8 SCIENCE OF THE GREEKS. pt. i. 



that Etna was the chimney of his forge. But if he spoke of 

 the sun as a globe of Hght, they would turn away from him 

 in horror as a wicked unbeliever in the gods, for who among 

 the Greeks did not know that the sun was the god Apollo, 

 who drove his chariot every day across the sky from east to 

 west? In fact, the Greeks, though learned and brave, were 

 quite ignorant of what we now call 'natural knowledge;' 

 they did not know that the rising and setting of the sun, 

 and the eruption of a volcano, are things which happen from 

 natural causes ; but everything which was not done by man, 

 they thought was the work of invisible beings or gods. 



It was not long, however, before some wise men began 

 to think more deeply about these things. You will have 

 read in Grecian history how the Greeks, after the taking of 

 Troy, crossed over the Hellespont and founded colonies on 

 the coast of Asia Minor ; one of the largest of these colonies 

 was called Ionia, and the lonians became famous for their 

 learning and wisdom. 



Thales, 640. — Here Thales, one of the seven wise men 

 of Greece, was born at Miletus, about 640 B.C. Thales 

 travelled in Egypt, and learned many things from the 

 Egyptians, and then returned to his own land and founded 

 a school of learning. He was the first Greek who studied 

 astronomy, and although, like his countrymen, he believed 

 that the earth was flat and floated on the water, yet he made 

 several great discoveries. 



The Greeks had always divided their year into two parts 

 only, summer and winter, but Thales discovered that there 

 are four distinct divisions marked out by the sun. He 

 noticed that in the middle of winter the sun, instead of 

 passing overhead, reached at mid-day only a certain low 

 point in the heavens, and then began to set again, so that 



