Crates of Mallus
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Crates, of Mallus in Cilicia (modern day Southeastern Anatolia Region, Turkey), was a Greek language grammarian and Stoic philosopher of the 2nd century BC, leader of the literary school and head of the library of Pergamum.
His principles were opposed to those of Aristarchus of Samothrace, the leader of the Alexandrian school. He was the chief representative of the allegorical theory of exegesis, and maintained that Homer intended to express scientific or philosophical truths in the form of poetry.
During the 2nd Century BC he visited Rome as ambassador of either Attalus II, king of Pergamum in 159 BC or Eumenes II, also of Pergamum, in 168 BC. Having broken his leg and been compelled to stay there for some time, he delivered lectures which gave the first impulse to the study of grammar and criticism among the Romans (Suetonius, De grammaticis, 2). His chief work was a critical and exegetical commentary on Homer.
According to Scientific American, issue September 2005, page 18, Crates of Mallus devised a globe representing the Earth. This implies that the Hellenistic world already knew that the Earth was round, which comes as no surprise to anyone who recalls that Eratosthenes had calculated the circumference of the earth a generation earlier.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- C Wachsmuth, De Cratete Mallota (1860), containing an account of the life, pupils and writings of Crates; JE Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. i. 156 (ed. 2, 1906).
