Even at a very early period the Romans recognized the advantage of surgical methods on the field of battle. Each soldier was supplied with bandages, and was probably instructed in applying them, something in the same manner as is done now in all modern armies. The Romans also made use of military hospitals and had established a rude but very practical field-ambulance service. "In every troop or bandon of two or four hundred men, eight or ten stout fellows were deputed to ride immediately behind the fighting-line to pick up and rescue the wounded, for which purpose their saddles had two stirrups on the left side, while they themselves were provided with water-flasks, and perhaps applied temporary bandages. They were encouraged by a reward of a piece of gold for each man they rescued. 'Noscomi' were male nurses attached to the military hospitals, but not inscribed 'on strength' of the legions, and were probably for the most part of the servile class."(6)

From the time of the early Alexandrians, Herophilus and Erasistratus, whose work we have already examined, there had been various anatomists of some importance in the Alexandrian school, though none quite equal to these earlier workers. The best-known names are those of Celsus (of whom we have already spoken), who continued the work of anatomical investigation, and Marinus, who lived during the reign of Nero, and Rufus of Ephesus. Probably all of these would have been better remembered by succeeding generations had their efforts not been eclipsed by those of Galen. This greatest of ancient anatomists was born at Pergamus of Greek parents. His father, Nicon, was an architect and a man of considerable ability. Until his fifteenth year the youthful Galen was instructed at home, chiefly by his father; but after that time he was placed under suitable teachers for instruction in the philosophical systems in vogue at that period. Shortly after this, however, the superstitious Nicon, following the interpretations of a dream, decided that his son should take up the study of medicine, and placed him under the instruction of several learned physicians.

Galen was a tireless worker, making long tours into Asia Minor and Palestine to improve himself in pharmacology, and studying anatomy for some time at Alexandria. He appears to have been full of the superstitions of the age, however, and early in his career made an extended tour into western Asia in search of the chimerical "jet-stone"—a stone possessing the peculiar qualities of "burning with a bituminous odor and supposed to possess great potency in curing such diseases as epilepsy, hysteria, and gout."

By the time he had reached his twenty-eighth year he had perfected his education in medicine and returned to his home in Pergamus. Even at that time he had acquired considerable fame as a surgeon, and his fellow-citizens showed their confidence in his ability by choosing him as surgeon to the wounded gladiators shortly after his return to his native city. In these duties his knowledge of anatomy aided him greatly, and he is said to have healed certain kinds of wounds that had previously baffled the surgeons.

In the time of Galen dissections of the human body were forbidden by law, and he was obliged to confine himself to dissections of the lower animals. He had the advantage, however, of the anatomical works of Herophilus and Erasistratus, and he must have depended upon them in perfecting his comparison between the anatomy of men and the lower animals. It is possible that he did make human dissections surreptitiously, but of this we have no proof.

He was familiar with the complicated structure of the bones of the cranium. He described the vertebrae clearly, divided them into groups, and named them after the manner of anatomists of to-day. He was less accurate in his description of the muscles, although a large number of these were described by him. Like all anatomists before the time of Harvey, he had a very erroneous conception of the circulation, although he understood that the heart was an organ for the propulsion of blood, and he showed that the arteries of the living animals did not contain air alone, as was taught by many anatomists. He knew, also, that the heart was made up of layers of fibres that ran in certain fixed directions—that is, longitudinal, transverse, and oblique; but he did not recognize the heart as a muscular organ. In proof of this he pointed out that all muscles require rest, and as the heart did not rest it could not be composed of muscular tissue.

Many of his physiological experiments were conducted upon scientific principles. Thus he proved that certain muscles were under the control of definite sets of nerves by cutting these nerves in living animals, and observing that the muscles supplied by them were rendered useless. He pointed out also that nerves have no power in themselves, but merely conduct impulses to and from the brain and spinal-cord. He turned this peculiar knowledge to account in the case of a celebrated sophist, Pausanias, who had been under the treatment of various physicians for a numbness in the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand. These physicians had been treating this condition by applications of poultices to the hand itself. Galen, being called in consultation, pointed out that the injury was probably not in the hand itself, but in the ulner nerve, which controls sensation in the fourth and fifth fingers. Surmising that the nerve must have been injured in some way, he made careful inquiries of the patient, who recalled that he had been thrown from his chariot some time before, striking and injuring his back. Acting upon this information, Galen applied stimulating remedies to the source of the nerve itself—that is, to the bundle of nerve-trunks known as the brachial plexus, in the shoulder. To the surprise and confusion of his fellow-physicians, this method of treatment proved effective and the patient recovered completely in a short time.

Although the functions of the organs in the chest were not well understood by Galen, he was well acquainted with their anatomy. He knew that the lungs were covered by thin membrane, and that the heart was surrounded by a sac of very similar tissue. He made constant comparisons also between these organs in different animals, as his dissections were performed upon beasts ranging in size from a mouse to an elephant. The minuteness of his observations is shown by the fact that he had noted and described the ring of bone found in the hearts of certain animals, such as the horse, although not found in the human heart or in most animals.

His description of the abdominal organs was in general accurate. He had noted that the abdominal cavity was lined with a peculiar saclike membrane, the peritoneum, which also surrounded most of the organs contained in the cavity, and he made special note that this membrane also enveloped the liver in a peculiar manner. The exactness of the last observation seems the more wonderful when we reflect that even to-day the medical, student finds a correct understanding of the position of the folds of the peritoneum one of the most difficult subjects in anatomy.

As a practical physician he was held in the highest esteem by the Romans. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius called him to Rome and appointed him physician-inordinary to his son Commodus, and on special occasions Marcus Aurelius himself called in Galen as his medical adviser. On one occasion, the three army surgeons in attendance upon the emperor declared that he was about to be attacked by a fever. Galen relates how "on special command I felt his pulse, and finding it quite normal, considering his age and the time of day, I declared it was no fever but a digestive disorder, due to the food he had eaten, which must be converted into phlegm before being excreted. Then the emperor repeated three times, 'That's the very thing,' and asked what was to be done. I answered that I usually gave a glass of wine with pepper sprinkled on it, but for you kings we only use the safest remedies, and it will suffice to apply wool soaked in hot nard ointment locally. The emperor ordered the wool, wine, etc., to be brought, and I left the room. His feet were warmed by rubbing with hot hands, and after drinking the peppered wine, he said to Pitholaus (his son's tutor), 'We have only one doctor, and that an honest one,' and went on to describe me as the first of physicians and the only philosopher, for he had tried many before who were not only lovers of money, but also contentious, ambitious, envious, and malignant."(7)

It will be seen from this that Galen had a full appreciation of his own abilities as a physician, but inasmuch as succeeding generations for a thousand years concurred in the alleged statement made by Marcus Aurelius as to his ability, he is perhaps excusable for his open avowal of his belief in his powers. His faith in his accuracy in diagnosis and prognosis was shown when a colleague once said to him, "I have used the prognostics of Hippocrates as well as you. Why can I not prognosticate as well as you?" To this Galen replied, "By God's help I have never been deceived in my prognosis."(8) It is probable that this statement was made in the heat of argument, and it is hardly to be supposed that he meant it literally.

His systems of treatment were far in advance of his theories regarding the functions of organs, causes of disease, etc., and some of them are still first principles with physicians. Like Hippocrates, he laid great stress on correct diet, exercise, and reliance upon nature. "Nature is the overseer by whom health is supplied to the sick," he says. "Nature lends her aid on all sides, she decides and cures diseases. No one can be saved unless nature conquers the disease, and no one dies unless nature succumbs."

From the picture thus drawn of Galen as an anatomist and physician, one might infer that he should rank very high as a scientific exponent of medicine, even in comparison with modern physicians. There is, however, another side to the picture. His knowledge of anatomy was certainly very considerable, but many of his deductions and theories as to the functions of organs, the cause of diseases, and his methods of treating them, would be recognized as absurd by a modern school-boy of average intelligence. His greatness must be judged in comparison with ancient, not with modern, scientists. He maintained, for example, that respiration and the pulse-beat were for one and the same purpose—that of the reception of air into the arteries of the body. To him the act of breathing was for the purpose of admitting air into the lungs, whence it found its way into the heart, and from there was distributed throughout the body by means of the arteries. The skin also played an important part in supplying the body with air, the pores absorbing the air and distributing it through the arteries. But, as we know that he was aware of the fact that the arteries also contained blood, he must have believed that these vessels contained a mixture of the two.

Modern anatomists know that the heart is divided into two approximately equal parts by an impermeable septum of tough fibres. Yet, Galen, who dissected the hearts of a vast number of the lower animals according to his own account, maintained that this septum was permeable, and that the air, entering one side of the heart from the lungs, passed through it into the opposite side and was then transferred to the arteries.

He was equally at fault, although perhaps more excusably so, in his explanation of the action of the nerves. He had rightly pointed out that nerves were merely connections between the brain and spinal-cord and distant muscles and organs, and had recognized that there were two kinds of nerves, but his explanation of the action of these nerves was that "nervous spirits" were carried to the cavities of the brain by blood-vessels, and from there transmitted through the body along the nerve-trunks.

In the human skull, overlying the nasal cavity, there are two thin plates of bone perforated with numerous small apertures. These apertures allow the passage of numerous nerve-filaments which extend from a group of cells in the brain to the delicate membranes in the nasal cavity. These perforations in the bone, therefore, are simply to allow the passage of the nerves. But Galen gave a very different explanation. He believed that impure "animal spirits" were carried to the cavities of the brain by the arteries in the neck and from there were sifted out through these perforated bones, and so expelled from the body.

He had observed that the skin played an important part in cooling the body, but he seems to have believed that the heart was equally active in overheating it. The skin, therefore, absorbed air for the purpose of "cooling the heart," and this cooling process was aided by the brain, whose secretions aided also in the cooling process. The heart itself was the seat of courage; the brain the seat of the rational soul; and the liver the seat of love.

The greatness of Galen's teachings lay in his knowledge of anatomy of the organs; his weakness was in his interpretations of their functions. Unfortunately, succeeding generations of physicians for something like a thousand years rejected the former but clung to the latter, so that the advances he had made were completely overshadowed by the mistakes of his teachings.



XI. A RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE AT CLASSICAL SCIENCE

It is a favorite tenet of the modern historian that history is a continuous stream. The contention has fullest warrant. Sharp lines of demarcation are an evidence of man's analytical propensity rather than the work of nature. Nevertheless it would be absurd to deny that the stream of history presents an ever-varying current. There are times when it seems to rush rapidly on; times when it spreads out into a broad—seemingly static—current; times when its catastrophic changes remind us of nothing but a gigantic cataract. Rapids and whirlpools, broad estuaries and tumultuous cataracts are indeed part of the same stream, but they are parts that vary one from another in their salient features in such a way as to force the mind to classify them as things apart and give them individual names.

So it is with the stream of history; however strongly we insist on its continuity we are none the less forced to recognize its periodicity. It may not be desirable to fix on specific dates as turning-points to the extent that our predecessors were wont to do. We may not, for example, be disposed to admit that the Roman Empire came to any such cataclysmic finish as the year 476 A.D., when cited in connection with the overthrow of the last Roman Empire of the West, might seem to indicate. But, on the other hand, no student of the period can fail to realize that a great change came over the aspect of the historical stream towards the close of the Roman epoch.

The span from Thales to Galen has compassed about eight hundred years—let us say thirty generations. Throughout this period there is scarcely a generation that has not produced great scientific thinkers—men who have put their mark upon the progress of civilization; but we shall see, as we look forward for a corresponding period, that the ensuing thirty generations produced scarcely a single scientific thinker of the first rank. Eight hundred years of intellectual activity—thirty generations of greatness; then eight hundred years of stasis—thirty generations of mediocrity; such seems to be the record as viewed in perspective. Doubtless it seemed far different to the contemporary observer; it is only in reasonable perspective that any scene can be viewed fairly. But for us, looking back without prejudice across the stage of years, it seems indisputable that a great epoch came to a close at about the time when the barbarian nations of Europe began to sweep down into Greece and Italy. We are forced to feel that we have reached the limits of progress of what historians are pleased to call the ancient world. For about eight hundred years Greek thought has been dominant, but in the ensuing period it is to play a quite subordinate part, except in so far as it influences the thought of an alien race. As we leave this classical epoch, then, we may well recapitulate in brief its triumphs. A few words will suffice to summarize a story the details of which have made up our recent chapters.

In the field of cosmology, Greek genius has demonstrated that the earth is spheroidal, that the moon is earthlike in structure and much smaller than our globe, and that the sun is vastly larger and many times more distant than the moon. The actual size of the earth and the angle of its axis with the ecliptic have been measured with approximate accuracy. It has been shown that the sun and moon present inequalities of motion which may be theoretically explained by supposing that the earth is not situated precisely at the centre of their orbits. A system of eccentrics and epicycles has been elaborated which serves to explain the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies in a manner that may be called scientific even though it is based, as we now know, upon a false hypothesis. The true hypothesis, which places the sun at the centre of the planetary system and postulates the orbital and axial motions of our earth in explanation of the motions of the heavenly bodies, has been put forward and ardently championed, but, unfortunately, is not accepted by the dominant thinkers at the close of our epoch. In this regard, therefore, a vast revolutionary work remains for the thinkers of a later period. Moreover, such observations as the precession of the equinoxes and the moon's evection are as yet unexplained, and measurements of the earth's size, and of the sun's size and distance, are so crude and imperfect as to be in one case only an approximation, and in the other an absurdly inadequate suggestion. But with all these defects, the total achievement of the Greek astronomers is stupendous. To have clearly grasped the idea that the earth is round is in itself an achievement that marks off the classical from the Oriental period as by a great gulf.

In the physical sciences we have seen at least the beginnings of great things. Dynamics and hydrostatics may now, for the first time, claim a place among the sciences. Geometry has been perfected and trigonometry has made a sure beginning. The conception that there are four elementary substances, earth, water, air, and fire, may not appear a secure foundation for chemistry, yet it marks at least an attempt in the right direction. Similarly, the conception that all matter is made up of indivisible particles and that these have adjusted themselves and are perhaps held in place by a whirling motion, while it is scarcely more than a scientific dream, is, after all, a dream of marvellous insight.

In the field of biological science progress has not been so marked, yet the elaborate garnering of facts regarding anatomy, physiology, and the zoological sciences is at least a valuable preparation for the generalizations of a later time.

If with a map before us we glance at the portion of the globe which was known to the workers of the period now in question, bearing in mind at the same time what we have learned as to the seat of labors of the various great scientific thinkers from Thales to Galen, we cannot fail to be struck with a rather startling fact, intimations of which have been given from time to time—the fact, namely, that most of the great Greek thinkers did not live in Greece itself. As our eye falls upon Asia Minor and its outlying islands, we reflect that here were born such men as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Aristarchus, Hipparchus, Eudoxus, Philolaus, and Galen. From the northern shores of the aegean came Lucippus, Democritus, and Aristotle. Italy, off to the west, is the home of Pythagoras and Xenophanes in their later years, and of Parmenides and Empedocles, Zeno, and Archimedes. Northern Africa can claim, by birth or by adoption, such names as Euclid, Apollonius of Perga, Herophilus, Erasistratus, Aristippus, Eratosthenes, Ctesibius, Hero, Strabo, and Ptolemy. This is but running over the list of great men whose discoveries have claimed our attention. Were we to extend the list to include a host of workers of the second rank, we should but emphasize the same fact.

All along we are speaking of Greeks, or, as they call themselves, Hellenes, and we mean by these words the people whose home was a small jagged peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean at the southeastern extremity of Europe. We think of this peninsula as the home of Greek culture, yet of all the great thinkers we have just named, not one was born on this peninsula, and perhaps not one in five ever set foot upon it. In point of fact, one Greek thinker of the very first rank, and one only, was born in Greece proper; that one, however, was Plato, perhaps the greatest of them all. With this one brilliant exception (and even he was born of parents who came from the provinces), all the great thinkers of Greece had their origin at the circumference rather than the centre of the empire. And if we reflect that this circumference of the Greek world was in the nature of the case the widely circling region in which the Greek came in contact with other nations, we shall see at once that there could be no more striking illustration in all history than that furnished us here of the value of racial mingling as a stimulus to intellectual progress.

But there is one other feature of the matter that must not be overlooked. Racial mingling gives vitality, but to produce the best effect the mingling must be that of races all of which are at a relatively high plane of civilization. In Asia Minor the Greek mingled with the Semite, who had the heritage of centuries of culture; and in Italy with the Umbrians, Oscans, and Etruscans, who, little as we know of their antecedents, have left us monuments to testify to their high development. The chief reason why the racial mingling of a later day did not avail at once to give new life to Roman thought was that the races which swept down from the north were barbarians. It was no more possible that they should spring to the heights of classical culture than it would, for example, be possible in two or three generations to produce a racer from a stock of draught horses. Evolution does not proceed by such vaults as this would imply. Celt, Goth, Hun, and Slav must undergo progressive development for many generations before the population of northern Europe can catch step with the classical Greek and prepare to march forward. That, perhaps, is one reason why we come to a period of stasis or retrogression when the time of classical activity is over. But, at best, it is only one reason of several.

The influence of the barbarian nations will claim further attention as we proceed. But now, for the moment, we must turn our eyes in the other direction and give attention to certain phases of Greek and of Oriental thought which were destined to play a most important part in the development of the Western mind—a more important part, indeed, in the early mediaeval period than that played by those important inductions of science which have chiefly claimed our attention in recent chapters. The subject in question is the old familiar one of false inductions or pseudoscience. In dealing with the early development of thought and with Oriental science, we had occasion to emphasize the fact that such false inductions led everywhere to the prevalence of superstition. In dealing with Greek science, we have largely ignored this subject, confining attention chiefly to the progressive phases of thought; but it must not be inferred from this that Greek science, with all its secure inductions, was entirely free from superstition. On the contrary, the most casual acquaintance with Greek literature would suffice to show the incorrectness of such a supposition. True, the great thinkers of Greece were probably freer from this thraldom of false inductions than any of their predecessors. Even at a very early day such men as Xenophanes, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Plato attained to a singularly rationalistic conception of the universe.

We saw that "the father of medicine," Hippocrates, banished demonology and conceived disease as due to natural causes. At a slightly later day the sophists challenged all knowledge, and Pyrrhonism became a synonym for scepticism in recognition of the leadership of a master doubter. The entire school of Alexandrians must have been relatively free from superstition, else they could not have reasoned with such effective logicality from their observations of nature. It is almost inconceivable that men like Euclid and Archimedes, and Aristarchus and Eratosthenes, and Hipparchus and Hero, could have been the victims of such illusions regarding occult forces of nature as were constantly postulated by Oriental science. Herophilus and Erasistratus and Galen would hardly have pursued their anatomical studies with equanimity had they believed that ghostly apparitions watched over living and dead alike, and exercised at will a malign influence.

Doubtless the Egyptian of the period considered the work, of the Ptolemaic anatomists an unspeakable profanation, and, indeed, it was nothing less than revolutionary—so revolutionary that it could not be sustained in subsequent generations. We have seen that the great Galen, at Rome, five centuries after the time of Herophilus, was prohibited from dissecting the human subject. The fact speaks volumes for the attitude of the Roman mind towards science. Vast audiences made up of every stratum of society thronged the amphitheatre, and watched exultingly while man slew his fellow-man in single or in multiple combat. Shouts of frenzied joy burst from a hundred thousand throats when the death-stroke was given to a new victim. The bodies of the slain, by scores, even by hundreds, were dragged ruthlessly from the arena and hurled into a ditch as contemptuously as if pity were yet unborn and human life the merest bauble. Yet the same eyes that witnessed these scenes with ecstatic approval would have been averted in pious horror had an anatomist dared to approach one of the mutilated bodies with the scalpel of science. It was sport to see the blade of the gladiator enter the quivering, living flesh of his fellow-gladiator; it was joy to see the warm blood spurt forth from the writhing victim while he still lived; but it were sacrilegious to approach that body with the knife of the anatomist, once it had ceased to pulsate with life. Life itself was held utterly in contempt, but about the realm of death hovered the threatening ghosts of superstition. And such, be it understood, was the attitude of the Roman populace in the early and the most brilliant epoch of the empire, before the Western world came under the influence of that Oriental philosophy which was presently to encompass it.

In this regard the Alexandrian world was, as just intimated, far more advanced than the Roman, yet even there we must suppose that the leaders of thought were widely at variance with the popular conceptions. A few illustrations, drawn from Greek literature at various ages, will suggest the popular attitude. In the first instance, consider the poems of Homer and of Hesiod. For these writers, and doubtless for the vast majority of their readers, not merely of their own but of many subsequent generations, the world is peopled with a multitude of invisible apparitions, which, under title of gods, are held to dominate the affairs of man. It is sometimes difficult to discriminate as to where the Greek imagination drew the line between fact and allegory; nor need we attempt to analyse the early poetic narratives to this end. It will better serve our present purpose to cite three or four instances which illustrate the tangibility of beliefs based upon pseudo-scientific inductions.

Let us cite, for example, the account which Herodotus gives us of the actions of the Greeks at Plataea, when their army confronted the remnant of the army of Xerxes, in the year 479 B.C. Here we see each side hesitating to attack the other, merely because the oracle had declared that whichever side struck the first blow would lose the conflict. Even after the Persian soldiers, who seemingly were a jot less superstitious or a shade more impatient than their opponents, had begun the attack, we are told that the Greeks dared not respond at first, though they were falling before the javelins of the enemy, because, forsooth, the entrails of a fowl did not present an auspicious appearance. And these were Greeks of the same generation with Empedocles and Anaxagoras and aeschylus; of the same epoch with Pericles and Sophocles and Euripides and Phidias. Such was the scientific status of the average mind—nay, of the best minds—with here and there a rare exception, in the golden age of Grecian culture.

Were we to follow down the pages of Greek history, we should but repeat the same story over and over. We should, for example, see Alexander the Great balked at the banks of the Hyphasis, and forced to turn back because of inauspicious auguries based as before upon the dissection of a fowl. Alexander himself, to be sure, would have scorned the augury; had he been the prey of such petty superstitions he would never have conquered Asia. We know how he compelled the oracle at Delphi to yield to his wishes; how he cut the Gordian knot; how he made his dominating personality felt at the temple of Ammon in Egypt. We know, in a word, that he yielded to superstitions only in so far as they served his purpose. Left to his own devices, he would not have consulted an oracle at the banks of the Hyphasis; or, consulting, would have forced from the oracle a favorable answer. But his subordinates were mutinous and he had no choice. Suffice it for our present purpose that the oracle was consulted, and that its answer turned the conqueror back.

One or two instances from Roman history may complete the picture. Passing over all those mythical narratives which virtually constitute the early history of Rome, as preserved to us by such historians as Livy and Dionysius, we find so logical an historian as Tacitus recording a miraculous achievement of Vespasian without adverse comment. "During the months when Vespasian was waiting at Alexandria for the periodical season of the summer winds, and a safe navigation, many miracles occurred by which the favor of Heaven and a sort of bias in the powers above towards Vespasian were manifested." Tacitus then describes in detail the cure of various maladies by the emperor, and relates that the emperor on visiting a temple was met there, in the spirit, by a prominent Egyptian who was proved to be at the same time some eighty miles distant from Alexandria.

It must be admitted that Tacitus, in relating that Vespasian caused the blind to see and the lame to walk, qualifies his narrative by asserting that "persons who are present attest the truth of the transaction when there is nothing to be gained by falsehood." Nor must we overlook the fact that a similar belief in the power of royalty has persisted almost to our own day. But no such savor of scepticism attaches to a narrative which Dion Cassius gives us of an incident in the life of Marcus Aurelius—an incident that has become famous as the episode of The Thundering Legion. Xiphilinus has preserved the account of Dion, adding certain picturesque interpretations of his own. The original narrative, as cited, asserts that during one of the northern campaigns of Marcus Aurelius, the emperor and his army were surrounded by the hostile Quadi, who had every advantage of position and who presently ceased hostilities in the hope that heat and thirst would deliver their adversaries into their hands without the trouble of further fighting. "Now," says Dion, "while the Romans, unable either to combat or to retreat, and reduced to the last extremity by wounds, fatigue, heat, and thirst, were standing helplessly at their posts, clouds suddenly gathered in great number and rain descended in floods—certainly not without divine intervention, since the Egyptian Maege Arnulphis, who was with Marcus Antoninus, is said to have invoked several genii by the aerial mercury by enchantment, and thus through them had brought down rain."

Here, it will be observed, a supernatural explanation is given of a natural phenomenon. But the narrator does not stop with this. If we are to accept the account of Xiphilinus, Dion brings forward some striking proofs of divine interference. Xiphilinus gives these proofs in the following remarkable paragraph:

"Dion adds that when the rain began to fall every soldier lifted his head towards heaven to receive the water in his mouth; but afterwards others hold out their shields or their helmets to catch the water for themselves and for their horses. Being set upon by the barbarians... while occupied in drinking, they would have been seriously incommoded had not heavy hail and numerous thunderbolts thrown consternation into the ranks of the enemy. Fire and water were seen to mingle as they left the heavens. The fire, however, did not reach the Romans, but if it did by chance touch one of them it was immediately extinguished, while at the same time the rain, instead of comforting the barbarians, seemed merely to excite like oil the fire with which they were being consumed. Some barbarians inflicted wounds upon themselves as though their blood had power to extinguish flames, while many rushed over to the side of the Romans, hoping that there water might save them."

We cannot better complete these illustrations of pagan credulity than by adding the comment of Xiphilinus himself. That writer was a Christian, living some generations later than Dion. He never thought of questioning the facts, but he felt that Dion's interpretation of these facts must not go unchallenged. As he interprets the matter, it was no pagan magician that wrought the miracle. He even inclines to the belief that Dion himself was aware that Christian interference, and not that of an Egyptian, saved the day. "Dion knew," he declares, "that there existed a legion called The Thundering Legion, which name was given it for no other reason than for what came to pass in this war," and that this legion was composed of soldiers from Militene who were all professed Christians. "During the battle," continues Xiphilinus, "the chief of the Pretonians, had set at Marcus Antoninus, who was in great perplexity at the turn events were taking, representing to him that there was nothing the people called Christians could not obtain by their prayers, and that among his forces was a troop composed wholly of followers of that religion. Rejoiced at this news, Marcus Antoninus demanded of these soldiers that they should pray to their god, who granted their petition on the instant, sent lightning among the enemy and consoled the Romans with rain. Struck by this wonderful success, the emperor honored the Christians in an edict and named their legion The Thundering. It is even asserted that a letter existed by Marcus Antoninus on this subject. The pagans well knew that the company was called The Thunderers, having attested the fact themselves, but they revealed nothing of the occasion on which the leader received the name."(1)

Peculiar interest attaches to this narrative as illustrating both credulousness as to matters of fact and pseudo-scientific explanation of alleged facts. The modern interpreter may suppose that a violent thunderstorm came up during the course of a battle between the Romans and the so-called barbarians, and that owing to the local character of the storm, or a chance discharge of lightning, the barbarians suffered more than their opponents. We may well question whether the philosophical emperor himself put any other interpretation than this upon the incident. But, on the other hand, we need not doubt that the major part of his soldiers would very readily accept such an explanation as that given by Dion Cassius, just as most readers of a few centuries later would accept the explanation of Xiphilinus. It is well to bear this thought in mind in considering the static period of science upon which we are entering. We shall perhaps best understand this period, and its seeming retrogressions, if we suppose that the average man of the Middle Ages was no more credulous, no more superstitious, than the average Roman of an earlier period or than the average Greek; though the precise complexion of his credulity had changed under the influence of Oriental ideas, as we have just seen illustrated by the narrative of Xiphilinus.



APPENDIX

REFERENCE LIST, NOTES, AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES



CHAPTER I. PREHISTORIC SCIENCE

Length of the Prehistoric Period.—It is of course quite impossible to reduce the prehistoric period to any definite number of years. There are, however, numerous bits of evidence that enable an anthropologist to make rough estimates as to the relative lengths of the different periods into which prehistoric time is divided. Gabriel de Mortillet, one of the most industrious students of prehistoric archaeology, ventured to give a tentative estimate as to the numbers of years involved in each period. He of course claimed for this nothing more than the value of a scientific guess. It is, however, a guess based on a very careful study of all data at present available. Mortillet divides the prehistoric period, as a whole, into four epochs. The first of these is the preglacial, which he estimates as comprising seventy-eight thousand years; the second is the glacial, covering one hundred thousand years; then follows what he terms the Solutreen, which numbers eleven thousand years; and, finally, the Magdalenien, comprising thirty-three thousand years. This gives, for the prehistoric period proper, a term of about two hundred and twenty-two thousand years. Add to this perhaps twelve thousand years ushering in the civilization of Egypt, and the six thousand years of stable, sure chronology of the historical period, and we have something like two hundred and thirty thousand or two hundred and forty thousand years as the age of man.

"These figures," says Mortillet, "are certainly not exaggerated. It is even probable that they are below the truth. Constantly new discoveries are being made that tend to remove farther back the date of man's appearance." We see, then, according to this estimate, that about a quarter of a million years have elapsed since man evolved to a state that could properly be called human. This guess is as good as another, and it may advantageously be kept in mind, as it will enable us all along to understand better than we might otherwise be able to do the tremendous force of certain prejudices and preconceptions which recent man inherited from his prehistoric ancestor. Ideas which had passed current as unquestioned truths for one hundred thousand years or so are not easily cast aside.

In going back, in imagination, to the beginning of the prehistoric period, we must of course reflect, in accordance with modern ideas on the subject, that there was no year, no millennium even, when it could be said expressly: "This being was hitherto a primate, he is now a man." The transition period must have been enormously long, and the changes from generation to generation, even from century to century, must have been very slight. In speaking of the extent of the age of man this must be borne in mind: it must be recalled that, even if the period were not vague for other reasons, the vagueness of its beginning must make it indeterminate.

Bibliographical Notes.—A great mass of literature has been produced in recent years dealing with various phases of the history of prehistoric man. No single work known to the writer deals comprehensively with the scientific attainments of early man; indeed, the subject is usually ignored, except where practical phases of the mechanical arts are in question. But of course any attempt to consider the condition of primitive man talies into account, by inference at least, his knowledge and attainments. Therefore, most works on anthropology, ethnology, and primitive culture may be expected to throw some light on our present subject. Works dealing with the social and mental conditions of existing savages are also of importance, since it is now an accepted belief that the ancestors of civilized races evolved along similar lines and passed through corresponding stages of nascent culture. Herbert Spencer's Descriptive Sociology presents an unequalled mass of facts regarding existing primitive races, but, unfortunately, its inartistic method of arrangement makes it repellent to the general reader. E. B. Tyler's Primitive Culture and Anthropology; Lord Avebury's Prehistoric Times, The Origin of Civilization, and The Primitive Condition of Man; W. Boyd Dawkin's Cave-Hunting and Early Man in Britain; and Edward Clodd's Childhood of the World and Story of Primitive Man are deservedly popular. Paul Topinard's Elements d'Anthropologie Generale is one of the best-known and most comprehensive French works on the technical phases of anthropology; but Mortillet's Le Prehistorique has a more popular interest, owing to its chapters on primitive industries, though this work also contains much that is rather technical. Among periodicals, the Revue de l'Ecole d'Anthropologie de Paris, published by the professors, treats of all phases of anthropology, and the American Anthropologist, edited by F. W. Hodge for the American Anthropological Association, and intended as "a medium of communication between students of all branches of anthropology," contains much that is of interest from the present stand-point. The last-named journal devotes a good deal of space to Indian languages.

CHAPTER II. EGYPTIAN SCIENCE

1 (p. 34). Sir J. Norman Lockyer, The Dawn of Astronomy; a study of the temple worship and mythology of the ancient Egyptians, London, 1894.

2 (p. 43). G. Maspero, Histoire Ancie-nne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, Paris, 1895. Translated as (1) The Dawn of Civilization, (2) The Struggle of the Nations, (3) The Passing of the Empires, 3 vols., London and New York, 1894-1900. Professor Maspero is one of the most famous of living Orientalists. His most important special studies have to do with Egyptology, but his writings cover the entire field of Oriental antiquity. He is a notable stylist, and his works are at once readable and authoritative.

3 (p. 44). Adolf Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, London, 1894, p. 352. (Translated from the original German work entitled Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben in Alterthum, Tilbigen, 1887.) An altogether admirable work, full of interest for the general reader, though based on the most erudite studies.

4 (p. 47). Erman, op. cit., pp. 356, 357.

5 (p. 48). Erman, op. cit., p. 357. The work on Egyptian medicine here referred to is Georg Ebers' edition of an Egyptian document discovered by the explorer whose name it bears. It remains the most important source of our knowledge of Egyptian medicine. As mentioned in the text, this document dates from the eighteenth dynasty—that is to say, from about the fifteenth or sixteenth century, B.C., a relatively late period of Egyptian history.

6 (p. 49). Erman, op. cit., p. 357.

7 (p. 50). The History of Herodotus, pp. 85-90. There are numerous translations of the famous work of the "father of history," one of the most recent and authoritative being that of G. C. Macaulay, M.A., in two volumes, Macmillan & Co., London and New York, 1890.

8 (p. 50). The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian, London, 1700. This most famous of ancient world histories is difficult to obtain in an English version. The most recently published translation known to the writer is that of G. Booth, London, 1814.

9 (p. 51). Erman, op. cit., p. 357.

10 (p. 52). The Papyrus Rhind is a sort of mathematical hand-book of the ancient Egyptians; it was made in the time of the Hyksos Kings (about 2000 B.C.), but is a copy of an older book. It is now preserved in the British Museum.

The most accessible recent sources of information as to the social conditions of the ancient Egyptians are the works of Maspero and Erman, above mentioned; and the various publications of W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, London, 1883; Tanis I., London, 1885; Tanis H., Nebesheh, and Defe-nnel, London, 1887; Ten Years' Diggings, London, 1892; Syria and Egypt from the Tel-el-Amar-na Letters, London, 1898, etc. The various works of Professor Petrie, recording his explorations from year to year, give the fullest available insight into Egyptian archaeology.

CHAPTER III. SCIENCE OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

1 (p. 57). The Medes. Some difference of opinion exists among historians as to the exact ethnic relations of the conquerors; the precise date of the fall of Nineveh is also in doubt.

2 (p. 57). Darius. The familiar Hebrew narrative ascribes the first Persian conquest of Babylon to Darius, but inscriptions of Cyrus and of Nabonidus, the Babylonian king, make it certain that Cyrus was the real conqueror. These inscriptions are preserved on cylinders of baked clay, of the type made familiar by the excavation of the past fifty years, and they are invaluable historical documents.

3 (p. 58). Berosus. The fragments of Berosus have been translated by L. P. Cory, and included in his Ancient Fragments of Phenician, Chaldean, Egyptian, and Other Writers, London, 1826, second edition, 1832.

4 (p. 58). Chaldean learning. Recent writers reserve the name Chaldean for the later period of Babylonian history—the time when the Greeks came in contact with the Mesopotamians—in contradistinction to the earlier periods which are revealed to us by the archaeological records.

5 (p. 59) King Sargon of Agade. The date given for this early king must not be accepted as absolute; but it is probably approximately correct.

6 (p. 59). Nippur. See the account of the early expeditions as recorded by the director, Dr. John P. Peters, Nippur, or explorations and adventures, etc., New York and London, 1897.

7 (p. 62). Fritz Hommel, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, Berlin, 1885.

8 (p. 63). R. Campbell Thompson, Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon, London, 1900, p. xix.

9 (p. 64). George Smith, The Assyrian Canon, p. 21.

10 (p. 64). Thompson, op. cit., p. xix.

11 (p. 65). Thompson, op. cit., p. 2.

12 (p. 67). Thompson, op. cit., p. xvi.

13 (p. 68). Sextus Empiricus, author of Adversus Mathematicos, lived about 200 A.D.

14 (p. 68). R. Campbell Thompson, op. cit., p. xxiv.

15 (p. 72). Records of the Past (editor, Samuel Birch), Vol. III., p. 139.

16 (p. 72). Ibid., Vol. V., p. 16.

17 (p. 72). Quoted in Records of the Past, Vol. III., p. 143, from the Translations of the Society of Biblical Archeology, vol. II., p. 58.

18 (p. 73). Records of the Past, vol. L, p. 131.

19 (p. 73). Ibid., vol. V., p. 171.

20 (p. 74). Ibid., vol. V., p. 169.

21 (p. 74). Joachim Menant, La Bibliotheque du Palais de Ninive, Paris, 1880.

22 (p. 76). Code of Khamurabi. This famous inscription is on a block of black diorite nearly eight feet in height. It was discovered at Susa by the French expedition under M. de Morgan, in December, 1902. We quote the translation given in The Historians' History of the World, edited by Henry Smith Williams, London and New York, 1904, Vol. I, p. 510.

23 (p. 77). The Historical Library of Diodorus Siculus, p. 519.

24 (p. 82). George S. Goodspeed, Ph.D., History of the Babylonians and Assyrians, New York, 1902.

25 (p. 82). George Rawlinson, Great Oriental Monarchies, (second edition, London, 1871), Vol. III., pp. 75 ff.

Of the books mentioned above, that of Hommel is particularly full in reference to culture development; Goodspeed's small volume gives an excellent condensed account; the original documents as translated in the various volumes of Records of the Past are full of interest; and Menant's little book is altogether admirable. The work of excavation is still going on in old Babylonia, and newly discovered texts add from time to time to our knowledge, but A. H. Layard's Nineveh and its Remains (London, 1849) still has importance as a record of the most important early discoveries. The general histories of Antiquity of Duncker, Lenormant, Maspero, and Meyer give full treatment of Babylonian and Assyrian development. Special histories of Babylonia and Assyria, in addition to these named above, are Tiele's Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte (Zwei Tiele, Gotha, 1886-1888); Winckler's Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens (Berlin, 1885-1888), and Rogers' History of Babylonia and Assyria, New York and London, 1900, the last of which, however, deals almost exclusively with political history. Certain phases of science, particularly with reference to chronology and cosmology, are treated by Edward Meyer (Geschichte des Alterthum, Vol. I., Stuttgart, 1884), and by P. Jensen (Die Kosmologie der Babylonier, Strassburg, 1890), but no comprehensive specific treatment of the subject in its entirety has yet been attempted.

CHAPTER IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET

1 (p. 87). Vicomte E. de Rouge, Memoire sur l'Origine Egyptienne de l'Alphabet Phinicien, Paris, 1874.

2 (p. 88). See the various publications of Mr. Arthur Evans.

3 (p. 80). Aztec and Maya writing. These pictographs are still in the main undecipherable, and opinions differ as to the exact stage of development which they represent.

4 (p. 90). E. A. Wallace Budge's First Steps in Egyptian, London, 1895, is an excellent elementary work on the Egyptian writing. Professor Erman's Egyptian Grammar, London, 1894, is the work of perhaps the foremost living Egyptologist.

5 (P. 93). Extant examples of Babylonian and Assyrian writing give opportunity to compare earlier and later systems, so the fact of evolution from the pictorial to the phonetic system rests on something more than mere theory.

6 (p. 96). Friedrich Delitzsch, Assyrischc Lesestucke mit grammatischen Tabellen und vollstdndigem Glossar einfiihrung in die assyrische und babylonische Keilschrift-litteratur bis hinauf zu Hammurabi, Leipzig, 1900.

7 (p. 97). It does not appear that the Babylonians thcmselves ever gave up the old system of writing, so long as they retained political autonomy.

8 (p. 101). See Isaac Taylor's History of the Alphabet; an Account of the origin and Development of Letters, new edition, 2 vols., London, 1899.

For facsimiles of the various scripts, see Henry Smith Williams' History of the Art Of Writing, 4 vols, New York and London, 1902-1903.

CHAPTER V. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCIENCE

1 (p. III). Anaximander, as recorded by Plutarch, vol. VIII-. See Arthur Fairbanks'First Philosophers of Greece: an Edition and Translation of the Remaining Fragments of the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, together with a Translation of the more Important Accounts of their Opinions Contained in the Early Epitomcs of their Works, London, 1898. This highly scholarly and extremely useful book contains the Greek text as well as translations.

CHAPTER VI. THE EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ITALY

1 (p. 117). George Henry Lewes, A Biographical History of Philosophy from its Origin in Greece down to the Present Day, enlarged edition, New York, 1888, p. 17.

2 (p. 121). Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, C. D. Yonge's translation, London, 1853, VIII., p. 153.

3 (p. 121). Alexander, Successions of Philosophers.

4 (p. 122). "All over its centre." Presumably this is intended to refer to the entire equatorial region.

5 (p. 125). Laertius, op. cit., pp. 348-351.

6 (p. 128). Arthur Fairbanks, The First Philosophers of Greece London, 1898, pp. 67-717.

7 (p. 129). Ibid., p. 838.

8 (p. 130). Ibid., p. 109.

9 (p. 130). Heinrich Ritter, The History of Ancient Philosophy, translated from the German by A. J. W. Morrison, 4 vols., London, 1838, vol, I., p. 463.

10 (p. 131). Ibid., p. 465.

11 (p. 132). George Henry Lewes, op. cit., p. 81.

12 (p. 135). Fairbanks, op. cit., p. 201.

13 (p. 136). Ibid., P. 234.

14 (p. 137). Ibid., p. 189.

15 (p. 137). Ibid., P. 220.

16 (p. 138). Ibid., p. 189.

17 (p. 138). Ibid., p. 191.

CHAPTER VII. GREEK SCIENCE IN THE EARLY ATTIC PERIOD

1 (p. 150). Theodor Gomperz, Greek Thinkers: a History of Ancient Philosophy (translated from the German by Laurie Magnes), New York, 190 1, pp. 220, 221.

2 (p. 153). Aristotle's Treatise on Respiration, ch. ii.

3 (p. 159). Fairbanks' translation of the fragments of Anaxagoras, in The First Philosophers of Greece, pp. 239-243.

CHAPTER VIII. POST-SOCRATIC SCIENCE AT ATHENS

1 (p. 180). Alfred William Bern, The Philosophy of Greece Considered in Relation to the Character and History of its People, London, 1898, p. 186.

2 (p. 183). Aristotle, quoted in William Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences (second edition, London, 1847), Vol. II., p. 161.

CHAPTER IX. GREEK SCIENCE OF THE ALEXANDRIAN OR HELLENISTIC PERIOD

1 (p. 195). Tertullian's Apologeticus.

2 (p. 205). We quote the quaint old translation of North, printed in 1657.

CHAPTER X. SCIENCE OF THE ROMAN PERIOD

1 (p. 258). The Geography of Strabo, translated by H. C. Hamilton and W. Falconer, 3 vols., London, 1857, Vol. I, pp. 19, 20.

2 (p. 260). Ibid., p. 154.

3 (p. 263). Ibid., pp. 169, 170.

4 (p. 264) Ibid., pp. 166, 167.

5 (p. 271). K. 0. Miller and John W. Donaldson, The History of the Literature of Greece, 3 vols., London, Vol. III., p. 268.

6 (p. 276). E. T. Withington, Medical History fron., the Earliest Times, London, 1894, p. 118.

7 (p. 281). Ibid.

8 (p. 281). Johann Hermann Bass, History of Medicine, New York, 1889.

CHAPTER XI. A RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE AT CLASSICAL SCIENCE

(p. 298). Dion Cassius, as preserved by Xiphilinus. Our extract is quoted from the translation given in The Historians' History of the World (edited by Henry Smith Williams), 25 vols., London and New York, 1904, Vol. VI., p. 297 ff.

(For further bibliographical notes, the reader is referred to the Appendix of volume V.)

THE END