On the Gift

When I heard you lately vexed on behalf of philosophy — that people set no limit to their impiety toward her, and also that she meets with a hard and very unfeeling fortune, since those who lay claim to her through much charlatanry are well regarded among the powerful and among the crowds, while those who are true to her are slighted and honoured at the value of a Carian slave — I admired your zeal, for it sprang from a very noble nature. Yet I do not think anyone ought to be vexed when what happens happens according to reason. And it is surely reasonable that each should obtain what he has striven to obtain and what he has busied himself about, and in turn should fail of those things

which he never desired nor took care to have come to him. If, then, one man has taken thought to become wise and another only to seem so, each has what belongs to him: the one is, the other seems to be. Otherwise those who hunt for reputation through a philosophy that is not real but apparent would suffer a terrible wrong, and be more justly vexed, if those who cared for one of the two should have both, and they themselves neither — though they have practised the easier thing with no less diligence: to deceive those who do not know the matters about which they are deceived. So let these men be brilliant, and let them be crowned in the theatres if they wish; for, having despised the truth, they have fallen in love with a name. But as for us who are slighted — since you wish to count me among those of the rare kind, and not least on my account were annoyed with us at philosophy's fortune — we, then, neglected by people, must be content with the rank in which we placed ourselves, and must not envy

nor count these half-educated men happy when they are carried aloft by the wholly uneducated. For those who are not pure cannot see beauty, which is for a purified soul; and to proclaim oneself and do everything for display belongs not to wisdom but to sophistry. Therefore it is well for one who has no share in the respect of the many to say: "I have no need of this honour; I think I am honoured by the dispensation of Zeus," and to love and gladly meet a man who has blended wisdom and power together; for so we would neither keep company with the unworthy nor be thought wholly without honour. How then shall I not give the middle place in my soul to the admirable Paeonius, who has found how to bring back and join together philosophy and military command, long walled off from each other by great copings, having perceived an ancient kinship between these pursuits?

For long ago Italy, which had the same men as hearers of Pythagoras and as governors of its cities, was called Great Greece, and with full justice. Among them Charondas and Zaleucus made laws, Archytas and Philolaus were generals, and Timaeus, the greatest of astronomers, governed the city, served as ambassador, and took part in public life in other ways — the Timaeus through whom Plato discourses to us on the nature of the world. That is why, down to the ninth generation from Pythagoras, these men, entrusted with public affairs, kept Italy prosperous. And indeed the Eleatic school, and the one at Athens in those days, cared for words and for arms with equal honour. For Zeno — you could not easily count how many tyrannies he cut down, rallying against them the sound part of the cities; and Xenophon, taking over the Ten Thousand when they had given up under their misfortunes and were longing for death, led them back from the very summit of the Persian empire, victorious over everything that stood against them.

What should one say of Dion's going against the monarchy of Dionysius, which had enslaved the Greek cities in Sicily and not a few of the barbarian ones in it too, had brought down the pride of the Carthaginians, and was already spreading over the coast of Italy? Yet against it the lover and beloved of Plato, having hired foreign troops, put his whole allied force aboard one ship — and that a round merchantman — and sailed to Sicily; and from so great an armament Dionysius was driven out, while Dion reshaped the constitution, giving the cities back to the rule of the laws. So in former times philosophy and statecraft kept company, and when they came together they accomplished such things. But as with the other fine and venerable things, against all of which time has acted insolently, so this too, as life declined, lost its twofold form and was split apart by later men. Therefore it is not even worth saying how human affairs now stand. For since this, like the other goods, has left us, no greater misfortune could befall cities

than to have its strength without understanding and its understanding without strength. But you seem yourself to be about to begin bringing this union back to us: you are entrusted with public affairs, and you think one ought to practise philosophy — and practise it in such a way that you fight a fine fight on behalf of us and of the Muses, so that no one may drive them out of the marketplace and the army as idle and handless, as though they were of no use for the deeds of the open air but were pretty things for chattering and prattling to little boys. And it befits each of us to stretch out a hand to you as far as our power goes. For so you would be a finished wise man, not half-complete or maimed, riding on natural promise alone; the state would do well to be governed by such men; and we shall benefit, having won honour from people for philosophy while remaining in the manners that befit her. For in this way

the opposite would likely come about of what was likely a little before, when the sophistic tribe was said to prey on the ignorance of the multitude, with the result that the true nurslings of philosophy fare worse in reputation than the changelings and the falsely enrolled. But when those who hold the offices and have the affairs of cities in hand are not of the multitude but have understanding, they will quickly tell the bastard from the legitimate, and the people would not be hard to teach out of their deception. For there is no need to say anything to them, only to strike out the counterfeits by leaving them in obscurity; for it is natural that what leads should be admired through the assent of those who are ruled. Even now, not least through the absurdity of affairs, the multitude follows along and regards men with unshorn hair, and all who are bold, as some kind of extraordinary beings; and the other, more varied kinds of sophists they all but worship and celebrate, especially those of them who walk with a club and clear their throats before they speak. So you will come to the help of philosophy's fortune, and will not accuse her, who does no wrong. For what was likely has been seen to happen, and you will change it into what is fitting

and better, when you take up the cause of philosophy more vigorously; for even now you have begun the alliance in no mean way, barking back at the dogs and undertaking to wall off our Decelea. Having learned about you from those who came before me into your acquaintance, and having perceived it myself in a short time, I long to kindle the astronomical sparks that are in your soul and raise them to a great flame, working with what is there. For astronomy is itself an exceedingly venerable science, and might quickly become a ladder to something higher — a fitting ferry, as I think, to ineffable theology. For it has as its matter the blessed body of heaven, whose motion the leaders of philosophy think to be an imitation of mind; and it advances to its demonstrations in no disputable way, but uses as its handmaids geometry and arithmetic, which one would not be wrong to call an unbending rule of truth. I bring you, then, a gift most fitting for me to give and for you to receive: the work of my mind, in so far as

my most revered teacher helped me find the way, and the work of the hand of the best of our craftsmen in silver. If I first explain it, I would be serving my purpose. The purpose is to call out the natural impulses toward philosophy that are in you. For if the desire should come to you to fix your gaze intently on what is shown, then I will hold out to you a greater gift: the account of the science itself. But see that even now you attend to what is said about what is shown. The unfolding of a spherical surface onto a plane that keeps the ratios the same amid the difference of the figures was hinted at by Hipparchus of very ancient times, and he was the first to attempt the problem. But we — if it is not too much for one like me to say — wove it out to its very fringes and completed it, the problem having been neglected in the very long time between; for Ptolemy, outstanding as he was, and the inspired company of his successors were content to have only

the use which the sixteen stars supplied, sufficient for the night-time hour-reckoner — the only ones that Hipparchus transferred and set into the instrument. One should pardon these men for being occupied with the hypotheses, since the more pressing matters were still incomplete while geometry was still in the nurse's arms. But we, in order to work out a beautiful body for the science, having received these things without labour ourselves, are grateful to those of the blessed men who prepared the way. Yet we do not think it an unphilosophical ambition now to add some ornaments as well, to apply some craftsmanship, and to work out something beyond what is required. For just as cities, while they are being founded, look only to necessities, how they may be preserved and how they may get by, but when they grow are no longer content with the necessary, and spend more on fine porticoes, large gymnasia, and a splendid marketplace; so in a science the first advance lies in the necessities and the growth in the things beyond

them. So, thinking the problem of the unfolding worthy of attention for its own sake, we worked it out fully and composed a treatise, packing it with a necessary number and variety of theorems; and we took pains to transfer the reasoning into matter, crafting a most beautiful image of the breadth of the cosmos. Since the same method allows both a plane surface and a uniformly concave one to be brought to the same ratios, we judged any concave surface more akin to the perfectly spherical one, and hollowed out the surface slightly; and we took care of the other things so that the appearance of the instrument might remind the intelligent viewer of the truth. For we set in the stars, distinguished by the six magnitudes, and preserved their configurations relative to one another; of the circles we drew some around and some across; and we divided them all into degrees, making the five-degree lines longer

than the single-degree lines, because we also enlarged the inscriptions of the numbers; and on the silver the black of the figures alongside them gives the base the look of a book. They are not all divided in the same way, either with respect to themselves or to one another: some into equal segments, others unevenly and unequally to the eye, but in ratio evenly and into equal parts. This had to be so in order that the differing figures might agree. For this reason too the greatest circles drawn through the poles and the solstitial points, while remaining circles in principle, have become straight lines in the transfer of the theorem; the antarctic circle is set in larger than the greatest circles; and the distances of the stars from one another are enlarged in proportion to that part of the unfolding. Of the inscriptions which we engraved in solid gold and set into the places free of stars along the antarctic circle, the latter, the four-line one, is ancient and simpler, an encomium of astronomers:

"I know that I am mortal, a creature of a day; but when I track the dense, circling spirals of the stars, I no longer touch the earth with my feet, but beside Zeus himself I am filled with god-nourishing ambrosia." The one that comes before it, the eight-line one, was made by the one who also made the work — by me. It has a seminal and comprehensive grasp of what is seen on the instrument, set out with force, and composed scientifically rather than elegantly. It tells the astronomer alone what he can get from the instrument: it promises the positions of the stars — not, it says, with reference to the zodiac but to the equator, for it was evident from the

lines that to take them that way was impossible. It says too that the obliquities are given — that is, of the parts of the zodiac in relation to the parts of the equator; and on top of all, the co-risings — that is, with how many degrees of the zodiac how many degrees of the equator pass the same horizon. And there is this besides (let it be written down for the sake of later readers; for you it is enough lying on the tablet): "If wisdom found her way to heaven, it is no great wonder: for mind too came from the heavenly ones themselves. Lo, she spread out the curved backs of the sphere, and cut all the circles with uneven sections. Look at all the constellations toward the rim on which the Titan, as he comes, weighs night against light,

the obliquities of the zodiac; nor will the … centres of the meridian conjunction escape you."