50 EMBRYOLOGY IN ANTIQUITY [pt. ii 



Ancient Greek thought shows many evidences of appreciation of 

 the mystery of embryonic growth, as for example 

 in the Orphic cosmogonies, which had their origin 

 about the seventh or eighth century b.g. In these 

 rehgious and legendary descriptions of the world, 

 which have been exhaustively discussed by A. B. 

 Cook and F. Lukas, the cosmic egg plays a large 

 part, and has been shown to occur also in the . ^ , , . 



. • f T^ T 1- -r. • 1 Fig- 2. Eros hatching 



ancient cosmogonies ot Lgypt, India, Persia and from the cosmic egg. 

 Phoenicia. A familiar reference to this cosmic (A Hellenistic gem de- 

 egg, out of which all things were produced at ^^^^ ^ y . . oo .j 

 the beginning of the world, is in Aristophanes' comedy. The Birds, 

 where the owl, as leader of the Chorus, says in the Parabasis 

 (J. T. Sheppard's translation) : 



Chaos was first, and Night, and the darkness of Emptiness, gloom 



tartarean, vast ; 

 Earth was not, nor Heaven, nor Air, but only the bosom of Darkness ; 



and there with a stirring at last 

 Of wings, though the wings were of darkness too, black Night was inspired 



a wind-egg to lay. 

 And from that, with the turn of the seasons, there sprang to the light 



the Desired, 

 Love, and his wings were of gold, and his spirit as swift as the wind when 



it blows every way. 

 Love moved in the Emptiness vast, Love mingled with Chaos, in spite of 



the darkness of Night, 

 Engendering us, and he brought us at last to the light. 



And perhaps another reference to the place of the egg in ancient 

 cosmogony occurs in The Arabian Nights, where Aladdin's request 

 for a roc's egg is treated as a blasphemy by the genie. Still more 

 fantastic is the speculation of C. H. Rice (in Psyche, 1929!) that the 

 world is an egg; living matter being the embryo and inorganic 

 matter the yolk. But none of the facts which have so far been 

 mentioned bears more than obliquely upon the main centre of 

 interest, the study of embryology. For its direct ancestry, Greece, as 

 might be expected, is responsible. 



1-2. Hellenic Antiquity: the Pre-Socratics 



The pre-Socratic philosophers nearly all seem to have had opinions 

 upon embryological phenomena, many of which are worth referring 



