It was also called the Great Year; which name was likewise applied to various spaces of time by different authors; by Virgil, to the solar year, to distinguish it from the monthly revolution of the moon; by Cicero and others, to the revolution of six hundred years, or three thousand six hundred years; called also several ages, when all the stars shall come to the same position, with respect to one another, as they were in at a certain time before; called likewise _Annus Mundanus_, or _Vertens_. The lunar cycle begun four hundred and thirty-two years before the commencement of our era, and according to it, the Greek calendars, which determined the celebration of their annual feasts, &c. were adjusted. Meteon is said to have derived his knowledge of this subject from Chaldea. The opinions of the subsequently registered astronomer, Xonophanes, founder of the Eleatic school, are so truly monstrous, that after the light which had appeared, he must have travelled with his eyes shut; or else the rage for novelty alike affected the scientific of Greece, as it did their _literati_; choosing to travel a long way for new thoughts, when they might have found much better at hand. Xonophanes, among other whimsical opinions, maintained that the stars were extinguished every morning, and illuminated every evening; that the sun is an inflamed cloud; that eclipses happen by the extinction of the sun, which is afterwards lighted up; that the moon is ten times larger than the earth; that there are many suns and moons to illumine different climates. The Eleatic school was chiefly famous for the study of logic, or the art of ratiocination, first invented by Zeno. Those of this sect paid but little attention to science, or the study of Nature. Philosophy was anciently divided into three parts, natural, moral, and the art of reasoning. Xonophanes was succeeded by Parmenides, his scholar, who, in addition to his master’s absurdities, taught that the earth was habitable in only the two temperate zones; that the earth was suspended in the middle of the universe, in a fluid lighter than air; that all bodies left to themselves light on its surface. This bore a slight resemblance to the Newtonian doctrine of attraction.