Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/378

 346 HISTORY OF GREECE. they seemed perfectly natural and plausible. In his view, th description of the sun, as given in a modern astronomical treatise, would have appeared not merely absurd, but repulsive and im- pious. Even in later times, when the positive spirit of inquiry had made considerable progress, Anaxagoras and other astrono- mers incurred the charge of blasphemy for dispersonifying Helios, and trying to assign invariable laws to the solar phenomena. 1 Personifying fiction was in this way blended by the Homeric prosopopoeia. His appeal is one sincere and heartfelt to the personal feelings Bnd sympathies of Helios. Tacitus, in reporting the speech, accompanies it with the gloss " quasi coram," to mark that the speaker here passes into a different order of ideas from that to which himself or his readers were accustomed. If Boiocalus could have heard, and reported to his tribe, an astronomical lecture, he would have introduced some explanation, in order to facilitate to his tribe the com- prehension of Helios under a point of view so new to them. While Tacitus finds it necessary to illustrate by a comment the personification of the sun, Boiocalus would have had some trouble to make his tribe comprehend tho re-ijication of the god Iltlios. 1 Physical astronomy was both new and accounted impious in the time of the Peloponnesian war : sec Plutarch, in his reference to that eclipse which proved so fatal to the Athenian army at Syracuse, in consequence of the religious feelings of Nikias : ov ydprjveixovToroi)f (pvaiKoijf nat //treopo/leff^aj vs aif, elf alriaf dAoyovf KO.I 6vvup.eif uirpovoi/Tovf KOI KOTIJ- dri diaTpiffovraf TO tielov (Plutarch, Nikias, c. 23, and Perikles, c. 32 ; Diodor. xii. 39 ; Demetr. Phaler. ap. Diogcn. Lae'rt, ix. 9, 1 ). " You strange man, Meletus," said Socrates, on his trial, to his accuser, " arc you seriously affirming that I do not think Helios and Selene to be gods, as the rest of mankind think ?" " Certainly not, gentlemen of the Dikastery (this is the reply of Meletus), Socrates says that the sun is a stone, and the moon earth." "Why, my dear Meletus, you think you are preferring an accusation against Anaxagoras ! You account these Dikasts so con- temptibly ignorant, as not to know that the books of Anaxagoras are full of such doctrines ! Is it from me that the youth acquire such teaching, when they may buy the books for a drachma in the theatre, and may thus laugh me to scorn if I pretended to announce such views as my own not to men- tion their extreme absurdity?" (uAAwf re nal ovruf urona ovra, Plato, Apolog. Socrat. c. 14. p. 26). The divinity of Helios and Selene is emphatically set forth by Plato, Lcgg. x. p. 886-889. He permits physical astronomy only under great restrictions and to a limited extent. Compare Xenoph. Memor. iv. 7, 7 ; Diogen. Lafirt. ii. 8 ; Plutarch, De Stoicor. Repugntnt. c. 40. p. 1053 ; and Schaubach ad Anaxagone Fragmenta, p. 6.