The Mechanical Tradition of Hero of Alexandria

Courtney Ann Roby (Cornell University, New York)

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English

Cambridge University Press
17 April 2025

Ancient history: to c 500 CE; History of engineering & technology

Hero of Alexandria was a figure of great importance not only for ancient technology but also for the medieval and early modern traditions that drew on his work. In this book Courtney Roby presents Hero's key strategies for developing, solving, and contextualizing technical problems, not only in his own lifetime but as an influential tradition of creating accessible technical treatises spanning multiple disciplines. While Hero's historical biography is all but impossible to reconstruct, she examines “Hero” as a corpus, a textual tradition of technical problem-solving capable of incorporating textual transformations like interpolation, epitomization, and translation, as well as intermedial transformation from text to artifact. Key themes include ancient and early modern technical readerships, the relationship between mathematics and mechanics, the materiality of manuscript and printed texts, and the shifting cultural contexts for scientific and technical literature.

By: Courtney Ann Roby (Cornell University New York)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 502g
ISBN: 9781009014052
ISBN 10: 1009014056
Pages: 310
Publication Date: 17 April 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

1. Introduction; 2. Systems of Explanation; 3. Theorizing the World; 4. Hero in Context; 5. Hero in the Age of Print; Bibliography.

COURTNEY ROBY is Associate Professor of Classics at Cornell University. She is also the author of Technical Ekphrasis: The Written Machine between Alexandria and Rome (Cambridge, 2016). She is the recipient of a fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography from the University of Virginia's Rare Book School.

Reviews for The Mechanical Tradition of Hero of Alexandria

'This book, perhaps the first modern monograph on the Corpus Heronicum, marks a significant achievement, promising a bright future for further exploration of ancient technology, its texts, and its transformations.' Markus Asper, Metascience