GREEK AND ROMAN SCIENCE 



PART I. HISTORICAL OUTLINE 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 



AMONGST the problems with which Greek 

 science confronts us, there is one which is 

 particularly complicated, that of its birth. 

 This has doubtless been influenced by the intimate 

 connection which existed between the inhabitants of 

 the countries bordering on the iEgean Sea and the 

 East, particularly Egypt, as is shown by their many 

 commercial transactions. The Greeks themselves are 

 unanimous in recognizing this (legend of Cadmus, 

 traditions reported by Herodotus, and by Proclus in 

 his Commentaries on Book I of Euclid, etc.). 



The question here arises in what really consists this 

 influence of Oriental thought on Greek science ? Has 

 the latter merely received from the former a mass of 

 empirical knowledge, or also, in some measure, the 

 rational direction which characterizes it ? The recent 

 discoveries of Minoan civilization have further com- 

 plicated this problem. The remains of this civilization 

 seem to have survived, outside Greece and Crete, for 

 some time after the Dorian invasions. 1 Did these 

 remains, together with material imported from the 

 East, form the foundation of the civilizations which 



1 R. von Lichtenberg, Die aegaische Kultur, Teubner, 

 Leipzig, 191 1. See also the complete and graphic work just 

 published by G. Glotz : La civilisation dgeenne, Renaissance du 

 Livre, 1923, p. 445, et seq. 



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