DEMOCRITUS 
177 
the greatest number of learned men A His travels lasted for 
five years, and he is said to have visited Egypt, Persia and 
Babylon, where he consorted with the priests and magi ; some 
say that he went to India and Aethiopia also. Well might 
he undertake the compilation of a geographical survey of 
the earth as, after Anaximander, Hecataeus of Miletus and 
Damastes of Sigeum had done. In his lifetime his fame was 
fat from world-wide : ‘ I came to Athens he says, ‘ and no 
one knew me.’ 2 
A long list of his writings is preserved in Diogenes Laertius, 
the authority being Thrasyllus. In astronomy he wrote, 
among other works, a book On the Planets, and another On 
the Great Year or Astronomy including a parapegma 3 (or 
calendar). Democritus made the order of the heavenly bodies, 
reckoning outwards from the earth, the following: Moon, 
Venus, Sun, the other planets, the fixed stars. Lucretius 4 has 
preserved an interesting explanation which he gave of the 
reason why the sun takes a year to describe the full circle of 
the zodiac, while the moon completes its circle in a month. 
The nearer any body is to the earth (and therefore the farther 
from the sphere of the fixed stars) the less swiftly can it be 
carried round by the revolution of the heaven. Now the 
moon is nearer than the sun, and the sun than the signs of 
the zodiac ; therefore the moon seems to get round faster than 
the sun because, while the sun, being lower and therefore 
slower than the signs, is left behind by them, the moon, 
being still lower and therefore slower still, is still more left 
behind. Deippcritus’s Great Year is described by Censorinus 5 
as 82 (LXXXII) years including 28 intercalary months, the 
latter number being the same as that included by Callippus in 
his cycle of 76 years; it is therefore probable that LXXXII 
is an incorrect reading for LXXVII (77). 
As regards his mathematics we have first the statement in 
1 Clement, Strom, i. 15, 69 ( Vors. ii 3 , p. 128. 3). 
2 Diog. L. ix. 36 {Vors. ii 3 , p. 11. 22). 
8 The parapegma was a posted record, a kind of almanac, giving, for 
a series of years, the movements of the sun, the dates of the phases of 
the moon, the risings and settings of certain stars, besides èma-rjfma-iai 
or weather indications ; many details from Democritus’s parapegma 
are preserved in the Calendar at the end of Geminus’s Isagoge and in 
Ptolemy. 
4 Lucretius, v. 621 sqq. 
1523 
N 
De die natali, 18. 8.