Res Gestae

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English translation, Vols. I-III. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; W. Heinemann, 1935-1940 (printing).

Let us now turn to the moon. Then only does she suffer a clear and evident eclipse, when, rounded out with her full light and opposite the sun, she is distant from its orb by 180 degrees (i.e. is in the seventh sign).[*](Of the Zodiac.) But although this happens at every full moon, yet there is not always an eclipse.

But since the moon is situated near the movement of the earth, and is the most remote from heaven of all that celestial beauty,[*](I.e. is nearer the earth than the other heavenly bodies.) she sometimes puts herself directly under the disc[*](The sun.) that strikes upon her, and

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is overshadowed and hidden for a time by the interposition of the goal of darkness ending in a narrow cone;[*](I.e. the shadow cast by the earth; meta refers to the shape of the shadow; cf. Cic., De Div. ii. 6, 17, quando illa. . . incurrat in umbram terrae, quae est meta noctis; Nat. Deor. ii. 40, 103.) and then she is wrapped in masses of darkness, when the sun, as if encompassed by the curve of the lower sphere, cannot light her with its rays, since the mass of the earth is between them; for that she has no light of her own has been assumed on various grounds.