Eratosthenes of Cyrene

Michael Lahanas
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.
. Cleomedes, On the Circular Motions of the
Celestial Bodies (de motu circulari corporum coelestium) And it is
necessary that the distance between Syene and Alexandria is one-
IiItieth oI the Earth's circumIerence. Since this distance is 5000
stades the circumIerence length is 250000 stades.
Eratosthenes oI Cyrene (c. 276 BC Cyrene c. 194 BC Alexandria ),
a Iriend oI Archimedes oI Syracuse, lived in Alexandria. He was
born in Cyrene, a place in Libya which is called today Shahhat. He
worked on geometry and prime numbers. He was a director oI the
great Library oI Alexandria. He is best remembered Ior his prime
number sieve which, in modiIied Iorm, is still an important tool in
number theory research. Eratosthenes measured the tilt oI the Earth's
axis with great accuracy and compiled a star catalogue containing
675 stars (now lost); he suggested that a leap day be added every
Iourth year and tried to construct an accurately-dated history. He
became blind in his old age and is said to have committed suicide by
starvation, like &e,o-r't. Eratosthenes came to Alexandria Irom
Athens to be the chieI librarian oI Ptolemy Euergetes. He was not
merely an astronomer and a geographer, but a poet and grammarian
as well. His contemporaries jestingly called him Beta the Second,
because he was said through the universality oI his attainments to be
"a second Plato" in philosophy, "a second Thales" in astronomy, and
so on throughout the list. For the same reason he was called
a Pentathlos which means and athlete in Iive disciplines. We know
indirect what he did by Strabo and Cleomedes who wrote 150-200
years later about Eratosthenes.
.//01
Geographica with maps and inIormation oI distance
measurements. The map by Eratosthenes includes India, Sri-
Lanka (Ceylon) and UK up to Thule in the North visited by
Pytheas.
Stories and Poems such as Hermes and Epigone.
2ha3es made measurements with the aid oI shadows using
the gnomon, which is the most primitive, but which long remained
the most important, oI astronomical instruments. It is believed that
Eratosthenes invented an important modiIication oI the gnomon
which was elaborated aIterwards by Hipparchus and called
an armillary sphere. This consists essentially oI a small gnomon, or
perpendicular post, attached to a plane representing the Earth's
equator and a hemisphere in imitation oI the Earth's surIace. With the
aid oI this, the shadow cast by the sun could be very accurately
measured. It involves no new principle. Every perpendicular post or
object oI any kind placed in the sunlight casts a shadow Irom which
the angles now in question could be roughly measured. The armillary
sphere made angle measurements extremely accurate.
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The ancient city oI Syene (today known as ''Aswn'' or
Assouan) is located due south oI Alexandria at a distance oI 5000
Greek stades.
In Syene there is a very deep well. Every year at noon on the day oI
the summer solstice (21 June) the sunlight illuminates the water at
the bottom oI this well. At that moment, the sun is directly overhead
and there are no shadows in the city oI Syene.
Eratosthenes invented, probably around 205 BC, a very beautiIul
method to measure the circumIerence oI the Earth. Details oI his
method he published in a work On the measurement of the
Earth which unIortunately was lost. We know indirect about his
method Irom other authors, mainly Cleomedes and Theon oI
Smyrna. He noted that, on the summer solstice, the sun casts no
shadow in Syene but he knew that it casts a shadow in Alexandria,
north oI Syene, corresponding to an angle 7
o
12' (or approximate
7.2
o
). He obtained the angle Irom the length oI a shadow cast at
noon by the summer solstice sun in Alexandria by a perpendicular
object oI known height, such as an obelisk or a gnomon. He reasoned
that the change in angle oI the shadow was caused by the spherical
shape oI the Earth (Aristotle and others knew this earlier) and that it
would be possible Irom this angle to obtain the circumIerence oI the
Earth..
a) Assumption that the Earth is Ilat: II the sun light Ialls vertical in
Syene then it will be also vertical in Alexandria and objects that are
vertical in both cities, like an obelisk or a gnomon, will be parallel to
the sun rays (no shadow will be observed). Eratosthenes knew that
the sun is very Iar Irom the Earth so that the sun rays are almost
perIectly parallel. Eratosthenes measured the distance to the sun as
804000000 stadia and the distance to the Moon as 780000 stadia
Irom data obtained during lunar eclipses.
b) Assumption that the Earth is spherical: sun light which Ialls
vertical in Syene Iorms an angle with a vertical object in
Alexandria due to the curvature oI the Earth surIace.
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0 ,
.
`
.
,
. ! Cleomedes
II we extend the lines oI two vertical objects they will meet at the
center oI the Earth and the angle Iormed by these two lines will be
also equal to the angle . Eratosthenes determined that the two cities
were 7.2 degrees apart. That is to say, out oI the 360 degrees
needed to travel all the way around the world, the two cities were
7.2/360 (1/50) oI that distance. In other words he determined that the
distance between Alexandria and Syene was one-IiItieth oI the
Earth's circumIerence. Since he knew that the two cities were about
800 km apart, he concluded that the the Earth must be 50 * 800 km
in circumIerence, or 40000 km (or roughly 25000 miles). From this
he determined the circumIerence oI the Earth to within less than 2
accuracy!!
2200 years ago!!!
1o,e 9e,ar:s
The distance between Alexandria and Syene is 729 km, not 800
km;
The accuracy depends on the length oI the stadium. For a value oI
157.2 metres Ior 1 stadium Eratosthenes obtained a remarkable
accurate result but others suggest that the stadium was 166.7
metres.
- The two cities are not on the same meridian;
- Syene is not on the Tropic oI Cancer (it is situated 55 km Iarther
North);
The angular diIIerence is not 7
o
12' but 7
o
5'.
Very interesting is that the measurement oI the distance between
Alexandria and Syene is based on the estimated average speed oI a
caravan oI camels that traveled this distance(!). Camels traveled the
distance many times to obtain an average estimate oI the distance.
Whether this is true is not clear.
About the well in Syene actually around 4 oI the light is reIlected
Irom water and even this is enough to assume that it was dangerous
to see the reIlected sunlight Irom the water at noon local solar time at
the summer solistice ( according to Edward Collett the reIlected light
is estimated to be 10000 more bright than that oI the Iull moon).
ThereIore one can imagine that at that particular time one could not
see at the reIlected sunlight Irom the well (was there any water in the
well?)
Strabo the known Geographer, another source oI the experiment,
says that Eratosthenes obtained 252000 and not 250000 stades
Some even say that Eratosthenes used another method , the so called
dip-method: Obviously, academicsocialite Eratosthenes simply used
or adopted the dipmethod result (!hich could have involved merely
ordmag an hour"s !or# atop the famous lighthouse, as against
!ee#s of !earing $ dangerous travel from %le&andria to %s!an) '
not the method for !hich he has been un(ustly immortali)ed* +,O $
-he .ournal for Hysterical %stronomy (PDF File)
Finally there is also the posibility that he used a scaphe which is also
a sun dial.
The scaphe dial, probably the oldest Iorm oI sundials. /caphe (Greek
boat) a bowl-shaped cup within which the hour-lines are marked. At
the time oI summer solstice the shadow is shortest and Ialls exactly
on the bottom line. In the Iollowing time the shadow grows again
until it reaches the top line at the time oI winter solstice. The days
are divided into temporal hours. Their length is not Iixed but instead
the time between sunrise and sunset is divided into 12 intervals oI
equal length. Klaus Kohl provides a possible method used by
Eratosthenes with the scaphe to determine the circumIerence,
avoiding the measurement oI angles.
Two thousand years later, French astronomers Pierre Mechain and Jean-
Baptiste Delambre set out to measure the Earth using modern methods. Their
goal was to determine with precision and accuracy the distance between the
Earth's north pole and its equator. By dividing that great distance into ten
million equal parts, the savants, in the name oI the people oI France and the
good oI all mankind, would create a new and natural standard oI measure: the
meter.
According to Ptolemy Eratosthenes measured the tilt oI the Earth's
axis and obtained a value oI
11
/
83
oI 180 degrees.
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The Earth's orbit around the Sun is very nearly circular, and it
deIines a plane in space called the ecliptic plane. With respect to the
perpendicular to the ecliptic plane (which points to orbital north), the
Earth's axis is tilted at an angle oI 23.5:
When the Earth's north pole is tilted directly towards the Sun, the
latter is highest in the sky (in the northern hemisphere), which is
what we called the summer solstice.
When the north pole is tilted directly away Irom the Sun, the latter is
lowest in the sky (in the northern hemisphere), which is the winter
solstice. The intermediate positions are the vernal and autumnal
equinoxes.
How did Eratosthenes discover the method to determine the Earth
diameter? In the Science Fiction book /ummer /olstice by Charles L.
Harness (nominated Ior a Nebula award in 1985) Eratosthenes meets
a shipwrecked alien, and iI we ignore the many historical errors,
learns Irom the alien how to do this! Today we do not know exactly
which method he used, but he knew one or more methods to estimate
the size oI the Earth, all equal impressive.
Some Images and part oI InIormation Irom Department oI History
University oI CaliIornia, Irvine
Dr. Barbara J. Becker
Eor ,ore +eta'3s see the (etr), FeGs'teH
/n EratosthenesD (a)'Is Joya*e of &'s-oKeryD an+ 9eK'K'n* 2he
4r'n-';3e of &'s-oKery 2o+ay Gy Lyn+on M> La9o)-heD Nr>
Klaus Kohl, Die Erdmessung des Eratosthenes (PDF File in German)
Measuring the Earth with Traceroute (PDF File) a modern version oI
estimating the Earth size using a computer and recording the
roundtrip time Ior small Internet packets between major Internet
traIIic hubs (a method much less accurate than all variations oI
Eratosthenes! which also requires the existence oI a network).
A 100 pages PDF File (in English) (in Spanish or French) with
inIormation about the Eratosthenes Experiment and what students
and teachers need to know to do this experiment
Co,,ents Gy J'tr)K')s
-hose !ho #no! names for very many !inds !ill perhaps be surprised at our
setting forth that there are only eight* 0emembering, ho!ever, that
Eratosthenes of Cyrene, employing mathematical theories and geometrical
methods, discovered from the course of the sun, the shado!s cast by an
e1uinoctial gnomon, and the inclination of the heaven that the circumference
of the earth is t!o hundred and fiftyt!o thousand stadia, that is, thirtyone
million five hundred thousand paces, and observing that an eighth part of
this, occupied by a !ind, is three million nine hundred and thirtyseven
thousand five hundred paces, they should not be surprised to find that a
single !ind, ranging over so !ide a field, is sub(ect to shifts this !ay and
that, leading to a variety of bree)es*
Eratosthenes lunar crater
Oer,an
Klaus Geus, Eratosthenes von Kyrene. Studien zur hellenistischen
Kultur- und WissenschaItsgeschichte. Mnchener Beitrge zur
PapyrusIorschung und antiken Rechtsgeschichte, 92. Mnchen: C. H.
Beck, 2002. Pp. 413. ISBN 3-406-48976-1. (English Review)
LPQ01
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