3 o SCIENCE IN GRECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY 



The advance of the Persians in Lydia put an end to the 

 School of Miletus, and, at the beginning of the sixth cen- 

 tury B.C., caused an emigration of philosophical thought 

 to Sicily and the south of Italy. The introduction of 

 Oriental cults, amongst which the most important was 

 that of Dionysus, caused, at the same epoch, in Greece 

 and the Greek colonies, a religious awakening which 

 had a profound effect on philosophical speculations. 



Although belonging to a younger generation than 

 Pythagoras and Xenophanes, Heraclitus of Ephesus 

 must be mentioned before them. Descended from the 

 kings of Ephesus, Heraclitus reached maturity about 

 the year 504 B.C. He renounced his royal rank in 

 favour of his brother and remained all his life in Ionia, 

 living solitary and disdainful, despising alike the men 

 of science and the common people "who cram their 

 bellies like cattle." This contempt was partly justifi- 

 able, for the Greeks of Ephesus lived in indolent luxury 

 under a foreign yoke. 



Primarily a theologian, Heraclitus appeals not to 

 science but to inspiration. 1 and in his writings, he 

 expresses himself in a sibylline manner, which caused 

 him to be designated " obscure." His astronomical 

 system is closely related to that of Thales. The 

 fundamental idea of this system is the ndviaqel (every- 

 thing is in a perpetual state of flux). Nothing is 

 stable, nothing is fixed. Life and death, good and evil, 

 cold and heat, change incessantly one into the other. 

 Nothing is either this or that, but everything is becom- 

 ing. This perpetual becoming has its source in the 



1 According to the majority of commentators (amongst 

 others, 25 Tannery, Science hellene, p. 186), the source of this 

 inspiration was the divine logos. 8 Burnet (Aurore, p. 148 

 and p. 159) thinks this interpretation erroneous and based on 

 paraphrases added by the Stoics to the original sentences of 

 Heraclitus in handing them down to us. Logos means simply 

 the discourse of Heraclitus in as far as it was prophetic. 



