Papers in English by Eugene Afonasin
DIA-NOESIS. A Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 16 (2024): Philosophy in Late Antiquity Middle Platonism, Neopythagoreanism, and Neoplatonism , 2024
https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/dianoesis/article/view/39531
Ideally, natural s... more https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/dianoesis/article/view/39531
Ideally, natural scientific theories, even the most speculative ones, need empirical confirmation, which, however, is not always possible and, even when achieved, cannot always be correctly interpreted. Moreover, as practical experience accumulates, the investigators of nature with more reason reject the least successful theories, and obtain new confirmations for the most successful ones. This is the way science works, both in modern times and in antiquity. Applied to the history of ancient hydrology, this means that we can trace the development of natural scientific ideas from early thinkers such as Thales, Empedocles, Diogenes of Apollonia, Plato,v and Aristotle, to the Roman and early Byzantine period, represented by encyclopaedic authors such as Posidonius, Seneca, Strabo, and Alexander of Aphrodisias. As a result, we will see not only the evolution of natural scientific ideas, but also, in some cases, we will be able to assess the methodological and empirical acceptability of the physical ideas of late antiquity, which emerged as a result of the trial and error of ancient naturalists and their long reflection on the riddles of nature. In general, the article is devoted to the ancient concept of the circulation of water in nature. In its first part special attention is given to an analogy between natural phenomena and the processes occurring in living organisms, common to our philosophers of nature, as well as the peculiarities of their interpretation of the theory of mutual transformation of the elements. We note the place of the method of analogy in their observations and theoretical constructions. The second part of the article is dedicated to tides and sea currents. We look at the history of their observation in antiquity as well as alternative theories, designed to explain their nature. Special attention is given to ancient explanation of the phenomenon of the periodical change of the stream in Euripus' channel (Chalkida, Greece).
Steps, 10.2, p. 140–153, 2024
Abstract. According to a number of ancient authors, including the recently discovered treatise of... more Abstract. According to a number of ancient authors, including the recently discovered treatise of Galen "On my own opinions," Protagoras suggested doubting everything about the gods and their essence. Remarkably, Philostratus (Lives of the Sophists 1.10.2) sees the source of this doubt in Protagoras' "Persian upbringing" because, in his opinion, the Persian magicians, while continuing to call on the gods in their secret rituals, would not admit it publicly, fearing that otherwise people, realizing that their supernatural abilities were linked to divine influences, would stop turning to them. In other words, in this way of reasoning, magicians were anxious not to lose their jobs. Should we accept the historicity of this strange message of Philostratus, or should we consider it a typical reflection of Hellenistic and Roman historiographic stanza to see an "eastern trace" in every doctrine or art? A famous statement from the Derveni papyrus (col. XX), which is fundamental to understanding its authorship, may help us answer this question. We see the reasons why it is impossible to unequivocally answer the question of whether the author of the papyrus was a practicing telestes. However, it becomes clear that he contrasts himself not with the practitioners of the mysteries (including professional mantis), but with those who participate in them without understanding the meaning of what is going on and “without even asking questions.” On the contrary, he intends to provide answers to possible questions and to reveal the true meaning of the authoritative text by exegetical means. We also try to answer the question of the purpose for which the author of the papyrus sought to use various cosmological associations. Whether we are faced with an ancient philologically oriented “commentator,” or whether, by associating Zeus with air, Moira with pneuma, and Demeter and other female deities with the earth, he seeks to uncover the secret intentionally concealed in the poem and understandable only to the initiated?
Keywords: mysticism, ancient hymns, commentaries, allegory, Orphica
Link: https://steps.ranepa.ru/issues/2024/2/11
Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica 29(1): 141–152, 2023
The Neoplatonic philosophers developed a complicated and quite ingenious concept of the grades of... more The Neoplatonic philosophers developed a complicated and quite ingenious concept of the grades of virtue, starting with such common human virtues, as the natural, ethical and political, and finishing which those attainable only by the real seekers of the highest truth, such as the purificatory, contemplative, paradigmatic, and hieratic. In the paper I trace the evolution of the Neoplatonic grades of virtue by means of the select passages from Damascius' "Philosophical History," which deal specifically with the character of Damascius' revered teacher. The life of Isidore is presented by his student as an ascent along the path of Neoplatonic perfection, moreover, by chance or not, but in the surviving fragments of this work, which tells about many remarkable philosophers and theurgists, it is Isidore who ultimately attains the last seventh degree of virtue. Possessing outstanding personal qualities and even the gift of the seer, he was a teacher of the Socratic type, most eager to help students achieve the purificatory virtues that alone determine the further path of philosophical perfection. The position of Damascius and his attitude to the philosophical way of life is further illustrated by a series of lively portraits of Athenian and Alexandrian philosophers of his time.
DOI 10.47743/saa-2023-29-1-8
ΣΧΟΛΗ. Ancient Philosophy and the Classical Tradition, 2019
In this lecture, one can find an abbreviated historical trajectory of the appearance and developm... more In this lecture, one can find an abbreviated historical trajectory of the appearance and development of archaeology as a science. The aim is to demonstrate the perceptions and biases, which have influenced and still influence the archaeological theory and practice in negative or positive ways. The lecture was prepared for the participants of the program on “Classics and Philosophy” of Novosibirsk State University (October 2018).
Finamore J., Nejeschleba T., eds. Platonism and Its Legacy. Lydney: Prometheus Trust. P. 159-172, 2019
http://www.prometheustrust.co.uk/html/isns_scholars_articles.html
Archai 26.3 (2019) 1-23, 2019
http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/archai/article/view/26566/23229
Our purpose on the present occ... more http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/archai/article/view/26566/23229
Our purpose on the present occasion is to evaluate some ideas the biographers of late antiquity held about the origins of European thought. Speaking about this period we are no longer dealing with the question of transferring of the archaic practices: these practices are indeed long dead. What we encounter can be better defined as the import of ideas. Equally important is a study of the changing attitudes of our authors: rather than passive witnesses, they became active participants of this import. The process is truly fascinatingand wehope that the following examples, mostly from Hippolytus, will elucidate this. The best, almosta paradigmatic example is Pythagoras, who in late antiquity had many faces. His biography is an interesting instance of general change of attitude to ancient wisdom, typical for the source utilized by Hippolytus. Looking at a number of peculiar features of Hippolytus’ report which, we hope, will help us to see why the image of Pythagoras and his philosophy, formed by Hippolytus, is somewhat untypical for the period. We will see that Hippolytus’ biographic report, however garbled, shows no signs of so-called ‘Neopythagorean’ biographic development. Admittedly, the later authors frequently combine their sources to make them suitable to their needs, polemical or apologetic. Do we still have a reason to believe that these stories, however doubtful from the historical point of view, may contain the germs of truth?
Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica 23/2 (December 2017)
http://saa.uaic.ro/issues/xxiii-2/
CUPRI... more Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica 23/2 (December 2017)
http://saa.uaic.ro/issues/xxiii-2/
CUPRINS – CONTENTS – SOMMAIRE
ARTICLES
— Felix Adrian TENCARIU, Măriuca VORNICU, Andrei ASĂNDULESEI, Loredana SOLCAN, George BODI, Casandra BRAȘOVEANU
Investigating a Chalcolithic dwelling at Isaiia, Iași County, Romania
— Policarp HORTOLÀ
From antiquities to memorabilia: a standardised terminology for ancestral artefacts according to manufacture date
— Florica MĂȚĂU, Ana-Lavinia MATRICALĂ, Adrian BELE, Ioana RUSU, Dragoș Lucian GORGAN, Neculai BOLOHAN
Diagenetic analysis and historical interpretations. Case studies from eastern Romania
— Sergey M. ZHESTOKANOV
The mysterious expedition of Thrasybulus of Miletus
— E. Deniz OĞUZ-KIRCA, Ioannis LIRITZIS
Chasing Hygassos (Anatolia): Settlement under epigraphic evidence
— Oleg KLIMOV
The Greek culture of dialogue and of political decision-making process at Hellenistic Kings’ court
— Arina BRAGOVA
Cicero on the gods and Roman religious practices
— Iulian MOGA
Jewish society and family tradition in funerary inscriptions
— Lucrețiu MIHAILESCU-BÎRLIBA
La population dans les villages situés entre Sacidava et Axiopolis
— Eugene AFONASIN
Neoplatonic Asclepius: Science and religion at the crossroads of Aristotelian biology, Hippocratic medicine and Platonic theurgy
— Valerii KAVRUK, Roxana-Gabriela CURCĂ
A new exploratory project: The ethnoarchaeology of salt in the Inner Carpathian area of Romania
REVIEWS
— Victor Sava, Neolithic and Eneolithic in the Lower Mureș Basin
(Ana DROB)
— Blas Román Castellón Huerta, Cuando la sal era una joya. Antropología, arqueología y tecnología de la sal durante el Posclásico en Zapotitlán Salinas, Puebla
(Mihaela ASĂNDULESEI)
In the article, I discuss some theoretical and methodological views of Aristotle and Theophrastus... more In the article, I discuss some theoretical and methodological views of Aristotle and Theophrastus, designed to illustrate their approaches to natural phenomena. It becomes clear that, indeed, the student of Aristotle frequently professes ideas that would surprise the philosopher of Stagira. For instance, he insists that the kosmos is a living and ordered whole, and its innate movement is something which cannot be explained with the help of such ad hoc teleological constructions, as the first mover. The analysis of Theophrastus' Metaphysics is supplemented in the article by observations based on his Syriac Meteorology and a selection of the fragments of his and Aristotle's lost scientific works.
Eugene Afonasin, ‘Pythagorean numerology and Diophantus’ Arithmetica (A note on Hippolytus’ Elenc... more Eugene Afonasin, ‘Pythagorean numerology and Diophantus’ Arithmetica (A note on Hippolytus’ Elenchos I 2)’, Pythagorean knowledge from the Ancient to the modern world, ed. By A.-B. Renger, A. Stavru. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag (in English), 2016, pp. 347-360.
A curious instance of utilization of algebraic terminology in Hippolytus’ (Elenchos I 2, 9–10: dynamis, cubus, dynamocubus, etc.) indicates, that a relatively advanced arithmetic, originated in the works of such mathematicians as Heron and Diophantus, for some reason, aroused interest in Platonic and Pythagorean circles. Indeed, if we were to look for an example of an “ideal” Pythagorean, Diophantus would certainly qualify: he wrote a book on such a popular Pythagorean subject as polygonal numbers, transformed traditional arithmetic, and created a new theory of number; in a word, he did things a Pythagorean is supposed to do. It is no secret that Pythagorean numerology is not very useful from a mathematical point of view. What if an unknown Pythagorean (Hippolytus’ source) decided to translate the standard Pythagorean theory into the language of the higher mathematics of his times? It is as if asked to define number I were to indulge in axiomatic set theory. Besides, the text has clear implications for the dating of Diophantus. Textual observations allow us to entertain the idea that Diophantus the philosophus Pythagoricus, was known and used in the Neopythagorean and Platonic sources from the second, and, possibly, the first century AD. Moreover, if he, as it seems, authored an introductory work on arithmetic, he may be set in a series with such persons as Eudorus, Cleomedes, Moderatus, Nicomachus, and Theon of Smyrna as a fully-fledged contributor to the development of the Neopythagorean movement, perhaps to be placed somewhere between Eudorus and Nicomachus.
Keywords: Diophantus, new dating, ancient algebra, Neopythagorean arithmetic.
Language: English
Issue: ΣΧΟΛΗ 8.1 (2014) 9–23, illustr.
Keywords: Academy at Athens, Proclus, Da... more Language: English
Issue: ΣΧΟΛΗ 8.1 (2014) 9–23, illustr.
Keywords: Academy at Athens, Proclus, Damascius, Neoplatonism, classical archaeology.
Abstract. In the first and second parts of the article we look at two archaeological sites excavated in the center of Athens, a building, located on the Southern slope of the Acropolis and now buried under the Dionysiou Areopagitou Street, known as House Chi, or the “House of Proclus”, and Houses A, B and C at the slope of the Areopagus overlooking the Athenian Agora. We outline and illustrate the basic finds and reexamine the principal arguments in favor of identifying these constructions as the houses of philosophical schools and, in the third part of the paper, offer a remark on religious practice in the Neoplatonic school.
A working version, to appear soon in a new journal of visual philosophy ΠΡΑΧΕΜΑ
Comments are wel... more A working version, to appear soon in a new journal of visual philosophy ΠΡΑΧΕΜΑ
Comments are welcome
Abstract. On the obverse of a rare gold quarter stater, struck c. 250–225 BCE in northern France and recently found near Ringwould, Kent, one sees the head of Apollo with a lyre and a bow (?) hidden in his curly hair, which proves that it was designed by a local master on the basis of a gold stater of Philipp II of Macedon (382–336 BCE). On the reverse of this small (13 mm) coin we see a strange long-haired Celtic deity: driving his sky-chariot, this god holds a huge hammer in his right hand. A big bee is depicted before the horse’s snout. This reminds of Sucellos, the Celtic god of agriculture, underworld and alcoholic drink, the “good striker”, usually depicted with a hammer in one hand and a cup in another, or, perhaps, the Roman Silvanus. It appears that this image became a prototype for another and quite extraordinary Celtic coin, struck in Normandy, France, c. 100 BCE, which displays a model ship as the victor’s prize in a chariot race. The head of Apollo (now crowned with a wreath) is again found on the obverse, but on the reverse a typologically similar divine charioteer holds – instead of a hammer – a model of a ship. A working hypothesis therefor could be that the image of a bee, also a conductor to the underworld, is simply replaced by the artist with an image of a ship, as if the divine traveler drives his chariot under sky at days and sails away and sinks below the horizon at nights. The image can further be placed both in mythological and historical context. There is quite reasonable to suppose, with D. Ellmers (1996), that this special coin was issued as a gesture of propaganda, designed to show the coastal inhabitants that they are protected at sea and land, and to merchants that the passage through the Channel is save. Parallel interpretations of the metaphors of pilot, helmsman, the observational tower and harmony, current in the Platonic tradition (Plato, Numenius, Olympiodorus, etc.), could to my mind also help to understand this unusual image. It is fascinating to observe how an unknown artist independently follows the steps of the Greek philosopher in his reinterpreting of a complicated mythological image in a political sense.
Keywords. Platonism, the heavenly traveler, body and soul, a passage to the underworld, the charioteer, pilot, kybernētēs metaphors, Sucellus, harmony, the Celtic ships.
Schole, 2008
The bibliographic summary is dedicated to the Dionysian corpus in the context of Byzantine–Slavo... more The bibliographic summary is dedicated to the Dionysian corpus in the context of Byzantine–Slavonic literary relations.
"Iamblichus and the Foundations of Late Platonism, ed. by E. Afonasin, J. Finamore and J. Dillon
... more "Iamblichus and the Foundations of Late Platonism, ed. by E. Afonasin, J. Finamore and J. Dillon
Brill, Leiden, 2012, p. 13-36
Eugene Afonasin highlights the wealth of information on Pythagoras and his tradition preserved in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis and presents them against the background of Later Platonic philosophy. He rst outlines what Clement knew about the Pythagoreans, and then what he made of the Pythagorean ideal and how he reinterpreted it for his own purposes. Clement clearly occupies an intermediate position between the Neopythagorean biographical tradition, rmly based on Nicomachus, and that more or less vague and difuse literary situation which preceded the later developments, and in this respect is a very good source, worth studying for its own sake and as supplementary material which can help to understand the great Pythagorean synthesis attempted by Iamblichus. Developing their variants of the “exhortation to philosophy” (protreptikoi logoi), these men were much concerned with the educational value of the Pythagorean way of life rather than biographical circumstances, designed to place the ancient sage in the proper cultural context."
Published: ΣΧΟΛΗ 2.1 (2008) 125–132
In the second century A.D. the Mediterranean world underwe... more Published: ΣΧΟΛΗ 2.1 (2008) 125–132
In the second century A.D. the Mediterranean world underwent a profound change in ethical attitude towards the сosmos and human society, and the change is especially well reflected in one of the most controversial intellectual movement of the Late Antiquity, the so-called Gnostic tradition. Although attempts to draw a coherent picture of Gnosis which have been undertaken so far have yielded no satisfactory result, the basic patterns of thought, commonly labeled as ‘Gnostic’, are reasonably well known. Taken in the broadest sense of the word, Gnosticism is a specific world attitude. In the framework of Judeo-Christian world-view the Gnostics contemplated the world affairs from a global prospective, put them in the context of world history and developed a specific form of eschatology. In this paper the author undertakes to interpret select historical evidence, which can throw the light upon the development of this quite diverse and controversial tradition, including a passage from the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria (Strom. III 29, 1–2 St), which, surprisingly enough, was not previously treated in this context.
Books by Eugene Afonasin
Печатный экземпляр книги можно заказать в Издательстве Балтийского федерального университета им. ... more Печатный экземпляр книги можно заказать в Издательстве Балтийского федерального университета им. И. Канта и в интернет-магазинах
ISBN 978-5-9971-0793-2
Серия: Приложение к журналу ΣΧΟΛΗ, том 7 (ISSN 2949-0936)
https://classics.nsu.ru/books/
https://schole.ru/books/
The book consists of two part. The first part contains the texts by Philodemus, Numenius and Dama... more The book consists of two part. The first part contains the texts by Philodemus, Numenius and Damascius, dedicated to the history of the Academy in Athens. The second part consists of a series of studies devoted to various aspect of Platonism from the time of Plato to Late Antiquity.
Афонасин Е. В, Афонасина А. С., Диллон Дж. Философская история Платоновской Академии. Тексты и исследования. – Санкт-Петербург: Издательство РХГА, 2022. 284 с. – (Античные исследования)
Книга состоит из двух частей. Первая часть включает в себя переводы на русский язык текстов Филодема, Нумения и Дамаския, посвященных истории Академии в Афинах. Вторая часть состоит из серии исследований, посвященных различным аспектам истории платонизма со времен Платона до периода поздней Античности. Адресована специалистам по истории античной философии, студентам вузов соответствующих специальностей, а также всем, интересующимся историей античной цивилизации.
A collection of the fragments of the Sophists (Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Antiphon, etc.) in ... more A collection of the fragments of the Sophists (Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Antiphon, etc.) in a new Russian translation.
Second edition.
Original publication
ΣΧΟΛΗ 7.1 (2013) 176–238
In this small treatise the Neoplat... more Second edition.
Original publication
ΣΧΟΛΗ 7.1 (2013) 176–238
In this small treatise the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry (c. 234–305) addresses the question, problematic to every Platonic philosopher, this of agency of the preexistent human soul. Are the embryos already in possession of the self-moving descended souls and thus already living beings? In order to answer the question Porphyry first tries to show that embryos are not actually animals and thus can more properly be compared with plants. The second set of arguments is aimed to show that they are not animals even potentially. Finally Porphyry argues that, regardless the time of its entry, the self-moving soul comes from outside, not from the parents. The final chapter of the treatise is unfortunately not preserved, but the answer given by the philosopher is clear: a particular soul enters an appropriate body immediately after its birth and harmonically attuned to it for the rest of the bodily life. The translation is prepared on the basis of a new commented edition by T. Dorandi (Brisson et al. 2012). An extensive commentary that accompanies the translation helps to situate the treatise in the context of ancient medical and philosophical literature.
Пифагорейская традиция: Избранные работы Эрика Доддса, Вальтера Буркерта и Джона Риста в перевода... more Пифагорейская традиция: Избранные работы Эрика Доддса, Вальтера Буркерта и Джона Риста в переводах на русский язык / Под общей ред. Е. В. Афонасина. Перевод с английского языка Е. В. Афонасина и А. С. Афонасиной. – Новосибирск: Центр изучения древней философии и классической традиции НГУ; Офсет-TM, 2020. – 139 с. (Античная философия и классическая традиция. Приложение к журналу ΣΧΟΛΗ [Том. I]; изд. с 2020 г.)
Uploads
Papers in English by Eugene Afonasin
Ideally, natural scientific theories, even the most speculative ones, need empirical confirmation, which, however, is not always possible and, even when achieved, cannot always be correctly interpreted. Moreover, as practical experience accumulates, the investigators of nature with more reason reject the least successful theories, and obtain new confirmations for the most successful ones. This is the way science works, both in modern times and in antiquity. Applied to the history of ancient hydrology, this means that we can trace the development of natural scientific ideas from early thinkers such as Thales, Empedocles, Diogenes of Apollonia, Plato,v and Aristotle, to the Roman and early Byzantine period, represented by encyclopaedic authors such as Posidonius, Seneca, Strabo, and Alexander of Aphrodisias. As a result, we will see not only the evolution of natural scientific ideas, but also, in some cases, we will be able to assess the methodological and empirical acceptability of the physical ideas of late antiquity, which emerged as a result of the trial and error of ancient naturalists and their long reflection on the riddles of nature. In general, the article is devoted to the ancient concept of the circulation of water in nature. In its first part special attention is given to an analogy between natural phenomena and the processes occurring in living organisms, common to our philosophers of nature, as well as the peculiarities of their interpretation of the theory of mutual transformation of the elements. We note the place of the method of analogy in their observations and theoretical constructions. The second part of the article is dedicated to tides and sea currents. We look at the history of their observation in antiquity as well as alternative theories, designed to explain their nature. Special attention is given to ancient explanation of the phenomenon of the periodical change of the stream in Euripus' channel (Chalkida, Greece).
Keywords: mysticism, ancient hymns, commentaries, allegory, Orphica
Link: https://steps.ranepa.ru/issues/2024/2/11
DOI 10.47743/saa-2023-29-1-8
Our purpose on the present occasion is to evaluate some ideas the biographers of late antiquity held about the origins of European thought. Speaking about this period we are no longer dealing with the question of transferring of the archaic practices: these practices are indeed long dead. What we encounter can be better defined as the import of ideas. Equally important is a study of the changing attitudes of our authors: rather than passive witnesses, they became active participants of this import. The process is truly fascinatingand wehope that the following examples, mostly from Hippolytus, will elucidate this. The best, almosta paradigmatic example is Pythagoras, who in late antiquity had many faces. His biography is an interesting instance of general change of attitude to ancient wisdom, typical for the source utilized by Hippolytus. Looking at a number of peculiar features of Hippolytus’ report which, we hope, will help us to see why the image of Pythagoras and his philosophy, formed by Hippolytus, is somewhat untypical for the period. We will see that Hippolytus’ biographic report, however garbled, shows no signs of so-called ‘Neopythagorean’ biographic development. Admittedly, the later authors frequently combine their sources to make them suitable to their needs, polemical or apologetic. Do we still have a reason to believe that these stories, however doubtful from the historical point of view, may contain the germs of truth?
http://saa.uaic.ro/issues/xxiii-2/
CUPRINS – CONTENTS – SOMMAIRE
ARTICLES
— Felix Adrian TENCARIU, Măriuca VORNICU, Andrei ASĂNDULESEI, Loredana SOLCAN, George BODI, Casandra BRAȘOVEANU
Investigating a Chalcolithic dwelling at Isaiia, Iași County, Romania
— Policarp HORTOLÀ
From antiquities to memorabilia: a standardised terminology for ancestral artefacts according to manufacture date
— Florica MĂȚĂU, Ana-Lavinia MATRICALĂ, Adrian BELE, Ioana RUSU, Dragoș Lucian GORGAN, Neculai BOLOHAN
Diagenetic analysis and historical interpretations. Case studies from eastern Romania
— Sergey M. ZHESTOKANOV
The mysterious expedition of Thrasybulus of Miletus
— E. Deniz OĞUZ-KIRCA, Ioannis LIRITZIS
Chasing Hygassos (Anatolia): Settlement under epigraphic evidence
— Oleg KLIMOV
The Greek culture of dialogue and of political decision-making process at Hellenistic Kings’ court
— Arina BRAGOVA
Cicero on the gods and Roman religious practices
— Iulian MOGA
Jewish society and family tradition in funerary inscriptions
— Lucrețiu MIHAILESCU-BÎRLIBA
La population dans les villages situés entre Sacidava et Axiopolis
— Eugene AFONASIN
Neoplatonic Asclepius: Science and religion at the crossroads of Aristotelian biology, Hippocratic medicine and Platonic theurgy
— Valerii KAVRUK, Roxana-Gabriela CURCĂ
A new exploratory project: The ethnoarchaeology of salt in the Inner Carpathian area of Romania
REVIEWS
— Victor Sava, Neolithic and Eneolithic in the Lower Mureș Basin
(Ana DROB)
— Blas Román Castellón Huerta, Cuando la sal era una joya. Antropología, arqueología y tecnología de la sal durante el Posclásico en Zapotitlán Salinas, Puebla
(Mihaela ASĂNDULESEI)
A curious instance of utilization of algebraic terminology in Hippolytus’ (Elenchos I 2, 9–10: dynamis, cubus, dynamocubus, etc.) indicates, that a relatively advanced arithmetic, originated in the works of such mathematicians as Heron and Diophantus, for some reason, aroused interest in Platonic and Pythagorean circles. Indeed, if we were to look for an example of an “ideal” Pythagorean, Diophantus would certainly qualify: he wrote a book on such a popular Pythagorean subject as polygonal numbers, transformed traditional arithmetic, and created a new theory of number; in a word, he did things a Pythagorean is supposed to do. It is no secret that Pythagorean numerology is not very useful from a mathematical point of view. What if an unknown Pythagorean (Hippolytus’ source) decided to translate the standard Pythagorean theory into the language of the higher mathematics of his times? It is as if asked to define number I were to indulge in axiomatic set theory. Besides, the text has clear implications for the dating of Diophantus. Textual observations allow us to entertain the idea that Diophantus the philosophus Pythagoricus, was known and used in the Neopythagorean and Platonic sources from the second, and, possibly, the first century AD. Moreover, if he, as it seems, authored an introductory work on arithmetic, he may be set in a series with such persons as Eudorus, Cleomedes, Moderatus, Nicomachus, and Theon of Smyrna as a fully-fledged contributor to the development of the Neopythagorean movement, perhaps to be placed somewhere between Eudorus and Nicomachus.
Keywords: Diophantus, new dating, ancient algebra, Neopythagorean arithmetic.
Issue: ΣΧΟΛΗ 8.1 (2014) 9–23, illustr.
Keywords: Academy at Athens, Proclus, Damascius, Neoplatonism, classical archaeology.
Abstract. In the first and second parts of the article we look at two archaeological sites excavated in the center of Athens, a building, located on the Southern slope of the Acropolis and now buried under the Dionysiou Areopagitou Street, known as House Chi, or the “House of Proclus”, and Houses A, B and C at the slope of the Areopagus overlooking the Athenian Agora. We outline and illustrate the basic finds and reexamine the principal arguments in favor of identifying these constructions as the houses of philosophical schools and, in the third part of the paper, offer a remark on religious practice in the Neoplatonic school.
Comments are welcome
Abstract. On the obverse of a rare gold quarter stater, struck c. 250–225 BCE in northern France and recently found near Ringwould, Kent, one sees the head of Apollo with a lyre and a bow (?) hidden in his curly hair, which proves that it was designed by a local master on the basis of a gold stater of Philipp II of Macedon (382–336 BCE). On the reverse of this small (13 mm) coin we see a strange long-haired Celtic deity: driving his sky-chariot, this god holds a huge hammer in his right hand. A big bee is depicted before the horse’s snout. This reminds of Sucellos, the Celtic god of agriculture, underworld and alcoholic drink, the “good striker”, usually depicted with a hammer in one hand and a cup in another, or, perhaps, the Roman Silvanus. It appears that this image became a prototype for another and quite extraordinary Celtic coin, struck in Normandy, France, c. 100 BCE, which displays a model ship as the victor’s prize in a chariot race. The head of Apollo (now crowned with a wreath) is again found on the obverse, but on the reverse a typologically similar divine charioteer holds – instead of a hammer – a model of a ship. A working hypothesis therefor could be that the image of a bee, also a conductor to the underworld, is simply replaced by the artist with an image of a ship, as if the divine traveler drives his chariot under sky at days and sails away and sinks below the horizon at nights. The image can further be placed both in mythological and historical context. There is quite reasonable to suppose, with D. Ellmers (1996), that this special coin was issued as a gesture of propaganda, designed to show the coastal inhabitants that they are protected at sea and land, and to merchants that the passage through the Channel is save. Parallel interpretations of the metaphors of pilot, helmsman, the observational tower and harmony, current in the Platonic tradition (Plato, Numenius, Olympiodorus, etc.), could to my mind also help to understand this unusual image. It is fascinating to observe how an unknown artist independently follows the steps of the Greek philosopher in his reinterpreting of a complicated mythological image in a political sense.
Keywords. Platonism, the heavenly traveler, body and soul, a passage to the underworld, the charioteer, pilot, kybernētēs metaphors, Sucellus, harmony, the Celtic ships.
Brill, Leiden, 2012, p. 13-36
Eugene Afonasin highlights the wealth of information on Pythagoras and his tradition preserved in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis and presents them against the background of Later Platonic philosophy. He rst outlines what Clement knew about the Pythagoreans, and then what he made of the Pythagorean ideal and how he reinterpreted it for his own purposes. Clement clearly occupies an intermediate position between the Neopythagorean biographical tradition, rmly based on Nicomachus, and that more or less vague and difuse literary situation which preceded the later developments, and in this respect is a very good source, worth studying for its own sake and as supplementary material which can help to understand the great Pythagorean synthesis attempted by Iamblichus. Developing their variants of the “exhortation to philosophy” (protreptikoi logoi), these men were much concerned with the educational value of the Pythagorean way of life rather than biographical circumstances, designed to place the ancient sage in the proper cultural context."
In the second century A.D. the Mediterranean world underwent a profound change in ethical attitude towards the сosmos and human society, and the change is especially well reflected in one of the most controversial intellectual movement of the Late Antiquity, the so-called Gnostic tradition. Although attempts to draw a coherent picture of Gnosis which have been undertaken so far have yielded no satisfactory result, the basic patterns of thought, commonly labeled as ‘Gnostic’, are reasonably well known. Taken in the broadest sense of the word, Gnosticism is a specific world attitude. In the framework of Judeo-Christian world-view the Gnostics contemplated the world affairs from a global prospective, put them in the context of world history and developed a specific form of eschatology. In this paper the author undertakes to interpret select historical evidence, which can throw the light upon the development of this quite diverse and controversial tradition, including a passage from the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria (Strom. III 29, 1–2 St), which, surprisingly enough, was not previously treated in this context.
Books by Eugene Afonasin
ISBN 978-5-9971-0793-2
Серия: Приложение к журналу ΣΧΟΛΗ, том 7 (ISSN 2949-0936)
https://classics.nsu.ru/books/
https://schole.ru/books/
Афонасин Е. В, Афонасина А. С., Диллон Дж. Философская история Платоновской Академии. Тексты и исследования. – Санкт-Петербург: Издательство РХГА, 2022. 284 с. – (Античные исследования)
Книга состоит из двух частей. Первая часть включает в себя переводы на русский язык текстов Филодема, Нумения и Дамаския, посвященных истории Академии в Афинах. Вторая часть состоит из серии исследований, посвященных различным аспектам истории платонизма со времен Платона до периода поздней Античности. Адресована специалистам по истории античной философии, студентам вузов соответствующих специальностей, а также всем, интересующимся историей античной цивилизации.
Original publication
ΣΧΟΛΗ 7.1 (2013) 176–238
In this small treatise the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry (c. 234–305) addresses the question, problematic to every Platonic philosopher, this of agency of the preexistent human soul. Are the embryos already in possession of the self-moving descended souls and thus already living beings? In order to answer the question Porphyry first tries to show that embryos are not actually animals and thus can more properly be compared with plants. The second set of arguments is aimed to show that they are not animals even potentially. Finally Porphyry argues that, regardless the time of its entry, the self-moving soul comes from outside, not from the parents. The final chapter of the treatise is unfortunately not preserved, but the answer given by the philosopher is clear: a particular soul enters an appropriate body immediately after its birth and harmonically attuned to it for the rest of the bodily life. The translation is prepared on the basis of a new commented edition by T. Dorandi (Brisson et al. 2012). An extensive commentary that accompanies the translation helps to situate the treatise in the context of ancient medical and philosophical literature.
Ideally, natural scientific theories, even the most speculative ones, need empirical confirmation, which, however, is not always possible and, even when achieved, cannot always be correctly interpreted. Moreover, as practical experience accumulates, the investigators of nature with more reason reject the least successful theories, and obtain new confirmations for the most successful ones. This is the way science works, both in modern times and in antiquity. Applied to the history of ancient hydrology, this means that we can trace the development of natural scientific ideas from early thinkers such as Thales, Empedocles, Diogenes of Apollonia, Plato,v and Aristotle, to the Roman and early Byzantine period, represented by encyclopaedic authors such as Posidonius, Seneca, Strabo, and Alexander of Aphrodisias. As a result, we will see not only the evolution of natural scientific ideas, but also, in some cases, we will be able to assess the methodological and empirical acceptability of the physical ideas of late antiquity, which emerged as a result of the trial and error of ancient naturalists and their long reflection on the riddles of nature. In general, the article is devoted to the ancient concept of the circulation of water in nature. In its first part special attention is given to an analogy between natural phenomena and the processes occurring in living organisms, common to our philosophers of nature, as well as the peculiarities of their interpretation of the theory of mutual transformation of the elements. We note the place of the method of analogy in their observations and theoretical constructions. The second part of the article is dedicated to tides and sea currents. We look at the history of their observation in antiquity as well as alternative theories, designed to explain their nature. Special attention is given to ancient explanation of the phenomenon of the periodical change of the stream in Euripus' channel (Chalkida, Greece).
Keywords: mysticism, ancient hymns, commentaries, allegory, Orphica
Link: https://steps.ranepa.ru/issues/2024/2/11
DOI 10.47743/saa-2023-29-1-8
Our purpose on the present occasion is to evaluate some ideas the biographers of late antiquity held about the origins of European thought. Speaking about this period we are no longer dealing with the question of transferring of the archaic practices: these practices are indeed long dead. What we encounter can be better defined as the import of ideas. Equally important is a study of the changing attitudes of our authors: rather than passive witnesses, they became active participants of this import. The process is truly fascinatingand wehope that the following examples, mostly from Hippolytus, will elucidate this. The best, almosta paradigmatic example is Pythagoras, who in late antiquity had many faces. His biography is an interesting instance of general change of attitude to ancient wisdom, typical for the source utilized by Hippolytus. Looking at a number of peculiar features of Hippolytus’ report which, we hope, will help us to see why the image of Pythagoras and his philosophy, formed by Hippolytus, is somewhat untypical for the period. We will see that Hippolytus’ biographic report, however garbled, shows no signs of so-called ‘Neopythagorean’ biographic development. Admittedly, the later authors frequently combine their sources to make them suitable to their needs, polemical or apologetic. Do we still have a reason to believe that these stories, however doubtful from the historical point of view, may contain the germs of truth?
http://saa.uaic.ro/issues/xxiii-2/
CUPRINS – CONTENTS – SOMMAIRE
ARTICLES
— Felix Adrian TENCARIU, Măriuca VORNICU, Andrei ASĂNDULESEI, Loredana SOLCAN, George BODI, Casandra BRAȘOVEANU
Investigating a Chalcolithic dwelling at Isaiia, Iași County, Romania
— Policarp HORTOLÀ
From antiquities to memorabilia: a standardised terminology for ancestral artefacts according to manufacture date
— Florica MĂȚĂU, Ana-Lavinia MATRICALĂ, Adrian BELE, Ioana RUSU, Dragoș Lucian GORGAN, Neculai BOLOHAN
Diagenetic analysis and historical interpretations. Case studies from eastern Romania
— Sergey M. ZHESTOKANOV
The mysterious expedition of Thrasybulus of Miletus
— E. Deniz OĞUZ-KIRCA, Ioannis LIRITZIS
Chasing Hygassos (Anatolia): Settlement under epigraphic evidence
— Oleg KLIMOV
The Greek culture of dialogue and of political decision-making process at Hellenistic Kings’ court
— Arina BRAGOVA
Cicero on the gods and Roman religious practices
— Iulian MOGA
Jewish society and family tradition in funerary inscriptions
— Lucrețiu MIHAILESCU-BÎRLIBA
La population dans les villages situés entre Sacidava et Axiopolis
— Eugene AFONASIN
Neoplatonic Asclepius: Science and religion at the crossroads of Aristotelian biology, Hippocratic medicine and Platonic theurgy
— Valerii KAVRUK, Roxana-Gabriela CURCĂ
A new exploratory project: The ethnoarchaeology of salt in the Inner Carpathian area of Romania
REVIEWS
— Victor Sava, Neolithic and Eneolithic in the Lower Mureș Basin
(Ana DROB)
— Blas Román Castellón Huerta, Cuando la sal era una joya. Antropología, arqueología y tecnología de la sal durante el Posclásico en Zapotitlán Salinas, Puebla
(Mihaela ASĂNDULESEI)
A curious instance of utilization of algebraic terminology in Hippolytus’ (Elenchos I 2, 9–10: dynamis, cubus, dynamocubus, etc.) indicates, that a relatively advanced arithmetic, originated in the works of such mathematicians as Heron and Diophantus, for some reason, aroused interest in Platonic and Pythagorean circles. Indeed, if we were to look for an example of an “ideal” Pythagorean, Diophantus would certainly qualify: he wrote a book on such a popular Pythagorean subject as polygonal numbers, transformed traditional arithmetic, and created a new theory of number; in a word, he did things a Pythagorean is supposed to do. It is no secret that Pythagorean numerology is not very useful from a mathematical point of view. What if an unknown Pythagorean (Hippolytus’ source) decided to translate the standard Pythagorean theory into the language of the higher mathematics of his times? It is as if asked to define number I were to indulge in axiomatic set theory. Besides, the text has clear implications for the dating of Diophantus. Textual observations allow us to entertain the idea that Diophantus the philosophus Pythagoricus, was known and used in the Neopythagorean and Platonic sources from the second, and, possibly, the first century AD. Moreover, if he, as it seems, authored an introductory work on arithmetic, he may be set in a series with such persons as Eudorus, Cleomedes, Moderatus, Nicomachus, and Theon of Smyrna as a fully-fledged contributor to the development of the Neopythagorean movement, perhaps to be placed somewhere between Eudorus and Nicomachus.
Keywords: Diophantus, new dating, ancient algebra, Neopythagorean arithmetic.
Issue: ΣΧΟΛΗ 8.1 (2014) 9–23, illustr.
Keywords: Academy at Athens, Proclus, Damascius, Neoplatonism, classical archaeology.
Abstract. In the first and second parts of the article we look at two archaeological sites excavated in the center of Athens, a building, located on the Southern slope of the Acropolis and now buried under the Dionysiou Areopagitou Street, known as House Chi, or the “House of Proclus”, and Houses A, B and C at the slope of the Areopagus overlooking the Athenian Agora. We outline and illustrate the basic finds and reexamine the principal arguments in favor of identifying these constructions as the houses of philosophical schools and, in the third part of the paper, offer a remark on religious practice in the Neoplatonic school.
Comments are welcome
Abstract. On the obverse of a rare gold quarter stater, struck c. 250–225 BCE in northern France and recently found near Ringwould, Kent, one sees the head of Apollo with a lyre and a bow (?) hidden in his curly hair, which proves that it was designed by a local master on the basis of a gold stater of Philipp II of Macedon (382–336 BCE). On the reverse of this small (13 mm) coin we see a strange long-haired Celtic deity: driving his sky-chariot, this god holds a huge hammer in his right hand. A big bee is depicted before the horse’s snout. This reminds of Sucellos, the Celtic god of agriculture, underworld and alcoholic drink, the “good striker”, usually depicted with a hammer in one hand and a cup in another, or, perhaps, the Roman Silvanus. It appears that this image became a prototype for another and quite extraordinary Celtic coin, struck in Normandy, France, c. 100 BCE, which displays a model ship as the victor’s prize in a chariot race. The head of Apollo (now crowned with a wreath) is again found on the obverse, but on the reverse a typologically similar divine charioteer holds – instead of a hammer – a model of a ship. A working hypothesis therefor could be that the image of a bee, also a conductor to the underworld, is simply replaced by the artist with an image of a ship, as if the divine traveler drives his chariot under sky at days and sails away and sinks below the horizon at nights. The image can further be placed both in mythological and historical context. There is quite reasonable to suppose, with D. Ellmers (1996), that this special coin was issued as a gesture of propaganda, designed to show the coastal inhabitants that they are protected at sea and land, and to merchants that the passage through the Channel is save. Parallel interpretations of the metaphors of pilot, helmsman, the observational tower and harmony, current in the Platonic tradition (Plato, Numenius, Olympiodorus, etc.), could to my mind also help to understand this unusual image. It is fascinating to observe how an unknown artist independently follows the steps of the Greek philosopher in his reinterpreting of a complicated mythological image in a political sense.
Keywords. Platonism, the heavenly traveler, body and soul, a passage to the underworld, the charioteer, pilot, kybernētēs metaphors, Sucellus, harmony, the Celtic ships.
Brill, Leiden, 2012, p. 13-36
Eugene Afonasin highlights the wealth of information on Pythagoras and his tradition preserved in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis and presents them against the background of Later Platonic philosophy. He rst outlines what Clement knew about the Pythagoreans, and then what he made of the Pythagorean ideal and how he reinterpreted it for his own purposes. Clement clearly occupies an intermediate position between the Neopythagorean biographical tradition, rmly based on Nicomachus, and that more or less vague and difuse literary situation which preceded the later developments, and in this respect is a very good source, worth studying for its own sake and as supplementary material which can help to understand the great Pythagorean synthesis attempted by Iamblichus. Developing their variants of the “exhortation to philosophy” (protreptikoi logoi), these men were much concerned with the educational value of the Pythagorean way of life rather than biographical circumstances, designed to place the ancient sage in the proper cultural context."
In the second century A.D. the Mediterranean world underwent a profound change in ethical attitude towards the сosmos and human society, and the change is especially well reflected in one of the most controversial intellectual movement of the Late Antiquity, the so-called Gnostic tradition. Although attempts to draw a coherent picture of Gnosis which have been undertaken so far have yielded no satisfactory result, the basic patterns of thought, commonly labeled as ‘Gnostic’, are reasonably well known. Taken in the broadest sense of the word, Gnosticism is a specific world attitude. In the framework of Judeo-Christian world-view the Gnostics contemplated the world affairs from a global prospective, put them in the context of world history and developed a specific form of eschatology. In this paper the author undertakes to interpret select historical evidence, which can throw the light upon the development of this quite diverse and controversial tradition, including a passage from the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria (Strom. III 29, 1–2 St), which, surprisingly enough, was not previously treated in this context.
ISBN 978-5-9971-0793-2
Серия: Приложение к журналу ΣΧΟΛΗ, том 7 (ISSN 2949-0936)
https://classics.nsu.ru/books/
https://schole.ru/books/
Афонасин Е. В, Афонасина А. С., Диллон Дж. Философская история Платоновской Академии. Тексты и исследования. – Санкт-Петербург: Издательство РХГА, 2022. 284 с. – (Античные исследования)
Книга состоит из двух частей. Первая часть включает в себя переводы на русский язык текстов Филодема, Нумения и Дамаския, посвященных истории Академии в Афинах. Вторая часть состоит из серии исследований, посвященных различным аспектам истории платонизма со времен Платона до периода поздней Античности. Адресована специалистам по истории античной философии, студентам вузов соответствующих специальностей, а также всем, интересующимся историей античной цивилизации.
Original publication
ΣΧΟΛΗ 7.1 (2013) 176–238
In this small treatise the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry (c. 234–305) addresses the question, problematic to every Platonic philosopher, this of agency of the preexistent human soul. Are the embryos already in possession of the self-moving descended souls and thus already living beings? In order to answer the question Porphyry first tries to show that embryos are not actually animals and thus can more properly be compared with plants. The second set of arguments is aimed to show that they are not animals even potentially. Finally Porphyry argues that, regardless the time of its entry, the self-moving soul comes from outside, not from the parents. The final chapter of the treatise is unfortunately not preserved, but the answer given by the philosopher is clear: a particular soul enters an appropriate body immediately after its birth and harmonically attuned to it for the rest of the bodily life. The translation is prepared on the basis of a new commented edition by T. Dorandi (Brisson et al. 2012). An extensive commentary that accompanies the translation helps to situate the treatise in the context of ancient medical and philosophical literature.
Офсет-TM, 2021. – 131 с. (Античная философия и классическая традиция. Приложение к журналу ΣΧΟΛΗ [Том. IV]; изд. с
2020 г.)
В данном томе публикуется аннотированная библиография исследований по антиковедению, выполненных в Новосибирском научном центре с 1984 по 2021 гг. В электронном виде текст книги доступен по адресу: schole.ru
Предлагаемая библиография отражает развитие и деятельность одного из научных направлений социально-гуманитарной сферы в Новосибирском научном центре Сибирского отделения РАН— философском антиковедении, ядро которого сформировалось в Институте философии и права СО РАН, и в настоящее время действует в рамках Историко-философской школы ИФПР СО РАН и Центра изучения древней философии и классической традиции. Данная библиография охватывает работы как сотрудников ИФПР СО РАН и Новосибирского государственного университета, так и тех ученых и исследователей Новосибирска, чья деятельность так или иначе связана с изучением античного наследия.
Heraclides of Pontus (c. 388–310 BCE), a Platonic philosopher, worked in various literary genres, esp. dialogue. He discussed such typical Platonic topics as the transmigration of the soul, composed philosophical lives, dialogues or treaties about politics, literature, history, geography, etc., and wrote a series of works on astronomy and the philosophy of nature. Nothing is preserved. The present publication contains a collection of testimonies about Heraclides’ lost writings.
Heraclides’ approach to the past is best understood in contrast with this found in early Peripatetics. Aristotle and his followers, such as Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus, present Pythagoras, the Pythagoreans and Empedocles as figures not entirely devoid of legendary features. At the same time the Peripatetic biographers do not fail to place them in proper historical setting as intellectuals, initiated important philosophical and religious movements. According to Dicaearchus, for instance, the sages are known for their highly practical maxims and general rules of right conduct; Pythagoras developed a new lifestyle and promulgated it in his public and private teaching; Socrates introduced a new form of intellectual and moral pursuit; while Plato founded an institutional framework for philosophical studies having thus paved the way to a systematic research, conducted by the Peripatetics, etc. In a striking contrast with this, in the dialogues of their contemporary Heraclides of Pontus Pythagoras, Empedocles and other ancient philosophers are predominantly literary figures and super-heroes who’s supernatural powers are clearly beyond the reach of ordinary men. At the same time, the theories these fictitious personages profess are tailored according to a recognizably Platon-ic draft.
As an astronomer Heraclides thought of an infinite universe, in fact believing that every star is a kosmos, located in the infinite either. He famously advanced the theory of terrestrial rotation, hypothesizing that the apparent diurnal rotation of the heavens is better explained by the rotation of the Earth, and in this context correctly observed that, unlike other planets, Venus as morning and evening star has the maximum elongation from the Sun’s position (that is to say is never locat-ed far from the Sun).
The evidences are translated and numbered in this book according to a new edition by Schütrumpf et al. 2008. The work will be useful for students of Ancient philosophy as well as for a wider readership, including those scholars and students who are interested in Greek culture in general.
ANCIENT COSMOS.
ESSAYS ON ASTRONOMY AND COSMOLOGY IN ANTIQUITY
TRANSLATIONS, COMMENTARIES AND STUDIES BY
EUGENE AFONASIN, ANNA AFONASINA AND ANDREY SCHETNIKOV
The book contains a number of studies and translations concerned with various aspects of ancient astronomy, cosmology, meteorology, geography and the theory of measuring.
Its first part contains Russian translations of three most prominent ancient as-tronomy textbooks, Geminοs’ Introduction to the Phenomena, Cleomedes’ On the Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies, and Theon of Smyrna’s The Mathematics Useful for Understanding Plato, all prepared by Andrey Schetnikov.
The Introduction to the Phenomena (Elementa astronomiae) of the Greek math-ematician and astronomer Geminοs of Rhodes (Γεμῖνος ὁ Ῥόδιος, fl. c. 70 BC) is a manual, based on the works of earlier astronomers such as Hipparchus. It treats the following general subjects: the zodiac; the motion of the Sun; the constellations; the celestial sphere; days and nights; the risings and settings of the zodiacal signs; calendars; phases of the Moon; eclipses; star phases; terrestrial zones and geographical places; and the uselessness of the stars for making weath-er predictions.
In two volumes of his On the Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies Cleome-des criticizes the Epicureans and approves of the Stoics. The work is valued for preserving much of Posidonius' lost writings on astronomy. Cleomedes accurately discusses lunar eclipses, notes that the absolute size of many stars may exceed that of the Sun, argues that the Sun appears farther away on the horizon than in the zenith, and therefore larger (since its angular size is constant). This book is the original source for the well-known story of how Eratosthenes measured the Earth's circumference.
Astronomical sections of the Mathematics Useful for Understanding Plato by Theon of Smyrna (the 2nd c. CE), a Greek mathematician, strongly influenced by the Neo-Pythagorean school of thought, also contain material taken from early authors, such as Thrasyllus (the beginning of the 1st c. CE), Adrastus (the end of the 1st c. CE). The purpose of Theon is to provide the reader interested in Plato with necessary aids, useful for understanding scientific background of Pythagore-an and Platonic philosophy. In its present form the treatise deals with arithmetic and numerology (book I, section 1), musical theory (book I, section 2), and as-tronomy (book II). The treatise contains a remarkably detailed description of epi-cycles and other mathematical models, useful for astronomy.
The second part of the book consists of five essays. In the first essay, Andrey Schetnikov reconstructs and illustrates the ways ancient astronomers measured distances to removed celestial objects. Two attachments are devoted to al-Biruni’s and early modern measurements of the distances to the Sun and the Moon.
In the second essay, entitled Spherical Earth: From the Ancient Greeks to the period of the great geographic discoveries, the same author deals with the origin and late development of the spherical Earth’s doctrine in ancient Greece, as well as how it was assimilated in other cultures that came into the contact with Hellenistic culture directly or through a chain of tradition. Special attention is paid to the methods of mathematical geography, which allow to measure the circumference of the globe and to determine the coordinates of geographical points on its sur-face.
In the third essay, entitled Measuring Time in Antiquity. Clepsydra and its Pe-culiarities (on the basis of literary testimonies and archeological data from Amphi-areion), Anna Afonasina discusses an episode in the universal history of metrolo-gy and standar¬dization. Based on literary testimonies and archeological data the author first outlines the history of development of various types of the water clocks, clepsydra. Special attention is paid to the usage of clepsydra in public life (esp. in legal proceeding) and in medical practice. Then, considering the massive water clock from the sanctuary of the healer-god Amphiaraus in Oropos author shows that in the 4th cent. BCE the water clocks became an essential part of social life, and demonstrates the ways they calibrated the device according to a 24-hours scale. The author suggests that the massive water clock, designed for continuous measuring of time, subdivided at equal hours, was built at the sanctuary of Am-phiaraus for medical purposes. Such hypothesis can be confirmed by a series of passages from the Hippocratic corpus, where the word “hour” is actually intro-duced, as well as by two more testimonies from the medical practice of Herophi-lus and Galen.
The fourth essay (by Eugene Afonasin) deals with ancient meteorology. Its au-thor focuses on archeological data and specialized works on the subject (mostly, but not exclusively, these by Aristotle, Theophrastus and Seneca). We see that Theophrastus frequently professes ideas that would surprise the philosopher of Stagira. For instance, the student of Aristotle frequently insists that the kosmos is a living and ordered universe (the whole), and its innate movement is something which cannot be explained with the help of hand-made teleological constructions, such as the first mover. The analysis of Theophrastus’ (Syriac) Meteorology and a selection of the fragments of his lost scientific works is supplemented by some observations based on his Metaphysics.
The fifth essay by the same author – Demiurge in the Ancient Cosmogony – begins with a brief survey of the Early Greek cosmogonies of Pherecydes of Syros and of the Orphics (the latter, on the basis of the Derveni papyrus). The major concerns are the figure of Chronos and the demiurgic activity of Zeus. Ancient cosmogony is compared with the contemporary theory of time by I. Prigogine, who, not unlike the Ancients and in contrast with the standard cosmological theo-ry of the Big Bang, thinks that Time did not originate with our world and will not end with it. Then the author examines the kybernētēs metaphor and the ideas, associated with it in the Ancient philosophy against the background of a broader literary tradition.
The work will be useful for students of Ancient science as well as for a wider readership, including those scholars and students who are interested in Ancient philosophy and culture. The texts are illustrated and supplemented with a select bibliography.
illustrations in color (цветные иллюстрации к книге)
http://www.nsu.ru/classics/bibliotheca/medicine-book-illustrations.pdf
ΙΑΤΡΙΚΗ ΤΕΧΝΗ.
ESSAYS ON ANCIENT MEDICINE
TRANSLATIONS, COMMENTARIES AND STUDIES BY
EUGENE AFONASIN AND ANNA AFONASINA
The history of ancient medicine is presented in the book in a number of interre-lated aspects. Firstly, we analyze relevant narrative sources, above all the Hippo-cratic Corpus and such an encyclopedic author as Galen, in order to produce a detailed exposition of the procedures and methods of diagnostics and treating of deceases typical for ancient medical praxis in the period of its flourishing. Then we study a number of lesser authorities, the physicians and other scientists, who con-tributed to the development of ancient medicine. Secondly, we briefly access the history of ancient technological advances that allowed the physicians to improve their treatment of human body. Numerous pictures of the Asclepions, medical instruments, glass, votive offerings, etc. (mostly these from Epidaurus, Corinth, Pergamon, Kos, Athens, and Rome) illustrate the story.
An essay dedicated to the evolution of ancient concept of health and the caus-es of disease opens the first part of the book. We start with the earliest natural philosophers (mostly based on the Anonymous Londinensis medical papyrus) and conclude with a study of Galen’s De morborum differentiis (VI.836–880 K.). Health is invariably defined as a condition, which is in accord with nature, while disease is that which is contrary to nature. Our major concern is to discuss how this definition influenced consequent distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘non-natural’, ‘contrary to nature’ and ‘in accord with nature’, and in general, norm and deviation.
Then we turn to the practical aspects of the Hippocratic tekhne as reflected in anatomy, physiology, dietetics, and therapeutic methods, as well as the theoretical speculations associated with it. Of the corpus of fragmented sources in the history of medicine dated to Hellenistic and Roman period we translate and comment upon the principal ancient evidences about Praxagoras of Cos (ci. 300 BCE), He-rophilus (the end of the 4th century BCE), and their followers. Special attention is given to such peculiarities of Praxagoras’ teaching as his idea that “arteries are nervelike, though hollow form”, his opinion that arteries beat by themselves and are filled with pneuma, not blood, that the soul is seated in the heart, etc. as well as his daring methods of therapy which allowed Caelius Aurelianus, in many years, to call him a reckless (protervus) surgeon. The first detailed study of the pulse (sphygmology) is associated in antiquity with an Alexandrian physician Herophilus, renowned for his anatomical discoveries. The scholars also attribute to him a dis-covery of a portable and adjustable water-clock, used for measuring ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ pulse and, accordingly, temperature of the patient. We see that ancient theory of proportion and musical harmony allowed Herophilus building a classifi-cation of the pulses, but the medical experience did not fit well in the Procrustean bed of this rather simple theory.
In a separate essay, we first outline the history of development of various types of water clocks in antiquity. Special attention is paid to the usage of clepsy-dra in public life and in medical practice. Then, considering the massive water clock from the sanctuary of the healer-god Amphiaraus in Oropos we show that in the 4th cent. BCE the water clocks became an essential part of social life, and demonstrate the ways they builders calibrated the device according to a 24-hours scale. We suggest that the massive water clock, designed for continuous measur-ing of time, subdivided at equal hours, was built at the sanctuary of Amphiaraus for medical purposes. Such a hypothesis is substantiated by a series of passages from the Hippocratic corpus, where the word “hour” is actually introduced, as well as by two more testimonies from the medical practice of Herophilus and Ga-len.
We also find it interesting to have a look at the earliest physiological specu-lations. Thus, in Fr. B 100 DK Empedocles famously compares the principle of breathing with the operation of clepsydra. This simile provoked a scholarly con-troversy. The main question is what kind of breathing Empedocles describes – the breathing through the skin or the breathing through the mouth and nostrils? We consider various solutions of the problem, suggested by different scholars, and incline to accept the idea that Empedocles describes a form of breathing through the skin with a qualification that the skin in question is the outer membrane of the respiratory apparatus rather than the outer covering of the living body, as it was previously thought.
In another study, we discuss certain peculiarities of the medical profession in antiquity. In his Philosophical History (fr. 80–84 Athanassiadi) Damascius narrates about a philosopher, named Asclepiodotus, whose interests ranged from Platonic philosophy to Aristotelian natural sciences. Asclepiodotus’ instructor in medical matters, a son of a doctor from the island of Rhodos, Iacobus, is pictured by Damascius as an exemplary figure (fr. 84), who, unlike many of his contemporar-ies, did not solely rely in his practice on compilations and anthologies, having un-ceasingly tried to acquire first-hand medical experience. He always tested the opinions of others and gained a reputation of an extremely successful physician, although the methods of treatment, scribed to him by Damascius, are highly rem-iniscent of those presented as the Pythagorean by Iamblichus (On the Pythagorean way of life 244). In this respect both Iacobus and Asclepiodotus are conformed to the best standards of medical ethics, and pass the test set by Galen in his “On ex-amination by which the best physicians are recognized”, except perhaps to the fact that they preferred to base their activities on such authorities as Aristotle and the Methodist Soranus rather than on a list of the “dogmatists” proposed by Galen.
In an essay, dedicated to the cult of Asclepius in Late Antiquity, we look at var-ious kinds of evidences taken from the Neoplatonic philosophers. The greatest of them, Proclus had intimate relations with many gods, but Asclepius seems to as-sist him all his life: the young Proclus miraculously recovered when the son of Asclepius, Telesphorus, appeared to him in a dream; in a more advanced age the patron of medicine saved him again, this time from arthritis; and it was Asclepius who appeared to him as a serpent “in his final illness” (Vita Procli 7 and 31). The philosopher speaks about a vision of Asclepius in his Commentary to Alcibiades 166. Besides, he was probably involved in the process of establishing an Asclepian cult in his home country, Lydia (Vita Procli 32). It is against this background that one may look at the Neoplatonic attitude to medicine. Having discussed first the principal philosophical interpretations of Asclepius found in Apuleus, Aelianus, Macrobius, Julian, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Damascius, etc., we turn to Pro-clus’ attitude to Athena and Asclepius as reflected in Marinus’ Vita Procli and fi-nally discuss the cult of Eshmun as found in Damascius. The textual data are sup-ported by archaeological evidence from the “House of Proclus” in Athens.
The section of translations includes three ancient treaties. A short polemical treatise of Galen (129–c. 216), On the sects for beginners, is dedicated to the nature of medical knowledge. Galen outlines the position of two opposing camps in the Hellenistic medicine, the Rationalists and the Empiricists. The dispute culminates with the appearance of the third camp, the so-called Methodists, who claim to have found a position immune to criticism from the both sides. The majority of counterarguments of Galen are directed against this school. Galen’s last work, De propriis placitis (On my own opinions), also included in the book, perfectly outlines Galen’s position in various aspects of philosophy, psychology and medicine. Final-ly, in a treatise “To Gaurus, On how embryos are ensouled” the Neoplatonic phi-losopher Porphyry (c. 234–305) addresses the question, problematic to every Pla-tonist, this of agency of the preexistent human soul. Are the embryos already in possession of the self-moving descended souls and thus already living beings? In order to answer the question Porphyry first tries to show that embryos are not actually animals and thus can more properly be compared with plants. The sec-ond set of arguments is aimed to show that they are not animals even potentially. Porphyry argues that, regardless the time of its entry, the self-moving soul comes from outside, not from the parents. The final chapter of the treatise is unfortu-nately not preserved, but the answer given by the philosopher is clear: a particular soul enters an appropriate body immediately after its birth and harmonically at-tuned to it for the rest of the bodily life. An extensive commentary that accompa-nies the translations helps to situate the treatises in the context of ancient medical and philosophical literature.
The work will be useful for students of Ancient science as well as for a wider readership, including those scholars and students who are interested in Ancient philosophy and culture. The texts are illustrated and supplemented with a select bibliography.
EDITED BY EUGENE AFONASIN, ANNA AFONASINA AND ANDREY SCHETNIKOV
This anthology contains a concise study of an important cultural and philosophical phenomenon of Late Antiquity, usually labeled as the revived Pythagoreanism or Neopythagoreanism, and offers the major works of the Neopythagoreans in a new Russian translation. Of course the “Neopythagoreans” and their contemporaries considered the movement in question as genuine Pythagoreanism: they did not acknowledge a fundamental gap in the tradition and insisted on the existence of an unbroken chain of succession from Ancient Pythagoreanism to the new one. This brought to life numerous pseudoepigraphic writings attributed to such An-cient Pythagoreans as Theano, Lysius, Hipparchus, Philolaus, Archytas and others. The Life of Pythagoras by Porphyry and On the Pythagorean Way of Life by Iamblichus pictured Ancient Pythagoreans as legendary sages, wonder makers and secret educators of humanity, and the image of Pythagoras created in Late Antiquity is still current in popular opinion. The most exemplary description of a Pythagorean sage, Apollonius of Tyana, produced by Flavius Philostratus, de-serves special attention in this connection and still intrigues scholars from the point of view of both the sources used and ideology involved.
Legendary Apollonius and similar propagators of the “Pythagorean way of life” represent just one side of the Neopythagorean revival. An entirely new philosophic movement, also called the Neopythagoreanism, started to develop approximately in this time. Already discernible in the Middle Platonism, it is found among the Neoplatonists in its fully developed form. These philosophers and their “Pythagorean” numerology and complicated metaphysics of the first principles are the main topic of the book.
Unfortunately only a few works of these authors are extant and the greater part of the material we have to deal with is preserved in fragmentary form in later doxographers and commentators. Since no reliable translation of these fragments existed in Russian so far, we deemed it important to fill up this gap and supply the reader with new translations of these interesting texts. A treatise “On the nature of the world and the soul”, ascribed to an ancient Pythagorean Timaios of Locri and counted among the most interesting pseudonymous philosophical works available, is translated and commented in Chapter 4, the fragments of Moderatus and Numenius are found in Chapters 6 and 9; two treatises by Nicomachus (these in arithmetic and harmonics) are translated in Chapter 7, an introductory manual, “Mathematics useful for understanding Plato” by Theon of Smyrna, a Greek mathematician, strongly influenced by the Neo-Pythagorean school of thought, is translated in Chapter 8, while Chapter 10 is dedicated to the Pythagorean numerology, represented by an anonymous treatise Theologoumena arithmeticae (which contains early material, mainly from Anatolius and Nicomachus). In Chapters 1–3 and 5 we adduce a series of relevant extracts from Greek, Judean and Early Christian philosophers as well as the Gnostic literature, analyzed in the context of Religious systems of Late Antiquity. As general introductions to Chapters 6, 7 and 9 we reprint few pages from the famous book by John Dillon The Middle Platonists (Duckworth, 1977; Cornell UP, 19962), dedicated to Moderatus, Nichomachus and Numenius, in our translation (published in St. Petersburg, 2002, corrected). Two articles of fundamental importance, these by Eric Dodds on the origin of the Neoplatonic One (Classical Quarterly 22 [1928] 129–42) and by John Rist on Neopythagoreanism and “Plato’s” Second Letter (Phronesis 10 [1965] 78–81), are translated as attachments to this volume.
The work will be useful for students of the Pythagorean tradition as well as for a wider readership, including those scholars and students who are interested in Ancient philosophy, mathematics and music. The texts are supplemented by indices and bibliography.
ESSAYS ON ANCIENT MUSIC
EDITED BY EUGENE AFONASIN, ANNA AFONASINA AND ANDREY SCHETNIKOV
The book contains a number of studies and translations concerned with various aspects of Ancient musical culture and theory. After a short systematic introduc-tion and a bibliographic outline, the authors trace the development of the musical theory from Pythagoras to Archytas and study the origins of the concept of ‘har-mony’. We than turn to the Aristotelian Problems, concerned with music, Pseudo-Euclidean Sectio Canonis, extracts from the On music by Aristoxenus and Theophrastus, the Aristoxenian Elementa rythmica, the Pythagorean Elements of Music by Ptolemaïs of Kyrene, the Manual of Harmonics by Nicomachus of Gera-sa and musical sections of the Mathematics Useful for Understanding Plato by The-on of Smyrna, which amounts to a good selection of Ancient musical sources in a new Russian translation.
The introductory paper discusses Ancient musical practices, outlines the sources of the science of Harmonics in Classical Greece, and reveals the role of music in the society. The exposition is supplemented with a series of color illustra-tions and a select bibliography.
The first essay outlines the Pythagorean science of harmonics in its historical and theoretical aspects. It is intended to be a chapter in the history of ancient mathematical studies of nature, although the author occasionally touches upon such related areas as the history of philosophy and the history of music, and hopes that his work will be interesting to scholars working in these fields. After a short introduction, the author first turns to the phenomenology of harmony and then analyses in considerable details the harmony as a structure of numerical rela-tions and – alleged or real – acoustic experiments designed to establish the quali-ties of sound, as well as consonant and dissonant intervals.
The second essays, the “birth of harmony out of the spirit of tekhe,” studies the extent to which the Mycenaean Greek influenced the formation of the very meaningful word harmonia. Even early Greek philosophers, who viewed harmo-nia as an organizing, joining and fastening principle, could not help hearing an-cient repercussions of this word, and probably unconsciously chose an appropri-ate, technical, context. As scholars, most notably P. Ilievski (1993), have convinc-ingly shown, the ancient Greek noun harmonia and the verb harmodzo are traced back to the Mycenaean word (h)armo (meaning a “wheel” in the form of a felloe having an inner connection by means of spokes). Heraclitus explains harmonia by means of lyre and bow, making us understand that this presupposes something more than a visible connection, and he chooses lyre and bow because they sym-bolize the same innate joint, which makes the wheel lighter and stronger. Emped-ocles links harmonia with Aphrodite – one of creative powers. It was important for him to represent the multifaceted character of harmonia by means of different crafts. In his philosophical views we can clearly see the process of development of the term from its technical to abstract meaning.
The Problems, concerned with music in the Corpus Aristotelicum is a collection of questions and answers on the subject of music, and was compiled, as the ma-jority of scholars agree, in Lyceum during and after Aristotle's time, in the late fourth and the early third centuries BCE. Unlike later manuals, the collection is marked by its diversity: it proposes a range of working hypotheses and offers al-ternative explanations for the same phenomenon, a rare witness of vivid school discussions of the scientific matters.
Although a work of several hands, rather than of Euclid (active around 300 BCE), the Sectio Canonis (an introduction and 20 propositions formulated in the manner of theorems, preserved independently and, partially and slightly differ-ently, in Porphyry and Boethius), is counted among the most important writings on ancient mathematical harmonics. The central part of the treatise could indeed be written by the great mathematician himself, undoubtedly, based on the works of early authors, such as Archytas, while the rest, esp. the introduction, is admit-tedly a later addition. Despite few logical inconsistencies, the treatise as a whole is a unique early attempt at the composing of a systematic mathematical harmonics, based on both the empirical observations and an intrinsic logic of the division of the musical kanon.
The Peripatetic philosopher Aristoxenus (the 4th century BCE) is undoubtedly the most important musical theorist of Antiquity. His major piece of writings, transmitted to our days as the Elementa harmonica have recently been translated into Russian by V. G. Tsypin (1998, Moscow), while his general views on the musi-cal culture are less studied. So are his fragments on rhythm. Rhythmical phenom-ena are very widespread: “rhythm is applied to bodies that do not move, as when we speak of a statue having ‘good rhythm’, to anything that moves, as when we speak of someone walking with ‘good rhythm’… in general rhythm is perceived by three senses, which are these: sight, as in dancing; hearing, as in melody; and touch, by which we perceive, for instance, the pulsations of the arteries” (Aristides Quintilianus, De Musica 1.13, Barker’s translation). In his Elementa Rhythmica Aristoxenus builds a general and quite abstract theory of rhythm, treating it as a phenomenon, quite distinct from metre and musical intervals. Indeed, the latter are perceived as quantifiers, inherently characteristic of verse and melody. On the contrary, rhythm does not inhere in a poem or musical composition and must be imposed on them: in order to perform a piece of poetry or music, especially if they involve a bodily movement, dance, one has to apply quite an empirical art of rhythmical composition (rhythmopoiia), which allows to structure fluid and un-stable temporal events. In the chapter, we offer a translation of the Elementa Rhythmica into Russian and, commenting on it, adduce contemporary evidence for the psychological aspects of time perception and structuring of spatial and temporal patterns.
The heir of Aristotle Theophrastus of Eresus (the head of Lyceum from 322 to c. 287 BCE) wrote voluminously on a great variety of subjects, including music. Unfortunately, not much survived intact, and for recovering his highly original approach to music we have to rely on a series of testimonies in later authors (fr. 714 ff. Fortenbaugh), and a relatively long extract from his treatise On Music, quoted by Porphyry in his Commentary to Ptolemy’s Harmonics. He seems to be especially concerned with educational and therapeutic value of music and, most importantly, while criticising standard Pythagorean, Platonic and Peripatetic mathematical harmonics as well as contemporary acoustical theories, have pro-posed a new qualitative approach to music, based on a re-evaluation of common empirical considerations and a very problematic (due to the lack of sufficient evi-dence) theory of the psychological nature of musical consciousness, and special power of music, manifested in the movement productive of melody which occurs in the human soul when it reveals itself in a melodic voice.
Extracts from the Pythagorean Elements of Music of Ptolemaïs of Kyrene, the only female musical theorist in Antiquity, preserved by Porphyry in his Commen-tary to Ptolemy’s Harmonics, are important, first of all, because, they belongs to those very scanty testimonies that witness continuous development of the musical science from the time of Aristoxenus to this of Nicomachus of Gerasa. Apparent-ly, Porphyry quotes Ptolemaïs on the basis of the work of Didymus the Musician (active in the time of Nero), and gives absolutely no information about her live. Most recently Levin (2009) speculated that this Ptolemaïs could be a woman of noble origin and live in Alexandria in the time of Eratosthenes (c. 275–194 BCE), which would be a nice hypothesis but cannot be proved. The extracts introduce the notion of the science of kanonike and contribute to the famous polemics be-tween the mathematikoi and the mousikoi, which lead to ‘reason-based’ Pythago-rean and ‘perception-based’ Aristoxenian approaches to musical theory, and Ptol-emaïs apparently prefers the latter despite the title of her work, given by Porphyry.
The fragments of Theophrastus’ and Ptolemaïs’ musical works are supple-mented with other evidences, also quoted by Porphyry, such as the most im-portant musical fragment of Archytas (fr. 1 DK), extracts from the Peripatetic De audibilibus, as well as quotes from such otherwise unknown musical writers as Heraclides the Younger (active in the time of Claudius and Nero), Panaetius the Younger (unknown date), and Aelianus (the end of the 2nd c.), all on the subject of Pythagorean harmonics and acoustic theory.
In two final chapters we translate the famous Manual of harmonics by the Ne-opythagorean Nicomachus of Gerasa (the 2nd c. CE) as well as the musical sec-tions of The Mathematics Useful for Understanding Plato by Theon of Smyrna (the 2nd c. CE), which contain material taken from Thrasyllus (the beginning of the 1st c. CE) and Adrastus (the end of the 1st c. CE).
The work will be useful for students of Ancient music as well as for a wider readership, including those scholars and students who are interested in Ancient philosophy and culture. The texts are illustrated and supplemented with a select bibliography.
Данная работа частично публиковалась в журнале https://respublicaliteraria.ru/index.php/rl/issue/archive Текст подготовлен для семинара Института философии и права 15 марта 2021 г.
Keywords: the school of Aristotle, pneuma, vital spirit, Empedocles, physiology, breath.
Abstract. The Peripatetic treatise Peri pneumatos has recently received a great deal of scholarly attention. Some authors, predominantly A. Bos and R. Ferwerda (2008), try to prove that the treatise is a genuine work of Aristotle and all the theories advanced in the text can be ultimately explained by references to this or that Aristotelian doctrine. Quite on the contrary, P. Gregoric, O. Lewis and M. Kuhar (2015) are firmly convinced that the treatise contains some physiological ideas introduced after Aristotle and are inclined to support the traditional dating of the treatise to the time after Praxagoras of Cos (ci. 300 BCE). Largely in agreement with the latter proposition, in the present study I tentatively place this earliest and unique witness of the discussions on the source of growth and nourishment of the so-called connate pneuma in the context of the Peripatetic tradition of the Early Hellenistic period. The treatise is translated into the Russian for the first time.
Ключевые слова: школа Аристотеля, пневма, жизненный дух, Эмпедокл, физиология, дыхание.
Аннотация. Перипатетический трактат Peri pneumatos активно обсуждается в последнее время в научной литературе. Некоторые авторы, в особенности А. Бос и Р. Ферверда (Bos, Ferwerda 2008), пытаются доказать, что трактат принадлежит самому Аристотелю или, по крайней мере, все идеи, высказываемые его автором, восходят к аутентичным сочинениям Стагирита. Напротив, П. Григорич, О. Льюис и М. Кухар (Gregoric, Lewis, Kuhar 2015) убеждены в том, что развиваемые в трактате физиологические представления получили распространение лишь после Аристотеля, что подтверждает традиционную датировку трактата временем после Праксагора с Коса (ок. 300 до н. э.). В целом разделяя это последнее предположение, в настоящей работе я помещаю это древнейшее и уникальное свидетельство дискуссий об источнике роста и питания так называемой «внутренней пневмы» в контекст перипатетической традиции раннего эллинистического периода. Трактат переводится на русский язык впервые.
Keywords: Ancient medicine, Galen, empiricism, skepticism, dogmatism, Methodism.
Abstract. Galen’s last work, De propriis placitis (On my own opinions) has a very complex textual history. Except to few extracts, the Greek original of the treatise is lost. The last two chapters of the treatise, entitled On the substance of natural faculties, circulated independently in a fourteenth century translation into Latin by Niccolò da Reggio. The main body of treatise is preserved in a medieval Latin translation made from an Arabic translation (as numerous words, transliterated from the Arabic, testify). There is also a quote in Hebrew. Fortunately, some time ago V. Nutton (1999) published an excellent commented edition of the treatise. It was proven indispensable for the present study, as well as a recent publication of a newly discovered Greek text by Boudon-Millot and Pietrobelli (2005). The treatise, important for understanding of Galen’s various opinions, certainly deserves a close study. It is now translated into the Russian for the first time.
Abstract. A new edition of the extant evidence about Dicaearchus of Messana (Mirhady 2001) actualized a longstanding controversy over the Peripatetic teaching on the soul. Did Dicaearchus indeed deem soul to be nothing at all? Did he accept (against Aristotle) the ‘harmony’ theory of the soul? If so, what kind of harmony was meant? The fragmentary nature of the evidence for Dicaearchus admits, as it is usually the case, various interpretations. Some scholars insist on fundamentally conflicting nature of our evidence (Gottschalk 1971, Sharples 2001), others find it possible to produce a more coherent picture and believe that the interpretative difficulties are not, in fact, intractable (Caston 2001 and the present writer). Placing the controversy in the context of a debate over the nature of the soul within the Lyceum, we observe that against both Plato and Aristotle, Dicaearchus seems to develop a peculiar theory of the soul as an ‘attunement’, or a harmony of bodily parts. These parts are not necessarily to be viewed as the primary elements (contrary to a single evidence, which is clearly his own interpretation, of Nemesius, De nat. hom. 2), and this bodily attunement is quite different from the ‘Pythagorean’ mathematical harmony. According to the peripatetic philosopher, there is no thinking beyond body in a certain state (Sextus Emp., Adv. Math. 7.348–349). To put it differently, the body has an innate ability to think while all the talks on possessing and receiving souls (animalia, animantes, empsycha) is misleading. The idea of heavenly travel of the soul may help to account for religious events, such as mantic (divination) and dreams, but it possesses no scientific value whatsoever. The article is supplemented with a new Russian translation of the evidence.
Key words: the school of Aristotle, ancient psychology, doxography, soul, body, harmony.
Abstract. Rhythmical phenomena are very widespread: “rhythm is applied to bodies that do not move, as when we speak of a statue having ‘good rhythm’, to anything that moves, as when we speak of someone walking with ‘good rhythm’… in general rhythm is perceived by three senses, which are these: sight, as in dancing; hearing, as in melody; and touch, by which we perceive, for instance, the pulsations of the arteries” (Aristides Quintilianus, De Musica 1.13, Barker’s translation). In his Elementa Rhythmica the Peripatetic philosopher Aristoxenus (the 4th century BCE) builds a general and quite abstract theory of rhythm, treating it as a phenomenon, quite distinct from metre and musical intervals. Indeed, the latter are perceived as quantifiers, inherently characteristic of verse and melody. On the contrary, rhythm does not inhere in a poem or musical composition and must be imposed on them: in order to perform a piece of poetry or music, especially if they involve a bodily movement, dance, one has to apply quite an empirical art of rhythmical composition (rhythmopoiia), which allows to structure fluid and unstable temporal events. In the paper, I offer a translation of the Elementa Rhythmica into Russian and, commenting on it, adduce contemporary evidence for the psychological aspects of time perception and structuring of spatial and temporal patterns.
Keywords: Ancient music, temporal duration, rhythmical patterns, composition, the foot, ancient medicine, Herophilus, harmonious pulse.
English (revised) version: Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica 23(2): 335–351
Keywords: Athena, Asclepius, Damascius, Julian, the House of Proclus, blood sacrifice, healing.
Abstract. In general, Proclus had intimate relations with gods, but Asclepius seems to assist him all his life: the young Proclus miraculously recovered when the son of Asclepius, Telesphorus, appeared to him in a dream; in a more advanced age the patron of medicine saved him again, this time from arthritis; and it was Asclepius who appeared to him as a serpent “in his final illness” (Vita Procli 7 and 31). The philosopher speaks about a vision of Asclepius in his Commentary to Alcibiades 166. Besides, he was probably involved in the process of establishing an Asclepian cult in his home country. It is against this background that one may look at the Neoplatonic attitude to medicine. Having discussed first the principal philosophical interpretations of Asclepius found in Apuleus, Aelianus, Macrobius, Julian, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Damascius, etc., we turn to Proclus’ attitude to Athena and Aslepius as reflected in Marinus’ Vita Procli and finally discuss the cult of Eshmun as found in Damascius. The textual data are supported by arhcaeological evidence from the “House of Proclus” in Athens.
Keywords: philosophical cosmology, creationism, myth, religious festivals, western legal tradition.
Key words: Ancient medicine, Hippocratic tradition, rational medicine, anatomy, pulse, veins and arteries, pneuma, soul.