predecessors.


{illustration caption = THE SLOT-MACHINE OF HERO (The coin
introduced at A falls on the lever R, and by its weight opens the
valve S, permitting the liquid to escape through the invisible
tube LM. As the lever tips, the coin slides off and the valve
closes. The liquid in tank must of course be kept above F.)}

In recent times there has been a tendency to give to this
steam-engine of Hero something more than full meed of
appreciation. To be sure, it marked a most important principle in
the conception that steam might be used as a motive power, but,
except in the demonstration of this principle, the mechanism of
Hero was much too primitive to be of any importance. But there is
one mechanism described by Hero which was a most explicit
anticipation of a device, which presumably soon went out of use,
and which was not reinvented until towards the close of the
nineteenth century. This was a device which has become familiar
in recent times as the penny-in-the-slot machine. When towards
the close of the nineteenth century some inventive craftsman hit
upon the idea of an automatic machine to supply candy, a box of
cigarettes, or a whiff of perfumery, he may or may not have
borrowed his idea from the slot-machine of Hero; but in any
event, instead of being an innovator he was really two thousand
years behind the times, for the slot-machine of Hero is the
precise prototype of these modern ones.

The particular function which the mechanism of Hero was destined
to fulfil was the distribution of a jet of water, presumably used
for sacramental purposes, which was given out automatically when
a five- drachma coin was dropped into the slot at the top of the
machine. The internal mechanism of the machine was simple enough,
consisting merely of a lever operating a valve which was opened
by the weight of the coin dropping on the little shelf at the end
of the lever, and which closed again when the coin slid off the
shelf. The illustration will show how simple this mechanism was.
Yet to the worshippers, who probably had entered the temple
through doors miraculously opened, and who now witnessed this
seemingly intelligent response of a machine, the result must have
seemed mystifying enough; and, indeed, for us also, when we
consider how relatively crude was the mechanical knowledge of the
time, this must seem nothing less than marvellous. As in
imagination we walk up to the sacred tank, drop our drachma in
the slot, and hold our hand for the spurt of holy-water, can we
realize that this is the land of the Pharaohs, not England or
America; that the kingdom of the Ptolemies is still at its
height; that the republic of Rome is mistress of the world; that
all Europe north of the Alps is inhabited solely by barbarians;
that Cleopatra and Julius Caesar are yet unborn; that the
Christian era has not yet begun? Truly, it seems as if there
could be no new thing under the sun.



X. SCIENCE OF THE ROMAN PERIOD

We have seen that the third century B.C. was a time when
Alexandrian science was at its height, but that the second
century produced also in Hipparchus at least one investigator of
the very first rank; though, to be sure, Hipparchus can be called
an Alexandrian only by courtesy. In the ensuing generations the
Greek capital at the mouth of the Nile continued to hold its
place as the centre of scientific and philosophical thought. The
kingdom of the Ptolemies still flourished with at least the
outward appearances of its old-time glory, and a company of
grammarians and commentators of no small merit could always be
found in the service of the famous museum and library; but the
whole aspect of world-history was rapidly changing. Greece, after
her brief day of political supremacy, was sinking rapidly
into desuetude, and the hard-headed Roman in the West was making
himself master everywhere. While Hipparchus of Rhodes was in his
prime, Corinth, the last stronghold of the main-land of Greece,
had fallen before the prowess of the Roman, and the kingdom of
the Ptolemies, though still nominally free, had begun to come
within the sphere of Roman influence.

Just what share these political changes had in changing the
aspect of Greek thought is a question regarding which difference
of opinion might easily prevail; but there can be no question
that, for one reason or another, the Alexandrian school as a
creative centre went into a rapid decline at about the time of
the Roman rise to world-power. There are some distinguished
names, but, as a general rule, the spirit of the times is
reminiscent rather than creative; the workers tend to collate the
researches of their predecessors rather than to make new and
original researches for themselves. Eratosthenes, the inventive
world-measurer, was succeeded by Strabo, the industrious collator
of facts; Aristarchus and Hipparchus, the originators of new
astronomical methods, were succeeded by Ptolemy, the perfecter of
their methods and the systematizer of their knowledge. Meanwhile,
in the West, Rome never became a true culture-centre. The great
genius of the Roman was political; the Augustan Age produced a
few great historians and poets, but not a single great
philosopher or creative devotee of science. Cicero, Lucian,
Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, give us at best a reflection of Greek
philosophy. Pliny, the one world-famous name in the scientific
annals of Rome, can lay claim to no higher credit than that of a
marvellously industrious collector of facts--the compiler of an
encyclopaedia which contains not one creative touch.


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