1574 and 1579. The passage which Gilbert alludes to (in De Magnete, Book I. chap. xiv.), is to be found in the abridged Latin translation of Garcia’s work made by Charles de l’Ecluse, Antwerp, 1593, lib. i. cap. 56, pp. 178–179. Hakewill observes (“Apologie,” 1635, lib. ii. p. 165): “Remarkable indeed, that is which Garzias ab Horto writes concerning the loadstone in Simpl. Indiæ, lib. i. cap. 47.”
References.—“Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XXXVIII. p. 887; Machado (Barb.), “Bibliotheca Lusitana”; Denis (Ferdinand), “Bulletin du Bibliographe”; Pincio (Léon), “Biblioteca Oriental y Occidental”; “Histoire des Drogues par Antoine Collin,” Lyon, 1619; “Thesaur. Lit. Bot.,” 1851, p. 127.
Gauricus, Lucas (1476–1558), Italian mathematician and astronomer, one of whose pupils was César Scaliger, is the author of twenty-one different works (“Opera Omnia,” Basle, 1575), of which the best known are “Rerum naturalium et divinarum ...” 1540; “Isagogicus ... in tot am astrologiam prædictivam ...” 1546; “Tractatus Astrologicus,” 1552; “Tabulæ de primo mobili,” 1560.
Gilbert says (De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.) the astrologer Lucas Gauricus held that beneath the tail of Ursa Major is a loadstone, and that he assigns the loadstone (as well as the sardonyx and the onyx) not only to the planet Saturn, but also to Mars (with the diamond, jasper, and ruby), so that the loadstone, according to him, is ruled by two planets. Further, Lucas says that the loadstone belongs to the sign Virgo—and with a veil of mathematical erudition he covers many similar disgraceful stupidities.
References.—Ughelli (Ferdinando), “Italia Sacra,” Venetiis 1717–1722; Nicodemo (Francesco), “Biblioteca Napoletana”; “Chronicum Mathematicorum,” which prefaces the Almagest of Riccioli; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XIX. pp. 681–683; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. XVIII. p. 617; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. VIII. p. 1087.
Geber—Yeber—Djaber—Abū-Mūsa-Jābir—Ibn Haiyān—Al-Tarsūsi—who, according to Aboulwefa (Michaud, “Dict.,” Vol. XVI. p. 100) lived in the eighth century A.D., is the earliest of the Great Arabian chemists or alchemists. Rhazès and Avicenna call him “the master of masters,” and, by the author of “The Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers,” he is designated as “the prince of those alchemical adepts who have appeared during the Christian Era.” As many as five hundred different alchemical works have been attributed to him, and a complete list of the most important will be found in M. F. Hœfer, “Histoire de la Chimie,” Paris, 1842.
References.—“Journal des Savants,” for May 1851, February 1892, pp. 118–128 passim, and for May 1892 (“Geber et ses œuvres alchimiques”), pp. 318–329; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. VIII. pp. 1114–1115; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 147; Bolton (H. C.), “Chron. Hist. of Chem.,” pp. 985–986; “La Grande Encyclopédie,” Vol. XVIII. pp. 680–682; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. vii.
Gemma, D. Cornelius, a well-known physician of Louvain (1535–1597) and son of the celebrated mathematician Gemma Frisius, is the author of the several works named at p. 854, Vol. XIX of the “Biographie Générale.” Of these, the most important is the “Cosmocritice, seu de naturæ divinis ... proprietatibus rerum” published at Antwerp in 1575.
References.—Foppens, “Bibliotheca Belgica”—“Biog. Médicale”; Linden (Joannes Antonides van der), “De scriptis medicis,” Amst., 1651, pp. 147–148; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book II. chap. iii.
Gemma, Frisius—Rainer—(1508–1555), above alluded to, besides being a mathematician was a medical practitioner. He wrote “De Principiis Astronomiæ et Cosmographiæ ...” Antwerp, 1530 (now of excessive scarcity and Chapters XXX-XXXI of which deal with America), as well as several other similar works published notably in 1539, 1545, 1548. These are standards of the Netherlands geographical schools, whose most brilliant representative was the well-known geographer, Gerard Mercator (1512–1594).
References.—“Biog. Générale,” Vol. XIX. p. 854; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. XVIII. p. 702; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. L. part i. p. 1405 and Vol. II. p. 148.
Goropius, Henricus Becanus—Jean Bécan—Jean Van Gorp (1518–1572), a Belgian savant who practised medicine at Antwerp and who attempted to prove, in his “Indo-Scythica,” that Adam’s language was the German or Teutonic. We are told by Gilbert, in the first book of De Magnete, that Goropius ascribes the invention of the compass to the Cimbri or Teutons, on the ground that the thirty-two names of the winds thereon inscribed are pronounced in German by all mariners, whether they be British or Spaniards, or Frenchmen.
References.—“Opera Joannis Goropii Becani,” Antwerp, 1570; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. II. p. 457; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. V. pp. 70–71; and, for additional citations, as well as for mention of all his works, the “Grande Encyclopédie,” Vol. XIX.
Grotius, Hugo, the latinized form of the Dutch De Groot—a great theologian and jurist (1583–1645). His singular precocity attracted Joseph J. Scaliger, who undertook to direct his studies at the Leyden University, where it is said he achieved brilliant success in all studies.
One of his biographers remarks that, in the annals of precocious genius, there is no greater prodigy on record than Hugo Grotius, who was able to write good Latin verses at nine (1592), was ripe for the University at twelve (1595), and at the age of fifteen (1598), edited the Encyclopædic work of Martianus Capella—a writer of the fifth century—with the aid of his father, Jan de Groot, the Delft burgomaster. It might be added that, in 1597, he had delivered public discourses on mathematics, philosophy and jurisprudence; in 1598, he was so highly sought for everywhere, that he was asked to, and did, accompany Count Justin of Nassau and Olden Barneveldt on their special embassy to the French Court, and that, in 1599, he not only took his degree of doctor of law and pleaded his first cases before the Hague Courts, but was able, through his superior knowledge of mathematics, to translate into Latin Simon Stevin’s work on navigation. Later on, 1603, he was appointed historiographer of the United Provinces, becoming fiscal general in 1607 (also Council Pensionary at Rotterdam six years later), and during 1609, he published his first work “De Mare Liberum,” which was a treatise against the claims of the English to exclusive right over certain seas. This was followed in 1610 by “De Antiq. Reipub. Batavæ,” and some years afterwards by his chief work, “De Jure Belli et Pacis,” considered the basis of international law and freely translated into all the principal languages. Grotius is twice mentioned in Book IV. chap. ix. of De Magnete.
References.—Brandt et Cattenbuch, “Histoire de Hugo de Groot,” 1727; Burigny (J. Levêque de), “Vie de Grotius,” 1752; Cras (Hendrik Constantijn), “Laudatio Hugonis Grotii,” 1796; Dr. Fried. Ueberweg, “Hist. of Phil.,” (Morris tr., 1885, Vol. II. p. 31); Rogge (H. C.), “Bibliotheca Grotiana,” 1883; Kœnen (Hendrik Jakob), “Hugo Grotius,” 1837; “Chambers’s Encycl.,” Vol. V. pp. 431–432; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. XIX. pp. 451–452; “Biographisch Woordenbock,” J. G. Frederiko en F. J. Van den Branden, Amsterdam, pp. 301–302; Larousse (Pierre), “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. VIII. p. 1556, giving list of his many works; Butler (C.), “Life of Grotius,” London, 1826; Creuzer (Georg Friedrich), “Luther und Grotius,” Heidelberg, 1846; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. XXII. pp. 197–216 for a complete record of all his works.
Hali Abas—‘Ali Ibn Al-‘Abbás—Al Majusí—celebrated Arabian physician, whose death occurred about A.D. 995, is author of “Ketab-el-Maleki,” i. e. the “Royal Book”—Liber Regius—in which he pretends to give all that was then known concerning medicine. Mr. Adams explains (Appendix, “Barker’s Lemprière,” London, 1838), that he considers the “Royal Book” as the most complete ancient treatise that has reached us on medicine, and the sciences generally, with exception of the Synopsis of Paulus Ægenita. The Latin translation of this work, given in 1127 by Stephanus Antiochenus, was first printed in Venice, 1492, then at Lyons in 1523.
References.—Casiri (Michael), “Bibliotheca Arabico-hispana Escur.,” Vol. I. pp. 260, 273; Hœfer, “Nouv. Biogr. Univ.,” Vol. II. pp. 96–97; Michaud, “Biog. Univ.,” Paris, 1843, Vol. I. p. 468; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.; Freind (John), “History of Physick”; Choulant (Johann Ludwig), “Handbuch der Bücherkunde ...”; Wüstenfeld (H. F.), “Geschichte d’ Arab. Ærzte,” p. 59; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. II. pp. 96–97.
Harriot, Thomas (1560–1621), one of the learned Englishmen alluded to by Gilbert, at the end of the first chapter, Book I of De Magnete, as having on long sea voyages observed the differences of magnetic variation, was a mathematician and astronomer, whose miscellaneous works, noted at pp. 437–439, Vol. XXIV of the “Dict. of Nat. Biog.,” embrace treatises on magnetism, mechanics, etc. The account he has given of his voyage to Virginia was printed in Hakluyt’s “Principal Navigations,” Vol. III and is pronounced “one of the earliest and best examples of a statistical survey made upon a large scale,” at p. 11, Vol. LXXI of the “Edinburgh Review.”
Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus, was a Greek historian and philosopher who died about 330 B.C. Diogenes Laertius attributes to him many works that have not reached us, and we have nothing of him but fragments of his treatise on the constitutions of the different States which have been printed with the works of Elien. Gilbert commences the third chapter of his sixth book by saying that Heraclides, as well as the Pythagoreans Nicetas of Syracuse and Aristarchus of Samos, and, as it seems, many others, held that the earth moves, that the stars set through the interposition of the earth, and that they rise through the earth’s giving way: they do give the earth motion, and the earth being, like a wheel, supported on its axis, rotates upon it from west to east.
References.—Rowles (S.), “De Vita et Scriptis,” 1824, Vol. VIII; Deswert (Eugenius), “Dissert de Heraclide Pontico,” 1830; Krische (August Bernhard), “Forschungen ...” p. 325; “La Grande Encyclopédie,” Vol. XIX. p. 1131; Dr. F. Ueberweg, “History of Philosophy,” tr. by Geo. S. Morris, New York, 1885, Vol. I. pp. 38–42; Humboldt, “Cosmos,” 1860, Vol. II. p. 309; “Essai théorique ... des connaissances humaines,” par G. Tiberghien, Bruxelles, 1844, Vol. I. pp. 182–185; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. IX. p. 200.
Hermes Trismegistus (or “thrice great”) is the supposed author of many Greek works that have reached us and which constitute an encyclopædia of Egyptian wisdom in that they treat of astronomy, medicine, and other sciences. As one of his biographers has it, the principal tenets of the Hermetic Books are that the Creator made the Cosmos by his word out of fluid ... that death and life are only changes and that nothing is destructible ... that passion or suffering is the result of motion.... Gilbert only refers to him in Book V. chap. xii. by saying that Hermes, Zoroaster and Orpheus recognize a universal soul. Clemens Alexandrinus, who has given an account and catalogue of his writings, makes him the author of six books of physic and of thirty-six books of divinity and philosophy.
References.—“The Works of George Berkeley,” by A. C. Fraser, Oxford, 1901, Vol. III. pp. 209, 253–255, 261, 267, 280; Baumgarten—Crusius (Ludwig Friedrich Otto), “... de librorum Hermeticorum ...” 1827; “Dict. of Philos. and Psychol.,” by J. M. Baldwin, New York, 1901, Vol. I. p. 475; “Hermes Trismegistus,” by Scheible (J.), 1855; Alex. Chalmers, “Gen. Biog. Dict.,” London, 1814, Vol. XVII. p. 396; “Hermes Trismegistus,” by Parthey (Gustav Friedrich Constantin), 1854; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. I. part i. pp. 427–428, 691–694; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. IX. p. 228; and the long list of citations in “Biog. Générale,” Vol. XXIV. pp. 377–382.
Hero—Heron—of Alexandria, a Greek mathematician, pupil of the celebrated Ctesibius who flourished in the third century before Christ and to whom have been attributed many ancient writings upon different technical subjects. Allusion is made by Gilbert (De Magnete, Book II. chap. ii.), to Hero’s “Spiritualia,” which is his most valuable known work and which has been often translated, notably into Latin, 1575, 1680, 1683, into Italian, 1547, 1589, 1592, 1605; and into German, 1687, 1688.
References.—Hultsch (Friedrich), “Heronis Alex.,” 1864–1874; Montucla (J. F.), “Hist. des Mathém.,” Vol. I. p. 267; “Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Mathematik,” Vol. VIII. pp. 175–214; Martin, “Sur la vie et les ouvrages d’Héron d’Alexandrie”—Mém. de l’Acad. des Ins. B. L., Paris, 1854, ss. 438–439; Arago (François), “Eloge de Watt” (Œuvres, Vol. I); Fabricius (Johann Albert), “Bibliotheca Græca,” Vol. IV. p. 234; Figuier (Louis), “Hist. des principales découvertes,” Vol. I. p. 42; “A short history of Greek Mathematics,” Jas. Gow, Cambridge, 1884, pp. 276–286; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. IX. p. 241; “Chambers’s Encyclopædia,” Vol. V. p. 689; ninth “Encycl. Britan.,” Vol. XI. p. 760; “La Grande Encyclopédie,” Vol. XIX. p. 1200; “Journal des Savants” for March 1903, p. 147, and for April 1903, p. 203; “Biogr. Générale,” Vol. XXIV. pp. 447–449; Th. Martin (“Mém. Ac. des Inscr.,” 1854); also two papers by Boncompagni and Vincent in “Bulletino di Bibliog.,” Vol. IV.
Hipparchus the Rhodian, “le plus grand astronome de l’antiquité”—born, according to Strabo, at Nicæa in Bithynia, 160–145 B.C.—is the inventor of the astrolabe[64] and discoverer of “the precession of the equinoxes.” He is mentioned by Gilbert five times in Book VI. chaps, ii. viii. ix. of De Magnete, and is extensively treated of in the “Journal des Savants” for November 1828, January 1829, August and September 1831, October 1843, August and September 1848, July 1859; also by the Rev. H. M. Close, in “Proc. of Roy. Irish Acad.,” Series III. vol. vi. No. 3, in Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. IX. p. 286, in the “Historical Account of Astronomy,” by John Narrien, London, 1833, pp. 219–244, and in the “Astronomy” article of the “Encyclopædia Britannica.”
By Humboldt, Hipparchus is called the founder of scientific astronomy and the greatest astronomical observer of antiquity. He was the actual originator of astronomical tables amongst the Greeks and, in the new map of the world which he constructed and founded upon that of Eratosthenes, the geographical degrees of latitude and longitude were based on lunar observations, and on the measurement of shadows, wherever such an application of astronomy was admissible (“Cosmos,” London, 1849, Vol. II. p. 545; Ideler, “Handbuch der Chronologie,” Vol. I. ss. 212, 329).
The mathematician Eratosthenes, alluded to above, was a native of Cyrene, and pronounced the most celebrated of the Alexandrian librarians. He is reported to have made the earliest attempt at measurement of an arc of the meridian. The next measurement of record is that of the astronomers of Almamon in the plains of Mesopotamia (“Encycl. Brit.,” ninth edition, Edinburgh, 1876, Vol. X. p. 177). The first arc of the meridian measured in modern times with an accuracy any way corresponding to the difficulty of the problem was by Snellius, who has given an account of it in his most remarkable work called “Eratosthenes Batavus,” published at Leyden in 1617 (“Ency. Brit.,” ninth edition, Vol. VII. pp. 597, 606, also eighth edition, Vol. I. pp. 617–618; “Cosmos,” London, 1849, Vol. II. p. 544, and Chasles, “Recherches sur l’astronomie ...” in the Comptes Rendus, Vol. XXIII, 1846, p. 851). The biographers of Snellius—Snell van Roijen (Willebrood)—state that he was a very celebrated Dutch astronomer (1591–1626), the discoverer of the law of refraction generally attributed to Descartes (Humboldt, “Cosmos,” 1849, Vol. II. p. 699), the author of a treatise on navigation (“Tiphys Batavus,” Leyde, 1624) after the plan of Edward Wright, and that the method he employed (with imperfect instruments), for measuring an arc of the meridian has since been followed by all scientists (“La Grande Encyclopédie,” Vol. XXX. p. 115; “Nouv. Biog. Gén.,” de Hœfer, Vol. XLIV. p. 83; Montucla, “Hist. des Mathém.,” Vol. II; Larousse, “Dist. Univ.,” Vol. XVI. p. 795; Delambre, “Hist. de l’astronomie moderne,” Vol. II. pp. 92–119; “Ency. Brit.,” Akron, Ohio, 1905, Vol. XXII. p. 211).
References.—Theodor Gomperz, “Greek Thinkers,” translation of L. Magnus, London, 1901, p. 544; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. I. part i. pp. 413–414, and Vol. II. p. 164; “Geographical Journal” for October 1904, p. 411; Wm. Whewell, “Hist. of the Ind. Sc.,” New York, 1858, Vol. I. pp. 145–156; “Journal des Savants” for 1828, 1831, 1843; Alex. Chalmers, “Gen. Biog. Dict.,” London, 1814, Vol. XVII. pp. 505–506.
Hues—Hood—Robert (1553(?)-1632), another of the English sea voyagers named by Gilbert at the end of his first book, was a mathematician and geographer who sailed around the world with Thomas Cavendish and is the author of “Tractatus de Globis ... et eorum usu,” 1593, 1594, 1627, which was written for the especial purpose of being used in connection with a set of globes by Emery Molyneux. This work was shortly afterwards followed by another in the same line entitled “Breviarum totius orbis”—“Breviarum orbis terrarum” (“Dict. of Nat. Biog.,” Vol. XXVIII. p. 156).
Kendall—Kendel—Abram, who has already been mentioned (Gama, A.D. 1497; Norman, A.D. 1576), is called by Gilbert “the expert English navigator.” He was sailing master of the “Bear,” a ship belonging to Sir Robert Dudley (1573–1649), on the voyage which is referred to in Vol. IV of Hakluyt’s “Collection of the early voyages, travels and discoveries,” London, 1811. Therein, at pp. 57 and 58, mention is made of Kendall, who is also favourably alluded to in the very attractive and justly prominent work of Sir Robt. Dudley, published in three volumes at Florence, 1646–1647, 1661, and entitled “Dell Arcano del Mare di Roberto Dudleio, Duca di Nortumbria e Conte di Warwick.”
References.—“Dict. of Nat. Biogr.,” Vol. XVI. p. 125; also Libri’s “Catalogues,” 1859, Vol. I. p. 160, and 1861, Vol. I. p. 268; Vol. II. p. 573, wherein it is said that amongst the Portulani are those of Abraham Kendall and John Diez for the coasts of America and the West Indies.
Kendall is said to have joined, during the year 1595, the last expedition of Francis Drake and to have died the year following. Drake is alluded to in the address by Edward Wright in connection with Thomas Candish (Cavendish), and they are both also mentioned together (De Magnete, Book III. chap. i.), where Gilbert calls Drake “our most illustrious Neptune,” and Cavendish “that other world-explorer.”
References.—David Hume, “History of England,” London, 1822, Vol. V; “Lives of Drake, Candish and Dampier,” Edin., 1831; “Collection of Voyages and Discoveries,” Glasgow, 1792; “English Seamen of the Sixteenth Century,” by James Anthony Froude, New York, 1896, pp. 75–103, detailing Drake’s voyage around the world; “Life of Sir Francis Drake and Account of his Family,” reprinted from the “Biog. Britannica,” 1828; “The Works of John Locke,” London, 1812, Vol. X. pp. 359–512, for the “History of Navigation from its Origin to this Time” (1704), prefixed to “Churchill’s Collection of Voyages,” and embracing the voyages of Stephen Burrough, Sebastian Cabot, Sir Thos. Candish, Christopher Columbus, Sir Francis Drake and Vasco da Gama, as well as the discoveries attributed to Gioia and others; making, for the polarity of needle, special mention of Bochart’s “Geog. Sacra,” p. 716, Purchas’ “Pilgrims,” p. 26 and Fuller’s “Miscellanies,” lib. iv. cap. 19; Franciscus Drakus, 1581, is Epig. 39, Liber Secundus, p. 28 of 1747, Amsterodami ed. of “Epigrammatum Ioan Oweni” (John Owen, 1560–1622, “Dict. of Nat. Biog.,” Vol. XLII. pp. 420–421). At pp. 437 and 444, Vol. I. of “The History of No’ America,” by Alfred Brittain, Philadelphia, 1903, will be found a plate portrait of Sir Francis Drake and the reproduction of a page from “Sir Francis Drake Revived,” originally published in 1626. The latter is “a true relation of foure severall voyages ... collected out of the notes of Sir Francis Drake, Philip Nichols and Francis Fletcher ...”; “The Voyages of the Cabots,” in “Narrative and Critical History of America,” by Justin Winsor, Boston, 1889, Vol. III. pp. 1–59–84 for Drake, Hawkins and Cavendish. “Life of Sir Rob. Dudley ...” by John Temple Leader, Florence, 1895. For Sir Francis Drake and Thos. Candish, consult also Vols. XV and XVI, as per Index, p. 412 of Richard Hakluyt, “The Principal Navigations ...” Edinburgh, 1889; “General Biog. Dict.,” Alex. Chalmers, London, 1813, Vol. XII. p. 305 for Sir Francis Drake and pp. 414–418 for Sir Rob. Dudley.
Lactantius—Lucius Cœlius Firmianus—celebrated orator of Italian descent, called “the Christian Cicero,” died about 325–326 A.D. He was a teacher of rhetoric in Nicomedia, Bithynia, was entrusted by Constantine the Great with the education of his son Crispus Cæsar (“History of Christianity,” Rev. Hy. Hart Milman, London, 1840, Vol. II. p. 384), and became a very extensive writer. Dufresnoy enumerates as many as eighty-six editions of his entire works, besides separate publications of his different treatises, appearing between the years 1461–1465 and 1739; the best editions being given in Vols. X-XI of the “Bibliotheca Patrum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum ...” by Gersdorf (Ephraim Gotthelf), Leipzig, 1842–1844 and in Migne (Jacques Paul) “Patrologiæ,” Vols. VI-VII, 1844. His principal work is the “Divinarum Institutionum,” the third book of which (“De falsa sapientia”) is referred to by Gilbert (De Magnete, Chap. III), when he says that Lactantius, like the most unlearned of the vulgar, or like an uncultured bumpkin, treats with ridicule the mention of antipodes and of a round globe of earth.
Geo. Hakewill, who has already appeared in this “Bibliographical History,” at A.D. 1627, alludes to the above (“Apologie,” Oxford, 1635, lib. iii. p. 281), in manner following: “Yet that which to me seemeth more strange is that those two learned Clearkes, Lactantius (Divin. Inst., lib. iii. cap. 24), and Augustine (De Civitate Dei, I. lib. xvi. cap. 9), should with that earnestnesse deny the being of any antipodes.... Zachary, Bishop of Rome, and Boniface, Bishop of Mentz, led (as it seems), by the authority of these Fathers, went farther herein, condemning one Vergilius, a Bishop of Saltzburg, as an heretique, only for holding that there were antipodes.” Madame Blavatsky (“Isis Unveiled,” Vol. I. p. 526) says: “In 317 A.D. we find Lactantius teaching his pupil Crispus Cæsar, that the earth is a plane surrounded by the sky, which is composed of fire and water, and warning him against the heretical doctrine of the earth’s globular form!”
The following notes concerning the antipodes are likely to prove interesting:
“Pythagoras left no writings—Aristotle speaks only of his school—but Diogenes Laertius in one passage (‘Vitæ,’ VIII. I. Pythag. 25), quotes an authority to the effect that Pythagoras asserted the earth to be spherical and inhabited all over, so that there were antipodes, to whom that is over which to us is under.... Plato makes Socrates say that he took up the work of Anaxagoras, hoping to learn whether the earth was round or flat (‘Phædo,’ 46, Stallb. I, 176).” In Plutarch’s essay, “On the face appearing in the orb of the moon,” one of the characters is lavish in his ridicule of the sphericity of the earth and of the theory of antipodes. (Justin Winsor, “Narrative and Critical History,” Boston, 1889, Vol. I. pp. 3–5, notes; Lucretius, “De Rerum,” V. pp. 1052, etc., and vi. p. 630; Virgil (Publius V. Maro), “Georgics,” I. p. 247; Tacitus (Publius Cornelius), “Germania,” p. 45.)
Speaking of the lower hemisphere or antipodes, as well as of islands of magnetic power drawing vessels on their rocks, Albertus Magnus says, in the book “De Natura Locorum,” contained in his “Philosophus Philosophorum Princeps”: “Perhaps also some magnetic power in that region draws human stones, even as the magnet draws iron.” See the Legends, in Reisch’s—Reysch’s—“Map of the World,” Rome, 1508 (“Christ. Colombus,” by J. B. Thatcher, New York, 1903, Vol. I. pp. 165–166).
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the roundness of the earth and the antipodes were generally recognized. Mention thereof is to be found in the “Trésor” of Brunetto Latini, in the “Divina Commedia,” in the “Convito” (Dante, Opere Minori, Vol. I. p. 93), and in the “Acerba” of Francesco degli Stabili (Cecco d’Ascoli), at ff. 8–11, lib. i. cap. 3; as well as in most cosmographical treatises of the fourteenth century (Libri, Vol. II. p. 197, note).
Cecco D’Ascoli. Last page of the earliest known edition of his “Acerba” Venetia 1476. Printed nineteen times up to and including the edition of 1546. Now in the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, Paris.
Lactantius. “De Divinis Institutionibus.” Page taken from the 1465 edition. In the Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève, Paris.
The passage in Lactantius (lib. iii. cap. 24), begins Ineptum credere. In the 1570 edition, it commences at Chap. XXIII, “Aut est ...” p. 178. In the “Works of Lactantius,” Edinburgh, 1871, Vol. I. chap. xxiv. pp. 196–197, the translator, Wm. Fletcher, says that he thus ridicules the antipodes and the roundness of the earth: “... the rotundity of the earth leads, in addition, to the invention of those suspended antipodes,” whilst, at Vol. II. chap. xxxix. p. 122, Lactantius says again that “about the antipodes, also, one can neither hear nor speak without laughter.”
In “Christian Schools and Scholars,” Augusta Th. Drane, London, 1867, p. 70, Albertus describes the antipodes and the countries they embrace.
Robert Steele, in his “Mediæval Lore,” London, 1893, p. 75, has it: “And fables tell, that there, beyond the antipodes be men that have their feet against our feet.”
At p. 200 of André Pezzani’s “La Pluralité des Existences de l’Ame,” Paris, 1866, he mentions that Cardinal Nicolas De Cusa admits the roundness of the earth, the plurality of worlds, etc.
For antipodes and roundness of the earth see, likewise: Libri, “Hist. des Sc. Mathém.,” Vol. II. pp. 178, 182, note; Ch. W. Shields, “The Final Philosophy,” New York, 1877, p. 46; “Le Journal des Sçavans,” Vol. XXXVI for 1707, p. 510, wherein it is said that Plutarch denied the antipodes, as did both Lactantius and Saint Augustine. Consult, also, the volumes of “Le Journal des Sçavans” for the years 1710 and 1721.
References.—Dupin (André M. J. J.), “Biblioth. des Auteurs Eccles.,” Vol. I. p. 295; Celier (Léonce), “Hist. des Auteurs Sacrés,” Vol. III. p. 387; Schöll (Carl), “Hist. de la Lit. Romaine,” Vol. IV. p. 26; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XXVIII. pp. 611–620; ninth “Encycl. Brit.,” Vol. XIV. pp. 195–196; Lenain de Tillemont, “Hist. Eccles.,” Vol. VI; Fleury (Claude), “Historia Ecclesiastica” (“The Eccles. History from A.D. 400 to A.D. 456”), Vol. I; “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” by Edward Gibbon (Milman), Philad. 1880, Vol. II. p. 248 note; “Anti-Nicene Christian Library,” edited by Drs. Roberts and Donaldson.
Lusitanus, Amatus—Joan Rodrigo Amato—Portuguese physician (1511–1568), is author of several medical essays wherein he advocates the views of Galen and of the Arabian School. His most important work is “Curationum medicinalium centuriæ septem,” and is so named because it is divided into seven parts, each containing a hundred different observations and reports on medical cures, etc. In De Magnete, Book I. chap. i., Gilbert names him amongst authors, like Antonius Musae Brasavolus and Joannes Baptista Montanus, who tell of the efficacy of the loadstone in medicine.
References.—“Thesaurus Literaturæ Botanicæ,” Lipsiæ, 1851, pp. 334–335; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. X. p. 796; “Dict. Hist. de la Médecine,” par N. F. J. Eloy, Mons, 1778, Vol. I. pp. 106–107.
Lynschoten—Linschooten—Jan Huygan van—who, with Richard Hakluyt, we find mentioned by Edward Wright in his Address “to the most learned Mr. William Gilbert,” was a celebrated Dutch navigator (1563–1611) who accompanied Vicente Fonseca, Archbishop of Goa, upon his Eastern trip and first published a relation thereof during the year 1601. He is the author, also, of “Itinerario Voyage ofte Schipvært,” Amsterdam, 1596, 1604, 1605, 1623, and “Itinerarium, ofte Schipvært,” Amsterdam, 1614.
References.—Lautz (G.), “Biog. de J. H. Van L.,” Amst., 1845; Du Boys (Pierre), “Vies des Gouverneurs,” p. 4; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. XXII. p. 299; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. X. p. 542; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. XXXI. p. 303.
Machometes Aractensis. See [Albategnius].
Marbodeus Gallus, surnamed Pelliciarius, who is briefly mentioned twice by Gilbert in De Magnete, Book I. chap. i., was a French writer, son of a merchant (Marbode, Marbœuf) who finally became Bishop of Rennes in 1081, and died at Angers in 1123–1125. He is best known by his poetical works, which were first published in 1524. As has already been said, Marbodeus is supposed to have used the manuscript of Evax-Euace—to make up his own book on precious stones. The latter work is alluded to by J. B. Hauréau in the second of his articles on the Latin MSS. of the Palatine—“Codices Palatini Bibliothecæ Vaticanæ”—wherein the first line is quoted:
“Evax, rex Arabum, fertur scripisse Neroni”
(“Journal des Savants,” Sept. 1887, p. 565, June 1891, p. 372; “Hildeb. et Marbod. Opera,” Col. 1637).
Bertelli quotes, at p. 96 of his “Pietro Peregrino” Memoir, four of the Latin lines, as well as those of Hildeberti, which can be translated as follows:
“The magnet stone is found amongst the Troglodites,
The same stone which India, its mother, sends;
This one is known to be of ferruginous colour
And its nature is to draw iron when near it.”
References.—“The Lapidarium of Marbodus” (with translation of the sixty-one chapters) at pp. 389–417 of “Antique Gems,” by Rev. C. W. King, London, 1866; “Gallia Christiana,” XIV. col. 746; “Hist. Lit. de la France,” Vol. X. p. 343; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. XXIII. p. 15; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. X2. p. 1126; “Biographie Générale,” Vol. XXXIII. pp. 366–367.
Marco Polo. See A.D. 1271–1295, p. [55].
55
Matthæus Silvaticus. See [Silvaticus].
Matthiolus, Petrus Andreas—Pierre André Mattiole—(1500–1577), Italian naturalist and physician, is best known by his Commentary originally published at Venice under the title “Il Dioscoride con gli suoi discorsi” and translated into Latin, 1554, which is said to contain all that was known of medicine and botany up to that time (Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. X. p. 1349; Eloy, “Dict. Hist. de Médecine,” Mons, 1778, Vol. III. pp. 190–193.)
Gilbert tells, in Book I. chap. i. of De Magnete, that Matthiolus, the translator of Dioscorides, “furbishes again the garlic and diamond story, in connection with the loadstone, that he also brings in the fable of Mahomet’s shrine having an arched roof of magnets so that the people might be fooled by the trick of the coffin suspended in air, as though ’twere some divine miracle, and, furthermore, that he compares the attractive virtues of the loadstone, which pass through iron, to the mischief of the torpedo, whose poison passes through bodies and spreads in an occult way.”
Maurolycus—Marulle—Franciscus (1494–1575) was Abbot of Messina and a celebrated geometer. His well-known “Opuscula Mathematica,” Venice, 1575, containing treatises on the sphere, astronomical instruments, etc., was preceded by his great book on Cosmography published during 1543, and he also wrote many other works which will be found enumerated in the Catalogue so ably made up by the Abbé Scina (Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. X. p. 1365; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 201).
Gilbert mentions Franciscus Maurolycus (De Magnete, Book I. chaps. i. and xvii., also Book IV. chaps. i. and xviii.), regarding the variation in the Mediterranean Sea and says that he discusses a few problems regarding the loadstone, adopting the current opinion of others, and that he believes the variation is caused by a certain magnetic island mentioned by Olaus Magnus.
References.—Libri, “Hist. des Sc. Mathém.,” Paris, 1838, Vol III. p. 102; “Nouv. Biog. Gén.” (Hœfer), Vol. XXXIV. p. 428; “Vita del Abate. Maurolico,” Messine, 1613; Nicéron, “Mémoires,” Vol. XXXVII; “Biog. Univ.” (Michaud), Vol. XXVII. p. 352; Tessier (H. A.), “Eloges des hommes Illustres”; “Dict. Univ. du XIXe siècle” (Larousse), Vol. X. p. 1365.
Menelaus (called also Mileus, Milieus, by Apian and by Mersenne), was a celebrated Alexandrian, living end of first century A.D., who, in his brilliant treatment especially of spherical geometry, went considerably beyond all his predecessors. The only work of his, however, that has reached us is a treatise on the sphere in three books, of which the translation was made by Maurolycus and inserted by P. Mersenne in his “Univ. Geometriæ Synopsis,” 1644.
Menelaus is mentioned by Gilbert (De Magnete, Book VI. chaps. viii. and ix.) together with Ptolemy and Machometes Aractensis, who, says he, have held in their writings that the fixed stars and the whole firmament have a forward movement, for they contemplated the heavens and not the earth and knew nothing of magnetic inclination.
References.—Montucla, J. F., “Hist. des Mathém.,” Vol. I. p. 291; Delambre, J. B. J., “Hist. de l’Astron. Moderne,” Vol. II. p. 243.
Merula, Gaudentius, was an Italian savant living early in the sixteenth century, author of “De Gallorum ... antiquitate,” 1536, 1538, 1592, of “Memorabilium” 1546, 1550, 1551, 1556, and of several general histories, etc. Gilbert says (De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.) Merula advises that on a loadstone be graven the image of a bear, when the moon looks to the north, so that, being suspended by an iron thread, it may win the virtue of the celestial Bear.
References.—Cotta (Lazaro Agostino), “Musæo Novarese,” p. 133; Philippo Argellati, “Bibliotheca ... Mediol. ...” Vol. II. pp. 2131–2134; “La Grande Encycl.” Vol. XXIII. p. 732; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XXXV. p. 127.
Montagnana, Bartholommeo, who is briefly alluded to at the end of Book I. chap. xv. of De Magnete, was the head of a well-known family of Italian physicians. He was born about 1400, practised medicine at Bologna and Padua, and wrote “Consilia Medica, edita Paduæ anno 1436,” also “De Balneis Patav.; de compositione et dosi medicamentorum,” the latter appearing at Padua in 1556.
References.—Papadopoli (Nicolaus Comnenus), “Historia Gymnasii Patavavini,” I; Manget (Jean Jacques), “Bibliotheca Scriptorum Medicorum”; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. XXXVI. p. 34.
Montanus, Arias—Benedictus (1527–1598), eminent Spanish Catholic divine and orientalist, member of the Council of Trent, is best known by his Polyglott Bible—Biblia Regia or Biblia Plantiniana—though he is the author of many works, mostly religious, published during the years 1569, 1571, 1572, 1574 and 1593. Upon completing the last of the eight folio volumes of the Biblia, he was offered, but declined, a bishopric by King Philip II, at whose request he had undertaken the work and who, later on, rewarded him with a liberal pension and other emoluments.
He is but briefly referred to by Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.
References.—Antonio (Nicolas), “Bibl. Hisp. Nova”; D. Nicol. M. Serrano, “Appendice al Dicc. Univ.,” Madrid, 1881, Vol. XIV. p. 407; “Diccionario Enciclopedico Hispano-Americano,” Barcelona, 1887, Vol. II. p. 596; Loumyer (C.), “Vie de B. A. Montano,” 1842; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. III. pp. 145–146; Rosenmüeller (Ernst Friedrich Carl), “Handbuch für die Literatur,” Vol. III. p. 296; Colomiès (Paul), “Italia et Hispania Orientalis,” p. 241.
Montanus—Da Monte—Joannes Baptista (1488–1551), already mentioned in connection with Lusitanus, was a Professor of Medicine at the Padua University and regarded as one of the most celebrated physicians of his day. He is the author of many valuable works, including “Metaphrasis Summaria,” 1551, “De Differentiis Medicamentorum,” 1551; “In Nonum librum; Rhazès ad Almansorem Expositio,” 1554, 1562.
References.—Tiraboschi (Girolamo), “Storia della Letteratura Italiana”; Facciolati (Jacopo), “Fasti Gymnasii Patavini,” par. III; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. XXXVI. pp. 108–109.
Myrepsus—Myrepsius—Nicolaus, Greek physician, living in the thirteenth century, became very prominent in Rome as a great student of the Arabic writers. He is the author, more particularly, of a medical treatise, divided into forty-eight sections containing as many as two thousand six hundred and fifty-six formulæ, which was translated by Leonard Fuchs under the title “Nic. Myr. Alex. medicamentorum opus,” Basle, 1549, and frequently reprinted, whilst another translation was made by Nicolas de Reggio, who, like Matthæus Silvaticus, was a physician at Salerno and who called it “Nic. Alex. liber de compositione medicamentorum,” Ingoldstadt, 1541. The last-named work has, by some, been confounded with the “Antidotarium” of Nicolas Præpositas.
Myrepsus is spoken of by Gilbert, Book I, at end of chap. xiv. De Magnete treating of the medicinal virtue of the loadstone. Nicolaus, says he, puts into his “divine plaster” a good deal of loadstone, as do the Augsburg doctors in their “black plaster” for fresh wounds and stabs; because of the exsiccating effect of the loadstone without corrosion, it becomes an efficacious and useful remedy. Paracelsus, in like manner, and for the same end, makes loadstone an ingredient of his plaster for stab wounds.
References.—Fabricius (Johann Albert), “Bibliotheca Græca,” Vol. X. p. 292; Vol. XII. pp. 4, 346; Kastner (Christian Wilhelm), “Medicin. Gelehrten-Lexikon,” p. 577; Freind (John), “Hist. of Physic,” Vol. I. p. 464; Hœfer (M. F.), “Hist. de la Chimie,” Vol. I; Sprengel (Kurt Polycarp Joachim), “Geschichte der Arzneikunde,” Vol. II. p. 334; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. XI. p. 744; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. XXXVII. p. 92.
Nicander of Colophon, whom Gilbert mentions twice in his first book, chapter ii., “On the loadstone, what it is: its discovery”—was a Greek poet and physician who lived second century B.C. and of whom comparatively little is known. Only two of his many reported works remain: these are treated of at pp. 917–920, Vol. XXXVII of the “Biographie Générale,” where can likewise be found the titles of all the others according to Fabricius (Johann Albert), “Bibliotheca Græca,” Harles edition, Vol. IV. p. 345).
References.—Haller (Albrecht von), “Bibliotheca Botanica”; Charlant (Johann Ludwig), “Handb. ... die Æltere Medicin”; G. A. Pritzel, “Thesaur. Lit. Bot.,” 1851, pp. 210–211.
Nicetas—Hicetas—of Syracuse, a Pythagorician of the fourth century B.C., native of Chonæ in Phrygia (the old Colossæ of St. Paul) alluded to by Gilbert in conjunction with Heraclides of Pontus, was doubtless the first, according to Diog. Laert (VIII, 85), to teach the earth’s rotation. Humboldt remarks (“Cosmos,” 1860, Vol. II. p. 109) that Nicetas, Theophrastus and Heraclides Ponticus appear to have had a knowledge of the rotation of the earth upon its axis; but Aristarchus of Samos, and more particularly Seleucus of Babylon, who lived one hundred and fifty years after Alexander, first arrived at the knowledge that the earth not only rotated on its axis, but also moved around the Sun as the centre of the whole planetary system. Cicero, “Academica,” lib. iv. cap. 39: “Nicetas of Syracuse,” as Theophrastus says, “believed that the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars—in brief, all things above—stand still; alone, the earth, of all things in the world, moves. Because it is rapidly turning and twisting upon its axis, it gives the effect of the whole sky moving, and that the earth stands.”
References.—Fabricius (Johann Albert), “Biblioth. Græca,” Vol. I. p. 847; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. XXIV. p. 642; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. XX. p. 63; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 214; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book VI. chap. iii.
Pedro Nuñez, “Traitte ... de la Navigation.”
Page 9 verso of Ms. Fr. No. 1338, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Nuñez, Pedro—Nonius, Petrus—was a celebrated Portuguese mathematician (1492–1577) who, after his voyage to the East Indies, became chief cosmographer of the kingdom, and made a great many improvements in astronomical instruments, the merits of which were recognized notably by Tycho Brahé and by Dr. Halley. Of all his books, the most important are the “Tratado da sphera ...” 1537; “De arte atque ratione navigandi,” 1546; “Opera Mathematica,” 1566 (containing many treatises on navigation, instruments, sailing cards, etc.); “Annotaçoes à Sphera de Sacro Bosco,” 1567[65]; “Instrumenta Artis Navigandi,” 1592. Stockler observes that the last-named treatise, which is an amplification of the 1537 “Tratatos das cartas de marear,” would alone justify placing Nonius among the most distinguished geometricians of his time.
References.—Fernandez de Navarette, “Recherches ... sciences nautiques” (tr. M. D. de Mofras), Paris, 1839; Varnhagen (Francisco Adolfo de), “Historia geral do Brazil”; Machado (Barb.), “Biblioth. Lusitana”; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Générale,” 1887, Vol. I. part i. pp. 216, 574–575, and part ii. p. 1222; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book IV. chap. viii.; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. XXV. p. 140; “Biographie Générale,” Vol. XXXVIII. pp. 361–363; “Estromento de Sombras” of Pedro Nuñez, copied in Dr. G. Hellmann’s “Neudrucke,” 1898, No. 10; J. F. Montucla, “Hist. des Mathém. ...” (Supplément), Vol. II. pp. 656–659, for names of many other authors of treatises on navigation. For Sacro Bosco: “Dict. of National Biography,” edited by Sidney Lee, London, 1891, Vol. XXVII. p. 217; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. IX. pp. 934–935; Græsse (J. G. T.), “Trésor des livres rares,” Vol. VI. pp. 209–211; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XXVI. p. 555; Fabricius (Johann Albert), “Bibliotheca Latina Mediæ ... Ætatis”; Delambre (J. B. J.), “Astron. du Moyen-Age,” Vol. II; “Hist. Litter. de la France,” Vol. XIX. p. 1; “Ency. Brit.” ninth edition, Vol. XXI. pp. 140, 543.
Oribasius, Sardianus, was an eminent Greek physician, born about A.D. 325 at Sardes, the capital of Lydia. Gilbert (De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.) alludes to Chapter XIII of Oribasius’ “De Facultate Metallicorum,” which is embraced in one of the only three authentic treatises of his that have reached us, the first being part of a compilation relative to seventy medical books, whilst the second is a Synopsis, or rather an abridgment, of the first, and the third is called Euporistes, or manual of practical medicine.
References.—“Dict. Hist. de la Médecine,” par N. F. J. Eloy, Mons, 1778, Vol. III. 419–422; Eunapius, “Vitæ Philos. et Soph.”; Sprengel (Kurt Polycarp Joachim), “Hist. de la Médecine”; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. XXV. p. 561; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XXXVIII. pp. 786–789; Fabricius (Johann Albert), “Bibliotheca Græca,” Vols. IX. p. 451; XII. p. 640, and XIII. p. 353; Linden (Joannes Antonides van der) “... de scriptis medicis,” Amst., 1651, pp. 476–477.
Orpheus, to whom Gilbert alludes (De Magnete, Book I. chap. ii.; Book II. chap. iii. and Book V. chap. xii.) is supposed to be the Vedic Ribhu. Orpheus is a very important figure in Greek legend, whose existence is denied by Aristotle, but to whom are attributed many writings such as the Argonautica, Lithica, Bacchica, Orphica, etc.
References.—“La Grande Encyclopédie,” Vol. XXV. pp. 607–608; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. XXXVIII. pp. 868–877; “English Cyclopædia,” Vol. IV. pp. 592–593.
Oviedus, Gonzalus—Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdès—was one of the earliest historiographers of the New World (1478–1557), whose principal work—“Summario de las Indias Occidentales,” printed 1525—Gilbert says (De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.) contains earliest mention of the fact that in the meridian of the Azores there is no variation.
References.—The complete edition of Oviedus’s writings which appeared in 1850; “Thesaurus Liter. Botanicæ,” 1851, p. 218; Ticknor (George), “Hist. of Span. Lit.,” 1849.
Parmenides, an ancient philosopher, native of Southern Italy, living in fifth century A.D., and the most prominent of the followers of the Eleatic School (founded by him and Xenophanes), has embodied a brief summary of his tenets in a work called “Nature,” of which an able analyzation is to be found in the ninth “Encycl. Brit.,” Vol. XVIII. pp. 315–317. Gilbert’s only allusion to him is at Book V. chap. xii. of De Magnete, where he says that the ancient philosophers, as Thales, Heraclides, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Parmenides, Plato and the Platonists—nor Greek philosophers alone, but also the Egyptian and the Chaldean—all seek in the world a certain universal soul, and declare the whole world to be endowed with a soul.
Parmenides has also left fragments of a poem on astronomy which was published by Scaliger.
References.—Ritter (Dr. Heinrich), “Hist. de la Philos.” (tr. M. Tissot), Vol. I; Fabricius (Johann Albert), “Biblioth. Græca,” Vol. I. p. 798; “Diog. Lært.,” IX. 23; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 220; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. XII. p. 307; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XXXIX. pp. 227–230; Dr. Friedrich Ueberweg, “Hist. of Philosophy,” New York, 1885, Vol. I. pp. 54–57; Paul Tannery, “Pour l’Histoire de la Science Hellène,” Paris, 1887, Chap. IX. pp. 218–246.
Paulum Venetum. See [Marco Polo, at A.D. 1271–1295.]
Paulus Venetus. See [Sarpi, Pietro at A.D. 1623].
Philolaus, the Pythagorean, was born at Crotona and flourished about 374 B.C. He was a disciple of Archytas, was the first known writer on the subject of physics, and it is said his writings were so highly esteemed that Plato employed three books of Philolaus for the composition of his “Timæus.” Gilbert says (De Magnete, Book VI. chap. iii.) that Philolaus, whom he calls an illustrious mathematician and a very experienced investigator of nature, would have the earth to be one of the stars and to turn in an oblique circle around the fire, just as the sun and moon have their paths.
In the “Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Mathematik,” Leipzig, 1899, Vol. IX. pp. 275–292, will be found “Note sur le charactère de l’astronomie Ancienne,” by Paul Mansion, explaining the seven systems of Ancient Astronomy and showing the centre of the world to be, according to Philolaus, a central fire, or vital flame of the entire planetary system; whilst Eudoxus,[66] Ptolemæus and Tycho Brahé believed it to be the earth immovable; Heraclides of Pontus asserted that it was the earth rotating from West to East; and both Aristarchus and Copernicus maintained that it was the Sun.
References.—Fabricius (Johann Albert), “Bibliotheca Græca”; Rose’s “New Gen. Biog. Dict.,” London, 1850, Vol. XI. p. 102; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 224; Chaignet (Antelme Edouard), “Pythagore et la Philosophie Pythagoricienne,” 1873; Humboldt, “Cosmos,” 1859, Vol. I. p. 65; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. XII. p. 823.
Philostratus, Flavius, to whom Gilbert alludes briefly at Chap. XXXVIII. book ii. of his De Magnete as affirming that the stone pantarbes attracts to itself other stones, was an eminent Greek sophist, born at Lemnos between 170 and 180 A.D., whose only writings known to us are accounts of the lives of Apollonius of Tyana[67] and of the Sophists. These were first published, Paris, 1608, and a part thereof have found a good translator in M. A. Chassang, who entitled his book “Le Merveilleux dans l’Antiquité,” Paris, 1862.
References.—Letronne (Jean Antoine), “Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscrip.,” N. S., Vol. X. p. 296; Gibbon (Edward), “Roman Empire,” Vol. III. p. 241; Ritter (Dr. Heinrich), “Hist. de la Philos. Ancienne,” Vol. XII. chap. vii.; Fabricius (Johann Albert), “Bibliotheca Græca,” Vol. V. p. 540; Miller, in the “Journal des Savants,” 1849; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XL. pp. 3–5; ninth “Encycl. Britan.,” Vol. XVIII. pp. 796–797.
Plancius, Peter, who is alluded to in Edward Wright’s address to Gilbert, was a Dutch theologian and astronomer—“a most diligent student, not so much of geography as of magnetic observations”—(1552–1622), the first to recommend the Dutch expeditions to the Indies and who prepared the necessary instructions and maps to ensure their success. His universal map has been alluded to at the Blundeville entry, A.D. 1602. In the article on Dr. Kohl’s Collection of Early Maps (“Harv. Univ. Bull.,” Vol. III. p. 305) allusion is made to a map of America by Peter Plancius, 1594, which is spoken of by Blundeville in his “Exercises” as “lately put forth in the yeere of our Lord 1592.”
References.—Wagenaar (Jan), “Histoire de la Hollande,” Vol. IX. p. 140, and also “Histoire d’Amsterdam,” Vol. I. p. 407, and Vol. III. p. 219; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XL. p. 403; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. XII. p. 1129.
Plotinus of Alexandria, the father of Neoplatonism, lived 205–270 A.D. His writings were left to the editorial care of Porphyry, who arranged them in six divisions, each of which was subdivided into nine books, or Enneads. Plotinus maintains that men belong to two worlds, that of the senses and that of pure intelligence, and it depends upon ourselves as to which one we will direct most our thoughts and finally belong. The fire-firmament of Plotinus is alone referred to by Gilbert in the third chapter of the last book of De Magnete.
References.—“Neoplatonism,” and works cited in the Encyclopædias, also the works on Plotinus, especially by Kirchner (Carl), 1854, by Brenning (Emil), “Die Lehre ... Plotin ...” (1864), and by Kleist (E. C. von) (1884); Plotini, “Operum Philosophicorum Omnium,” Basilæ, 1580, Liber III, Ennead II, p. 115; Kingsley (Charles), “Alexandria and her Schools,” Camb., 1854; Grucker (Emile), “De Plotinianis,” Paris, 1866; Lewes (George Henry), “History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte,”[68] London, 1867; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. XII. p. 1198; “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XL. pp. 487–494; Dr. Fried. Ueberweg, “Hist. of Philos.,” tr. of Geo. S. Morris, 1885, Vol. I. pp. 240–252; Bouillet (Marie Nicolas), “Les Ennéades de Plotin,” 1857.
Ptolemæus, Claudius, the great Egyptian mathematician, geographer and astronomer who flourished in middle of the second century after Christ, is frequently alluded to throughout four of the books of De Magnete, and Gilbert makes direct reference to the “Opus Quadripartitum,” “Cosmographia” and “Geographia.” The last is, however, the work with which Ptolemy’s name is most prominently connected. It was the standard up to the time of the marine discoveries of the fifteenth century, and has been translated and published into editions too numerous to mention here.
It may be added that the “Geographia Universalis” issue of 1540 is the first to embrace a proper map bearing the name “America,” and that, to the identical account of Columbus which originally appeared in the 1522 and 1525 editions, Servetus appended a few words concerning the absurdity of putting the claims of Americus Vespuccius before those of the real discoverer.[69] The first book in which the name America was formally given to the new Continent is entitled “Globus Mundi,” published 1507–1510, and attributed to Henricus Loritus—de Glaris—Glareanus. The suggestion of the name had, indeed, been made by the geographer Waldseemüller (Martinus Hylacomylus) of Freiburg, in his “Cosmographiæ Introductio,” published at St. Dié, in Lorraine, April 25, 1507, but the “Globus Mundi” was first to put it into effect.
The Waldseemüller suggestion above alluded to is thus translated: “And the fourth part of the world, having been discovered by Americus, it may be called Amerige; that is, the land of Americus, or America.” In 1901, Prof. Jos. Fischer, of Beldkirch, discovered, at Wolfegg Castle in Würtemberg, two huge maps, measuring together eight feet by four and a half feet, which proved to be those of Waldseemüller, of which all trace had been lost for centuries. They were reproduced in London, during the year 1903, and were thus alluded to by one of the writers at the time:
“Ever since Humboldt first called attention to the ‘Cosmographiæ Introductio’ no lost maps have ever been sought for so diligently as those of Waldseemüller. It is not too much to say that the honour of being their lucky discoverer has long been considered as the highest possible prize to be obtained amongst students in the field of ancient cartography. But until the summer of 1901, although many copies of the book are known in various editions, no specimen of either the globe or map has ever been seen or heard of in modern times. Some historians and geographers have even gone so far as to state definitely that they were never issued at all, and the book published alone. Others have held that they never got beyond their manuscript form, while some have contended that they were actually issued with the book, but, being separate, had become lost in the course of time. The writers holding this last view have been brought to their belief by tracing the supposed influence of the St. Dié cartography in later maps, and these authorities have been proved to be right by Prof. Fischer’s discovery. The expectation that the missing map would be found to bear the name of AMERICA on the newly discovered Western Lands has also been duly realized.”
References.—“Le nom d’Amérique et les grandes mappemondes ... de 1507 et 1516,” in “Annales de Géographie,” 15 Janvier 1904, pp. 29–36; “History of North America,” by Alfred Brittin, Philadelphia, 1903, at p. 293, Vol. I of which is a fine reproduction of a sheet from Waldseemüller’s “Cosmographiæ Introductio” published in May 1507, showing the passage that first suggested calling the new world by the name of America; “Martinus Hylacomylus Waltzemüller, ses ouvrages et ses collaborateurs, par un géographe bibliophile” (M. d’Avezac), Paris, 1867; “Geographical Journal,” Vol. XIX. pp. 201–209, 389; Humboldt, “Examen Critique,” Paris, 1836, Vol. I. p. 22; also Vol. IV and Vol. V passim; “Amerigo Vespucci,” Vol. II. pp. 129–179 of Justin Winsor’s “Narrative and Critical History of America,” Boston, 1889. See also the geography and maps of Loritus (Henricus), Glareanus, in the “Geographical Journal” for June 1905; “Le Journal des Savants” for December 1830; April and May 1831; August 1840; October and December 1843; July 1847; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. I. part i. pp. 420–424, 684–688, and part. ii. p. 1390; also Vol. II. p. 231.
Puteanus, Guilielmus—Dupuis, and not Dupuy—French physician of the sixteenth century, professor at the University of Grenoble, is the author of “De Medicamentorum,” Lyons, 1552, which was reproduced with a treatise of Cousinot under the title “De Occultis Pharmacorum” two years later. To Puteanus, Gilbert alludes (De Magnete, Book I. chap. i. and Book II. chap. iii.) saying that he discusses the loadstone briefly and crudely and deduces its power, not from a property of its whole substance unknown to any one and incapable of demonstration (as Galen held and, after him, nearly all physicians), but from “its substantial form as from a prime motor and self-motor, and as from its own most potent nature and its natural temperament, as the instrument which the efficient form of its substance, or the second cause, which is without a medium, employs in its operations. So the loadstone attracts iron not without a physical cause, and for the sake of some good.” But nothing like this, adds Gilbert, is done in other bodies by any substantial form unless it be the primary one, and this Puteanus does not recognize.
References.—“Biographie Générale,” Vol. XV. p. 367; Larousse, “Dict. Universel,” Vol. VI. p. 1420.
Pythagoras, celebrated Greek philosopher (569–470 B.C.) who, as Hegel says, “First made thought and not sense the criterion of the essence of things.” He is said to have travelled widely and, according to one of his biographers, he learned geometry from the Egyptians, arithmetic from the Phœnicians, astronomy from the Chaldæans, religious formulæ and ethical maxims from the Magians, and obtained other scientific and religious knowledge from the Arabians and the Indians. He settled finally at Crotona in Lower Italy, during the year 529 B.C. and there established the school that has made him famous.
To a complete exposition of the Pythagorean school or sect, the “Biographie Générale” devotes, in Vol. XLI, twenty-four full columns, whilst the notices of the Pythagoreans which Aristotle gives in the first book of the “Metaphysics” contain about all that is of importance in their theory.
According to the report of Philolaus of Croton, the Pythagoreans taught the progressive movement of the non-rotating Earth, its revolution around the focus of the world (the central fire, hestia), while Plato and Aristotle imagined that the Earth neither rotated nor advanced in space, but that, fixed to one central point, it merely oscillated from one side to the other. Humboldt, from whose “Cosmos” the above is taken, further says that the figurative and poetical myths of the Pythagorean and Platonic pictures of the universe were as changeable as the fancy from which they emanated, and he cites Plato, who, in the Phædrus, adopts the system of Philolaus, whilst, in the Timæus, he accepts the system according to which the earth is immovable in the centre and which was subsequently called the Hipparchian or Ptolemaic.[70]
References.—Ueberweg (Dr. Friedrich), “History of Philosophy,” tr. of Geo. S. Morris, New York, 1885, Vol. I. pp. 42–49; Butler (William Archer), “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy”; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book II. chap. ii., and Book V. chap. xii.; Chas. Rollin, “Ancient History,” London, 1845, Vol. I. pp. 383–384; Iamblichus’ “Life of Pythagoras,” translated from the Greek by Thos. Taylor; “Dict. des Sc. Philos.,” Paris, 1852, Vol. V. pp. 297–312; Ritter (Dr. Heinrich), “History of Ancient Philosophy,” London, 1846, Vol. I. pp. 326–357; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. II. p. 232; Roeth (Eduard), “Geschichte,” 1846–1858; Cantor (Moritz), “Geschichte der Mathematik,” Leipzig, 1894, Vol. I. pp. 137–201; Grote (George), “Greece,” Vol. IV. pp. 525–551; Chaignet (Antelme Edouard), “Pythag. et la Phil. Pyth.,” 1873.
Reinholdus, Erasmus. See [Erasmus].
Rhazès—Razes—Rasis—Rasaeus—Abu-Bekr Al-Rázi—Muhammad Ibn Zakariya—one of the most famous of the ancient Arabian physicians, is the author of “De simplicibus, ad Almansorem,” the ten books of which contain a complete system of medicine.[71] In Book I. chap. xv. of De Magnete, reference is made to Chap. LXIII. liber ix. of Rhazès’ work, entitled “De Curatione omnium partium,” wherein an electuary of iron slag, or of prepared steel filings, is spoken of as a highly commended and celebrated remedy for dried-up liver, the Arabs believing that iron opens the spleen and the liver.
References.—“Journal des Sçavans,” Vol. LXXVI for 1725, p. 220, and Vol. LXXXV for 1728, p. 412; “Journal des Savants” for February 1892, pp. 118–126 passim, and for March 1892 (“l’Alchimie de Razes”), pp. 190–195, also for May 1851, p. 288, giving names of all the leading alchemists; “Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Mathematik,” Vol. VI., Leipzig, 1892, pp. 43–44, 76; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. XIII. p. 747; Freind (John), “History of Physic”; Eloy (N. F. J.), “Dict. Hist. de la Médecine,” Vol. IV. pp. 56–61; Haller (Albrecht von), “Bibliotheca Botanica”; Sprengel (Kurt Polycarp Joachim), “Hist. de la Médecine.”
Ruellius, Joannes—Jean Ruel—(1479–1537), was a French physician, attached to the court of François I—, who wrote a Commentary on Dioscorides, published 1516, 1529, 1543, as well as several medical treatises. The one by which he is best known is the “De Natura Stirpium,” Paris, 1536, reprinted four times at Basle and at Venice, from which Gilbert extracts (De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.) the mention by Ruellius that the loadstone’s force, when failing or dulled, is restored by the blood of a buck.
References.—“Sc. de Ste Marthe, Elogia Doct. Gallorum”; Eloy (N. F. J.), “Dict. hist. de la Méd.”; “Biographie Générale,” Vol. XLII. pp. 864–865.
Rueus, Franciscus—François de la Rüe—(1520–1585), Flemish naturalist who long practised in his native country and the author of “De Gemmis aliquot ...” 1547, 1565, which was printed, with the book on “Philosophy of Vallesius” in 1588, 1595, 1652, also at Franckfort in 1596, and together with the “Similitudines ac Parabolæ” of Lev. Lemnius in 1626. Gilbert’s only reference to him is briefly made in the opening chapter of De Magnete.
References.—Valère, André, “Bibl. Belgica,” p. 240; Mercklein (Georg Abraham), “Lindenius renovatus,” 1686, pp. 297, 304; Le P. Lelong, “Bibl. Sacr.,” p. 935; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. XXIX. p. 702.
Scaliger, Julius Cæsar (1484–1558), a famous Italian scholar who practised medicine at Verona until 1525 and afterwards devoted his time to writing on various subjects, as shown in the “Biographie Générale,” Vol. XLIII. pp. 446–450. Of the works cited in latter, should be extracted, as best known: “In Aristotelis ... de plantis,” 1556; “In Theophrasti, de causis plantarum,” 1566; “De Subtilitate ad Cardanum,” 1557, 1560, 1576, 1592, 1634.
It is to the last-named important work that Gilbert frequently alludes (De Magnete, Book I. chaps. i. xvi; Book II. chaps. i. iii. iv. xxxviii.; Book iv. chap. i.). He says, more particularly, that Scaliger strays far from truth when, in treating of magnetic bodies, he speaks of diamond attracting iron, also that he keeps the loadstone and iron in bran to protect them from the injurious action of the atmosphere, and that Scaliger, in order to explain the difference of variation for change of locality, brings in a celestial cause to himself unknown, and terrestrial loadstones that have nowhere been discovered; and seeks the cause not in the “siderite mountains,” but in that force which formed them, to wit, in the part of the heaven which overhangs that northern point.
References.—Teissier (H. A.), “Eloges des hommes illustres”; Coupé (Jean Marie Louis), “Soirées littéraires,” Vol. XV; Nicéron (Jean Pierre), “Mémoires,” XXIII; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. VIII. pp. 692–693.
Silvaticus—Sylvaticus—Matthæus Moretus, well-known Italian savant living in 1344, physician to the King of Naples, one of the professors at Salerno,[72] and author of “Matth. Silvatici, medic. de Salerno, Liber cibalis et Medicinalis Pandectarum ...” originally published at Naples, 1474. This work, dedicated to Ferdinand, King of Sicily, is an Encyclopædic Dictionary and one of the most important books we have of the history of medicine in the Middle Ages, and at beginning of the Italian Renaissance. The citations made by Græsse (“Trésor,” Vol. VI. p. 406), state that Silvaticus was the owner of a private botanical garden at Salerno (Chap. CXCVII. s.v. “Colcasia” of the Opus Pandectarum), and allude to Thos. Frognall Dibdin’s “Bibliotheca Spenceriana,” Vol. IV. London, 1815, pp. 24–25, and Van der Meersch, “Rech. sur les impr. Belges,” etc., Vol. I. pp. 384, etc.
References.—“Repertoire et sources historiques du Moyen Age,” par l’abbé Ulysse, Joseph Chevalier, Paris, 1877–1886, p. 2089; Argellati (Philippo), “Bibliotheca Mediolan.,” 1745; Tiraboschi (Girolamo), “Storia della Letteratura Italiana,” 1807, Vol. I. p. 275; Sbaralea (Joannes Hyacinthus), “Supplementum ... Scriptores ordinis,” 1806, p. 529; Tafuri (Giovanni Bernardino), “Scrittori ... di Napoli,” 1749, Vol. II. pp. 67–70; “Thesaur. Lit. Bot.,” 1851, p. 185; Brunet (Jacques Charles), “Manuel du Libraire,” 1864, Vol. V. pp. 387–388; Watt (Rob.), “Bibliotheca Britannica,” Edinburgh, 1824, Vol. II. p. 856 h; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. XIV. p. 1308; Paul Lacroix, “Science and Literature of the Middle Ages,” p. 117; Ludovico Hain, “Repertorium Bibliographicorum,” Vol. II. part ii. Nos. 15192–15202, pp. 375–376; Gilbert, De Magnete, Book I. chap. i.
Solinus, Caius Julius—Grammaticus—a Roman writer who lived in latter part of the second century, the author of a compilation in fifty-seven chapters which contains a sketch of the world as it was known to him, but which is supposed to have been taken entirely from Pliny’s “Natural History.” It was originally published under the title of “Collectanea rerum mirabilium,” the second edition being headed “Polyhistor.” This was one of the earliest known printed books, having first appeared at Venice in 1473, and it has since been translated into many foreign languages, notably during 1600, 1603, and 1847.
The most important of the three references Gilbert makes to Solinus is found in De Magnete, Book II. chap. xxxviii., where it is said that Pliny and Julius Solinus tell of the stone cathochites, affirming that it attracts flesh and that it holds one’s hand, as loadstone holds iron and amber holds chaff. But that, says he, is due solely to its viscosity and its natural glutinousness, for it adheres most readily to a warm hand.
References.—Dodwell (Henry, the elder), “Dissertationes Cyprianicæ”; Moller (D. W.); C. J. Solino, in “Biog. Gén.,” Vol. XLIV. pp. 153–154; “La Grande Encycl.,” Vol. XXX. p. 232.
Thebit Ben-Kora—Thabit Ibn Corrah—Abū Thabit Ibn Kurrah—Tebioth ben Chorezen (Houzeau, No. 1130), one of the most brilliant and accomplished scholars produced by the Arabs (836–901), called by Delambre “Le Ronsard de l’Astronomie,” is the author of many treatises on mathematics, and on other scientific subjects, the mention of the titles of which take up nearly two folio pages of Casiri’s “Catalogue.” Especially is he shown in latter as having translated into Arabic the chief works of Archimedes, Apollonius, Euclid and Ptolemy also the Physics and Analytics of Aristotle and many of the works of Hippocrates and Galen.
Incidentally it may be added that geometry, to which Thebit Ben-Kora gave particular attention, was named by the Arabs handassah, and that the Tahrir Hendassiat contains: the explication, the data and the optics, of Euclid, the syntaxis magna of Ptolemy, the spherics of Theodosius and his book concerning night and day, the spherics of Menelaus, the movable sphere of Autolycus, the ascendants or horoscopes of Asclepius, a treatise of Aristarchus on the discs of the sun and moon, the lemmas or theorems of Archimedes, also his treatise on the sphere and cylinder, the conics of Apollonius and Thebit Ben-Kora, a treatise of Theodosius on the positions, or quiescence, of bodies, etc., etc. (D’Herbelot, art. Handassah, and Aklides. See also, for origin of geometry, etc. “A Short History of Greek Mathem.,” Jas. Gow, Cambridge, 1884, pp. 123–134.)
The allusions by Gilbert are to be found, Book III. chap. i., and Book VI. chap. ix. of De Magnete, in which latter it is said that, Thebitius, in order to establish a law for the great inequalities in the movements of the stars, held that the eighth sphere does not advance by continued motion from west to east, but that it has a sort of tremulous motion, “a movement of trepidation.”
References.—“Hist. de la Médecine Arabe,” par Dr. Lucien Leclerc, Paris, 1876, Vol. I. pp. 168–172; Dreyer (J.), “Tycho Brahe,” 1890, pp. 354–356; Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Gén.,” Vol. I. part i. pp. 466–467, 702; “History of Mathematics,” Walter W. Rouse Ball, London, 1888, p. 153; “Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Mathematik,” Vol. VI, Leipzig, 1892, pp. 25–26.
Themistius of Paphlagonia—surnamed Euphrades—was a distinguished Greek orator and writer (about 315–390), whose philosophical works consist of commentaries in the form of paraphrases on some of Aristotle’s writings, one being upon the work “On Heaven,” and the other upon the twelfth book of the “Metaphysics.” The paraphrases were first published by Hermolaus Barbarus in 1481. Gilbert’s only reference is briefly made in De Magnete, Book II. chap. iv.
References.—Schöll (Carl), “Geschichte d. G. Litt.,” Vol. III. pp. 96, 388, or “Hist. de la Litt. Grecque,” Vol. VI. p. 141; Vol. VII. p. 121; Photius, cod. LXXIV; Fleury, “Hist. Eccles.”; Tillemont, “Hist. des Emp.,” Vols. IV and V; Suidas, art. “Themistius”; E. Baret, “De Themistio sophista ...” Paris, 1853; Brucker, “Hist. Crit. de la Phil.,” Vol. II. p. 484.
Zoroaster—Zarath ’ustra—Zerdusht—founder of the religious system contained in the Zend-Avesta (religious book of the Parsees, fire worshippers), is said to have been a native of Bactria, near the modern Balkh, and to have lived about 589–513 B.C. That he was an historical personage, equally with Buddha, Confucius and Mahomet, it is now scarcely possible to doubt.
His able biographer in the English Cyclopædia, London, 1868, Vol. VI. pp. 946–948, states that Zoroaster was a great astrologer and magician, and it is said at p. 95 of Mr. A. V. W. Jackson’s admirable work on Zoroaster, published in New York, 1899, that some of the original Nasks of the Avesta are reported to have been wholly scientific in their contents, and that the Greeks even speak of books purported to be by Zoroaster treating of physics, of the stars and of precious stones.
Zoroaster is merely named by Gilbert in manner shown at the Hermes Trismegistus entry.
References.—“Life of Zoroaster,” prefixed to Anquetil du Perron’s “Zend-Avesta,” Paris, 1771; Pastoret (Claude Emmanuel J. P. de), “Zoroaster, Confucius et Mahomet comparés,” 1787; Hyde (Thomas), “Historia ... Veterum Persarum ...” Oxford, 1760; “Zend-Avesta, Ouvrage de Zoroastre,” 2 vols. Paris, 1771; Martin-Haug (I.), “Essays,” Bombay, 1862; Malcolm (Sir John), “History of Persia,” 1815; Darmesteter, “Ormazd et Ahriman,” Paris, 1877; Spiegel (Friedrich), “Erânische Alterthumskunde,” Leipzig, 1871–1878; Chas. Rollin, “Ancient History,” London, 1845, Vol. I. pp. 234–235, 237; Ritter (Dr. Heinrich), “History of Ancient Philosophy,” London, 1846, Vol. I. p. 52; “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Edward Gibbon (Milman), Philad., 1880, Vol. I. pp. 229–230, notes, and, for abridgment of his theology, pp. 231–234; also the Bury ed., London, 1900, Vol. I. pp. 197–198, 456–457; Vol. V. p. 487; “Classical Studies in Honour of Hy. Drisler,” New York, 1894, pp. 24–51; “The Fragments of the Persika of Ktesias,” by John Gilmore, London, 1888, pp. 29–36, 95; “The Great Monarchies of the Ancient Western World,” by Geo. Rawlinson, London, 1865, Vol. I. p. 195; Vol. III. pp. 93, 98, 105, 127, 135–139, 164; Vol. IV. pp. 110, 333; “Essai Historique,” Eug. Salverte, Paris, 1824, Vol. II. p. 503.
To the foregoing “Accounts of Early Writers,” can properly be added the following happy description of “The School of Athens,”[73] as coloured by Raphael and now to be seen among his frescoes in the papal state-apartments (Stanze—Camere) of the Vatican in Rome, for, it will be observed, most of the leading writers of which we have spoken are therein depicted:
“The School of Athens”—Scuola d’Atene—represents Philosophy in general, and is, with regard to expression and scholastic knowledge, a wonderful work; for every philosopher, by his posture and gestures, characterises his doctrines and opinions.... Beginning with the Ionian School, on the right, before the statue of Minerva, the aged person whose head is covered with linen, after the Egyptian manner is Thales; whom Raphael has represented as walking with a Stick, because, with that, he measured the Pyramids. Next to Thales is Archelaus of Messenia.... Behind them is Anaxagoras, resting his foot upon a marble book and almost hidden; in reference to the persecutions he underwent. The next figure, standing alone, at a little distance, to show that he is of another School, represents Pythagoras; who seems resolved to continue fixed at one spot, to show the unchangeableness of his ideas ... his head and body being turned different ways shows his metaphorical method of teaching important truths; and the crown, formed by his hair, refers to his initiation in all mysteries. The Figure leaning on a column is Parmenides; close to whom sits a youth, his adopted son Zeno, who is writing something short; referring to a Poem, by Parmenides, which compared, in two hundred lines, all the various Systems of Philosophy. Two masters only of the Eleatic School are introduced; because its followers were few in number. The metaphysics of Parmenides and Zeno gave rise to the Sceptical Philosophy of Pyrrho, expressed by the next figure.... At the opposite side of the Picture, talking with his fingers to a Figure in armour, supposed to represent Alcibiades, is Socrates ... who, like Thales, appears to be walking; because geometry was never taught in a fixed place.... Plato and Aristotle are placed together on a flight of steps in the centre of the Picture: Plato, representative of the speculative school, holds the Timæus: his sublime style is expressed by his attitude, denoting that his thoughts soar above this earth; and the cord attached to his neck marks his initiation at the Eleusinian Mysteries.... Aristotle, founder of ethical and physical philosophy, points earthward. The Figure in shade, nearest to Plato, is Archothæa.... The next Figure, in the same line, indicates roughness of character, and represents Xenocrates.... Behind Socrates and another Figure, Lasthenia, is a bearded old man Zeno of Citium, the founder of the sect called Stoics.... Behind Zeno of Citium is Antisthenes, in shade, because his School is expressed by that of Zeno. On the side of Aristotle, the tallest and most conspicuous Figure is Theophrastus ... said to be the portrait of Cardinal Bembo. The next figures are Strato of Lampsacus, Demetrius Phalereus, Callisthenes, Neophron, Glycon. Behind the last named is Heraclides and in rear of the disciples of Aristotle are Euclid of Megara and Eubulides of Miletus, his pupil: the last hated Aristotle, and is looking angrily at him. The lower part of the Picture, on the side with the statue of Apollo, represents the Philosophy of Leucippus, the disciple of Zeno, though the author of a very opposite system. He first taught the doctrine of Atoms.... Democritus, his most celebrated disciple, is sitting near him—booted, in the manner of his countrymen, the Abderites—and writing upon a stone table, shaped like the sarcophagi among which he used to meditate: he lost his fortune, therefore his dress indicates poverty; and he is represented in deep meditation, to show his uncommon studiousness. Opposite to Leucippus sits Empedocles, resting on a cube, though not with contempt, according to the principles of Leucippus; because Empedocles adhered, on some points, to the Pythagorean system. The youth holding, before Empedocles, Pythagoras’s Table of the Generation of Numbers and the Harmonies, is Meton.... The Figure in an Oriental costume bending over Pythagoras, represents Averrhoes, or one of the Magi, from which sect the Grecian Schools derived part of their doctrines. Behind Empedocles, is Epicharmus.... The Figure in a toga is Lucretius, placed near Empedocles, as having been his follower; but looking another way, because he differed from his master. This figure is the portrait of Francesco, Duke of Urbino, nephew to Julius II. The person crowned with vine-leaves and resting a book on a pedestal, is Epicurus, looking gay, according to the account given of him, and the Figure leaning upon his shoulder is Metrodorus; next to whom is Heraclitus, wearing a black veil, like that of the Ephesian Diana, in whose temple he exposed his works. Seated on the second step, near the centre of the Picture, is Diogenes, and below him is a Portrait of the great architect, Bramante (under the character of Archimedes), who is tracing an hexagonal figure on the pavement ... the enthusiastic-looking person who points to the hexagon, is supposed to be Archytas of Tarentum; the boy on his knees, is Phenix of Alexandria; and behind him, with a hand on his back, is Ctesibius. In the angle of the picture are Zoroaster and Ptolemy, one holding a celestial and the other a terrestrial globe, as representatives of Astronomy and Geometry; the figure wearing a crown, under the character of Zoroaster, being Alphonso, King of Arragon, Sicily and Naples; the person with a black turban on his head, and likewise holding a Globe, may probably represent Confucius: and the two persons with whom Alphonso seems conversing are portraits of Raphael and of his master Pietro Perugino. The statues and bassi-relievi with which Raphael has ornamented his scene, are emblematical of the different Schools of Philosophy: and the picture, in point of composition, is considered to be his chef-d’œuvre, the Sibyls of Sa Maria della Pace excepted.
A more detailed description of the above will be found in the works of Trendelenburg (Berlin, 1843), and of Richter (Heidelberg, 1882), bearing title “Ueber Rafael’s Schule von Athen.”