Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898), A, Ara, Archȳtas

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Archȳtas

（Ἀρχύτας).

1.

A musician of Mitylené, mentioned by Diogenes Laertius as having written a treatise on agriculture.

2.

A famous Tarentine astronomer and geometrician, the son of Hestiaeus. He was seven times elected governor of his native city. He is said to have been instrumental in rescuing Plato (q.v.) from the tyrant Dionysius. Many stories are told of his ingenuity. For him is claimed the invention of the screw, of the pulley, and of a wooden pigeon that could fly. He is also reported to have attempted to calculate the number of the grains of sand upon the sea-shore. Only a single fragment of his writings has come down to us in Porphyry. He perished in a shipwreck about B.C. 394. See his life in Diog. Laert. ; Plato, 338 C; and Horace, Carm. i. xxviii., with the commentators.

Harry Thurston Peck. Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. New York. Harper and Brothers. 1898.

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Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

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Archȳtas

1.

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