6 HISTORY OP ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERY. 



periods, about forty days, during which time the cluster would be invisible owing to its 

 proximity to the sun, corresponds with the preceding statement. Hesiod likewise ob- 

 serves, that when the Pleiades rise from the dark seas, sailing is dangerous, and that, on 

 account of violent winds and rain, it is necessary to have large vessels, well provided with 

 ballast, and to work much at the pumps. Here, he evidently alludes to what is called the 

 acronical rising of the stars, which takes place at the setting of the sun. This would 

 happen in his day soon after the autumnal equinox, in the case of the group named ; 

 and at that season, we know that storms are common in the Grecian seas. The names 

 of several of the constellations occur in Homer. In the fifth book of the Odyssey, he 

 makes Ulysses, upon leaving the island-goddess for his bark, speak of the " Pleiades 

 and Bootes, the Hyades, and bold Orion, the Bear, which is called the Wain, the un- 

 wearied sun, and the full moon, and all the stars, by which, like a crown, the heavens are 

 surrounded." He mentions Sirius also, and Hesiod in addition introduces Arcturus ; 

 but neither of these writers take any notice of the planets. The reference, in the fine 

 passage descriptive of Tydides in the Iliad, is doubtful : 



" High on his helm celestial lightnings play, 

 His beamy shield emits a living ray ; 

 The unwearied blaze incessant streams supplies, 

 Like the red star that fires the autumnal skies, 

 When fresh he rears his radiant orb to sight, 

 And bath'd in ocean shoots a keener light." 



Some conjecture Venus to have been intended, others Sirius ; and it may here be men- 

 tioned, as a singular physical fact, that Sirius, now so brilliantly white, was known as 

 a red star to the ancients a change of aspect which is not a solitary instance of the 

 phenomenon. 



By THALES the founder of the Ionic school the basis was laid, of whatever profi- 

 ciency the Greeks attained in astronomical sci- 

 ence, for they were never distinguished . as a 

 people Jby the study of physical nature. Of him, 

 the familiar story is related, that when a boy at 

 Miletus, his native city, he fell into a ditch while 

 contemplating the stars, upon which Thressa, his 

 conductress, exclaimed, '* Why, O Thales, do you 

 seek to comprehend the things which are in the 

 heavens when you are not able to see those before 

 your eyes ? " The truth of this anecdote has been 

 doubted, but the remark harmonises with what 

 we know to have been the general tone of the 

 Grecian mind. The great men of the country 

 were chiefly poets, warriors, statesmen, orators, 

 and moral rather than natural philosophers. It 

 was not the spirit of scientific enquiry, but a love 

 of speculative and tasteful sentiment, that ele- 

 vated the soul of Plato into communion with the 

 skies, and inspired the thought, that because the 

 flight of birds, and the movement of every body 

 through space, produced a vibrative sound, that 

 therefore the motion of the celestial objects must 

 occasion a ravishing harmony, fitly called the music of the spheres an idea to which 

 Shakspeare gives expression in the address of Lorenzo in the grove to Jessica 5 



