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Book I Chapter 26

Chapter 26: The Moon

On the moon’s substance, size, and shape, ⟨its illumination, eclipse, appearance, distances, and signs⟩.⁷⁸⁹

1a ⟨Aëtius⟩: Anaximander

Anaximander held that there is a circle nineteen times the size of the earth, resembling a chariot ⟨wheel⟩, with a hollow rim full of fire, like the sun’s circle. Like that circle, it lies obliquely, with a single outlet, like the tube of a bellows. An eclipse occurs through the wheel’s turnings.⁷⁹⁰

1a ⟨Aëtius⟩: Anaximenes

Anaximenes held that the moon is fiery.

1b ⟨Aëtius⟩: Parmenides

Parmenides held that it is fiery, and equal in size to the sun, for it is illuminated by the sun.⁷⁹¹

1c ⟨Aëtius⟩: Heraclitus

Heraclitus held that its shape is that of a bowl.

1d ⟨Aëtius⟩: Xenophanes

Xenophanes held that it is a compacted cloud.

1e ⟨Aëtius⟩: Earthy and fiery bodies

Thales declared that the moon is earthy.

Anaxagoras and Democritus held that it is an incandescent solid body, containing plains, mountains, and ravines.

Diogenes held that the moon is a kindled mass resembling pumice.⁷⁹²

1e ⟨Aëtius⟩: Ion and Berossus

Ion held that it is a body partly glass-like and transparent, partly without light.⁷⁹³

Berossus held that the moon is a sphere with half of it on fire.⁷⁹⁴

1e ⟨Aëtius⟩: Mist and reflection

Heraclides and Ocellus held that it is earth surrounded by mist.

Pythagoras held that it is a mirror-like body.

1f ⟨Aëtius⟩: Empedocles and other shapes

Empedocles held that it is air compressed into a cloud-like mass and solidified by fire, so that it is a mixture. Its shape is disk-like.

Others held that it is cylindrical.⁷⁹⁵

1g ⟨Aëtius⟩: Plato

Plato held that the moon consists predominantly of fire.

1h ⟨Aëtius⟩: Aristotle

Aristotle held that the moon, stationed at the boundaries of the air and sharing in the fifth substance, completes its own circuit in a month. It is smaller in size than the earth.⁷⁹⁶

1i ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Zeno

Zeno said that the moon is an intelligent and wise heavenly body, fiery with a craftsmanlike fire.⁷⁹⁷

1i ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Cleanthes

Cleanthes held that the moon is fire-like, but shaped like a felt cap.⁷⁹⁸

1k ⟨Aëtius⟩: Posidonius and the Stoics

Posidonius and most of the Stoics held that the moon is a mixture of fire and air. It is larger than the earth, as is the sun. Its shape is spherical, but it takes on many appearances: full, half, gibbous, and crescent.⁷⁹⁹

1l ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Chrysippus

Chrysippus held that the moon is an intelligent fiery mass gathered, next after the sun, from the exhalation arising from fresh waters; hence it is also nourished by them. It is spherical.⁸⁰⁰

1l ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Month and visible moon

A month is the name given to the completion of its course. A “visible moon,” he says, is the part of the moon appearing to us, or the moon with a part of it appearing to us.⁸⁰¹

2 On its illumination

On its illumination.

2 ⟨Aëtius⟩: The moon’s own light

Anaximander, Xenophanes, and Berossus held that the moon has light of its own.

Aristotle held that it has its own light, but somehow more rarefied.

The Stoics held that its light appears dim, since it is air-like.⁸⁰²

2 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Antiphon

Antiphon held that the moon shines with its own light, but that its hidden portion is dimmed by the impact of the sun’s rays: the stronger naturally obscures the weaker. The same thing happens with the other heavenly bodies.⁸⁰³

2 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Illumination by the sun

Thales was the first to say that the moon is illuminated by the sun. Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Metrodorus held the same view.⁸⁰⁴

2 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Heraclitus

Heraclitus held that the same thing happens to both moon and sun. The heavenly bodies are shaped like bowls: receiving the radiance from moist exhalation, they become luminous to our sight. The sun shines more brightly because it moves through purer air; the moon moves through murkier air and therefore appears dimmer.⁸⁰⁵

3 On lunar eclipse

On eclipse of the moon.⁸⁰⁶

3 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Closures and turnings

Anaximander held that eclipse occurs when the opening on the wheel is blocked.

Berossus held that it occurs when the unburned portion turns toward us.

Alcmaeon, Heraclitus, and Antiphon held that it occurs through the turning and tilting of the bowl-shaped body.

3 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Earth and counter-earth

Some Pythagoreans, according to Aristotle’s account and Philip of Opus’ statement, held that eclipse occurs through the interposition sometimes of the earth, sometimes of the counter-earth.⁸⁰⁷

3 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Fire spreading and dying out

Some of the more recent thinkers held that it happens through the spreading of a flame, kindled little by little in an orderly way until it produces the completely full moon, then correspondingly diminishing until conjunction, when it is entirely extinguished.⁸⁰⁸

3 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Xenophanes

Xenophanes held that the monthly disappearance too occurs through extinction.

3 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Conjunction and the earth’s shadow

Thales, Anaxagoras, Plato, and the Stoics, in agreement with the mathematical astronomers, held that the moon undergoes its monthly disappearances when it is in conjunction with the sun and bathed in its light. Eclipses occur when it falls into the earth’s shadow, the earth having come between the two heavenly bodies; or rather, when the moon is blocked off.⁸⁰⁹

789.Wachsmuth supplies the latter part of the heading from Photius, Bibliotheca 167, 112b12 and following. “Appearance” concerns the markings visible on the moon; “signs” concerns indications of weather. The supplied wording remains marked on both sides.

790.Compare the sun’s twenty-eightfold circle in I.25.1c. The present passage gives nineteen, retains the distinction between the wheel and its outlet, and attributes eclipse to its turnings. In I.26.3 Anaximander’s eclipse is described as closure of the outlet. The supplied “wheel” comes from the parallel Placita.

791.The causal “for” is in the printed Greek, although illumination does not establish equal size. Wachsmuth flags the connection as problematic. The translation preserves it instead of supplying an unstated argument.

792.The account combines a solid lunar surface with incandescence. Diogenes’ pumice comparison likewise concerns a porous physical body; compare his account of the sun in I.25.3c.

793.The name Ion follows Wachsmuth’s text. His apparatus records proposed replacements, Alcmaeon and Antiphon, but also notes that Photius’s list of authors names Ion here.

794.The half-burning sphere supplies the physical background to Berossus’ explanation below: the moon darkens when its unburned portion turns toward us.

795.The unnamed advocates of a cylindrical moon are distinct from Empedocles’ disk-shaped moon. The compressed account makes fire responsible for the air’s solidification.

796.The fifth substance is the celestial aether, distinguished from earth, water, air, and fire. The Greek says “boundaries of the air”; the additional words “and of the aether,” proposed in the apparatus, are not printed or inserted here.

797.“Craftsmanlike” renders technikon, the Stoic description of fire that acts methodically to form and sustain things. Compare the fuller distinction between kinds of fire in I.25.5. Wachsmuth assigns this and the following report to Arius Didymus, physical fragment 34.

798.Wachsmuth prints piloeidē, “felt-cap-shaped,” following Lipsius’ correction of pēloeidē, “clay-like.” The unusual shape belongs to the adopted Greek reading.

799.The report distinguishes the moon’s spherical body from its changing visible phases. “Gibbous” renders amphikyrton, convex on both sides, for a phase between half and full. The lettering follows the source, which passes from i to k.

800.Potima means waters fit to drink, in contrast with the sea that nourishes the sun in I.25.5. “Next after the sun” preserves the report’s compressed ordering without assigning a precise interval or distance.

801.The text moves from mēn, “month,” to meis, here the visible moon or its visible portion. The related words can overlap in other contexts. Keeping the distinction makes sense of the two definitions; compare LSJ, s.v. meis, sense II.2, which cites Chrysippus for the visible part of the moon.

802.The last two reports are elliptical, with “light” understood from the first. The translation retains “more rarefied” without supplying an explicit comparison absent from the Greek.

803.This account explains invisibility by the overpowering effect of brighter light. Its own-light theory differs from the borrowed-light explanation that follows.

804.The claim of priority for Thales is the claim made by the transmitted report. It is retained as part of that report, rather than independently established here.

805.The difference in brightness is attributed to the surrounding air. Compare the bowl-shaped sun and moon in I.25.1g and I.26.1c.

806.This section includes both eclipses and the moon’s regular monthly disappearance. Some reports distinguish the two; others explain them through the same physical process. “Conjunction” below is the moon’s coming together with the sun in the sky.

807.The counter-earth is another body in the Pythagorean cosmic scheme. Aristotle, On the Heavens II.13, reports theories in which the earth and other unseen bodies circle the center, and these bodies can obstruct the moon. The report here also names Philip of Opus as a source.

808.Although placed under eclipse, this report describes the entire waxing and waning cycle. Wachsmuth supplies the modal particle an from the parallel Placita; it has no separate natural English equivalent.

809.The final clause, “or rather, when the moon is blocked off,” is textually corrupt according to Wachsmuth’s apparatus. A proposed reconstruction makes it refer instead to a solar eclipse caused by the moon. That conjecture has not replaced the printed text here. The bracketed men, rejected by Diels, remains visible on the Greek side and is not incorporated into the English.