y a public
resolution, giving power to prosecute those who gave natural explanations
of heavenly phenomena.

As to Anaxagoras's attitude to popular belief, we hear next to nothing
apart from this. There is a story of a ram's head being found with one
horn in the middle of the forehead; it was brought to Pericles, and the
soothsayer Lampon explained the portent to the effect that, of the two
men, Pericles and Thucydides, who contended for the leadership of Athens,
one should prove victorious. Anaxagoras, on the other hand, had the ram's
head cut open and showed that the brain did not fill up the cranium, but
was egg-shaped and lay gathered together at the point where the horn grew
out. He evidently thought that abortions also, which otherwise were
generally considered as signs from the gods, were due to natural causes.
Beyond this, nothing is said of any attack on the popular belief on the
part of Anaxagoras, and in his philosophy nothing occurred which logically
entailed a denial of the existence of the gods. Add to this that it was
necessary to create a new judicial basis for the accusation against
Anaxagoras, and it can be taken as certain that neither in his writings
nor in any other way did he come forward in public as a denier of the
gods.

It is somewhat different when we consider the purely personal point of
view of Anaxagoras. The very fact that no expression of his opinion
concerning the gods has been transmitted affords food for thought.
Presumably there was none; but this very fact is notable when we bear in
mind that the earlier naturalists show no such reticence. Add to this
that, if there is any place and any time in which we might expect a
complete emancipation from popular belief, combined with a decided
disinclination to give expression to it, it is Athens under Pericles. Men
like Pericles and his friends represent a high level, perhaps the zenith,
in Hellenic culture. That they were critical of many of the religious
conceptions of their time we may take for granted; as to Pericles himself,
this is actually stated as a fact, and the accusations of impiety directed
against Aspasia and Pheidias prove that orthodox circles were very well
aware of it. But the accusations prove, moreover, that Pericles and those
who shared his views were so much in advance of their time that they could
not afford to let their free-thinking attitude become a matter of public
knowledge without endangering their political posi