Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/522

392 highway amid the stars, the "Via Lactea" of the ancients. Chiefly it has been the road to heaven traversed by the souls of the departed.

It may be interesting to review the peculiar ideas of the ancients respecting the Galaxy.

Anaxagoras thought that the Milky Way was a collection of stars whose light was partially obscured by the shadow of the earth.

Pythagoras said it was a vast assemblage of very distant stars.

Democritus about 460 held that the white cloudlike appearance of the Galaxy was due to the fact that, in that part of the heavens, there was a multitude of diminutive stars so close together that they illuminated each other.

It is strange that these early opinions of the Milky Way should have been confirmed in later days when the structure of this band of light could be examined in powerful telescopes, confirmed at least in the assumption that the white effect was produced by the presence of a myriad of stars.

Aristotle thought that the Galaxy was a vast mass of glowing vapour, far above the region of the ether and below that of the planets,

Parmenides believed that the milky colour was due to the mixture of dense and rare air.

Metrodorus and Oinopides conceived the strange idea that the Milky Way marked the pathway of the sun amid the stars.

Posidonius thought that it was a compound of fire less dense than that of the stars, but more luminous.

Theophrastus said it was the junction between the two hemispheres which together formed the vault of heaven, and that it was so badly made that some of the light supposed to exist behind the solid sky was visible through the cracks.