hundred. But though the change probably had in view the giving a somewhat more popular form to the government, or at least the curbing the power of the adherents of the banished family, no single ruler could be brooked: Cleisthenes and his Spartan allies were forcibly opposed and defeated, and the aristodemocratic form of government in Athens was confirmed. The period which has just been slightly glanced over was fertile in great men. The power which mental cultivation affords to its possessor was for the most part nobly used; and few purer or more disinterested philanthropists are to be found than the lawgivers and sages of this period, whose names have been handed down to us by the gratitude of their fellow-citizens. The names of Zaleucus, Charondas, Lycurgus, and Solon, are still famous as having been able legislators; and if they failed to produce a perfect code, we may admit for them all, the excuse which Solon made for himself, when asked if he had given the Athenians the best possible laws, according to his own opinion. The sage replied that he had not ; but that he had given them the best they were capable of receiving.* From Moses downwards this has probably been the case, for the attempt to cut down prejudices all at once, and to change the whole customs and manners of a nation, would but end in the destruction of the imprudent innovator, without improving the people; unless, as in the case of Christianity, the system was supported by superhuman means. The custom of Greece gave the title of Zopos, or sage, to those who excelled their fellows in science, or moral worth. It is fabled, or perhaps the tale * Plutarch in Vitâ Solonis. may be a fact, that a golden tripod having been drawn up in their nets by some fishermen of Miletus, a quarrel arose as to its possession. The oracle at Delphi was consulted, and the dissension was allayed by its award of the tripod "to the wisest." The Milesians, by common consent, then offered it to their countryman Thales, who, with a laudable modesty, sent it on to Bias of Priene, who transferred it to Pittacus, and Pittacus to another yet, till it came seventhly to Solon, who finding no other mortal worthy of it, dedicated it to Apollo, as the only wise.* The names of the seven among whom the tripod thus passed round, are differently given by different authors. THALES is, however, always placed at the head of them. He was a native of Miletus, in that Ionia where Grecian civilization had sought an asylum from Dorian barbarism; and he is looked up to as the founder of the Ionic school of philosophy, so fruitful in great men; and which closed its bright career by imbuing with its doctrines the son of a stone-cutter, who, in spite of humble birth and poverty, won for himself the most illustrious name in all antiquity; and whose purity of doctrine, and holiness of life, wrung from Erasmus the acknowledgment, that when he perused the life of this heathen, he felt tempted to exclaim, "Sancte Socrates! ora pro nobis!" At an earlier period legislation and political science had alone attracted the notice of the sage; but attention was now turned to the natural sciences also. Thales, the Milesian," says Cicero, "who was the first who made such things a subject of inquiry, said that water was the origin of all things; but God the 66 * See Brucker, Hist. Crit. Phil. p. ii. lib. i. c. 2. There is mind which formed all things from it."* in this a striking parallelism to the history of creation given by Moses, scarcely to be accounted for, unless we suppose his opinions on this head derived from tradition. Thales had visited Egypt: he was somewhat junior to the Prophet Isaiah, and such an event as the destruction of Sennacherib's army could not but have made a strong impression on surrounding nations. The sage, traveling for information, could therefore scarcely avoid the having his attention drawn to the Hebrew records; which is made the more probable from an expression which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates; that, for the higher doctrines of theology, his disciples must go to the barbarians. The other opinions of Thales, as far as we have them recorded, are these-" God is the eldest of all things, for he is without beginning.‡ Death differs not from life, the soul being immortal," -as a consequence of which, he believed the universe to be full of the disembodied souls of good and bad men, called by the Greeks dæmons. When asked "if a bad man could hide his evil actions from the Divine power?" Not even his evil thoughts," he replied; and when farther questioned, "how to lead an honorable and a just life?" he answered, By not doing ourselves what we blame in others." When asked "what is fairest?" he replied, world, for it is the work of God."§ 66 66 "The Thales is said to have had no teacher but the priests of Egypt; under their tuition, and by his own. industry, however, he made considerable progress in geometry and astronomy. He is said to have sacri * Cicero de Nat. Deor 1. i. c. 10. Diog. Laert. lib. i. § 35, 36, 37. † ἀγέννητον. ficed an ox in thankfulness for the discovery that a right angled triangle could be inscribed in half a circle; and to have measured the pyramids, by comparing the length of the shadow with his own. In astronomy his opinions probably were clearer than his reporters make them. His first assertion that night preceded the day, is again in conformity with the Hebrew account; he is farther said to have considered the stars and moon to be of terrestrial substance, the former ignited, the latter giving light by reflection from the sun. His disciples are said to have taught that the earth was in the centre of the system; but as that doctrine is elsewhere stated to have been first broached by Parmenides,† it is probable that Thales himself did not teach this. He is recorded to have predicted a total eclipse of the sun, which occurred in his time; the first calculated eclipse on record. He considered that all bodies, though almost infinitely divisible, were composed of atoms, i. e. particles incapable of farther division; and in this he was followed by Pythagoras :§ and he was no stranger to the magnetic and electric properties of the loadstone, and of amber. He is said to have considered these substances as endowed with souls; yet considering the decline of Grecian literature at the time the accounts which have reached us were written, considering too that the use of the mariner's compass was known, and had been known from time immemorial in some of the countries visit *Plutarch. de Placitis Phil. 1. iii. c. 2. + Diog. Laert. in vit. Parmen. Cic. de Divin. 1. i. c. 49. Plut. de Placitis Phil. 1. i. c. 16. Aristoteles notices this opinion with regard to the loadstone in his treatise de anima, arguing from it that Thales must have considered the soul a force capable of causing movement, since he attributed a soul to the loadstone. De Anim. lib. i. c. 2. ed by Vasco de Gama ;* we may give Thales credit for more knowledge on these subjects than either Plutarch or Diogenes Laertius was able to explain; probably as much as we ourselves possessed up to the middle of the last century. Such were the extraordinary strides in knowledge made by one man almost unassisted; we cannot wonder that his countrymen voted him the tripod. He lived to the age of ninety, and died full of years and honor, at the representation of the Olympic games, 540 B. c. Paganism had not then become bigoted to falsehood, as was the case in after times, when the idolatry of the people became a part of the polity of states; and Thales could profess without reproach, what afterwards sent Anaxagoras into banishment, and cost Socrates his life. EPIMENIDES of Crete has by some been placed among the seven sages of Greece: at any rate he was in habits of intimacy with them. He is, however, more noted as a man of piety and holy life, then as deeply versed in science. He was sent for to Athens after the massacre of Cylon's adherents, to purify the city from the guilt which was supposed to have incurred the wrath of the gods, and occasioned a pestilence. Various lustrations were used by him; among other ceremonies, he ordered a certain number of white and black sheep to be let loose on Mars' hill,† and wherever they lay down, he directed that an altar should be built to the god to whom that spot belonged: but to this god no name was allowed to be given. The order was scrupulously obeyed: seven centuries later, Paul, the apostle, stood upon this spot, pointed to the altar of the unknown God, * See Bailly, Hist. de l'Astronomie. +"Apelomayos. The court of Areopagus was held here. |