Talk:Posidonius

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I think there is a mistake here - the external link to Thessalonika says Posidonius had 180,000 stadia as the circumference of his "equator" - a figure I have seen elsewhere. But here you say 240,000.

Since you haven't signed or dated your query (by typing four tildes at the end, which automatically convert into your IP Address and the time & date) we can't tell how old it is. The current version of the article clearly states that Posidonius initially arrived at a figure of 240,000 stadia, but later revised it to 180,000. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 10:36, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Images of Posidonius

Hi. I’m new to Wikipedia. I’ve been teaching myself how to edit by working on this biographical article about Posidonius.

I’ve found some good images of his busts online. The best pictures of Posidonius are available from the Virtuelles Antiken Museum Göttingen website and are copyrighted. The image itself hyperlinks to other views of the bust.

http://viamus.uni-goettingen.de/fr/e/schule/g/a_02/10

Other images appear here and there on the Web. This image is fairly common, and I’d guess is in the public domain.

http://www.newgenevacenter.org/reference/hellenists2.htm

http://www.livius.org/gi-gr/greeks/philosophers.html

In fact, the proprietor of the Livius website indicates a belief that the image I used for the article is in the public domain.

Another view. Public domain?

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/PictDisplay/Posidonius.html

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Distances.htm

A different bust. Copyrighted image.

http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/000Free/000Survivors/source/61.html

--Tregonsee 11:56, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Invalid reference

Please note that the reference Posidonius, Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition is not valid since it does not link to any source. selfworm^Talk) 23:25, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Improper format?

While the lengthy material at the head of this article is undoubtedly valuable and of good quality, is there not a major format problem? It is inserted as a free-standing article; it has an author attribution at the end of it; its references are not formatted correctly; etc.

How can this good material be incorporated to proper Wikipedia standards? For one, should somebody simply remove the author attribution? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.127.183.196 (talk) 17:45, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Update: what has happened is that someone has lifted and inserted whole an article at http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Posidonius.html, citing it in the "references" section. Still, major problems of format and now of sourcing material going on here that need fixing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.127.183.196 (talk) 17:51, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Distance to the Sun

The article currently says:

In about 90 BCE Posidonius estimated the distance to the sun (see astronomical unit) to be 9,893 times the Earth's radius, which was still too small by half. In measuring the size of the Sun, however, he reached a figure larger and more accurate than those proposed by other Greek astronomers and Aristarchus of Samos.

However there is no number 9,893 in , which says:

Poseidonius stated a hypothesis that the circumference of the orbit of the sun is 10,000 times greater than the earth's circumference.

Other sources (e.g. ) also says that Posidonius took of Sun's orbit as wide as a myriad Earths. Does anybody know where the figure 9,893 comes from? Alexei Kopylov (talk) 06:18, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Also Russian [Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary] (1890-1907) states that Poseidonius believes that the ratio of sun orbit to Earth is 13,098. But unfortunately it does not provide any reference. Does anyone knows where this number comes from? Alexei Kopylov (talk) 06:33, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Note that AuthorHouse is a vanity publisher. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.136.176.89 (talk) 09:46, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

The article on Astronomical unit gives the factor 10,000 as having been used by Posidonius. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.136.176.89 (talk) 09:48, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

See Talk:Aristarchus_of_Samos#Alberto Gomez Gomez. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.136.176.89 (talk) 10:06, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Both figures, 9,893 and 13,098, have a great deal of spurious accuracy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.136.176.89 (talk) 10:09, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

References

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Pliny's Discussion of Posidonius's Astronomical Calculations

I would like to insert the following under Astronomy and would like to see if there are any thoughts as to if this should be inserted. The numbers provided are very accurate for the moon and about 2/3 of the distance to the sun.

"" Pliny (Book 2, Chapter 21 [Bostock Translation]) says:

"Posidonius supposes that there is a space of not less than 40 stadia around the earth, whence mists, winds and clouds proceed; beyond this he supposes that the air is pure and liquid, consisting of uninterrupted light; from the clouded region to the moon there is a space of 2,000,000 of stadia, and thence to the sun of 500,000,000." ""

Reworked first half of the article

I gave this article a bit of a rewrite. I noticed that this article was asserting that Posidonius abandoned Stoicism and switched to becoming a "faithful follower of Aristotelian doctrines". This is a bizarre notion I've never come across before in any textbook, paper or primary source, but which seems to have been added by an anonymous IP to this page seven or eight years ago. It might not have been vandalism, I guess maybe because Posidonius' data collecting was in the manner of Aristotle that perhaps the contributor really did believe that. In the end I gave the life section a careful rewriting citing my edits carefully, and likewise on his philosophical doctrines. It's probably still a bit patchy in places. Pasicles (talk) 22:46, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Hmm. And I did some "clean up" of other things in the article based on that long-ago inserted (and unsourced!) claim assuming it was correct. I just did a bit of searching on Google Scholar and I could not readily find it. Good catch! Teishin (talk) 23:07, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Split section on arc measurement

that topic is notable enough and the section is long enough. fgnievinski (talk) 05:01, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

The section as it stands in the article seems perfectly proportional, and I can see no compelling need for a split based on size alone. As this proposal has gained no interest in almost exactly one year, I've removed the split tag. Anyone interested in writing a stand-alone article on Posidonius' measurements of the Earth's circumference can always do so, though I don't see any real need for such an article. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:02, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Earth's circumference

Under Earth's circumference, it is written: "Ptolemy used Posidonius's lower value of 180,000 stades". Did Posidonius ever write this lower value, or is that an invention of Strabo? I feel like that's a rather important distinction. Someone with more knowledge could perhaps clarify this backed up by some good sources? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:799:B9E:5600:8980:D5EE:55F8:507E (talk) 17:26, 17 December 2022 (UTC)