Philo of Byzantium (Greek: Φίλων ο Βυζάντιος, ca. 280 BCE - ca. 220 BCE), also known as Philo Mechanicus, a Greek writer on mechanics, flourished during the latter half of the 2nd century B.C. He was probably younger than Ctesibius, though some place him a century earlier.
Philo was the author of a large work, Mechanike syntaxis (Compendium of Mechanics), which contained the following sections:
The military sections Belopoeica and Poliorcetica ar...
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Philo of Byzantium (Greek: Φίλων ο Βυζάντιος, ca. 280 BCE - ca. 220 BCE), also known as Philo Mechanicus, a Greek writer on mechanics, flourished during the latter half of the 2nd century B.C. He was probably younger than Ctesibius, though some place him a century earlier.
Philo was the author of a large work, Mechanike syntaxis (Compendium of Mechanics), which contained the following sections:
The military sections Belopoeica and Poliorcetica are extant in Greek, detailing missiles, the construction of fortresses, provisioning, attack and defence, as are fragments of Isagoge and Automatiopoeica (ed. R. Schone, 1893, with German translation in Hermann August Theodor Köchly's Griechische Kriegs-schriftstelle, vol. i. 1853; E. A. Rochas d'Aiglun, Poliorcetique des Grecs, 1872).
Another portion of the work, on pneumatic engines, has been preserved in the form of a Latin translation (De ingeniis spiritualibus) made from an Arabic version (ed. W. Schmidt, with German translation, in the...
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