Chapter Three: The Alexandria Quartet

After Archimedes, the city of Alexandria became a centre for Greek mechanics, where Ctesibius, Philo of Byzantium, Hero, and Pappus worked. Although Ctesibius’s works are now lost, some of his machines were described by Vitruvius in his De architectura. In his Mechanics, Hero (fl. A.D. 50) took up the mechanical challenge attributed to Archimedes—to move with the aid of a machine any load however large with any power however small—and reduced its solution to the five powers—the five simple machines. These he explained through the principles of less force, dividing and sharing the load, and compensation. Hero’s Mechanics survived in Greek only in passages quoted in the fourth century by Pappus of Alexandria in his mathematical Collection, which fortunately included Hero’s descriptions (but not his analyses) of the five powers.