Chapter VI. On the Same Subject, From Clement

[CLEMENT] [1] ‘THE healing art is said to have been invented by Apis the Egyptian . . . and afterwards improved by Aesculapius. Atlas the Libyan was the first who built a ship, and sailed the sea. . . .

‘Astrology also was first made known among men by the Egyptians and Chaldeans. . . . Some, however, say that prognostication by the stars was devised by the Carians. The Phrygians were the first to observe the flights of birds.

‘The inspection of sacrificial victims was accurately practised by the Tuscans who border on Italy. The Isaurians and Arabians perfected augury, and the Telmessians, doubtless, divination by dreams.

‘The Tyrrhenians invented the trumpet, and Phrygians the flute; for both Olympus and Marsyas were Phrygians. . . . The Egyptians again first taught men to burn lamps, and divided the year into twelve months, and forbade intercourse with women in temples, and enacted that none should enter temples after intercourse without bathing.

‘The same people again were the inventors of geometry. . . . Kelmis and Damnameneus, the Idaean Dactyls, first discovered iron in Cyprus. And the tempering of bronze was invented by Delas, another Idaean, or, as Hesiod says, a Scythian. ‘Certainly Thracians were the first who invented the so-called scimitar, which is a curved sword, and they first used targes on horseback: in like manner the. Illyrians invented the so-called targe (πέλτη). Further they say that the Tuscans invented the art of moulding clay: and Itanus, who was a Samnite, fashioned the long shield.

‘Cadmus the Phoenician invented stone-cutting, and discovered the gold mines near Mount Pangaeus. Moreover another nation, the Cappadocians, first invented the so-called “nabla,” as the Assyrians the lyre of two strings.

‘The Carthaginians were the first to fit out a quadrireme, and it was built off hand by Bosporus. Medea of Colchis, the daughter of Aeetes, first devised the dyeing of the hair.

‘The Noropes (a Paeonian tribe, now called Noricum) worked copper, and were the first to refine iron. Amyous, the king of the Bebryces, invented boxing-thongs.

‘With regard to music, Olympus the Mysian was fond of practising the Lydian harmony: and the so-called Troglodytes invented a musical instrument, the sambuca.

‘They say also that the slanting pipe was invented by Satyrus the Phrygian, and in like manner the trichord, and the diatonic harmony by Hyagnis who also was a Phrygian: notes likewise by Olympus the Phrygian; as the Phrygian harmony and the Mixo-Phrygian, and the Mixo-Lydian by Marsyas, fellow countrymen of those just named: and the Dorian was invented by Thamyris the Thracian.

‘We have heard too that the Persians were the first who made a carriage, and couch, and footstool, and that the Sidonians first built a trireme. The Sicilians who are close to Italy were the first to invent a lyre, not far inferior to the harp, and devised castanets.

‘Robes of fine linen are said to have been invented in the time of Semiramis, queen of the Assyrians: and Atossa who reigned over the Persians is said by Hellanicus to have been the first to use folded letters.

‘These things then were related by Scamon of Mitylene, and Theophrastus of Ephesus, and Cydippus of Mantinea, also by Antiphanes, and Aristodemus, and Aristotle, and besides these by Philostephanus, and Straton the Peripatetic in the books Concerning Inventions.And I have quoted a few of them in confirmation of the inventive and practical genius of Barbarians, from whom the Greeks have received the benefit of their institutions.’

These things Clement states in these very words in the Miscellanies.And to what has now been mentioned I think it well to append also the extracts from the writing of Josephus the Hebrew, which he composed in two books, Of the Antiquity of the Jews,on the point that the Greeks are a young nation, and have received help from the Barbarians, and have dissented from each other in their writings. This too will contribute to the accurate and sure confirmation of my statements. Hear therefore what he also writes, word for word.