De Facie Quae in orbe Lunae Apparet

Speaking generally, he said, I marvel that they adduce against us the moon’s shining upon the earth at the half and at the gibbous and the crescent phases too.[*](i.e. the moon at the half, gibbous, and crescent phases presents such a great difficulty for the Stoics themselves that it is strange for them to adduce these phenomena as refutation of the theory that the moon shines by reflected light. Wyttenbach’s conjecture, ἐκπίπτουσαν for ἐμπίπτουσαν, approved by Purser and apparently adopted by Prickard in his translation of 1918, betrays a misapprehension of the meaning of the text.) After all, if the mass of the moon that is illuminated by the sun were ethereal or fiery, the

sun would not leave her[*](For ἀπέλειπεν cf. 931 C s.v.. The dative with the verb is unobjectionable, cf. e.g. [Reg. et Imp. Apophthegm.] 178 D, 195 F.) a hemisphere that to our perception is ever in shadow and unilluminated; on the contrary, if as he revolves he grazed her ever so slightly, she should be saturated in her entirety and altered through and through by the light proceeding easily in all directions. Since wine that just touches water at its surface[*](For κατὰ πέρας cf. Communibus Notitiis, 1080 E ( = S. V. F. ii, frag, 487): ψαύειν κατὰ πέρας τὰ σώματα λέγουσι and S. V. F. ii, frag. 433 cited in note d on 930 F s.v.. The emendations of Emperius and Papabasileios are consequently ill-advised.) or a drop of blood fallen into liquid at the moment [of contact] stains all the liquid red,[*](cf. Communibus Notitiis, 1078 D - E ( = S. V. F. ii, frag. 480) and S. V. F. ii, frags. 473, 477, 479.) and since they say that the air itself is filled with sunshine not by having any effluences or rays commingled with it but by an alteration and change that results from impact or contact of the light,[*](cf.S. V. F. ii, frag. 433 (Galen, In Hippocr. Epidem. vi Comment. iv, vol. xvii, B, p. 161 [Kühn], especially: τοῖς ἄνω πέρασιν αὐτοῦ (scil. τοῦ ἀέρος) προσπιπτούσης τῆς ἡλιακῆς αὐγῆς ὅλος ἀλλοιοῦταί τε καὶ μεταβάλλεται συνεχὴς ὢν ἑαυτῷ). cf. also note a on 922 E supra.) how do they imagine that a star can come in contact with a star or light with light and instead of blending and producing a thorough mixture and change merely illuminate those portions of the surface which it touches?[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 4. 101 (p. 182. 20 ff. [Ziegler]) for the doctrine of Posidonius, which Plutarch here turns against him and the Stoics generally: τρίτη ἐστὶν αἵρεσις ἡ λέγουσα κιρνᾶσθαι αὐτῆς (scil. τῆς σελήνης) τὸ φῶς ἔκ τε τοῦ οἰκείου καὶ τοῦ ἡλιακοῦ φωτὸς καὶ τοιοῦτον γίνεσθαι οὐκ ἀπαθοῦς μενούσης αὐτῆς ἀλλ᾽ ἀλλοιουμένης ὑπὸ τοῦ ἡλιακοῦ φωτὸς καὶ κατὰ τοιαύτην τὴν κρᾶσιν ἴδιον ἰσχούσης τὸ φῶς cf. ibid. 104 (p. 188. 4-7).) In fact, the circle which the sun in its revolution describes and causes to turn about the moon now coinciding with the circle that divides her visible and invisible parts and now standing at right angles to it so as to intersect it and be intersected by it, by different inclinations and relations of the bright part to the dark producing in her the gibbous and crescent phases,[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 5. 109-111 (pp. 196. 28-200. 23 [Ziegler]).) conclusively demonstrates that her illumination is the result not of combination but of contact, not of a concentration of light within her but of light shining upon her from without. In that she is not only illuminated herself, however, but also transmits to us the semblance of her illumination, she gives us all the more confidence in our theory of her substance. There are no reflections from anything rarefied or tenuous in texture, and it is not easy even to imagine light rebounding from light or fire from fire; but whatever is to cause a repercussion or a reflection must be compact and solid,[*](Here ἐμβριθές is used as the opposite of λεπτομερές (cf. Liddell and Scott, s.v. ἐμβρίθεια ii) as πυκνόν is of ἀραιόν.) in order that it may stop a blow and repel it.[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 4. 101-102 (p. 184. 9-18 [Ziegler]). Cleomedes, assuming that the moon is μανόν, uses this as an argument against reflection; Plutarch, having established the necessity of reflection, uses the argument to support the contention that the moon is earthy.) At any rate, the same sunlight that the air lets pass without impediment or resistance is widely reflected and diffused from wood and stone and clothing exposed to its rays. The earth too we see illuminated by the sun in this fashion. It does not let the light penetrate its depths as water does or pervade it through and through as air does; but such as is the circle of the sun that moves around the moon and so great as is the part of her that it intercepts, just such a circle in turn moves around the earth, always illuminating just so much and leaving another part unilluminated,[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 5. 108 (p. 194. 20 ff. [Ziegler]).) for the illuminated portion of either body appears to be slightly greater than a hemisphere.[*](Cleomedes, ii. 5. 109 (p. 198. 6-9 [Ziegler]).) Give me leave then to put it in geometrical fashion in terms of a proportion. Given three things approached by the light from the sun: earth, moon, air; if we see that the moon is illuminated not as the air is rather than as the earth, the things upon which the same agent produces the same effects must be of a similar nature. [*](I have tried to preserve the contorted form in which Plutarch expresses the point that the moon, since it is affected by sunlight as the earth is and not as air is, must have the consistency of earth and not of air.)

When all had applauded Lucius, I said: Congratulations upon having added to an elegant account an elegant proportion, for you must not be defrauded of what belongs to you, He smiled thereat and said: Well then proportion must be used a second time, in order that we may prove the moon to be like the earth not only because the effects of the same agent are the same on both but also because the effects of both on the same patient are the same. Now, grant me that nothing that happens to the sun is so like its setting as a solar eclipse. You will if you call to mind this conjunction recently which, beginning just after noonday, made many stars shine out from many parts of the sky[*](Concerning this eclipse see the Introduction, § 3 supra on the date of the dialogue.) and tempered the air in the manner of twilight.[*](For λυκανγές see 941 D s.v. and Lucian, Vera Hist. ii, 12. Prickard takes the κρᾶσις to refer to the degree of heat; Raingeard, like Amyot and Wyttenbach, takes it to refer to colour or light. Either is possible, but I think a reference to colour the more probable; for κρᾶσις used of colour cf. Quaest. Conviv 647 c.) If you do not recall it, Theon here will cite us Mimnermus[*](cf.Anthologia Lyrica Graeca, ed. Diehl², i. 1, pp. 50-57, and Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus, i, pp. 82-103; Mimnermus is mentioned in the pseudo-Plutarchean Musica, chap. 8, 1133 f.) and Cydias[*](cf. Plato, Charmides, 155 d; Edmonds, Lyra Graeca, iii, p. 68; Wilamowitz, Textgeschichte der griechischen Lyriker, p. 40, n. 1.) and

Archilochus[*](cf. Archilochus, frag. 74 (Anthologia Lyrica Graeca, ed. Diehl², i. 3, p. 33 = Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus, ii, p. 134).) and Stesichorus besides and Pindar,[*](cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 12, § 54: quo in metu fuisse Stesichori et Pindari vatum sublimia ora palam est deliquio solis. ) who during eclipses bewail the brightest star bereft [*](= Pindar, Paean, ix. 2-3: ἄστρον ὑπέρτατον ἐν ἁμέρᾳ κλεπτόμενον. ) and at midday night falling [*](Possibly Stesichorus, cf. Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci⁴ , iii, p. 229 (frag. 73), and Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus, i, p. 102, n. 1.) and say that the beam of the sun [is sped] the path of shade [*](cf. Pindar, Paean, ix. 5: ἐτίσκοτον ἀτραπὸν ἐσσυμένα. For the genitive σκότους cf. Audiendis Poetis, 36 E, and Latenter Vivendo, 1130 B.); and to crown all he will cite Homer, who says the faces of men are covered with night and gloom[*](Adapted from Odyssey, xx. 351-352.) and the sun has perished out of heaven[*](Odyssey, xx. 356-357.) speaking with reference to the moon and [hinting that] this naturally occurs

When waning month to waxing month gives say.[*](Odyssey, xix. 307. For this interpretation of the Homeric lines cf. Vita et Poesi Homer, chap. 108 (vii, p. 388. 15 ff. [Bernardakis]), and Heraclitus, Quaestiones Homericae, § 75 (pp. 98. 20-99. 18 [Oelmann]).)

For the rest, I think that it has been reduced by the precision of mathematics to the [clear] and certain [formula] that night is the shadow of earth[*](cf. Primo Frigido, 953 A and Plat. Quaest. 1006 F, where on Timaeus, 40 C Plutarch quotes Empedocles to this effect. Aristotle refers to the definition, Topics, 146 B 28 and Meteorology, 345 B 7-8.) and the eclipse of the sun is the shadow of the moon[*](cf. the lines of Empedocles quoted at 929 c-d supra. In Placitis, 890 F = Aëtius, ii. 24. 1 this explanation of solar eclipses is ascribed to Thales — quite unhistorically, as the subsequent entries show.) whenever the visual ray encounters it. The fact is that in setting the sun is screened from our vision by the earth and in eclipse by the moon; both are cases of occultation, but the vespertine is occultation by the earth and the ecliptic by the moon with her shadow intercepting the visual ray.[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 3. 94-95 (p. 172. 6-10 [Ziegler]) and ii. 4. 106 (p. 192. 16-24); Geminus, x (pp. 130. 11-132. 12 [Manitius]).) What follows from this is easy to perceive. If the effect is similar, the agents are similar, for it must be the same agents that cause the same things to happen to the same subject. Nor should we marvel if the darkness of eclipses is not so deep or so oppressive of the air as night is. The reason is that the body which produces night and that which produces the eclipse while the same in substance are not equal in size. In fact the Egyptians, I think, say that the moon is one seventy-second part (of the earth),[*](I know of no other reference to such an estimate.) and Anaxagoras that it is the size of the Peloponnesus[*](According to Hippolytus, Refut. i. 8. 6-10 ( = Dox. Graeci, p. 562 = Anaxagoras, frag. A 42 [ii, p. 16. 16-31, Diels-Kranz]), Anaxagoras said that the sun exceeds the Peloponnesus in size (cf. Aëtius, ii. 21. 3 and Diogenes Laertius, ii. 8). The statement here concerning the moon is missing from Diels-Kranz.); and Aristarchus demonstrates that the ratio of [the earth’s diameter to] the diameter of the moon is smaller than 60 to 19 and greater than 108 to 43.[*](This is Proposition 17 of Aristarchus’s essay, On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon (cf. Heath’s edition and translation in his Aristarchus of Samos, pp. 351 ff.). Although Plutarch does not say that this contradicts Stoic doctrine, the older, orthodox Stoics held that the moon as well as the sun is larger than the earth ( Placitis, 891 C = Aëtius, ii. 26. 1 = S. V. F. ii, frag. 666; cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 11 [8]. 49).) Consequently the earth because of its size removes the sun from sight entirely, for the obstruction is large and its duration is that of the night. Even if the moon, however, does sometimes cover the sun entirely, the eclipse does not have duration or extension; but a kind of light is visible about the rim which keeps the shadow from being profound and absolute.[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 4. 105 (p. 190. 17-26).) The ancient Aristotle gives this as a reason besides some others why the moon is observed in eclipse more frequently than the sun, saying that the sun is eclipsed by interposition of the moon but the moon [by that of the earth, which is much larger].[*](= Aristotle, frag. 210 (Rose). The reference is not to Caelo, 293 B 20-25, for in that passage Aristotle gives not his own opinion but that of some Pythagoreans (cf. Cherniss, Aristotles Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy, pp. 198-199, and Aëtius, ii. 29. 4 cited there). For the terminology σελήνης or γῆς ἀντίφραξις cf. Aristotle, Anal. Post. 90 a 15-18, and with the whole passage cf. Pseudo-Alexander, Problem. 2. 46 (quoted by Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, § 194, p. 222), and Philoponus, In Meteor. p. 15. 21-23.) Posidonius gave this definition: The following condition is an eclipse of the sun, conjunction of the moon’s shadow with whatever [parts of the earth it may obscure], for there is an eclipse only for those whose visual ray the shadow of the moon intercepts and screens from the sun[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 3. 94-95 (p. 172. 6-17 [Ziegler]) and 98 (p. 178. 13-24), ii. 4. 106 (p. 192. 14-20).); — since he concedes then that a shadow of the moon falls upon us, he has left himself nothing to say that I can see. Of a star there can be no shadow, for shadow means the unlighted and light does not produce shadow but naturally destroys it.[*](Posidonius ranked the moon as a star; cf. Arius Didymus, Epitome, frag. 32 (Dox. Graeci, p. 466. 18-21), and Edelstein, A. J. P. lvii (1936), p. 297. For the theory that the light of the moon is a product of her own proper light and the solar light which produces an alteration in her cf. Cleomedes, ii. 4.101 (pp. 182. 20-184. 3 [Ziegler]) and 104 (p. 188. 5-27), the latter of which indicates how the present contention of Plutarch could have been answered from the point of view of Posidonius.)

Well now, he said, which of the proofs came after this? And I replied, That the moon is subject to the same eclipse. Thank you, he said, for reminding me; but now shall I assume that you have been persuaded and do hold the moon to be eclipsed by being caught in the shadow and so

turn straightway to my argument,[*](The argument that the moon is earthy, which at the beginning of chap. 19 (931 D) Lucius stated in the form of a proportion.) or do you prefer that I give you a lecture and demonstration in which each of the arguments is enumerated? By heaven, said Theon, do give these gentlemen a lecture. As for me, I want some persuasion as well, since I have only heard it put this way: when the three bodies, earth and sun and moon, get into a straight line, eclipses take place because the earth deprives the moon or the moon, on the other hand, deprives the earth of the sun, the sun being eclipsed when the moon and the moon when the earth takes the middle position of the three, the former of which cases occurs at conjunction and the latter at the middle of the month. [*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 6. 115 (p. 208. 9-12 [Ziegler]) for the eclipse of the moon and ii. 4. 106 (p. 192, 14-20) for the eclipse of the sun; cf. also Theon of Smyrna, p. 193. 23 ff, and p. 197. 22 ff. (Hiller); Geminus, viii. 14 (p. 104. 23 ff. [Manitius]).) Whereupon Lucius said, Those are roughly the main points, though, of what is said on the subject. Add thereto first, if you will, the argument from the shape of the shadow. It is a cone, as is natural when a large fire or light that is spherical circumfuses a smaller but spherical mass.[*](See notes a and b on 923 B supra.) This is the reason why in eclipses of the moon the darkened parts are outlined against the bright in segments that are curved,[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 6. 118 (p. 214. 2-12 [Ziegler]); Aristotle, Caelo, 297 B 23-30.) for whenever two round bodies come into contact the lines by which either intersects the other turn out to be circular since they have everywhere a uniform tendency.[*](i.e. the intersecting lines are always arcs of a circle because the degree of curvature of each of the two surfaces is at every point similar. For this interpretation cf Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), p. 144.) Secondly, I think that you are aware that of the moon the eastward parts are first eclipsed and of the sun the westward parts and that, while the shadow of the earth moves from east to west, the sun and the moon move contrariwise towards the east.[*](cf.Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), p. 144; Cleomedes, ii. 6. 116 (p. 210. 6-19 [Ziegler]), 117 (p. 212. 1-12) on the lunar eclipse; ii. 5. 113-114 (p. 204. 27 ff.) on the solar eclipse; Geminus, xii. 5-13 (pp. 138-140 [Manitius]) on the eastward motion of sun and moon.) This is made visible to sense-perception by the phenomena and needs no very lengthy explanations to be understood, and these phenomena confirm the cause of the eclipse. Since the sun is eclipsed by being overtaken and the moon by encountering that which produces the eclipse, it is reasonable or rather it is necessary that the sun be caught first from behind and the moon from the front, for the obstruction begins from that point which the intercepting body first assails. The sun is assailed from the west by the moon that is striving after him, and she is assailed from the east [by the earth’s shadow] that is sweeping down as it were in the opposite direction. Thirdly, moreover, consider the matter of the duration and the magnitude of lunar eclipses. If the moon is eclipsed when she is high and far from the earth, she is concealed for a little time; but, if this very thing happens to her when she is low and near the earth, she is strongly curbed and is slow to get out of the shadow, although when she is low her exertions of motion are greatest and when she is high they are least. The reason for the difference lies in the shadow, which being broadest at the base, as cones are, and gradually contracting terminates at the vertex in a sharp and fine tip. Consequently the moon, if she has met the shadow when she is low, is involved by it in its largest circles[*](cf. Communibus Notitiis, 1080 B: αὐταὶ γάρ δήπουθεν αἱ τῶν κωνικῶν τμημάτων ἐπιφάνειαι. κύκλοι εἰσίν.) and traverses its deep and darkest part; but above as it were in shallow water by reason of the fineness of the shadow she is just grazed and quickly gets clean away.[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 6. 119 (pp. 214. 13-216. 8 [Ziegler]); for the observation that the planets appear to move most swiftly when they are nearest to the earth and most slowly when they are farthest away cf. Cleomedes, ii. 5. 112-114 (pp. 202. 26-206. 27), and Theon of Smyrna, p. 135. 6-11 and p. 157. 2-12 (Hiller). Plutarch’s language, however, implies that the moon makes a conscious exertion to accelerate her motion when she is near the earth, and in the myth at 944 A s.v. it is stated that she increases her speed in order to escape the shadow of the earth. Kepler in note 51 to his translation declares that, contrary to what Lucius here says, perigee eclipses even when central are briefer than apogee eclipses; and Prickard (Plutarch on the Face of the Moon [1911], p. 11) says that ceteris paribus an eclipse of a distant moon should be longer by about one fifteenth. Prof. Neugebauer informs me that, using the Ptolemaic figures for the apparent diameter of the moon and of the earth’s shadowand the classical figures given by Geminus for the velocity, the maximum totality in apogee should be 4; 3, 23ʰʳ and in perigee 3; 20, 0ʰʳ.) I pass over all that was said besides with particular reference to the phases and variations,[*](Probably a reference to such matters as are discussed by Geminus, ix (pp, 124-130 [Manitius]), With τὰς φάσεις καὶ διαφορήσεις cf. species diversitatesque Lunae, Martianus Capella, viii. 871 (p. 459. 15-16 [Dick]).) for these too, in so far as is possible,[*](It is impossible to give an exhaustive and accurately scientific explanation of physical phenomena, for they are involved in the indeterminateness of matter. cf. Aristotle, Anal. Post. 87 a 31-37 and Metaphysics, 995 A 14-17, 1078 A 9-13 (cf. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, ii. 2, p. 166, n. 3); and for Plato’s more extreme attitude cf. especially Timaeus, 29 B - C, Philebus, 56 and 59. Plutarch appears to have Philebus, 56 C in mind at Quaest. Conviv 744 e-f, where he makes astronomy attendant upon geometry, as he has Philebus, 66 a-b in mind at 720 C (cf. R. M. Jones, Class. Phil. vii [1912], pp. 76 f.). For the notion of the necessary lack of accuracy of the physical sciences cf. further Plat. Quaest. 1001 E ff. and Quaest. Conviv 699 B.) admit the cause alleged; and instead I revert to the argument before us[*](cf. note a on 932 D supra.) which has its basis in the evidence of the senses. We see that from a shadowy place fire glows and shines forth more intensely,[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 3. 99 (p. 180. 11-13 [Ziegler]) and ii. 6. 120-121 (p. 218. 2-3).) whether because the dark air being dense does not admit its effluences and diffusions but confines and concentrates the substance in a single place or because this is an affection of our senses that as hot things appear to be hotter in comparison with cold and pleasures more intense in comparison with pains so bright things appear conspicuous when compared with dark, their appearance being intensified by contrast to the different impressions.[*](cf.Quomodo Adul. ab Amico Internosc. 57 C, Herodoti Malignitate, 863 E.) The former explanation seems to be the more plausible, for in sunlight fire of every kind not only loses its brilliance but by giving way becomes ineffective and less keen, the reason being that the heat of the sun disperses and dissipates its potency.[*](cf. Aristotle, Caelo, 305 A 9-13; [Alexander], Anima Libri Mantissa, p. 128. 2-7 (Bruns), and the explanation of the moon’s phases ascribed to Antiphon in Placitis, 891 D = Aëtius, ii. 28. 4 (Dox. Graeci, p. 358).) If, then, as the Stoics themselves assert,[*](See 928 D supra with note d there and 935 B s.v.. Reference to the present passage is omitted in S. V. F. ) the moon, being a rather turbid star, has a faint and feeble fire of her own, she ought to have none of the things happen to her that now obviously do but the very opposite; she ought to be revealed when she is hidden and hidden whenever she is now revealed, that is hidden all the rest of the time when she is bedimmed by the circumambient ether[*](αἰθήρ is here used in the Stoic sense as in 922 B and 928 c-d supra.) but shining forth and becoming brilliantly clear at intervals of six months or again at intervals of five when she sinks under the shadow of the earth, since of 465 ecliptic full moons 404 occur in cycles of six months and the rest in cycles of five months.[*](For this period of 465 ecliptic full moons cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), p. 145.) It ought to have been at such intervals of time then that the moon is revealed resplendent in the shadow, whereas in the shadow she is eclipsed and loses her light but regains it again as soon as she escapes the shadow[*](For this argument cf. Cleomedes, ii. 4. 103 (p. 182. 10-16 [Ziegler]).) and is revealed often even by day, which implies that she is anything but a fiery and star-like body.

When Lucius said this, almost while [he was speaking] Pharnaces and Apollonides sprang forth together. Then, Apollonides having yielded, Pharnaces said that this very point above all proves the moon to be a star or fire, since she is not entirely invisible in her eclipses but displays a colour smouldering and grim which is peculiar to her.[*](= S. V. F. ii, frag. 672. cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 9. 42. (deficiens et in defectu tamen conspicua); Olympiodorus, In Meteor. p. 67. 36-37; Philoponus, In Meteor. pp. 30. 37-31. 1 and p. 106. 9-13. The moon is seldom invisible to the naked eye even in total eclipses (cf. Dyson and Woolley, Eclipses of the Sun and Moon, p. 30; C. A. Young, Manual of Astronomy [1902], § 287; Boll, s.v. Finsternisse, R. E. vi. 2344); and the apparent colour of the moon in total eclipse was as late as the 16th century adduced as evidence that the moon had light of its own, a notion entertained as possible even by W. Herschel (cf. Pixis, Kepler als Geograph, pp. 132-133).) Apollonides raised an objection concerning the shadow on the ground that scientists always give this name to the region that is without light and the heaven does not admit shadow.[*](For a Stoic this follows from the definition of οὐρανός as ἔσχατον αἰθέρος and πύρινον (cf. S. V.F. i, p. 33, frags. 115 and 116; S. V. F. ii, frag. 580 [p. 180. 10-12]).) This, I said, is the objection of one who speaks captiously to the name rather than like a natural scientist and mathematician to the fact. If one refuses to call the region screened by the earth shadow and insists upon calling it lightless space, nevertheless when the moon gets into it she must [be obscured since she is deprived of the solar light]. Speaking generally too, it is silly, I said, to deny that the shadow of the earth reaches

that point [from which on its part] the shadow of the moon by impinging upon the sight and [extending] to the earth produces an eclipse of the sun. Now I shall turn to you, Pharnaces. That smouldering and glowing colour of the moon which you say is peculiar to her is characteristic of a body that is compact and a solid, for no remnant or trace of flame will remain in tenuous things nor is incandescence possible unless there is a hard body that has been ignited through and through and sustains the ignition.[*](cf. 922 A-B supra. With ἀνθρακογένεσις, incandescence, Raingeard compares ἀνθρακοποιΐα in Gregory of Nyssa, iii. 937 A.) So Homer too has somewhere said:

1. But when fire’s bloom had flown and flame had ceased
2. He smoothed the embers. . .[*](Iliad, ix. 212-213 in our texts read: αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ κατὰ πῦρ ἐκάη καὶ φλὸξ ἐμαράνθη, )
3. [*](ἀνθρακιὴν στορέσας ὀβελοὺς ἐφύπερθε τάνυσσε, but the first line as Plutarch gives it was known to Aristarchus, who rejected it (cf. Ludwich, Aristarchs Homerische Textkritik, i, p. 302; Eustathius, Ad Iliadem, 748. 41; Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem, ed. Dindorf, i, p. 312).)

The reason probably is that what is igneous[*](Purser has pointed out (Hermathena, xvi [1911], p. 316) that ἄνθραξ may mean all degrees of burning coal from complete incandescence to ashes and that fire’s need of solid matter to work upon was often used as an argument against the Stoic conflagration of the world: cf. Philo, Aeternitate Mundi, §§ 86-88 (vi, pp. 99. 14-100. 10 [Cohn-Reiter]).) is not fire but body that has been ignited and subjected to the action of fire, which adheres to a solid and stable mass and continues to occupy itself with it, whereas flames are the kindling and flux of tenuous nourishment or matter which because of its feebleness is swiftly dissolved. Consequently there would be no other proof of the moons earthy and compact nature so manifest as the smouldering colour, if it really were her own. But it is not so, my dear Pharnaces, for as she is eclipsed she exhibits many changes of colour which scientists have distinguished as follows, delimiting them according to time or hour.[*](cf.Aemilius Paulus, 17 (264 B), Nicias, 23 (538 E) and for a description and explanation of the phenomenon cf. Sir John Herschel, Outlines of Astronomy, §§ 421-424, and J. F. J. Schmidt, r Mond (Leipzig, 1836), p. 35. Astrology assigned special significance to the various colours of the moon in total eclipse: cf. Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum, vii (Brussels, 1908), p. 131. 6 ff.; Ptolemy, Apotelesmatica, ii. 14. 4-5 (pp. 101-102 [Boll-Boer]) and ii. 10. 1-2 (pp. 91-92); and Boll in R. E. vi. 2350 assumes that by μαθηματικοί in the present passage Plutarch means astrologers (but see 937 F s.v.). Neither there nor in his article, Antike Beobachtungen farbiger Sterne, does Boll mention any classification of the colours according to the time of the eclipse, however, nor does Gundel, s.v. Mond in R. E. xvi. 1. 101-102. Geminuss calendar for the different phases of the moon (ix. 14-15 [pp. 128-130, Manitius]) has no connection with this matter and so is not, as Adler supposes (Diss. Phil. Vind. x, p. 157), an indication that Plutarchs source in the present passage was Posidonius.) If the eclipse occurs between eventide and half after the third hour, she appears terribly black; if at midnight, then she gives off this reddish and fiery colour; from half after the seventh hour a blush arises[*](This, pace Prickard, must be the meaning of ἀνίσταται here; cf. ἀνιστάμενος in Pompey, 34 (637 D) and ἀναστάντος in Appian, B.C. i. 56 (ii, p. 61. 7 [Mendelssohn-Viereck]).) on her face; and finally, if she is eclipsed when dawn is already near, she takes on a bluish or azure[*](In Marius, 11 (411 D) χαροπότης is used of the eye-colour of the Teutons and Cimbrians, and in Iside, 352 D the colour of the flax-flower is said to resemble τῇ περιεχούσῃ τὸν κόσμον αἰθερίῳ χαροπότητι.) hue, from which especially it is that the poets and Empedocles give her the epithet bright-eyed. [*](See 929 D supra and note b there; but Diels (Hermes, xv [1880], p. 176) because of ἀνακαλοῦνται thought that Plutarch must here have had in mind a verse of Empedocles that ended with the invocation, γλαυκῶπι, Σελήνη. cf. also Euripides, frag. 1009 (Nauck²).) Now, when one sees the moon take on so many hues in the shadow, it is a mistake to settle upon the smouldering colour alone, the very one that might especially be called alien to her and rather an admixture or remnant of the light shining round about through the shadow, while the black or earthy colour should be called her own.[*](Kepler remarks on this sentence (note 56): Ecce Plutarchum meae sententiae proxime accedentem, nisi quod non dicit, a quo lucente sit illud lumen, num ab aethere, an a Sole ipso, per refractionem ejus radiorum. ) Since here on earth places near lakes and rivers open to the sun take on the colour and brilliance of the purple and red awnings that shade them, by reason of the reflections giving off many various effulgences, what wonder if a great flood of shade debouching as it were into a heavenly sea of light, not calm or at rest but undergoing all sorts of combinations and alterations as it is churned about by countless stars, takes from the moon at different times the stain of different hues and presents them to our sight?[*](cf. the similar but more elaborate description in Genio Socratis, 590 C ff., where the stars are islands moving in a celestial sea, and also Sera Numinis Vindicta, 563 E-F.) A star or fire could not in shadow shine out black or glaucous or bluish; but over mountains, plains, and sea flit many kinds of colours from the sun, and blended with the shadows and mists his brilliance[*](For λαμπρόν, brilliance, as a colour cf. Plato, Timaeus, 68 A; Theophrastus calls it τὸ πυρῶδες λευκόν ( Sensibus, § 86 [Dox. Graeci, p. 525. 23]).) induces such tints as brilliance does when blended with a painter’s pigments. Those of the sea Homer has endeavoured somehow or other to designate, using the terms violet [*](e.g. Iliad, xi. 298.) and wine-dark deep [*](e.g. Iliad, i. 350. ) and again purple swell [*](e.g. Iliad, i. 481-482. ) and elsewhere glaucous sea [*](Only in Iliad, xvi. 34 (cf. Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem, ed. Dindorf, ii, p. 92).) and white calm [*](Odyssey, x. 94.); but he passed over as being an endless multitude the variations of the colours that appear differently at different times about the land. It is likely, however, that the moon has not a single plane surface like the sea but closely resembles in constitution the earth that the ancient Socrates made the subject of a myth,[*](Plato, Phaedo, 110 B ff.) whether he really was speaking in riddles about this earth or was giving a description of some other.[*](This one, tau/thn, means the earth, not the moon, as most translators since Wyttenbach have thought; some other, ἄλλην τινά, means some other earth, which is exactly what Lamprias believes the moon to be. So Lamprias means that what Socrates said must be considered as a riddle if he was really talking about our earth but can be taken as straightforward description if he was referring to some other earth, i.e. the moon.) It is in fact not incredible or wonderful that the moon, if she has nothing corrupted or slimy [in] her but garners pure light from heaven and is filled with warmth, which is fire not glowing or raging but moist[*](Or, if νοτεροῦ is a scribal error for νοεροῦ, intellectual; cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), p. 145.) and harmless and in its natural state, has got open regions of marvellous beauty and mountains flaming bright and has zones of royal purple with gold and silver not scattered in her depths but bursting forth in abundance on the plains or openly visible on the smooth heights.[*](The details of this description were suggested by Phaedo, 110 C 111 C, to which Plutarch has referred above.) If through the shadow there comes to us a glimpse of these, different at different times because of some variation and difference of the atmosphere, the honourable repute of the moon is surely not impaired nor is her divinity because she is held by men to be a [celestial and] holy earth rather than, as the Stoics say, a fire turbid and dreggish.[*](See 928 D and 933 D supra. The present passage is not listed in S. V. F. ) Fire, to be sure, is given barbaric honours among the Medes and Assyrians, who from fear by way of propitiation worship the maleficent forces rather than the reverend; but to every Greek, of course, the name of earth is dear and honourable, and it is our ancestral tradition to revere her like any other god. As men we are far from thinking that the moon, because she is a celestial[*](See note c on 929 A supra.) earth, is a body without soul and mind and without share in the firstfruits that it beseems us to offer to the gods, according to custom requiting them for the goods we have received and naturally revering what is better and more honourable in virtue and power. Consequently let us not think it an offence to suppose that she is earth and that for this which appears to be her face, just as our earth has certain great gulfs, so that earth yawns with great depths and clefts which contain water or murky air; the interior of these the light of the sun does not plumb or even touch, but it fails and the reflection which it sends back here is discontinuous. [*](For this discontinuousness of the reflection cf. 921 C supra and especially Quaest. Conviv 686 a-c.)

Here Apollonides broke in. Then by the moon herself, he said, do you people think it possible that any clefts and chasms cast shadows which from the moon reach our sight here; or do you not reckon the consequence, and shall I tell you what it is? Please listen then, though it is not anything unknown to you. The diameter of the moon measures twelve digits in apparent size at her mean distance[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 3. 95 (p. 172. 25-27 [Ziegler]); on this measurement of 12 digits cf. Heath, Aristarchus of Samos, p. 23, n. 1.); and each of the black and shadowy spots appears greater than half a digit and consequently would be greater than one twenty-fourth of her diameter. Well then, if we should suppose that the circumference of the moon is only thirty thousand stades and her diameter ten thousand each of the shadowy spots on her would in accordance with the

assumption measure not less than five hundred stades.[*](Apodonides exaggerates for the sake of his point, for 500 stades is 1/20 not 1/24 of 10,000: but he has guarded himself by saying that each of the spots is more than half a digit and so more than 1/24 of the diameter. On the other hand, he intends his estimate of the moon’s size to err, if at all, on the side of conservatism: cf. only thirty thousand stades. Such small figures, even as minima, are remarkable, however. Cleomedes (ii. 1. 80-81 [pp. 146. 25-148. 3, Ziegler]) gives 40,000 stades as the lunar diameter, basing this upon the assumption that the earth is twice as large as the moon and has a circumference of 250,000 stades according to the measurement of Eratosthenes and a diameter therefore of more than 80,000 stades. Plutarch adopted the same figure for the terrestrial diameter (see 925 D supra) but supposed this and the terrestrial circumference to be three times those of the moon (see 923 B supra and note d there), figures which should have given him more than 26,000 stades as the lunar diameter. According to Hultsch, however, Posidonius must have calculated the lunar diameter to be 12,000 stades (cf. Abhand. K. Gesell. Wissensch. zu Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Kl., N.F. i, No. 5, p. 38), which by the usual approximation would have given 36,000 stades for the lunar circumference; and Apollonides minimal estimate may have been based upon these figures. For the common rough approximation 3-1 as the relation of circumference to diameter cf. Archimedes, Arenarius, ii. 3 (Opera Omnia, ii, p. 234. 28-29 [Heiberg]).) Consider now in the first place whether it is possible for the moon to have depths and corrugations so great as to cast such a large shadow; in the second place why, if they are of such great magnitude, we do not see them. Then I said to him with a smile: Congratulations for having discovered such a demonstration. Apollonides. It would enable you to prove that both you and I are taller than the famous sons of Aloeus,[*](Otus and Ephialtes: cf. Exilio, 602 d; Iliad, v. 385-387; Odyssey, xi. 305-320; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 7. 4. 2-4.) not at every time of day to be sure but early in the morning particularly and in late afternoon, if, when the sun makes our shadows enormous. you intend to supply sensation with this lovely reasoning that, if the shadow cast is large, what casts the shadow is immense. I am well aware that neither of us has been in Lemnos; we have both, however, often heard this line that is on everyone’s lips:

Athos will veil the Lemnian heifer’s flank.[*](The verse, which comes from an unidentified tragedy of Sophocles, is elsewhere quoted with καλύπτει or σκιάζει and with πλευρά or νῶτα (cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag.² , p. 299, frag. 708). For the shadow of Athos cast upon Lemnos cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. iv. 12 (23). 73; Apollonius Rhodius, i. 601-604; Proclus, In Timaeum, 56 B (i, p. 181. 12 ff. [Diehl]).)

The point of this apparently is that the shadow of the mountain, extending not less than seven hundred stades over the sea,[*](Proclus (loc. cit.) says that this is the distance of Lemnos from Athos, Plutarch rather that it is the length of the shadow cast by the mountain. According to Eustathius (Ad Iliadem, 980. 45 ff.), Athos is 300 stades distant from Lemnos, according to Pliny (loc. cit.) 87 Roman miles (unless this is a scribal error for XXXXVII). The actual distance is said to be about 50 miles; and Athos, which is 6350 feet high, could cast a shadow for almost 100 miles over open sea.) falls upon a little bronze heifer; [but it is not necessary, I presume,] that what casts the shadow be [seven hundred stades] high, for the reason that shadows are made many times the size of the objects that cast them by the remoteness of the light from the objects.[*](In this Plutarch is guilty either of an error or of an intentional sophism; cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), p. 145.) Come then, observe that, when the moon is at the full and because of the shadows depth exhibits most articulately the appearance of the face, the sun is at his maximum distance from her. The reason is that the remoteness of the light alone and not the magnitude of the irregularities on the surface of the moon has made the shadow large. Besides, even in the case of mountains the dazzling beams of the sun prevent their crags from being discerned in broad daylight, although their depths and hollows and shadowy parts are visible from afar. So it is not at all strange that in the case of the moon too it is not possible to discern accurately the reflection and illumination, whereas the juxtapositions of the shadowy and brilliant parts by reason of the contrast do not escape our sight.

There is this, however, I said, which seems to be a stronger objection to the alleged reflection from the moon. It happens that those who have placed themselves in the path of reflected rays see not only the object illuminated but also what illuminates it. For example, if when a ray of light rebounds from water to a wall the eye is situated in the place that is itself illuminated by the reflection, the eye discerns all three things, the reflected ray and the water that causes the reflection and the sun itself,[*](i.e. the image of the sun in the water or the reflecting surface.) the source of the light which has been reflected by impinging upon the water. On the basis of these admitted and apparent facts those who maintain that the moon illuminates the earth with reflected light are bidden (by their adversaries)[*](i.e. by the Stoics; cf. e.g. the argument of Cleomedes (ii. 4. 101-102 [p. 184. 4 ff., Ziegler]) against the explanation of the moon’s light as reflection. The following argument in this passage is printed by von Arnim, S. V. F. ii, p. 199 as frag. 675 of Chrysippus.) to point out in the moon at night an appearance of the sun such as there is in water by day whenever there is a reflection of the sun from it. Since there is no such appearance, (these adversaries) think that the illumination comes about in another way and not by reflection and that, if there is not reflection, neither is the moon an earth. What response must be made to them then? said Apollonides, for the characteristics of reflection seem to present us with a problem in common. [*](For the idiom, κοινὸν καὶ πρός τινα εἶναι, cf. Lucullus, 44 (521 A) and 45 (522 B). Apollonides is a geometer (cf. 920 F and 925 A-B supra) who had expressed admiration for Clearchuss theory of reflection from the moon (cf. 921 B supra); by καὶ πρὸς ἡμᾶς here he means that the objection just raised to reflection from the moon constitutes a difficulty for the theory which he has espoused as well as for that of Lamprias and Lucius which he has just attacked. Lamprias in his reply, however, contends that the physical characteristics of the moon on his theory, the very characteristics to which Apollonides has just objected (935 D-E), will explain why the objection does not really make the difficulty for his theory that it would for that of Clearchus.)

In common in a way certainly, said I, but in another way not in common either. In the first place consider the matter of the image,[*](i.e. the reflected image, not the simile, as Amyot and Prickard interpret it.) how topsy-turvy and like rivers flowing uphill[*](For the proverbial expression cf. Hesychius, s. v. ἄνω ποταμῶν; Euripides, Medea, 410; Lucian, Dialogi Mortuorum, 6. 2. ) they conceive it. The fact is that the water is on earth and below, and the moon above the earth and on high; and hence the angles produced by the reflected rays are the converse of each other, the one having its apex above at the moon, the other below at the earth.[*](As Kepler says in his note 64 ad loc., ratio nihil ad rem. ) So they must not demand that every kind of mirror or a mirror at every distance produce a similar reflection, since (in doing so) they are at variance with the manifest facts. Those, on the other hand, who declare that the moon is not a tenuous or a smooth body as water is but a heavy and earthy one,[*](i.e. those who hold the view of the moon’s nature that Lamprias himself espouses.) I do not understand why it is required of them that the sun be manifest to vision in her. For milk does not return such mirrorings either or produce reflections of the visual ray, and the reason is the irregularity and roughness of its particles[*](cf.Quaest. Conviv 696 A; and observe that the phrase, ἀνωμαλία καὶ τραχύτης, used here of milk is in 930 D supra and 937 A s.v. applied to the moon.); how in the world the is it possible for the moon to cast the visual ray back from herself in the way that the smoother mirrors do? Yet even these, of course, are occluded if a scratch or speck of dirt or roughness covers the point from which the visual ray is naturally reflected, and while the mirrors themselves are seen they do not return the customary reflection.[*](For the phenomenon referred to cf. [Ptolemy], Speculis, vi = Hero Alexandrinus, Opera, ii. 1, p. 330. 4-22 (Nix-Schmidt). For τυφλόω meaning to deaden, muffle, occlude cf. Defectu Oraculorum, 434 c, Quaest. Conviv 721 B, Esu Carnium, 995 f.) One who demands that the moon either reflect our vision from herself to the sun as well or else not reflect the sun from herself to us either is naive, for he is demanding that the eye be a sun, the vision light, and the human being a heaven. Since the light of the sun because of its intensity and brilliance arrives at the moon with a shock, it is reasonable that its reflection should reach to us; but the visual ray, since it is weak and tenuous and many times slighter, what wonder if it does not have an impact that produces recoil or if in rebounding it does not maintain its continuity but is dispersed and exhausted, not having light enough to keep it from being scattered about the irregularities and corrugations (of the moon)? From water, to be sure, and from mirrors of other kinds it is not impossible for the reflection (of the visual ray) to rebound to the sun, since it is still strong because it is near to its point of origin[*](Plutarch has to explain how the image of the sun can be seen in water and mirrors though it is not seen in the moon, and he does so by stressing the proximity of the former to the point of origin. This point of origin can only be our eyes, so that he must be thinking of the visual ray as reflected from water and mirrors to the sun and as failing to be reflected from the moon to the sun. The reading of the mss., ἐπὶ τὸν ἥλιον, is necessary to the argument and all suggestions for altering it are wrong.); but from the moon, even if the visual rays do in some cases glance off, they will be weak and dim and prematurely exhausted because of the magnitude of the distance.[*](i.e. the distance from the eye to the reflecting surface of the moon.) What is more too, whereas mirrors that are concave make the ray of light more intense after reflection than it was before so as often even to send off flames,[*](For the concave burning-glass cf. [Euclid], Catoptrica Prop. 30 (Euclid, Opera Omnia, vii, pp. 340-342 [Heiberg]) 154.) convex and spherical mirrors[*](Not two kinds of mirrors, as Raingeard says ad. loc., but one, convex, i.e. convex spherical, for (1) spherical mirrors that are concave are the burning-glasses in the preceding category, and (2) convex mirrors that are not spherical would not provide the obvious analogy with the moon that is wanted.) by not exerting counterpressure upon it from all points [give it off] weak and faint. You observe, I presume, whenever two rainbows appear, as one cloud encloses another, that the encompassing rainbow produces colours that are faint and indistinct. The reason for this is that the outer cloud, being situated further off from the eye, returns a reflection that is not intense or strong.[*](On the double rainbow and the reason why the outer bow is less distinct cf. Aristotle, Meteorology, 375 A 30-b 15. Aristotle’s explanation, which Plutarch here adopts, is attacked by Kepler in a long note on the present passage (note 70).) Nay, what need of further arguments? When the light of the sun by being reflected from the moon loses all its heat[*](See note a on 929 E supra.) and of its brilliance there barely reaches us a slight and feeble remnant, is it really possible that of the visual ray travelling the same double-course[*](The moon is thought of as the καμπτήρ or turning-post in the stadium. The sun’s rays travel from sun to moon to eye, and the visual ray would have to travel the same course in reverse.) any fraction of a remnant should from the moon arrive at the sun? For my part, I think not; and do you too, I said, consider this. If the visual ray were affected in the same way by water and by the moon, the full moon ought to show such reflections of the earth and plants and human beings and stars as all other mirrors do; but, if there occur no reflections of the visual ray to these objects either because of the weakness of the ray or the ruggedness of the moon, let us not require that there be such reflection to the sun either.

So we for our part, said I, have now reported as much of that conversation[*](See 921 f, 929 B, 929 F supra.) as has not slipped our mind; and it is high time to summon Sulla or rather to demand his narrative as the agreed condition upon which he was admitted as a listener. So, if it is agreeable, let us stop our promenade and sit down upon the benches, that we may provide him with a settled audience. To this then they agreed; and, when we had sat down, Theon said: Though, as you know, Lamprias, I am as eager as any of you to hear what is going to be said, I should like before that to hear about the beings that are said to dwell on the moon[*](In Placitis, 892 A = Aëtius, ii. 30. 1 this notion is ascribed to the Pythagoreans (and in the version of Stobaeus specifically to Philolaüs). Diogenes Laertius, ii. 8 ascribes it to Anaxagoras — if on the basis of frag. B 4 (ii, p. 34. 5 ff. [Diels-Kranz]), wrongly; and Cicero’s ascription of it to Xenophanes (Acad. Prior. II, xxxix. 123) is certainly an error (despite Lactantius, Div. Inst. iii. 23. 12) but more probably due to confusion with Xenocrates than, as is usually said, a mistake for Anaxagoras (cf. J. S. Reid ad loc.; Diels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok.⁵ , i, p. 125. 40; Diels, Dox. Graeci, p. 121, n. 1). The moon-dwellers became characters of scientific fiction at least as early as Herodorus of Heraclea (cf. Athenaeus, ii. 57 f).) — not whether any really do inhabit it but whether habitation there is possible. If it is not possible, the assertion that the moon is an earth is itself absurd, for she would then appear to have come into existence vainly and to no purpose, neither bringing forth fruit nor providing for men of some kind an origin, an abode, and a means of life, the purposes for which this earth of ours came into being, as we say with Plato, our nurse, strict guardian and artificer of day and night. [*](Timaeus, 40 B-C. Though ἀτρεκῆ does not appear there, it is introduced into the passage by Plutarch at 938 E s.v. and at Plat. Quaest. 1006 E, which indicates that he meant it as part of the quotation. Since there appears to be no other reference to the words τροφὸν ἡμετέραν in Plutarch’s extant works, one cannot be sure that τροφήν here is not his own misquotation rather than a scribal error. (The phrase, τροφαῖς ζῴων, in Superstitione, 171 A is probably not part of the adaptation of the Timaeus-passage there.)) You see that there is

much talk about these things both in jest and seriously. It is said that those who dwell under the moon have her suspended overhead like the stone of Tantalus[*](cf. the sarcastic remarks of Lucius in 923 C supra. For the stone of Tantalus cf. Nostoi, frag. x ( = Athenaeus, 281 B - C); Pindar, Olympian, i. 57-58 and Isthmian, viii. 10-11: and Scholia in Olymp. i. 91 a, where reference is made to the interpretation that the stone which threatens Tantalus is the sun, this being his punishment for having declared that the sun is an incandescent mass (cf. also scholiast on Euripides, Orestes, 982-986).) and on the other hand that those who dwell upon her, fast bound like so many Ixions[*](For the myth of Ixion on his wheel cf. Pindar, Pythian, ii. 21-48 and for Ixion used in a cosmological argument cf. Aristotle, Caelo, 284 A 34-35. ) by such great velocity, [are kept from falling by being whirled round in a circle]. Yet it is not with a single motion that she moves; but she is, as somewhere she is in fact called, the goddess of three ways,[*](An epithet of Hecate (cf. Athenaeus, vii. 325 A) applied to the moon only after she had been identified with the moongoddess, after which her epithets had to be explained by reference to lunar phenomena. cf. e.g. Cleomedes, ii. 5. 111 (p. 202. 5-10 [Ziegler]) on τριπρόσωπος, and Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compend. 34 (p. 72. 7-15 [Lang]) on τρίμορφος and τριοδῖτις. The etymology here put into Theons mouth had already been given by Varro in his Lingua Latina, vii. 16. For the moon as Hecate cf. notes b on 942 D and g on 944 C s.v..) for she moves on the zodiac against the signs in longitude and latitude and in depth at the same time. Of these movements the mathematicians call the first revolution, the second spiral, and the third, I know not why, anomaly, although they see that she has no motion at all that is uniform and fixed by regular recurrences,[*](For the text, terminology, and intention of these two sentences cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 146-147.) There is reason to wonder then not that the velocity caused a lion to fall on the Peloponnesus[*](cf. Epimenides, frag. B 2 (i, p. 32. 22 ff. [Diels-Kranz]); Anaxagoras, frag. A 77 (ii, p. 24. 25-26 and 28-30 [DielsKranz]). It may be that Anaxagoras referred to this legend in connection with his theory concerning the meteoric stone of Aegospotami, the fall of which he is said to have predicted (Lysander, 12 [439 D-F]; Diogenes Laertius, ii. 10; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 58 [59], 149-150). Kepler (note 77) suggests that the story of the lion falling from the sky may have arisen from a confusion of λάων (gen. pl. of λᾶας) and λέων or, as Prickard puts it, between λᾶς and λίς. Diogenes Laertius (viii. 72) quotes Timaeus to the effect that Heraclides Ponticus spoke of the fall of a man from the moon, an incident which Voss after Hirzel refers to a dialogue of his that may have influenced Plutarch (Voss, Heraclidis Pontici Vita et Scriptis, p. 61).) but how it is that we are not forever seeing countless

Men falling headlong and lives spurned away,[*](Aeschylus, Supplices, 937; cf De Curiositate, 517 f, where also Plutarch gives βίων instead of Aeschylus’s βίου.)

tumbling off the moon, as it were, and turned head over heels. It is moreover ridiculous to raise the question how the inhabitants of the moon remain there, if they cannot come to be or exist. Now, when Egyptians and Troglodytes,[*](i.e. Ethiopians: cf. Herodotus, iv. 183. 4; Strabo, ii. 5. 36 (c. 133).) for whom the sun stands in the zenith one moment of one day at the solstice and then departs, are all but burnt to a cinder by the dryness of the atmosphere, is it really likely that the men on the moon endure twelve summers every year, the sun standing fixed vertically above them each month at the full moon? Yet winds and clouds and rains, without which plants can neither arise nor having arisen be preserved, because of the heat and tenuousness of the atmosphere cannot possibly be imagined as forming there, for not even here on earth do the lofty mountains admit fierce and contrary storms[*](cf.Aristotle, Meteorology, 340 B 36 341 A 4, 347 A 2935, and Alexander, Meteor. p. 16. 6-15, where lines 10-11 guarantee and explain the ἐναντίους in Plutarch’s text. ) but the air, [being tenuous] already and having a rolling swell[*](Cf 939 E s.v. and Plat. Quaest. 1005 E.) as a result of its lightness, escapes this compaction and condensation. Otherwise, by Heaven, we shall have to say that, as Athena when Achilles was taking no food instilled into him some nectar and ambrosia,[*](cf.Iliad, xix. 340-356.) so the moon, which is Athena in name and fact,[*](See 922 A supra and note C there.) nourishes her men by sending up ambrosia for them day by day, the food of [the] gods themselves as the ancient Pherecydes believes.[*](= Pherecydes, frag. B 13 a (i, p. 51. 5-9 [Diels-Kranz]).) For even the Indian root which according to Megasthenes the Mouthless Men, who [neither eat] nor drink, kindle and cause to smoulder and inhale for their nourishment,[*](Megasthenes, frag. 34 (Frag. Hist. Graec. ii, pp. 425-427 [Müller]); cf. Strabo, ii. 1. 9 (c. 70) and xv. 1. 57 (c. 711); Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 2. 25. Aristotle (Parva Nat. 445 A 16-17) mentions the belief of certain Pythagoreans that some animals are nourished by odours; cf. the story told of Democritus, frags. A 28 and 29 (ii, p. 89. 23 ff. [Diels-Kranz]), and Lucian on the Selenites (Vera Hist. i. 23), a passage which, however, looks like a parody of Herodotus, i. 202. 2.) how could it be supposed to grow there if the moon is not moistened by rain ?

When Theon had so spoken, I said [Bravo], you have most excellently [smoothed our] brows by the sport of your speech, wherefore we have been inspired with boldness to reply, since we anticipate no very sharp or bitter scrutiny. It is, moreover, a fact that there really is [no] difference between those who in such matters are firm believers and those who are violently annoyed by them and firmly disbelieve and refuse to examine calmly what can be and what might be.[*](Strictly, the potential and the contingent; but probably Plutarch meant his phrase here to imply only the possible in all its senses and intended no technical distinction between δυνατόν and ἐνδεχόμενο. Certainly one cannot ascribe to him the distinction drawn in the pseudo-Plutarchean Fato, 570 E 571 E; n.b. that in Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1055 d-f he attacks the Chrysippean doctrine of δυνατόν. On δυνατόν and ἐνδεχόμενον as used by Aristotle cf. Ross, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, ii, p. 245 ad 1046 B 26, and Faust, r Möglichkeitsgedanke, i, pp. 175 ff.; for the attitude of the Hellenistic philosophers, Faust, Op. cit. i, pp. 209 ff.) So, for example, in the first

place, if the moon is not inhabited by men, it is not necessary that she have come to be in vain and to no purpose, for we see that this earth of ours is not productive and inhabited throughout its whole extent either but only a small part of it is fruitful of animals and plants on the peaks, as it were, and peninsulas rising out of the deep, while of the rest some parts are desert and fruitless with winter-storms and summer-droughts and the most are sunk in the great sea. You, however, because of your constant fondness and admiration for Aristarchus, give no heed to the text that Crates read:

1. Ocean, that is the universal source
2. Of men and gods, spreads over most of earth.[*](For the uninhabitability of the arctic and torrid zones cf. besides Iside, 367 D Strabo, ii. 3. 1 (c. 96) and Cleomedes, i. 2. 12 (p. 22. 11-14 [Ziegler]); and for the connection of this theory with the notion that the greatest part of the outer ocean is in the torrid zone cf. Cleomedes, i. 6. 33 (p. 60. 21-24). This was not the opinion of Posidonius (Cleomedes, ibid, and i. 6. 31-32 [p. 58. 4-25]); it was the geography of Cleanthes, which Crates sought to impose upon Homer (cf. Geminus, xvi. 21 ff. [p. 172. 11 ff., Manitius]; Kroll, R. E. xi. 1637 s. v. Krates; Susemihl, Geschichte der griech. Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit, ii, pp. 5 ff.). Since the first line quoted by Plutarch is Iliad, xiv. 246 of our text of Homer (with ὠκεανοῦ instead of ὠκεανός) but the second line does not occur, the latter was probably an interpolation made by Crates to support his interpretation of Homer’s geography; for Crates textual alterations and for the controversy between him and Aristarchus cf. Susemihl, Op. cit. i, p. 457 and ii, p. 7, n. 33; Kroll, loc. cit. 1640; ChristSchmid-Stählin⁶, ii. 1, p. 210; Mette, Sphairopoiia. pp. 60 ff.)

Yet it is by no means for nothing that these parts have come to be. The sea gives off gentle exhalations, and the most pleasant winds when summer is at its height are released and dispersed from the uninhabited and frozen region by the snows that are gradually melting there.[*](cf. Theophrastus, Ventis, ii, § 11, and Aristotle, Meteorology, 364 A 5-13. For ἡ ἀοίκητος without a noun = the uninhabited world cf. Adv. Coloten, 1115 a.) A strict guardian and artificer of day and night has according to Plato[*](Lamprias retorts upon Theon an adaptation of his own quotation of Timaeus, 40 B - C; cf. 937 E supra and note c there.) been stationed in the centre. Nothing then prevents the moon too, while destitute of living beings, from providing reflections for the light that is diffused about her and for the rays of the stars a point of confluence in herself and a blending whereby she digests the exhalations from the earth and at the same time slackens the excessive torridity and harshness of the sun.[*](cf. 928 C supra.) Moreover, conceding a point perhaps to ancient tradition also, we shall say that she was held to be Artemis on the ground that she is a virgin and sterile but is helpful and beneficial to other females.[*](For moon = Artemis cf. 922 A supra and note b there; for the virgin goddess of childbirth cf. besides the references there Plato, Theaetetus, 149 B, and Cornutus, 34 (p. 73. 18 ff. [Lang]).) In the second place, my dear Theon, nothing that has been said proves impossible the alleged inhabitation of the moon. As to the rotation, since it is very gentle and werene, it smooths the air and distributes it in settled order, so that there is no danger of falling and slipping off for those who stand there. And if it is not simple either,[*](This refers to 937 F supra. For the use of ἁπλῆ simple in this context cf Cleomedes, i. 4. 19 (p. 34. 20 [Ziegler]) and Theon of Smyrna, p. 150. 21-23 (Hiller).) even this complication and variation of the motion is not attributable to irregularity or confusion; but in them astronomers demonstrate a marvellous order and progression, making her revolve with circles that unroll about other circles, some assuming that she is herself motionless and others that she retrogresses smoothly and regularly with ever constant velocity,[*](An example of the former hypothesis is Aristotle’s theory that each planet is fixed in a sphere revolving within counteracting spheres that cancel the special motions of the superior planet (cf. Metaphysics, 1073 B 38-1074 A 14 and Caelo, 289 B 30-290 A 7); an example of the latter is Plato’s theory of freely moving planets (cf. Timaeus, 40 C-D, Laws, 822 A-C; Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, pp. 79-93). Theon of Smyrna (p. 175. 1-4 [Hiller]) observes that the difference between these two kinds of astronomical model is immaterial in saving the phenomena. On the whole passage cf. Eudemus in Theon of Smyrna, p. 200. 13 ff. (Hiller).) for these superpositions of the circles and their rotations and relations to one another and to us combine most harmoniously to produce the apparent variations of her motion in altitude and the deviations in latitude at the same time as her revolutions in longitude.[*](Norlind (Eranos, xxv [1927], pp. 275-277) argues from the terms used here and in 937 F supra that Plutarch has in mind the theory of epicycles which Hipparchus proposed for the moon and which is described by Ptolemy, Syntaxis, iv (i, pp. 265 ff. and especially pp. 301. 16-302, 11 [Heiberg]). The evidence of the terminology is not exact enough to make this thesis convincing (cf. Class. Phil. xlvi [1951], pp. 146-147).) As to the great heat and continual scorching of the sun, you will cease to fear it, if first of all you set the conjunctions over against the twelve summery full-moons[*](cf. 938 A supra: twelve summers every year. ) and suppose that the continuousness of the change produces in the extremes, which do not last a long time, a suitable tempering and removes the excess from either. Between these then, as is likely, they have a season most nearly approaching spring. In the second place, upon us the sun sends, through air which is turbid and which exerts a concomitant pressure, heat that is nourished by the exhalations, whereas there the air being tenuous and translucent scatters and diffuses the sun’s light, which has no tinder or body to sustain it.[*](For the pressure of the air and the ὑπέκκαυμα cf. Aristotle, Meteorology, 341 B 6-25, and Alexander, Meteor. p. 20. 11 ff. Praechter (Hierokles der Stoiker, p. 109) refers to Seneca, Nat. Quaest. iv b 10 in support of his thesis that the material in this chapter of the Facie is from a Stoic source.) The fruits of tree and field here in our region are nourished by rains; but elsewhere, as up in your home[*](Lamprias is addressing Theon primarily; but Menelaus also was from Egypt, though we know only Alexandria as his residence.) around Thebes and Syene, the land drinking water that springs from earth instead of rain-water and enjoying breezes and dews[*](Theophrastus (Hist. Plant. viii. 6. 6) says that in Egypt, Babylon, and Bactria, where rain is absent or scarce, dews nourish the crops (cf. also Hist. Plant. iv. 3. 7). Plutarchs statement here that the water drunk by the land in Egypt is γηγενές may have been inspired by Platos remark in Timaeus, 22 E 2-4; for the theory that the flood of Nile was caused by water springing from the earth cf. Oenopides, frag. 11 (i, p. 394. 39 ff. [Diels-Kranz]; cf. Seneca, Nat. Quaest. iv a 2. 26) and the opinion mentioned without an author by Seneca, Nat. Quaest. vi. 8. 3. Praechter (Hierokles, p. 110) holds that Plutarch here reflects Posidonius’s theory as reconstructed by Oder (Philologus, Suppl. vii [1898], pp. 299 ff. and 312 f.).) would refuse, I think, to adapt itself[*](For this meaning of συμφέρεσθαί τινι cf. Quomodo Quis Sent. Prof. Virt. 79 A, Cohibenda Ira, 461 A, Sollertia Animalium, 960 E, Timoleon, 15 (242 E), Wyttenbach’s Animadversiones in Plutarchi Opera Moralia (Leipzig, 1820), i, p. 461; the phrase cannot mean to be compared with, as it has been regularly translated here.) to the fruitfulness that attends the most abundant rainfall, and that because of a certain excellence and temperament that it has. Plants of the same kind, which in our region if sharply nipped by winter bear good fruit in abundance, in Libya and in your home in Egypt are very sensitive to cold and afraid of winter.[*](That the same species of plant varies with the nature of the soil, the atmosphere, and the cultivation is frequently stated by Theophrastus (cf. e.g. Hist. Plant. vi. 6. 3-5-8); cf. with ἐὰν σφόδρα τιεσθῇ χειμῶσιν in this passage Theophrastus, Causis Plant. ii. 1. 2-4.) And, while Gedrosia and Ethiopia which comes down to the ocean is barren and entirely treeless because of the aridity, in the adjacent and surrounding sea there grow and thrive down in the deep plants of great magnitude, some of which are called olives, some laurels, and some tresses of Isis[*](On these plants that grew in the sea cf. Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. iv. 7. 1 ff.; Eratosthenes in Strabo, xvi. 3. 6 (c. 766); Pliny, Nat. Hist. xiii. 25. 50-52 (140-142). In Quaest. Nat. 911 F Plutarch refers to the plants that are said to grow in the Red Sea, but there he states that they are nurtured by the rivers which bring down mud and that these plants consequently grow only near to the shore.); and the plants here called love-restorers when lifted out of the earth and hung up not only live as long as you wish but sprout[*](Cf Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxiv. 17. 102 (167).) [. . .]. Some plants are sown towards winter, and some at the height of summer as sesame and millet.[*](cf. Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. viii. 1. 1 and 4; 2. 6; and 3. 2.) Thyme or centaury, if sown in good, rich soil and wetted and watered, departs from its natural quality and loses its strength, whereas drought delights it and causes it to reach its proper stature[*](cf. Theophrastus, Causis Plant. iii. 1. 3-6.); and some plants, as they say, cannot stand even dew, as is true of the majority of Arabian plants, but are blighted and destroyed by being moistened.[*](For the notion that dew injures some plants cf. possibly Theophrastus, Causis Plant. vi. 18. 10; but he holds that desert vegetation is nourished by dew in default of rain (Hist. Plant. iv. 3. 7 and viii. 6. 6).) What wonder then if on the moon there grow roots and seeds and trees that have no need of rain nor yet of snow but are naturally adapted to a summery and rarefied air? And why is it unlikely that winds arise warmed by the moon and that breezes steadily accompany the rolling swell of her revolution and by scattering off and diffusing dews and light moisture suffice for the vegetation and that she herself is not fiery or dry in temperament but soft and humidifying? After all, no influence of dryness comes to us from her but much of moistness and femininity[*](Of. Vita et Poesi Homeri, B, 202 (vii, p. 450. 14-20 [Bernardakis]); Aristotle, Hist. Animal. 582 A 34 b 3.): the growth of plants, the decay of meats, the souring and flattening of wine, the softening of timbers, the easy delivery of women.[*](On the liquefying action of the moon and the passage in general cf. Quaest. Conviv iii. 10 (657 F ff.); Iside, 367 D; Cicero, Nat. Deorum, ii. 19. 50 (with Mayor’s note ad. loc.); Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 101 (223). On the growth of plants cf. also Iside, 353 F and Athenaeus, iii. 74 C; on softening of timbers Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. v. 1. 3; on easy delivery S. V. F. ii, frag. 748. For further literature cf. Boll, Sternglaube und Sterndeutung³ (1926), pp. 122-125.) Now that Pharnaces is quiet I am afraid of provoking and arousing him again if I cite, in the words of his own school, the flood-tides of Ocean and the swelling of the straits when they are increased and poured abroad by the liquefying action of the moon.[*](= S. V. F. ii, frag. 679. cf. also Cicero, Divinatione, ii. 34 (with Pease’s note ad loc.) and Nat. Deorum, ii. 7. 19; Seneca, Provid. i. 4; Cleomedes, ii. 1. 86 (p. 156. 15-16 [Ziegler]) and ii. 3. 98 (p. 178. 4-5); Strabo, iii. 5. 8 (cc. 173 f.) and i. 3. 11 (cc. 54-55). In Placitis, 897 B-C ( = Aëtius, iii. 17. 3 and 9) theories that the moon influences the tides are attributed to Pytheas and to Seleucus.) Therefore I shall rather turn to you, my dear Theon, for when you expound these words of Alcman’s,

[Such as] are nourished by Dew, daughter [of Zeus] and of [divine] Selene,[*](Alcman, frag. 43 (Diehl) = 48 (Bergk⁴). In both Quaest. Conviv 659 B and Quaest. Nat. 918 A Plutarch quotes the line as an explanation of the origin of dew, cf. Macrobius, Sat. vii. 16. 31-32.)

you tell us that at this point he calls the air Zeus and says that it is liquefied by the moon and turns to dew-drops.[*](cf.Vergil, Georgics, iii. 337; Roscher, Selene und Verwandtes, p. 50, n. 200.) It is in fact probable, my friend, that the moon’s nature is contrary to that of the sun, if of herself she not only naturally softens and dissolves all that he condenses and dries but liquefies and cools even the heat that he casts upon her and imbues her with. They err then who believe the moon to be a fiery and glowing body; and those who demand that living beings there be equipped just as those here are for generation, nourishment, and livelihood seem blind to the diversities of nature, among which one can discover more and greater differences and dissimilarities between living beings than between them and inanimate objects.[*](cf.Aristotle, Hist. Animal. 588 B 4 ff. and Part. Animal. 681 A 12-15.) Let there not be mouthless men nourished by odours who [Megasthenes] thinks [do exist][*](See 938 C supra and note d there. On the text and implication of this sentence cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 147-148.); yet the Hungerbane,[*](For ἡ ἄλιμος cf. Sept. Sap. 157 D-F; [Plutarch], Comment. in Hesiod. § 3 (vii, p. 51. 14 ff. [Bernardakis]); Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxii. 22 (73); Porphyry, Vita Pythag. § 34 and Abstinentia, iv. 20 (p. 266. 5 ff. [Nauck]); Plato, Laws, 677 E (where the word ἄλιμος itself does not occur, however).) the virtue of which he was himself trying to explain to us, Hesiod hinted at when he said

Nor what great profit mallow has and squill[*](Works and Days, 41.)

and Epimenides made manifest in fact when he showed that with a very little fuel nature kindles and sustains the living creature, which needs no further nourishment if it gets as much as the size of an olive.[*](cf. Epimenides, frag. A 5 (i, pp. 30-31 [Diels-Kranz]), where reference to this passage should be added.) It is plausible that the men on the moon, if they do exist, are slight of body and capable of being nourished by whatever comes their way.[*](cf.Aristotle, Gen. Animal. 761 B 21-23 for the suggestion that animate beings of a kind unknown to us may exist on the moon and [Philoponus], Gen. Animal. p. 160. 16-20 for a description of these creatures that do not eat or drink.) After all, they say that the moon herself, like the sun which is an animate being of fire many times as large as the earth, is nourished by the moisture on the earth, as are the rest of the stars too, though they are countless; so light and frugal of requirements do they conceive the creatures to be that inhabit the upper region.[*](= S. V. F. ii, frag. 677. cf. Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1053 A ( = S. V. F. ii, frag. 579); Aëtius, ii. 17. 4; Strabo, i. 1. 9 (c. 6); Cleomedes, i. 6. 33 (p. 60. 21-24 [Ziegler]). Plutarch, of course, uses Stoic doctrine here against the Stoics.) We have no comprehension of these beings, however, nor of the fact that a different place and nature and temperature are suitable to them. Just as, assuming that we were unable to approach the sea or touch it but only had a view of it from afar and the information that it is bitter, unpotable, and salty water, if someone said that it supports in its depths many large animals of multifarious shapes and is full of beasts that use water for all the ends that we use air, his statements would seem to us like a tissue of myths and marvels, such appears to be our relation to the moon and our attitude towards her is apparently the same when we disbelieve that any men dwell there. Those men, I think, would be much more amazed at the earth, when they look out at the sediment and dregs[*](Zeno called earth ἰλύ and ὑποστάθμη (S. V. F. i, frags. 104 and 105); but, since the end of this chapter appears to have been inspired by Plato’s Phaedo, 109 B-D, the phrase here used was probably suggested to Plutarch by Plato’s use of ὑποστάθμη there (109 C 2).) of the universe, as it were, obscurely visible in moisture, mists, and clouds as a lightless, low, and motionless spot, to think that it engenders and nourishes animate beings which partake of motion, breath, and warmth. If they should chance to hear somewhere these Homeric words, Dreadful and dank, which even gods abhor[*](Iliad, xx. 65.) and

Deep under Hell as far as Earth from Heaven,[*](Iliad, viii. 16.)

these they would say are simply a description of this place and Hell and Tartarus have been relegated hither while the moon alone is earth, since it is equally distant from those upper regions and these lower ones.

Almost before I had finished, Sulla broke in. Hold on, Lamprias, he said, and put to the wicket of your discourse[*](cf. Sollertia Animalium, 965 B.) lest you unwittingly run the myth aground, as it were, and confound my drama, which has a different setting and a different disposition. Well, I am but the actor of the piece, but first I shall say that its author began for our sake — if there be no objection with a quotation from Homer[*](On the text of this sentence cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 148-149.):

An isle, Ogygia, lies far out at sea,[*](Odyssey, vii. 244. On the geographical introduction to the myth see the Introduction, § 5, and especially Hamilton, Class. Quart. xxviii (1934), pp. 15-26, who points out the parallel between Plutarch’s geographical scheme and Plato’s location of Atlantis in Timaeus, 24 E 25 A.)

a run of five days off from Britain as you sail westward; and three other islands equally distant from it and from one another lie out from it in the general direction of the summer sunset. In one of these, according to the tale told by the natives, Cronus is confined by Zeus, and the antique [Briareus], holding watch and ward over those islands and the sea that they call the Cronian main, has been settled close beside him.[*](cf. Defectu Oraculorum, 420 A and on the text Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), p. 149. For Briareus as a guard set by Zeus over Cronus and the Titans cf. Hesiod, Theogony, 729-735 and Apollodorus, i. 7 ( = i. 2. 1). The pillars of Heracles are said to have had the older name Βριάρεω στῆλαι (cf. Aelian, Var. Hist. v. 3 = Aristotle, frag. 678) and before that Κρόνου στῆλαι (cf. Charax, frag. 16 = Frag. Hist. Graec. iii, p. 640); cf. also Clearchus, frag. 56 (Frag. Hist. Graec. ii, p. 320) and Parthenius, frag. 21 (Diehl) = frag. 31 (Martin).) The great mainland, by which the great ocean is encircled,[*](cf.Timaeus 24 E 5 25 A 5.) while not so far from the other islands, is about five thousand stades from Ogygia, the voyage being made by oar, for the main is slow to traverse and muddy as a result of the multitude of streams.[*](Plutarch’s language really implies that the way is so long — not just that it takes a long time — because the sea is hard to traverses3) The streams are discharged by the great land-mass and produce alluvial deposits, thus giving density and earthiness to the sea, which has been thought actually to be congealed.[*](cf. Strabo, i. 4. 2 (c. 63): ἥν (i.e. Θούλνἠ φησι Πυθέας ἐγγὺς εἶναι τῆς πεπηγυίας θαλάττης, and Pliny, Nat. Hist. iv. 16 (104): a Tyle unius diei navigatione mare concretum a nonnullis Cronium appellatur (n. b. that for Apollonius Rhodius [iv. 327, 509, 546] the Adriatic is the Cronian sea); cf. Tacitus, Agricola, § 10 and Germania, § 45. Plutarch denies that the sea is really congealed as it is reputed to be and explains its nature in imitation of Plato (Timaeus, 25 d 3-6, Critias, 108 E 6 109 A 2); but, since he cannot adduce as the cause of the muddy shallows the settling of the island, Atlantis, under the sea, he falls back upon alluvial deposits from the rivers on the great continent, a notion familiar from many sources (cf. Exilio, 602 D with Thucydides, ii. 102. 6; Aristotle, Meteorology, 351 B 28-32; Herodotus, ii. 10; Strabo, i. 2. 29-30 [cc. 36-37]). For the congealed sea cf. further K. Müllenhoff, utsche Altertumskunde, i (1890), pp. 410-425; E. Janssens, Hist. ancienne de la mer du Nord² (1946), pp. 20-22; J. O. Thomson, Hist, of Ancient Geography, pp. 148-149, 241, and 54-55 (on Avienus, Ora Maritime, 117-129).) On the coast of the mainland Greeks dwell about a gulf which is not smaller than the Maeotis[*](The Sea of Azov, the size of which Herodotus had greatly exaggerated (iv. 86); Strabo reduced its perimeter to 9000 stades (ii. 5. 23 [c. 125]).) and the mouth of which lies roughly on the same parallel as the mouth of the Caspian sea.[*](The Caspian was thought to be a gulf of the outer ocean from the time of Alexander until Ptolemy corrected the error (Alexander, chap. 44; Strabo, xi. 6. 1 [c. 507]), though Herodotus (i. 202-203) and Aristotle (Meteorology, 354 A 3-4) had known that it was connected with no other sea.) These people consider and call themselves continentals [and the] inhabitants of this land [islanders] because the sea flows around it on all sides; and they believe that with the peoples of Cronus there mingled at a later time those who arrived in the train of Heracles and were left behind by him and that these latter so to speak rekindled again to a strong, high flame the Hellenic spark there which was already being quenched and overcome by the tongue, the laws, and the manners of the barbarians. Therefore Heracles has the highest honours and Cronus the second. Now when at intervals of thirty years the star of Cronus, which we call Splendent [*](Φαίνων as the name of the planet Saturn occurs in An. Proc. in Timaeo, 1029 B (acc.: Φαίνωνα); Aëtius, ii. 15. 4 (where mss. vary between Φαίνωνα and Φαίνοντα, cf. Diels, Dox. Graeci, p. 344 ad loc.); [Aristotle], Mundo, 392 A 23 (Φαίνοντος); cf. Cicero, Natura Deorum, ii. 20. 52. There is a similar variation in the mss. as between Στίλβοντ and Στίλβωνα (cf. Diels, Dox. Graeci, p. 345 on Aëtius, ii. 15. 4), though at 925 A supra the mss. of Facie agree on Στίλβοντα.) but they, our author said, call Nightwatchman, enters the sign of the Bull,[*](Taurus is the sign of the moon’s exaltation (cf. Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, i. 20 [p. 44. 2, Boll-Boer]; Porphyry, Antro Nymph. 18), and it is for this reason that the expedition begins when Saturn enters this sign. For the thirty years cf. Aëtius, ii. 32. 1 (Dox. Graeci, p. 363); Cleomedes, i. 3. 16-17 (p. 30. 18-21 [Ziegler]); Cicero, Natura Deorum, ii. 20, 52. ) they, having spent a long time in preparation for the sacrifice and the [expedition], choose by lot and send forth [a sufficient number of envoys] in a correspondingly sufficient number of ships, putting aboard a large retinue and the provisions necessary for men who are going to cross so much sea by oar and live such a long time in a foreign land. Now when they have put to sea the several voyagers meet with various fortunes as one might expect; but those who survive the voyage first put in at the outlying islands, which are inhabited by Greeks,[*](These islands lie out westward or north-westward from Ogygia, cf. 941 A supra. It has not previously been said that they are inhabited by Greeks; in fact, 941 B seems to imply that Greeks live only on the mainland.) and see the sun pass out of sight for less than an hour over a period of thirty days,[*](I have tried to preserve the ambiguity of Plutarch’s language, though he probably meant to say less than an hour each day for thirty days (so Kepler understood, who thought that the reference was to Greenland). For the length of summer-days in Britain and in Thule cf. Cleomedes, i. 7. 37-38 (pp. 68. 6-70. 22 [Ziegler]) and Pytheas and Crates in Geminus, vi. 9-21 (pp. 70-76 [Manitius]). Pliny, Nat. Hist. iv. 16 (104) says that in Thule at the summer solstice there is no night at all, i.e. while the sun is in Cancer; but he adds here, what he had before (ii. 75 [186-187]) ascribed to Pytheas, that some think that in Thule there is a continuous day of six months duration.) — and this is night, though it has a darkness that is slight and twilight glimmering from the west. There they spend ninety days regarded with honour and friendliness as holy men and so addressed, and then winds carry them across to their appointed goal.[*](cf.Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), p. 149 and note 91.) Nor do any others inhabit it but themselves and those who have been dispatched before them, for, while those who have served the god together for the stint of thirty years are allowed to sail off home, most of them usually choose to settle in the spot, some out of habit and others because without toil or trouble they have all things in abundance while they constantly employ their time in sacrifices and celebrations or with various discourse and philosophy, for the nature of the island is marvellous as is the softness of the circumambient air. Some when they intend to sail away are even hindered by the divinity which presents itself to them as to intimates and friends not in dreams only or by means of omens, but many also come upon the visions and the voices of spirits manifest. For Cronus himself sleeps confined in a deep cave of rock that shines like gold — the sleep that Zeus has contrived as a bond for him —, and birds flying in over the summit of the rock bring ambrosia to him, and all the island is suffused with fragrance scattered from the rock as from a fountain; and those spirits mentioned before tend and serve Cronus, having been his comrades what time he ruled as king over gods and men. Many things they do foretell of themselves, for they are oracular; but the prophecies that are greatest and of the greatest matters they come down and report as dreams of Cronus, for all that Zeus premeditates Cronus sees in his dreams[*](For the sleep of Cronus as his bonds and for the spirits who are his servitors cf. Defectu Oraculorum, 420 A. For the sleeping Cronus cf. also Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta, frags. 149 and 155; in these Orphic or Neo-Platonic passages, however, Cronus prophesies, furnishes Zeus with plans, or thinks the world order before Zeus is aware of it (cf. Damascius, Dub. et Sol. 305 v-306 r [ii, pp. 136. 19-137. 8, Ruelle] and Proclus, In Cratylum, p. 53. 29 ff. [Pasquali]), which is the opposite of what Plutarch’s words imply. Because of Tertullian, Anima, 46. 10 (f. 156) J. H. Waszink (Tertullian, Anima, p. 496) thinks it certain that the ultimate source of the story was one of Aristotle’s lost dialogues. Pohlenz (R. E. xi. 2013. s.v. Kronos) supposes that Plutarchs source was Posidonius and that Posidonius was inspired by Nordic legends3 The feature of the birds that bring Cronus ambrosia appears to have been adapted from the story of Zeus’s nectar; cf. Sept. Sap. 156 F and Odyssey, xii. 63-65. Besides J. H. Waszink (Tertullian, Anima, p. 496) see the same author’s articles in Vigiliae Christianae, i (1947), pp. 137-149 (especially pp. 145-149) and in Mèlanges Henri Grègoire, ii (1950), pp. 639-653 (especially pp. 651-653). Waszink mistakenly believes that in Plutarch’s story special demons convey to Zeus [the thoughts that arise in Cronus’s dreams] who makes use of them for his government of the universe, and consequently he overlooks the important difference between Plutarch’s version and the Orphic passages that I have pointed out in this note.) and the titanic affections and motions of his soul make him rigidly tense [until] sleep [restores] his repose once more and the royal and divine element is all by itself, pure and unalloyed.[*](cf.Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 149-150.) Here then the stranger[*](This is the first mention of the stranger, unless he was referred to in the lost beginning of the dialogue. Hitherto he has merely been implied by the indirect discourse and τὸν ποιητήν in 941 A supra; cf. the reference in note c there.) was conveyed, as he said, and while he served the god became at his leisure acquainted with astronomy, in which he made as much progress as one can by practising geometry, and with the rest of philosophy by dealing with so much of it as is possible for the natural philosopher.[*](φιλοσοφίας χρώμενος is highly condensed; it must be construed: φιλοσοφίας δὲ πῆς ἄλλης ῾ἐμπειρίαν ἔσχἐ, χρώμενος ῾αὐτῇ ἐφ᾽ ὅσον̓ τῷ φυσικῷ ῾δυνατόν ἐστιν̓. For the distinction between ἀστρολογία and φυσική here referred to cf. Geminuss quotation of Posidonius in Simplicius, Physica, pp. 291. 23-292. 9 (Diels).) Since he had a strange desire and longing to observe the Great Island (for so, it seems, they call our part of the world), when the thirty years had elapsed, the relief-party having arrived from home, he saluted his friends and sailed away, lightly equipped for the rest but carrying a large viaticum in golden beakers. Well, all his experiences and all the men whom he visited, encountering sacred writings and being initiated in all rites — to recount all this as he reported it to us, relating it thoroughly and in detail, is not a task for a single day; but listen to so much as is pertinent to the present discussion. He spent a great deal of time in Carthage inasmuch as [Cronus] receives great [honour] in our country,[*](For the special position of Cronus at Carthage cf. Superstitione, 171 C, Sera Numinis Vindicta, 552 A; Diodorus, v. 66. 5.) and he discovered certain sacred parchments that had been secretly spirited off to safety when the earlier city was being destroyed and had lain unnoticed in the ground for a long time.[*](Nothing in the subsequent account supports the frequently expressed notion that the myth is supposed to have been discovered in these parchments, and 945 D s.v. expressly invalidates any such assumption.) Among the visible gods[*](cf.Timaeus, 40 D (τὰ περὶ θεῶν ὁρατῶν), 41 A (ὅσοι περιπολοῦσιν φανερῶς θεοί); Epinomis, 985 D (τοὺς ὄντως ἡμῖν φανεροὺς ὄντας θεούς).) he said that one should especially honour the moon, and so he kept exhorting me to do, inasmuch as she is sovereign over life [and death], bordering as she does [upon the meads of Hades].