been expended by modern critics to
show the state of scientific astronomy among the Greeks. I am amazed
equally at the amount of research and its comparative worthlessness; for
what addition to science can be made by an enumeration of the
puerilities and errors of the Greeks, and how wasted and pedantic the
learning which ransacks all antiquity to prove that the Greeks adopted
this or that absurdity![1]

[Footnote 1: The style of modern historical criticism is well
exemplified in the discussions of the Germans whether the Arx on the
Capitoline Hill occupied the northeastern or southwestern corner, which
take up nearly one half of the learned article on the Capitoline in
Smith's Dictionary.]

The earliest historic name associated with astronomy in Greece was
Thales, the founder of the Ionic school of philosophers. He is reported
to have made a visit to Egypt, to have fixed the year at three hundred
and sixty-five days, to have determined the course of the sun from
solstice to solstice, and to have calculated eclipses. He attributed an
eclipse of the moon to the interposition of the earth between the sun
and moon, and an eclipse of the sun to the interposition of the moon
between the sun and earth,--and thus taught the rotundity of the earth,
sun, and moon. He also determined the ratio of the sun's diameter to its
apparent orbit. As he first solved the problem of inscribing a
right-angled triangle in a circle, he is the founder of geometrical
science in Greece. He left, however, nothing to writing; hence all
accounts of him are confused,--some doubting even if he made the
discoveries attributed to him. His philosophical speculations, which
science rejects,--such as that water is the principle of all
things,--are irrelevant to a description of the progress of astronomy.
That he was a great light no one questions, considering the ignorance
with which he was surrounded.

Anaximander, who followed Thales in philosophy, held to puerile
doctrines concerning the motions and nature of the stars, which it is
useless to repeat. His addition to science, if he made any, was in
treating the magnitudes and distances of the planets. He constructed
geographical charts, and attempted to delineate the celestial sphere,
and to measure time with a gnomon, or time-pillar, by the motion of its
shadow upon a dial.[2]

[Footnote 2: Dr. E.H. Knight, in his "American Mechanical Dictionary"
(i. 692), cites the Scriptural account of the beautif