The Gastraphetes

[Eleatic Guest]

Thanks D B.

I'm open to any other suggestions.

Perhaps some starting points:

Zopyrus of Tarentum is mentioned twice, in a treatise on siege-engines by Biton (3rd or 2nd century BC), as the inventor of an advanced form of the type of artillery known as the belly-bow (Marsden 1971, 74-77). Zopyrus' bow used a winch to pull back the string and hence could shoot a six-foot wooden missile 4.5 inches thick (Marsden 1969, 14). It is not implausible to suppose that this is the same Zopyrus as is listed in Iamblichus' catalogue of Pythagoreans under Tarentum (Diels 1965, 23), although Biton does not call him a Pythagorean. The traditional dating for Zopyrus puts him in the first half of the fourth century (Marsden 1971, 98, n. 52), but Kingsley has convincingly argued that he was in fact active in the last quarter of the fifth century, when he designed artillery for Cumae and Miletus (1995, 150 ff.). In a famous passage, Diodorus reports that in 399 BC Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse, gathered together skilled craftsmen from Italy, Greece and Carthage in order to construct artillery for his war with the Carthaginians (XIV 41.3). It seems not unlikely that Zopyrus was one of those who came from Italy. There is no reason to suppose, however, as Kingsley (1995, 146) and others do, that Zopyrus' interest in mechanics was connected to his Pythagoreanism or that there was a specifically Pythagorean school of mechanics in Tarentum (Huffman 2005, 14-17).

It is controversial whether this Zopyrus of Tarentum is the same as Zopyrus of Heraclea, who is not called a Pythagorean in the sources, but who is reported in late sources to have written three Orphic poems, The Net, The Robe and The Krater, which probably dealt with the structure of human beings and the earth (West 1983, 10 ff.). This Zopyrus could be from the Heraclea closely connected to Tarentum, but he might also be from the Heraclea on the Black Sea. A late source connects Zopyrus of Heraclea with Pisistratus in the 6th century (West 1983, 249), which would mean that he could not be the same as Zopyrus of Tarentum in the late 5th century. On the other hand, Orphic writings are assigned to a number of other Pythagoreans, and it is not impossible that the same person had interests both in Orphic mysticism and mechanics. Kingsley supposes that the myth at the end of Plato's Phaedo is based in minute detail on Zopyrus' Krater or an intermediary reworking of it (1995, 79-171), and tries to connect specific features of the myth to Zopyrus' interest in mechanics (1995, 147-148), but the parallel which he detects between the oscillation of the rivers in the mythic account of the underworld and the balance of opposing forces used in a bow is too general to be compelling. The connection between Zopyrus and the Phaedo is highly conjectural and must remain so, as long as there are no fragments of the Krater, with which to compare the Phaedo.

SOURCE: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoreanism/

PS: Zopyrus' Mountain Gastrophetes: http://www.frapanthers.com/teachers/whi ... allery.htm

This theory is apparently gaining ground:

Ein weiteres entscheidendes Indiz, dass der Bauchspanner des Heron weit vor 399/8 existierte, ist die in der Forschung kaum zur Kenntnis genommene Neudatierung des ältesten von Zopyros Mechanicus gebauten Bogenpfeilgeschützes in Kyme – Italien mit dem terminus ante quem 421. Wenn der Bauchspanner des Heron der ersten Artillerie vorausgeht, muß er eine nicht zu bestimmende Zeitspanne älter sein als genau dieses Geschütz.

Hans Michael Schellenberg: “Diodor von Sizilien 14,42,1 und die Erfindung der Artillerie im Mittelmeerraum“, ''Frankfurter Elektronische Rundschau zur Altertumskunde'', Vol. 3 (2006), pp.14-23 (18f.) http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.d ... enberg.pdf