146 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



while apparently building on the foundation laid by Eratosthenes, 

 is plainly an original work devoted largely to his own explorations 

 and observations during years of travel and study in different 

 countries, including Italy , Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Ethiopia. 

 He himself says : 



Westward I have journeyed to the parts of Etruria opposite Sar- 

 dinia ; towards the South from the Euxine to the borders of Ethiopia, 

 and perhaps not one of those who have written geographies has 

 visited more places than I have between those limits. 



His work is invaluable as a picture of the limited geographical 

 knowledge of the time, but he had no such mathematical knowledge 

 of geography as had his great predecessors, Eratosthenes, Hip- 

 parchus, and Ptolemy. 



PLINY THE ELDER (23-79 A.D.), sometimes called Pliny the 

 Naturalist, is another Roman of scientific attainments, whose great 

 work entitled Natural History, although more an encyclopaedia of 

 miscellaneous information than a scientific treatise, is, nevertheless, 

 like the works of Herodotus, a landmark in. the history of civil- 

 ization. It consists of thirty-seven books and is easily accessible 

 in English. Pliny deals with the universe, God, nature, and 

 natural phenomena ; with earth, stars, earthquakes ; with man, 

 beasts, shells, fishes, insects, trees, fruits, gums, perfumes, timber, 

 the diseases of plants, metals, stones, precious stones, etc. The 

 author met his death in that eruption of Vesuvius which over- 

 whelmed Pompeii in 79 A. D. and because of his scientific curiosity 

 which led him to approach too near to the volcano. 



GALEN (CLAUDIUS GALENUS) who flourished in the second 

 century A.D. was born and partly educated at Pergamum in Asia 

 Minor, where, after much travelling, and research, chiefly in 

 anatomy and philosophy at Smyrna and at Alexandria, he also 

 practised the healing art. Sent for by the Roman emperor, Lucius 

 Verus, he was afterward physician to Marcus Aurelius and his 

 son Commodus. His writings are voluminous, encyclopedic and 

 anatomically important, though not especially original, and his 

 name is often linked with that of Hippocrates, partly, no doubt, 



