8 
INTRODUCTORY 
as far as the Pillars of Hercules, after they had explored the 
Adriatic sea, the west coast of Italy, and the coasts of the 
Ligurians and Iberians. They are said to have founded 
Massalia, the most important Greek colony in the western 
countries, as early as 600 b. c. Gyrene, on the Libyan coast, 
was founded in the last third of the seventh century. The 
Milesians had, soon after 800 b. c., made settlements on the 
east coast of the Black Sea (Sinope was founded in 785) ; the 
first Greek settlements in Sicily were made from Euboea and 
Corinth soon after the middle of the eighth century (Syracuse 
734). The ancient acquaintance of the Greeks with the south 
coast of Asia Minor and with Cyprus, and the establishment 
of close relations with Egypt, in which the Milesians had a 
large share, belongs to the time of the reign of Psammetichus I 
(664-610 B. €.), and many Greeks had settled in that country. 
The free communications thus existing with the whole of 
the known world enabled complete information to be collected 
with regard to the different conditions, customs and beliefs 
prevailing in the various countries and races ; and, in parti 
cular, the Ionian Greeks had the inestimable advantage of 
being in contact, directly and indirectly, with two ancient 
civilizations, the Babylonian and the Egyptian. 
Dealing, at the beginning of the Metaphysics, with the 
evolution of science, Aristotle observes that science was 
preceded by the arts. The- arts were invented as the result 
of general notions gathered from experience (which again was 
derived from the exercise of memory) ; those arts naturally 
came first which are directed to supplying the necessities of 
life, and next came those which look to its amenities. It was 
only when all such arts had been established that the sciences, 
which do not aim at supplying the necessities or amenities 
of life, were in turn discovered, and this happened first in 
the places where men began to have leisure. This is why 
the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt ; for there the 
priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure. Aristotle does not 
here mention Babylon ; but, such as it was, Babylonian 
science also was the monopoly of the priesthood. 
It is in fact true, as Gomperz says, 1 that the first steps on 
the road of scientific inquiry were, so far as we know from 
1 Griechische Deriker, i, pp. 36, 37.