This period was of course the Classical Age of Greek thought and Roman action. It was the age when rational thought first came into its own. Knowledge was no longer just a compilation of detached practical results but developed into a system of interconnections. It was the age of Aristotle's Logic and Euclid's Geometry. It could easily be split into two parts, the Greek and the Roman, at its mid-point around −150.
"According to convention, the Hellenistic Age began with the conquests of Alexander and ended with the death of Cleopatra. It therefore lasted for about three centuries - from about −330 to −30. During this period the Seleucids ruled in Syria, the Ptolemies in Egypt. It is often regarded as a period of stagnation, or even regression, between the glory of Greece and the grandeur of Rome. And this for an age that produced Archimedes, Theocritus and many major engineering works! There is, in fact, a strong case fro prolonging the Hellenistic Age, for want of a better name, through the Roman Empire into Byzantime times and up to the advent of Islam. In the first centuries of our era great scientists such as Ptolemy, Pappos and Hero wrote in Greek in Alexandria, and there was also a thriving scientific tradition, with Syriac as its language, centred on Harran in northern Mesopotamia. Scholars from Harran were a seminal influence on the nascent science of Islam." [D. Hill, p.2]
Heraclides (−387 - −312), postulated a rotating earth.
Aristotle & & & & & & (−384 - −322), his works include Physics, Metaphysics, Nichomachean Ethics, Politics, Poetics, De Anima. His groundbreaking work on Logic, known as the Organon, consists of six titles: Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, On Interpretation, Topics, Sophistical Refutations, and Categories.
Theophrastus (c.−372 - −287), pupil of Aristotle, principally a botanist.
Mencius (−372 - −289), Chinese philosopher.
Menander (c.−343 - −291), dramatist, wrote 100 comedies but only fragmenmts survive, text of Dyskolos discovered 1957.
Epicurus & & & & (−341 - −271), atomist philosopher, Letter to Menoeceus, Principal Doctrines &.
Zeno of Citium & & (−334 - −262), founder of the stoic philosophy.
Euclid & & (c.−325 - −265), compiled all the Elements & of arithmetic and geometry known at his time into a systematic logical development. Other works: Catoptrics included the law of reflection.
Cleanthes & (c.−331 - −232) stoic Hymn to Zeus &.
Archimedes & (−287 - −212), mathematician and engineer, The Sandreckoner deals with very large numbers, On Spirals, On plane equilibria principle of the lever and centres of gravity, Quadrature of the parabola area by method of exhaustion, On the sphere and cylinder determines volumes and areas, On conoids and spheroids, On floating bodies Archimedes' principle of buoyancy, Measurement of a circle approximation to pi, The Method.
Chrysippus & & (c.−280 - c.−206), stoic philosopher.
Manetho Egyptian scribe, Aegyptiaka −271, Chronicle of Egyptian history, survives only in extracts and summaries.
Aristarchus of Samos & & & & & (c.−310 - c.−230), On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon, he also according to Archimedes proposed a sun-centred universe, though not in this book.
Eratosthenes (−276 - −194), made a determination of the radius of the Earth.
Ashoka (−269 - −232).
Apollonius of Perga (c.−262 - c.−190), Conics names the ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola.
Hipparchus & (−190 - −120), astronomer: −150 used parallax to determine the Moon is roughly 380,000 km away, −134 makes a detailed star map, using a 'magnitude' scale of luminosity, and discovers the precession of the equinoxes from knowledge of earlier observations of Babylonian astronomers.
The Antikythera Mechanism & & &, recovered in 1902 from an ancient Greek shipwreck near the island of Antikythera, is a clockwork type mechanism, dated to −100 to −150, apparently including sufficient data to predict an eclipse, and possibly part of a more elaborate model of the planetary motions. "The mechanism is the oldest known complex scientific instrument. It has several accurate scales, and is essentially an analog computer made with gears. It is based on theories of astronomy and mathematics developed by Greek astronomers."
Roman Empire: Marcus Tullius Cicero (−106 - −43) orator.
Gaius Julius Caesar (−102 - −44) general, dictator and historian.
Spartacus (d.−71) leader of slave revolt.
Titus Lucretius Carus (c.−99 - −55) author of the epic poem De Rerum Natura On the Nature of Things - Epicurean atomist views.
Augustus, aka Octavian (−63 - 14) first Roman emperor.
Titus Livius (Livy −59 - 17) Roman historian (only 1 - 10 and 21 - 45 of his 142-book history survive).
Ovid, Publius Ovidius Naso (−43 - 17) poet, mythographer, author of Metamorphoses.
Jesus of Nazareth (−4? - 30?) religious teacher, probably mythical.
Paul of Tarsus (1st century, d.c.64) Jewish Pharisee who persecuted christians until he was converted by a vision on the road to Damascus, and became a missionary of christianity to non-Jewish people, the 'gentiles'.
Seneca the younger (−4 - 65) Consolationes 49, stoic philosopher, statesman and satirist.
Pedanius Dioscorides (c.20 - 90), surgeon with the Roman army, gathered knowledge on medicinal plants in his De Materia Medica.
Nero (37 - 68) Roman emperor (54). New Testament Gospels written: Mark c.70, Matthew c.80, Luke 1st c. and Acts of Apostles, John later.
Heron, aka Hero of Alexandria (1st century) mathematician and inventor, Metrica, Mechanics, and Pneumatics.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (1st century) Roman architect and military engineer in service of Augustus De Architectura (before year 27).
Plutarch (c.46 - c.120) biographer, historian, encyclopedist.
Epictetus (c.55 - 135) freed slave, stoic philosopher.
Zhang Heng (78 - 139) Chinese astronomer.
Claudius Ptolemy & & (c.85 - 165). made astronomical observations 127-141, compiled and systematised the knowledge of his day: Harmonics on music, Optics on light, including angles of refraction for several media, Geographia including map projections, Tetrabiblos on astrology, Planetary Hypothesis on cosmology, Syntaxis or 'Almagest' on astronomy.
Donald Hill, A History of Engineering in Classical and Medieval Times (Croom Helm 1984; Routledge 1996).