De Facie Quae in orbe Lunae Apparet

Even while I was still speaking Pharnaces spoke: Here we are faced again with that stock manoeuvre of the Academy[*](The word τὸ περίακτον occurs in Comp. Lys. Sulla, iii, 476 E, where it seems to mean the old saw, though it may refer to a proverbial state of inside out and wrong side to. In Gloria Atheniensium, 348 E Plutarch mentions μηχανὰς ἀπὸ σκηνῆς περιάκτους, but that rather tells against taking τὸ περίακτον as the name of this stage-machine. He uses περιαγωγή in Genio Socratis, 588 D in the sense of distraction and in Praecepta Gerendae Reipublicae, 819 A in the sense of a trick of diversion, a sense which certainly suits τὸ περίακτον in the present context. The complaint of Pharnaces is frequently made by the interlocutors of Socrates; cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia, iv, 4. 9; Plato, Republic, 336 C; Aristotle, Soph. Elench. 183 B 6-8. ): on each occasion that they engage in discourse with others they will not offer any accounting of their own assertions but must keep

their interlocutors on the defensive lest they become the prosecutors. Well, me you will not to-day entice into defending the Stoics against your charges until I have called you people to account for turning the universe upside down. Thereupon Lucius laughed and said: Oh, sir, just don’t bring suit against us for impiety as Cleanthes thought that the Greeks ought to lay an action for impiety against Aristarchus the Samian on the ground that he was disturbing the hearth of the universe because he sought to save (the) phenomena by assuming that the heaven is at rest while the earth is revolving along the ecliptic and at the same time is rotating about its own axis.[*](= S. V. F. i, p. 112, frag. 500; the title, Against Aristarchus, appears in the list of Cleanthes writings given by Diogenes Laertius, vii. 174. For the theory of Aristarchus cf. Plutarch, Plat. Quaest. 1006 c; Placitis 891 A = Aëtius, ii. 24. 8 (Dox. Graeci, p. 355); Archimedes, Arenarius, i. 1.4-7 (Opera Omnia, ii, p. 218 Heiberg); Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. x. 174; T. L. Heath, Aristarchus of Samos, pp. 301 ff.) We[*](i.e. we Academics, the party which did in fact maintain that the moon is an earthy body.) express no opinion of our own now; but those who suppose that the moon is earth, why do they, my dear sir, turn things upside down any more than you[*](i.e. you Stoics; cf. Achilles, Isagogê, 4 = S. V. F. ii, frag. 555, p. 175. 36 ff.) do who station the earth here suspended in the air? Yet the earth is a great deal larger than the moon[*](This would not have been admitted by most of the Stoics, who thought that the moon is larger than the earth; but in this Posidonius and possibly others disagreed with the earlier members of the school; cf. Aëtius, ii. 26. 1 (Dox. Graeci, p. 357 and p. 68, n. 1), and M. Adler, Diss. Phil. Vind. x (1910), p. 155.) according to the mathematicians who during the occurrences of eclipses and the transits of the moon through the shadow calculate her magnitude by the length of time that she is obscured.[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 1, § 80 (p. 146. 18 ff. Ziegler); Simplicius, Caelo, p. 471. 6-11.) For the shadow of the earth grows smaller the further it extends, because the body that casts the light is larger than the earth[*](cf. Cleomedes, ii. 2. §§ 93-94 (p. 170. 11 ff. Ziegler); Theon of Smyrna, p. 197. 1 ff. (Hiller); Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 11 (8), 51.); and that the upper part of the shadow itself is taper and narrow was recognized, as they say, even by Homer, who called night nimble because of the sharpness of the shadow.[*](cf. Defectu Oraculorum, 410 D. Homer uses the phrase θοὴ νύξ frequently (e.g. Iliad, x. 394 [cf. Leaf’s note ad loc.], Odyssey, xii. 284). Another θοός, supposedly meaning pointed, sharp and cognate with ἐθόωσα in Odyssey, ix. 327, is used of certain islands in Odyssey, xv. 299 (cf. Strabo, viii. 350-351; Pseudo-Plutarch, Vita et Poesi Homeri, B, 21 [vii, p. 347. 19 ff. Bernardakis]). The latter passage so understood was used to support the hypothesis that θοὴ νυξ referred to the sharpness of the earth’s shadow: cf. Heracliti Quaestiones Homericae, §§ 45-46 (p. 67. 13 ff. Oelmann). Eustathius (Comment. ad Iliadem, 814. 15 ff.) mentions besides this another astronomical interpretation of the phrase by Crates of Mallos.) Yet captured by this part in eclipses[*](For this temporal dative without ἐν cf. Theon of Smyrna, p. 194. 1-3 (Hiller).) the moon barely escapes from it in a space thrice her own magnitude. Consider then how many times as large as the moon the earth is, if the earth casts a shadow which at its narrowest is thrice as broad as the moon.[*](cf. An. Proc. in Timaeo, 1028 D where Plutarch ascribes to geometers the approximate calculation of three to one as the ratio of the earth’s diameter to that of the moon and of twelve to one as the ratio of the sun’s diameter to that of the earth, figures which agree roughly with those of Hipparchus (t: 1: s = 1 . 1/3 . 12 1/3; cf. Heath, Aristarchus of Samos, pp. 342 and 350 after Hultsch). Hipparchus, however, considered the breadth of the shadow at the moon’s mean distance from the earth in eclipses to be lunar diameters (Ptolemy, Syntaxis, iv. 9 [i, p. 327. 1-4 Heiberg]), while Aristarchus, whose calculations of the moon’s diameter Plutarch quotes at 932 B s.v., declared the shadow to be 2 lunar diameters in breadth (cf. Aristarchus, Hypothesis 5 [Heath, Op. cit. p. 352. 13]; Pappus, Collectionis Quae Supersunt, ii, p. 554. 17-18 and p. 556. 14-17 [Hultsch]), the figure given by Cleomedes as well (pp. 146. 18-19 and 178. 8-13 [Ziegler]; cf. Geminus, Elementa, ed. Manitius, p. 272). Plutarch may here simply have assumed that the ratio of the lunar diameter to the breadth of the shadow would be the same as the Hipparchean ratio of the lunar diameter to the diameter of the earth; but he may also have erroneously supposed that the time taken by the moon to enter the shadow, the time of complete obscuration, and the time taken to leave the shadow equal three diameters instead of two (cf. Cleomedes, p. 146. 21-25 [Ziegler] and M. Adler, Diss. Phil. Vind. x [1910], p. 156, n. 2).) All the same, you fear for the moon lest it fall; whereas concerning the earth perhaps Aeschylus has persuaded you that Atlas

Stands, staying on his back the prop of earth And sky no tender burden to embrace.[*](Aeschylus, Prometheus Vinct. 351-352 (Smyth).)

Or, while under the moon there stretches air unsubstantial and incapable of supporting a solid mass, the earth, as Pindar says, is encompassed by steel-shod pillars[*](Pindar, frag. 88 (Bergk) = 79 (Bowra).); and therefore Pharnaces is himself without any fear that the earth may fall but is sorry for the Ethiopians or Taprobanians,[*](i.e. the Sinhalese; cf. Strabo, ii. 1. 14, chap. 72 and xv. 1. 14, chap. 690; Pliny, Nat. Hist. vi. 22 (24).) who are situated under the circuit of the moon, lest such a great weight fall upon them. Yet the moon is saved from falling by its very motion and the rapidity of its revolution, just as missiles placed in slings are kept from falling by being whirled around in a circle.[*](cf. Aristotle, Caelo, 284 A 24-26 and 295 A 16-21 (on Empedocles [Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy, p. 204, n. 234]). Plutarch himself in Lysander, xii. 3-4 (439 D) ascribes to Anaxagoras the notion that the heavenly bodies are kept from falling by the speed of their circular motion.) For each thing is governed by its natural motion unless it be diverted by something else. That is why the moon is not governed by its weight: the weight has its influence frustrated by the rotatory motion. Nay, there would be more reason perhaps to wonder if she were absolutely unmoved and stationary like the earth. As it is, while [the] moon has good cause for not moving in this direction, the influence of weight alone might reasonably move the earth, since it has no part in any other motion; and the earth is heavier than the moon not merely in proportion to its greater size but still more, inasmuch as the moon has, of course, become light through the action of heat and fire.[*](Here Lucius assumes the Stoic theory of the composition of the moon in order to rebut the Stoic objections.) In short, your own statements seem to make the moon, if it is fire, stand in greater need of earth, that is of matter to serve it as a foundation, as something to which to adhere, as something to lend it coherence, and as something that can be ignited by it, for it is impossible to imagine fire being maintained without fuel,[*](cf.Seneca, Nat. Quaest. vii. 1. 7: magni fuere viri, qui sidera crediderunt ex duro concreta et ignem alienum pascentia. nam per se, inquiunt, flamma diffugeret, nisi aliquid haberet, quod teneret et a quo teneretur, conglobatamque nec stabili inditam corpori, profecto iam mundus turbine suo dissipasset. ) but you people say that earth does abide without root or foundation. [*](cf. Aristotle’s remark (Meteorology, 353 A 34 - B 5) about the ancient θεολόγοι who assumed ῥίζαι γῆς καὶ θαλάττης and see Hesiod, Theogony, 728; Aeschylus, Prometheus Vinct. 1046-1047; and the Orphic lines quoted by Proclus, In Timaeum, 211 C (ii, p. 231. 27-28 [Diehl]) = Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta, 168. 29-30 (p. 202). The phrase ῥίζα καὶ βάσις is applied to the earth itself in a different sense by Timaeus Locrus (97 E). For the ascription to Xenophanes of the notion that the earth ἐπ’ ἄπειρον ἐρρίζωται cf. Xenophanes, frag. A 47 (i, pp. 125-126 [Diels-Kranz]).) Certainly it does, said Pharnaces, in occupying the proper and natural place that belongs to it, the middle, for this is the place about which all weights in their natural inclination press against one another and towards which they move and converge from every direction, whereas all the upper space, even if it receive something earthy which has been forcibly hurled up into it, straightway extrudes it into our region or rather lets it go where its proper inclination causes it naturally to descend. [*](= S. V. F. ii, p. 195, frag. 646. This is the doctrine of proper place and natural motion, originally Aristotelian and ascribed to Aristotle in Defectu Oraculorum, 424 B but adopted also by the Stoics (cf S. V. F. ii, p. 162. 14-19; p. 169. 8-11; p. 175. 16-35; p. 178. 12-15); it should not be confused, however, as Raingeard confuses it, with the Stoic doctrine that the universe itself is in the middle of the void ( Defectu Oraculorum, 425 D - E, Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1054 C - D).)

At this — for I wished Lucius to have time to collect his thoughts — I called to Theon. Which of

the tragic poets was it, Theon, I asked, who said that physicians

With bitter drugs the bitter bile purge?

Theon replied that it was Sophocles.[*](Sophocles, frag. 770 (Nauck²). The verse is quoted with variations at Cohibenda Ira, 463 F, and Tranquillitate Animi, 468 B.) Yes, I said, and we have of necessity to allow them this procedure; but to philosophers one should not listen if they desire to repulse paradoxes with paradoxes and in struggling against opinions that are amazing fabricate others that are more amazing and outlandish,[*](cf. Aristotle’s remark, Caelo, 294 A 20-21: τὸ δὲ τὰs περὶ τούτου λύσεις μὴ μᾶλλον ἀτόπους εἶναι δοκεῖη τῆς ἀπορίας, θαυμάσειεν ἆνa τις.) as these people do in introducing their motion to the centre. What paradox is not involved in this doctrine? Not the one that the earth is a sphere although it contains such great depths and heights and irregularities?[*](This objection to the Peripatetic and Stoic theory that the sphericity of the earth is a necessary consequence of the natural motion of earth downwards to the centre of the universe (Aristotle, Caelo, 297 A 8 - b 23; Strabo, i. 1. 20, chap. 11; Adrastus in Theon of Smyrna, p. 122. 1-16 [Hiller]) was often answered (cf. Dicaearchus in Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 65. 162; Adrastus in Theon of Smyrna, pp. 124. 7-127, 23, using arguments from Archimedes, Eratosthenes, and Dicaearchus; Cleomedes, i. 56 [p. 102. 9-20 Ziegler]; Alexander in Simplicius, Caelo, p. 546. 15-23; Alexander, Mixtione, p. 237. 5-15 [Bruns]). Plutarch, who defends Plato for constructing the spherical earth of molecules that are cubes on the ground that no material object can be a perfect sphere (Quaest. Plat. 1004 B - C), probably did not intend this or the subsequent paradoxes to be taken too seriously. Lamprias is simply riding Pharnaces as hard as he can, using any argument, good or bad, to make him appear ridiculous.) Not that people live on the opposite hemisphere clinging to the earth like wood-worms or geckos turned bottomside up?[*](cf. Lucretius, i. 1052-1067 in his argument against the Stoic motion to the centre. Plutarch mentions the antipodes in connection with the Stoics in Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1050 B. In Herodoti Malignitate, 869 C it is said that some say that there are antipodes.) — and that we ourselves in standing remain not at right angles to the earth but at an oblique angle, leaning from the perpendicular like drunken men?[*](cf. Aristotle, Caelo, 296 B 18 - 21 and 297 B 17 - 21: the courses of bodies falling to the earth form equal angles with the horizontal plane at the point of contact and are not parallel. So, Lamprias argues, men standing upright on the earth would not be parallel to one another but all in converging on the centre would deviate from the absolute perpendicular.) Not that incandescent masses of forty tons[*](Probably not aeroliths, as Raingeard supposes, but incandescent boulders such as are thrown up by volcanoes; for μύδροι in this sense cf. [Aristotle], Mundo, 395 B 22-23; Strabo, vi. 2. 8, chap. 274; vi. 2. 10, chap. 275; xiii. 4. 11, chap. 628. For the falling of great boulders within the earth cf. Lucretius, vi. 536-550, and Seneca, Nat. Quaest. vi. 22. 2; but Plutarch probably had in mind a subterranean geography such as that of Phaedo, 111 D ff., of which the next sentence but one contains an explicit reminiscence.) falling through the depth of the earth stop when they arrive at the centre, though nothing encounter or support them; and, if in their downward motion the impetus should carry them past the centre, they swing back again and return of themselves? Not that pieces of meteors burnt out on either side of the earth do not move downwards continually but falling upon the surface of the earth force their way into it from the outside and conceal themselves about the centre?[*](For the text and interpretation of this sentence cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 139-140.) Not that a turbulent stream of water, if in flowing downwards it should reach the middle point, which they themselves call incorporeal,[*](cf. 926 B s.v.. According to the Stoics the limits of bodies are incorporeal and therefore in the strict sense nonexistent ( Communibus Notitiis, 1080 e; cf. 1081 B and S. V. F. ii, p. 159, frag. 488), since only the corporeal exists (S. V. F. ii, p. 115, frag. 320 and p. 117, frag. 329). Only corporeal existence, moreover, can produce an effect or be affected ( Communibus Notitiis, 1073 E, cf. S. V. F. ii, p. 118, frag. 336 and p. 123, frag. 363). How then can the incorporeal centre have any effect upon corporeal entities?) stops suspended [or] moves round about it, oscillating in an incessant and perpetual see-saw?[*](cf.Plato, Phaedo, 111 E 112 E, which is certainly the source of Plutarch’s figure, and Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s account in Meteorology, 355 B 32 356 A 19.) Some of these a man could not even mistakenly force himself to conceive as possible. For this amounts to upside down and all things topsy-turvy, everything as far as the centre being down and everything under the centre in turn being up.[*](cf.Phaedo, 112 E 1-3. By introducing the conventional phrase ὑπὸ τὸ μέσον, which really begs the question, Lamprias makes the notion appear to be a ridiculous self-contradiction.) The result is that, if a man should so coalesce with the earth[*](That συμπαθείᾳ τῆς γῆς, which has given rise to many conjectures, need mean no more than this is proved by Dox. Graeci, p. 317 B 14-16: τῆς τε τῶν ὄντων συμαθείας καὶ τῆς τῶν σωμάτων ἀλληλουχίας. For the figure used here cf. Aristotle, Caelo, 285 A 27-b 5, and Simplicius, Caelo, p. 389. 8-24 and p. 391. 33 ff. The most famous later parallel is the position of Lucifer in Dante’s Inferno, xxxiv. 76-120.) that its centre is at his navel, the same person at the same time has his head up and his feet up too. Moreover, if he dig through the further side, his [bottom] in emerging is [up], and the man digging himself up is pulling himself down from above [*](i.e. his feet emerge first; and they, his bottom part, are up. In digging himself up relatively to the surface through which he emerges, he is with reference to himself pulling himself not up to a position above his head but down to a position below his feet. The paradox rests upon the assumption that head and feet are respectively absolute up and absolute down for man (cf. Aristotle, Incessu Animal. 705 A 26 706 B 16, and Parva Nat. 468 A 1-12).); and, if someone should then be imagined to have gone in the opposite direction to this man, the feet of both of them at the same time turn out to be up and are so called.

Nevertheless, though of tall tales of such a kind and number they have shouldered and lugged in not a wallet-full, by heaven, but some juggler’s pack and hotchpotch, still they say[*](= S. V. F. ii, p. 195, frag. 646.) that others are playing the buffoon by placing the moon, though it is earth, on high and not where the centre is. Yet if all heavy body converges to the same point and is

compressed in all its parts upon its own centre,[*](Lamprias refers directly to the words of Pharnaces at 923 E - F supra. cf. Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1055 A: εἰ γὰρ αὐτός γε νεύειν ἐπὶ τὸ αυτοῦ μέσον ἀεὶ πέφυκε καὶ τὰ μέρη πρὸς τοῦτο κατατείνειν πανταχόθεν ) it is no more as centre of the sum of things than as a whole that the earth would appropriate to herself the heavy bodies that are parts of herself; and [the downward tendency] of falling bodies[*](That τῶν ῥερόντων can stand alone in this sense, pace Adler (Diss. Phil. Vind. x, p. 96), is proved by Aristotle, Caelo, 312 B 24.) proves not that the [earth] is in the centre of the cosmos but that those bodies which when thrust away from the earth fall back to her again have some affinity and cohesion with her.[*](Aristotle ( Caelo, 296 B 9-25) asserted that heavy, i.e. earthy, objects move to the centre of the universe and so only accidentally to the centre of the earth. The Stoics distinguished the cosmos as ὅλον from τὸ πᾶν, which is the cosmos plus the infinite void encompassing it (S. V. F. ii, p. 167, frags. 522-524), putting the cosmos in the centre of the πᾶν and explaining this as the result of the motion of all things to the centre of the latter (S. V. F. ii, pp. 174-175, frags. 552-554; cf. note d on 923 F supra) but stating that within the cosmos those things that have weight, i.e. water and earth, move naturally down, i.e. to the centre (S. V. F. ii, p. 175. 16-35, frag. 555). Nevertheless, Chrysippus’s own words could be used to show that the natural motion to the centre must belong to the parts of the universe qua parts of the whole and not because of their own nature (cf. Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1054 E 1055 C); and with the very word οἰκειώσεται Lamprias turns against the Stoics their own doctrine of οἰκείωσις (cf. Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1038 B = S. V. F. ii, p. 43, frag. 179).) For as the sun attracts to itself the parts of which it consists[*](According to Reinhardt (Kosmos und Sympathie, pp. 173-177) the source of Plutarch’s argument must be Posidonius; but none of the passages cited contains any parallel to this statement concerning the sun, for references to the attractive power of the sun over the other planets (Reinhardt, Op. cit. p. 58, n. 2; cf. R. M. Jones, Class. Phil. xxvii [1932], pp. 122 ff.) are irrelevant. There may rather have been a connection between this notion and the doctrine of Cleanthes referred to in Communibus Notitiis, 1075 D = S. V. F. i, p. 114, frag. 510.) so the earth too accepts as [her] own the stone[*](This is not a reference to aeroliths as Raingeard and Kronenberg suppose nor to the imaginary stone in intercosmic space ( Defectu Oraculorum, 425 C) as Adler believes, but to any γεῶδές τι ὑπὸ βίας ἀναρριφέν, in the words of Pharnaces (923 F supra); cf. Aristotle’s use of ὁ λίθος in the statement of his principle of natural motion (Eth. Nic. 1103 A 19-22).) that has properly a downward tendency, and consequently every such thing ultimately unites and coheres with her. If there is a body, however, that was not originally allotted to the earth or detached from it but has somewhere independently a constitution and nature of its own, as those men[*](The men referred to in 924 D, ἑτέρους ἄνω τὴν σελήνην, gῆν οὖσαν, ἐνιδρύοντας, whom the Stoics attack and among whom are Lamprias and Lucius themselves and our comrade (921 F).) would say of the moon, what is to hinder it from being permanently separate in its own place, compressed and bound together by its own parts? For it has not been proved that the earth is the centre of the sum of things,[*](i.e. even if it is the centre of our cosmos; cf. Defectu Oraculorum, 425 A - E, where concerning the possibility of a multiplicity of universes in τὸ πᾶν Plutarch points out that even on the hypothesis of natural motion and proper place up, down, and centre would apply separately within each cosmos, there could be no centre of τὸ πᾶν, and the laws of motion in any one universe could not affect objects in any other or hypothetical objects in intercosmic space.) and the way in which things in our region press together and concentrate upon the earth suggests how in all probability things in that region converge upon the moon and remain there. The man who drives together into a single region all earthy and heavy things and makes them part of a single body — I do not see for what reason he does not apply the same compulsion to light objects in their turn but allows so many separate concentrations of fire and, since he does not collect all the stars together, clearly does not think that there must also be a body common to all things that are fiery and have an upward tendency.