In French, besides the great work of Delambre, Histoire de l’astronomie ancienne, 1817, we have the valuable studies of Paul Tannery in Recherches sur l’histoire de l’astronomie ancienne, 1893, and Pierre Duhem, Le Système du Monde, Vol. I, 1913.
In English, reference may be made to Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, An Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients, 1863; J. L. E. Dreyer, History of the Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler, Cambridge, 1906; and the historical portion of Sir Thomas Heath’s Aristarchus of Samos, the ancient Copernicus, Oxford, 1913.
Aristarchus’s treatise On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon first appeared in a Latin translation by George Valla in 1488 and 1498, and next in a Latin translation by Commandinus (1572). The editio princeps of the Greek text was brought out by John Wallis, Oxford, 1688, and was reprinted in Johannis Wallis Opera Mathematica, 1693–1699, Vol. III, in both cases along with Commandinus’s translation. In 1810 there appeared an edition by the Comte de Fortia d’Urban, Histoire d’Aristarque de Samos ... including the Greek text and Commandinus’s translation but without figures; a French translation by Fortia d’Urban followed in 1823. The treatise was translated into German by A. Nokk in 1854. Finally, Sir Thomas Heath’s work above cited contains a new Greek text with English translation and notes.
CHRONOLOGY.
(Approximate where precise dates are not known.)
| B.C. | |
| 624–547 | Thales. |
| 610–546 | Anaximander. |
| 585–526 | Anaximenes. |
| 572–497 | Pythagoras. |
| born 516 or 514 (possibly 540). | Parmenides. |
| 500–428 | Anaxagoras. |
| 494–434 | Empedocles. |
| 5th century | { Œnopides of Chios. |
| { Philolaus. | |
| 427–347 | Plato. |
| 408–355 | Eudoxus. |
| 388–315 | Heraclides of Pontus. |
| 384–322 | Aristotle. |
| 370–300 | Callippus. |
| 310–230 | Aristarchus of Samos. |
| 287–212 | Archimedes. |
| 284–203 | Eratosthenes. |
| 265–190 | Apollonius of Perga. |
| 3rd century | Aratus. |
| fl. 150 | Hipparchus. |
| 135–51 | Posidonius. |
| A.D. | |
| 50–125 | Plutarch. |
| 100–178 | Ptolemy. |
ABERDEEN: THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.