Archytas (
Greek: Αρχύτας;
428 BC –
347 BC) was an
Ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and
strategist.
Archytas was born in
Tarentum, Magna Graecia (now
Italy) and was the son of Mnesagoras or Histiaeus. He was taught for a while by
Philolaus and he was a teacher of mathematics to
Eudoxus of Cnidus. He was a scientist of the
Pythagorean school and famous for being a good friend of
Plato. His and Eudoxus' student was
Menaechmus.
Archytas is believed to be the founder of mathematical
mechanics. As only described in the writings of
Aulus Gellius five centuries after him, he was reputed to have designed and built the first artificial, self-propelled flying device, a bird-shaped model propelled by a jet of what was probably steam, said to have actually flown some 200 yards. This machine, which its inventor called
The Pigeon, may have been suspended on a wire or pivot for its flight. Archytas also wrote some lost works, as he was included by
Vitruvius in the list of the twelve authors of works of mechanics. Thomas Winter has suggested that the pseudo-Aristotelian
Mechanical Problems is an important mechanical work by Archytas, not lost after all, but misattributed.
According to
Eutocius, Archytas solved the problem of
doubling the cube in his manner with a geometric construction.
Hippocrates of Chios before, reduced this problem to finding mean
proportionals. Archytas' theory of proportions is treated in book VIII of
Euclid's Elements, where is the construction for two proportional means, equivalent to the extraction of the
cube root. According to
Diogenes Laertius, this demonstration, which uses lines generated by moving figures to construct the two proportionals between magnitudes, was the first in which geometry was studied with concepts of mechanics. The
Archytas curve, which he used in his solution of the doubling the cube problem, is named after him.
Politically and militarily, Archytas appears to have been the dominant figure in Tarentum in his generation, somewhat comparable to
Pericles in
Athens a half-century earlier. The Tarentines elected him
strategos, 'general', seven years in a row – a step that required them to violate their own rule against successive appointments. He was allegedly undefeated as a general, in Tarentine campaigns against their southern Italian neighbors. The
Seventh Letter of
Plato asserts that Archytas attempted to rescue Plato during his difficulties with
Dionysius II of
Syracuse. In his public career, Archytas had a reputation for virtue as well as efficacy. Some scholars have argued that Archytas may have served as one model for Plato's
philosopher king, and that he influenced Plato's political philosophy as expressed in
The Republic and other works (i.e., how does a society obtain good rulers like Archytas, instead of bad ones like Dionysus II?).
Archytas was drowned in the
Adriatic Sea. His body lay unburied on the shore till a sailor humanely cast a handful of sand on it. Otherwise, he would have had to wander on this side the
Styx for a hundred years, such the virtue of a little dust,
munera pulveris, as
Horace calls it.
The
Archytas crater on the
Moon was named in his honour.
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