Physicists tend to think of their science as a discipline with a long history, to which additions are made every decade and century as we close in on a complete understanding of the universe. In fact, the terms "physics" and "science" do have a long history, but not in the sense in which we employ them today. Their Greek equivalents, phusika and episteme respectively, were much used by Aristotle (384-322 BC), and treatises on nature (phusis) existed back to the time of Thales of Miletus (c. 600 BC).
If we take our development to start in the 6th century BC, and assume that physics became "modern" in the 17th century with the works of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), then we have 20 centuries to cover in our pre-history if the "dark ages" are excluded.
The first period covers the ten centuries extending from 600 BC to roughly AD 400, during which Greek was the language of science. The second runs approximately from AD 700 to 1650, during which Latin largely replaced Greek in scientific writing - except for the four centuries from, say, 700 to 1100, when important developments were made by Islamic scholars. However, the development over those two millennia was not continuous, nor was it cumulative or logical. Physics may be a logical discipline, but its historical development was far from rational, being interrupted by periods during which whole fields of knowledge were lost and advances that had been made were completely negated.
In the December issue of Physics World magazine, William Wallace from the University of Maryland, College Park, US explains the little known pre-history of physics.