than the centre. That, however, is a difficulty which all the Ionian cosmologists down to Demokritos had to face. Holding, as they did, that the whole rotation was in the same direction, they had to say that what we call the greatest velocities were the least. The moon, for instance, did not rotate so rapidly as the sun, since the sun more nearly keeps up with the fixed stars.[1] That Anaximander failed to observe this difficulty is not surprising, if we remember that he was the first to attack the problem. It is not immediately obvious that the centre of the vortex must have a slower motion than the circumference. This serves to explain the origin of the theory that the heavenly bodies have a rotation of their own in the opposite direction to the diurnal revolution which we shall see reason for attributing to Pythagoras (§ 54).
22.Animals. We have, in any case, seen enough to show us that the speculations of Anaximander about the world were of an extremely daring character. We come now to the crowning audacity of all, his theory of the origin of living creatures. The Theophrastean account of this has been well preserved by the doxographers:
Living creatures arose from the moist element as it was evaporated by the sun. Man was like another animal, namely, a fish, in the beginning.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 22 a).
The first animals were produced in the moisture, each enclosed in a prickly bark. As they advanced in age, they came out upon the drier part. When the bark broke off,[2] they survived for a short time.[3]—Aet. v. 19, 4 (R. P. 22).
Further, he says that originally man was born from animals of another species. His reason is that while other animals
- ↑ Lucretius, v. 619 sqq.
- ↑ This is to be understood in the light of what we are told about γαλεοί below. Cf. Arist. Hist. An. Z, l0. 565 a 25, τοῖς μὲν οὖν σκυλίοις, οὓς καλοῦσί τινες νεβρίας γαλεούς, ὅταν περιρραγῇ καὶ ἐκπέσῃ τὸ ὄστρακον, γίνονται οἱ νεοττοί.
- ↑ The true reading is ἐπ' ὀλίγον χρόνον μεταβιῶναι, the omission of χρόνον by Diels in Vors.¹ and Vors.² being apparently a slip. In the Index to Dox., Diels s.v. μεταβιοῦν says "mutare vitam [cf. μεταδιαιτᾶν]," and I followed him in my first edition. Heidel well compares Archelaos, ap. Hipp. Ref. i. 9, 5 (of the first animals) ἦν δὲ ὀλιγοχρόνια.
