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The Greeks

Of Clouds & Shadows

Heiner Thiessen on Eratosthenes, Ancient Greek scientist.

Thinking for oneself and avoiding any form of hero-worship seems sound advice, and most of my life I have followed it with genuine conviction. But in my quieter years, and closer to the big cliff, where I have found the space and time to live on a sloping ledge, well beyond the realm of grinding necessity, I have discovered a fellow human being with whom I feel great kinship and even a sense of quiet admiration, having none of his outstanding qualities myself.

I am talking about a Greek polymath who had a finger in almost every scientific pie of his day. They called him the pentathlete, due to his mental prowess in so many disciplines. He was a poet, a mathematician, a geographer, a historian, an astronomer, and finally, the director of the most important library of the ancient world, situated in Alexandria on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt, west of the Nile Delta.

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