617 



SIMPLICIUS. 



SIMPSON, THOMAS. 



518 



upon him. He was one of the most distinguished of the elegiac poets, 

 and particularly excelled in the pathetic, as we see iu hia ' Lament of 

 Danse ' and in other remains of his poetry. He is stated to have had 

 the superiority over ^Eschylus in an elegy which he composed in 

 honour of those who died at Marathon, when the Athenians instituted 

 a contest of the chief poets. But some of Simonides's best poems 

 are epigrams, which species of poetry he carried to greater perfec- 

 tion than any of his predecessors. The Persian war gave constant 

 employment to his muse, as he was frequently employed by the dif- 

 ferent states of Greece to adorn with inscriptions the tombs of those 

 who fell, and the votive offerings which were dedicated in the various 

 temples. We still possess several of his epigrams belonging to this 

 period. Of these one of the most celebrated is upon the Spartans 

 who fell at Thermopylae : " Stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that we 

 are lying here in obedience to their laws ; " and another upon the 

 Athenians who fell at Marathon : "Fighting in the van of the Greeks, 

 the Athenians at Marathon destroyed the power of the glittering 

 Medians." Simonides also celebrated the sea-fights of Artemisium and 

 Salamis in two larger poems, which are often referred to by ancient 

 writers, but of which no fragments have come down to us. 



The remains of the poems of Simonides have been published by F. 

 G. Schneidewin, under the title of ' Simonidis Carminum Reliquse,' 

 Bruus., 8vo, 1835. The Greek letters H, T, n, are said to have been 

 invented by Simonides, who is also stated to have converted the sign 

 of the aspirate H into a long e. 



Simonides of Ceos must not be confounded with Simonides of 

 Amorgus, which is an island not far from Faros. The latter was a con- 

 temporary of Archilochus, and flourished ; from B.C. 693 to 662. He 

 wrote iambics, in which he attacked private persons, and of which a 

 few fragments have come down to us. He also wrote a satirical poem 

 upon women in the iambic metre, which is still extant. The frag- 

 ments of his poems have been published by Welcker, Bonn, 1835. 



(Miiller's History of the Literature of Greece, p. 125, &c., 140 ; Bode's 

 Geschichte der Lyrischen Dichtkunst der Hellenen, vol. i., p. 318, &c.; 

 vol. ii., p. 122, &c.) 



SIMPLI'CIUS, a native of Tibur, succeeded Hilarius as bishop of 

 Rome, in 467. He had a controversy with Acacias, Patriarch of Con- 

 stantinople, about precedence. Simplicius dedicated several churches 

 at Rome to particular saints, and he also framed several regulations 

 concerning the discipline of the clergy of Rome. He died in 483. 



SIMPLI'CIUS was a native of Cilicia, and lived in the reign of 

 Justinian. He had been trained in the study of philosophy by Am- 

 monius, and appears to have been engaged in teaching at Athens when 

 Justinian issued the decree which imposed perpetual silence on the 

 few yet remaining votaries of heathen science and superstition in that 

 city. Simplicius and six of his philosophic friends, who were resolved 

 not to abandon the religion of their forefathers, left Athens, to seek 

 in a foreign land the freedom which was denied to them at home. 

 They went to Persia, where Chosroes then reigned, expecting to find all 

 their hopes realised ; but when they saw the actual state of affairs in the 

 East, they repented of the steps which they had taken, and declared 

 that they would rather die on the borders of the empire than enjoy 

 the favours and the wealth which the barbarian monarch might bestow 

 upon them. They returned to their country; and Chosroes, in a 

 treaty which he at the time concluded with the Greek emperor, 

 stipulated that the seven philosophers who had visited his court should 

 be exempt from the penal laws which Justinian enacted against his 

 pagan subjects. Simplicius and his friends, after their return, lived in 

 peace and retirement at Athens, where they devoted the remainder 

 of their lives to the study of philosophy, enjoying the reputation of 

 being wise and virtuous men. 



Simplicius wrote Commentaries on Aristotle's Categorise, Physica, 

 De Ccelo, and De Anima. One of his objects in these commentaries is 

 to reconcile the Platonic and Stoic systems with the Peripatetic school, 

 to which he himself belonged. They are the most valuable of all the 

 extant Greek commentaries on Aristotle; for Simplicius possessed a 

 profound knowledge of his author, as well as of other philosophical 

 writers of antiquity; and as he frequently quotes the opinions of 

 ancient philosophers whose works are no longer extant, his commenta- 

 ries are a fruitful source for those who wish to study the history of 

 ancient philosophy. Hia commentaries are printed in some of the 

 early editions of Aristotle ; they are also contained in ' Scholia in 

 Aristotelem, collegit Ch. A. Brandis,' Berlin, 1836, &c. 



Simplicius also wrote a Commentary on the Enchiridion of Epicte- 

 tus, which for its pure and noble principles of morality has commanded 

 the admiration of all ages. The best separate edition of this com- 

 mentary is that by Schweighauser, with a Latin translation, in 2 vols., 

 Leipzig, 1800. It has been translated into English by Dr. G. Stanhope, 

 London, 8vo, 1704; into French by Dacier, Paris, 1715: and into 

 German by Schulthess, Zurich, 1778. 



SIMPSON, THOMAS, a distinguished English mathematician, was 

 born at Market-Bosworth in Leicestershire, August 20, 1710. He 

 appears even in his boyhood to have had a strong inclination for 

 acquiring information by reading and conversation ; but his father, 

 who was a weaver, intending that he should follow that occupation, 

 endeavoured to divert him from a pursuit which interfered with the 

 labour, of his hands. The impulse of genius however prevailed over 

 the remonstrances of the parent, and the youth, having quitted his 



father's house, went to reside at Nuneaton, where, in the exercise of 

 his trade, he obtained the means of subsisting, and during the 

 interval of leisure he indulged his taste for the acquisition of 

 knowledge. 



Young Simpson was led to the study of mathematics by having 

 accidentally obtained possession of a copy of Cocker's ' Arithmetic,' to 

 which was annexed a short treatise on algebra ; and, similarly to what 

 is related of Tycho Brahe, it is said that he applied himself to astro- 

 nomy from admiration of the science in consequence of the occurrence 

 (in 1724) of a great eclipse of the sun at the time, which had been pre- 

 dicted. It is added that an itinerant pedlar and fortune-teller instructed 

 him at the same time in the mysteries of judicial astrology, and this 

 art he occasionally practised during several years. 



While yet a stripling he married a woman about fifty years of age, 

 the widow of a tailor and the mother of two children, of whom the 

 younger was his senior by two years ; all the family however appear 

 to have lived together in harmony, Simpson working at his trade by 

 day, and increasing his income by keeping a private school in the 

 evenings. In 1733 he went to reside at Derby, where he continued 

 to follow the united avocations of weaver and schoolmaster, and where 

 he found means to increase his knowledge of mathematics. With 

 arithmetic, geometry, and algebra he was already acquainted ; and 

 now, having obtained a loan of Stone's translation of the Marquis de 

 I'Hopital's 'Analyse des Infinimens Petits,' he was enabled by the 

 force of genius and unremitting application to make himself master 

 of the direct and inverse method of fluxions. Being thus qualified 

 he began in or before the year 1735 to write answers to the mathe- 

 matical questions in the ' Ladies Diary,' and even to propose questions 

 for solution in that work. Some of the questions have a certain 

 degree of intricacy, and they afford evidence that, at this time, the 

 scientific attainments of Simpson, considering his means, must have 

 been very extensive. 



In the year 1735 or 1736 Simpson came to London and took 

 lodgings in Spitalfields, where at first he both worked at the loom and 

 gave instruction as he had done in the country ; but his great abilities 

 becoming known to the world, and being perhaps more conspicuous 

 from the obscurity of his situation, he was enabled to give up hia 

 trade and devote himself wholly to science. Having brought hia 

 family to the metropolis, he established himself there as a teacher of 

 the mathematics, and employed his leisure hours in extending bis 

 researches into the highest branches of the science. 



On the death of Dr. Derham, Mr. Simpson was, in 1743, appointed 

 professor of mathematics in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich ; 

 and this post he held during nearly all the rest of his life. He is said 

 to have been successful in acquiring the friendship and esteem of his 

 pupils ; and while exerting himself diligently in fulfilling his public 

 duties, he found time to compose numerous works on the most 

 abstruse points in the mathematical and physical sciences. 



In 1746 he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society, and on 

 account of the mediocrity of his circumstances he was excused the 

 payment of the admission fee and the annual subscriptions : several of 

 his mathematical papers were printed in the ' Transactions,' but most 

 of them were afterwards republished in the volumes of his works. 

 In 1760, when the present bridge at Blackfriars was about to be built, 

 Mr. Simpson was consulted with other mathematicians concerning 

 the form which would be most advantageous for the arches; he 

 appears in consequence to have taken some pains in investigating the 

 conditions of the stability of vaults, and to have given the preference 

 to those of a hemi-cylindrical form, but he did not live to complete 

 the work, and the results of his researches have never been made 

 public. 



As Mr. Simpson advanced in life, he became gradually a prey to 

 melancholy, which appears to have been increased by the influence of 

 bad habits ; his mental faculties were at length so far impaired that 

 he became incapable of performing the duties of his professorship, and 

 in the beginning of the year 1761 he was prevailed on to retire to his 

 native town. The fatigues of the journey increased his disorder, and 

 he died May 14, in that year, in the fifty-first year of his age. 



Considering the circumstances attending Simpson's early life, and 

 the laborious occupation in which he was afterwards engaged, it is not 

 without surprise that we contemplate the number of works which he 

 wrote, and the profound research those works display. His first pub- 

 lication, which came out in 1737, was entitled ' A New Treatise of 

 Fluxions,' in which the direct and inverse methods, as they were 

 called, are demonstrated with considerable precision and perspicuity, 

 and agreeably to the manner of Newton : the work also contains 

 several useful applications of the calculus to subjects in natural 

 philosophy and astronomy. Thirteen years afterwards, that is, in 

 1750, he published ' The Doctrine and Applications of Fluxions,' 

 which he dedicated to the Earl of Macclesfield, and which, though it 

 embraces the same subjects as form the body of the ' Treatise,' must 

 from the numerous improvements it contains, be considered as a 

 separate work. 



In 1740 Simpson published 'A Treatise on the Nature and Laws of 

 Chance,' besides ' Essays on several subjects in Pure and Mixed Mathe- 

 matics,' and two years afterwards ' The Doctrine of Annuities and 

 Reversions,' with tables showing the values of single and joint lives. 

 These works were followed, in 1743, by ' Mathematical Dissertations 



