In the discussion, I was surprised a bit to see the portion of Ogden Nash poem described as a "para". I would have expected "stanza". The last two lines "We'll all be Kansas, By and By." allusion puzzled me for a bit. I suppose it meant that Kansas was also excessively anti-smut. In looking up Atlas, I noticed a Greek statue, showing Atlas semi-kneeling, with a sphere representing the World on his shoulders. It was not dated, but it appears to show that the Greeks did not think the world was flat.My dictionary seems to be wrong in its statement that Atlas was condemned to bear the Heavens on his shoullders.

PS: I know that Eratosthenes and Aristotle knew the world was a sphere. I was just commenting that the acceptance of that sculpture meant that only the really ignorant believed the world was flat. What a bunch of kooks have sites about it!

total off the theme of the week, and the word occiput, but the idea that Columbus was unaware the earth was round was a joke made up by Washington Irving... and taken to be true. there is a good deal of evidence the ancients new the world to be round.. and as sphere, not a round plate..

first there was the moon, and it phases, and eclipses added further evidence.. and wasn't Archimedes who first measured the earth? by noting, that a certain well in Egypt, on the day of the summer solstice, had the sun directly overhead.. and the sun would shine down the well shaft, at high noon, and reflect a perfect circle.. He used this information, and then had walkers, who were trained to always move forward the same distance, (and used by map makers, and tax accountants to measure far distances) pace to a town so many *miles distance to an other point in Egypt, and in that town, the next year, at noon, on the day of solstice, he measured the shadow of stick.. (*i don't remember the unit of measure, but it for this purpose miles works..)

(and now, if you know any geometry, you know you have 2 sides, and right angle, and with a bit of math, can figure out the remaining 2 angles..) and so he did, he figured out the angle of the sun rays in the distant town... (about a 7 degree angle as i recalled..) and since he knew how long a interval was a 7 degree angle, he could multiply till he had 360 degree, and figure out the circumference of the globe.. as i recall, he ended up close to 24,000 miles which ain't bad considering his tools! (my atlas puts it at 24,902-- so he had a error of about 4%-- not bad..) and since much of the knowledge of the ancient greeks would have been known to educated people of columbus's time, we can expect he knew the world to be round..

as to whether or not the ancients considered the heavens to be a sphere as well.. who knows.. but the most certainly realized the moon was a sphere, and the earth.. and suspected the same of the sun (a ball of fire... not plate.. and since they made flat plate into oil lanterns.. the would have known both) and yes, all the Atlas (s) i have seen carry the weight of the world on their shoulders..

since i don't know the greek-- was he condemmed to carry the world? the heavens? the cosmos?
what ever, it was percieved as an ordered whole.. something that could be carried..

(what ever unit of measurement it was, it noted the two town, and what he percieved to be the distance between them,-- the towns still existed in more modern times, and the distance was remeasured, and from this actual measurement, and Archimedes numbers, scholars have worked it all out again.. )

Not Archimedes.It was Eratosthenes.
Eratosthenes (276?-196? BC), Greek mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and poet, who measured the circumference of the earth with extraordinary accuracy by determining astronomically the difference in latitude between the cities of Syene (now Aswan) and Alexandria, Egypt. He was born in Cyrene (now Sha‰‰at, Libya). Among his teachers was the Greek poet Callimachus. About 240 BC, Eratosthenes became the head of the library at Alexandria, Egypt. His calculation of the earth's circumference was only about 15 percent too large. Eratosthenes also measured the obliquity of the ecliptic with an error of only seven minutes of arc and created a catalog (now lost) of 675 fixed stars. His most important work was a systematic treatise on geography. After becoming blind, he died in Alexandria of voluntary starvation.



"Eratosthenes," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 98 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights

He knew that the sun was directly overhead in Syene on a given day, knew the distance from Syene to Alexandria, and from there measured the angle of the sun. The distance was measured in stadia, and that value has been questioned.

The distance was measured in stadia, and that value has been questioned.

Umm, the value for the stadion? Or the size he came up with for the Earth?

And I believe your encyclopedia had it right about what Herakles was bearing and the modern image of his bearing the world is the error. See the Pillars of Herakles at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea.

I remember reading somewhere that there were at least two different versions of the ? stadium? And some authors have been unkind enough to suggest that Eratosthenes' modern admirers have out of kindness fudged things a bit to make the value come out correct. But there is no room for doubt that it was a brilliant concept, entirely sound.

This weekend I got around to visiting the Roman Baths at yes, you mebbe guessed it, Bath - the largest building in Roman times had a 15 metre columned portico with a pediment frieze of elaborate bas relief. One of the details still extant is a picture of the world which the learnéd hi cara commentary stated unequivocally represented a Roman world view of a spherical earth.

I have a digital pic if anyone's interested further.

I have a digital pic if anyone's interested further.

bien sûr.

Moi aussi. (I've been there but I guess I had too much beer to notice it)