OLD AND FAITHFUL SERVANTS.
“In their death they were not divided.”
2 Samuel i. 23.
To the Editor
Sir,—The following memorial I copied from a tablet, on the right hand side of the clergyman’s desk, in the beautiful little church at Hornsey. The scarceness of similar inscriptions make this valuable.
S. T. L.
“Erected to the memory of Mary Parsons, the diligent, faithful, and affectionate servant, in a family during a period of 57 years. She died on the 22d day of November, 1806, aged 85.
“Also to the memory of Elizabeth Decker, the friend and companion of the above; who, after an exemplary service of 47 years in the same family, died on the 2d of February, 1809, aged 75.
“Their Remains, by their mutual request, WERE INTERRED IN THE SAME GRAVE.”
Discoveries
OF THE
ANCIENTS AND MODERNS.
No. XXXVI.
Merely a cursory mention of all the important discoveries in geometry, mathematics, and philosophy, for which we are indebted to the ancients, would form a large book; yet a few of these particulars will be adverted to by way of concluding the series of articles under the present title.
Ancient Philosophers.
Thales was the first we know of who predicted eclipses. He pointed out the advantages that must arise from a due observation of the little bear or polar star; and taught that the earth was round, and the ecliptic in an oblique position.
Pytheas also, by accurate observations at Marseilles, more than 300 years before Christ, determined the obliquity of the ecliptic, by means of the solstitial shadow of the sun upon a dial. He found the height of the gnomon was to the length of the shadow as 600 to 2131⁄8; whence he concluded, that the obliquity of the ecliptic was 23° 49′. When Gassendi was at Marseilles with the celebrated Peiresc, he reiterated the experiment, and found it very just.
Thales went to the Egyptians to be instructed in geometry, and himself instructed them in that science. He showed them how to measure the pyramids by the length of their shades, and to determine the measure of inaccessible heights and distances, by the proportion of the sides of a triangle. He demonstrated the various properties of the circle; he discovered, respecting the isosceles triangle, that the angles at its base were equal; and he was the first who found, that in right lines cutting one another, the opposite angles are equal.
Anaximander, the successor of Thales, was the inventor of the armillary sphere, and of sun-horologes, or dials; he was likewise the first who drew a geographical map.
Pythagoras was the first who gave sure and fundamental precepts in music. Struck by the difference of sounds which issued from the hammers of a forge, but came into unison at the fourth, and fifth, and eighth percussions, he conjectured that this must proceed from the difference of weight in the hammers; he weighed them, and found he had conjectured right. Upon this he wound up some musical strings, in number equal to the hammers, and of a length proportioned to their weight; and found, that at the same intervals, they corresponded with the hammers in sound. Upon this principle he devised the monochord; an instrument of one string, capable of determining the various relations of sound. He also made many fine discoveries in geometry.
Plato by his studies in mathematics was enabled to devise the analytic method, or that geometric analysis, which enables us to find the truth we are in quest of, out of the proposition itself which we want to resolve. He it was who at length solved the famous problem, respecting the duplication of the cube. To him also is ascribed the solution of the problem concerning the trisection of an angle; and the discovery of conic sections.
Hipparchus discovered the elements of plane and spherical trigonometry.
Diophantes, who lived 360 years before Jesus Christ, was the inventor of algebra. It was from this science that the ancients drew those long and difficult demonstrations which we meet with in their works. They are presumed to have aimed at concealing a method which furnished them with so many beautiful and difficult demonstrations; and to have preferred the proving of their propositions by reasonings ad absurdum, rather than hazard the disclosure of the means by which they arrived more directly at the result of what they demonstrated. We meet with strong traces of algebra in the 13th book of Euclid. From the time of Diophantes, algebra made but small progress, till that of Vietus, who restored and perfected it, and was the first who marked the known quantities by the letters of the alphabet. Descartes afterwards applied it to geometry.
Aristarchus was the first who suggested a method of measuring the distance of the sun from the earth, by means of the half section of the moon’s disk, or that phasis of it wherein it appears to us when it is in its quadratures.
Hipparchus was the first who calculated tables of the motion of the sun and moon, and composed a catalogue of the fixed stars. He was also the first who, from the observation of eclipses, determined the longitude of places upon earth: but his highest honour is, that he laid the first foundations for the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes.
Archimedes discovered the square of the parabola, the properties of spiral lines, the proportion of the sphere to the cylinder, and the true principles of statics and hydrostatics. His sagacity is evident from the means he adopted to discover the quantity of silver that was mixed along with the gold, in the crown of king Hieron. He reasoned upon the principle, that all bodies immerged in water lose just so much of their weight, as a quantity of water equal to them in bulk weighs. Hence he drew this consequence, that gold being more compact must lose less of its weight, and silver more; and that a mingled mass of both, must lose in proportion to the quantities mingled. Weighing therefore the crown in water and in air, and two masses, the one of gold, the other of silver, equal in weight to the crown; he thence determined what each lost of their weight, and so solved the problem. He likewise invented a perpetual screw, valuable on account of its being capable to overcome any resistance; and the screw that still goes by his own name, used in the elevating of water. He alone defended the city of Syracuse, by opposing to the efforts of the Romans the resources of his genius. By means of machines, of his own construction, he rendered Syracuse inaccessible. Sometimes he hurled upon the land forces stones of such enormous size, as crushed whole phalanxes of them at once. When they retired from the walls, he overwhelmed them with arrows innumerable, and beams of a prodigious weight, discharged from catapults and balistæ. If their vessels approached the fort, he seized them by the prows with grapples of iron, which he let down upon them from the wall, and rearing them up in the air, to the great astonishment of every body, shook them with such violence, as either to break them in pieces, or sink them to the bottom. When they kept at a distance from the haven, he focalized fire from heaven, and wrapped them in sudden and inevitable conflagration. He once said to king Hieron, “Give me but a place to stand upon, and I will move the earth.” The king was amazed by the declaration, and Archimedes gave him a specimen of his power by launching singly by himself a ship of a prodigious size. He built for the king an immense galley, of twenty banks of oars, containing spacious apartments, gardens, walks, ponds, and every convenience required by regal dignity. He constructed a sphere, representing, the motions of the stars, which Cicero esteemed one of the inventions which did the highest honour to human genius. He perfected the manner of augmenting the mechanic powers, by the multiplication of wheels and pullies; and carried mechanics so far, that his works surpass imagination.
Mechanics.
The immense machines, of astonishing force, which the ancients adapted to the purposes of war, prove their amazing proficiency in mechanics. It is difficult to conceive how they reared their bulky moving towers: some of them were a hundred and fifty-two feet in height, and sixty in compass, ascending by many stories, having at bottom a battering ram, of strength sufficient to beat down walls; in the middle, a drawbridge, to be let down upon the wall of the city attacked, afforded easy passage into the town for the assailants; and at top a body of men, placed above the besieged, harassed them without risk to themselves. An engineer at Alexandria, defending that city against the army of Julius Cæsar, by means of wheels, pumps, and other machinery, drew from the sea prodigious quantities of water, and discharged it upon the adverse army to their extreme discomfiture.
The mechanical enterprise and skill of the ancients are evidenced by their vast pyramids existing in Egypt, and the magnificent ruins of the cities of Palmyra and Balbec. Italy is filled with monuments of the greatness of ancient Rome.
Ancient Cities.
The finest cities of Europe convey no idea of the grandeur of ancient Babylon, which being fifteen leagues in circumference, was encompassed with walls two hundred feet in height, and fifty in breadth, whose sides were adorned with gardens of a prodigious extent, which arose in terraces one above another, to the very summit of the walls. For the watering of these gardens there were machines, which raised the water of the Euphrates to the highest of the terraces. The tower of Belus, arising out of the middle of the temple, was of so vast a height, that some authors have not ventured to assign its altitude; others put it at a thousand paces.
Ecbatane, the capital of Media, was eight leagues in circumference, and surrounded with seven walls in form of an amphitheatre, the battlements of which were of various colours, white, black, scarlet, blue, and orange; all of them covered with silver or with gold.
Persepolis was a city, which all historians speak of as one of the most ancient and noble of Asia. There remain the ruins of one of its palaces, which measured six hundred paces in front, and still displays relics of its former grandeur.
The Lake Mœris and the Pyramids.
The lake Mœris was a hundred and fifty leagues in circuit, and entirely the work of one Egyptian king, who caused that immense compass of ground to be hollowed, to receive the waters of the Nile, when it overflowed its usual level, and to serve as a reservoir for watering Egypt by means of canals, when the river was not of sufficient height to overflow and fertilize the country. From the midst of this lake arose two pyramids, of six hundred feet in height.
The other pyramids of Egypt, in bulk and solidity so far surpass whatever we know of edifices, that we should be ready to doubt their having existed, did they not still subsist. One of the sides of the base of the highest pyramid measures six hundred and sixty feet. The free-stones which compose it are each of them thirty feet long. The moderns are at a loss to imagine by what means such huge and heavy masses were raised to a height of above four hundred feet.
The Colossus of Rhodes.
This was another marvellous production of the ancients. Its fingers were as large as statues; few were able with outstretched arms to encompass the thumb. Ships passed between its legs.
Stupendous Statues.
Semiramis caused the mountain Bagistan, between Babylon and Media, to be cut out into a statue of herself, which was seventeen stadia high, that is, above half a French league; and around it were a hundred other statues, of proportionable size, though less large.
It was proposed to Alexander the Great, to make a statue of him out of mount Athos, which would have been a hundred and fifty miles in circumference, and ten miles in height. The design was to make him hold in his left hand a city, large enough to contain ten thousand inhabitants; and in the other an urn, out of which should flow a river into the sea.
Bridges—Glazed Windows.
In the structures of the ancients, the hardness of their cement equals that of marble itself. The firmness of their highways has never been equalled. Some were paved with large blocks of black marble. Their bridges, some of which still remain, are indubitable monuments of the greatness of their conceptions. The Roman bridge at Gard, near Nismes, is one of them. It serves at once as a bridge and an aqueduct, goes across the river Gardon, and connects two mountains, between which it is enclosed. It comprehends three stories; the third is the aqueduct, which conveys the waters of the Eure into a great reservoir, to supply the amphitheatre and city of Nismes. Trajan’s bridge over the Danube had twenty piers of free-stone, some of which are still standing, a hundred and fifty feet high, sixty in circumference, and distant one from another a hundred and seventy.
Among the ornaments and conveniences of ancient buildings was glass. They decorated their rooms with glasses, as mirrors. They also glazed their windows, so as to enjoy the benefit of light, without being injured by the air. This they did very early; but before they discovered that manner of applying glass, the rich made use of transparent stones in their windows, such as agate, alabaster, phengifes, talc, &c.
Curious Mechanism.
The works of the ancients in miniature were excellent. Archytas, who was contemporary with Plato, constructed a wooden pigeon, which imitated the flight and motions of a living one. Cicero saw the whole of Homer’s Iliad written in so fine a character that it could be contained in a nutshell.[515] Myrmecides, a Milesian, made an ivory chariot, so small and so delicately framed, that a fly with its wing could at the same time cover it; and a little ivory ship of the same dimensions. Callicrates, a Lacedemonian, formed ants and other little animals out of ivory, so extremely small, that their component parts were scarcely to be distinguished. One of these artists wrote a distich in golden letters, which he enclosed in the rind of a grain of corn.
Microscopes, &c.
Whether, in such undertakings as our best artists cannot accomplish without the assistance of microscopes, the ancients were so aided, is doubtful, but it is certain that they had several ways of helping and strengthening the sight, and of magnifying small objects. Jamblichus says of Pythagoras, that he applied himself to find out instruments as efficacious to aid the hearing, as a ruler, or a square, or even optic glasses, διοπτρα, were to the sight. Plutarch speaks of mathematical instruments which Archimedes made use of, to manifest to the eye the largeness of the sun; which may be meant of telescopes. Aulus Gellius having spoken of mirrors that multiplied objects, makes mention of those which inverted them; and these of course must be concave or convex glasses. Pliny says that in his time artificers made use of emeralds to assist their sight, in works that required a nice eye; and to prevent us from thinking that it was on account of its green colour only that they had recourse to it, he adds, that they were made concave the better to collect the visual rays; and that Nero used them in viewing the combats of the gladiators.
Sculpture.
Admirable monuments remain to us of the perfection to which the ancients carried the arts of sculpture and design. The Niobé and the Laocoon, the Venus de Medicis, the Hercules stifling Antæus, that other Hercules who rests upon his club, the dying gladiator, and that other in the vineyard of Borghese, the Apollo Belvedere, the maimed Hercules, and the Equerry in the action of breaking a horse on mount Quirinal, loudly proclaim the superiority of the ancients in those arts. These excellences are to be observed upon their medals, their engraved precious stones, and their cameos.
Painting.
Of ancient painting the reliques are so few and so much injured by time, that to form a proper judgment of it, is at first difficult. Yet if due attention be paid to pictures discovered at Rome, and latterly in the ruins of Herculaneum, the applause which the painters of antiquity received from their contemporaries may seem to have been merited. Among the ancient paintings in fresco, still at Rome, are a reclining Venus at full length, in the palace of Barbarini; the Aldovrandine nuptials; a Coriolanus, in one of the cells of Titus’s baths; and seven other pieces, in the gallery of the college of St. Ignatius; taken out of a vault at the foot of mount Palatine; among which are a satyr drinking out of a horn, and a landscape with figures, both of the utmost beauty. There are also a sacrificial piece, consisting of three figures, in the Albani collection; and an Œdipus, and a sphynx, in the villa Altieri; which all formerly belonged to the tomb of Ovid. From these specimens an advantageous judgment may be formed of the ability of the masters who executed them. Others, discovered at Herculaneum, disclose a happiness of design and boldness of expression, that could only have been achieved by accomplished artists. Theseus vanquishing the minotaur, the birth of Telephus, Chiron and Achilles, and Pan and Olympe, have innumerable excellencies. There were found also, among the ruins of that city, four capital pictures, wherein beauty of design seems to vie with the most skilful management of the pencil. They appear of an earlier date than those spoken of, which belong to the first century; a period when painting, as Pliny informs us, was in its decline.
Mosaic.
Of this work, which the Romans made use of in paving their apartments, a beautiful specimen, described by Pliny, was found in the ruins of Adrian’s villa at Tivoli. It represents a basin of water, with four pigeons around its brim; one of them is drinking, and in that attitude its shadow appears in the water. Pliny says, that on the same pavement the breaking up of an entertainment was so naturally represented, that you would have thought you really saw the scattered fragments of the feast.