Recently I discovered on Internet Archive Charles Hutton’s “A mathematical and philosophical dictionary”. Hutton’s mathematical dictionary is one of the earliest dictionaries that focused on the mathematical sciences. In this post I just want to transcribe an epigram written by Claudian about a sphere of glass created by Archimedes that showed the motions of the heavenly bodies. The epigram appears on page 137 of Volume 1 of the dictionary, where the entry for “Archimedes” is discussed.
Claudian is one of the last important poets of antiquity. He died at the beginning of the 5th century AD, a few generations before the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Other late antiquity poets include Palladas and Nonnus of Panopolis.
Epigram
When in a glass’s narrow space confin’d,
Jove saw the fabric of th’ almighty mind,
He smil’d, and said, Can mortals’ art alone,
Our heavenly labours mimic with their own?
The Syracusian’s brittle work contains
Th’ eternal law, that through all nature reigns.
Fram’d by his art see stars unnumber’d burn,
And in their courses rolling orbs return :
His fun through various signs describes the year;
And every month his mimic moons appear.
Our rival’s laws his little planets bind,
And rule their motions with a human mind.
Salmoneus could our thunder imitate,
Rut Archimedes can a world create.
Claudian
Other Remarks
The entry on Archimedes also mentions the story of Cicero discovering the tomb of Archimedes when he was a questor in Sicily. The story is told by Cicero himself in his Tusculan Disputations. It’s one of my favorite historical anecdotes, so I’ll probably discuss the story in a future post.