REPOSTING: The Story of Adolphe Rome from 300 B.C. to 2018 A.D.

Gabriellebirchak/ August 7, 2018/ Classical Antiquity, Contemporary History, Post Classical

DECEMBER 2016 — AROUND THE WORLD 

Humans per­sis­tent­ly live in an age where the preser­va­tion of knowl­edge is essen­tial. When Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion began its tran­si­tion into our gov­ern­ment, time was unfor­giv­ing­ly lim­it­ed; archivists, sci­en­tists, and data base experts around the world hur­ried­ly com­piled and har­bored endan­gered envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion records. Data res­cue events were coor­di­nat­ed in the Unit­ed King­dom, Greece, Ger­many, Japan, Chi­na and mul­ti­ple oth­er places to down­load and scrape data sets. In Toron­to, Cana­da, 150 aca­d­e­mics, and activists gath­ered for a “Guer­ril­la Archiv­ing Event” the month before the U.S. gov­ern­ment con­ver­sion took place. These con­cerned indi­vid­u­als knew that if our knowl­edge, rev­e­la­tions, and insights were not pre­served and if the new admin­is­tra­tion took down the valu­able data, the road to recon­nect back to our sci­en­tif­ic records would be long and arduous. 

FLASHBACK: 48 B.C. to 400 A.D. — ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT

If you are not aware of the Library of Alexan­dria, it is worth learn­ing about. The Library of Alexan­dria was once the largest library in the world. Alexan­der the Great had a vision of cre­at­ing a city built on the mem­ber­ship of knowl­edge. The city’s library grew so large that Alexan­dria had to build more libraries in the city. Ulti­mate­ly, the libraries decayed over time. In 48 B.C., Julius Cae­sar acci­den­tal­ly burned down a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the library. Around 270 A.D., Aure­lian attacked and destroyed part of the muse­um. In 365 A.D., an earth­quake in Crete caused a destruc­tive tsuna­mi in Alexan­dria. Then, around 391 A.D., Chris­t­ian Patri­arch Theophilus ordered the destruc­tion of the pagan tem­ples and sis­ter libraries. Hence, the library’s decay was due to years of neglect, reli­gious and polit­i­cal vit­ri­ol, unin­tend­ed fires, inten­tion­al fires, and archa­ic meth­ods of preservation.

FLASH-FORWARD: JULY 1889 — BELGIUM

The piec­ing togeth­er of infor­ma­tion that is thou­sands of years old requires exten­sive time, knowl­edge, and dili­gence. Some­times it takes teams, and some­times it takes the metic­u­lous, ded­i­cat­ed effort of one indi­vid­ual. Adolphe Rome is not a famous his­to­ri­an. How­ev­er, in the grand land­scape of his­tor­i­cal preser­va­tion, he is an authen­tic pro­tag­o­nist who was able to cre­ate con­nec­tions in his­to­ry that we oth­er­wise would not have been able to find. Thus, his life sto­ry is admirable because of his undy­ing love for math­e­mat­ics and his preser­va­tion of sci­ence and mathematics. 

Uni­ver­si­ty of Leu­ven, Belgium 

Rome was born on July 12, 1889, in Stavelot, Bel­gium. At the age of 23, he received his ordi­na­tion as a priest from Mechelen’s major sem­i­nary. He then trav­eled to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leu­ven to con­tin­ue his stud­ies. He enrolled to study clas­si­cal philol­o­gy, yet remained devot­ed to math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence. In 1919, he received his Doc­tor­ate in Clas­si­cal Philol­o­gy com­plet­ing his the­sis on ancient math­e­mat­ics, titled Les Fonc­tions Trigonometriques dans Heron d’Alexandrie. After he fin­ished his doc­tor­ate work, he was appoint­ed as a pro­fes­sor at Saint Mary’s Insti­tute in Schaer­beek, Bel­gium, and then at Saint Gertrude Col­lege in Niv­elles, Bel­gium. In 1922, he was award­ed a trav­el schol­ar­ship to research at the Bel­gian His­tor­i­cal Insti­tute in Rome. Then, in 1927, he trav­eled back to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leu­ven in Bel­gium to teach Greek lit­er­a­ture, where, in 1935, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Chap­ter of Meche­len appoint­ed him as hon­orary Canon. In 1959, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leu­ven award­ed him with the title of Pro­fes­sor Emeritus. 

FLASHBACK: 400 A.D. — 500 A.D. — EGYPT and TURKEY

Fif­teen hun­dred years pri­or, in 400 A.D., Hypa­tia and her father Theon worked com­pre­hen­sive­ly to write com­men­taries on works that went back as far as 300 B.C. includ­ing Euclid’s Ele­ments, Archimedes’ Dimen­sion of the Cir­cle, Ptolemy’s Almagest, and many oth­ers. Yet despite their con­tri­bu­tions, many of the orig­i­nal works that they ref­er­enced were not pre­served. It was not until around 500 A.D. when the Per­sian patron of sci­ence, Khos­rú the Holy, invit­ed Greek schol­ars to his court in Con­stan­tino­ple (now Istan­bul) and encour­aged the arrival of West­ern knowl­edge and cul­ture that began the volu­mi­nous preser­va­tion of Alexandria’s aca­d­e­mics. As a result, if it were not for the many Per­sian and Ara­bic trans­la­tors dur­ing this time, many of the works in Alexan­dria would not have sur­vived, and there would not be much mate­r­i­al for his­to­ri­ans to analyze.

FLASH-FORWARD: 1931–1943 — BELGIUM

Rome was one of the first his­to­ri­ans in the 20th cen­tu­ry to reassess Ptolemy’s Almagest. His analy­sis on Pap­pus’, Theon’s, and Hypatia’s author­ship of Com­men­tary on the Almagest tru­ly stands out. Rome devot­ed con­sid­er­able time ana­lyz­ing all three authors and start­ed research on Hypatia’s rhetoric and writ­ing style, which might have claimed her as the author of Com­men­tary on the Almagest.

Rome cre­at­ed a method­ol­o­gy while work­ing on the var­i­ous books of the Com­men­tary on the Almagest to com­pare the Greek Attic dialect against Hel­lenis­tic Koine. He inter­pret­ed style, gram­mar, phras­ing and sta­tis­ti­cal use of each word to under­stand the details and dif­fer­ences between Theon’s writ­ing style and Hypatia’s writ­ing style. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, his con­clu­sions were neg­a­tive, and he could not quite define if Hypa­tia had writ­ten Com­men­tary on the Almagest.

Rome’s work and con­tri­bu­tion to the his­to­ry of math­e­mat­ics are foun­da­tion­al, to say the very least. In 1932, in addi­tion to his teach­ings at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leu­ven and his ded­i­cat­ed research on Com­men­tary on the Almagest, Rome, along with Franz Cumont and Joseph Bidez, found­ed the mag­a­zine L’Antique Clas­sique.

GREAT SIDE STORY: 1986 —STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

Wilbur Knorr

Wilbur Knorr is not­ed as “one of the most pro­found and cer­tain­ly the most provoca­tive his­to­ri­an of Greek math­e­mat­ics.” Like Rome, Knorr had very lit­tle tan­gi­ble evi­dence to work with while ana­lyz­ing ear­ly Greek geom­e­try, due to the lack of mate­r­i­al avail­able. How­ev­er, Knorr believed, despite Rome’s incon­clu­sive­ness, that Rome’s method­ol­o­gy was valu­able. Thus, Knorr applied the same process­es for ana­lyz­ing every piece of work that Hypa­tia might have worked on. A long and fan­tas­tic tech­ni­cal read by Knorr titled Tex­tu­al Stud­ies in Ancient and Medieval Geom­e­try is worth dig­ging into, from begin­ning to end, to under­stand Knorr’s equal­ly incon­clu­sive studies.

STORY ARC: 1940 — NAZI INVASION

On May 10, 1940, Ger­man forces entered Bel­gium. Hitler’s cold-blood­ed troops moved in with­out regard for the sanc­ti­ty of human life. Rome sur­vived; how­ev­er, nine years of his thor­ough work on Com­men­tary on the Almagest did not. 

The bod­ies of Bel­gian civil­ians killed by Ger­mans, Decem­ber 1944 as the Ger­mans launched a counter-offen­sive into Lux­em­burg and Bel­gium, their ven­gance was wreaked upon inno­cent Bel­gium civil­ians. By Unknown or not pro­vid­ed — U.S. Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion, Pub­lic Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17335280

In addi­tion to the Nazi destruc­tion of Rome’s work on Com­men­tary on the Almagest, his mag­a­zine L’Antique Clas­sique began to fall under Nazi scruti­ny. Rome, aware of a poten­tial­ly destruc­tive out­come, care­ful­ly made efforts to pre­serve the mag­a­zine on a mate­r­i­al lev­el. While under the Nazi’s sur­veil­lance, he covert­ly con­vert­ed the magazine’s reserves to paper stock (that was hid­den). By doing this, the stocks avoid­ed spe­cif­ic require­ments that the Nazi regime had enforced. The mag­a­zine sur­vived and was still in tan­gi­ble form. At the height of World War II in 1943, the mag­a­zine was sus­pend­ed. How­ev­er, the war did not stop Rome and his team who were able to take all of the copies that elud­ed alter­ation, which was still in the pre­vi­ous­ly hid­den stock, and ship them out of the coun­try with­out any gov­ern­ment censorship.

Regard­less of the heart­less actions of a mer­ci­less army, noth­ing could dis­suade Rome’s deter­mi­na­tion to con­tin­ue his work on the Almagest. After World War II, he con­tin­ued to work on these trans­la­tions and analy­ses from mem­o­ry. Thus, Rome’s pas­sion for late antiq­ui­ty sci­ence nev­er wavered. He epit­o­mized the mean­ing of per­sis­tence. Fur­ther­more, as a result, the extent of his research allowed math­e­mati­cian and his­to­ri­an Wilbur Knorr to pick up where he left off.

ACT THREE: ROME’S TRIUMPH

Rome’s work in sci­ence his­to­ry and philol­o­gy was unique, out­stand­ing, exten­sive, and judi­cious. One of his most famous writ­ings is Com­men­taires de Pap­pus et de Theon d’Alexandrie sur l’Almagest. It is part of a mar­velous edi­tion in the Vat­i­can Library called Stu­di e Testi, which is three vol­umes of per­son­al man­u­scripts of Rome’s analy­ses of the writ­ings of Archimedes, Ptole­my, Pap­pus, Theon, and Hypa­tia. After World War II, he and his stu­dent, Mogenet, became edi­tors of the research jour­nal Osiris, a pub­li­ca­tion of His­to­ry of Sci­ence Soci­ety. Rome was elect­ed as a mem­ber of the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, Let­ters, and Fine Arts of Bel­gium in 1948. In 1956, he was appoint­ed Dean Hon­or of Labor for his sci­en­tif­ic work. Then, in 1959, he was appoint­ed as Grand Offi­cer of the Order of Leopold. In his final years, he was a res­i­dent priest at the nurs­ing home Emmaüs in Kor­beek-Lo. Then, after liv­ing a long, full, and incred­i­bly admirable life, he passed away on April 9, 1971. 

Rome’s dis­ser­ta­tion in 1919 served as a cor­ner­stone to his pas­sions and his ded­i­ca­tion to philol­o­gy and math­e­mat­ics. He inex­haustibly ded­i­cat­ed him­self to research­ing the his­to­ry of sci­ence and astron­o­my, and devot­ed his life to teach­ing young and eager philol­o­gists who also found inter­est in the his­to­ry of sci­ence. Rome fruit­ful­ly sowed the seeds. Two of his great­est suc­ces­sors, Joseph Mogenet and Anne Tihon, con­tin­ued with his bril­liant method­olo­gies and schol­ar­ly approach­es. Mogenet went on to cre­ate a course at the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Leu­ven that was devot­ed to the his­to­ry of sci­ence. Tihon, now Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Leu­ven, con­tin­ues to do com­pre­hen­sive analy­ses of the his­to­ry of Byzan­tine astron­o­my and the work of Ptolemy’s Handy Tables.

Accom­plish­ments aside, he was a hum­ble indi­vid­ual. He loved to play the organ, he enjoyed long walks, and was fas­ci­nat­ed with botany. His memo­r­i­al states that he often resort­ed to humor when he seemed exces­sive­ly fool­ish. In oth­er words, he didn’t take him­self seriously.

Rome is unknown to some. Yet sci­ence his­to­ry is dif­fer­ent today because of his efforts. The sub­jects of math, sci­ence, and astron­o­my have more evi­dence than they did a thou­sand years ago because of Rome’s copi­ous philo­log­i­cal research and unique appli­ca­tion of sci­en­tif­ic and lin­guis­tic investigation.

AUGUST 2018 — HERE AND NOW — AFTERTHOUGHT

His­to­ry has taught us and will con­tin­ue to teach us that the preser­va­tion of knowl­edge is a neces­si­ty. Rome’s pas­sion for math, sci­ence, and astron­o­my com­pli­ment­ed his skills in philol­o­gy. This empow­ered him to cre­ate approach­es that allowed him to take small bits of infor­ma­tion and build them into a wealth of knowl­edge for fur­ther sci­ence his­to­ri­ans. Like those in Cana­da and around the world who devot­ed tremen­dous time and effort to pre­serve our sci­en­tif­ic data between U.S. polit­i­cal admin­is­tra­tions, some­times preser­va­tion requires teams of peo­ple devot­ed to sav­ing knowl­edge. How­ev­er, some­times the most mag­nif­i­cent preser­va­tion comes from indi­vid­u­als like Adolphe Rome who was unques­tion­ably a bril­liant philol­o­gist with a life­time of ded­i­ca­tion to the restora­tion of the his­to­ry of science. 

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