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Book I Chapter 23

Chapter 23: The Substance and Division of Heaven

On the substance and division of heaven.

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: The outermost circuit

Anaximenes and Parmenides held that heaven is the outermost circuit around the earth.⁶⁹⁶

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Empedocles’ solid heaven

Empedocles held that heaven is a solid mass, made of air solidified by fire like ice, containing the fiery and the airy in each of its hemispheres.⁶⁹⁷

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Mixture and fire

Anaximander held that it is made from a mixture of hot and cold.

Parmenides, Heraclitus, Strato, and Zeno held that heaven is fiery.⁶⁹⁸

2 ⟨Aëtius and Didymus⟩: A fifth body

Aristotle held that heaven is made from a fifth body.⁶⁹⁹

For he speaks as follows in his works Physics and On Heaven:⁷⁰⁰

2 ⟨Aëtius and Didymus⟩: The enduring aether

The stars and heaven are constituted from aether. This is neither heavy nor light, neither generated nor perishable, neither increasing nor diminishing; it remains forever unchanging and unaltered, bounded, spherical, and endowed with soul, moving in a circle around the center.⁷⁰¹

3 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Five celestial circles

Thales, Pythagoras, and his followers held that the sphere of the whole heaven is divided into five circles, which they call zones. Of these, one is called arctic and always visible; another, the summer tropic; another, the equator; another, the winter tropic; and another, antarctic and invisible.⁷⁰²

3 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Zodiac and meridian

The so-called zodiacal circle is set obliquely to the three middle circles, touching those three.⁷⁰³ The meridian cuts all of them at right angles, from the Bears to the opposite side.⁷⁰⁴

3 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Who discovered the obliquity?

Pythagoras is said to have been the first to discover the obliquity of the zodiacal circle; Oenopides of Chios appropriates this discovery as his own.⁷⁰⁵

696.Periphora can signify a circular course or circuit. The report places heaven at the outermost circuit around earth; it does not assert that earth itself revolves. The supplied attribution to Aëtius identifies the doxographical source reconstructed by the editor, here II.11.

697.The ice comparison describes the resulting solidity, although fire is said to cause it. LSJ, under krystalloeidēs, gives “like ice” and cites this very report, Placita II.11.2, for the adverb. “In each” follows the printed hekaterōi; the translation does not redistribute fire and air between separate hemispheres.

698.Hot and cold are the opposed constituents named in Anaximander’s compressed report. Parmenides appears again because the earlier sentence described heaven’s position, while this one describes its substance. The grouped names do not imply identical cosmologies.

699.The fifth body is aether, distinguished from earth, water, air, and fire. Wachsmuth attributes the first statement to Aëtius II.11.3 and the following account to Arius Didymus’s epitome, physical fragment 9 in Diels. The latter is the same source used in I.22.1c.

700.“Heaven” in the title follows Spengel’s correction, adopted by Wachsmuth, of the manuscripts’ autou, “his own.” Despite the introductory “he speaks as follows,” what follows is an indirect report of Aristotelian doctrine, not an authenticated verbatim passage from either treatise.

701.This passage repeats the latter part of I.22.1c, as Wachsmuth explicitly notes. The repetition is preserved. “This” refers grammatically to aether, whose qualities are combined with those of the ensouled celestial whole. Unchanging substance and circular movement are both affirmed.

702.These are circles of the sky. The arctic and antarctic circles mark the limits of the always visible and never visible regions for a northern observer; they are not the modern geographical polar circles. The two tropics correspond to the sun’s northern and southern solsticial limits. “His followers” refers to Pythagoras.

703.The three middle circles are the two tropics and the equator. “Touching” translates parapsauōn: the zodiacal circle meets the equator by crossing it and the tropics at its northern and southern extremes. The printed [en], “in,” is rejected by the editor and remains visible on the Greek side; the English follows the sentence without it.

704.The Bears are the northern constellations, here indicating the north. The meridian is a great circle through the celestial poles. “All of them” refers to the five parallel circles of the preceding list, which it intersects at right angles; the oblique zodiac is not a sixth parallel circle.

705.Obliquity here concerns the zodiacal circle’s inclination to the celestial equator. The accusation of appropriation belongs to this ancient report. Other testimonies differ: Diodorus I.98.3 says that Oenopides learned about the sun’s inclined circle from Egyptian priests. For the competing accounts, see István Bodnár, Oenopides of Chius (2007), pp. 3-6 and 24. The statement is not a secure modern finding about priority. This is the end of chapter 23.