An historical survey of the astronomy of the ancients / by Sir George Cornewall Lewis.

  • George Cornewall Lewis
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An historical survey of the astronomy of the ancients / by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    the open air, such as national games, must likewise have been fixed with reference to the weather. War was waged during the fine part of the year. At a period of semi-barbarism, men were more dependent on the seasons than at a more civilized stage of society. Houses were ill constructed, clothing was scanty, and even scarcity of food was a constantly recurring evil. Roads and bridges did not exist. Navigation was timid and unskilful. The division of the four seasons, though of considerable anti- quity, (34) is not decisively indicated in nature. The antithesis between summer and winter is obvious; the revival of nature in spring, after the torpor of winter, is also a marked epoch. (35) But autumn is a less definite season. Hence a division of the year into the three seasons of spring, summer, and winter, is attributed to the ancient Egyptians. (36) The year of the ancient Germans consisted only of these three seasons, according to the testimony of Tacitus ; (37) and in English, the same three seasons are denoted by Anglo-Saxon words; whereas the word ' autumn' is borrowed from the Latin. (38) The recurrence of the seasons at fixed intervals is one of the most remarkable laws of physical (34) See Galen, ad Hippocrat. Epidem. i. vol. xvii. 1. p. 18, ed. Kiihn. The treatise of Hippocrates de Diseta, iii. 68 (vol. vi. p. 594, ed. Littre), says that the year is generally divided into four seasons : that the winter lasts from the setting of the Pleiads to the spring equinox; the spring from the equinox to the rising of the Pleiads ; the summer from the rising of the Pleiads until the rising of Arcturus; and the autumn from the rising of Arcturus to the setting of the Pleiads. The treatise De Diseta is either genuine, or as ancient as Hippocrates, Littre, vol. i. p. 356. Manilius, ii. 656, considers the four seasons as marked by nature. (.?5) See Macrob. Sat. i. 12, § 14. Virgil supposes the spring to hare immediately followed the creation of the world ; as being the season of renewal of vegetable and animal life, Georg. ii. 336. (36) Diod. i. 26. iEschylus, in describing the division of the year by Prometheus, enumerates only the three seasons of winter, summer, and spring, Prom. 454—6. (37)- Germ. 26. Compare Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 435. (38) See Dean Trench, Select Glossary of English Words (Lond. 1859), v. Harvest. The Hippocratean treatise irepl e/3So/id8a>i> distributed the year into seven seasons. It left the spring and autumn undivided ; but made the winter consist of three seasons, and the summer of two. See Galen, ib. j Hippocrates, vol. viii. p. 635, ed. Littre.
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