Excerpts pertaining to the history of the handbook tradition

From pages 11-12, and 14 of Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages by Edward Grant. Any "bold faced" words were not bold faced in the original text.

   "The achievements of the first six centuries of the Christian era were typical of the manner in which Greek science and natural philosophy had developed and advanced. Always the product of a small number of gifted scholars concentrated in a few centers, Greek science was a fragile enterprise, able to advance and preserve itself just so long as the intellectual environment was favorable, or at least not overtly antagonistic. Greek science at its traditional best in the Roman Empire was but a continuation of the progress already made in the physical and biological sciences of classical Greece and the Hellenistic world, when the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hipparchus, Eudoxus, Euclid, Archimedes, Appollonius of Perga, Hipparchus, Theophrastus, Herophilus, and Erastistratus established the highest levels of achievement. 

    As in our own day, however, there existed in antiquity an audience of educated individuals  interested in the physical world but with little inclination or ability to tackle forbidding scientific treatises of a theoretical and abstract nature. To meet the needs of this group, scientific popularizers simplified and rendered palatable conclusions from the exact sciences and natural philosophy, which were then incorporated into handbooks and manuals. Greek authors began the process of popularization in the Hellenistic period. Not surprisingly, some of these treatises were filled with contradictory information. Readers who were astute enough to detect the inconsistencies were left to reconcile them as best they could.

    Greeks who were instrumental in shaping the handbook tradition were the polymath Erastosthenes of Cyrene (ca. 275-194 B.C.), who supplied much geographical knowledge to the tradition; Cretes of Mallos (fl. 160 B.C.); and especially Posidonius (ca. 135-51 B.C., whose numerous works have not survived, but whose opinions on meterology, geography, astronomy, and other sciences were absorbed into later handbooks to become permanent fixtures in the tradition. Continuing in the manner of Posidonius were other Greek authors, such as Geminus (ca. 70 B.C.); Clepcosmological work On the Cyclic motions of the celestial bodies; and Theon of Smyrna (first half of second century AD), who wrote the Manual of Mathematical Knowledge useful for an Understanding of Plato in which the whole universe is discussed, just as in Plato's Timaeus. Theon drew upon astronomy and cosmology as well as Pythagorean arithmetic and mathematics. 

....

When fashion dictated that cultured Romans become acquainted with the results of Greek science, the handbook method was there to meet the need. Romans who knew Greek consulted the Greek handbooks directly, but the great majority of Romans absorbed their knowledge through Latin translations or summaries. Soon, Latin authors began compiling their own handbooks on science.

    Although Latin encyclopdic tradition actually began in the first century B.C. with Marcus Terrentius Varro (116-27 B.C.), its two most significant early representitives were Seneca (d. A.D. 68) and Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23/24-79). In Natural Questions, Seneca concerned himself largely with geography and meteorological phenomena (for example, rainbows, halos, meteors, thunder, and lightening), after the manner of Aristotle's Meteorology. He drew heavily upon Aristotle, Posidonius, perhaps his major authority, Theophrastus, and other Greek sources. Because Seneca frequently drew morals from natural phonomena, his book was popular with Christians. He also transmitted to the Middle Ages an estimate of the size of the earth that was small enough to encourage men like Columbus and others to think that the oceans were sufficiently narrow to be readily navigable. Seneca also struck an optimistic note on the progress of science and knowledge when he predicted that continuous research would reveal natures secrets. 

    Pliny's Natural History in thirty-seven books was a remarkable scissors-and-paste collection of enormous scope and detail. By his own estimate, he examined about two thousand volumes drawn from 100 authors.

[...]

    Ancius Manlius Severinus Boethius (ca. 480-524) was one of the best of the Latin encyclopedists and also an unusual one because he knew Greek, although the extent of his knowledge is uncertain. Beothius wrote on the "quadrivium" (a term he may have introduced for the four mathematical sciences of the seven liberal arts), of which only his treatises on music and Pythagorean arithmetic survive, the latter in the form of a free translation of Nicomachus's Introduction to Arithmetic, originally composed in Greek. To these Boethius added his translations of some of Aristotle's logical treatises, perhaps Euclid's Elements, and unspecified works of Archimedes that have not survived. His commentaries on certain of the philosophical treatises that he translated and his most famous work, On the Consolation of Philosophy, written in prison while he awaited execution, were very influential. Cassiodorus (ca. 488-575) included sections on the seven liberal arts in his Introduction to Divine and Human Readings and was reasonably scrupulous about citing his authorities. Isidore of Seville (ca. 560 - 636), in addition to writing a treatise entitled On the Nature of Things, compiled a vast encyclopedia called The Etymologies, in which he discussed the seven liberal arts, medicine, zoology, the mechanical arts, metallurgy, and other topics. Finally, there is Venerable Bede (ca. 673-735), perhaps the most intelligent of the Latin encyclopedists. In addition to a conventional encyclopedia, On the Nature of Things, Bede wrote two treatises, On the Division of Time and On the Reckoning of Time, whihc were concerned with calendar reckoning and in which he discussed such topics as chronology, astronomy, calendrical computations, Easter tables, and the tides. Although he borrowed heavily from his predecessors, especially Isidore, Bede was capable of adding intelligently to his meagre inheritance. For example, he formulated the concept of the "establishment of the port" and recorded that the tides recur at approximately the same time at a particular place along the coast, although the times of occurrence vary from place to place.