Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 11:51:07 pm
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Site provides evidence for ancient comet explosion
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/nationworld/story/173177.html
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

(III.) HISTORY - Through The Doors of Greece

Pages: [1] 2   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: (III.) HISTORY - Through The Doors of Greece  (Read 1290 times)
0 Members and 13 Guests are viewing this topic.
Bianca
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 41646



« on: August 17, 2007, 02:28:36 pm »








Many reports of early astronomical/astrological feats by the Greeks must be regarded with suspicion. It has often been suggested, for instance, that Thales predicted a solar eclipse that occurred in 585BC, thus ending a battle between the Lydians and Medes, who stopped fighting in sheer surprise. This seems unlikely. The knowledge simply did not exist by which it could have been done, although it is possible Thales might simply have made a spectacularly successful guess. There is a little more substance, perhaps, in Pliny's report that Cleostratus of Tenedos observed the zodiacal constellations as they appeared behind Mount Ida towards the end of the 6th century. But it is only on looking at the calendars devised by Eudoxos of Cnidus (c 408-355 BC), a Greek scientist and astronomer, that we definitely find use being made of the Greek zodiac (it was he who, in the Phainomena, divided the ecliptic into twelve equal signs).

Between the 5th century BC and the birth of Christ, astrology appealed to various sections of Greek society, among them not only philosophers and scientists, but such men as Hippocrates, the physician and 'father of medicine', who taught astrology to his students so that they could discover the 'critical days' in an illness. He is said to have remarked that 'any man who does not understand astrology is a fool rather than a physician'. And the young intelligentsia often took an intense interest in the subject; when Plato visited Dionysus' school, he saw two pupils arguing with great vigour about the theories of Anaxagoras, illustrating their argument by imitating the sweep of the ecliptic with their arms. Aristophanes in The Clouds ridicules the study of astrology as one of the cults of the Athens upper classes.
Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.


Pages: [1] 2   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy