BMCR 2009.07.14: Rihll on Nicastro, Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the Globe

Nicholas Nicastro, Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to
Measure the Globe.  New York:  St. Martin's Press, 2008.  Pp. xi, 223.
ISBN 9780312372477.  $23.95.

Reviewed by T.E. Rihll, Swansea University, Wales, UK
([email protected])
Word count:  1538 words
-------------------------------
To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009-07-14.html
To comment on this review, see
http://www.bmcreview.org/2009/07/20090714.html
-------------------------------

[Table of contents at the end of the review.]

This book is not written for academics. It is more ambitious than its
title: besides Eratosthenes, we meet all the famous scientists of the
period, and beside ancient attempts to measure the globe, we are told
about many of the famous achievements of ancient science. Having
lamented (in the Preface) classicists' relative neglect of ancient
scientists, Nicastro seems to want to rectify the situation by
introducing as many of them as possible between the covers of this
book. The intended readership is general, and the author's experience
in writing novels is apparent throughout. Nicastro provides an easy
introduction to ancient science in the Hellenistic era. Production
quality is good. Most of the text is supported with notes at the back,
and the notes identify the sources of quotes.

The book is divided into five chapters. The first describes Athens and
Alexandria and sets the tone for the whole, conjuring up a picture of
people going about their daily lives in two busy Greek ports. A huge
amount of imagery is piled on. Between pages 1 and 3, for example, we
meet reputable shipping companies, good profits, bulk exports,
intellectuals as the most important exports from Athens, passengers
pitching tents on the deck of merchant ships on which they bought
passage, and smelly cities with buildings high enough to cut off the
sunshine and street crime such as to deter residents going out at
night. The ancient world thus brought to life is not a familiar one.
The chapter ends with Eratosthenes' computation.

The second chapter is one of overviews: an overview of Greek astronomy
in order to contextualise the astronomical assumptions necessary to
Eratosthenes' method for calculating the circumference of the earth.
Next is an overview of Alexander's successors, their names and
territories, and the founding and growth of the city of Alexandria, to
provide the temporal and spatial context. A sketch of the kingdom's
resources follows, illustrating the extraordinary wealth at the
Ptolemies' disposal in a few well-drawn brushstrokes.

In the third chapter Eratosthenes' hometown is the first focus, then
attention switches to the place of books in Classical and Hellenistic
Greece. This leads to the story of the founding of the library in
Alexandria, and a discussion of its physical features and location, its
librarians and its internal politics. Here a great deal of
interpretation is superimposed on the flimsy evidence, sometimes
'illuminating' ancient Alexandria and its institutions by
anachronistically modern lights. Eratosthenes himself takes centre
stage next, and Nicastro makes clear the extraordinary range and scope
of his work. Eratosthenes' 3D slide rule for finding cube roots creates
the link for a discussion of the astonishing Antikythera mechanism and
its discovery, where Nicastro's dramatic style is given full reign.

Chapter four opens with Greek stereotypes of themselves and of others.
The stereotypes drawn are as much modern as ancient. Medea's murder of
her children is cited as an example of an act arising from her
uncontrollable passion (qua barbarian or woman is not clear; when such
an act occurs in the modern world it is usually performed by the father
and it has never, to my knowledge, been attributed to his
uncontrollable passion; it is, on the contrary, considered heartless).
Nicastro then focuses on the practicalities of gathering the data
needed for the calculation of the circumference of the earth:
verification that the sun was overhead at Syene at noon on the summer
solstice, measurement of the angle of the sun at the same time in
Alexandria, and the straight-line distance between Syene and
Alexandria. It includes discussion of other ancient methods and results
on the size of the world. In the last section Nicastro summarises the
contents of Eratosthenes' lost Geography and his efforts at calculating
the size and distance of the sun and moon from earth. This chapter
concludes with an overview of political and military events about the
time of his death, and an amusing account of Nicastro's trials and
tribulations trying to perform the same sort observations and
measurements that Eratosthenes did; his result was accurate to within
7%.

The last chapter covers ancient developments in the field after
Eratosthenes. Claudius Ptolemy features centrally here, especially his
Geography. Attention then turns to the role of the early Christian
church in the decline of 'ancient rationalism' (157). Strikingly, he
compares the Christian zealots of the early fifth century AD with the
Taliban of modern Pakistan and Afghanistan: 'Like the Taliban, the
monks' ignorance of what they opposed was equalled only by their zeal
to destroy it' (161). He points out the irony in the idea that science
is a modern subversive force undermining established religion, when
ancient rationalism preceded and was displaced by that religion (when
it was the newcomer, 166). Nicastro then sketches the contributions
made by various Indians, Arabs, and residents of medieval Western
Europe, to science, especially as it related to working out the size
and landmasses of the earth we stand on. The book ends with a lament
for Eratosthenes.

Many sound points about science are made en route. For example, that it
is not a solitary activity (107), that luck plays a role (120), that
much ancient science was done by people at their own expense (165),
that mistakes (a) happen, and (b) can be productive (181). There is an
excellent graphic of use to anyone wishing to teach this topic, a
satellite photo showing Alexandria, Syene, and the tropic (119), and
there is a very good discussion of the old chestnut: which stade
Eratosthenes used (123-9).

Nicastro often asks the right questions, but there is some carelessness
in the act of researching the answers or writing that is bound to
trouble the scholar and undermine the whole. For example, on p. 11
Nicastro claims to be quoting Canfora, The Vanished Library, Berkeley
and Los Angeles 1990, p. 83. Canfora, quoting his source, has


'I have conquered the great city of the west ... Let me say only that
it contains four thousand palaces, four thousand public baths, four
hundred theatres or places of amusement and twelve thousand fruit
shops; and that forty thousand Jews pay tribute there'.


Nicastro, supposedly quoting Canfora, has:


[the general wrote a letter saying he had taken] 'a city of which I
can only say that it contains 4,000 palaces, 4,000 baths, 1,200
greengrocers and 40,000 Jews'.


In this short circumlocution posing as a quote, the theatres or places
of amusement have disappeared, 12,000 fruit shops have been reduced by
a factor of ten (and have turned into greengrocers), and 40,000 Jews
have become the subject instead of the tribute that they pay.

Another example concerns background material: the super-freighter Isis
is noted but leviathan ships are said to have appeared only late in
antiquity; what about the Syrakosia, which was of Eratosthenes' time,
and sailed to Alexandria? It would also have provided another peg for
Nicastro to insert Archimedes into the book. A simpler but more basic
example concerns the number of stars in Ptolemy's star catalogue: 1,022
in Ptolemy (p. 399 of the Toomer translation, for example) becomes
1,028 in Nicastro (151). This may be a typographic error but the other
examples suggest not.

Some confusions are more serious or more misleading, e.g. most of what
is said about the Egyptian calendar (14), a supposed 'tag-and-release
research project' that is conjured out of Pliny 8.119 (65), and the
description of the Olympic victor list and the Spartan king list as
'secure' sources (82). Familiar stories are repeated, e.g. the
existence, and the Library's cunning acquisition of, 'definitive
editions' of the Athenian tragedians' plays (13 and 73; the original
source is the section on Lykourgos in the Lives of the ten orators
attributed to Plutarch, Mor. 841F), which story was shown to be
unlikely by Rutherford in 1905 (A Chapter in the History of Annotation,
London, 1905 1.1.Note b). Only Euripides' works were frequently revived
after the C4 BC; comments upon nine of his plays by ancient scholars
make clear that there were significant variants in the text when they
were writing, and they do not mention an 'authorized' or 'master'
version, so if an 'authorized' version ever existed, it was not known
to these commentators. A similar situation exists for Shakespeare's
plays.

Nicastro repeatedly castigates classicists for (variously) neglecting,
underestimating, and misleading 'us' on the topic of ancient
technology. Some of the criticism is justified, and he may be right
that Finley's 'arguments were so effective that technophobia came to
characterize the ancient world in the popular mind as thoroughly as
swords and sandals' (100). But some of us never agreed with Finley, and
quite a lot of people have been busy rewriting the history of ancient
technology for decades now, so this complaint is rather passe/.

Given the paucity of material in English on Eratosthenes, anything is a
welcome addition, but this book is much better than nothing. In its
pages, historians of science will learn much about the ancient world,
and historians of the ancient world will learn much about science.

Table of Contents
1. The Philosopher's Run
2. A Zoo of Universes
3. Mr Beta and the Ancient Plan B
4. Greeks and Barbarians
5. Eclipse