CHAPTER III 

 THE GRECO-ROMAN PERIOD 



(From the Christian Era to the Sixth Century a.d.) 



THE Roman Empire once established, Greek 

 science was able to spread throughout the 

 civilized world ; it remained, however, foreign 

 to the Western mind, while in the East it made some 

 progress or remained stationary, before falling into 

 decadence. 



1. THE ROMANS AND SCIENCE 



The Romans, owing to their essentially practical and 

 political turn of mind, had little appreciation of pure 

 science. They even despised it, and Cicero praises 

 them because, thanks to the gods, they were not like 

 the Greeks, and knew how to limit the study of mathe- 

 matics to utilitarian purposes (Tnsculanae, i, 2). 

 The mathematical rudiments of which the Roman 

 surveyors had need were borrowed from Greek writ- 

 ings in such a way as to enable them to be used in 

 practice without the aid of theoretical knowledge. 

 When need arose, specialists were called from Alexan- 

 dria and shown the measurements to be made. It 

 must have been in this way that Agrippa carried out 

 the cadastral survey of the empire. 1 The fragments 

 which appear in the mathematical compendiums are 

 very poor. Martianus Capella (about 400 a.d.) 

 published a work of bad taste, entitled The Marriage 

 of Mercury and Philosophy , which was held in high 



1 15 Heiberg, Naturwiss., p. 73 et seq. 



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