matapoeica. (Left) Steam from a cauldron of boiling water is forced into a hollow sphere from which its
only escape is via two small hooked pipes placed opposite each other; the result is that the sphere rotates.
(Right) An automatic libation. The heat of the altar-fire forces hot air down into a tank of oil contained in
the platform; the oil in turn is forced up through tubes within the bodies of the two statuettes and drips
out from vessels held in their hands.
Such bloody researches may seem far removed from the contemplative armchair of the philosopher. But
Greek medicine had a long association with philosophy, and the philosophical interests of the Hippocratic
writers of the fifth and fourth centuries were inherited by their Hellenistic successors. Erasistratus was
said by his followers 'to have associated with the Peripatetic philosophers', and his physiological theory
betrays the influence of Epicurus and of the Stoa. He wrote a work On Causes which appears to have been
primarily philosophical in tone. Herophilus too was exercised by the notion of causation: he 'cast doubt on
all causes by many powerful arguments', and came to a sceptical conclusion: 'whether or not there are
causes is by nature undiscoverable, but in opinion I hold that I am made hot and cold, and am filled by
food and drink'. Herophilus was the first of a long line of medical sceptics which culminated in the second
century A.D. in the figure of Sextus Empiricus, physician and Pyrrhonist.
Epilogue
To some degree the doctors preserved the Aristotelian ideal which the Hellenistic philosophers had
generally discarded: science and philosophy, for them, were complementary aspects of a unified search
for understanding. At the end of the Hellenistic age that ideal was briefly revived by an eminent
philosopher.
Posidonius was an admired figure in his day, a friend of Cicero and of Pompey. In philosophy he was a
Stoic, and though he was no blind follower of Chrysippus his Stoicism was heterodox only on the
periphery. What was unorthodox about Posidonius was his voracious appetite for learning of every kind.
He was a voluminous historian, who undertook a continuation of the work of Polybius; an original
ethnographer, who described the manners and mores of the Celts; a travelled geographer, who
propounded a theory of the Atlantic tides; a student of logic and mathematics, of botany and zoology, of
seismology, geology, and mineralogy. In sum, as one ancient admirer put it, 'he Aristotelizes'. But
Posidonius was a giant apart. He had no followers. Polymathy was outmoded, Aristotelian man extinct.
The river of philosophy ran a clear course for some two centuries, its two main channels, the Stoic and the
Epicurean, being clearly marked. In the first century B.C. the waters became turbid. The Middle Stoa
relaxed the canons of Chrysippus and advanced a more eclectic philosophy. The New Academy passed
out of existence when the last proponent of scepticism, Antiochus of Ascalon (fl. c. 85), became a Stoic in
all but name (below, p. 703). Even Epicureanism altered, as the writings of Philodemus of Gadara (fl. c.
55) demonstrate. Pyrrhonian scepticism was rekindled by Aenesidemus (fl. c. 90). Platonism received
fresh attention and attracted new followers. The edition of Aristotle's treatises by Andronicus of Rhodes
(fl. c. 50) revived interest in the philosophical parts of the Peripatetic system.