Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 78.djvu/325

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE GENESIS OF THE LAW OF GRAVITY
315

ire of the Athenians was aroused in behalf of their gods. As a result, history would have claimed the first martyr to scientific truth in the person of Anaxagoras (500-428), had not the great Pericles interposed in his behalf. Even so, the death penalty was but exchanged for that of banishment.

Another disciple of Thales was the illustrious Pythagoras (578-400), who not only held the views of his master, but, from observations on the altitude of the stars, measured in different places, demonstrated that the earth was round, or, at least, not flat. He conceived Venus to be both the morning and evening star—a view lost sight of, later, as shown by the double name, Lucifer and Hesperus, long applied to this planet. Most remarkable, perhaps, was his doctrine of the diurnal rotation of the earth and its annual motion about the sun. Less substantial, but longer-lived, was his fanciful notion of the harmony of