66 HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



* 



Hesiod, who lived a century after Homer, thus states the 

 Scientific attainments of his time: — a The space between the 

 heavens and the earth is exactly the same as that between the 

 earth and Tartarus beneath it. A brazen anvil, if tossed from 

 heaven, would fall during nine days and nine nights, and would 

 reach the earth upon the tenth day. Were it to continue its 

 course towards the abode of darkness, it would be nine days 

 and nine nights more in accomplishing the distance." It is 

 worth while remarking that this statement is at variance with 

 that of Homer, who makes Vulcan, when precipitated from 

 heaven by Jupiter, land at Lemnos in a single day : he had 

 travelled, therefore, nearly twenty times faster than one of his 

 own anvils. Hesiod intended to convey, by this illustration, an 

 imposing idea of the loftiness of the heavens. In the eyes of 

 modern astronomy, nothing can be more paltry. The time that 

 an anvil thrown from Halcyon, the brightest star of the Pleiades, 

 towards our globe, would require to reach it, may perhaps 

 be imagined from the fact that the rays of light emitted by 

 Halcyon travel five centuries before they strike the earth ! It 

 is thus that the positive revelations of modern science surpass 

 in marvels the most daring inventions of ancient fable. 



THE EARTH ACCORDING TO ANAXIMANDER. 



Anaximander, four hundred years after Homer, held that 

 the earth, instead of being flat, was in the form of a cylinder, 

 convex upon its upper surface. Its diameter was three times 

 greater than its height ; and its form was round, as if it had 



