Apparent sun

Use in the book

Aëtius at A56 places the apparent sun in the hemisphere filled with air mixed with heat. It arises by reflection involving the rounded earth and a crystalline sun and is carried around with the motion of the fiery one. The concluding summary makes the sun a reflection of the fire about earth. A further notice says that the sun according to reflection is equal to earth.

These descriptions give a real contrast between source and appearance but do not yield an unambiguous optical model. The apparent sun should not simply be called an illusion: the witness treats it as a physical reflection with a place, movement and size relation. At the same time, the relation of the several reflecting or crystalline items is unclear in the transmitted account.

Ps.-Plutarch’s A30 statement that the sun is not fire by nature but reflected fire offers a related account. Diogenes’ A1 §77 instead calls the sun a great mass of fire. The lexicon preserves that difference rather than declaring all reports verbatim descriptions of the same two-level theory.

Places to read

1. A 56 (testimony)Aëtius II 20,13 and II 21,2. Describes the reflected visible sun and adds its equality in size to earth.
2. A 30 (testimony)Ps.-Plutarch, Stromateis, in Eusebius P.E. I 8,10. Distinguishes the sun’s nature from the fire whose reflection it is.
3. A 1 §§ 76–77 (testimony)Diogenes Laertius VIII 77. Calls the sun a great mass of fire, a formulation not automatically identical with the reflected-sun account.

Translation in this edition

Diels identifies συντεμόντα in A56 as an old gloss and marks the solar report unclear. A fluent English translation cannot remove those transmission and interpretation limits.