268 HEIDEL. 



the three whom, with Hesiod, Herachtus rebuked for their polymathy, 

 which failed to teach them understanding. This hst is not the 

 product of chance; for a clear line, running from Hesiod through 

 Thales and Anaximander, leads us to Pythagoras, the mathematician, 

 to Xenophanes, the rationalist interested in ethnography and history, 

 and to Hecataeus the geographer, historian, and naturalist. Hera- 

 clitus is said to have testified to the interest of Thales in astronomy, 

 and Eudemus called liim the father of geometry. The latter also, 

 apparently, is responsible for the data we have for Anaximander's 

 ideas regarding the magnitudes and intervals of the heavenly bodies 

 and for the statement that he outlined the subject of geometry.^'^ 



How these several intellectual interests were cultivated in the 

 IMilesian circle, we do not know; but it is not difhcult to discover a 

 relation between their studies and the problems which crowded upon 

 the intelligent citizens of ^Miletus. Thus Thales was credited with 

 a work on nautical astronomy ^^ and with various nautical devices 

 natural in the busiest trading center of the Levant, whose sailors 

 went ever\"\vhere. Of similar interest was presumably liis study of 

 the calendar. As for the pursuit of geometry, its relation to city- 

 planning and to the allotment of lands was well recognized in anti- 

 quity ; the relation of both astronomy and geometry to geography was 

 no less distinctly seen.^^ The schematic geometrical treatment of the 

 early Ionian (IMilesian) maps is known to every student of ancient 

 geography: hence we need not suppose that Eratosthenes first brought 

 geometry to the ser^^ce of cartography. 



In the busy streets of ]Miletus there met men who had voyaged to 

 Egypt and seen the Ethiopians, snub-nosed and dark of skin, and to 

 Thrace, and knew its blue-eyed and red-haired inhabitants: '^° one could 

 gather there, even without travel, to which every IMilesian must have 

 been tempted, the most varied lore about all sorts of strange peoples 

 and their customs. Pretty nearly everything we learn of the ' barba- 

 rians ' before the close of the fifth centurv comes ultimatelv from earlv 

 Ionian wTiters. They interested themselves also in the progress of 

 civilization and the steps and 'inventions' whereby it was advanced.^''" 



67 T'3 1. 19, 12, I. 14, 22. 



68 ^\^lethe^ it really belongs to Thales or not — and this is not clear — the 

 work was undoubtedlv quite ancient. 



69 See Strabo 2.5 and Ar. Nub. 201 sq. 



70 Xenophanes /r. 16 Diels. 



71 Xenophanes /r. 18 Diels; cp. the interest shown by Herodotus in the 

 contributions of various foreign lands, especially Egjiat and Babylonia, to 

 Greek civihzation. Strabo 2.5,18 expresses the thought which underhes the 

 historico-geographical tradition from the beginning. 



