34 THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



is concerned with machinery windmills, windlasses, 

 axles, pulleys, cranes, pumps, fire-engines, revolving 

 spiral tubes for raising water, wheels for irrigation 

 worked by water-power, wheels to register distance 

 traveled by land or water, scaling-ladders, batter- 

 ing-rams, tortoises, catapults, scorpions, and ballistae. 

 On the subject of war-engines Vitruvius speaks with 

 special authority, as he had served, probably as mili- 

 tary engineer, under Julius Caesar in 46 B.C., and 

 had been appointed superintendent of ballistse and 

 other military engines in the time of Augustus. It 

 was to the divine Emperor that his book was dedi- 

 cated as a protest against the administration of 

 Roman public works. In its pages we see reflected 

 the life of a nation employed in conquering and 

 ruling the world, with a genius more distinguished 

 for practical achievement than for theory and specu- 

 lation. Its author is truly representative of Roman 

 culture, for nearly everything that Rome had of a 

 scientific and intellectual sort it drew from Greece, 

 and it selected that part of Greek wisdom that minis- 

 tered to the daily needs of the times. In his work 

 on architecture, Vitruvius shows himself a diligent 

 and devoted student of the sciences in order that 

 he may turn them to account in his own department 

 of technology. 



If you glance at the study of mathematics, astron- 

 omy, and medicine among the Romans prior to the 

 time of Greek influence, you find that next to noth- 

 ing had been accomplished. Their method of field 

 measurement was far less developed than the ancient 

 Egyptian geometry, and even for it (as well as for 

 their system of numerals) they were indebted to 



