Eratosthenes of Cyrene

This book is the first comprehensive examination of the lists of Olympic victors that were assiduously maintained by ancient Greeks for more than a 1,000 years. The origins, development, content, and structure of Olympic victor lists are explored and explained, and a number of important questions, such as the source and reliability of the year of 776 BCE for the first Olympics, are addressed.

Abstract.
The interlink between the determination of the circumference of the Earth and the geographical mapping performed by Ptolemy in his Geography (c. 150 AD) is discussed. As Ptolemy himself stated, he used the value of 180,000 stades for the circumference of the Earth which is in stark contrast to the famous result of Eratosthenes, i.e. 252,000 stades. Many scholars see these different values as a result of the diverse definitions of a stade used by both ancient authors. Such a view cannot, nevertheless, explain the excessive distortion of Ptolemy's world map along the east-west direction. We have treated the problem with the methods of spherical trigonometry and have shown that many features of Ptolemy’s map can be easily explained and corrected under the presupposition that the length of the stade used by Ptolemy coincides with that of Eratosthenes. The latitudinal distortion in Ptolemaic map is caused by his underestimating of the size of the Earth in combination with his efforts to keep the known latitudes of the localities. Another mathematical consequence is a significant displacement of the localities lying approximately on the same meridian (so-called antikemenoi poleis), as in the case Carthage in relation to Rome. It is shown that a simple transformation of the Ptolemaic coordinates to the circumference of the Earth measured by Eratosthenes drastically improves the positions of the locations given in Ptolemy´s catalogue. The comparison of the recalculated positions of the identified localities with their actual positions confirmed a very high precision of Eratosthenes' result for the circumference of the Earth.

Zusammenfassung
Untersucht wird der Zusammenhang zwischen der Bestimmung des Erdumfangs und dem kartographischen Verfahren, das Ptolemaios in seiner Geographie (ca. 150 n. Chr.) anwendet. Wie Ptolemaios selbst behauptet, verwendet er statt des Resultats der berühmten Erd-umfangsmessung des Eratosthenes (252 000 Stadien) den Wert von 180 000 Stadien für die Erdgröße. Die meisten Forscher heute führen diesen Unter-schied auf unterschiedliche Stadien-Längen zurück. Eine solche Ansicht kann aber z. B. nicht die starke Ost-West-Überdehnung der Oikumene erklären, wie sie aus der Erdkarte des Ptolemaios bekannt ist. Wir haben daher dieses Problem mit den Methoden der Sphärischen Trigonometrie behandelt und können nun zeigen, dass sich viele Verzerrungen leicht erklären und korrigieren lassen, wenn wir annehmen, dass das Ptolemäische Stadion mit dem des Eratosthenes identisch ist. Vielmehr wird die Über-dehnung der Oikumene durch den zu geringen Erdumfang bei Ptolemaios in Verbindung mit seinem Bestreben, die überlieferten Breitenangaben für bekann¬te Orte zu bewahren, verursacht. Eine andere mathematische Konsequenz ist die signifikante Verlagerung von Orten, die auf dem gleichen Meridian liegen (so genannte antikemenoi poleis), wie die von Karthago gegenüber Rom. Wir können nachweisen, dass durch eine Rekalkulation der Ptolemaischen Koordinaten in Bezug auf die “richtige” Erdgröße des Eratosthenes die Positionen der Orte in seinem Katalog dramatisch verbessert werden. Ein Vergleich zwischen den rekalkulierten und modernen Koordinaten bestätigt außerdem die Genauigkeit der Eratosthenischen Erdmessung.

Geus, Klaus: Krokodile, Elefanten, Wale und Bohnen: über Kontingenz und Valenz von zoologischen und botanischen Argumenten in den geographischen Kon-zeptionen der Antike. In: Lafer, Renate; Dolenz, Heimo; Luik, Martin (Hrsg.): Antiquitates variae: Festschrift für Karl Strobel zum 65. Geburtstag. Rahden/Westf.: VML Vlg. Marie Leidorf, 2019 (Internationale Archäologie – Studia honoraria). S. 81–96 [ISBN: 9783896465580].

Synopsis 
There can be no doubt, that Pytheas' curious played an important role in his journey to the distant shores. But, there is also no doubt, that someone had to support such a risky and expensive trip. Apparently, Pytheas, who discovered deposits of tin and Amber for the Greeks, acted in the interests of his sponsors. It is not possible to identify the names of these of his sponsors. However, there is no doubt, that Marseilles, where Pytheas came from, was ruled by oligarchs at that time, that is, in the 4th-3rd centuries BC. Apparently, the great merchants financed the trip of Pytheas for their own benefit. Despite the fact, that ancient authors have already tried to blame the traveler, in terms of data on what and in what year Pytheas discovered, these are not entirely reliable, while Pytheas himself, still considered the first representative of the ancient world, who not only saw the shores of the British Isles, but also walked on and around them in a circle. From the Celtic shores, the Marseillaise went further north, where he encountered a certain substance condensed from sea and air. With a high degree of probability, it can be argued that the seaborne-explorer is talking about ice. And it was this ice that surrounded the mythical island of Thule. For many centuries, scientists wondered exactly where Pytheas got to. Someone claimed, that it was Iceland, someone else, considering himself a realist, pointed to Norway. However, both did not doubt the veracity of the description of the northern regions of Europe, which no one had visited before Pytheas. Of course, this fact did not pass for Greek culture without a trace. First of all, the Greeks significantly expanded their horizons, enriched their knowledge of the world around them and realized, that there is also a lot of mysterious and unknown outside the world that they know, worthy of attention and study. In addition, this plot served as the basis for literary works and legends that influenced the further development of the literary tradition not only of Greece, but of the entire European Culture.

The seeming assignment of an iambic trimeter line (= adesp. tr. fr. 123 a) to
Antiphanes (fr. 288) and Timocles (fr. 41) at Pseudo-Plutarch Lives of the Ten Orators 845 b, in the course of a brief description of Demosthenes’ early career, is actually a reference to Antiph. fr. 167. 2–3, on the one hand, and to adesp. com. fr. 149 (which ought to be assigned to Timocles), on the other. Antiph. fr. 288 = Timocl. fr. 41 should thus be regarded as dubia at best.

The aim of the presentation is to analyse possible overlaps between Eratosthenes' philological and scientific production, both in terms of 'content' and in terms of 'method'. Particular attention is paid to Eratosth. fr. 52, 81, 101 Strecker.

Didymus’ commentaries on the comic playwrights and his Comic Vocabulary responded to the interests of the readership of Attic Comedy primarily in two ways: by summarising the opinions of previous scholars and by offering a wide typological range of explanations, useful also to less specialised readers. Although the grammarian’s exegesis of comedy is now preserved only through quotations (mainly in the scholia to Aristophanes), it is still possible to identify the main features and interests of Didymus’ interpretive work and highlight its relevance for both ancient and contemporary readers of Greek comedy.

El conocimiento geográfico del Noroeste hispano que nos transmiten geógrafos e historiadores greco-romanos antiguos está estrechamente unido tanto al debate científico más general sobre la dimensión y los límites de la ecúmene, como a la percepción más cultural que histórica que se tiene de sus territorios y de sus gentes, sobre todo a medida que Roma los va conociendo y conquistando.
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The geographical knowledge of Northwestern Hispania transmitted by ancient Greek-Roman geographers and historians is closely related to a wider scientific discussion on the size and limits of the oikoumene as well as to a perception, more cultural than historical, of their territories and inhabitants, especially as Rome is conquering and getting to know them.

The contributions in this volume combine fundamental questions of common sense geography with case studies of ancient geographical texts. The book seeks to bridge synchronic cognitive linguistic and cognitive psychological approaches to ancient texts with a diachronic perspective. The mental modelling of common sense geography is a fruitful theoretical approach to gain deeper insights in universal and cultural-specific mnemonic representational systems on the one hand, and to enhance our understanding of ancient geography on the other.

Klaus Geus is a historian, philologist and geographer who holds the chair for ancient geography at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Martin Thiering, a cognitive linguist and anthropologist, works on the interface between cognitive linguistics, cognitive anthropology, and philosophy of language.

Доклад на Научной конференции «Международные сети как фактор интеграции научного сообщества» (Секция «История географии»), Санкт-Петербург, 13 ноября 2018 года
Рассматривается вопрос о реальной протяженности стадия, которым мог оперировать Эратосфен в своих трудах по географии Земли. А также предлагается гипотеза о происхождении "стадия" в 155...158 м.

Klaus Geus: Eratosthenes: Sternsagen (2007): A German Edition of the Catasterismi. In: Pàmias, Jordi (Hrsg.): Eratosthenes’ Catasterisms: Receptions and Translations. Mering: Utopica Verlag Rainer Streng, 2016. S. 123–30. [ISBN: 978-3-944735-04-7].

Klaus Geus: Sternbild und Standpunkt: Zu einem Ordnungs- und Beschreibungsprinzip in der astronomischen Literatur der Griechen (Die Anordnung der Sternbilder in den Katasterismen des Eratosthenes). In: Pàmias, Jordi (ed.): Eratosthenes’ Catasterisi: Receptions and Translations. Mering: Utopica Verlag Rainer Streng, 2016. S. 35–47. [ISBN: 978-3-944735-04-7].