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