Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/475

Rh driving his four wonderful horses across the heavens; in the evening he descended into the western sea; at night he slept in a golden boat which was borne along the northern edge of the earth to the rising place in the east. The moon was the abode of the lovely goddess Luna, sister of Apollo, who guided its course in the heavens.

Thus mythology explained astronomical phenomena; the sun, moon, planets, clouds, dawn, and night with its black mantle bespangled with stars, became animated things. The sun, when setting in the brilliant evening clouds, then became Hercules in the fiery pile.

While mythology obstructed scientific progress by finding sacred explanations for every natural event, there were a few gifted, inquisitive minds among the Greeks that sought for knowledge behind the painted curtain of superstition. Thales of the sixth century was the father of Greek astronomy. He taught that the earth is spherical and that the moon receives her light from the sun. Anaxagoras ascribed eclipses of the moon to natural causes and taught the existence of a creative intelligence. He fell a victim to the superstitions of his age. Sentence of death was passed on him and his family, which required all the eloquence of his friend Pericles to commute to banishment.

Pythagoras of the fourth century B.C. was a most assiduous enquirer. He is said to have been the first to propose the system of a globular earth and of planets, revolving around the sun. When the Church condemned the theory of Copernicus the indictment was that it was heathenism and Pythagorean.

Modern astronomy may be said to have arisen in the third century under the patronage of the first king of the Greek dynasty, at Alexandria, Egypt. Euclid, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus and Ptolemy were among the illustrious astronomers of the Alexandrian era. It was in the second century A.D. that Ptolemy published his great work on astronomy called the "Almagest" which during the following