6 Greek Biology 



Mycenean lions provide well-known examples. It is difficult 

 not to believe that the Minoan element, entering into the 

 mosaic of peoples that we call the Greeks, was in part at 

 least responsible for the like graphic power developed in the 

 Hellenic world, though little contact has yet been demon- 

 strated between Minoan and archaic Greek Art. 



For the earliest biological achievements of Greek peoples we 

 have to rely largely on information gleaned from artistic 

 remains. It is true that we have a few fragments of the works 

 of both Ionian and Italo-Sicilian philosophers, and in them 

 we read of theoretical speculation as to the nature of life and 

 of the soul, and we can thus form some idea of the first 

 attempts of such workers as Alcmaeon of Croton (c. 500 B.C.) 

 to lay bare the structure of animals by dissection. 1 The 

 pharmacopoeia also of some of the earliest works of the Hippo- 

 cratic collection betrays considerable knowledge of both native 

 and foreign plants. 2 Moreover, scattered through the pages 

 of Herodotus and other early writers is a good deal of casual 

 information concerning animals and plants, though such 

 material is second-hand and gives us little information con- 

 cerning the habit of exact observation that is the necessary 

 basis of science. 



Something more is, however, revealed by early Greek Art. 

 We are in possession of a series of vases of the seventh and sixth 

 centuries before the Christian era showing a closeness of observa- 

 tion of animal forms that tells of a people awake to the study of 

 nature. We have thus portrayed for us a number of animals- 

 plants seldom or never appear and among the best rendered 

 are wild creatures : we see antelopes quietly feeding or startled at 

 a sound, birds flying or picking worms from the ground, fallow 



1 The remains of Alcmaeon are given in H. Diels' Die Fragmente dcr 

 Vorsokratiker, Berlin, 1903, p. 103. Alcmaeon is considered in the com- 

 panion chapter on Greek Medicine. 



2 Especially the Trepi yvvaiKfir/s (frvaios, On the nature of woman, and the 

 i yvvaiKeiaiv, On (the diseases o/) women. 



