The continuation of the article
Fragment A contains 27 of the 30 gears of the Meteoroscope. Note the connections of the gears. The X-ray of Fragment A is from X-Tek Company and the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project. Aristides Voulgaris has slightly altered it. The view is the back view. Thanks to X-Tek Company, the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, and Aristides Voulgaris.
The back of the Meteorological Observatory has the upper spiral scale of 19 years (235 months) of the Meton calendar and the lower spiral scale of 18 years (223 months) of the Saros calendar which predicts the Solar and Lunar eclipses. Thanks to the artist from Evia Evi Sarantea.
After the Meteorological Observatory, the next brilliance of Alexandrian Greek science rose in Alexandria with the astronomer Ptolemy in 2being century. This era was the heyday of Greek science. Ptolemy's books, especially the "Mathematical Syntax," which the Arabs called the Almagest, shaped European astronomy for a thousand years and more.
Mathematical Syntax, Almagest, by Claudius Ptolemy. – https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Ptolemy's mathematical astronomy was an elaboration and refinement of the scientific ideas of Hipparchus.
But what is Greek science? The British historian of philosophy John Burnet says the following: “Science is Greek thought about the World. This is the reason that science never existed, except among people who came under Greek influence” (Early Greek Philosophy, 3rd ed., 1920, v).
I agree with the British scholar. The Greeks breathed freedom and, therefore, with their own intelligence, investigated themselves, others, their society, nature and the Universe. They had an alphabet and a rich language and poets and philosophers who constantly observed how animals and plants and people and stars together explained the Cosmos. The philosopher Pythagoras of the 6th century BC he was sure that he heard the music of the celestial spheres. He taught his students not to sacrifice animals to the gods and to become vegetarians. Aristotle wrote scientific studies on animals, and in this way, careful observations from the anatomy, physiology and behavior of hundreds of animals, laid the foundation for the science of zoology (“On the Stories of Animals” and “Parts of Animals”).
Greek science was both the atomic theory of Democritus and the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus of Samos and a method of research, starting with questions, but also a deep understanding of life and the existence of the Universe. How the Cosmos is and works were the pillars of Greek science. With such a philosophical framework, the discovery of the truth about nature and political and social issues becomes possible. That is, Greek science is philosophy with cogs, a synthesis of intelligence with art, technology, agriculture, sculpture, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, cosmology, geography and a strategy for freedom.
Medieval Greece
4being In the 1st century, the King of the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantine, replaced Greek culture and gods with the Jewish sect of Christianity. Something so radical and revolutionary had no precedent. This huge earthquake overturned virtues, history, science and the entire strategic architecture of Hellenism.
The results were terrible. For centuries, the Greeks were victims of persecution and destruction. The Olympic Games were banned at the end of the 4th century.th century. In 415, the philosopher Hypatia was murdered by monks in Alexandria for teaching Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. In 529, Emperor Justinian closed Plato’s Academy, which had been a university for 900 years. In 1082, the Orthodox Church anathemaed Greek culture and those who studied it. After these self-destructive blows, foreign barbarians almost wiped out Hellenism.
In 1204, French, Venetian, and German crusaders conquered Constantinople and Greece. Their barbaric behavior paved the way for the Mongol Turks' capture of Constantinople on May 29, 1453.
Nevertheless, Greek scholars continued their studies of ancient Greek civilization. For example, Ioannis Tzetzis in the 12th centurybeing century he published Homer's "Iliad" for the German princess Irene of Bavaria (Bertha von Sulzbach) who married Manuel I Komnenos, Greek king, 1143-1180. Almost 2 centuries later, Metropolitan Bessarion, 1402-1472, had many ancient Greek manuscripts which he donated to Venice. Pope Eugene IV appointed Bessarion a Cardinal for his help in the Union of the churches. Around the middle of the 15thth century, the very weak Greek government of Constantinople needed military help from the West. Hence the unification of the churches. Unfortunately, the emperor Palaiologos refused the wise advice of the Platonic philosopher George Gemistos Plethon from Mystras in the Peloponnese. Plethon, 1355-1452, whose life spanned the century before the fall of 1453, told Palaiologos that the only hope of protecting Hellenism from the powerful Ottoman Empire was to build a strong Greek kingdom in the Peloponnese, which had always been the heart of Hellenism. But, Plethon told Palaiologos, those who would defend the Peloponnese should not be foreign mercenaries but Greek farmers with arable land. Also important, Plethon told the emperor, Christianity should be replaced by the ancient Greek religion. In other words, Plethon, who knew the history, politics and strategy of his time, tried to convince Palaiologos to make radical changes in the state machine in order to save Hellenism, but Palaiologos did not understand or refused to understand the tragic situation and danger that had been approaching Constantinople for decades. The result? Medieval Hellenism lost its freedom – for 4s centuries.
The West rose from its lethargy with the Lighthouse of Greek books, and Greece sank into the Ottoman Hell of slavery, superstition, and darkness.
However, the ancient Greek books of Bessarion were translated into Latin and sparked the Renaissance. The Renaissance brought Greek science to Florence, Padua, Venice and other European cities. European scholars studied the books from ancient Greece and gradually came to understand the world of the ancient Greeks as a model for their own world, that is, the world that 5 centuries later, we have today in 2025.
Cardinal Bessario, helped to unite the Orthodox and Catholic churches. By Theodore de Bray – Uni Mannheim Mateo (Mannheimer Texte Online); Source [1]; Image:[2], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=799163 - https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Modern Greece
Ancient Greece gave life not only to Europe in the 15th centuryth century but also in modern Greece of the 19thth century. Adamantios Korais, 1748-1833, united ancient and modern Greece. He studied in France and became the father of the Greek Revolution of 1821. He published with prefaces ancient Greek philosophers and scientists such as Hippocrates and Aristotle on knowledge, Hellenism, education and freedom. He constantly told modern Greeks that they were children of the ancient Greeks. In 1806, he anonymously published “The Greek Prefecture, That is, a Discourse on Freedom,” in which he described the virtue of laws for freedom and the chains of tyranny that the Greeks must break in order to gain Freedom. But in the same revolutionary work, Korais also describes the miserable life of the enslaved Greeks under the Turkish dynasty and tyranny. The food of the Greeks, for example, was inferior to that of horses.
www.vergosauctions.com photo Agnostou, Adamantios Korais, Greek Prefecture, That is, a Speech on Freedom, Italy, 1806. – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elliniki_Nomarchia_s_439.JPG
The Greek Revolution broke out in Romania on February 24, 1821. Alexander Ypsilantis, a general in Russia, was a Greek patriot with knowledge of the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC and the poet Aeschylus. Aeschylus' ancient motto, NOW FOR ALL FIGHTS, was also the voice of the Greek Revolution.
Manto Mavrogenous, lithograph by Adam Friedel, 1786-1868. Manto was a heroine who financed warships and soldiers who fought the Turks. Public Domain – Parliament of the Greeks, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Friedel_-_Manto_Mavrogenous.jpg
Manto Mavrogenous is an example of the heroic struggle between a relatively few Greeks and numerous Turks, enemies trained and armed by European powers. Modern Greeks are just waking up to scholars like Korais, who, having the heroism and culture of the ancient Greeks as a vision of freedom, urge the Greek revolutionaries to fight to the death for their freedom. The struggle was unequal.
General Yannis Makrygiannis learned to write Greek at the age of 30. In his “Memoirs,” he wrote that while the ancient Greeks clothed Europeans with virtues, Europeans sowed corruption in Greece. They are trying to make us slaves, the general said. But we, almost without weapons, killed more than 400,000 Turks. And when the revolutionaries defeated the Turks, the Europeans supplied the defeated Turks with weapons and food. If you did not help our enemies, Makrygiannis tells the Europeans, with the strength we had at the beginning of the revolution, we would be free.
The revolution finally won the Greeks the desired freedom. The Russians defeated the Turks in the war of 1828 and in the Treaty of Adrianople of 1829 Greece became an independent state.
Goes on
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Mathematical Syntax, Almagest, by Claudius Ptolemy – https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Cardinal Vissarion – By Theodore de Bray – Uni Mannheim Mateo (Mannheimer Texte Online); Source [1]; Image:[2], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=799163 - https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/
www.vergosauctions.com photo Agnostou, Adamantios Korais, Greek Prefecture, That is, a Speech on Freedom, Italy, 1806. – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elliniki_Nomarchia_s_439.JPG
Manto Mavrogenous, lithograph by Adam Friedel, 1786-1868. Public Domain – Parliament of the Greeks, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Friedel_-_Manto_Mavrogenous.jpg
