6 INTRODUCTION 



together again. When botany began to revive, the 

 writings of Dioscorides were considered by French, 

 German and Italian herbalists as one of the most 

 precious legacies of ancient learning. 



Pliny's Natural History is a vast and uncritical 

 encyclopaedia, which probably contains not a single 

 new observation in biology. The book has a value, 

 however, if not the kind of value that we expect. 

 Frequent notices of the practical arts of the ancients 

 supply information which can be found nowhere else, 

 and Pliny abounds in that philosophical eloquence with 

 which in a much later age Buffon was wont to dignify 

 his expositions of natural processes. 



After Pliny the decline of European science, art, 

 literature and civilisation was general and rapid. Galen, 

 who died about 200 a.d., is the last of the ancient 

 anatomists, Oppian (contemporary with Galen) the last 

 of the ancient naturalists. The decline in the fine arts 

 may be roughly estimated by comparing the architecture 

 and sculpture of the age of Constantine with those of 

 the times of Augustus or Trajan. The higher Greek 

 literature ends with Lucian (d. about 200 a.d.), the 

 higher Latin literature with Claudian (d. about 410 A. D.); 

 about 600 A. D. the knowledge of Greek ceased in Western 

 Europe. 



During the greater part of a thousand years men 

 despaired of progress and of their own powers. It was 

 widely believed, as it has been in less gloomy ages, that 

 man had declined, not only in knowledge and skill, but 

 in strength, stature and longevity. The earth and even 

 the heavens were thought to show signs of decay. ^ But 



^For ancient opinions on the decay of nature Mayor's Juvenal (Vol. II, 

 pp. 374-6) may be consulted. To the modern references given by Ma5'^or 

 and Jonston, History of the Constancy of Nature, 12mo, Lond., 1657. Jonston, 

 like Hakewell (quoted by Mayor), takes the cheerful modern view. 



