the notion of a horoscope, in which the positions of the heav-
enly bodies at the moment of a person’s birth determined that
person’s future; thus astronomy was crucial. Th ere are sur-
viving Greek horoscopes from the fi rst century b.c.e. Astrol-
ogy quickly became extremely popular, though not everyone
was convinced and those who were held many diff erent views
as to how it worked. Astrology relied on the astronomical and
mathematical knowledge of a very small group of experts, and
thus made mathematics relevant to the lives of many people
in society other than the literate, intellectual elite.MECHANICS
Mathematics, with an understanding of certain physical prin-
ciples, was also crucial to the emerging discipline of mechan-
ics. From very early times in Greek society there had been
craft smen and engineers who could build a ship, a fountain,
or a defensive wall. Th is kind of specialist expertise, which
could be written down but was usually passed on in oral and
practical lessons from teacher to apprentice, is called a techne,
usually translated as “art” or “craft .” Th e word technology is
derived from it.
Some arts, such as architecture, required mathematical
knowledge. Th e physics of motion, materials, and machines
was also a topic of interest to some philosophers and other
intellectuals. Aristotle’s school, the Lyceum, produced a trea-
tise called Mechanical Problems that discussed the workings
of common machines such as pulleys and windlasses, not to
mention the physics of the knee joint.
Th eories were developed about the behavior of air and
liquids under pressure, or pneumatics and hydraulics. Pneu-
matics, hydraulics, and other applications of physics resulted
in the production of machines made by a specialized group
of intellectual inventors, the mechanists. Many of the mecha-
nists’ devices involved steam power. Ctesibius of Alexandria,
working in the third century b.c.e. invented, among other
things, a water organ and statues and doors that moved auto-
matically. Th ese kinds of toys and spectacular set pieces did
not usually have any practical purpose. Th e ancient world had
very little industry in the modern sense. Th ey were perhaps
made to display cleverness and to surprise and entertain a
client base, an audience of the social elite, or anyone else who
saw the mechanists’ products.
But there were important practical roles for mechanists
as developers of improved military technology, defensive
structures, and civic buildings. Th e mechanist Philon of
Byzantium, in the second century b.c.e., described how the
Greek kings of Egypt, the Ptolemies, funded engineer-mech-
anists to conduct a series of experiments that would result in
building the most eff ective kind of catapult. Th e lighthouse
of Alexandria was also an example of the mechanists’ practi-
cal technology.
Mechanics was heavily utilized by governments and had
considerable social importance. Many relatively well-off in-
dividuals used architects and engineers to construct private
buildings and machines for them. But the fact that mechan-ics and engineering were largely practical and that practitio-
ners were professionals who got funding and payment—and
probably also because manual labor was involved—meant
that many of the elite regarded the discipline of mechanics as
inferior to mathematics and natural philosophy. Th e ancient
Greek intellectual ideal was to study the nature of the uni-
verse for the sake of knowledge alone.
Many mechanists argued against this downgrading of
their expertise, and some experts managed to become fa-
mous both for their mathematical ability and their useful
machines. Archimedes (287–212/211 b.c.e.), known for hav-
ing allegedly shouted “Eureka” (I’ve found it!) in the bath on
discovering the law of buoyancy, was well known both as a
highly theoretical mathematician and the inventor of many
practical machines. Th e Archimedean screw, named aft er and
probably invented by him, made it much easier to lift water
from the ground and was widely used for centuries in agri-
culture. During the siege of his city, Syracuse, by the Romans,
Archimedes is said to have constructed many innovative war
machines, such as a claw that pulled ships out of the water. It
is unclear how reliable these reports are in their details, but
certainly Archimedes was believed to have been important to
the defense of Syracuse.MEDICINE
Traditional healing in Greece consisted of a combination of
the use of plants and foodstuff s as drugs, surgical procedures
that were traumatic in themselves, and the use of incanta-
tions. Th is combined approach to medicine became a techne,
an art, though people might also take care of themselves by
self-medicating, appealing to the gods and participating in
healing cults, or going to experts such as drug collectors (root
cutters), purifi ers, and magicians.
In the fi ft h and fourth centuries b.c.e. many practi-
tioners of medicine adopted a more exclusively naturalis-
tic approach, which both infl uenced and was infl uenced by
contemporary developments in philosophy. In this natu-
ralistic concept of medicine, physicians developed theories
about the nature of the human body as a biological animal
and treated illness on the basis of this understanding. Th e
texts of the so-called Hippocratic Corpus were written by
an unknown number of anonymous authors during this
period. Th ey were later collected together under the name
of the famous physician Hippocrates of Cos (fi ft h century
b.c.e.), though it is not known whether Hippocrates actually
wrote any of them.
Some of these Hippocratic texts explicitly assert a natu-
ralistic approach and describe theories of physiology and
pathology; others are more practically oriented but assume a
naturalistic view. Th e theories described in these works dif-
fer, but they oft en involve one or more substances in the body
called humors, such as phlegm, bile, and blood, which need
to be in balance for health. Physicians demonstrated their au-
thority and expertise by being able to predict the course of a
disease and, if it did not seem likely to be fatal, by inter vening940 science: Greece0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i940 940 10/10/07 2:30:30 PM