Military leader and statesman
Born: c. 305 b. c.e.; place unknown Died: c. 215 b. c.e.; place unknown Category: Military; government and politics
Life Ruthless but magnanimous, ambitious but generous, a warrior with a love of mathematics, poetry, and sculpture, Hieron II (HI-uh-rahn) of Syracuse is one of the least known but most remarkable figures of Mediterranean antiquity. After gaining control of the Syracusan army, Hieron set out to rule Syracuse independently of the two great powers of the day— Carthage and Rome. He began by ridding his army of mutinous mercenaries. He led the army to battle, then pulled back the citizens and let the mercenaries be slaughtered. He organized a new army out of his grateful countrymen, who raised him from military captain to the undisputed kingship of Syracuse.
Although originally friendly to Carthage, Hieron shrewdly switched alliances when he realized that Rome would become the region’s most important power. Although he remained steadfastly allied with Rome during the First and Second Punic Wars (264-247 b. c.e., 218-201 b. c.e.), he secretly aided neighboring cities (including even Carthage) in an attempt to prevent Rome from completely dominating the Mediterranean. Called to Rome to explain his actions, Hieron responded by bringing 200,000 bushels of corn for the people, which won their hearts and forced the Roman senate to send him home unscathed.
During his long reign, Hieron fortified, enriched, and beautified Syracuse, making it into one of the great city-states of the ancient Mediterranean. To improve his city’s defenses, he persuaded Archimedes to turn from pure geometry to mechanics, out of which came the famous mathematician’s system of pulleys and levers as well as his discovery of how to weigh objects using water displacement.
Influence Although Hieron is almost forgotten today, his alliance with Rome was critical to that city’s ultimate triumph over Carthage. For that reason, he has played a significant role in some of the most important accounts of Rome, including those of Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, Justin, and Niccolo Machiavelli.
Further Reading
Hoyos, B. D. Unplanned Wars: The Origins of the First and Second Punic Wars. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998.
Kincaid, C. A. Successors of Alexander the Great. Chicago: Argonaut, 1969.
Jeffrey Sikkenga
See also: Archimedes; Syracuse.
Born: 190 b. c.e.; Nicaea, Bithynia, Asia Minor (now Iznik, Turkey) Died: After 127 b. c.e.; possibly Rhodes, Greece Category: Astronomy and cosmology
Life According to ancient sources, Hipparchus (hih-PAHR-kuhs) worked most of his life in Bithynia, although he was in Rhodes near the end of his life. Only one of his minor works, Ton Aratou kai Eudoxou (on Aratus and
Hipparchus (R. S. Peale and J. A. Hi
Eudoxus), survives, so what is known of him comes largely from later astronomers, especially Ptolemy. Hipparchus’s main contributions were in mathematics and astronomy. In mathematics, he contributed to the development of trigonometry through a table of chords useful for astronomy. He also introduced into Greece the practice of dividing the circle into 360 degrees.
Best known for his work in astronomy, Hipparchus made careful observations of the lengths of both the sidereal and tropical solar years, which enabled him to calculate the length of the year accurately. He also discovered the precession of equinoxes. Additionally, he improved on the estimations of the sizes of the Sun and the Moon from Earth and of their distances from Earth, and he helped develop the system of epicycles and equants to account for the motions of both the Moon and the Sun. Ptolemy would later extend this method to explain the behavior of the planets. Finally, Hipparchus created a star chart of 850 stars cataloged according to six magnitudes of brightness.
Influence Through his work in spherical trigonometry and his careful observational practices, Hipparchus transformed Greek astronomy from a largely speculative science into a predictive one.
Further Reading
Calinger, Ronald. A Contextual History of Mathematics. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1999.
Crowe, Michael J. Theories of the World from Antiquity to the Copernican Revolution. 2d rev. ed. Mineola, N. Y.: Dover, 2001.
Dreyer, J. L. E. A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler. New York: Dover Press, 1953.
Pecker, Jean Claude. Understanding the Heavens: Thirty Centuries of Astronomical Ideas from Ancient Thinking to Modern Cosmology. Edited by Susan Kaufman. New York: Springer, 2001.
Toomer, G. L., trans. Ptolemy’s Almagest. London: Duckworth, 1984. Reprint. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.
Terry R. Morris
See also: Science.
World History
