Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

By his proficiency in the "Equilibrium of Bodies in Fluids," he detected the true weight of Hiero's crown, and exclaimed to the startled public, "I have found it! I have found it!" So greatly was his inventive power feared by the often repulsed Romans, that at last the appearance of a rope or a pole above the wall of a besieged city threw them into a panic, for fear of some new "infernal machine." His burning mirrors occasioned Lucian to say that Archimedes, by his mechanical skill, burnt the Roman ships. Galen refers to the same fact. Archimedes lent great aid in the final defense of his beloved Syracuse, but the fortune of Rome was overwhelming at last. It is said that Marcellus gave strict orders to preserve a person of whose genius he had seen such extraordinary proofs, but this was forgotten in the license of war. A ruthless soldier burst upon the venerable philosopher absorbed over a diagram, and smote him dead. Cicero, traveling in Sicily about a hundred and fifty years later, had great difficulty in finding his tomb. "I recollected," he says, "some verses which I had understood to be inscribed on his monument, which indicated that on the top of it there was a sphere and a cylinder. On looking over the burying-ground (for at the gate of the city the tombs are very numerous and crowded), I saw a small pillar just appearing above the brushwood, with a sphere and cylinder upon it, and immediately told those who were with me, who were the principal persons in Syracuse, that I believed that to be what I was seeking. Workmen were sent in with tools to clear and open the place, and when it was accessible, we went to the opposite side of the pedestal; there we found the inscription, with the latter portions of the lines worn away, so that about half of it was gone. And thus, one of the most illustrious cities of Greece, and one formerly of the most literary, would have remained ignorant of the monument of a citizen so distinguished for his talents, if they had not learnt it from a man of a small Samnite village."

When the dominion of the Romans supervened upon that of the Greeks, and bore all irresistibly to the West, much that was glorious appeared to be obscured, but nothing was lost. All the materials which flowed into the vast stream of Roman civilization, from the valley of the Nile, from Phœnicia, the Euphrates, and the Ilissus, arrived by ways and in times which infinite wisdom saw to be best, and from Octavius to Constantine were amalgamated, and thenceforth still further removed for the grandest use. From India to the Atlantic coast, from Libyan borders to Caledonian hills, not only was the greatest variety in the forms of earth, its organic productions and physical phenomena presented to general notice, but also the human race was seen in all the gradations of civilized and savage life. In the East, effete races existed still in the possession of ancient knowledge, and in the exercise of ancient arts; while in the West, over gathering hordes of energetic barbarians, the fresh dawn of a mightier life was beginning to rise. In the time of Ælius Gallius and Bulbus, distant scientific expeditions were undertaken; and under Augustus, a general survey of the entire empire was commenced by Zenodoxus and Polycletus. The same Grecian geometricians, or others under their direction, prepared itineraries and special topographical accounts to be distributed among the rulers of the several provinces. They were the first statistical works undertaken in Europe. Roads were divided into miles, and extended to the remotest boundaries, so that Hadrian, in an uninterrupted journey which occupied eleven years, traveled with ease from the peninsula of Iberia to Judea, Egypt, and Mauritania. It might reasonably be expected that such a vast field, so diversified in climate and productions, and which might with so much facility be explored by state officers and their retinues of learned men, would have produced numerous proficients in science. On the contrary, during the four centuries, when the Romans held undivided sway over the known world, Dioscorides the Cilician, and Galenus of Pergamus, were the only natural philosophers. The first made some approach to botanical science, and increased the number of species of plants, which had been described. And it was at this time that Galen, by the care of his dissections, and the extent of physiological researches, has been declared worthy of being placed near to Aristotle, and generally above him. Ptolemæus, whom we before mentioned as a systematic astronomer and geographer, is a third bright name to be added to the experimental philosophers Dioscorides and Galen. He measured the refraction of light, and was the first founder of an important part of optics. All these distinguished masters of such science as existed among the Romans were Greeks, as we have before seen was the case with the prime leaders in the departments of literature and art.

As the soldiers of Alexander of Macedon brought home the jungle-fowl of India, and domesticated it in Europe; so the agents of Providence, acting in the realms of science, gathered up and transmitted just such elements as their successors would most need. As soon as mineral acids could be obtained, chemistry first began, a powerful means of decomposing matter; therewith the distillation of sea-water, described by Alexander of Aphrodisias in the time of Caracalla, became an invention of great importance. The new solvent was variously applied, and the scientific mind gradually became acquainted with the compound nature of matter, its chemical constituents, and their mutual affinities.

Anatomical knowledge also improved under Roman teachers. Marinus, and Rufus of Ephesus, dissected monkeys, and distinguished between the nerves of motion and the nerves of sense. Ælian of Præneste wrote a history of animals, and Oppianus of Cilicia, a poem upon fishes. These contained some accurate descriptions, but few facts founded upon their own examination, or worthy of a standard work on natural history. Great numbers of elephants, elks, ostriches, crocodiles, panthers, tigers, and lions, were slaughtered in the Roman amphitheatre during four centuries, but without any result save that of a brutal enjoyment. In that great metropolis there was no academy of science, and no general interest in a high range of intellectual pursuits. Antonius Castor, the Roman physician, was the only citizen who is reported to have had a botanical garden, probably made to imitate those of Theophrastus and Mithridates, but of no more practical use to science than was the collection of fossil bones made by the emperor Augustus, in the museum of natural curiosities. Galen, the only anatomist of true scientific method, flourished under the Antonines, and died about A.D. 203. He was originally from Pergamus, but went early to Alexandria, where he perfected his professional skill, and then removed to Rome, the scene of his great trials and triumphs. His superiority excited the jealous hatred of the metropolitan physicians; but the reputation he had earned was superior to their malice. Galen regarded his chief publication as "a religious hymn in honor of the Creator."

The noble undertaking of a "Description of the World," by Caius Plinius the Second, was doubtless the greatest contribution to general science made during the Augustan age. It comprised thirty-seven books, and was the first great Encyclopedia of Nature and Art. In all antiquity nothing had ever been attempted in like manner, and for many centuries it remained perfectly unique. In its dedication to Titus, the author appropriately applied to his work a Greek expression which signifies the abstract and compendium of universal knowledge and science.

The "Historia Naturalis" of Pliny includes a description of the heavens and the earth; the position and course of the celestial bodies, the meteoric phenomena of the atmosphere, the form of the earth's surface, and everything relating to its productions, from the plants and the mollusca of the ocean up to the human race. According to Humboldt, all these subjects were treated of and applied, in the most varied way, and brought forth the noblest fruit of descriptive genius. The elements of general knowledge were copiously employed in this great work, but without strict order in the arrangement. "The road over which I am about to travel," says Pliny, with a noble pride, "has been hitherto untrodden; no one of our nation, or of the Greeks, has alone undertaken to treat of the entire subject, namely Nature. If my enterprise does not succeed, it is, nevertheless, a fine and grand thing to have attempted it." The intelligent author attempted an immense picture, and did not entirely succeed; but the want of success depended principally upon a want of capacity to make the description of nature subordinate to scientific generalizations, and in view of the comprehensive laws of creation. Eratosthenes and Strabo had referred, not only to a description of mountains, but to an account of the entire earth; of their investigations, however, Pliny made but very little use. Not more did he profit by Aristotle's work on the anatomical history of animals. As overseer of the fleet in lower Italy, and as governor of Spain, he had but little time for extended research in natural science, and was often compelled to commit the execution of large portions of his designs to inferior hands.

Pliny the younger, in his letters, characterizes the work of his uncle truly "as a learned book, full of matter, not less manifold in its subjects than nature herself is." There are many things in Pliny which are generally objected to as unnecessary and foreign to his subject, but that most competent critic, Alexander Von Humboldt, is disposed to speak of the general result in terms of praise. "It appears to me to be particularly gratifying, that he so frequently, and always with so much pleasure, alludes to the influence exerted by nature upon the moral and intellectual development of man. His plan of connecting the subject is seldom well chosen. For example, the account of mineral and vegetable matter leads him to a fragment from the history of sculpture; a fragment which has been of almost more importance for the present condition of our knowledge than anything referring to descriptive natural history which can be extracted from the work." Pliny evidently had a feeling for art, but he seldom betrayed an artistic feeling in the forms of his scientific disquisition. His data came from books rather than from nature direct, and a sombre hue invested all he wrote. As Aristotle had garnered all anterior wealth in the same department, and passed it over to the Romans, so Pliny, in turn, gathered up later accumulations, and transmitted the grand aggregate to the middle ages. Providence always has the man ready for the needful task.

That the ancients made some powerful applications of the lens is evident from the account given by Lucian and Galen, that Archimedes burned the Roman fleet at the siege of Syracuse, by means of glasses, B.C. 212. But neither the Greeks nor Romans have left us any account of the lens being applied to increase the stores of discovery in natural science. The only authentic records we have respecting the microscope, or its still more powerful correlative, belong to that age of scientific invention for the advent of which the Augustan age was appointed to prepare.

Lucullus and Pompeius, by their eastern victories, made the Romans acquainted with Greek science and philosophy; the consequence of which was that many accomplished teachers streamed from those erudite regions to traffic their superior knowledge for Roman wealth. The latter really enjoyed nothing disconnected with the tumultuous excitement of war, even in the brief intervals of general peace. A master-passion for the sensations of battle morbidly existed in every breast, and yearned for gratification in the combats of gladiators, or the yet wilder brutality of the circus. The cruel and ostentatious spectacles which arose with the conquests of the republic, were continued with enhanced extravagance under the empire, fostered by the wealth, excitement, and corruption, which those conquests had introduced. There was no affinity of soul for refined and tranquil pleasure in the Romans; so that, if the legitimate drama was attempted, the admiring mob felt the keenest delight on viewing a mimic procession, or could interrupt the plot by vociferous exclamations for novelties of a yet more exciting and degrading kind. Civilization advanced perpetually, but from the period of culmination under Augustus, as before under Pericles, each step of progress was marked by its decline. As the palaces were enlarged, they were filled by impoverished dependents. Scipio, Metellus, and others, form courts around themselves, wherein the arts and sciences are taught by slaves, while the streets resound with the exulting shouts of those who conduct thousands of captives to bondage or death. The great become greater, and the little become less; until the exhausted empire succumbs to barbarians, and a superseded civilization disappears from earth.

The elder Gracchus, that truly noble Roman, attempted first to enlarge the number of landed proprietors, and then to fortify them with the energy of self-respect, through the dignity of free toil. The extension of an enlightened yeomanry, happily employed in the avocations of scientific agriculture, was the ambition of his life, and the occasion of his martyr-death. The republican tribune fell under patrician clubs, and not in vain was his corpse dragged through the streets, and thrown into the Tiber. Says Bancroft, "The deluded nobles raised the full chorus of victory and joy. They believed that the Senate had routed the people; but it was the avenging spirit of slavery that had struck the first deadly wound into the bosom of Rome. When a funeral pyre was kindled to the manes of Tiberius Gracchus, the retributive Nemesis lighted the torch, which, though it burned secretly for a while, at last kindled the furies of social war, and involved the civilized world in the conflagration."