From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishthe ancientsthe ancients[plural]OLD/NOT NEW people who lived long ago, especially the Greeks and Romans The ancients believed that the Sun and Moon were planets. → ancient
Examples from the Corpus
the ancients• The ancients believed that the sun and moon were planets.• There followed a very fierce dispute between the Ancients and the Moderns.• The best fuel of the ancients was wood.• A thorough knowledge of the ancients is thus a prerequisite of criticism.• Unlike Lactantius, Augustine did not treat the scientific scholarship of the ancients with ignorant contempt.• Among the Copernicans there was exhilaration at the thought that man, in his astronomical understanding, had now surpassed the ancients.• According to the ancients, seven planets circle the sun, hence the seven dwarfs.• It was a subject to which the Ancients had given much thought too.• However, other work focuses on why the ancients thought what they did. 