Greek Mathematical Astronomy Reconsidered Author(s): HughThurston Reviewed work(s): Source: Isis, Vol. 93, No.

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CRITIQUES & CONTENTIONS

Greek Mathematical Astronomy Reconsidered

By Hugh Thurston*

ABSTRACT

Recent investigations have thrown new light on such topics as the early Greek belief in heliocentricity, the relation between Greek and Babylonian astronomy, the reliability of Ptolemys Syntaxis, Hipparchuss theory of motion for the sun, Hipparchuss value for the obliquity of the ecliptic, and Eratosthenes estimate of the size of the earth. Some claims resulting from these investigations are controversial, especially the reevaluation of Ptolemy (though it is notable that no one any longer uses data from the Syntaxis for investigating such things as the spin of the earth). This essay presents the evidence for these claims; it makes no pretense of presenting the evidence against them.

ECOGNITION OF THE NEED FOR RECONSIDERATION, specically, of Ptolemys authority and reliability dates back at least to Johannes Kepler, supported by Christian Severin. This concern was resurrected by J. B. J. Delambre and again by Robert Newton. It was widened to include almost all of ancient Greek mathematical astronomy by B. L. van der Waerden and Dennis Rawlins.1 The main new points of view are these:
Not only did Aristarchus believe that the earth and the planets circled around the sun, but there was a mathematical astronomy based on this belief. Many writers have assumed that the data that are common to Greek and Babylonian astronomy were all obtained by the Greeks from the Babylonians, but some could have gone the other way.

* 12951 Seventeenth Avenue, Unit 3, Surrey, British Columbia V4A 8T7, Canada. 1 Christian Severin, Introductio in theatrum astronomicum (Copenhagen, 1639), 50.1, fol. 33 (Non tantum erasse ilium dixit observando sed plane nxisse observatum quod ex Hipparcho computaverit); J. B. J. Delambre, Histoire de lastronomie du moyen age (Paris, 1819), p. lxviij; Robert R. Newton, The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1977); and B. L. van der Waerden, Die Astronomie der Griechen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988). Dennis Rawlinss work appears mostly in DIO, The International Journal of Scientic History http://dioi.org , a privately published magazine (Box 19935, Baltimore, MD 21211-0935). ISIS, 2002, 93:5869 2002 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved. 0021-1753/02/9301-0003$10.00 58

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Figure 1. Error in ten-thousandths of a day in the estimates, shown below, of the mean length of the year. (The crosses mark estimates that use data from the Syntaxis.)

Days Chinese, about 500 B.C. Hipparchus, about 140 B.C. ACT 210, after 134 B.C. Ptolemy, about 140 A.D. Chinese, 520 to 579 A.D.* Al-Battan, 900 A.D. A1-Zarqali, 1270 A.D. Guo Shoujing, 1280 A.D. Ulugh Beg, 1400 A.D. Tycho Brahe, 1600 A.D. 48578/133 36514 1/290 (1,49;34,25,27,18) 18 36514 1/300 365 plus various fractions 365;14,26 365;14,33,30 365.2425 365 plus 5 hours, 49 minutes, 15 seconds 365 plus 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45 seconds

Excess .2481 .2463 .2458 .2467 .2437 to .2446 .2406 .2426 .2425 .2425 .2422

NOTE.The last column shows the excess over 365 days converted to a decimal, to four places. The mean length of the year given in the Nautical Almanac (which does not dene the concept) has been taken as correct in calculating the errors. In this period it decreased from 365.2423 to 365.2422. *Over this period the following almanacs gave the fractions shown for the excess of the year over 365 days. Zheng guang li 523 A.D. 1477/6060 Xing ho li 539 A.D. 4117/16860 Tian bao li 551 A.D. 5787/23660 Tian he li 566 A.D. 5731/23460 Da xiang li 579 A.D. 3167/12992

The most substantial treatise on Greek astronomy, Ptolemys Syntaxis,2 is not to be trusted; Ptolemy misreported much of the data. (Many examples of this misreporting are advanced in Robert Newtons The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy.)

Orthodox historians of astronomy have vigorously rejected these suggestions, especially the last one. But it is notable that no one who uses ancient data in research any longer uses data from the Syntaxis. Al-Battan was unlucky enough to do so. He used the date of an equinox reported by Ptolemy in his calculation of the length of the year and found a length 212 minutes too short.3 At his date the error should probably have been about half a minute, as revealed by Figure 1, and so it would have been if Ptolemy had put the equinox on the right day.
M hgl sijgy otms nexy bibki ic, ca. 150 A.D. Willy Hartner, Al-Battani, in Dictionary of Scientic Biography, ed. Charles C. Gillispie, 16 vols. (New York: Scribners, 19701980), Vol. 1, pp. 507515, on p. 511.
2 3

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Several minor points should be made as well:

Eratosthenes did not measure the 5,000 stades from Syene to Alexandria that he used in his estimate of the size of the earth but unwittingly used a distance calculated from an earlier estimate of the size of the earth. Hipparchus had other parameters for the motion of the sun besides the ones reported in the Syntaxis. Hipparchus had two values for the obliquity of the ecliptic, neither of them the one ascribed to him in the Syntaxis, and used one of them to calculate distances from the equator.

Now let us look at the evidence for these suggestions.

EARLY HELIOCENTRIC THEORIES

In the eccentric presentation of Hipparchuss theory of the motion of the moon, the moon revolves in a circle of radius R whose center revolves in a much smaller circle of radius r around the earth. In the epicyclic presentation, the moon revolves in a circle of radius r whose center revolves in a circle of radius R around the earth. In each presentation R is the mean distance of the moon. The two presentations were well known to be equivalent. In Syntaxis 4.11 Hipparchus is reported as calculating the ratio of r to R as 32723 to 3,144 from one trio of eclipses, 24712 to 3,12212 from another. Presumably he meant r 32723 and R 3,144 in one case and r 24712 and R 3,12212 in the other. The 1 peculiar gures 3,144 and 3,122 2 for the mean distance of the moon are hard to explain, but Rawlins has an ingenious suggestion.4 Rawlins suggested that early astronomers used one-thousandth of the distance of the sun as their unit of distance. Aristarchus, in his famous treatise on the sizes and distances of the sun and moon, had the elongation of the half-moon as 87 . The diagram in Syntaxis 15.5, reproduced here as Figure 2A, has AD perpendicular to ND instead of perpendicular to NA. If Hipparchus made a similar mistake in interpreting Aristarchus, that would give him Figure 2B for the situation at half-moon instead of Figure 2C, which is correct. This would make the distance of the moon 1,000tan3 , which in sexagesimals is 52;24, to one sexagesimal place, which is 3,144 sixtieths, exactly the rst gure quoted above. Further, if 52;24 were misread as 52124 (a type of error known to be common), this would be 3,12212 sixtieths, exactly the other gure quoted. (Rawlins also showed, earlier in the same article, how the 32723 and 24712 could be obtained from these gures and Hipparchuss data.) Rawlins contends that only heliocentrists, not geocentrists, would base their astronomical unit on the sun. He gives no reason for this belief; however, Ptolemy, who was a geocentrist, used the radius of the earth as his unit of distance, and modern astronomers, who are heliocentrists, use the distance of the sun as the astronomical unit. The classic Indian theory of the motion of the planets, as expounded by Aryabhata and . Brahmagupta in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D., was epicyclic and was clearly inspired by Greek ideas. For Mercury and Venus, the theory involves a point called the sighrocca, which revolves around the earth in the heliocentric sidereal period of the planet. It is the number of revolutions of the sighrocca in a given period that is listed in the Indian treatises. This suggests to me, at the very least, that the Indians had an early heliocentric theory that Aryabhata and Brahmagupta gave up when they devised their systems, though they . kept the earlier parameters. Similarly, Hipparchus and Ptolemy gave up Aristarchuss he4

Dennis Rawlins, Heliocentrists Adoption of the Astronomical Unit, DIO, 1991, 1:159161.

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Figure 2. A, Diagram from Syntaxis 5.15, illustrating Ptolemys calculation of the distance of the sun. In the picture D is the center of the sun; NA is a tangent to the sun from the center, N, of the earth. Therefore DA should be perpendicular to NA, but Ptolemy has it perpendicular to ND. B, Incorrect depiction of the situation at half-moon. C, Correct depiction of the situation at half-moon.

liocentric ideas; but by contrast with the situation in India, there is no direct evidence that Aristarchus had any precise parameters. Ptolemy did not obtain the daily motion in epicyclic anomaly for each planet by dividing the change in anomaly deduced from the data in books 9, 10, or 11 by the number of days taken by the change. The value for Mars cannot be obtained from Ptolemys data, even by rounding it (as can the values for Saturn, Venus, and Mercury). Rawlins maintains that the only relation that can produce the results for Mars has an integral number of sidereal periods, which implies a heliocentric point of view. He adduces such a relation: 327 sidereal periods 288190 synodic periods, (1)

which he uses to modify the synodically integral relation 303 synodic periods 647 sidereal years 236,321 days (to the nearest whole day) (2)

as follows. Set p Then relation (2) yields 3 360 p degrees of anomaly per day. Rawlins rounds p to the nearest whole number: call this result q. His calculations yield 25,921 25,921 236,321 . 101

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360 q

25,921

degrees per day. This, to six sexagesimal places, is the gure given by Ptolemy. Essentially Rawlins multiplies by 288190, rounds off a factor in the middle, and divides by 288190.5 (Any reasonably accurate relation will give the rst three sexagesimals: relation [2] does, and so do the data in the Syntaxis. We have to balance the likelihood of the indirect calculation using two unattested relations against the very small probability of getting the last three sexagesimals by chance.) I am inclined to believe that the strongest evidence for heliocentricity, at least of Venus and Mercury, is plain common sense. Everyone knew that their angular distances from the sun were restricted. (The Incas thought that the sun, as lord of all the stars, ordered Venus to keep near him because she was more beautiful than the rest.) If we combine this with ideas of circular orbits, it seems obvious that these two planets circle the sun. It is hard to fathom why the Greeks gave up this natural idea in favor of the highly articial suggestion that each circles a point strictly in line with the sun at an unspecied distance. (The distance is specied in Ptolemys later work Hypothoseis ton planomenon but is nowhere near the right value.)
GREEK AND BABYLONIAN DATA

A gure that was found in a Babylonian tablet but is now known to have come from the Greeks is a value for the number of days in a year. Tablet ACT 210 (undated) says that in 1,49,34;25,27,18 days the sun returns to its longitude after 18 rotations. This makes one year 6,5;14,44,51 days, which is 365;14,44,51 if we decimalize the whole number. Because Babylonian longitudes were sidereal this would, if obtained by the Babylonians, be a sidereal year. It is a poor estimate for this, however, but quite a good one for the tropical year. The sexagesimal fraction 14,44,51 is given by the vulgar fraction 73297. It looks as though the gure was obtained by dividing by 297 the interval of time between two similar solstices or equinoxes 297 years apart. (Assuming that solstices and equinoxes are reported to the nearest quarter of a day that is, as morning, midday, evening, or midnightwe would need to divide a whole number of quarters by the number of years between two observations. The number quoted, 297, is the only time span less than 400 years that gives the right sexagesimals.) There are two summer solstices 297 years apart: one observed by Hipparchus in 135 B.C. (Syntaxis 3.1) and one by Meton in 432 B.C. in the morning of Phamenoth 21 (Syntaxis 3.1). And 36573297 times 297 is 108,478 (which agrees with the Julian dates 134/06/26 and 431/06/27 usually attributed to these observations, the one in 135 B.C. by calculating the actual date of the solstice, the other from the date recorded). The fact that this parameter was of Greek origin does not, of course, negate the fact that the Greeks took much from the Babylonians: the decimal/sexagesimal numerals, the use of signs and degrees to measure arcs, and the use of Babylonian methods, not by Ptolemy and Hipparchus, but by Greeks in the Roman period.6
5 Dennis Rawlins, Ancient Heliocentrists, Ptolemy, and the Equant, American Journal of Physics, 1987, 55:235239; the calculations are on p. 237. 6 Alexander Jones, Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus (P. Oxy. 41334300a), Vols. 1 and 2 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1999).

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The clearest example of Ptolemys misreporting is his calculation of the length of the year. He said that he divided the time span between two summer solstices, the second of which he observed himself, by the number of years between them. He did the same with two spring equinoxes and two autumn equinoxes, choosing for the later equinoxes for the sake of accuracy those [observations] which we ourselves have made with the greatest accuracy.7 Each time he got the same result as Hipparchus; it is about ve minutes too short. To get such a result, his observed equinoxes and solstice had to be more than a day too early. And indeed they wereand this 300 years after Hipparchus had been reporting them to the nearest quarter of a day and getting most of them right. The times at which Ptolemy claimed to observe the solstice and equinoxes, quoted to the nearest hour, were precisely what we would obtain if we calculated them from the earlier observations and Hipparchuss value for the length of the year. The conclusion that Ptolemy calculated the times in this way and was not telling the truth when he said that he observed them seems inescapable.8 In Ptolemys time the difference between the elevations of the sun at noon on the two solstices was 47 21 . He said that he made repeated observations and found that it was always between 47 40 and 47 45 . The error is unacceptably large for instruments available to Ptolemy; but the result is suspiciously close to a value, namely 11/83 of a circle, that Ptolemy attributed to Eratosthenes. There are many other examples of reported measurements that disagree with reality but are precisely what Ptolemy needed in order to deduce results that he wanted. For example, he calculated the longitude of Saturn on 138/12/22 four hours before midnight by noting that it was 12 east of the northern tip of the crescent moon (Syntaxis 11.6). It is possible, however, to calculate from modern theory where Saturn and the moon were at the time stated. John Britton has done so and found that the moon was not where Ptolemy said that it was; in fact, the moon covered Saturn. Britton also found that an observation that Ptolemy claimed to have made on 293/03/09 was incorrect.9 Sometimes the results of Ptolemys calculations are suspiciously close to what he wanted but not close to reality. For example, he calculated the apogee of Venus twice, getting two values only 2 apart, though they were out by about 4 (Syntaxis 10.110.3); he also calculated the apogee of Mercury four times and (using his incorrect value of precession for the earlier ones) found the four values to be within half a degree of each otherand over 30 from the true value. Sometimes the fudging is in the calculation. For example, Ptolemy quoted an observation of the moon when it was half full, from which he found the equation of center to be 7 40 . But he neglected parallax: he should have found 7 31 . He quoted another observation by Hipparchus from which he computed the equation of center to be 7 40 , again neglecting parallax (which this time was in the opposite direction); he should have found 7 49 . It looks as though the neglect of parallax here was deliberate (elsewheree.g., Syntaxis 5.3Ptolemy allowed for it). Also, he calculated the latitude of Spica from its position relative to the moon on 293/03/09, 212 hours before midnight, but in his calculation he ignored the latitude of the moon.
Ptolemy, Almagest, ed. and trans. G. J. Toomer (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998), p. 137. It seems inescapable to me, but not to David Dicks, who sees no incontrovertible reason to disbelieve Ptolemy: David Dicks to Hugh Thurston, 24 Oct. 1999. 9 John P. Britton, Models and Precision (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 140141.
7 8

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Ptolemys catalogue of stars (Syntaxis 7.5 and 8.1) has several suspicious traits: too many latitudes of stars north of the zodiac are whole numbers of degrees; too many of their longitudes end in 2/3; the fractional endings for the latitudes differ from those for the longitudes; and the longitudes are out, on average, by 1 06 . These traits could all be accounted for if the astrolabon was graduated in degrees, the smaller fractions were estimated by eye, and the observer was more attracted to the visible degree marks than to the invisible subdivisionsand if the longitudes were measured 223 centuries earlier and adjusted for precession by adding 223 to each.10 The catalogue contains no stars that rise less than 5 above the horizon at Alexandria, suggesting that the observations were made 5 farther north. Hipparchus lived 223 centuries before Ptolemy, worked 5 north of Alexandria (on the island of Rhodes), and was said (by Pliny) to have compiled a comprehensive catalogue of stars. He is the obvious choice for the compiler of the catalogue. This suggestion is further supported by the fact that if we precess the longitudes of the stars south of the zodiac back by 223 and compute the declinations using an obliquity that Hipparchus is known to have used, we nd that too many end in 5/6. So these latitudes and longitudes were computed from the declination and one other coordinate. (Declinations are found by subtracting the zenith distance at upper transit from the latitude of the site where it is measured. An excess of whole-number zenith distances would produce this result if the latitude ended in 5/6 consistent with observations at Rhodes.11) Ptolemys description of how he used the astrolabon is confused, lending credence to the suspicion that he did not actually use it.12 He said that when the sun and moon were both visible he set the longitude ring to the graduation on the ecliptic ring that marked the longitude of the sun. Next he turned the two rings together until they both overshadowed themselves. Then the astrolabon is properly set. He cannot have done this. His tables for the longitude of the sun were out by over a degree, so if one ring overshadowed itself the other would not. And it is not a sensible procedure: he needed only to turn the ecliptic ring until it overshadowed itself. There is no need for any calculation. It is in the second and third steps, in which the astrolabon is used to measure the coordinates of stars, that it is oriented by setting the longitude ring to a predetermined longitude. In Syntaxis 4.2 Ptolemy claimed to have found the mean month to be 29,31,50,08,20
Newton, Crime of Claudius Ptolemy (cit. n. 1), pp. 237256. Dennis Rawlins, Hipparchos Rhodos Observatories Located: Lindos and Cape Prassonesi, DIO, 1994, 4:3941. 12 Ptolemys description of the astrolabon is in Syntaxis 3.1. A reconstruction is shown in Figure 3. The astrolabon consists essentially of a graduated ring, which I call the ecliptic ring, that can be swung into the plane of the ecliptic. Two other rings can be rotated about an axis perpendicular to the ecliptic ring. The inner one is tted with sights; I call this the sighting ring, the other the longitude ring. Ptolemy explained that at a time when the sun and the moon were both visible he set the longitude ring to the graduation on the ecliptic ring corresponding to the longitude of the sun and rotated the astrolabon until the intersection of the two rings was in the direction of the sun and the rings overshadowed themselves. He then rotated the sighting ring to sight on the moon and read off the longitude of the moon from the position of the sighting ring on the ecliptic ring. Ptolemy described the next step in Syntaxis 7.2. He found the coordinates of several bright stars as follows. He calculated the position of the moon just after sunset from an observation just before sunset, allowing for the changes in longitude and parallax between the two times of observation. He set the longitude ring to this calculated longitude and sighted the moon with it. He then sighted the star with the sighting ring and read off its longitude from the position of the ring on the ecliptic ring and its latitude from the sights on the ring. In Chapter 4 he explained that he observed as many stars as he could by setting the longitude ring to the longitude of one of these bright stars and sighting on the star being measured with the sighting ring.
10 11

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Figure 3. Reconstruction of the astrolabon.

days long by dividing 126,007 days, 1 hour, by 4,267. However, division does not give this result: it gives 9 instead of 20 in the last place. (The difference is tiny, but we are concerned with the correctness of a calculation, not with accuracy of measurement.) Ptolemy did not perform the division but multiplied the previously known gure by 4,267; this does give 126,007 days, 1 hour, to the nearest hour. This leaves a miscellaneous collection of doubtful statements in the Syntaxis. Ptolemy needed the greatest elongation of Venus for two separate calculations. He cited it twice: 37 days apart (Syntaxis 10.1 and 10.2). A referee of an earlier version of this essay suggested that instead of being dishonest or incompetent, Ptolemy was exhibiting his great ingenuity and brilliance in tackling an otherwise essentially insoluble problem. It would be most interesting to see the details of this brilliance. Even absolving Ptolemy of incompetence here would not, of course, make it honest to report maximum elongations 37 days apart, which cannot happen either in actual fact or on Ptolemys theory. Ptolemy based the rate of anomaly of Mercury in the Syntaxis on two longitudes, using four other parameters that he had adopted. Three of the parameters, however, had values different from those in the earlier Canobic Inscription. Nevertheless, the rate of anomaly there is exactly the same as in the Syntaxis.13 Book 5 of the Syntaxis attributes three timed longitudes of the sun to Hipparchus. These agree with a solar theory used by Hipparchus (and reconstructed by Dennis Rawlins on other evidence) but not with the solar theory that Ptolemy adopted. Ptolemy said that Hipparchus had computed the longitudes wrongly from the dates and that he recomputed them from the theory in the Syntaxis, quoting also the mean longitudes. By coincidence, the two theories give the same longitude, but not the same mean longitude, for the middle observation. The mean longitude that Ptolemy quoted agreed with Hipparchuss theory, not his own. Clearly, when Ptolemy came to write the Syntaxis he remembered that he had
13

Rawlins, Ancient Heliocentrists (cit. n. 5), pp. 236237.

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found the longitude for the middle observation to be correct and carelessly copied the mean longitude from Hipparchus as well (Syntaxis 5.3 and 5.5).14
ERATOSTHENES

The well-known estimate of the circumference of the earth depends on the estimate of 5,000 stades for the distance from Syene to Alexandria. This gure is suspiciously round, and it does not seem possible that it was paced out over the desert. P. S. Laplace speculated that Eratosthenes had unwittingly used a distance calculated from an earlier astronomical estimate of the circumference; Rawlins put this speculation on a rmer footing.15 The evidence lies in a description of the Nile in Strabos Geography that Strabo referred to as Eratostheness opinion. He had the Nile owing 2,700 stades north from Meroe, 3,700 stades southwest, then 5,300 stades north to the Great Cataract, 1,200 stades to the cataract at Syene, and then 5,300 stades to the sea. And he had Meroe 700 stades above the conuence of the Astaboras and the Nile. Not only is the unusual gure 5,300 repeated, but 2,700 and 700 are roughly one half and one eighth of it. If we keep halving 5,300 and rounding to the nearest hundred, we get 5,300, 2,700, 1,300, 700. (If that 1,200 had been 1,300 there would have been a perfect t.) Successive halving (or doubling) is highly unlikely for a terrestrial survey but quite likely for an astronomical one. And 12 5,300Z2 rounds to 3,700, the gure for the southwest distance. The difference in latitude between Alexandria and Syene is one forty-eighth of a revolution. If one forty-eighth of the circumference is the basic unit for the map, the estimate of the circumference must have been 254,400 stades. If this stade was the one attributed to Eratosthenes by Pliny (Historia naturalis 2.247: universum autem circuitum Eratosthenes CCLII miliorum stadiorum prodidit, quae mensurae Romana computatione efcit trecentiens quindiciens centena milia pasuum [252,000 stades 31,500 Roman miles]), this would be between 18 percent and 19 percent too high. If the early estimate of the circumference had been made by nding how far away a lighthouse of known height is visible, or by some equivalent technique, it would have been some 20 percent too high because of refraction. Rounding the 5,300 to 5,000, together with Eratosthenes underestimate of the difference in latitudes, would account nicely for his actual error of 17 percent.
HIPPARCHUS AND THE SUN

If the summer solstices in 432 B.C. and 135 B.C. were reported a whole number of days apart, as I suggested in the section on Greek and Babylonian data, that would mean that the solstice in 135 B.C. was reported as in the morning, disagreeing with the tables in the Syntaxis by a quarter of a day. This implies that spring lasted 9414 days, not 9412. If we apply the standard calculation with the length of spring changed to 9414 days we nd that the orbit of the sun has an eccentric distance 213 and apogee 67 (instead of 212 and 6512 ). This agrees precisely with three pieces of data reported in Syntaxis 5.3 and 5.5: longitude 128 712 on 37 34 on 100 910 on
14 15

127/08/05 morning 126/05/02 morning 126/07/07 8 A.M.

Dennis Rawlins, The UH Orbit Restored to Life, DIO, 1991, 1:5759, 64. Dennis Rawlins, Eratosthenes Geodesy Unravelled, Isis, 1982, 73:259265.

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These gures disagree with the tables in the Syntaxis, and Ptolemy said that Hipparchus had made mistakes in his calculations. Syntaxis 4.11 reports the intervals between the times of three observations and the longitudes of the sun. First to second Second to third Interval of time 178 days, 6 hours 176 days, 113 hours Difference in longitude 180 20 168 33

From these data it is possible to calculate (by ancient Greek methods) the one and only simple eccentric motion that ts them. The apogee is 44 and the eccentric distance 314. This agrees precisely with a simple eccentric motion deduced by Rawlins on other grounds.16 A similar pair of intervals is reported in Syntaxis 4.11. First to second Second to third Interval of time 177 days, 1334 hours 177 days, 123 hours Difference in longitude 17278 17518

There is something wrong here. It would imply First to third 354 days, 15512 hours 348

and would make the sun cover 12 in 1056 days, which is unreasonably fast. (It would require an eccentric distance as much as 734.) Newton suggested that 17518 should be 17618 .17 The simple eccentric motion that agrees with the emended differences has apogee 65 (the same as in the Syntaxis) and eccentric distance 314 (the same as the motion described below in the discussion of Hipparchuss obliquities). Probably when he used this hybrid theory Hipparchus had not recomputed his tables and had to use the earlier ones, which would entail the earlier eccentricity but not the earlier apogee.
HIPPARCHUSS OBLIQUITIES

Strabo listed the distances of various climata from the equator in Geography 2.5.34. A clima, in this context, is a region where the longest day has a specied length; it is therefore a strip of territory parallel to the equator. Aubrey Diller showed that with an obliquity of 23 40 these distances could be accounted for by a straightforward trigonometrical calculation. This suggestion was rejected by Otto Neugebauer and by D. R. Dicks, but it has been conrmed by Rawlins, who showed that it also ts an extra clima unknown to Diller.18 An investigation by Rawlins of the errors in the coordinates of the catalogue of stars in

16 For the calculation see Hugh Thurston, Three Solar Longitudes in the Almagest Due to Hipparchus, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 1995, 26:164; an editorial mistake is corrected in the next issue. For the eccentric motion as deduced by Rawlins see Dennis Rawlins, Old Turkey: The Mystery of Hipparchos Roots, DIO, 1991, 1:141145. 17 For the eccentric distance as 734 see DIO, 1991, 1, p. 133 n 162; for Newtons suggestion see Newton, Crime of Claudius Ptolemy (cit. n. 1), p. 119. 18 Aubrey Diller, Geographical Latitudes in Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius, Klio, 1934, 27(3):258 269, esp. pp. 266, 267; Otto Neugebauer, History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy (New York: Springer, 1975), p. 734 n 14; D. R. Dicks, Geographical Fragments of Hipparchus (London: Athlone, 1960), p. 194; and Rawlins, Competence Held Hostage, DIO, 1994, 4:5557.

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the Syntaxis showed that stars in the constellations Ursa minor, Draco, and Cepheus were most likely to have been observed by an astrolabon constructed with an obliquity of 23 40 . (He investigated the effects of inaccuracies in the obliquity, the precession, and the setting of the longitude ring and of a presumed sinusoidal error and found the best value for each by a least-squares analysis.) The value 23 40 was also conrmed by R. Nadal and J.-P. Brunet.19 The investigation of the catalogue of stars showed also that the stars in the constellations of the zodiac were observed using an obliquity of 23 55 . This was conrmed by the fact that if we calculate the declinations of the stars in the southern constellations from the data in the catalogue we nd a nonrandom distribution of fractional endings.20 No other obliquity would give this result.
CONCLUSION

What should we do if some or all of these suggestions are valid? Why has the establishment reacted so strongly? Why did Ptolemy act as he did? We should stop using data from the Syntaxis. This, I think, we have already done. We should reevaluate Ptolemy. While continuing to admire his geometry and to give him credit as a painstaking encyclopedist, we should realize that he showed no ability as a practical astronomer and that if he made any observations he did not report them correctly. We should recognize the Syntaxis for what it is: a remarkably effective model for the motions of the sun, moon, and planetsafter all, it was not improved on until Kepler discovered elliptical orbitsorganized in a way, probably inspired by Euclid, in which the parameters are deduced logically from the smallest number of observations that would sufce to determine them. It is regrettable that Ptolemy chose to pretend that he made the observations. I think that we need not drastically reassess the relation between Greek and Babylonian astronomy. The one parameter found in Babylonian sources that almost certainly came from the Greeksnamely, the length of the tropical yearwas not used in Babylonian theories. More on the relation between Greek and Babylonian astronomy can be found in Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle, by D. R. Dicks, and in his article Pan-Babylonianism Redivivus?21 The establishment reacted strongly partly because of the polemical nature of Robert Newtons book, but mainly because they have gone out on a limb in the past in praising Ptolemy uncritically and it is human (though not laudable) to dislike admitting error. But the reaction does seem to have abated somewhat; the latest reference that I have seen to Ptolemy as the greatest astronomer of antiquity is in fact some twenty years old.22 Perhaps, too, the fact that Newton, van der Waerden, and Rawlins are not historians of science (van der Waerden was a mathematician; Newton was and Rawlins is a physicist) and could be viewed as trespassing on the historians turf played a part in the hostility to their work.
19 Dennis Rawlins, An Investigation of the Ancient Star Catalogue, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacic, 1982, 94:359373; and R. Nadal and J.-P. Brunet, Le Commentaire dHipparque, Archives for the History of Exact Science, 1984, 29:201236, on p. 210 n 17. 20 The procedure for obtaining this nonrandom distribution is described at the end of the section on the catalogue. 21 D. R. Dicks, Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 165175; and Dicks, Pan-Babylonianism Redivivus? DIO, 1994, 4:413. 22 Owen Gingerich, Was Ptolemy a Fraud? Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1980, 21:253256, on p. 253.

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More mysterious to me is why, after Delambres clear proof that Ptolemy faked his solstice and equinoxes, no one investigated the rest of the Syntaxis for similar aws for over a hundred years. We shall probably never know why Ptolemy behaved as he did. But we can guess why he faked the length of the year. Many tables in the Syntaxis depend on the motion in longitude of the sun and were computed using Hipparchuss data. If the length of the year were altered they would have to be changed. But if Ptolemy had merely used Hipparchuss 300-year-old result without trying to conrm it himself, that would have looked suspicious. (Ptolemys reported observations of the equinoxes and the solstices were among the last half-dozen in the Syntaxis.) Why he pretended to make the observations from which he deduced his parameters instead of stating them hypothetically (If the maximum eastward elongation of Venus is . . .) I just do not know. Certainly the suggestion, which I have seen several times, that people in those times were not as honest as we are today cannot be sustained.