Lunar fragment

Use in the book

Achilles at A55 surveys different orderings of sun, moon and Kronos, then says that the more common opinion puts the moon first because it is a fragment of the sun. He adduces Empedocles with an abbreviated B45 citation, translated as a light not its own circling the earth. The citation supports borrowed or dependent lunar light more directly than it establishes a material piece physically torn from the sun.

The argumentative transition is therefore important. The witness links his fragment account to a verse, but the wording printed does not compel that interpretation. Other reports describe the moon as air cut off by fire and congealed like hail, or as cloud-like compacted air. Those different material accounts cannot be reconciled merely by treating the fragment image as a literal quotation from Empedocles.

The headword records both the later interpretation and the narrower evidence of the embedded verse, preserving an instructive example of how quotation and explanatory frame can diverge.

Places to read

1. A 55 (testimony)Achilles, In Aratum 16 p. 43,2 Maass. Connects a common lunar-fragment opinion with an Empedoclean citation, without proving that every preceding celestial order is his.
2. A 55 (quotation)Empedocles B45, abbreviated within Achilles, In Aratum 16. The printed verse citation concerns light not the moon’s own circling the earth; it does not explicitly state a physical detachment from the sun.
3. A 55 (apparatus)Diels, apparatus. Records ἀπόφασμα as a variant for ἀπόσπασμα.

Translation in this edition

Distinguish Achilles’ physical interpretation from the verse’s borrowed-light wording. The Greek verse is abbreviated here even though the English gives a fuller rendering.