win32.trojan.downloader

engravings showing the earth and heaven above it as conceived by Egyptians and Chaldeans, with "pillars of heaven" and "firmament," see Maspero and Sayce, Dawn of Civilization, London, 1894, pp. 17 and 543. But, as civilization was developed, there were evolved, especially among the Greeks, ideas of the earth's sphericity. The Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle especially cherished them. These ideas were vague, they were mixed with absurdities, but they were germ ideas, and even amid the luxuriant growth of theology in the early Christian Church these germs began struggling into life in the minds of a few thinking men, and these men renewed the suggestion that the earth is a globe.(26) (26) The agency of the Pythagoreans in first spreading the doctrine of the earth's sphericity is generally acknowledged, but the first full and clear utterance of it to the world was by Aristotle. Very fruitful, too, was the statement of the new theory given by Plato in the Timaeus; see Jowett's translation, 62, c. Also the Phaedo, pp.449 et seq. See also Grote on Plato's doctrine on the sphericity of the earth; also Sir G. C. Lewis's Astronomy of the Ancients, London, 1862, chap. iii, section i, and note. Cicero's mention of the antipodes, and his reference to the passage in the Timaeus, are even more remarkable than the latter, in that they much more clearly foreshadow the modern doctrine. See his Academic Questions, ii; also Tusc. Quest., i and v, 24. For a very full summary of the views of the ancients on the sphericity of the earth, see Kretschmer, Die physische Erkunde im christlichen Mittelalter, Wien, 1889, pp. 35 et seq.; also Eiken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, Stuttgart, 1887, Dritter Theil, chap. vi. For citations and summaries, see Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sciences, vol. i, p. 189, and St. Martin, Hist. de la Geog., Paris, 1873, p. 96; also Leopardi, Saggio