7 
It is curious to note that most of the mighty nations of 
antiquity began and flourished in more or less rainless regions, and 
thus made the study of hydraulics a necessity, and engineering 
science was directed to water conservation and irrigation, and the 
remains of these works show what a high degree of efficiency had 
been attained. 
In the ancient world, science reached her greatest height when 
Greece was at the zenith of her renown; and her temples, monu- 
ments and works stand out for all time as a tribute to her great- 
ness in science and art, and to her philosophy and freedom of 
thought. 
Rome never rose to the same high position in science and 
philosophy as her elder rival, Athens. Indeed, Rome was, 
perhaps, more utilitarian; the great works of the Roman engi- 
neers and architects stand to-day, monuments to their ability and 
skill. Of this classic period T might mention a few of the great 
thinkers and workers in science such as Euclid, Hipparchus, 
Ptolemy, Archimedes, Hero, and Democritus, names which prove 
that the prosperity and renown of any nation are intimately asso- 
ciated with scientific knowledge and its application. 
With the rise of Christianity and the descent of the Northern 
Barbarians upon Rome and Greece, civilisation and science 
suffered an eclipse — and over Europe spread a dense pall of scien- 
tific ignorance during the dark ages from the 4th century, when 
Hypatia, a celebrated woman philosopher and mathematician, was 
murdered by a fanatic mob at Alexandria — to the time of Galileo' 
in the 17th century. But even in the darkest hour science never 
lacked its devotees, and the sacred torch of science was kept 
alight by the great Califs of Bagdad and other cities of Arabia,, 
who encouraged science and especially astronomy. The old Greek 
works were translated into Arabic, and the Arabian astronomers 
carried on the work and made many advances during the centuries 
of intellectual darkness in Europe. 
Galileo is famous not only for being one of the earliest to use 
the telescope, and for his experiments in dynamics, but also be- 
cause his teaching of the doctrine of Copernicus that the earth 
revolved round the sun brought him under the ban of the Inquisi- 
tion, which forced him, in 1633, to abjure the Copernican theory, 
and thus brought about the first clear-cut conflict between science 
and the powers of the dark ages. 
When we look hack at the dark ages, that long period of 
1,400 years when scientific thought and experiments were banned 
as impious and evil, we must realise that but for this period of 
stagnation and oppression science and civilisation would have 
advanced vastly beyond the position we occupy to-day. With the 
progress of scientific knowledge and thought up to the first few 
centuries Anno Domini, many of the great inventions of modern 
