First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The most striking advances in the knowledge of human anatomy and physiology that the world had ever known—or was to know until the seventeenth century A.D.—took place in Hellenistic Alexandria. The city was founded in 331 B.C. by Alexander the Great. After the tatter's death in 323 B.C. and the subsequent dissolution of his empire, it became the capital of one of his generals, Ptolemy, son of Lagus, who established the Ptolemaic dynasty there. The first Ptolemy, subsequently named Soter , (...) and his son Ptolemy Philadelphus , became immensely enriched by their exploitation of Egypt and raised the city to a position of great wealth and magnificence. Anxious to enhance both their own reputation and the prestige of the kingdom, they sought to rival the cultural and scientific achievements not only of other Hellenistic rulers but even of Athens herself. Their patronage of the arts and sciences, coupled with their establishment of the Museum , together with the Library, made the city the centre of Hellenistic culture. Philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, artists, poets and physicians were all encouraged to come and work there. (shrink)

In the doxographical tradition the concept of a ‘crystalline’ outer-heaven is ascribed to two Presocratic thinkers. Aëtius tells us that Anaximenes held that the stars were fastened like nails in the ‘crystalline’: and, again, that Empedocles believed that the fixed stars were attached to the ‘crystalline’, while the planets were unattached: The ascription of this concept to both these Presocratic philosophers is decidedly odd; for, whereas, in the case of Empedocles’ thought, fire acts as a solidifying agent, Anaximenes, on the (...) other hand, connected solidity with cold and rarity with heat and in his cosmology the heavenly bodies are created by the rarefaction into fire of vapour from the earth. For this reason the concept of a solid outer-heaven is quite incompatible with the little else that is known of his cosmogony and cosmology. (shrink)