SHOOTING STARS. 569 



the conclusion of the Peloponnesian war by the victory of Ly- 

 sander over the Athenians), made upon all the Hellenic races, 

 must have exerted a decisive and not sufficiently regarded 

 influence upon the direction and development of the Ionian 

 physiology? Anaxagoras of Clazomena was at the mature 

 age of thirty-two years when that event of nature took place. 

 According to him, the stars are masses torn away from the 

 earth by the violence of the rotation (Plut. de plac. PMlos. 

 iii. 13). He considers that the whole heavens may be 

 composed of stones (Plato, de Legib. xii. p. 967). The 

 stony solid bodies are made to glow by the fiery ether, so 

 that they reflect the light communicated to them by the 

 ether. Lower than the Moon, and still between her and the 

 Earth, there move, says Anaxagoras, according to Theo- 

 phrastus (Stobseus, Eclog. Phys. lib. i. p. 560), yet other dark 

 bodies which can also produce eclipses of the Moon (Diog. 

 Laert. ii. 12; Origenes, Philosoplmm, cap. viii.) Diogenes 

 of Apollonia who, if he is not a disciple of Anaximenes, 4 still 

 probably belongs to an epoch between Anaxagoras and Demo- 

 critus, expresses himself still more distinctly as to the struc- 

 ture of the world, and, as it were, more moved by the im- 

 pression of the great fall of aerolites. According to him, as 

 I have already mentioned, " invisible (dark) masses of stone 

 move with the visible stars, and remain on that account 

 unknown. The former sometimes fall upon the earth, and 

 are extinguished; as happened with the stony star which 

 fell near JEgos Potamos." (Stob. Eclog. p. 508. ) 5 



3 See the opinions of the Greeks as to the falls of me- 

 teoric stones, in Cosmos, vol. i. p. 122; vol. ii. p. 690, note. 



4 Brandis, Gesch. der Griechisch-Eom. Philosophic, torn. i. 

 pp. 272-277, against Schleiermacher, in theAbhandl.der Berl. 

 Akad. from the year 1804-1811 (Berl. 1815), pp. 79-124. 



6 When Stobseus in the same passage (Eclog. Phys. p. 508) 

 ascribes to the Apollonian that he had called the stars pumice- 



