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Reading language

Book I Chapter 24

2a ⟨Aëtius⟩: One surface or different depths

Xenocrates thinks that the stars lie on a single surface.

The other Stoics place some before others, at different heights and depths.⁷²⁹

2b ⟨Aëtius⟩: Astronomers’ arrangements

Some of the mathematical astronomers say that the stars are arranged as Plato describes; others put the sun in the middle of them all.⁷³⁰

2b ⟨Aëtius⟩: Mercury, Venus, and the sun

Stilbon is in the same condition as Eosphorus: they keep pace with the sun and revolve along with it. At one time the planet rises before it and appears as a morning star; at another it sets after it and is called an evening star.⁷³¹

2b ⟨Aëtius⟩: The planets’ contrary course

The planets travel from west to east, contrary to the fixed stars.

Alcmaeon agrees with this as well.⁷³²

2c ⟨Aëtius⟩: What carries the stars?

Aristotle held that they are carried by the spheres on which each is mounted.

Anaximander likewise held that they are carried by the circles and spheres on which each is set.⁷³³

2d ⟨Aëtius⟩: Spheres and cones

The other ⟨Stoics⟩ held that the stars are spherical, but Cleanthes that they are cone-shaped.⁷³⁴

2e ⟨Aëtius⟩: Parmenides’ ordering

Parmenides places first the morning star, which he considers to be the same as the evening star, in aether; after it the sun; and beneath the sun the stars in the fiery region, which he calls heaven.⁷³⁵

3 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Light received from the sun

Metrodorus held that all the fixed stars receive their light from the sun.

Strato too held that the stars are illuminated by the sun.

Diotimus of Tyre, the follower of Democritus, put forward the same opinion as they did.⁷³⁶

4 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Eudoxus and Aratus

Eudoxus and Aratus held that weather signs occur in accordance with the risings of the stars. Thus Aratus says in the Phaenomena:⁷³⁷

For he himself established signs in heaven, setting the stars apart; and for the year he devised stars that would give the surest signs.

5 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Posidonius

Posidonius says that a celestial body is a divine body constituted from aether, bright and fiery, never at rest but always moving in a circle. In particular, the sun and moon are called celestial bodies. A star differs from a celestial body: if something is a star, it will also properly be called a celestial body, but not conversely.⁷³⁸

5 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Rising and setting

Chrysippus says in his Treatises on Natural Philosophy that rising is a celestial body’s emergence above earth, and setting its concealment beneath earth. The same bodies rise and set simultaneously for different observers.⁷³⁹

5 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Rising with the sun

By epitolē he means ⟨the⟩ rising of a celestial body together with the sun, and by setting its setting together with the sun. For “setting” is used in two senses: one corresponding to ordinary rising, the other to rising with the sun.⁷⁴⁰

5 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: The Dog and the Pleiades

The Dog’s epitolē is its rising together with the sun, and the Dog’s setting is its disappearance beneath earth together with the sun. The same account applies to the Pleiades.⁷⁴¹

5 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Apollodorus

Apollodorus, in the second book of On the Gods, says that the opinion identifying the Light-bringer and the Evening Star as the same body is Pythagorean.⁷⁴²

729.“The other Stoics” is the transmitted wording, although Xenocrates was an Academic, not a Stoic. Wachsmuth suspects that words were lost before this clause. The translation preserves the awkward transition without supplying a missing philosopher or doctrine.

730.Mathematikoi here means those studying the mathematical arrangement and motions of the heavens. A middle position in the sequence of celestial bodies does not by itself establish a heliocentric system. The preceding Platonic arrangement is given in 1l.

731.Stilbon is Mercury and Eosphorus is Venus. The report compares their courses with the sun’s, without specifying a modern orbital mechanism. After its plural “they,” the Greek shifts to a singular participle; “the planet” preserves that general wording. Morning and evening appearances can describe either planet here.

732.The contrary course is the planets’ movement relative to the stellar background, distinguished from the sky’s common daily revolution. Alcmaeon’s agreement attaches to this claim; it need not endorse every preceding arrangement or explanation.

733.“They are carried” is understood in the first elliptical sentence from the surrounding discussion. The reading “on which each is mounted” follows Diels’s repair of its damaged wording. Both circles and spheres remain in the Anaximander report, without an attempted reconstruction of his machinery.

734.“Stoics” is supplied by the editor from the parallel tradition. The comparison concerns the shapes of the stars themselves, not the shapes of their paths.

735.The morning and evening star are identified as one body, Venus. The different placements of aether and fiery heaven recall the report on Parmenides in I.22.1a. “First” gives the order of the listed regions, not a claim about which star formed first.

736.The description of Diotimus as a follower of Democritus follows Diels’s correction, adopted in the printed text. The manuscripts have a corrupt designation for which the apparatus records other conjectures. The claims about stellar illumination are retained as the named authors’ opinions.

737.Phaenomena 10-12. “He” is Zeus, named at the poem’s beginning. The quotation stops here in Stobaeus; Aratus’s next line specifies signs of the seasons for human beings. Tetugmena conveys the reliability of the indications. The poem’s larger context concerns timely agricultural work.

738.The argument distinguishes astēr, rendered “star,” from the broader astron, rendered “celestial body” in this passage. Elsewhere both Greek words can be translated “star,” but that would conceal the distinction here. Posidonius’s fiery aether should not be equated with Aristotle’s fifth body merely because the same noun is used. Wachsmuth identifies excerpt 5 with Arius Didymus, physical fragment 32.

739.The title renders Physikai technai, literally systematic arts or manuals concerning nature. The simultaneous rising and setting are relative to observers in different places, not simultaneous events at a single observer’s horizon.

740.Anatolē is ordinary rising, whereas epitolē is defined here by its relation to the sun. The same Greek word dysis serves as the counterpart of both. The translation keeps the definition “together with the sun”; it does not replace it with the different observational condition of first visibility in dawn twilight.

741.The Dog here is the Dog Star, Sirius. The singular pleias is a collective designation of the Pleiades. These familiar seasonal markers illustrate the preceding definitions; the passage gives no calendar dates.

742.Phōsphoros, Light-bringer, is another name for the Morning Star. Compare the identification ascribed to Parmenides in 2e. Apollodorus assigns the opinion to the Pythagorean tradition here; the sentence does not settle who first made the discovery. This is the end of chapter 24.