Why Study Metrology

7/30/2019 Why Study Metrology

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Why Study Metrology?

La metrologia non scienza, un incubo.

(Metrology is not a science; its a nightmare).

-G. De Sanctis

In 1923, Wilhelm Kubitschek, archaeologist and numismatist, author of themost comprehensive study on ancient measures of time, wrote:

There are scholars such as Theodor Mommsen and Hultsch, as Drpfeld andNissen, who have presented the problems of metrology in a comprehensive,

clarifying and self-contained form. But, because of the way it has been

handled in the last decades and particularly in the last few years, metrologyis today probably the most unappealing field of ancient scholarship.

This is something I did not know when Angelo Segr first introduced me tothe problems of metrology in Greek papyri. I was then in my last year of

secondary education, and I thought that it would be pleasant to apply my

classical education to the solution of problems that for their formal rigor

appealed to my personal temper. It took me many years to discover that I

was engaged in a field that, within its limits, was as dangerous as the studyof astronomy in the age of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. I

began to realize this only when I undertook the writing of a doctoraldissertation to be submitted to Harvard University. I had been educated in

such a sacred respect for Mommsen and had such a deep personal

admiration for August Bckh that, quite innocently, I could not believe that

anyone could seriously impeach the validity of their method. At theUniversity of Rome, I had become aware of the ideas held by the literary

faculty, and I had been told how the teachers of ancient history, Julius

Beloch, Gaetano de Sanctis, and Ettore Pais, used to talk to the students:

their condemnation of the philological method, their warning against

reliance on auxiliary disciplines and their scorn of the constructions ofRoman law. But their utterances were mixed with such crude anti-German

quips and with such offensive references to Mommsen that the studentswere inclined to discount them as political moods or personal peeves. In the

Italian intellectual climate, even the most extreme positions can be

expressed without great harm, since all ideologies are met with a degree ofskepticism. It was for this reason that the erratic genius of Beloch was

welcomed at the University of Rome, whereas Mommsen and Wilamowitz
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had considered his ideas so dangerous for scholarship that they hadprevented him from obtaining a chair in Germany. It was only when I came

to America that I discovered that the principles of the Roman school of

classical studies had been accepted by some outside Italy with a dogmatism

that was more deep rooted, because it had become unconscious or

inarticulate.

In my thesis the disagreement with De Sanctis school was embodied in two

points. One contention was that the structure of ancient systems of

metrology was such that all units of weight and volume could be calculated

long or short with a difference of 10 per cent; the short calculation wascalled in Greek inscriptionspheidolos from the verbpheidomai,to be

chary. The existence of this terminology gave rise to the construction of an

imaginary character called Pheidon of Argos, a figure of great importance,

because his imaginary date was used as an anchor point by ancient Greekchronographers and was used, for instance, to fix the date of the first

Olympiad. The second contention was that many important Greek texts, as,for instance the Athenian decree on coinage in the Delian League, had beenbadly understood because of an erroneous interpretation of the phrase metra

kai stathma kai nomisma (ornomos). This phrase, which is the key one in

ancient metrological texts, corresponds to the phrase numero ponderemensura of Roman law and is found in important passages of the Bible and

of the Talmud. It is a phrase constructed according to the principles of

Semitic syntax and consists of three synonymous terms linked by anexplanativevau (literally translated into Greek by kai) and conveying a

single idea. I tried to present my point of view in a form as limited as

possible, making as many concessions as possible to the other side. I was so

discreet that I did not mention the word metrology more than three or fourtimes, but the disagreement about the value of my kind of research

remained, and my thesis was sharply criticized from a methodological point

of view. To be more exact I should say that the criticism was

epistemological: it was a matter of deciding whether the Greeks or any otherhuman beings could have thought in the way I described. In the following

years I learned that this is the very essence of the debate on metrology. In

this field one can rely on evidence more reliable than that usually availablein ancient scholarship, and as a result there is substantial agreement among

specialists about all essential points; but other scholars refuse to accept the

conclusions drawn from the evidence because these do not suit their way of

thinking.

I had just begun to ponder the criticism of my thesis when I went to teach at

the University of Chicago, and on that occasion I paid a visit to ProfessorJacob Larsen. When I described to him what my interests were, he told me

that metrology had been completely debunked and added that I had better

read whats been written on the subject in recentyears. This advice wasnot intended to be friendly, but it proved useful, because then, for the first


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time, I began to read in chronological order all that had been written on thesubject of ancient metrology. Up to that time, I had concentrated my

attention on the works of authors whom I considered competent and

responsible. Reading all that had been written in this century was a painful

process, since I found myself submerged in a realm of total irrationality, but

it allowed me to arrive at an understanding of why a highly technical andimpersonal research could meet deep-seated emotional hostility.

I had pursued the study of metrology because I knew it was a promising

field, providing a solid method of investigating several topics of ancient

history, but I did not suspect that I had involved myself in a controversytouching upon basic issues of intellectual life. At moments, I felt that I

should abandon my research, since my task was overwhelming, but what I

found was so outrageous in terms of my values of justice and truth that I

concluded I should continue it.

The basic points of ancient metrology were reconstructed in the seventeenthcentury by two successive holders of the Saville Chair of Astronomy atOxford, John Greaves (1602-1652) and Eduard Bernard (1638-1697). Their

work is connected with the development of the ideas of Newton, who also

was interested in ancient metrology. The achievement of these two scholars,men of extraordinary encyclopedic learning and of more than human

capacity for work, was such that Christian Eisenschmidt as early as 1701

could say, with reason, that to write about metrology after Bernard was likewriting the Iliad after Homer. The modern study of metrology was initiated

by Bckh, who amplified the work of his predecessors by taking Greek

inscriptions as his main starting point. Bernard had also been active as an

editor of Greek inscriptions, but his information in this area was necessarilylimited; he relied mainly on Greek and Oriental literary sources, many of

which he discovered himself through his activity as a collector of ancient

manuscripts. Following the principles already formulated by Greaves,Bckh stressed two main points. The first, that there was one single system

of metrology, which had been developed in Egypt and completed in Assyria

by connecting the Egyptian units of length, volume, and weight with unitsof time and with angular measurements; this system was received as a

unified whole by the Greeks. The second, that the system developed by the

Egyptians was conceived like the French metric system, in that the unit of

length, by being cubed, gives the unit of volume, which, filled with water, is

the unit of weight. On a different level, Bckh was one of the figures mainlyresponsible for the establishment at the beginning of the nineteenth century

of the concept of philologia, the concept that classical culture is

characterized by certain general basic ideas and that these can be bestapproached by the development of specialized branches of investigation,

each with its own methodology. One of these branches is metrology, which

Bckh established as a formal discipline. Up to the end of the nineteenthcentury, generations of scholars pursued metrological investigations


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accepting the basic structure outlined by Bckh.

By a quirk of fate, the attack against the study of ancient metrology was

launched in England, where the study was born. In 1892, William Ridgewaypublished his sensational work, The Origin of Metallic Currency and

Weight Standards. It has the pretension of great encyclopedic learning, butin reality it is a conglomeration of hastily collected information of allorigins badly put together. It is difficult to criticize its methodology, since

the author proclaimed to have introduced a new scientific method called

inductive ; his writings indicate that by this term he means a method

based on intuition of what must have been the truth. In the first lines,Ridgeway proclaims that Bckhs theory was undoubtedly suggested by

the fact that the French Republic had established a new scientific metric

system. This statement is as inaccurate as most of those that follow, but it

is considered sufficient to dispose of Bckhs work. Ridgeway did notbother to inquire about Bckhs English predecessors. He considers that it is

absurd to assume that the Egyptians and the Assyrians could, from earlytimes, have had a scientific system of measures as that described bymetrologists. As a proof of this, he describes the systems of currency used

by several primitive societies; the argument consists in applying to highly

developed cultures the anthropology of preliterate societies. As pointed outby reviewers, the author did not like the idea that Oriental cultures could

have had any influence on Greece; metrology must be, rather, the invention

of the Aryan races. For this reason the author imagines the existence inthe entire Aryan area from India to Spain of a system of metrology based on

the amount of gold corresponding to the value of a cow. The Babylonians

and the Egyptians would have developed their own systems beginning with

the Aryan cow unit. This piece of writing was greeted by several Englishscholars as the fanciful work it was. But in the following years the

prevailing attitude of English scholars began to change. On the eve of the

First World War, England was possessed by an inferiority feeling in respect

to German industrial and scientific achievement; this feeling of inferiorityhad its reflection on the field of classical studies in which many began to

talk of the necessity of freeing themselves from the influence of German

scholarship. It was said that the heavy, technical German method ofscholarly investigation destroyed appreciation for classical works and

corrupted human beings by mechanizing them. The archaeologist Sir

William Ramsay proclaimed that there were two methods of scientific

research: one, called the method of exhaustion, by which the researcherconsidered all possibilities before choosing one; and the other by which the

researcher conceived a new idea. The first method required continuity of

working and belonged to the Germanic races; the second method requiredingenuity and belonged to the Anglo-Saxon races. With the second

method one arrived at discoveries, whereas with the first method one couldonly perform useful work. It is obvious that according to these

methodological principles the work of Ridgeway is the expression of


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superior scholarship.

It must be noted that these ideas were presented by Ramsay in 1914, a

period in which he was active organizing in the United States a revoltagainst the alleged Germanization of scholarly techniques introduced by

President Eliot of Harvard. Up to 1912, he had been a member of an Anglo-German group, headed in Germany by Theodor Wolf, of the BerlinerTageblatt, formed to prove that there were no basic economic conflicts

between England and Germany and to further intellectual cooperation

between the two countries. Ramsays passage to the prevailing camp of

anti-Germanism was marked by the Oxford History Lecture of 1913, inwhich he declared that henceforth the English Empire must not be based on

economic considerations but on faith and moral values ; he used these

terms as empty of any content as they are in Fascist terminology.

As English classicists were whistling in the dark, they realized that there

was one field in which their scholarship was superior to the German, that ofnumismatics. It happened, however, that the brilliant achievements inEnglish numismatics had been made by people who were gentlemen

scholars or operated in the tradition of gentlemen scholars; they considered

it quite unpleasant to have to bother to learn the arithmetical technicalitiesof metrology. In general, there is little good feeling between metrologists

and numismatists, because their two fields infringe upon each other but

require completely different skills and types of memory and imagination.The metrologist, engaged mostly in a speculative work that requires pencil

and paper, has to remember huge series of numerical texts in order to be

able to arrive at a synthesis; the numismatist must have an extraordinary

memory about material objects, in order to be able to classify them, andmust develop a feeling about them that includes a particular sense of touch.

I suspect that here we deal with the distinction, pointed out experimentally

by the electro-encephalograph, between individuals who think in terms ofabstractions and individuals who think in terms of concrete images; brain

physiologists remark that intellectual communication between the two types

may be difficult. Plato noticed this distinction-and the resulting difficulty ofmutual understanding. Much progress would be achieved if numismatists

and metrologists would develop a respect for the achievements and the

limitations of their respective fields. But this has not been generally so up to

now, and the existence of a team composed of a numismatist and a

metrologist, such as Kurt Regling and Carl Lehmann-Haupt, is a rareoccurrence. In this situation, English numismatists thought that they could

proclaim numismatics to be a field in which Englishmen had nothing to

learn from the Germans; this meant that English numismatists had no longerto ponder the metrological treatises written by German scholars. It is quite

significant that it was the numismatist Percy Gardner who in 1903 delivered

the most important appeal for the liberation of English classical studiesfrom German influences, in his essay Oxford at the Cross Roads. This book


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ends with the conclusion that henceforth English intelligence mustsubstitute for German amassing and ordering of facts. It seems that

Oxford always had its share of Percy Gardners, since a biographer of

Bernard reports that his erudite pursuits rendered him an object of ridicule

in gay society. Bernards primer of metrology was criticized for being hard

reading; to this Thomas Smith, who with Bernard had edited the Greekinscriptions of Palmyra, replied, neque enim elementa in puerorum aut iam

discere incipientium usum scripsit.

As a result of the political situation, the defense of Ridgeways work

became a matter of prestige for many English scholars and for numismatistsin particular. In the heat of nationalist passion, Ridgeway became a hero

and, at the end of 1914, was elected president of the Classical Association.

In his Presidential Address, he took the occasion to denounce as pro-

German the English scholars who had dismissed his papers as unscholarly:My only offence was that I had ventured to dispute what the Germans had

said. He then proceeded to compare the reception given to his work byrespectable English scholars to the attitude of English biologists who, intheir subservience to Germany, subscribed to Weismannism and refused

to accept the ideas of a friend of his who aimed at proving the inheritance of

acquired characteristics. This little detail proves that there is some methodin this world of madness; the Lysenko affair in the Soviet Union also

consisted of condemning Weismannism as kowtowing to foreigners

(inostranshchina). It is rather significant that Ridgeway proceeds bywarning Englishmen that Greek history teaches that unless they temper their

democracy with some return to aristocratic institutions they risk losing the

war. The ideas of Ridgeway continued to be accepted as truth by English

numismatists even beyond 1918 and have influenced all their writings up tothe most recent ones. It has been accepted that the proof that Ridgeway

failed to provide about the existence of the cow standard was provided by

Arthur Evans in 1906 (Minoan Weights and Currency), who claimed that

some bronze ingots found in Greece represented an oxhide and had thevalue of a cow.

When I wrote my Harvard thesis, I knew that I could not achieve anything

in the field of metrology unless I refuted Ridgeways theories, but I decided

that, instead of engaging in polemics, I should take a constructive position.

A careful perusal of Ridgeways work convinced me that his analysis of

anthropological evidence had confusedly pointed out an important fact ofGreek history, namely, that before the reception of the system of metrology

the Greeks had used utensil money such as is used by many primitive

people. Therefore my thesis consisted, first of all, of a detailedarchaeological analysis of the types of utensil money used by the Greeks.

On the basis of this analysis, I proceeded to a review of the conclusions of

C. T. SeltmansAthens, Its History and Coinage, a work that contains manyimportant numismatic results, badly distorted by being combined with a


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total acceptance of Ridgeways theories. I devoted a special appendix toEvans theory of the oxhide ingots. Heinrich Willers, who is not a friend of

Bckhs method, wrote, Evans work is one of the most fantastic ones of

modern metrology. I did not say anything of the sort, but through many

months of patient research I was able to prove that the ingots, which with a

great effort of imagination could be said to resemble oxhides, were plainingots of smelted metal that had that shape for metallurgical reasons. I was

able to point out the use of smelting techniques producing ingots of thesame shape in several periods and in several parts of the world. I think that I

can hardly hope ever to prove a case with equal assurance. But those who

reported on my thesis asked me how I could dare to contradict Sir ArthurEvans so blatantly. It is obvious that if I had to bow to Evans judgment in

this matter, I had to accept a fortiori the positions of Ridgeway and Seltman.

Another line of attack against metrology developed in the context ofGerman and Italian scholarship. At the end of the nineteenth century, the

leading representative of philologia in ancient historical studies wasMommsen, who tried to further, in particular, the study of Roman law andmetrology. Against this kind of scholarship Nietzsche lifted his voice and

with him the entire nihilist trend of thought of Germany at the turn of the

century. In the field of ancient history this movement of revolt found itsexpression in Beloch. Belochs main passion was politics; he advocated the

establishment of a popular dictatorship and thought that Germany had been

totally corrupted by French and Jewish ideas. One of these ideas wasconstitutional government and the rule of law, which German

ultranationalists blamed on the German reception of Roman law. The study

of Roman law was also linked at the moment with the name of Mommsen,

who was particularly obnoxious to German right-wing radicals for hiscourageous championing of intellectual freedom and for his opposition to

intellectual chauvinism. Hence the necessity to condemn Mommsen with

the entire concept of philologia. Metrology was a clear embodiment of the

evils of the philological method. It is worth noting that at the same timeFrench nationalists were attacking Mommsen and his type of scholarship, as

an instrument of German imperialism; he was accused of being a

spokesman for Bismarck, under whose rule he was actually brought to trial.

The two founders of metrology, Greaves and Bernard, had relied mainly on

their extensive knowledge of rabbinical literature, and Bckh had stressed

the similarity between ancient metrology and the French metric system.This clearly proved to Beloch that he was dealing with an idea concocted by

his mortal enemies, the French and the Jews. In German academic circles,

Beloch was a prophet before his time, but he found a friendly reception atthe University of Rome, where some classicists had adopted Nietzsches

motto Ceterum censeo delendam esse philologiam. There he could pander

to Italian nationalism by inveighing against the German philologicalmethod. From the German Jugendbewegung, the movement of revolt


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against all intellectual, social, and moral traditions, Beloch imported thetermAbschreiber,copycat, which was translated into Italian

asscimmione,ape, and with this word the Roman school disposed of all

philologists who were described as abstract and pedantic squelchers of the

creative spirit. It was natural that the study of metrology, with its technical

and mathematical rigors, should be quoted as the worst exampleofscimmionismo.

1

There was also another specific reason for Beloch and his pupil De Sanctis

to direct their fire against metrology. In 1891 AristotlesConstitution of the

Athenians was discovered, which they greeted as an opportunity to do awaywith the philological method in the field of Greek history. They set down

the principle that this text should be the basis of the study of Greek history.

This procedure, which one could well accept on practical grounds, to them

meant that the study of Greek history could be reduced to politics withoutconsideration for Greek intellectual history and that one could study a single

text in isolation without all the baggage of auxiliary researches required bythe philological method. An incidental reason for stressing the significanceof this text is that allegedly it emphasizes the importance of dictatorship in

Athenian social progress.2In reality, Beloch and De Sanctis were the least

fit to appreciate a text of Aristotle, for whom formalism and constitutionalgovernment were of paramount importance. Only now, after fifty years,

scholars are beginning to recognize how little progress has been made in the

interpretation of the Constitution of the Athenians. The text of Aristotlebothered Beloch and De Sanctis in that it contained references to Solons

metrological reforms and hence seemed to require a knowledge of this most

condemned auxiliary discipline. De Sanctis tried to disentangle himself by

asserting that Solons social reforms had nothing to do with his monetaryand metrological reforms, but, even when relegated to a lesser place,

metrological questions continued to exist. It was necessary to prove that the

passages of Aristotle could be interpreted without reference to the formal

structure of ancient metrology, and that all that had been written up to thenabout metrology was an imaginary and arbitrary construction. Beloch and

De Sanctis were not afraid to do this, since they had already intimated the

same about the system of rules developed by scholars of Roman law.

The parting shot for the Roman school was fired in 1909 by Willers in

hisGeschichte der rmischen Kupferprgung. Willers was a numismatist

who had reasons for disagreeing violently with Mommsens study ofRoman coinage, since this work is weak from the numismatic point of view,

as Mommsen himself admits in a prefatory letter to the French translation.

As I have said before, metrologists are usually weak as numismatists, butthe reverse is also usually true. The great contribution of Mommsens work

is his incidental study of Greek metrology, which allowed the development

of Greek numismatics, up to that time only a poor sister of Romannumismatics. Willers thought that, having revised part of Mommsens work
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on Roman coinage, he should attack the entire science of metrology withwhich Mommsen was associated. For this reason Willers added to his

respectable book a few prefatory pages that are a wild manifesto against

metrology. This manifesto is based on what Willers had heard in Italy from

the mouths of Beloch and De Sanctis. It does not contain any textual

reference, but it gives in three pages an imaginary history of metrology thatis a modified version of Ridgeways theories; Ridgeways work, however,

is not quoted, probably because it was not accepted as respectable inGermany and Italy. Willers makes the following declaration:

The competent reader will be surprised by my repugnance for the so-calledcomparative metrology, whose dogmas have been forced upon

numismatists, attempts having been made to include coins in its scope. A

sort of apotheosis of this discipline is the booklet by Hultsch entitledDie

Gewichte des Altertums in ihrem Zusammenhange dargestellt. This methodis nothing but a mathematical playwork, and in the course of time it has

brought about a complete crippling of research on Greek monetarystandards.La metrologia non scienza, un incubo, properly complainedan Italian historian, but I would rather call it a methodological frenzy. It is

still beyond our knowledge how much the Egyptian and Babylonian weight

systems have influenced the Greek and Italic ones but this much can beclearly seen already today; namely, that this influence cannot be expressed

in a simple fashion-in terms of fractions. In any case, we must, in the first

place, derive the Greek and Roman weight system from the monuments andmeanwhile leave the Orient completely to one side.

In this way, one disposed of the work of generations of scholars who had

shown that the Greek and Roman system of measures was the Egyptian andBabylonian one. It will, of course, be impossible to prove the identity of the

systems if one sets the rule that scholars of Greek and Roman metrology

must ignore the system of the Orient. As to the alleged crippling of researchon Greek monetary standards, it is a fact that studies had flourished up to

just this point. Willers manifesto was echoed by Beloch, with an increase

of invective, in the chapter Metrologisches of hisGriechische

Geschichte.The only point remarkable in Belochs statement is that he tried

to develop in the spot a new system of Greek metrology and that his

construction, as far as it contains documented statements, follows the

conclusions and the techniques he condemns. This last point was made in

1915 by Ettore Ciccotti, a Marxist historian and Socialist politician, who in1914 joined the ranks of the ultra-patriots of the Mussolini group. In order

to prove his conversion to the side of anti-German academic chauvinism,

Ciccotti, after ten years of scientific inactivity, came out with a bookdirected against metrology, Vecchi e nuovi orizzonti della numismatica. In

this book, he demonstrates that there have been two attacks against

metrology, that of Willers and Beloch and the English one, and that thelatter is much more radical. It was obviously the right political move to


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uncover that the German Beloch had remained a Teuton after all. And, infact, in 1918 Beloch was suspended from his chair at the University of

Rome, a victim of the wave of fanaticism he had helped to stir up in Italy; it

is to be noted that this event had a sobering effect on De Sanctis position.

Ciccottis book must be read with his popular article of that same date, Per

lemancipazione della cultura italiana. In this article, he advised Italians tofollow the example of English classicists, and of English numismatists in

particular, who renounced competition with the overwhelmingly superiorGerman scholarship, and to concentrate on the production of works of

vulgarization and interpretation of history. He quoted at length the ideas of

William Ramsay, but added the warning that this call for works of geniusmust not be an excuse for laziness and improvisation. This last

reservation is a reflection of the fact that the majority of Italian scholars put

up a good fight against the attempt to discredit the philological method. One

may cite as an example the uncompromising position of Giorgio Pasquali.Beloch stated that his internment as an enemy alien in Italy in 1918 was the

greatest misfortune of his life, because it prevented him from emerging as apolitical leader in Germany at the moment of the defeat, by means of the

organization of a popular revolutionary movement based on hatred ofFrenchmen, Jews, and Socialists; one may speculate whether English

numismatists, Ciccotti, and metrology have to be blamed for the fact that

the Third Reich was not established under the leadership of ProfessorBeloch.

The attack against metrology, which was conducted in the name of anti-

Germanism in England and in Italy, took an anti-Semitic tone in Germany.

The attack began as a dispute on some Assyrian metrological texts about

which F. H. Weissbach disagreed with Carl Lehmann-Haupt. Weissbach,who was a sound scholar in the field of textual interpretation, decided to

attack Lehmann-Haupt in the field of metrology. Weissbach had no

competence in metrology, so he questioned the validity of metrology in

general. Lehmann-Haupt used arguments from the field of metrology, inwhich he had a breadth of information unrivaled since the age of Bernard.

The result was a polemic that lasted for years, with replies and

counterreplies in which Weissbach made sweeping statements against themethod of metrologists and Lehmann-Haupt and Kurt Regling tried to

explain why, if one accepted Weissbachs view, any metrological research

would be impossible. For instance, Weissbach claimed that numerical

relations do not prove anything and that one must accept as proven onlywhat is spelled out explicitly in words General verbal formulations of

accepted social practices belong to the highest level of culture, as Aristotle

points out, and one would, consequently, never find the documents requiredbefore the age of Socrates at least. The general rules of Roman law began to

be formulated in the Byzantine age and were, in some cases, formulated byRomanists of the nineteenth century. A clear refutation of Weissbachs

contention is provided by an inscription found at Thasos, recently published


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by Mabel Lang, which consists of three words and four numbers and is,possibly, the most important metrological inscription ever discovered.

One has to read about fifteen hundred pages in order to follow the disputebetween Weissbach and Lehmann-Haupt, but the concrete issue under

dispute is a single one. Lehmann-Haupt had realized that all important unitsof weight and volume exist in two varieties related as 24:25 or 96:100. Heconsidered this discovery his greatest contribution to scholarship; he made it

before the publication of AristotlesConstitution of the Athenians came to

confirm it by definitely proving that in the Solonian system there were two

minas of 432 and of 450 grams and that other units were adjustedaccordingly. This confirmation was displeasing to Beloch and De Sanctis

since it implied that one should study Solons reforms in the light of general

metrological practice. Therefore when Weissbach denied the existence of

the relation 24:25, he found enthusiastic approval and was therebyencouraged to defend an impossible position. Since the evidence about the

use of the relation 24:25 is overwhelming, Weissbach was forced toquestion every single technique of evidence normally used in metrologicalinvestigations. For instance, since Lehmann-Haupt tried to prove his point

by the examination of sample weights, Weissbach replied that such a

difference between weights could be the result of accidental causes and,further, that one should accept as evidence only weights that were marked

with inscriptions stating that they were official weights and stating

expressly the number of the units and the nature of the units. Such astricture is tantamount to asking epigraphists to limit themselves to the

study of inscriptions that have been found in their full text.

The correctness of Lehmann-Haupts opinion on the relation 24:25 wasproved in 1942 on theoretical grounds by August Ox, who demonstrated

that not only all weights but all units of volume were of varieties related as

24:25. In the thirties, Colonel de La Chausse, in a series of articles in LaRevue Numismatique, proved the existence of this relation on the basis of

some of the best known ancient sample weights. In 1934 N. T. Bieliaev

arrived at the same conclusion by a statistical analysis of weights excavatedat Susa in Iran. I intend to show that the instruments and the methods of

calculation used account for the relation 24:25. But, in any case, the single

arguments used by Weissbach are not very important; what proved

important is that he attacked Lehmann-Haupt in a manner that Lehmann-

Haupt mildly called unparliamentary. Even Ciccotti granted that thelanguage used went beyond what is acceptable in scholarly disputes. I do

not know whether Weissbach intended to use anti-Semitic innuendoes, but

the fact is that references The matter became worse when Oskar Viedebantt,who had begun as a follower of Lehmann-Haupt and published useful,

though not outstanding, research, came into conflict with his mentor.

Lehmann-Haupt accused Viedebantt of having appropriated the results ofsome of his studies

3and, in turn, Viedebantt blamed Lehmann-Haupt for his
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failure to obtain a university position. As a result of this miserable story,Viedebantt proclaimed himself the founder of a new school of metrology

opposed to the old school, of which the representatives were, first of all,

Lehmann-Haupt and then all other metrologists present and past who had

followed Bckhs ideas. The new school was composed of Weissbach

and Viedebantt. In his first manifesto of the new school, Viedebanttsubscribed to Willers position and declared that his school had as

sloganHeraus mit den monumentalen Zeugen! Viedebantt, in spite of hisslogan, did not produce any monumental evidence, but filled pages and

pages with abstruse and often irrelevant numerological calculations, which

occasionally are arithmetically incorrect. The English numismatists G. F.Hill and C. T. Seltman, who reviewed with enthusiasm ViedebanttsAntike

Gewichtsnormen und Mnzfsse (1923), because of his richness of

contumely against the old metrologists, should have been punished by

being asked to explain some of its pages. I know that they would have had ahard time doing it, particularly in view of the fact that their works prove that

numbers definitely are not their forte. In a way I have done more justice toViedebantts work, since, like Kubitschek, I have spent many a painful

week in trying to interpret it and at times have found in it a usefulreckoning. The prevailing frame of mind of the scholarly world in such

matters is indicated by the review of Pericle Ducati, who praised the book

while granting that it was beyond his ken. He declared, E questo non sololibro di scienza, ma di fiera battaglia.I can well see the fierce battle, but

as to science I am of the opinion that it has been lost in the scuffle.

The seriousness of Viedebantts approach is indicated by the fact that, when

he was about to break with Lehmann-Haupt, he claimed that he would have

arrived independently at the discovery of the general occurrence of therelation 24:25 and he was in condition of showing a heap of manuscripts

written before his becoming acquainted with Lehmann-Haupts position.

This is a rather strange statement since Lehmann-Haupt had dealt with the

relation in his earliest works, written when Viedebantt was still a minor. Butmost peculiar is the fact that Viedebantt, after he became a follower of

Weissbach, dedicated the first pages of hisAntike Mnzfsse to berating

Lehmann-Haupt for believing in the existence of the relation 24:25. He didnot explain how he intended to deal with the evidence concerning this

relation he had gathered in the mentioned unpublished manuscripts and with

the evidence he had published in the article Hin of theReal-Encyclopdie.

A more serious effort to establish a new metrology according to the

pronunciamentos of the Roman school was made by Angelo Segr. He

started as a scholar of Roman law, but for reasons better known to himselfhe initiated a quarrel with the other scholars of the same field, one of whom

was his uncle, by saying that they were reactionary and not aware of social

and economic reality. Similar things had been said by Beloch and are astandard part of Fascist ideologies. In this way Segr succeeded in spoiling


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some excellent legal studies and continued to do so up to his last one, whichdealt with the Hellenistic katagraphe. Being blackballed by the Romanists,

Segr became a proteg of De Sanctis, under whose guidance he wrote his

major work,Metrologia (1928). In the process of writing this work, Segr

became involved in a welter of absurdities; by the time he had accepted De

Sanctis theories and let him edit the manuscript, there was little left of theoriginal work. He had to believe that there was no close relation between

the metrology of the several ancient countries and that there was nointerdependence between measures of length, volume and weight, but the

underlying, unexpressed idea of the entire work is to the contrary. The most

important metrological discovery, namely, that the volume of the artabadepends on the relation of length between foot and cubit is buried in a

footnote. On the basis of this footnote I was able to determine that measures

could be calculated long or short with a difference of 10 percent; Greek

inscriptions distinguish between calculationpheidolos and drakto. Thesituation caused such great personal distress to Segr that at times he

abandoned metrological studies for periods of years. Certain formalinaccuracies and erroneous quotations are evidence of the emotional stress

under which he wrote his main work. About ten years ago he kindlysuggested that, using his notes, I publish a revision of his treatise, but I

found this tempting offer unacceptable, because I would have been in the

situation of Procopius writing the secret volume of his court history. I canonly say that Segrs inability to resist the cruel pressures of our age has

resulted in a tremendous loss to scholarship. I do not hesitate to compare

this case with that of Copernicus, who was compelled to deny the

significance of his work. Segr undoubtedly was unique in variety of skillsand breadth of learning. As evidence of this, I can point out that after the

publication of hisMetrologia,friends competent in the field of physicssuggested to him that he should abandon the ungrateful study of metrologyand dedicate himself to theoretical physics, in which, in spite of his age, he

could still achieve a fame similar to that of his brother.

Metrological studies continued in the peace of isolation in distant Romania,

where Mihail Sutzu (Soutzos) dedicated his long life (1841-1933) to them.

His achievements are great, and among them is that of having reduced allancient weights to multiples or submultiples of a single Egyptian unit; this

particular achievement was the basis of the last and most comprehensive

study of Hultsch. In the following thirty years, Sutzu arrived at other

similarly important results, which have not yet been considered by scholars.His position as a member of one of the great princely families of Romania

may explain his aloofness from academic controversy, but in spite of his

nobility of approach, he reveals an awareness of economic reality possiblyinherited from his Phanariote Greek grandfathers. It is to be noted that this

metrologist, too, was accused of kowtowing to foreign scholarship.Romanian nationalist and anti-Semitic extremists tended to be pro-German,

so he was accused offrantzuzisme. Luckily, he had the strength to make this


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public declaration in the organ of the Liberal Party: Since there are somewho aspire to make an insult of the wordfrantzusit, I shall shout, and well

aloud, so that nobody may fail to notice, I am afrantzusitand I consider this

a glory.4I wish Segr had had the same psychological security instead of

wasting his life in fear of personal criticism of his work.

The only contemporary upholder of metrology is another isolated scholar,the Russian exile Bieliaev, an encyclopedic mind whose activity extends

from the teaching of metallurgy to Oriental archaeology and Russian

history. He has pointed out that the same weights with the same

subdivisions are found in early Rome and in India of the third millenniumB.C. He has traced the connecting links in Sumer and in Egypt, and

determined that the same units were used in medieval Russia. Unfortunately

most of his essays have appeared in the Seminarium Kondakovianum, the

most distinguished, but little known, organ of Russian exile scholarship.

The history of the vicissitudes of metrological scholarship forces one to ask

why there has been such an explosion of irrationality in a field that is so dryand technical. It is not extraordinary that somebody has claimed that Bckh,

Brandis, Lepsius, Mommsen, Nissen, Hultsch, Drpfeld, Hberlin, Brugsch,

Lehmann-Haupt, Regling, Kubitschek and others spent the whole or a goodpart of their lives furthering a sort of conspiracy aiming at the befuddlement

of the scholarly world, but it is extraordinary that such a paranoiac view was

widely accepted. Incidentally, for some reason, the French metrologists De

Sacy, Aurs, Decourdemanche, Thureau-Dangin and so on, are usually

considered not even worthy of a dismissal.

My studies of ancient metrology have led me to two general conclusions:first, that metrology was born mainly from the practices of the international

merchant class of the ancient world and, second, that metrology provided

the foundation for the scientific rational vision of the world.

I think that these two aspects of metrology can explain the a priori prejudice

of some classicists.

When one considers Max Webers description of the frame of mind

necessary to the development of capitalism, one sees quite clearly thatmetrology corresponds to the main elements of it. Without entering into

details about the history of a period for which I claim no competence, it

seems to me that the spirit that Weber describes as the prerequisite of thecapitalistic age is nothing but classicist rationalism as recreated by

Humanism. Weber himself suggests this when he lists a rational legal

system such as Roman law among the prerequisites. He agrees that the

conception of universal society as formulated in the age of the Antonine


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Emperors best corresponds to the needs of a capitalist order. Metrology isclosely linked with an outlook that corresponds to that of the modern

capitalistic scientific world. It is for this reason that there are people who,

with the same logic for which Jews are blamed for modern capitalism and

science, recognize in metrology something Semitic. The sociologist Talcott

Parsons has properly pointed out that phenomena such as Fascism,chauvinism and racial bigotry are the expressions of attitudes of rebellion

against the increasing demand for rational behavior made by modernsociety; specifically he remarks that they are reactions against what Weber

called the process of rationalization. Parsons states:

The reaction against the ideology of rationalization of society is one of the

principal aspects at least of the ideology of fascism. It characteristically

accepts in essentials the socialist indictment of the existing order described

as capitalism, but extends it to include leftist radicalism and the wholepenumrba of scientific and philosophical rationalism.

This also explains, to some extent, the nature of the attacks againstmetrology.

It should be the historical task of classicists to point out that the world of

Copernicus, Galilei, Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz is their world, and toremind this world of its spiritual foundations.

On the contrary, the field of classics has often become the refuge of peoplewith resentments against scientific progress, with a resulting hostility

toward some fundamental aspects of ancient thought.

Herman Diels notes this in the preface to Antike Technik.

Alfred Espinas, who was one of the most influential thinkers of the FrenchThird Republic, has indicated that the period of Greek bloom from the

seventh to the fifth century B.C. was a period of rapid technological change

which was closely linked with the development of Greek thought, andRodolfo Mondolfo, who is a fine specialist of pre-Socratic philosophy, has

written that the difficulty in interpreting the remaining quotations of pre-

Socratic philosophers results from the fact that they were often lifted from

the context of technological treatises.

Similar ideas are also presented by Pierre-Maxime Schuhl and, in a morepopular version, by Benjamin Farrington.

These highly important views have even less chance of being consideredthan the achievements of metrological research.

This bias of classical studieshas been studied in relation to the birth of


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Italian Fascism.

The historian Luigi Salvatorelli (who is the most outstanding chronicler and

analyst of the Fascist phenomenon in Italy) has written that Fascism was,first of all, a reaction by the class of parasitic job holders with academic

degrees against the involvement of Italy in the stream of internationalcapitalism. He noted that this humanistic petite bourgeoisie was theproduct of a classical education emphasizing only the rhetorical skills, and

saw itself threatened by the possible rise of true bourgeois elites with all

sorts of technical skills, including technical skills in classical studies.5Thus

it was that the main butt of the future fascists was the philological methodand the industrialization of Italy with the help of German technology and

capital.6It must be noted that it is in this context that anti-Semitic literature

made its first appearance in Italy. Salvatorelli, who began his academic

activity as historian of the Christian Roman Empire, points out that in Italyclassical education of the rhetorical type, connected with an ancient history

that emphasized the political side, gave an artificial representation of theancient world and created a complete ignorance of the new scientific-industrial world, of capitalistic civilization, of the economic and moral

values of entrepreneurs and workers... and hence, reciprocally, this capitalist

civilization often ignored and despised cultural values.7These remarks

about the Italian political scene throw a good deal of light on the state of

classical studies in general, and in a particular way should explain also why

metrology met and meets such opposition. The attack against metrologybegan in England, where classical studies had taken the aspect of dilettante

exercises, and received general support in a moment in which it was felt,

rightly or wrongly, that England would be worsted in a liberal world of

capitalistic competition.

It is significant that Eduard Meyer, who wrote in defense of the most crude

form of philosophical positivism, dismisses all metrological studies in a fewlines: I hold as unjustified the assumption of Nissen and Lehmann-Haupt,

approved by Thureau-Dangin, which unconscionably ascribes to the old

Babylonians the modern speculation that derives the system of weights fromthe unit of length. In reality, all measures have been established arbitrarily

before the existence of metric systems...8This statement is as dogmatic as

the entire methodology of Meyer, who, together with diligence in compiling

detailed historical research, had very fixed notions on the course of history,

in spite of his proclaimed positivism, and for this reason was able toassemble a tremendous amount of facts within the framework of a universal

history. One of the basic conceptions of this universal history was the

paramount importance of the state in shaping culture; he discounted theinfluence of economic factors not controlled by the state. It is obvious that

for this reason the entire world of ancient international trade and the

cosmopolitan science of metrology was something not of his liking. At aminor level, one may note that during the First World War he proved to be a
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rabid academic chauvinist, and, reversing the argument of Englishwarmongers, claimed that individual liberty and the notion of a world

market was an English invention aiming at the total victory of capitalism

and hence at English world supremacy.9

The attacks against philological method and hence against metrology, haveoften been justified on the ground of philosophical positivism. In realitypositivism, taken as a serious position, is not an argument against

metrology, as it is not an argument against the philological method.

For instance, one can write papers showing statistically that a word is usedin a given sense; this is a technique most frequently used by scholars of

Roman law.

In my own sphere of research, I have tried to stress as a mere fact that

money is called nomos and that this word is synonymous with arithmos, and

thatarithmos is a synonym ofmetra, which means ratio.But I have metthe objection that these facts are too odd to be presented as such. Most of

the prejudice against the conclusions of metrologists stem from the

circumstance that often these have to be presented in a positivist form: it isoften possible to point out identity of measures in very distant areas and in

very different periods, without having the data for tracing the connecting

links. The fact that in recent excavations of Indian Bronze Age sites theweights have been statistically tabulated has provided one of the most

striking confirmations of metrological theories, because of the identity

between these Indian units and the Roman ones. The English archaeologist

Flinders Petrie took a positivistic position in matters of metrology, and

proclaimed agnosticism in matters of metrological theories;10

for this reasonhe engaged in the task of tabulating statistically all the sample weights he

excavated or could find available in collections. In spite of the fact that hissampling was of necessity incomplete (this type of research should be

increased at least tenfold) he determined statistically the existence of a

pattern of distribution of weight types which agrees perfectly with the

conclusions of theoretical research.11

The last study of Hultsch, that whichwas the occasion for the attacks against metrology by Willers and Beloch,

was written as a purely positivistic statement, aiming at proving on the basis

of a long experience with the subject that in metrology one meets only with

a limited number of types of numerical relations. Not only is it true that

metrological research must often be conducted with positivist techniques,but also that, if one were to search for antecedents of positivism in ancient

thought, metrology may be just the field: any system of measures mustcontain some positivistic elements, even though the ancients tried to justify

their system of units on the basis of rational relations with an immanent

order of the physical world. Modern positivism has its roots in Newtonsgravitational theory; Newtons metrological studies may solve the problem

raised by historians of science concerning the intellectual development that
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induced Newton to offer a theory which limits itself to the presentation of apattern, without discussing causes. In reality the classicists who justify their

position by appealing to modern scientific positivism, are using it merely as

a pretext for rejecting the idea of order, whereas positivism, even twentieth

century statistical positivism, does not reject the idea of order. Pattern is the

central idea of positivism, and the belief in the existence of welldefinedpatterns of thought and behavior in the ancient world is what is found to be

objectionable by the opponents ofphilologia. The professed positivism ofmany modern classicists is a device for rejecting the intellectual structures

of the ancients and organizing the facts according to the personal

ideological assumptions of the investigators.

It is significant that Meyer, who is a voluminous writer, in one line

dismisses as the extreme of metrological absurdity a study of Hugo

Winckler showing how the ancients tried to connect earthly units ofmeasurement with astronomical measurements. Meyer had to reject outright

this fact for which there is abundant textual evidence, called to attentionalso by other studies, because it emphasizes one of the characteristic aspectsof ancient metrology; namely, its connection with the notion of cosmic

order and with the striving toward transcendental values.

It is not by accident that the two Oxford scholars, Greaves and Bernard,

who founded metrological research were Biblical scholars and men of

theological convictions, besides being linguists and antiquarians, andapproached the study of astronomy and Greek geometry and mathematics

with a religious feeling. It is not irrelevant that Bckh had theological

training and was deeply influenced by Leibnizs philosophy. His main

concern in the study of ancient culture was the problem of intellectualharmony and the order of the universe; the influence of Leibniz thought in

its mathematizing aspect is clearly revealed by the subject of Bckhs

doctoral dissertation, De harmonice veterum. One can clearly see how hebrought to metrology ideas about ancient science that he had discovered in

his study of Platos Timaeus. Greaves, Bernard, and Bckh shared a

common faith in universal reason and were concerned with transcending thesocial and intellectual cleavage brought about, in one case, by the religious

wars and, in the other case, by the French Revolution. At the head of his

work on metrology, Greaves quotes an epigram by Guillaume Bud:

Una fides, pondus, mensura sit idem,Et status illaesus totius orbis erit.

Bud (1468-1540), the scholar of Roman law who founded Greek

scholarship in France, in first raising the problems of ancient metrology

properly summed up with this epigram the spirit that animates metrology.12

It is for this reason that Maimonides was greatly concerned with


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metrological problems. Many of his conclusions are final and the clearest ofthe modern treatises of metrology, that by the Spaniard Vicente Vazquez

Queipo13

takes its start from Maimonides work. Vazquez strength is his

acquaintance with the Arabic-Hebrew culture of Spain, his weakness is his

limited knowledge of the richer Greek materials, for which he misses the

flexibility of the system of metrology, flexibility that allows adaptation tothe most varied historical situations. One of the difficulties of metrology is

the fact that it has both cosmological and practical economic aspects. It wasthe astronomer and cosmologist Pierre de Laplace (1749-1827), who was

concerned also with the practical applications of the Newtonian concept of

the world, who was able to determine that the ancients used a cubit of 555mm.; this conclusion was confirmed about one century later by the

discovery of a Greek inscription on which there is cut a reference standard

of this length. On the other side, a thinker as unworldly as Spinoza did not

understand the spirit of ancient metrology and, partly for the avowedpurpose of discrediting Biblical authority, made offhand remarks about the

mathematical ineptness of Hebrew metrology. These remarks have enteredhistorical works and, being steadikly repeated without awareness of their

origin, have greatly hampered metrological studies. A contemporary scholarwho has clearly stated the intellectual value of ancient metrology is Georges

Conteneau14

I do not find anything scandalous in metrology, since at the

University of Freiburg I received my philosophical education from Husserland Heidegger, the two most influential philosophers of this century, the

founders respectively of phenomenology and of existentialism. Having

accepted a position of realism, that is, of confidence in the identity of

human thought with reality, I have a view completely different from that ofclassicists who had absorbed the nihilism and the psychologism of the

previous generation of philosophers. This chasm is further emphasized bymy training in Roman law and in the philological method, which implymore or less directly a belief in the validity of the structures of reason. From

metrology there developed conceptions of the world such as are embodied

in the Timaeus, which from Aristotles time until recently was consideredthe most important of Platos dialogues. It was the only dialogue known in

the Middle Ages, and it is the text considered by scholars to best embody

the ideal of Renaissance science. It is in its spirit that Copernicus, Kepler,

Galilei, Newton and Leibniz set the foundations of modern science. Butsomething radically new followed the popularization of Newtons theories.

It was a gradually increasing attitude of revolt against reason which found

its final affirmation in Nietzsche. One must not forget that it was Nietzschewho initiated the revolt against philologia. The present crisis of classicalstudies is an expression of a more general crisis of modern thought for

which science has completely divorced itself from its humanistic

foundations and has degenerated into technology. It is natural that the studyof metrology, which is at the borderline between science and humanities,

should be under attack.
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The problem is discussed by Husserl in his speech on The Crisis of

European Culture, which he delivered several times as a summation of his

thought after Hitlers rise to power. In this address he makes the point that

the perversion of scientific thought that took place after Newton results

from having lost sight of the genetic relation between practical metrology

and the mathematical interpretation of the universe, and stresses howimportant it is for science to have a correct view of this relation. It is likely

that Husserl hardly knew about studies of ancient metrology, but obviouslyhe had been able to realize from the reading of Greek philosophy how this is

related to metrology.

The central idea of Husserl is that after Newton there took place an

intellectual revolution by which the mathematical scientific universe came

to be considered an objective reality independent of the mind of man. By

this process the world of science became a negation of human rationality, sothat modern scientism is linked with antirationalistic tendencies.

Phenomenologists did not have to wait for the atom bomb to warn thatobjectivized science had become a monster that would crush humanity.Husserl, even though he was not a historian by vocation, dedicated much of

his research to the origin of Greek science because he wanted to recapture

the spirit in which it was born. For the Greeks science was the product ofthe rational attitude of man, an affirmation of the human mind: the logos

discovered in nature is the human logos. This is the essence of humanism

according to Husserl. For this reason he pays attention to metrology,because it reveals mans deliberate option in specific social-historical

circumstances to interpret the world in mathematical terms.

Husserl states that an intellectual revolution is necessary in order toenthrone again human reason in the field of science, to destroy the notion

that the mathematical world of nature is something with which man is

externally confronted. This epistemological problem explains the criticismof my thesis. Since I was concerned with the reception of metrology by

Greece in the seventh century B.C., it was objected that I was dealing with

the reception of something which it was doubtful existed at all; but insubstance the skepticism about my thesis resulted from the fact that my

critics could not see the problem. Therefore the textual and archaeological

evidence I had collected had trivial meaning for them. Greek sources,

however, are emphatic and clear in assigning dramatic significance to the

introduction of metrology (metra kai stathma kai arithmos, or simplymetra). In the last few years I have been told by several classicists that the

problem I am trying to investigate does not exist: without probably having

ever given any thought to the question, they can tell me with certainty thatmeasurement consisted merely in chosing arbitrarily some units, which was

done independently in each locality. They can make this dogmatic

declaration because it corresponds to the asusmptions of modern science:measures are conceived as something that exists objectively in the physical


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world. Husserl has demonstrated that this is the total denial of humanisticstudies, the denial of mans capacity to construct for himself a reasonable

and comprehensive image of the world.

In order to understand the spirit of metrology it may be helpful to keep in

mind that Bckh, the founder of modern metrological studies, wasinfluenced by the philosophy of Leibnitz and that one of Bckhs majorwritings was a commentary on Platos Timaeus. The greatest among the

French metrologists, August Aurs (1806-1894), remarks that it is important

to understand the significance that the ancients attached to number and

measurement and that it is necessary to meditate texts such asPlatosEpinomis in order to interpret metrological evidence. It is to be

noted that he did not agree with this particular view of the world, but he

thought its knowledge necessary for historical research: The ancients

attributed to numbers a mystical virtue of which today we can hardly realizethe full importance. In this matter, their prejudices were so great that I do

not think I am exaggerating when I consider number mysticism as havingoperated as the essential basis of most of their knowledge.

I have found evidence of the peculiar significance that numbers had for the

ancients in the fact that the letters of the alphabet are always associated bythe ancients with numbers. This apparently puzzling aspect of ancient

thought became clearer to me when I realized that the alphabet is in some

way related to the abacus. I have left this line of research in abeyance,waiting for the results of recent discoveries concerning Cretan and Ugaritic

writings, but I have gone far enough to know that the order of the letters in

the alphabet is a function of the abacus. All this proves how necessary it is

in historical research to put oneself in a frame of mind not dissonant fromthe ancient one.

Possibly the study of Aristotle may be preferable to the study of Plato as a

preparation to metrological studies. I feel that metrology helps in

understanding Plato rather than the other way around. Aristotle provides a

better insight into the practical aspects of metrology, whereas Plato wasinterested just in doing away with its practical aspects. I feel that by starting

with an Aristotelian outlook I have been able to develop a different

metrology from that of my predecessors, in that I have taken into account

practical operations. For this reason, I have started from what seems to me

the very first step, which is a knowledge of the instruments of calculation.The sources indicate that one first learned to use the abacus, and then

learned to use it to calculate volumes, weights, specific gravities,geographical distances, rates of interest, and so on, just as today the

engineer learns to use the slide rule for an entire series of different

calculations. One of the central ideas of ancient metrology is explained bythe much read and little understood Fifth Book of AristotlesEthics, in

which the idea of justice is explained by referring to money and to the price


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structure. This book explains why money is called by the same name thatapplies to civil law and to natural law (nomos) and why this term is

synonymous with arithmos; metrology first developed as an attempt to

assure justice in the contract of sale by mathematizing the relation. The

origins of the art of legislation and of legal science are to be found in lists

that state how many measures of a given commodity would correspond to ameasure of another commodity. Once one takes this practical outlook, one

can see how, in the Bible, the idea of Divine Providence is linked with themethods used in the rationing of food, of which Greek inscriptions provide

the most abundant evidence. Once one keeps in mind the metrological

aspects of the idea of Providence, one can see the meaning of the wordepiousios in the Lords Prayer, a word on the interpretation of which an

entire library has been written. One must keep in mind the ethical aspects of

metrology to see in the Gospels the metrological reasons for the two

miracles of the multiplication of the bread, the Feeding of the FourThousand and the Feeding of the Five Thousand. In metrology, one must

steadily shift from metaphysical and ethical presuppositions to practicalaspects. his has been the concern of Greaves and Bernard, who came to

metrology from the study of cosmogony but at the same time travelledextensively in the Orient and saw the ancient system of metrology still used

by the Arabs. The Talmud, which nobody used systematically for this

purpose after Greaves and Bernard, provides an excellent insight into thepractical operations of economic life and constitutes an excellent means for

interpreting Greek inscriptions. I think that I have been able to achieve the

synthesis between the study of Greek economics and the study of Greek

conceptions of order at which Bckh aimed. A concrete result of this way oflooking at the problem is that I have been able to see that the ancients had

an instrument of reckoning, the diagrammismos, which is a primitive sliderule operating on logarithms with base 2. This particular instrumentaccounts for the existence of measures of volume and weight related at

24:25, a problem to which I have referred earlier.

The fact is that metrology is so central to ancient thought that its study tends

to expand in all directions. I am not able to embrace all these facts in one

single view, and to give a more adequate picture I must refer to Platoswriting in which he stresses the importance of the art of measuring in the

education of the citizen. Luckily, phenomenological method of Husserl

allows one to understand this continuous shift from the practical to the

theoretical. Merleau-Ponty says in the preface toPhenomenologie de laPerception,The entire universe of science is built on the lived world, and

if we want to think with exactness about science itself and appreciate its

meaning and import, we must first of all awaken that experience of theworld of which science is a subsequent expression.

If one begins by assuming that Plato and Aristotle spoke nonsense and thatone can be a scholar of ancient history without bothering to find out what


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they said, the study of metrology becomes impossible, since one cannotarrive at a feeling for its implied intellectual presuppositions. There are no

other equally extensive sources allowing one to arrive at an insight into the

realm of ideas referred to by the word metra in Homer, Hesiod, Heraclitus

and Pindar. In an indirect way the importance of an insight into views such

as those of Plato and Aristotle for the study of metrology is admitted bySegr who, in order to justify the attacks on metrology, stated that ancient

measures were conceived in the spirit of Protagoras.

The difficulty of metrological studies results from the fact that metrology

originated in a given way of looking at the world, a way in which the notionof the existence of a recognizable rational order is implied. It is necessary to

look with some sympathy at the effort to see the world in terms of the

immanent structures of the mind. This can be explained by an example in

which this attitude was carried to an absurd conclusion. Ancient scientificgeography developed from metrology, at first as a study of the distances and

times needed for commercial travel and navigation. The step, conceived as afixed unit both of length and of time, provided the link between measures oflength and of time, provided the link between metrology and astronomy,

allowing for the development of astronomical navigation. From the tables

concerning trade routes there developed scientific geography and, verysoon, calculations of the size of the earth. These calculations, however,

were based on erroneous assumptions, such as that, for logical reasons,

Rhodes was on the meridian of the Nile and, being on the latitude of thecaravan route from Syria to Mesopotamia, was the center of the world, and,

further was on the meridian passing through the Dardanelles and a river of

the Black Sea corresponding to the Nile. The same way of interpreting

things accounted for the assumption that Carthage, the Strait of Messina,and Rome were on the same meridian. These erroneous assumptions,

however, allowed great scientific achievements, such as amagingly accurate

calculations of the size of the earth. In any case, a study of this way of

interpretation allows the historian to explain what Homer means by metrakeleuthou and Hesiod by metra thalasses.

Once this way of thinking is clear, one sees that the basic structure of the

Odyssey is that of a geographical poem, giving pointers on orientation and

distances. In spite of the huge amount of writing on the subject, scholars

have not seen the rather elementary fact that the cardinal points of the

Homeric poems are not four but six, according to the sexagesimal methodof dividing the horizon. Once this is accepted, according to my reckonings,

the location of Ithaca can be determined to the mile. It is clear that in

mythology Odysseus is a doublet of Palamedes, the hero to whom wereascribed the inventions of the abacus, the alphabet, metrology, astronomical

navigation, money, and all the system of sciences necessary to trade, to

which the anciences referred with the phrasemetra kai stathma kainomisma (orarithmos). I hope that after having reconstructed in detail the


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myth of Palamedes I shall be able to prove that the contention of EmileMireaux that the Odyssey was written in the early years of the reign of King

Gyges of Lydia is a fact.

All this indicates that metrology was one of the central ideas of the ancient

world. It is so central that as a researcher I found myself confronted with afrightening Pandoras box. It is sufficient to consider that a phrase likenumero pondere mensura, applied by the Talmud to the contract of sale, is

used in early parts of the Bible to refer to the laws of the Hebrews and in

late parts to the divine order of the universe. The fact is that metrology

accounts for the development of scientific and philosophic attitudes in theancient world. The field is so enormous that I have given little thought to

the fact that metrology was exported from the ancient world into China; this

is a fact of which Bernard already was aware. Marin Mersenne, the

correspondent of Descartes, who, before Bernard, in 1644 made anunsuccessful attempt to reconstruct the system of ancient metrology, was

aware of the wide cosmological implications of metrology and opened histreatise with the words Cum omnia Deus in numero, pondere, mensuracondiderit, hic de Mensuris et Ponderibus tractatus...

Given the fact that metrology has such widespread implications, it is notsurprising that even though for years I have tried to concentrate my

attention on the simplest and most obvious documents of ancient metrology,

I have found that my conclusions are questioned a priori, since of necessityI have always to refer in a more or less limited way to some general

principle. If some scholars have acted like the astronomers of Padua, who

refused to look through the telescope at the satellites of Jupiter, it is because

if they accept the interpretation of one single inscription or of one singlearchaeological measurement, they have to swallow the existence of

systematic metrology. A great part of the methodological disagreement

results from the fact that in metrology one must proceed with the methodused in Roman law, the historico-dogmatic method; that is, one must

proceed with a survey of the entire evidence in order to arrive at the

formulation of basic principles, and these, in turn, must be used to interpretthe single texts. It is for this reason that Bckh titled his work as dealing

with measures in ihrem Zusammenhange. And for the same reason Hultsch

called his final and comprehensive workDie Gewichte des Altertums nach

ihrem Zusammenhnge dargestellt; this is the work that was dismissed by

Willers and Beloch as mere fancy, coming from the witches kitchen. Theonly really important work of metrology in this century was written by

August Ox, at the age of seventy-nine, summing up what must have been

decades of research, and it is calledAntike Hohlmasse und Gewichte inneuer Beleuchtung(1942). It is to be noted that in spite of the monumental

scope of this work, covering all important volume and weight measures of

the ancient world, and in spite of the established scholarly reputation of itsauthor, it was not the object of a single mention or book review, to my


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knowledge. The majority of scholars of the present generation accepts thecondemnation of metrology by such authorities as Beloch, De Sanctis and

Eduard Meyer without having even an inkling of the method and the

achievements of this discipline. The situation clearly indicates that today

one must start at the point where Greaves and Bernard and Bckh, too,

started. Bernard, in spite of the incredible wealth of information he hadaccumulated, deliberately set down his main work in the form of a primer

(Non pompae sed usui destinatus). Bckh also set down a fundamentalstatement, which was used by metrologists for the following hundred years.

I have to proceed in the same way, keeping in mind that reason under attack

can rely only on its own strength.

Luckily I am in the condition of writing a clearer, more unified and practical

primer than those written by my predecessors; I can utilize all the

accumulation of data provided by the unfolding of scholarship sinceBckhs time. One encouraging aspect of metrology is that the more

investigations progress, the simpler the system becomes. I have succeededin what has been the aim of all major metrologists beginning with Newton,that of explaining all measures on the basis of a single unit of length.

Having determined which was the basic ruler, I have been able to trace the

few simple formulas by which there derived all measures of volume andweight. Even though my description is purely factual and intended to

provide a practical reference handbook, I have outlined a structure which by

itself proves what marvellous adventure of the human mind metrology was.I hope to be able to convince ancient historians that metrology provides

sources of information which are exact and reliable beyond hope, and to

convince them to look at the data with a spirit similar to that shown by

Newton:15

Newton withheld his hope

Until the day when light was brought from France,New light, new hope, in a small glistening fact,

Clear-cut as any diamond; and to him

Loaded with all significance, like the pointOf light that shows where constellations burn.

Picard in Franceall glory to her name

Who is herself a light among all lands

Had measured earths diameter once more

With exquisite precision. To the throng,Those few correct ciphers, his results,

Were less than nothing; yet they changed the world,

For Newton seized them and, with trembling handsBegan to work his problems anew.

References


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1. Belochs terminology has been made generally known in Italy bytwo popular books by Ettore Romagnoli,Lo Scimmione inItalia andMinerva e lo scimmione, attacking the philological method

in classical studies.

2. This point is made by De Sanctis in the preface toAtthis.3. ZDMG, 66; 1912, 638.4. Indpendence Roumaine, 6/19, April, 1906.5. Nazional-fascismo, 1923, p. 21.6. Cf. Ezio Maria Gray,Linvasione tedesca in Italia, 1916.7. Irrealt Nazionalista, 1925, p. 184.8. Geschichte des Altertums, I, 2, 581.9. England, 1915, p. 78.10.Inductive Metrology, 1877.11.Ancient Weights and Measures, 1924.12.De asse et partibus eius.13.Essai sur les systmes mtriques et montaires des anciens peoples

depuis les premiers temps jusqu la fin du Khalifat dOrient, 1859.14.Manuel darchologie orientale, Vol. 4, pp. 1874-77.15.Alfred Noyes, Watchers of the Sky
http://www.metrum.org/measures/metrics.htmhttp://www.metrum.org/measures/index.htmhttp://www.metrum.org/measures/metrics.htmhttp://www.metrum.org/measures/index.htm

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