Volume 16, Number 10 · June 3, 1971
Ancient Technocrats
By M.I. Finley
The Muses at Work
edited by Carl Roebuck
MIT, 294 pp., $12.50
Technology in the Ancient World
by Henry Hodges
Knopf, 287 pp., $10.00
Moving the Obelisks
by Bern Dibner
MIT, 61 pp., $2.95 (paper)
The Ancient Engineers
by L. Sprague de Camp
MIT, 408 pp., $2.95 (paper)
Agricultural Implements of the Roman World
by K. D. White
Cambridge, 232 pp., $15.00
Roman Farming
by K. D. White
Cornell, 536 pp., $12.50
The Muses began their long career as vague minor spirits whom old Greek poets such as Hesiod invoked for inspiration. But when mythology fell into the hands of the learned, the Muses became fixed in number (nine) and they acquired individuality, with personal names and specialized spheres of activity. The Hellenistic and late Roman pedants did not altogether agree on the details but they were in full accord over which activities were appropriate to inspiration—poetry, music, the dance, historiography, and, for Urania, astronomy (really mathematics).
Review, 2531 words
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