Antikythera and Archimedes: a conference in Syracuse

The theme

The Antikythera mechanism was born in the Greek world of the 2nd century BC, at a time when the legacy of Archimedes — the mechanical planetarium described by Cicero and other authors — was still alive. Syracuse is the natural place to discuss this link: what we know about the Syracusan tradition of planetaria, what the sources say and what the CT scans of the fragments say.

Syracuse: Archimedes, Phidias and the astronomical tradition

Archimedes (Syracuse, c. 287 – 212 BC) was the son of the astronomer Phidias: he says so himself in the Sand-Reckoner, quoting his father’s estimate of the apparent diameter of the Sun next to that of Eudoxus. Cicero (De re publica I, 21–22; Tusculan Disputations I, 63) describes the sphere built by Archimedes and taken to Rome by Marcellus after the fall of Syracuse in 212 BC: a device reproducing the motions of the Sun, the Moon and the five planets. Pappus records a lost treatise of his, On Sphere-Making. Before him, ancient sources credit two Syracusans, Hicetas and Ecphantus, with the idea that the Earth rotates on its axis.

Syracuse is thus, in the third century BC, the epicentre of Greek mechanical astronomy: the place where a model of the sky becomes a machine that computes. The link with the Antikythera mechanism also runs through its calendar: the month names engraved on the Metonic dial belong to the Corinthian family, to which Syracuse belonged (Freeth, Jones, Steele & Bitsakis, Nature 2008); the precise geographical attribution is debated (Iversen 2017 proposes Epirus).

In his exhibition Xenophon Moussas follows the Epirote identification and notes that this calendar shares seven month names with Syracuse and with Tauromenion, as well as with Bouthrotos, Corfu and Ambracia. It is a documentary link between the mechanism and the Greek cities of Sicily, independent of the question of Archimedes, and it holds under either reading of the calendar. See The exhibition.

Planned programme

• The mechanism told by its data: what is measured and what is reconstructed.
• Live demonstration of the calculator and the three-dimensional model, with the exploded view.
• Archimedes and the ancient planetaria: the literary sources and the problem of transmission.
• Presentation of the project’s research and of the path towards a buildable version.
• Session for schools and the public: questions, experiments with eclipses and the sky of Syracuse.

Speakers

Programme and speakers: in preparation.

To attend or propose a talk

Write to info@antikytheramechanism.app or use the form under Join the Project, choosing the closest interest.