Telegraphing Among the Ancients (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Telegraphing Among the AncientsThis magnificent simile, which the poet has chosen to adorn the turning point of his epic (2. 203 presents to us the two chief methods employed by the ancients in tele graphing to distant points, and also furnishes us with the earliest instance of their use to be found in our classic litera ture. So simple, so obvious and ready a means of notifying friends that danger has come or help is coming must have been hit upon in the earliest times, and no doubt has been resorted to by all peoples in all ages. My consideration of its use will be confined chie¿y to the Greeks. The confor mation of Greece itself, and of the surrounding seas with their numerous islands, presenting their mountain peaks in all directions shooting up into the clear ether, whether from the mainland or the islands, offered especial Opportunities for the employment of beacon-fires and beacon-smoke, and we may rest assured that the occasional references to them in our literary sources represent but a small fraction of the actual cases of their use. To arrive at a clearer conception of the methods employed, and the distances from beacon to beacon, I shall follow our sources down the line of centuries, leaving the poets out of the question for the present.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.