But here, as many other scientists after him were to discover, he trod upon dangerous ground, for he discussed something with which people were familiar. The sun and the moon were distant orbs. The average Greek did not care what names the philosopher wished to call them. But when the professor began to argue that all things had gradually grown and developed out of a vague substance called “original matter”—then he went decidedly too far. Such an assertion was in flat contradiction with the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, who after the great flood had re-populated the world by turning bits of stone into men and women. To deny the truth of a most solemn tale which all little Greek boys and girls had been taught in their early childhood was most dangerous to the safety of established society. It would make the children doubt the wisdom of their elders and that would never do. Hence Anaxagoras was made the subject of a formidable attack on the part of the Athenian Parents’ League. During the monarchy and the early days of the republic, the rulers of the city would have been more than able to protect a teacher of unpopular doctrines from the foolish hostility of the illiterate Attic peasants. But Athens by this time had become a full-fledged democracy and the freedom of the individual was no longer what it used to be. Furthermore, Pericles, just then in disgrace with the majority of the people, was himself a favorite pupil of the great astronomer, and the legal prosecution of Anaxagoras was welcomed as an excellent political move against the city’s old dictator. A priest by the name of Diopheites, who also was a ward-leader in one of the most densely populated suburbs, got a law passed which demanded “the immediate prosecution of all those who disbelieved in the established religion or held theories of their own about certain divine things.” Under this law, Anaxagoras was actually thrown into prison. Finally, however, the better elements in the city prevailed. Anaxagoras was allowed to go free after the payment of a small fine and move to Lampsacus in Asia Minor where he died, full of years and honor, in the year 428 B.C.