A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 1 (of 2) by Lynn Thorndike
BOOK I. THE ROMAN EMPIRE
368 words | Chapter 30
FOREWORD
[Sidenote: A trio of great names.]
A trio of great names, Pliny, Galen, and Ptolemy, stand out above all
others in the history of science under the Roman Empire. In the use
or criticism which they make of earlier writers and investigators
they are also our chief sources for the science of the preceding
Hellenistic period. By their voluminousness, their generous scope in
ground covered, and their broad, liberal, personal outlooks, they have
painted, in colors for the most part imperishable, extensive canvasses
of the scientific spirit and acquisitions of their own time. Pliny
pursued politics and literature as well as natural science; Ptolemy
was at once mathematician, astronomer, physicist, and geographer;
Galen knew philosophy as well as medicine. The two latter men,
moreover, made original contributions of their own of the very first
order to scientific knowledge and method. It is characteristic of the
homogeneous and widespread culture of the Roman Empire that these three
representatives of different, although overlapping, fields of science
were natives of the three continents that enclose the Mediterranean
Sea. Pliny was born at Como where Italy verges on transalpine lands;
Ptolemy, born somewhere in Egypt, did his work at Alexandria; Galen
came from Pergamum in Asia Minor. Finally, these men were, after
Aristotle, the three ancient scientists who directly or indirectly
most powerfully influenced the middle ages. Thus they illuminate past,
present, and future.
[Sidenote: Plan of this section.]
We shall therefore open the present section of our investigation
by considering in turn chronologically, Pliny, Ptolemy, and Galen,
coupling, however, with our consideration of Ptolemy the work of
Seneca on _Natural Questions_ which shows the same combination of
natural science and natural divination. Next we shall consider some
representatives of ancient applied science and its relations to
magic, and the more miscellaneous writings of Plutarch, Apuleius, and
Philostratus’s _Life of Apollonius of Tyana_. From the hospitable
attitude toward magic and occult science displayed by these last
writers we shall then turn back again to consider some examples of
literary and philosophical attacks upon superstition, before proceeding
lastly to spurious mystic writings of the Roman Empire, Neo-Platonism
and its relations to astrology and theurgy, and the works of Aelian,
Solinus, and Horapollo.
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