De Facie Quae in orbe Lunae Apparet

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.

Now, said I, my dear Apollonides, you mathematicians[*](This is implied by the second person plural addressed to Apollonides, cf. 925 B s.v. and 920 F, 921 C supra.) say that the sun is an immense distance from the upper circumference and that above

the sun Venus and Mercury and the other planets[*](For the order of the planets cf. Dreyer, History of the Planetary Systems, pp. 168-170, and Boyancè, Ètudes sur le Songe de Scipion, pp. 59-65; the order here given is not the one adopted by most of the astronomers of Plutarch’s time, by the later Stoics, or in all probability by Posidonius.) revolve lower than the fixed stars and at great intervals from one another; but you think that in the cosmos there is provided no scope and extension for heavy and earthy objects. You see that it is ridiculous for us to deny that the moon is earth because she stands apart from the nether region and yet to call her a star although we see her removed so many thousands of miles from the upper circumference as if plunged [into] a pit. So far beneath the stars is she that the distance cannot be expressed, but you mathematicians in trying to calculate it run short of numbers; she practically grazes the earth and revolving close to it

Whirls like a chariot’s axle-box about,

Empedocles says,[*](Empedocles, frag. B 46 (i, p. 331 [Diels-Kranz]).)

That skims [the post in passing].

Frequently she does not even surmount the earth’s shadow, though it extends but a little way because the illuminating body is very large; but she seems to revolve so close, almost within arm’s reach of the earth, as to be screened by it from the sun unless she rises above this shadowy, terrestrial, and nocturnal place which is earth’s estate. Therefore we must

boldly declare, I think, that the moon is within the confines of [the] earth inasmuch as she is occulted by its extremities.

Dismiss the fixed stars and the other planets and consider the demonstrations of Aristarchus in his treatise, On Sizes and Distances, that the distance of the sun is more than 18 times and less than 20 times the distance of the moon, that is its distance from us.[*](This is Proposition 7 of Aristarchus’s treatise, the full title of which is On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon. The treatise is edited and translated by Sir Thomas Heath in his Aristarchus of Samos, pp. 352 ff.) According to the highest estimate, however, the moon’s distance from us is said to be 56 times the radius of the earth.[*](This was not the highest estimate hitherto given, nor have I been able to identify its author. cf. on this matter and the subsequent calculations in this passage Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 140-141. No attempt is made to give equivalents for stades in calculations, for it is uncertain what stade is meant in any one place. Schiaparelli assumes everywhere the Olympic stade of 185 metres (Scritti sulla storia della astronomia antica, i, p. 333, n. 3 and p. 342, n. 1); Heath argues that Eratosthenes used a stade of 157.5 metres and Ptolemy the royal stade of 210 metres (Aristarchus of Samos, pp. 339 and 346); and Raingeard (p. 83 on 925 D 6) assumes without argument that Plutarch used the Attic stade of 177.6 metres.) Even according to the mean calculations this radius is 40,000 stades; and, if we reckon from this, the sun is more than 40,300,000 stades distant from the moon. She has migrated so far from the sun on account of her weight and has moved so close to the earth that, if properties[*](There is a play on the meaning of τὰs οὐσίας, substances, as property or estates and as the real nature of things. ) are to be determined by locations, the lot, I mean the position, of earth lays an action against the moon and she is legally assignable by right of propinquity and kinship to the chattels real and personal of earth. We do not err at all, I think, if granting such altitude and extension to the things called upper we leave what is down below also

some room to move about in and so much latitude as there is from earth to moon. For as he is immoderate who calls only the outermost surface of the heaven up and all else down, so is he intolerable who restricts down to the earth or rather to the centre; but both there and here some extension must be granted since the magnitude of the universe permits it. The claim that everything away from the earth is ipso facto up and on high answered by a counter-claim that what is away from the circuit of the fixed stars is ipso facto down.