by E A Paschos (University of Dortmund, Germany) & P Sotiroudis (University of Thessaloniki, Greece)

Most of the knowledge of ancient Greek science survived through Byzantine codices. A short Byzantine article, extant in three manuscripts, contains advanced astronomical ideas and pre-Copernican diagrams; it presents improvements on ancient and medieval astronomy. This important book includes the edited version and translation of the text and analyzes its content. It surveys the development of astronomical models from Ptolemy to Byzantium and compares them mathematically with several works of Arab astronomers, as well as with the heliocentric system of Copernicus and Newton.

• (1) The Byzantine article contains the following sections: About Motion
  • About the Spheres and the Stars Lying on Them
  • About the Sun
  • About the Spheres of the Moon
  • About the Spheres of the Four Stars: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and Venus
  • Computation of the Sphere of Mercury
  • Stations and Retrogression of the Five Stars and their Ascending Motion
  • About the Latitude of the Stars
  • About the Change in Appearance (Parallax)
  • Parallax of the Sun
  • About the Waxing and Waning of the Moon
  • About the Eclipse of the Moon
  • About the Eclipse of the Sun
• (2) The Diagrams:
  • Diagrams in the Schemata of the Stars
  • Excerpts from the Texts
  • Geocentric Clocks
  • Astronomical Diagram from Mount Athos
• (3) Analysis of the Schemata of the Stars:
  • Kinematic Principles
  • Chioniades' Classification of the Stars and their Motions
  • The Model for the Spheres
  • The Motion of the Sun
  • The Lunar Model
  • The Planets
  • Mercury
  • Description of the Stations and Retrogression of the Five Stars
  • The Nodes and Latitudes of the Stars
  • The Parallax
  • The Phases of the Moon
  • The Eclipse of the Moon
  • The Eclipse of the Sun