Natural Knowledge in the Latin Middle Ages 85Hellenistic mathematical sciences, which only the best- educated Romans
could read in the original. The others relied on encyclopedias, handbooks,
and summaries for a second- or thirdhand acquaintance with such mate-
rial. In the end, Roman civilization produced only a handful of original
Latin writings focused primarily on nature and related topics.^3
Self- consciously practical, the Romans were aware of, but lacked in-
terest in, Greek theoretical contributions (in marked contrast to Greek
religion and literature). Some Romans bragged about their innocence
of philosophy, including natural philosophy; others were suspicious of
both the Greeks’ speculations and their medicine. Cicero saw his fellows
as concerned with specifi c calculations and measurement,^4 not with ab-
stract Greek mathematics, a neglect symbolized by the overgrown tomb
of Archimedes in Syracuse. When necessary, however, the Romans did tap
Greek expertise. To reform the calendar, Julius Caesar turned to the Alex-
andrian Sosigenes, while medicine in Rome was a stereotypically Greek
endeavor that Cato, Juvenal, and Pliny targeted with their barbs.^5 It was
in the Roman Empire of the second century that Ptolemy and Galen pro-
duced the most impressive works in, respectively, the mathematical sci-
ences and medicine—in Greek, not Latin.
This state of affairs shaped the cultural predicament of the learned in
the former Roman colonies once the central administration of the empire
fi zzled. Judged by Roman rather than Alexandrian standards, the tradi-
tional notion of a precipitous medieval decline in the inquiry into nature
seems grossly exaggerated, even more so if the vantage points are the
banks of the Thames, the Seine, the Rhine, or the Danube.
The Latin writers from the fi rst century BCE to the ages of Augustine
(d. 430 CE) and Boëthius did little original inquiry into nature, but they
performed a crucial service by summarizing parts of the Greek heritage or
by translating parts of it into Latin. Their budding technical vocabulary
and categories of thought would frame Latin- language approaches to na-
ture until the twelfth century. These were only the fi rst fruits, however.
Only after scholars embraced and translated the high culture of Islamic
civilization did readers of Latin for the fi rst time appropriate the bulk of
Greek works about nature and develop their own more adequate technical
vocabulary.^6
THE ORGANIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE
Central to the later medieval understandings of nature were its reorganiza-
tions of the classical relationships among the disciplines. Roman writers