Note 75 — Chapter I · SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY IN GREECE, BEFORE AND IN THE TIME OF SOKRATES.

Diogen. Laert. ix. 21, viii. 48; Strabo, ii. p. 93 (on the authority of Poseidonius). Plutarch (Placit. Philos. iii. 11) and others ascribe to Parmenides the recognition not of five zones, but only of two. If it be true that Parmenides held this opinion about the figure of the earth, the fact is honourable to his acuteness; for Leukippus, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Diogenes the Apolloniate, and Demokritus, all thought the earth to be a flat, round surface, like a dish or a drum: Plato speaks about it in so confused a manner that his opinion cannot be made out: and Aristotle was the first who both affirmed and proved it to be spherical. The opinion had been propounded by some philosophers earlier than Anaxagoras, who controverted it. See the dissertation of L. Oettinger. Die Vorstellungen der Griechen über die Erde als Himmelskörper, Freiburg, 1850, p. 42-46.