Aristotle, an important Greek philosopher, had a completely different, and erroneous, view of the constitution of matter. Perhaps because of his great influence in the philosophical field, Aristotle's idea of the constitution of matter prevailed for about two thousand years!
According to Aristotle, the atom simply did not exist! Matter consisted of a mixture of four elements.
Interestingly, Alchemy prevailed in this period, but the alchemists' greatest concern was not the constitution of matter itself, but the transformation of one matter into another, especially into gold.