Chapter 131: Mathematics and Waterwheel

Chapter 131: Mathematics and Waterwheel

“Other city-states regard land as the greatest wealth, so they are not willing to accept outsiders and freeman, and they are also not willing to share the benefits and wealth of the city-state with them. On the contrary I think “people” is the greatest wealth of a city-state! With people, we can grow food, make art and create wealth! With people, we can build weapons, army and defend the city-state! And with enough people, we can get much more land!” Said Davos firmly.

His words had an unprecedented impact on Kunogelata, as smart as he is, he certainly did not know how they will get enough land. Apparently, Davos was implicitly telling him the source of the “allocated land” for the new citizens, so he kept quiet…

Then, Sostratus, the eldest son of Kunogelata, saw some of the warehouses and inns on the construction site that were nearly completed and asked, “I heard that you are going to attract merchants from Thurii and other city-states to store their goods and lodging here. These warehouses and inns that are under construction will be it?”

“Yes.”

“It seems that there will be a lot of warehouses and inns that are going to be built here. Is the city-state going to manage them all by themselves?” Asked Sostratus again.

Mersis heard what he meant, and so he immediately said, “Of course not! We don’t have so much public officials in the city-state, and everyone has their own business and so we are ready to have a public auction and rent them out.”

“Auction” was a new word, and the Greek merchant genes made him quickly understand what was going on, and so he asked, “Can we participate?”

“You are very welcome!” Replied Mersis happily.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Although he had been busy from moving and arranging the house most of the day and the whole family was tired, Kunogelata still woke up early the next morning. Getting up early was a habit that he had developed after many years. The slave helped him get up and dressed, and then he decided to go out for a walk with the help of the slaves and came back to have breakfast.

Kunogelata’s house is at the foot of the mountain of Amendolara. After allocating the houses to the new citizens, there are still many vacant houses here, and it can be seen that in the previous war, it had done great harm to Amendolara. Only after Kunogelata came here did he understand why the native people of Amendolara were so angry with Thurii.

Most of these empty houses were rented to the freeman at a low price, so as soon as Kunogelata went out, he could see freeman rushing to work by groups. Their faces were full of vitality and passion that the freeman in the city of Thurii did not have, and even when they meet Kunogelata, who is a stranger, they would still speak with him with strange Greek and pay friendly greetings.

Kunogelata knew the reason why they were so passionate about life, because they had changed from slaves to freeman, and their employers have also paid the so-called “preparatory citizenship tax” to the city-state for them, and as long as they abide the law and work hard, then they can become a preparatory citizen of the city-state in two years.

It was currently June and the weather has began to get hot. While the city of Amendolara is relatively cool due to it being built on a mountain, and the sea breeze and mountain wind take turns to cool down the small city.

As Kunogelata walked up the road, from time to time, he will meet citizens who will go down the mountain, and they are all going to work in the fields. Both the native and new citizens said hello and laughed at each other, which was very harmonious. The slaves who followed them also showed great spirit, and all these must be the deeds of those mercenary slaves who could become citizens that have given them hope.

What really surprised Kunogelata was that there is also a woman that accompanied a citizen. She was a citizen’s wife, not the wife of a freeman (in order to make a living, the wives of a freeman often came out to work and earn money in order to support their families, such as setting up stalls, being employed in a restaurant, and so on.) She was going to accompany her husband to work in the field. It seems that his son had mentioned to him about some strange things in the city yesterday afternoon, and looking at the appearance of the woman, she is indeed a Lucanian woman. If he was a traditional and conservative foreigner, then he would have made a fuss. However, Kunogelata, who had been in politics for many years, had first thought of the significance that is represented by this phenomenon. Apparently, Davos was not just barking about it, but he was indeed trying to assimilate the Lucanians in various ways.

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This young man has extraordinary ambition! Under his leadership, the small city of Amendolara had become strange and different, and in such a short period of time, it became full of vitality! Kunogelata had become more interested, and he noticed that there were many people going down the mountain, but there were also many people going up the mountain, including many children. When he asked, he found out that there is a Pythagorean disciple teaching mathematics for free on the square.

There is a Pythagorean school here! After getting surprised, Kunogelata suddenly remembered the scene of their first meeting and instantly understood that it must have been Archytas! The Pythagorean school is against democracy and supporting aristocratic politics. Will Davos tolerate them?!

But Kunogelata had thought about how Davos is an archon for life, and so, Amendolara is not a democracy!

Coming to the square, there are already some people around the stage, on which a young man is teaching basic mathematics.

This young man was Metoticles. At the beginning, he and Marticoris got the promise of Davos  to recruit apprentices. However, they strictly followed the Pythagorean requirements, which is, the disciples must have a certain mathematical foundation, and so a test is required.

But when they excitedly went door-to-door to inquire, they were rejected. First of all, most of the new citizens have a low level of education, and they are currently have just been assigned a field and houses, and so they are busy taking care of everything. How can they have the time for a test and study? Even though there are a few who wants to learn in order to prepare for public services in the future, they need to pass the test first. Although the education level of the native citizens are higher than that of the new citizens, on the one hand, they are busy doing funeral services to their relatives, and on the other hand, the Pythagorean school’s reputation in Magna Graecia is not good, with them being a secret association that worship evil gods (they regard “number” as their god), and they oppose the city-state and so on, it has long been spread to all city-state, and so they are, of course, not welcomed.

After busying for several days, they did not get any new disciples, which greatly shocked them. And so they wandered around the city-state all day long, and inadvertently discovered the Hades numeral (which is actually the Arabic numerals) that Davos had taught to Mersis to use for bookkeeping. It must be known that the Greek scholars who study mathematics in this era have a headache due to the tedious writing of Greek characters that represents numbers more than 10,000, which brought a lot of trouble for scholars in carrying out calculation. However, the Hades numeral are simple, easy to learn and easy to remember, and it can easily solve the problem that gave them the most headache in the field of mathematics. This will certainly improve the efficiency of their mathematical research, and the most important thing is that mathematics will be more easy to popularized among the public. (In history, Archimedes was the first person to solve the Greek problem, as he had invented the method of myriad (exponent).)

Thinking of this, the two men felt like they hit the jackpot. However, Mersis refused to teach them the secret of how to use this symbol, “Lord Davos is the one that have taught this, and it is said that this is a gift from Hades. And so, you must first get his permission for you to learn it!”

And so, they had to look for Davos again, which they thought that it would be more difficult to get his agreement. But Davos immediately agreed and said that, “Mathematics comes from daily life, and so naturally, I hope everyone can learn it, so that they can apply it to their daily life to solve the problems that they encountered in life and provide convenience. This is the real significance of learning knowledge!”

The two young men were greatly touched by the words of Davos.

Therefore, Davos had put forward a suggestions: That they are to open a free public lecture on mathematics on the square to teach the citizens of the city who are willing to come and learn the basics of mathematics, and the council is willing to endorse them in advocating the active participation of the public, which can also cultivate a large number of mathematics enthusiasts for the Pythagorean school over a long period of time. Which would naturally, make the Pythagorean school take root in Amendolara.

The two young and vigorous disciples did not want to return to Taranto with nothing to show. So after much deliberation, they finally decided to break the tradition of Pythagorean school and taught in public.

After getting their agreement, Davos was very happy and immediately invited them to participate in the designing in the manufacture of the waterwheel.

In his previous life, Davos had seen a lot of waterwheel in southern China, which seemed to be very easy thing to make, but when Davos had asked Alexius, the aedile, to lead the carpenter to try and make it, he found that it was not easy to make. It wasn’t due to the uneven force on the support frame and made it collapsed, or that the wheel axle angle which was not the same and caused the rotation to fail…and so on. But it was in fact, the involvement of precise mathematical calculation and the application of mathematical mechanics in making the waterwheel. In this era, mathematicians are also often both versed in mathematical mechanics and physics. And because of his close relation with the two, Davos had to ask the two young Pythagorean disciples for help.

When he took out the simple design of the waterwheel and explained its use, they were then immediately got attracted. After careful observation, they thought that this was a perfect gift of the “God of Mathematics” to help human beings live a better life (completely ignoring that this was the idea of Davos). In addition, under the leadership of Archytas, the Pythagorean school of Taranto has begun to involve in the study of mathematical mechanics for several years, and it just so happen that they can apply what they have learned, and so the two had immediately expressed their willingness to help develop the waterwheel.

Today, while Metoticles was teaching on the stage, Marticoris has begun to build the waterwheel on the river Siris. Although Metoticles was worried, he tried his best to stabilize his mood to finish the lecture with good quality and quantity and patiently answered the questions of the public. After that, he hurriedly went down the mountain…

In a narrow section of the river Siris, the surging river pushes the huge waterwheel axle to slowly rotate. When the bucket full of river water goes up to the center above the waterwheel, it then went down and dump the water into a wooden channel, the water was then led into the canal through the wooden channel, and flow into a large and small, meandering canals and then lead the cool and clear water of river Siris into the higher fields…

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