Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/265

243 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 243 Pherecydes. It was probably written in a style of extreme concise- ness, and in language more befitting poetry than prose, as indeed appears from the few extant fragments. The astronomical and geographical explanations attributed to Anaximander were probably contained in this work. Anaximander possessed a gnomon, or sun- dial, which he had doubtless obtained from Babylon j* and, being at Sparta (which was still the focus of Greek civilization), he made ob- servations, by which he determined exactly the solstices and equinoxes, and calculated the obliquity of the ecliptic. f According to Erato- sthenes, he was the first who attempted to draw a map ; in which his object probably was rather to make a mathematical division of the whole earth, than to lay down the forms of the different countries com- posing it. According to Aristotle, Anaximander thought that there were innumerable worlds, which he called gods ; supposing these worlds to be beings endowed with an independent power of motion. He also thought that existing worlds were always perishing, and that new worlds were always springing into being; so that motion was per- petual. According to bis views, these worlds arose out of the eternal, or rather indeterminable, substance, which he called to a-n-eipov; he arrived at the idea of an original substance, out of which all things arose, and to which all things return, by excluding all attributes and limitations. " All existing things (he says in an extant fragment) must, in justice, perish in that in which they had their origin. For one thing is always punished by another for its injustice (i. e., its in- justice in setting itself in the place of another), according to the order of time." } § 6. Anaximenes, another Milesian, according to the general tradi- tion of antiquity, followed Anaximander, and must, therefore, have flourished not long before the Persian war. § With him the Ionic philosophy began to approach closer to the language of argumentative discussion; his work was composed in the plain simple dialect of the Ionians. Anaximenes, in seeking to discover some sensible substance, from which outward objects could have been formed, thought that air best fulfilled the conditions of his problem ; and he showed much in- genuity in collecting instances of the rarefaction and condensation of bodies from air. This elementary principle of the Ionians was always considered as having an independent power of motion ; and as endowed and others. t The obliquity of the ecliptic (that is, the distance of the sun's course from the equator) must have been evident to any one who ohseived it with attention ; but Anaximander found the means of measuring it, in a certain manner, with the gnomon. J Simplicius ad Aristot. Phys. fol. 6. § The more precise statements respecting his date are so confused, that it is dif- ficult to unravel them. See Clinton in the Philological Museum, vol. i. p, 'J!. r2
 * Herod. II. 109. Concerning Anaximander's gnomon, see Diog. Laert. II. 1,