Endlessly toiling Helios speeds. No rest for him or for his steeds When Dawn has climbed the height. Soon as he lays his weary head Upon the golden wingèd bed Made by Hephaestos’ might, It bears him sleeping o’er the seas, Far from the fair Hesperides, Through realms of darkest night; Till in the Ethiopian land He sees his horses ready stand; And when the child of light, The rosy-fingered, early-born, Has ushered in another morn, He mounts his chariot bright. The earth, as pictured on the shield of Achilles, was flat and round, just as it appears from a height, and of course Greece was the centre, just as Egypt was the centre of the Egyptian, and Babylon the centre of the Babylonian cosmogonies. It was a small earth: a few countries lay round the Middle Sea, and further to the south was the land of the Ethiopians where the Sun passes overhead and burns the inhabitants black; there was another sea to the north, over which the Argonauts sailed, and in the extreme east was the Lake of the Sun, out of which he rose every morning. This was a great gulf of the River Oceanus which encircled the whole earth. Its sources were in the furthest west, just beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and thence it flowed north, east, and south, finally returning into itself. A branch from near the source, called the Styx, flowed down into the underground world of Hades, the abode of the dead, and beneath this again was Tartarus, where were imprisoned the Titans who had fought against Jove. Above the flat earth the blue dome of heaven was spread like a tent, and across it travelled “The never-wearied Sun, the Moon exactly round, And all those stars with which the ample brows of heaven are crowned.” What a compact little universe, and how important a part of it was man! But as thought developed, the universe expanded. 2. THALES AND ANAXIMANDER. [Sidenote: B.C. 585.] [Sidenote: Thales _c._ 600 B.C.]