In reference to the astronomy and physics of the Homeric Greek, it has already been remarked that he connected together the sensible phenomena which form the subject matter of these sciences by threads of religious and personifying fancy, to which the real analogies among them were made subordinate; and that these analogies did not begin to be studied by themselves, apart from the religious element by which they had been at first overlaid, until the age of Thales,—coinciding as that period did with the increased opportunities for visiting Egypt and the interior of Asia. The Greeks obtained access in both of these countries to an enlarged stock of astronomical observations, to the use of the gnomon, or sundial,[208] and to a more exact determination of the length of the solar year,[209] than that which served as the basis of their various lunar periods. It is pretended that Thales was the first who predicted an eclipse of the sun,—not, indeed, accurately, but with large limits of error as to the time of its occurrence,—and that he also possessed so profound an acquaintance with meteorological phenomena and probabilities, as to be able to foretell an abundant crop of olives for the coming year, and to realize a large sum of money by an olive speculation.[210] [208] The Greeks learned from the Babylonians, πόλον μὲν γὰρ καὶ γνώμονα καὶ τὰ δυωκαίδεκα μέρεα τῆς ἡμέρης (Herodot. ii. 109). In my first edition, I had interpreted the word πόλον in Herodotus erroneously. I now believe it to mean the same as _horologium_, the circular plate upon which the vertical gnomon projected its shadow, marked so as to indicate the hour of the day,—twelve hours between sunrise and sunset: see Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i. p. 233. Respecting the opinions of Thales, see the same work, part ii. pp. 18-57; Plutarch. de Placit. Philosophor. ii. c. 12; Aristot. de Cœlo, ii. 13. Costard, Rise and Progress of Astronomy among the Ancients, p. 99.