ILLR-Intellectual Life and Learning on Rhodes (168BC-AD44)
Higher education is fundamental to the exchange of knowledge and training of individuals and societies. This is as true today as it was in pre-modern cultures. Students and researchers move between different institutions across different countries to pursue new research and acquire further learning and skills. They contribute to and improve the knowledge economy of their host and resident countries. How did a knowledge economy work in the ancient world? During Greco-Roman antiquity, the island of Rhodes in the SE Aegean serves as a point of comparison and inspiration with analogue features of today’s knowledge economies, such as the mobility of students and researchers, the formalisation and diversification of academic disciplines, and the use of heritage and learning as a means of identity. Rhodes was a naval power, a hub for international trading and banking, and a centre for learning for Greek and Roman elites. It had an international reputation for its art, civic institutions, philosophers, scholars, schools of rhetoric, and mediators. It was a venue of cultural cross-fertilization and where long-established disciplines (such as philosophy, rhetoric, and philology) blended together and other disciplines such as the sciences and engineering flourished. Noted figures include, Posidonius (born c. 135 BC), the polymath and leading Stoic philosopher of his time, who wrote works on physics, ethics, logic, mathematics, the sciences, geography, and history. He was an influential thinker and writer, who was sought out by intellectuals and statesmen, e.g. Cicero and Pompey the Great. Apollonios Molon taught rhetoric to e.g. Cicero, Caesar, and Brutus. Hipparchus (c. 190-120 BC) led Greek astronomy and geography towards precise, predictive and empirically confirmed calculations e.g. he calculated the length of the tropical year at 365.1448 days, a deviation from the modern value of about six minutes. He indirectly influenced Indian planetary theories and he was one of the main sources of Claudius Ptolemy's Almagest, an astronomical work which considerably influenced Byzantine, Islamic, and Western European science. Scholars and students of Roman antiquarianism, oratory and philosophy undertook further studies on Rhodes, including Stilo, Antony the orator, Cicero, Caesar and the lawyer Servius Sulpicius Rufus. Clitomachus, a Rhodian philosopher, was one of the main authorities for Cicero’s philosophical works (De Div. and DRN); Posidonius was a partial source for the argument of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum 2; and Panaetius’ On Duty, supplied by Posidonius, was also the starting point for Cicero’s On Duties, a work of considerable influence up to the 19th century.
The specific objectives (SO) are:
(SO1) to demonstrate Rhodes as an important intersection within the ancient Mediterranean knowledge economy.
(SO2) to identify and analyze the features of Rhodian intellectual life.
(SO3) to trace Rhodes’ role in the development of Greco-Roman culture, the Humanities, and the Social Sciences.
(SO4) to describe and outline the factors in Rhodes’ transformation from a predominately economic and political power to a cultural one.
ILLR draws upon literary, archaeological and epigraphic evidence to demonstrate its pivotal and under-appreciated role as an important intersection within networks of learning. ILLR demonstrates several precedents (e.g. the study of heritage and anthropology), connections (education and mobility), and continuities (e.g. grammar and linguistics) in modern intellectual life.
