THE HELLENIC PERIOD 23 



rented all the olive trees and thus made a good profit. 

 In his capacity of merchant he seems to have travelled 

 in Egypt and perhaps even in Chaldea. According to 

 Herodotus (I, 75) Thales accompanied Croesus, prob- 

 ably as an engineer, in his unfortunate military expedi- 

 tion against Pteria. Herodotus (I, 74) also attributes 

 to him the prediction of the solar eclipse which put an 

 end to the war between the Persians and the Lydians, 

 and which took place in either 610, 597, or 585 B.C., 

 this last date being the most probable. M. Bigourdan, 

 however, believes this to be a legend, 1 as the cycle of 

 Saros by which solar eclipses were predicted had not 

 been established at that epoch. But in verification of 

 this fact, ancient testimonies may be quoted, amongst 

 them, that of Xenophanes (Diogenes Laertius,23), and 

 it might be explained in the following manner : as we 

 have seen, in the seventh century B.C. the Babylonians, 

 owing to the simpler periodicity of the eclipses of the 

 moon at this epoch, were able to predict them without 

 the aid of the cycle of Saros. It is quite likely that 

 they also ventured to foretell the eclipses of the sun, 

 and that Thales might have brought back from one of 

 his travels their predictions, which by chance happened 

 to be correct for the eclipse of 585 B.C. 



Thales might also have brought back from his travels 

 the Egyptian knowledge of the division of the year 

 and of the solstices. His cosmogony likewise seems 

 to betray an Oriental origin. The following are its out- 

 standing features. Water is the origin of everything. 

 Expanded by evaporation it produces air ; congealed 

 and contracted, it gives birth to the earth. The 

 alluvial deposits at the mouth of rivers confirmed this 

 belief in a water which could change into earth. 2 More- 

 over every living organism perishes when it is deprived 

 of water. 



1 2 Bigourdan, Astronomie, p. 44. 



2 8 Burnet, Aurore, p. 50. 



