Andron īcus
（
Ἀνδρόνικος).
1.
A peripatetic philosopher, a native of Rhodes, who flourished about B.C. 80. He arranged
and published the writings of Aristotle, which had been brought to Rome with the library of
Apellicon. He commented on many parts of these writings; but no portion of his works has
reached us, for the treatise
Περὶ Παθῶν, and the
Paraphrase of the Nicomachean ethics, which have been published under his name, are the
productions of another. The treatise
Περὶ Παθῶν was
published by Hösschel in 1593, and was afterwards printed conjointly with the
Paraphrase in 1617, 1679, and 1809. The Paraphrase was published by
Heinsius in 1607, at Leyden, as an anonymous work (
Incerti Auctoris
Paraphrasis, etc.), and afterwards under the name of
Andronicus of
Rhodes, by the same scholar, in 1617, with the treatise
Περὶ
Παθῶν added to it. See the dissertations by
Littig, Andronikos von
Rhodos (1891) and by Rösener
(1893).
2.
Cyrrhestes, an astronomer of Athens, who erected, B.C. 159, an
octagonal marble tower in that city to the eight winds, now known as the “Tower of
the Winds.” On every side of the octagon he caused to be wrought a figure in
relievo, representing the wind which blew
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Tower of the Winds.
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against that side. The top of the tower was finished with a conical marble, on
which he placed a brazen Triton, holding a wand in his right hand. This Triton was so
contrived that he turned round with the wind, and always stopped when he directly faced it,
pointing with his wand over the figure of the wind at that time blowing. Within the structure
was a water-clock, supplied from the fountain in a turret. Beneath the eight figures of the
winds lines were traced on the walls of the tower, which, by the shadows cast upon them by
styles fixed above, indicated the hour of the day, as the Triton's wand did the quarter of
the wind. When the sun did not shine recourse was had to the water-clock within the tower,
which building thus supplied both a vane and a chronometer. The structure still stands,
though in a damaged state. To the correctness of the sundials Delambre bears testimony, and
he describes the series as “the most curious existing monument of the practical
gnomonics of antiquity.” There are two entrances, facing respectively to the
northeast and northwest; each of these openings has a portico supported by two columns. (See
Vitruv. i. 6, 4.)
