AMONG THE GREEKS 97 



in which he borrowed bodily from the drama of 

 iEschylus, Prometheus Bound. In shutting out 

 Aristotle and his purposive interpretation of Na- 

 ture, he excluded the only Greek who came near 

 the modern idea of descent of higher forms from 

 lower. The animals and plants of Lucretius arise 

 full-formed direct from the earth. This is not 

 Evolution, yet it plays an important part in the 

 later history of the idea. Views not unhke these 

 w^ere revived as late as the eighteenth century. 



Although a Roman, Lucretius w^as virtually a 

 Greek in his natural philosophy. He terminated 

 a period of thought, and in his poem summed up 

 in a pure form all the non- Aristotelian teachings. 

 After him the Greek ideas were grafted upon 

 Arabic and Christian philosophy and science. 

 This is, therefore, the point at which to consider 

 what were the Greek legacies to their followers. 



The last of the Greek naturalists were Dios- 

 coridus, a physician, observer, and botanist liv- 

 ing in the time of the C^sars, and the celebrated 

 Galen, physician and anatomist, living under 

 Marcus Aurelius. Galen (131-201) has been 

 compared both with Hippocrates (460-377 b. c.) 

 and with Aristotle, whose method of observation 

 he followed and applied to human anatomy. This 

 was the waning of the scientific movement under 

 Grecian influence. 



