Water-Lifting Technology in the Graeco-Roman World and Its Development Through the Renaissance

CHAPTER 2 Water-Lifting Technology in the Graeco-Roman World and Its Development through the Renaissance

The Invention of Water-Lifting Devices

The invention of the waterwheel and its applications, such as the water mill, is generally ascribed to the Greek world, between the third and first century BCE. In fact, all water-lifting devices based on subdivided wheels and cylinders seem to have originated in that period.1 The reference to water- raising devices in the extant writings of Ctesibius (285–222 BCE),2 Philo of Byzantium (c.280−220 BCE), Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c.75–15 BCE) and Hero of Alexandria (c.10–70 CE) bear testimony to the fact that lifting water con- stituted an important challenge for the outstanding mechanical technologists

1 For discussions on this subject, see: Adam Robert Lucas, Wind, water, work: ancient and me- dieval milling technology, Leiden: Brill, 2006, Technology and Change in History, (ongoing series), Vol. 8; John Peter Oleson, Greek and Roman Mechanical Water-Lifting Devices: The History of a Technology, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984, pp. 325–331; John Peter Oleson, “Water-Lifting,” in Örjan Wikander, (ed.), Handbook of Ancient Water Technology, Technology and Change in History, (ongoing series), Vol. 2, Leiden: Brill (2000), pp. 217–302, specially pp. 229–241; Örjan Wikander, “The Water-Mill,” in Örjan Wikander, (ed.), Handbook of Ancient Water Technology, Technology and Change in History, (ongoing series), Vol. 2, Leiden: Brill (2000), pp. 371–400; K. Donners, M. Waelkens and J. Deckers, “Water Mills in the Area of Sagalassos: A Disappearing Ancient Technology,” Anatolian Studies, Vol. 52, (2002), pp. 1–17; K. D. White, “ ‘The Base Mechanic Arts’? Some Thoughts on the Contribution of Science (Pure and Applied) to the Culture of the Hellenistic Age,” in Peter Green, (ed.), Hellenistic History and Culture, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 211–237; Larry W. Mays, (ed.), Ancient Water Technologies, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London and New York: Springer, 2010; and Stavros I. Yannopoulos, Gerasimos Lyberatos, Nicolaos Theodossiou, Wang Li, Mohammad Valipour, Aldo Tamburrino and Andreas N. Angelakis, “Evolution of Water Lifting Devices (Pumps) over the Centuries Worldwide,” Water, 7 (2015), pp. 5031–5060. 2 Although no Ctesibius’ writings have survived, Vitruvius specifically refers to Ctesibius’ works as available in his time. See: Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, The Ten Books on Architecture, translated by Morris Hicky Morgan, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1914, book X, chapter 7, pp. 297–298.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��8 | doi ��.��63/9789004312425_004 30 chapter 2 of Antiquity.3 Yet most of the writings of the period have been lost, and much of our information about the scholars of the Hellenistic period comes from remarks made by later authors. When texts have been saved, the selection pro- cess was fortuitous, arguably resulting in the preservation of some of the worst and the destruction of some of the best. The Italian historian Lucio Russo attributes the birth of this inventiveness to a Hellenistic scientific and technological revolution that achieved depths that had not been reached in the classical times, when Greek culture had reached great heights in art, literature and philosophy.4 This so-called ‘revolution’, although lasting about two centuries, actually covered a period that was shorter than what is generally considered to be the Hellenistic age—the period between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE to the conquest of Egypt by Rome in 30 BCE.5 For Russo, the end of the Hellenistic period was linked to the end of the quantum leap of scientific knowledge in the second century BCE, when scientific studies declined and eventually disappeared. Russo main- tains that the science developments achieved during the era labeled by him as the scientific revolution were lost with the Roman conquest and during the Middle Ages, because the scholars of those periods did not have the capability to understand them. The Hellenistic period was almost immediately forgotten, whereas interest in classical philosophers like Aristotle and Plato revived. In Russo’s view, the legacy of Hellenistic science was one of the bases of the scientific revolution of the sixteenth century, when ancient texts in these fields started once again to be available in Europe.6

3 See Thorkild Schioler, Roman and Islamic Water-Lifting Wheels, Odense: Odense University Press, 1973, pp. 110–174. Schioler presents a detailed chronological account of the sources rel- evant to study the evolution of water-raising devices. Schioler’s book remains a frequently quoted study in this area by scholars, but his systematic approach to standardize the termi- nology characterizing the different devices has not been adopted by other historians, and confusion among them is rampant in this respect. 4 For a controversial discussion on this subject, see: Lucio Russo, The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BCE and Why It Had to Be Reborn, translated by Silvio Levy, Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer, 2004. The ensuing paragraphs summarize succinctly some ideas from his thesis. 5 This periodization is according to German historian Johann Gustav Droysen in Geschichte des Hellenismus, (2 volumes), Vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011 (originally written between 1836 and 1843). 6 Russo, The Forgotten Revolution, chapter 11, pp. 329–397, specially pp. 385–307.