Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
"Well then," said Sulla, "that belongs to my tale, and comes from that source too; but if you have already struck up something, before I begin, about the views that are current in everyone's hands and on everyone's lips concerning the face on the moon, I should be glad to hear it first." "Of course," I said, "we were bound to be driven onto those very questions by our perplexity over the ones just discussed. For just as, in chronic illnesses, when men have given up on the ordinary remedies and the customary regimens, they turn to purifications and amulets and dreams, so too in inquiries that are hard to see through and hard to resolve, when the common, reputable, and familiar accounts fail to persuade, it is necessary to try the stranger ones, and not to despise them, but simply to charm ourselves, as it were, with the sayings of the ancients, and through all of them to test out the truth."
"You see at once," I went on, "how absurd it is to say that the visible shape on the moon is an affection of our sight, which yields to the brightness through weakness — the very thing we speak of as 'dazzling.' Such a person fails to notice that this ought rather to happen with respect to the sun, which strikes and pierces the sight more sharply, as Empedocles too, not unpleasingly, renders the difference between the two: 'the sun sharp-darting, and the moon mild.' It is her attractive, cheerful, and painless quality that he thus describes; and then he gives an explanation according to which faint and weak eyesight discerns no difference of shape on the moon, but her disc shines back at them smooth and full all over, whereas those who see keenly and vividly make out more precisely and distinguish the shapes of the face as they stand out in relief, and grasp the difference more clearly.
That, I think, ought to be the very opposite: if it were an affection of an overpowered eye that produced the appearance, then the weaker the affected organ, the clearer the appearance ought to be. But the unevenness of the markings altogether refutes this account; for it is not the look of a continuous, blended shadow. Rather, Agesianax, sketching it not badly, has said: 'All round about she blazes with fire, but in the middle there shines a bluer light, like a girl's eye and her moist brow';
'and the features resemble a face.' For indeed the shadowy parts really do sink beneath the bright ones as they pass round, and are in turn pressed and cut off by them, and altogether they are woven through one another, so that the outline of the shape has a painterly quality. This too, Aristotle, seemed not implausibly said with reference to Clearchus, your countryman — for he was your countryman, having been an associate of the elder Aristotle, even if he diverged considerably from the Peripatos."
When Apollonides took up the discussion and asked what Clearchus's view had been, "It is less fitting for anyone to be ignorant of it than for you," I said, "since it is an account that sets out, as it were, from the very hearth of geometry. For the man says that the so-called face in the moon consists of mirror-images and reflections of the great sea, appearing on the moon; for
the rim of the moon, being curved back at many points, is naturally suited to make contact with things not seen along a straight line, and the full moon herself, of all mirrors, is the most beautiful and purest in evenness and polish. Just as you people suppose that the rainbow is seen when our sight is bent back toward the sun by a cloud that has taken on a gentle moist smoothness and a fusing quality, so, he says, is seen in the moon the outer sea — not
the region in which it actually lies, but the point from which the refraction brought about the sight's contact with it and its reflected image; as Agesianax again put it somewhere: 'or the great wave of the sea, surging opposite, might show a phantom-image of a fire-blazing mirror.'" Apollonides was delighted and said, "How original, and altogether novel, is this contrivance of a theory, coming from a man with a certain boldness and poetic touch!
But in what way did you bring your refutation to bear on him?" "First," I said, "in that the outer sea is of one single nature, a confluent and continuous expanse, whereas the reflected image of the dark patches on the moon is not single, but has, as it were, isthmuses, the bright part dividing and marking off the shadowy part; so that, each region being separated off and having its own boundary, the incursions of the bright areas upon
the dark ones, taking on the appearance of height and depth, have shaped the resemblances that appear around what look like eyes and lips with great exactness. The result is that we must either suppose there are several outer seas, cut off from one another by certain isthmuses and continents — which is absurd and false — or, if it is a single sea, it is not plausible that so torn-apart an image of it should appear. That other question, however, is safer to ask than to pronounce upon in your presence: whether, the inhabited world
being equal in breadth and length, it is possible for the sight, reflected in the same way from the moon for everyone alike, to touch the sea — and, by Zeus, even for those who sail upon that very great outer sea and dwell there, like the Britons — and this even though the earth, as you people say, does not even hold the ratio of a center-point relative to the sphere of the moon. This, then," I said, "is your task to examine; but as for the refraction of sight
toward the moon, that is no longer your affair, nor Hipparchus's either — and yet, my dear fellow, many are not pleased, when discoursing on the physics of vision, to suppose that it undergoes an affection of like-with-like blending and coalescence, rather than certain impacts and reboundings, such as Epicurus used to fashion for his atoms. I do not think Clearchus will be willing to suppose, as you people do, that the moon is a heavy, solid body, but rather a star,
ethereal and light-bearing, as you say; and a body of that kind ought to shatter and turn back the sight, so that the reflection would be lost entirely. And if anyone presses us further, we shall ask how it is that only in the moon is there a mirror-image of the sea forming a face, while in none of the countless other stars is anything of the kind seen — and yet it is reasonable to demand that this happen to sight either in the case of all of them, or of none."
But then, looking toward Lucius, I said, "Remind us of what was first said on our side." And Lucius said, "But let us not seem to be treating Pharnaces with utter contempt, passing over the Stoic doctrine so completely without a word — say something to the man in any case, since he supposes the moon to be a mixture of air and gentle fire, and then claims that, as when a shudder runs beneath a calm sea's surface, so, as the air darkens,
a face-like appearance comes about." "How graciously, Lucius," I said, "you clothe the absurdity in polite words! Our friend did not put it that way; rather — and this was the truth of the matter — he said that they were 'blackening the moon's eye,' filling it with spots and dark patches, while at the same time invoking her as Artemis and Athena, and at the same time making her a mixture and a kneaded compound of murky air and glowing coal-fire, possessing neither a kindling of her own nor
any light that belongs to her, but rather some ill-defined body, forever smoldering and scorched by fire, like those thunderbolts that poets call 'lightless' and 'sooty.' Yet that a coal-like fire, such as these men make the moon's fire to be, has no persistence or coherence at all unless it takes hold of some solid matter that at once contains it and feeds it — this, I think, is something better understood by looking at the philosophers who playfully
say that Hephaestus is called lame because fire, apart from wood, cannot proceed, just as the lame cannot go without a staff. If, then, the moon is fire, where has so much air come to be within her? For that region up above, moving in a circle, is not made of air, but of a superior substance, whose nature it is to attenuate and kindle everything together with it; and if air has indeed come to be there, how is it that it has not vanished, transformed
into another form, turned wholly into fire, but instead is preserved and dwells together with fire for so long a time, as though it were a nail fastened and riveted forever to the same parts? For a thing that is rarefied and confused ought not to remain but to be dispersed; and it is impossible for a thing mixed with fire, and partaking neither of moisture nor of earth — the only things with which air is naturally suited to solidify — to become compacted. And yet the very rush and
violence of the fire's whirling burns up even the air within stones, and the air within cold lead, let alone the air whirling within fire itself with such great speed! Indeed, people are also displeased with Empedocles, who makes the moon a frozen, hail-like mass of air, held together by the enclosing sphere of fire; yet these men themselves say that the moon, being a sphere of fire, contains within it a different sort of air, torn apart in one place and another, and this
though it has neither ruptures within itself nor depths and hollows, such as those who make it earthy leave room for — but rather, evidently, lying superficially upon its convex surface. But this is both unreasonable with a view to permanence, and impossible to observe, at the times of full moon; for there ought not to be a sharp boundary between black and shadowed, but rather a fading out as it is hidden, or a shining together with the rest, as the moon is overtaken by the sun's light. For indeed, among us too,
the air in the depths and hollows of the earth, where light does not penetrate, remains shadowy and unlit, while the air poured round the earth from outside has brightness and a luminous color; for it is, on account of its rarity, readily blended with every quality and power, and above all, whenever it is touched and reached by light alone, as you say, it is illuminated throughout, being altered. The very same thing, then, applies also
to those who force the shadows into certain depths and ravines: in the moon the air seems admirably to help you, but it thoroughly refutes you people who somehow mix and fit together her sphere out of air and fire; for it is not possible for a shadow to remain on the surface when the sun illuminates with its light all that portion of the moon which we, too, cut off with our sight from
the rest of the moon." And Pharnaces, while I was still speaking, said, "Here it is again, that revolving stage-device from the Academy has reached us — the practice, when arguing against others, of continually failing to give an account of the very things they themselves assert, but always playing the defendant rather than the accuser, whenever they meet with people. Well, you at any rate will not draw me out today into giving an account of what you charge the Stoics with, until I have received satisfaction
from you people, who turn the world upside down." And Lucius laughed and said, "Only, my good man, do not proclaim a charge of impiety against us, as Cleanthes thought the Greeks ought to summon Aristarchus of Samos on a charge of impiety for moving the hearth of the universe, because the man was trying to save the phenomena by supposing that the heaven remains still while the earth revolves along an oblique circle,
and at the same time rotates about its own axis. We ourselves, of course, are asserting nothing on our own account; but those who suppose the moon to be earth — my good sir — in what way do they turn things upside down any more than you do, when you people set the earth up here, suspended in mid-air, though it is many times greater than the moon, as the mathematicians measure the magnitude of its distance from the phenomena of eclipses and from the passages of its shadow
through the ecliptic? For the earth's shadow, cast by a source of light greater than itself, tapers as it extends, and the fact that the upper part of that very shadow is thin and narrow did not escape Homer either, so they say, but he called the night 'swift' on account of the sharpness of the shadow. Yet the moon, caught by this shadow in eclipses, nevertheless clears it after barely three of
her own diameters. Consider, then, how many moons' breadth the earth measures, if the shadow it casts, at its narrowest, has a breadth of three moons. And yet you are afraid the moon might fall, while as for the earth, perhaps Aeschylus has persuaded you, when he says that Atlas stands, propping the pillar of heaven and earth upon his shoulders, a burden not easy to embrace in the arms — as though, while for the moon light air runs beneath it, unable in good faith to bear so solid
a mass, the earth is held up, as Pindar says, by 'columns shod in adamant.' And that is why Pharnaces himself feels no fear that the earth might fall, yet pities the Ethiopians or the Taprobanians who lie beneath the moon's course, lest so great a weight fall upon them. And yet for the moon, the very thing that helps it against falling is its motion itself and
the whirling rush of its revolution — just as objects placed in slings are prevented from falling by the circular whirling motion. For each thing is carried by its natural motion, unless it is turned aside by something else. That is why weight does not carry the moon down, its downward tendency being knocked out of it by the revolution. But it would perhaps make more sense to wonder, rather, if it remained absolutely still and motionless, as the earth does. As it is,
the moon has a strong reason for not being carried down here; but as for the earth, being without a share in any other motion, it would be reasonable for it to be moved only by that which weighs it down. And it is heavier than the moon, not merely in proportion to its greater size, but even more so, inasmuch as the moon, through heat and combustion, has become light. In general, it appears from what you say that the moon, if it is fire, all the more
needs earth and matter, in which it can stand and take root and hold itself together and keep its power kindled; for it is not possible even to conceive of fire preserved apart from matter. Yet you people say that the earth persists without any base or root." "Quite so," said Pharnaces, "since it holds the middle place, as being proper and natural to it; for this is the point about which all weights, inclining, lean
and are carried and converge from every side; while the whole region above, even if it should receive some earthy body hurled up by force, at once squeezes it out from itself, or rather lets it go, since it is naturally carried downward by its own proper inclination." To this I, wishing to give Lucius time to collect his thoughts, called on Theon and said, "Theon, which of the tragic poets has said that physicians purge bitter bile
with bitter drugs?" And when Theon answered that it was Sophocles, "That," I said, "must be granted to those men out of necessity; but philosophers ought not to be listened to, if they wish to ward off paradoxes with paradoxes, and, fighting against the astonishing features of their opponents' doctrines, fashion others still more absurd and astonishing — as these men do in introducing motion toward the middle. What paradox is not contained in that notion? Is it not paradoxical that the earth is a sphere, having such great depths
and heights and irregularities? That there dwell antipodes, like woodworms or lizards turned upside-down, clinging to the earth head downward? That we ourselves do not stand upright but lean sideways, tilted like drunkards? That thousand-talent masses of molten metal, carried through the depths of the earth, come to rest when they reach the middle, though nothing meets or supports them; and if, carried down by their own rush,
they should overshoot the middle, they turn back again and rebound from it? That sections, as it were, sawn off from either side of the earth do not fall downward continuously, but, striking against the earth from outside, are pushed inward and hidden away around the middle? That a raging torrent of water, carried downward, if it should reach the middle point — as these men themselves say — a thing without body, would come to a stop, hanging suspended in mid-air, or
“revolving in a circle, an unceasing and unresting suspension? For one could not falsely charge some of these consequences upon anyone who tries, as far as possible, to bring his thought into line with the theory. For this is what it means for things to be turned upside down and everything reversed: that whatever is on the near side of the center becomes ‘down,’ while whatever is beneath the center becomes ‘up’ in turn — so that, if by the earth’s sympathetic attraction someone were to stand with the center of the earth at his navel, he would have both his head up and his feet up at the same time; and if someone should dig through to the region beyond him, the man being dug up would find his own being rising and being drawn down from above; while if someone else, standing opposite to this first man, were imagined, both of their feet together would become and be called ‘up.’”
“Indeed, of such and so many paradoxes—by Zeus, not a beggar’s wallet but the baggage of some conjuror, and a whole festival-load of them, they load onto their backs and drag others along with them, saying that we are joking when we place the moon, which is earth, up above, establishing it not where the center is. And yet, if every heavy body converges toward the same point and presses back with all its parts toward its own center, then the earth is the center of the universe not so much because it is a whole to which the parts, being its own weights, belong.
And it will be proof that the things that incline downward do so not because of a centrality belonging to the earth in relation to the cosmos, but because of some kinship and affinity to the earth felt by the things thrown off from it and then falling back again. For just as the sun draws back into itself the parts of which it is composed, so also the earth receives the stone as something of its own and proper to it, and carries it toward itself; hence each such thing becomes united with it over time and grows together with it.
But if some body happens not to have been apportioned to the earth from the beginning, nor torn away from it, but somewhere has acquired its own constitution and nature independently — as those men would say the moon has — what prevents it from being separate and remaining around itself, held together and compacted by its own parts? For neither is the earth shown to be the center of the universe, nor does the cohesion and constitution of the things here in relation to the earth indicate the manner in which the things that fell together there are likely to remain in relation to the moon.
He who drives together all earthy and heavy things into one region and makes them parts of a single body — I do not see why he does not render the same necessity to the light things as well, but instead allows so many separate systems of fire to exist, and thinks it necessary, without gathering all the stars into the same place, that there should nonetheless be a single common body of all things that tend upward and are flame-like.”
“But you say,” I said, “my dear Apollonides, that the sun is countless myriads of stadia distant from the upper revolution, and Venus upon it, and Mercury shining, and the other planets set lower than the fixed stars and carried at great distances from one another; yet you think the cosmos affords no roominess or spacing within itself to the heavy and earthy things. Do you not see how absurd it is, if we shall say the moon is not earth because it stands apart from the lower region, yet shall call it a star, seeing it thrust away from the upper revolution by so many myriads
of stadia, and as it were sunk into some depth — while of the stars it is so much lower that one could not even state a measure, but the numbers fail even you mathematicians when you try to calculate it — whereas it in some manner touches the earth, and revolving nearby traces, as it were, the track of a chariot-wheel, as Empedocles says; and near its edge it does not even overstep its own shadow,
though that shadow is often raised up only a little, because the illuminating body is so vast. But the moon seems to circle so close to the skin, so nearly in the very arms of the earth, that it is screened off from the sun by the earth itself, never rising above this shadowy, earthy, nocturnal region, which is the earth’s own portion. Therefore, I think, one should say boldly that the moon lies within the bounds of the earth, being eclipsed by
the earth’s own projections.” “But consider, setting aside the other fixed stars and planets, what Aristarchus demonstrates in his book On Sizes and Distances: that ‘the distance of the sun from the distance of the moon’ — the moon’s distance from us — ‘is more than eighteen times but less than twenty times’ as great, although the man who places the moon at its greatest remove says it is fifty-six times as far from us,
reckoned from the center of the earth; and this distance is forty myriad stadia according to those who measure it moderately; and reckoning from this figure, the sun is more than four thousand and thirty myriad stadia distant from the moon. Thus is it removed from the sun on account of its weight, and it has drawn so close to the earth, that if one must distinguish substances by their places, the earth’s domain and jurisdiction lays a claim upon the moon and
upon the affairs and bodies around the earth, by right of nearness and neighborhood. And I think we do nothing amiss in this, that while we grant to the things called ‘above’ so great a depth and interval, we leave to the things ‘below’ some circuit and breadth as well, as much as the distance from earth to moon amounts to. For neither is the man who calls only the outermost surface of the heaven ‘above’ and everything else ‘below’ speaking with due measure,
nor is the man tolerable who marks off ‘below’ as belonging to the earth, or rather to the center; but instead, as the cosmos yields the needed space in that direction as well, on account of its magnitude, motion belongs there too. And against the man who insists that everything immediately away from the earth must at once be ‘up’ and aloft, another voice answers back that everything immediately away from the sphere of the fixed stars must at once be ‘down.’” “And in general, how can it be said
and of what is the earth the center? For the universe is infinite; and to the infinite, which has neither beginning nor end, it does not belong to have a center, for a center is itself a kind of boundary, and infinity is the privation of boundaries. But the man who declares the earth to be the center not of the whole, but of the ordered cosmos, is agreeable enough — unless he supposes the cosmos itself, too,
to be caught in the very same difficulties. For the universe leaves no center even to the cosmos itself, but it is homeless and unfounded, borne in infinite void toward nothing that is its own, or else, having found some other cause for remaining, it stands fixed, not in accordance with the nature of place. One may conjecture similarly about the earth and about the moon, that they differ rather by having each a different soul and nature,
the one remaining at rest here, the other also being carried in motion. But apart from these considerations, see whether some great point has escaped them: for if whatever, in whatever way, comes to be outside the center of the earth is ‘up,’ then no part of the cosmos at all is ‘down,’ but the earth itself, and the things upon the earth, and simply every body that stands around or lies about the center,
becomes ‘up’; and only one thing is ‘down,’ that bodiless point itself, which must stand opposed to the whole nature of the cosmos, if indeed ‘down’ is by nature opposed to ‘up.’ And this is not the only absurdity, but it also destroys the very cause on account of which heavy things incline and are carried here: for there is no
body ‘down there’ toward which they move, and the bodiless point is not likely, nor do they themselves wish it, to have such power as to draw everything toward itself and hold it together around itself. But altogether it is found irrational and at odds with the facts, that ‘up’ should be the whole cosmos, while ‘down’ is nothing but a bodiless, dimensionless limit; whereas that view is reasonable, as
we ourselves say, according to which ‘up’ has been allotted a region, and ‘down’ likewise a great one, possessing breadth.” “But nevertheless, granting, if you wish, that the motions of earthy bodies in the heaven are contrary to nature, let us consider the matter calmly, not tragically but gently: does this show that the moon is not earth at all, or rather that it is earth existing where it does not naturally belong? Since even the fire
on Etna, though beneath the earth, is contrary to nature, yet it is still fire; and the breath enclosed in wineskins is by nature upward-tending and light, yet it comes to be where it does not naturally belong, by compulsion. And the soul itself, by Zeus,” I said, “is it not contrary to nature that it is yoked to a body — the swift to the slow, the fiery to the cold, the invisible to the perceptible, just as you yourselves say? Is that why, then,
we should say that there is no soul in a body, nor any divine portion of mind, though under weight or thickness it comes to encompass and fly through heaven and earth and sea all together, and yet arrives at flesh and sinews and marrow and moistures full of countless passions? This Zeus of yours — does he not, using his own nature, exist as one great continuous fire,
but now has been let down and bent and reshaped, having become and becoming every color amid the changes? So take care and consider, my good sir, lest, by shifting and dragging each thing away from where it naturally belongs, you are philosophizing a dissolution of the cosmos, and bringing in Empedocles’ Strife upon the world — or rather, stirring up against nature the ancient Titans and Giants, and longing to behold that mythic
and fearful disorder and confusion, setting all that is heavy apart and all that is light apart, ‘where neither the sun’s bright form is discerned, nor the shaggy race of earth, nor the sea,’ as Empedocles says: earth had no share in heat, water none in breath, nothing heavy was above, nothing light below, but the first principles of all things were unmixed and unloving units,
admitting no combination of one with another, nor any communion, but fleeing and turning away and being carried each in its own willful, separate course — they were as everything is, according to Plato, from which god is absent, that is, as bodies are when mind and soul have left them; until Desire came upon nature by providence, when Friendship arose, and
Aphrodite and Eros, as Empedocles says, and Parmenides, and Hesiod, so that, exchanging places and receiving powers from one another, some bound and compelled by necessity to motion, others to rest, toward the better, from which each had its nature, they might yield and change and bring about harmony and communion for the whole.” “For if no other part of the cosmos either
were possessed of anything contrary to nature, but each lies as it naturally is, needing no relocation or rearrangement, nor having needed any at the beginning, then I am at a loss what work providence has, or of what Zeus, ‘the master craftsman,’ has become the maker and father and artisan. For there would be no use for tacticians in an army, if each soldier of himself knew how to take up, at the right moment, the rank and place he needed,
and to keep it; nor any use for gardeners or builders, if in one place water of itself naturally flows toward those who need it and irrigates as it streams, while in another bricks and timbers and stones, using their natural inclinations and tendencies, of themselves attain the fitting arrangement and place. But if this is so, this argument outright destroys providence;
whereas if the ordering of things and their division belongs properly to god, what is astonishing in the world's being so arranged, and nature so fitted together, that fire is here and stars there, and again that earth is here below and the moon set above, held together by a bond more secure than the natural one — the bond of reason? For if all things must follow their natural inclinations
and be carried according to what is natural to them, then let not the sun revolve in a circle, nor Venus, nor any of the other stars; for it is not natural for light, fiery things to move upward in a circle. But if nature admits of such a change according to place, so that here fire is seen carried upward, yet when it comes into the heaven it is swept around together with the vortex, what is astonishing
if the heavy and earthy things too, once they come to be there, likewise happen to be overcome by the surrounding medium into another kind of motion? For it is surely not the case that the upward motion is taken away from the light things as being natural to the heaven, while the heaven is unable to overpower the downward tendency of the heavy things; rather, whatever power it once used upon the former, it has used the same power to rearrange the latter as well, adapting
their nature for the better.” “And yet, if one must at last set aside enslaved and habituated opinions and speak boldly of what appears, no part of a whole seems, by itself, to have its own order or position or motion which one could simply call ‘natural.’ Rather, whenever each thing, moving in a way useful and proper to that for the sake of which it came to be and toward which it is naturally suited or has been made, provides
itself — whether acting, being acted upon, or being disposed — usefully and properly, as is fitting for that thing’s preservation or beauty or power, then it seems to have its place, motion, and disposition according to nature. Man, for instance, as one who, like anything else that exists, has come to be according to nature, has above all the heavy and earthy parts placed around the head,
and in the middle regions the hot and fiery ones; and of the teeth, some grow from above and some from below, and neither is contrary to nature; nor is it natural for fire alone to glitter around the eyes above, while what is in the belly and heart is contrary to nature — rather, each has been arranged suitably and usefully. Indeed, in the nature of stony-shelled cockles and tortoises
and every kind of oyster, as Empedocles says when he studies it — ‘there you will see earth dwelling uppermost on the flesh’ — and the stony part does not press or crush the living tissue lying beneath it, nor again does the heat, on account of its lightness, fly away and depart into the upper region; rather they are somehow mingled with one another and coordinated according to the nature of each thing.” “As is likely also to hold
for the cosmos too, if indeed it is a living being, having earth in many places, and in many places fire and water and air, not compressed together by necessity but ordered by reason. For neither is the eye in this body squeezed out by lightness to its place, nor has the heart, slipping by its weight, fallen down into the chest; but each has been so arranged because it was better so. Do not, then,
Let us not, then, suppose that of the parts of the cosmos the earth lies here because it collapsed under its own weight, nor that the sun, as Metrodorus of Chios believed, was squeezed out into the upper region like a wineskin because of its lightness, nor that the other stars, as if inclining in the balance of a scale, came to be in the places where they now are. Rather, since reason governs, some bodies, like luminous eyes set in the face of the universe, revolve as they circle around, while the sun, possessing the power of a heart, sends out and disperses from itself heat and light as if they were blood and breath; and the cosmos makes use of earth and sea according to nature, as a living creature makes use of belly and bladder. The moon, lying between sun and earth like a liver, or some other soft inward organ, set between heart and belly, transmits the warmth from above to this region, and by a kind of concoction and purification refines the vapors that rise from here and gives them off around itself; but whether its earthy and solid part serves some other useful purpose besides is unclear to us. In everything, the better prevails over the merely necessitated.
"For what likelihood should we accept from what those men say? They say that of the aether, the bright and fine part, because of its rarity, became heaven, while the part that was condensed and compacted became the stars, and that of these the moon is the most sluggish and murkiest. And yet one can see that the moon is not cut off from the aether, but is still carried along within a great deal of it, and has beneath itself a great deal more, in which winds and comets whirl about. Thus no body is weighed down purely according to the inclinations of heaviness and lightness among bodies, but each has been ordered by a different principle."
When this had been said, and I was handing the argument over to Lucius, who was moving on to the proofs of his position, Aristotle smiled and said, "I call you to witness that you have directed your whole rebuttal against those who suppose the moon to be half fire, and who claim generally that bodies incline, of their own nature, some upward and some downward. But if there is anyone who says that the stars move in a circle by nature, and that they are of a substance far different from the four elements, it was not by chance that he came to our minds — so that both I and you, Lucius, might be relieved of the business." And Lucius said, "By no means, my good man — rather, as for the rest, perhaps against you who posit that the stars and the whole heaven belong to some pure and unmixed nature, free from the change that comes with passion, and who maintain an eternal and unending circular revolution, no one could, at least for now, contend, though there are countless difficulties. But when the argument comes down and touches upon the moon in this way, it no longer preserves in it that freedom from passion, nor that beauty of body,
but — to leave aside its other irregularities and differences — this very face that shows through it has come about either through some affection of its substance or through some admixture of another substance. And that which is mixed in also suffers something in the process, for it loses its purity, being forcibly filled with what is inferior. As for the moon's own sluggishness, its bluntness of speed, and its heat, feeble and dim — the heat by which, in Ion's words, 'the dark grape does not ripen' — to what shall we attribute these except to weakness and passion in it, if indeed an eternal and Olympian body can share in passion? For in general, my dear Aristotle, as earth it appears a wholly beautiful and majestic and well-ordered thing; but as a star, or a light, or some divine and heavenly body, I fear it may prove shapeless and unbecoming, disgracing its fair name — if indeed, when there are so many bodies in the heaven, it alone goes about needing a light not its own, forever, as Parmenides says, 'gazing toward the rays of the sun.'
"Now our companion, in his lecture, expounding this very Anaxagorean doctrine — that the sun implants its brightness in the moon — won approval; but I shall not repeat what I learned from you, or together with you, and will proceed, by my own choice, to what remains. That the moon is illuminated not as glass or crystal is, by the sun's shining and shining through it, is plausible; nor again by a kind of joint-kindling and joint-brightening, as torches do when their flame is fed — for in that case there would be no less a full moon at new moons than at mid-month, if the moon does not block or obstruct the sun but lets him through because of its own rarity, or lets him shine in through some blending, and kindles the light about itself. For there are no turnings or aversions of it to account for, of the kind one might posit around the conjunction, as when it is half, gibbous, or crescent-shaped; rather, as Democritus says, standing directly in line with the source of light, it takes up and receives the sun — so that it would be reasonable for the moon itself to appear and, at the same time, to let the sun shine through. But it is far from doing this:
for at that very time it is itself invisible, and it has hidden and made the sun disappear many times over, and has 'scattered its rays down upon the earth,' as Empedocles says, and 'has darkened as much of the earth as is the breadth of the grey-eyed moon' — as though into night and darkness, not onto another star, when the light falls upon it. As for what Posidonius says, that because of the depth of the moon the sun's light does not pass through it to us, this is plainly refuted. For the air, being boundless and having a depth many times that of the moon, is entirely suffused with sun and lit up by its rays throughout. What remains, then, is Empedocles' view: that the illumination we see here comes about through a certain reflection of the sun toward the moon and from it to us; and this is why neither heat nor brightness reaches us, as would be likely if there had been a genuine kindling and blending of lights. But just as voices, in echoing, produce a fainter version of the original sound, and the blows of rebounding missiles land more softly, so too, 'a ray striking the broad circle of the moon' meets with a weak and dim upward flow back toward us, its power spent through the refraction."
Taking up the argument, Sulla said, "To be sure, these points have some plausibility; but as for the strongest of the objections raised — did it, in fact, receive any answer, or did it slip past our friend?" "What do you mean by that," said Lucius, "other than the difficulty concerning the half-moon?" "Just so," said Sulla. "For there is something in this: since every reflection occurs at equal angles, whenever the moon, at the half phase, is at mid-heaven, its light ought not to be carried down to the earth but should slip past it beyond the earth's edge. For the sun, being on the horizon, touches the moon with its ray; hence, being reflected at equal angles, the ray will fall out at the opposite extremity and will not send its light here — or else there will be a great distortion and shift in the angle, which is impossible."
"But indeed, by Zeus," said Lucius, "this too was raised" — and turning to look at Menelaus, the mathematician, in the course of the discussion, he said, "I am ashamed, dear Menelaus, in your presence, to overturn a mathematical proposition, since it underlies matters of optics as a foundation; yet it must be said that the claim that every reflection occurs at equal angles is neither self-evident nor universally agreed. It is called into question in the case of convex mirrors, whenever they produce images larger than themselves relative to a single point of sight; and it is called into question by double mirrors, which, when tilted toward one another so that an angle is formed between them, each of the two planes yields a double image and produces four images from a single face — two inverted, in the outer parts, and two right-facing and dim, in the depth of the mirrors. Plato gives the explanation of how these arise.
For he has said that, since the mirror rises to a height on this side and that, the visual rays shift their reflection, passing over from one side to the other. If, then, of the visual rays some run straight back to us while others, slipping off to the other parts of the mirrors, are carried back to us again from there, it is not possible for all the reflections that occur — the very ones which people, going straight at the matter, claim hold equally for the rays coming from the moon — to occur at equal angles. As for streams flowing over the earth, they think the equality of the angles is destroyed there, and consider this far more plausible than the other case. Nevertheless, if we must grant this favor to beloved geometry, then, in the first place, it is likely to hold true only for mirrors perfected in smoothness; but the moon has many irregularities and roughnesses, so that the rays, being carried from so vast a body over considerable heights, receive counter-reflections and transmissions from one another, are reflected in all directions, become entangled, and join their own after-glow to themselves — as though being carried to us from many mirrors at once. Then again, even if we grant that the counter-reflections occur at equal angles right at the moon itself, it is not impossible that, traveling over so great a distance, the rays undergo refractions and slippages, so that the light becomes blurred together and simply shines. Some also try to demonstrate this by drawing diagrams, showing that many light sources send out a ray along a line running beneath an inclined line; but to construct a diagram while speaking, and before so large an audience, was not possible."
"But on the whole," he said, "I am amazed at how they bring the half-moon phase to bear against us, together with the gibbous and crescent phases. For if the sun were illuminating the moon's mass as being aethereal or fiery in nature, it would not leave a hemisphere of it forever shadowed and unlit to our perception; rather, even if the light merely grazed it in passing, it would be fitting for the whole to be filled and turned entirely to light, the brightness spreading everywhere with ease. For just as wine, touching water at its edge, or a drop of blood falling into a liquid, tinges the whole at once, turning it red throughout — so too they say that the air itself is illuminated by the sun not through any effluences or mingled rays, but through a turning and a change brought about by contact or touch with the light. How, then, do they suppose that star touching star, and light touching light, do not blend, and do not produce confusion and change throughout, but illuminate only those things which they touch on the surface?
For the circle which the sun, in its course, traces and turns about the moon — now falling upon the line that divides its visible part from its invisible part, now rising at right angles to it, so that it cuts that line and is cut by it in turn, and, through other inclinations and relations of the bright part to the shadowed part, yields gibbous and crescent shapes upon it — this, more than anything, shows that the illumination consists not in blending but in contact, not in joint-kindling but in encompassing light. And since the moon is not only itself illuminated but also sends back to us here the image of its brightness, this gives even greater support to arguing about its substance. For reflections do not occur against anything rare or finely dispersed, nor is it easy to conceive of light bounding off from light, or fire from fire; rather, whatever is to produce resistance and refraction must be dense and solid, so that there may be an impact against it and a rebound from it. The sun itself, at any rate, the air lets pass without offering any check or resistance, while wood, stones, and garments placed in the light give back many counter-gleams and reflected rays. So too we see the earth being illuminated by it: for the earth does not let the ray pass down into its depth as water does, nor all the way through as air does; but just as a certain circle of the sun's light goes around the moon and marks off a portion of it, so likewise another such circle goes around the earth, always illuminating that much of it and leaving the rest unlit — for the illuminated hemisphere of each body seems to be a little larger than the unlit one.
"Now allow me to put the point geometrically, by way of proportion: given that there are three things which the light from the sun approaches — earth, moon, and air — we observe that the moon is illuminated not as the air is illuminated, but as the earth is; and it is necessary that things which are affected in the same way by the same agent share a similar nature." And since everyone praised Lucius, I said, "Well done — you have added a fine proportion to a fine argument, for you ought not to be deprived of what is properly yours." And he, smiling in turn, said, "Then should we not also make use of a second proportion, so that we may show the moon to resemble the earth not only in being affected in the same way by the same agent, but also in producing the same effect? For grant me this: that nothing among the events connected with the sun is so similar to anything else as a solar eclipse is to a sunset — recalling that recent conjunction, which, beginning right at midday, revealed many stars in many parts of the sky, and produced a blending in the air just like that of twilight.
Otherwise, our friend Theon here will bring against us Mimnermus and Cydias and Archilochus, and besides these Stesichorus and Pindar, lamenting in their verses on eclipses 'the brightest star stolen away,' and 'night coming in the middle of the day,' and calling the sun's ray 'a pathway of darkness' — and, above all, Homer, who says that 'night and gloom hold fast the faces of men,' and that 'the sun has perished out of the heaven' — and this too is a thing that naturally happens around the moon, 'in the month's waning' as well as 'in its waxing.'
The rest of the matter, I think, has been brought by mathematical precision to a firm and settled conclusion: namely, that night is the shadow of the earth, and an eclipse of the sun is the shadow of the moon, whenever our line of sight falls within it. For the sun, setting beneath the earth, is blocked from our sight; and, in eclipse, it is blocked by the moon. Both are cases of darkening, but the one is the setting-darkness that belongs to the earth, the other the eclipse-darkness that belongs to the moon, its shadow overtaking our sight. From this, what follows is easy to see: if the effect is similar, the causes producing it are similar, for it is necessary that the same things happen to the same thing from the same causes. But if the darkness surrounding eclipses is not as deep as this, nor does it press upon the air in the same way that night does, let us not be surprised — for the substance of that which produces night and of the body which produces the eclipse is the same, but their size is not equal. The Egyptians, I believe, say that the moon is a seventy-second part of the earth's shadow; Anaxagoras says it is as large as the Peloponnese; and Aristarchus demonstrates that the diameter of the earth bears a ratio to the diameter of the moon of less than sixty to...
nineteen, and greater than the ratio of one hundred eight to forty-three. Hence the earth deprives the sight of the sun altogether because of its size — for the interposition is great, and lasts as long as the night — whereas the moon, even when it does sometimes hide the whole sun, produces an eclipse that has neither duration nor breadth, but a certain radiance still shows around the rim, not allowing the shadow to become deep and unmixed.
The elder Aristotle, among other causes, also gives this one for why the moon is seen eclipsed more often than the sun: the sun is eclipsed by the moon's screening it, whereas the moon is eclipsed by [the earth's shadow]. Posidonius, defining the phenomenon in this way, says: "An eclipse is a coincidence of the sun with the shadow of the moon, of which an eclipse occurs only for those upon whom the moon's shadow, catching their line of sight, cuts them off from the sun." Yet in agreeing that the moon's shadow is carried toward us, I do not know what he has left himself to say — for it is impossible for a star to cast a shadow, since what is unlit is called shadow, and light does not produce shadow but by its nature abolishes it.
"But what," he said, "was said after this, among the proofs?" And I said, "That the moon undergoes the same eclipse." "You are right," he said, "to remind me. But tell me whether I should now turn to the discussion on the assumption that you are already persuaded and hold that the moon is eclipsed by being caught by the shadow, or would you like me to rehearse the demonstration for you, enumerating each of the proofs one by one?" "By Zeus," said Theon, "do rehearse them for us. As for myself, I still need some persuading, having heard only this much — that eclipses occur when the three bodies, earth, sun, and moon, come to lie on a single straight line; for either the earth deprives the moon of the sun, or, again, the moon deprives the earth of it — the sun being eclipsed by the moon, the moon by the earth, whichever of the three stands in the middle. Of these, one occurs at conjunction, the other at full moon."
And Lucius said, "These, indeed, are pretty much the most authoritative of the points made. But first take, if you will, the argument from the shape of the shadow: it is a cone, inasmuch as it is the shadow cast by a great fire, or by a sphere of light, around a smaller spherical mass. Hence in eclipses of the moon the outlines of the darkened portions, where they meet the bright, have their divisions rounded; for whatever round body meets a round body, whether it receives or produces the cuts, these become circular everywhere on account of the resemblance. Second, I think you know that in eclipses of the moon the eastern parts are eclipsed first, but of the sun the western parts; and the earth's shadow moves toward the west from the east, while the sun and moon move, on the contrary, toward the east.
These things the appearances allow one to observe directly by sense, and one can also learn them from arguments not at all long; and from these the cause of the eclipse is confirmed. For since the sun is eclipsed by being overtaken, while the moon meets that which produces the eclipse, naturally — or rather necessarily — the one is caught first from behind, the other begins to be caught in front; for the interposition begins there, from wherever the interposing body first strikes — and it strikes the sun from the west, since the moon is racing to catch up with it, but it strikes the moon from the east, since the moon is being carried along in the opposite direction.
Take, then, a third point still, that of the duration and the magnitude of the moon's own eclipses. When high and at apogee she is eclipsed and hidden for a short time; but when near the earth and low, undergoing this same thing, she is pressed hard and departs slowly out of the shadow — and yet, being low, she employs the greatest motions, while being high she employs the least. But the cause of the difference lies in the shadow: for the shadow, being very broad at its base, like cones, contracts little by little to a fine and narrow point at its tip.
Hence the moon, when low, falls into the greatest circles of the shadow and is caught by it, and passes through the deepest and darkest part; but when high, as though in a shallow, because of the thinness of the shaded region, she is touched only briefly and is quickly freed. I pass over what was said separately about the particular bases and the discrepancies — for those points too admit the cause up to the point that is possible — but let me return to the argument at hand, which has its starting point in sense-perception.
We observe that fire, when seen from a shadowed place, appears brighter and shines more — whether this is because of the thickness of the dark air, which does not admit the fire's effluences and diffusions but confines and compresses its substance in the same place; or whether this is an affection of the sense of sight itself, just as hot things appear hotter beside cold ones, and pleasures more intense beside pains, so that bright things appear more manifest beside dark ones, our perception being intensified in each case by contrast with the opposite affection. The former explanation seems the more plausible: for in the sun every fiery nature not only loses its brightness but, by yielding to it, becomes sluggish and duller — for the sun's heat scatters and diffuses its power.
If, then, the moon possesses a weak and feeble fire, being a murkier star, as they themselves say, then none of what she now appears to undergo would be appropriate to her — rather the opposite of all this ought to happen to her: she ought to appear bright when hidden, and be hidden when she appears — that is, she ought to be hidden the rest of the time, dimmed by the surrounding aether, but shine out and become visible every six months, and again every five months, as she sinks into the shadow of the earth. For the four hundred and sixty-five cycles of eclipse full moons include four hundred four intervals of six months, and the rest of five months.
It would therefore be necessary, over such long intervals, for the moon to appear brightened while in the shadow — but instead she is eclipsed in the shadow and loses her light, and recovers it again only when she has escaped the shadow; and she often appears by day, showing herself to be anything rather than a fiery, star-like body."
When Lucius had said this, both Pharnaces and Apollonides broke in at once upon the argument, almost together; then, Apollonides yielding, Pharnaces said that this above all shows the moon to be a star or fire — for she is not entirely invisible during eclipses, but shows through a certain coal-like and grim color, which is peculiar to her. Apollonides objected concerning the word "shadow" — for the mathematicians, he said, always use that name for the unlit region, and the heavens do not admit of shadow.
But I said, "This objection is made more contentiously with regard to the name than in a scientific and mathematical spirit with regard to the fact. For whether or not one is willing to call the region screened off by the earth a 'shadow,' but rather a lightless place, it is nonetheless necessary that the moon, coming to be within it, [suffer accordingly]. And in general," I said, "it is foolish to deny that the earth's shadow reaches that far, when the moon's own shadow, falling upon our sight and extending to the earth, produces an eclipse of the sun.
But I shall turn to you, Pharnaces: that coal-like and glowing color of the moon, which you say is peculiar to her, belongs to a body that has density and depth; for no remnant or trace of flame is willing to remain in rarefied things, nor can a coal come to be except where there is a solid body which receives the burning throughout its depth and preserves it — as indeed Homer somewhere has said: 'but when the flower of fire had flown away, and the flame, having spread the coal-bed, ceased.' For a coal, it seems, is not fire but a body that has been fired and has been affected by fire, clinging to and lodging in a solid mass that has, so to speak, root; whereas flames are the kindling of something rarefied and streams of fuel and matter, quickly dissolving because of their weakness.
So there would be no other proof so clear that the moon is earthy and dense, if that coal-like color were indeed peculiar to her. But it is not, dear Pharnaces: for as she is eclipsed she changes through many colors, and the mathematicians distinguish these by time and by hour: if she is eclipsed from evening, she appears terribly black until the third and a half hour; if at midnight, she then sends out this reddish and fiery glow; from the seventh and a half hour on, the redness rises; and finally, toward dawn, she takes on a blue-gray and gleaming-eyed color, from which the poets, and Empedocles too, call her most of all 'gleaming-eyed.'
Seeing, then, that the moon takes on so many colors in the shadow, people are not right to fasten only on the coal-like one, which one might most say is actually foreign to her, and rather a mixture and remnant of the light shining around through the shadow; whereas what is peculiar to her is the black and earthy. Just as, in our world, where shaded regions lie near purple and crimson pools and rivers and lakes that catch the sun, they take on a shared color and are lit up all around, giving back many different reflected gleams because of the refractions — what wonder is it if a great stream of shadow, pouring as it were into a heavenly sea of light that is neither steady nor at rest but driven by countless stars, taking on all manner of minglings and changes, wipes off now one color, now another, from the moon and gives it back here to us?
For a star or fire could not, in shadow, show through as black or gray-blue or dusky blue; but on mountains and plains and seas many forms of color run over from the sun, together with shadows and mists, such as the bright light produces when mixed with painters' pigments — colors of which Homer has somehow tried to name those of the sea, calling it 'violet-colored' and 'wine-dark sea,' and again 'the purple wave,' and elsewhere 'gray-blue sea' and 'white calm'; but he has left aside the differences around the land, of colors appearing now one way, now another, as being infinite in number. And it is not likely that the moon, like the sea, has a single uniform surface, but that she resembles most of all the earth in nature — the earth which old Socrates described in myth, whether indeed he was hinting at this very moon or telling of some other. For it is not incredible or astonishing, if, having nothing corrupt or muddy in herself, but enjoying pure light from heaven and a warmth that is not scorching or maddening fire but moist and harmless and natural, she is full of it, and possesses wonderful beauties of regions — mountains that gleam like flame, and belts of purple, and gold and silver not scattered in her depths but blooming abundantly upon her plains or carried around on her smooth heights.
And if the sight of these things reaches us, altered now this way, now that, through the shadow, because of some variation and difference in the medium surrounding it, still this does not take away from the moon's honor or divinity — she who is held sacred by men more than a turbid and dreggy fire, as the Stoics say. For fire indeed has barbarian honors among the Medes and Assyrians, who out of fear worship the things that harm them, propitiating them ahead of what is truly holy; but the name of 'earth' is dear and honored, I suppose, by every Greek, and it is ancestral for us to revere it like some other god. We are far, then, from needing to think of the moon — being a heavenly earth — as a soulless and mindless body, having no share in what it is proper to offer as first-fruits to the gods, paying by custom the returns due to good things and by nature revering what is greater in excellence and power and more honorable.
So let us think we do nothing amiss in positing her as earth, and this face that appears on her — just as our own earth here has certain great gulfs, so that moon too is opened out with great depths and clefts containing either water or murky air, into which the sun's light does not descend and does not even touch, but is eclipsed there and gives back a scattered reflection." Apollonides, taking this up, said, "Then, in the name of the Moon herself, does it seem possible to you that these are shadows of certain clefts or ravines, and that they reach us here to our sight from there — or have you not reckoned with what actually follows, and shall I state it? Listen, even though you are not ignorant of it.
The diameter of the moon, at its apparent size at mean distances, measures twelve finger-breadths. Each of the dark and shadowy patches appears greater than half a finger-breadth, so that it is greater than a twenty-fourth of the diameter. And indeed, if we suppose the circumference of the moon to be only thirty thousand stades and its diameter ten thousand, then on this assumption each of the shadowy patches on her would be no less than five hundred stades. Consider, then, first, whether it is possible for the moon to have depths and roughnesses so great as to produce a shadow of such size; and next, how, being so great in magnitude, they are not seen by us."
And I, smiling at him, said, "Well done, Apollonides, for having devised such a proof, by which you will show both me and yourself to be taller than those famous sons of Aloeus — not at every hour of the day, however, but especially in the early morning and late afternoon, if you suppose, when the sun makes our shadows towering, that this fine syllogism holds good for the senses: that if the shadowed thing is large, the thing casting the shadow is immensely large. Neither of us, I am quite sure, has ever been to Lemnos; yet we have both often heard that well-worn iambic line: 'Athos will cover the flank of the Lemnian ox' — for the mountain's shadow falls, it seems, upon a certain bronze heifer, stretching its length across the sea no less than seven hundred stades, the shadowing height being what it is for the reason that the distances of light from bodies produce shadows many times greater.
Come, then, look also at the moon, when she is at the full and shows the articulated shape of her face most clearly through the depth of the shadow, the sun being then at its greatest distance from her — for it is this distance of the light that has produced the great shadow, not the magnitudes of the irregularities upon the moon's surface. And indeed, not even the projecting peaks of mountains are permitted to be seen by day, on account of the sun's surrounding brightness, though the deep hollows appear shadowy from far off. It is, then, nothing strange if the moon's own receiving and reflecting of light cannot be observed exactly either, while the juxtapositions of her shadowy patches...
"...are not, by their contrast with the bright regions, hidden from view."
"But that fact," I said, "seems rather to refute the theory of reflection alleged for the moon: that those standing in reflected rays happen to see not only the illuminated object but also the illuminating one. For whenever, as a ray leaps from water to a wall, sight comes to be in the very spot on the wall that is illuminated by the reflection, it discerns three things at once: the reflected ray itself, the water that produces the reflection, and the sun itself, from which the light, falling on the water, has been reflected. Since these facts are agreed and observed, they call on those who maintain that the earth is illuminated by reflection from the moon to show the sun appearing in the moon at night, just as it appears in water by day whenever a reflection occurs from it. But since this is not observed, they suppose that the illumination comes about in some other way, not by reflection; and if not by this, then the moon is not earth."
"What then," said Apollonides, "should be said against them? For the matter of reflection seems to bear on our view as well." "Indeed," I said, "in one way it is common to us, but in another way not at all. First observe how they take the image the wrong way round, upside down. For water lies on the earth, below, while the moon lies above the earth, aloft; hence the reflected rays form the angle in reverse, one having its apex above, near the moon, the other below, near the earth. So let them not demand that every kind of mirror, from every distance, produce a similar reflection, since that runs against plain observation. As for those who declare that the moon's body is not fine and smooth, as water is, but dense and earthy, I do not see how they can then demand that the sun's image appear in it for our sight; for milk does not yield such reflections either, nor does it produce reflections of sight, because of the unevenness and roughness of its particles. How, then, could it be possible for the moon to send sight back from itself, as the smoother mirrors send it back? And yet even these mirrors, if some scratch or dirt or roughness seizes the point from which sight is naturally reflected, go blind -- they themselves are still seen, but they no longer give back the answering gleam. And whoever insists either that our sight reaches the sun, or else that the sun is not reflected onto us by the moon itself, is being naive: he requires the eye to be a sun, sight to be light, and man to be heaven. For it is likely that the sun's reflection, on account of its force and brightness, travels toward us from the moon with something like a blow; but our sight, being weak and thin and scant, what wonder is it if it neither delivers a repelling blow nor, in rebounding, preserves its continuity, but instead breaks up and falls short, having no abundance of light with which to avoid being torn apart amid the unevenness and roughness? For from water and other mirrors, while it is still strong and close to its starting point, it is not impossible for the reflection to leap on to the sun; but from the moon, even if some slippages of it occur, they will be weak and faint and will give out before arriving, because of the length of the distance. Besides, concave mirrors make the reflected ray more intense than the incoming ray, so that they often send up actual flames, whereas convex and spherical mirrors, because they do not offer resistance from every side, make it weak and dim. You surely observe, whenever two rainbows appear, one cloud enclosing another, that the enclosing one makes the colors dim and indistinct -- for the outer cloud, lying farther from the eye, does not give back a vigorous or strong reflection. And why should I say more? Where the sun's light, reflected from the moon, loses all its heat, and only a thin, feeble remnant of its brightness reaches us with difficulty, is it likely that sight, traveling the same double course, could have any portion left over to reach the sun from the moon? I for one do not think so. Consider this too," I said, "you yourselves: if sight were affected the same way toward water as toward the moon, then the full moon would have to produce images of earth and plants and men and stars, as the rest of mirrors do; but if no reflections of sight occur with respect to these, because of its weakness or the moon's roughness, then let us not demand them with respect to the sun either."
"We, then," I said, "have reported as much as has not escaped our memory of what was said there. It is time now to call on Sulla, or rather to require his account of himself, since he has been, as it were, a listener under contract to repay us; so, if it please you, let us break off our walk, and sitting down on the benches, provide him with a settled audience." This was agreed, and when we had sat down, Theon said, "I myself, Lamprias, desire no less than any of you to hear what is to be told; but first I would gladly hear about those said to inhabit the moon -- not whether some in fact dwell there, but whether it is even possible to dwell there. For if it is not possible, then it is absurd even to hold that the moon is earth; for it will seem to have come into being for nothing, in vain, neither bearing fruit nor furnishing any seat, origin, or way of life for any beings -- for the sake of which, we say, this body too has come to be, according to Plato, our nurse and 'the exact guardian and maker of day and night.' And you see how much is said about these things, both in jest and in earnest. Some say that those who dwell beneath the moon hang, as it were, like Tantaluses over their own heads, while those who in turn dwell upon it are bound to it like Ixions, with such violent force -- although it moves with no single motion but, as it is somehow also called, 'goddess of the three ways,' being carried at once in length along the zodiac, and in breadth, and in depth; of which motions the astronomers name one 'revolution,' another 'spiral,' and another -- I do not know how -- 'anomaly,' although they see nothing anomalous or disordered in its returns. So then, if some lion once fell, by the force of this motion, into the Peloponnese, that is no cause for wonder; the wonder is rather that we do not constantly see countless fallings of men and violent expulsions of lives from up there, tumbling and turning over as it were. And indeed it is absurd to raise doubts about the dwelling of those beings there, on the ground that they cannot have origin or composition. For where the Egyptians and the Troglodytes, for whom the sun stands directly overhead for the merest instant of a single day at the solstice and then departs, come close to being scorched by the dryness of the surrounding air, surely it is likely that those on the moon endure twelve summers every year, since the sun, month by month, stands directly over them and stays fixed whenever there is a full moon? As for winds and clouds and rains, without which plants can neither come to be nor survive once they have, it is impossible to conceive of these forming there, because of the heat and thinness of the surrounding air; for not even here do the high parts of mountains receive the wild, opposing storms, but the air there, already unsettled by its own lightness, escapes such condensation and thickening -- unless, by Zeus, we are to say that, just as Athena dripped nectar and ambrosia into Achilles when he refused food, so the moon, called and in fact being Athena, nourishes her men, sending up for them a daily ambrosia, as Pherecydes of old supposed the gods themselves to feed. As for the Indian root which Megasthenes says those who neither eat nor drink, but are sweet of breath, singe and burn as incense and are nourished by its scent -- where could one get such a root growing there, since the moon is never rained upon?"
When Theon had said this, "Most excellent," I said, "and best of all, you have smoothed our frowning brows with the playfulness of your speech, and on that account we too take courage for our reply, not expecting too bitter or too severe a reckoning; for indeed those who are exceedingly harsh and distrustful about such matters, unwilling calmly to examine what is possible and what may be, are truly no different from those who are excessively convinced of them. So then, in the first place, it is not necessary -- if men do not inhabit the moon -- that it should have come to be in vain and for nothing. For we do not see even this earth of ours active or inhabited throughout its whole extent, but only a small part of it -- as it were certain headlands or peninsulas rising out of the deep -- is fruitful of animals and plants, while of the rest, some parts are desolate and barren from storms and droughts, and most has sunk beneath the great sea. But you, who always love and admire Aristarchus, do you not hear Crates reciting: 'Ocean, who has been made the source for all men and gods alike, sends forth over most of the earth'? Yet it is far from true that these things have come to be in vain: indeed the sea sends up soft exhalations and the sweetest of winds when summer is at its height, while from the uninhabited, frozen regions the snows, gently melting, relax and scatter... 'of day and night' it stands, exact, fixed in the middle, 'guardian,' according to Plato, 'and maker.' Nothing, then, prevents the moon likewise from being empty of living creatures, while still providing reflections for the light diffused about it, and a confluence and blending for the rays of the stars within it, by which it also helps digest the exhalations rising from the earth, and at the same time tempers the excessive fieriness and harshness of the sun. And perhaps, granting something also to ancient report, we shall say she was thought to be Artemis herself, as a virgin and childless, yet otherwise helpful and beneficial. Furthermore, dear Theon, none of the things you have said proves the reputed habitation on the moon impossible: for its whirling motion, possessing much gentleness and calm, smooths the air and distributes it as it is set in order together with the moon, so that there is no fear that those who have lived there would fall off and be dislodged; and the change and this varied, wandering character of its motion is not a mark of irregularity or disorder -- rather, the astronomers demonstrate a wonderful order and course in these very things, resolving it by certain circles unwound about other circles, some making the moon stationary, others making it carried back and forth smoothly and evenly at constant speeds. For it is these mountings and revolutions of the circles, and their relations to one another and to us, that most harmoniously bring to completion the apparent heights and depths of its motion, together with its deviations in latitude along with its periods in longitude. As for the great heat and continuous burning from the sun that you fear, you will stop fearing it once you set the full moons against the eleven summer conjunctions: you will find that the continuity of the change, since the extremes do not last long, produces its own proper blending and strips away the excess of each; and lying midway between these, it has, as is likely, a season most akin to spring. Moreover, toward us it sends its heat down through murky, resistant air, nourished together with the rising exhalations; but there, the air being thin and translucent, scatters and disperses the ray, since it has no fuel and no body to sustain it. Its produce and fruits are nourished here by rains, but elsewhere -- as, for example, up around Thebes in your country, and Syene -- the earth, drinking not rainwater but water native to itself, and making use of winds and dews, would not wish, I think, to trade its fruitfulness, owing to a certain excellence and blending, for that of the land most rained upon. The very same kinds of plants, among us, if pressed hard by winter, bear much fine fruit; but in Libya, and among you in Egypt, they are quite susceptible to cold and fearful of winters. As for the land of Gedrosia and the Troglodyte country, which reaches to the ocean, being unfruitful through dryness and utterly treeless, in the neighboring, encircling sea wonderful growths of plants are nourished and flourish even in the depths -- some of which they call 'olives,' others 'laurels,' others 'the locks of Isis.' And the plants called 'resurrection plants,' once pulled out of the earth, not only live on hanging for as long as one likes but actually put forth shoots. Some crops are sown before winter, others at the height of summer, like sesame and millet; and thyme, or centaury, if sown in good, rich soil and watered and irrigated, departs from its natural quality and loses its potency, but rejoices in drought and thrives when kept to what is proper to it; and if, as they say, it cannot even bear the dew, like most Arabian plants, but is dimmed and spoiled by being moistened, what wonder is it if there grow, around the moon, roots and seeds and matter that need no rains or snows at all, but are naturally well suited to a warm, thin air? And how is it not likely that winds should rise, warmed by the moon and by the agitation of its revolution, and that gentle breezes should accompany it, and that light dews and moistures should be poured around it, and, being scattered, should suffice for the things that sprout -- while the moon itself, in its own blending, is neither fiery nor parched, but soft and productive of moisture? For no effect of dryness reaches us from it, but much of moisture and of the feminine -- growth of plants, decay of meats, turnings and relaxings of wines, softenings of wood, easy deliveries for women. But I am wary of stirring up and provoking Pharnaces again, now that he is quiet, by bringing forward the ocean's floodings, as they themselves put it, and the swellings of straits, as these are dispersed and increased by the moon through its moistening power. So I shall turn instead to you, dear Theon; for it is you who tell us, in expounding these words of Alcman -- 'the daughter of Zeus, Dew, and divine Selene nourish' -- that here he calls the air 'Zeus,' and says that, being moistened by the moon, it turns into dew. For it seems, my friend, that the moon has a nature opposed to the sun's: since not only does she soften and disperse whatever he condenses and dries, but she also moistens and cools the heat that comes from him, as it falls upon her and mingles with her. Both those who suppose the moon to be a fiery, blazing body are mistaken, and those who demand that the creatures there require, for their origin, nourishment, and way of life, everything that creatures here require..."
...seem blind to the irregularities in nature, among which one can find greater and more numerous differences and dissimilarities between living things themselves than between living things and non-living things. And let there be no fine-mouthed men who are nourished by smells - I do not think such men exist at all; but as for the power that Ammonius himself expounded to us, Hesiod hinted at it when he said, ‘nor how much benefit there is in mallow and asphodel, a great boon.’ Epimenides made this evident in practice, teaching that nature, with only a small kindling, revives and sustains a living creature, so that if it receives just the size of an olive, it needs no further nourishment. As for the inhabitants of the moon, if indeed they exist, it is plausible that they are slight of body and can be sustained by whatever comes their way; for indeed the moon itself, like the sun - itself a fiery living creature, and many times larger than the earth - is said to be nourished from the moisture that rises from the earth, and the other stars too, though they are countless in number: so they suppose that the region above bears creatures light and frugal in their necessities. But we fail to perceive both this and the fact that a different region, a different nature, and a different temperament is suited to them.
Just as if, when we were unable to approach the sea or even touch it, but only gazed at the sight of it from afar and learned that its water is bitter, undrinkable, and salty, someone were to tell us that in its depths it nourishes many great creatures of every shape, and is full of beasts that use water just as we use air - this would seem like tales and marvels brought to their conclusion. So too, it seems, we are in the same condition and suffer the same thing with regard to the moon, disbelieving that any men dwell there. Yet I think that those inhabitants, for their part, would be far more astonished at the earth, looking upon it as a kind of sediment and dregs of the universe, appearing dimly through mists and clouds and moisture - a lightless, low, and motionless region - if it produces and nourishes living creatures that share in motion, breath, and warmth. And if they should ever happen to hear these Homeric lines - ‘dreadful, dank places, which even the gods abhor,’ and ‘as far beneath Hades as heaven is from earth’ - they would say that these words are spoken quite literally about this region, and that Hades and Tartarus are situated here, while the moon alone is earth, standing at an equal distance from those regions above and these regions below.
While I was still speaking, more or less, Sulla broke in and said, “Hold on, Lamprias, and bolt shut the little door of your discourse, lest, before you know it, you run your myth aground on the earth, so to speak, and throw into confusion my own drama, which has a different stage-setting and arrangement. I am, after all, its actor - though I will first name for you its poet, if nothing prevents it, beginning in Homeric fashion:
‘A certain island, Ogygia, lies far off in the sea, five days’ sail from Britain for one sailing westward; and three other islands, lying at an equal distance from it and from one another, lie roughly toward the setting of the summer sun. On one of these, the natives tell in myth, Cronus is imprisoned by Zeus, while his son keeps watch as guardian over those islands and over the sea which they call the Cronian Sea. Beyond them lies the great continent, by which the great outer sea is encircled all around, at a lesser distance from the other islands, but about five thousand stades from Ogygia for one traveling by oared ships - for the sea there is slow to cross and muddy on account of the multitude of currents; and these currents flow out from the great continent, and deposits are formed from them, making the sea heavy and earthy, for which reason it has even gained the reputation of being frozen solid.
Of that continent, Greeks dwell on the parts near the sea, around a gulf no smaller than the Maeotic Lake, whose mouth lies almost directly opposite the mouth of the Caspian Sea; and these Greeks speak of and consider themselves mainlanders, while calling the inhabitants of this land of ours islanders, on the ground that it too is washed all around by the sea. They believe that those who came with Heracles and were left behind there later mingled with the people of Cronus, and that the Greek element there, which was already dying out and being overpowered by the barbarian tongue and by foreign laws and customs, was as it were rekindled and became strong and numerous again; and that this is why Heracles is held in first honor there, and Cronus in second.
So whenever the star of Cronus - which we call Phaenon, but which those people, he said, call Nyctouros - enters Taurus, which happens every thirty years, they spend a long time preparing for the sacrifice and the voyage, then send off, by lot, in as many ships as are needed, men chosen along with a large retinue and the provisions necessary for those about to row across so great a stretch of sea and to live a long time in a foreign land. Once they have put out to sea, they meet with various fortunes, as one might expect, different men differently. Those who survive the crossing put in first at the islands lying off the coast, which are inhabited by Greeks, and there they see the sun disappear for less than one hour, over thirty days - this being their night, which has a light darkness, twilight-like, glowing from the west. After spending ninety days there, held sacred and treated with honor and hospitality, and addressed as such, they are at last carried across by favoring winds.
No one else dwells there except themselves and those sent out before them; for while it is permitted for those who have served the god together for thirty years to sail back home, most of them choose, understandably enough, to settle there for good - some out of habit, others because all things are available to them in abundance, without toil or trouble, while they spend their time amid sacrifices and festivals, or continually occupied with certain studies and with philosophy. For the nature of the island, they say, is wonderful, and so is the mildness of the surrounding air; and to some who plan to sail away, the divine power itself even stands in their way, appearing to them as to familiars and friends - not only in dreams and by omens, but many meet it openly, face to face, in visions and voices of daemons.
As for Cronus himself, he lies asleep, enclosed in a deep cave of gold-gleaming rock - for sleep has been contrived by Zeus as a bond to hold him - while birds fly in over the summit of the rock and bring him ambrosia, and the whole island is filled with fragrance, spreading from the rock as from a spring. And those daemons attend and serve Cronus, having become his companions in the time when he reigned over gods and men. These daemons, being themselves possessed of prophetic power, foretell many things on their own account, but the greatest matters, concerning the greatest things, they proclaim as they come down from the dreams of Cronus - for whatever Zeus premeditates, Cronus dreams. The Titanic passions and motions of the soul in him are utterly stilled by sleep, so that what is kingly and divine in him remains by itself, pure and unmixed.
It was to this place, then, that the stranger said he had been brought, and there, while attending upon the god at his leisure, he acquired as much knowledge of astronomy as one who has studied geometry can advance to, together with the rest of philosophy, so far as it can be pursued by natural methods. He also felt a certain desire and longing to become an eyewitness of the great continent - for that, it seems, is what they call our inhabited world. So, when the thirty years had elapsed, and the men who were to relieve him arrived from home, he bade his friends farewell and sailed off, lightly equipped in other respects, but carrying a considerable supply of provisions in golden cups.
Now what he experienced and how many peoples he passed through, encountering sacred writings and being initiated into every kind of mystery rite, is not the work of a single day to relate, as he himself reported to us, recalling everything most exactly and in detail. But listen to what is relevant to our present discussion. He spent the greatest part of his time at Carthage, since the god is held in great honor among us there, and because he discovered certain sacred hide-scrolls, which had been secretly carried off when the earlier city was being destroyed and had lain hidden in the ground undetected for a long time. He said that, of the visible gods, one ought - and he urged me too - to honor the Moon especially, as being most sovereign over life and closely bound up with it.’”
When I expressed my astonishment at this and asked to hear it more clearly explained, he said, “Many things, Sulla, are said among the Greeks about the gods, but not all of them correctly. For instance, though they are right to name Demeter and Kore, they are wrong to suppose that both are in one and the same place together; for the one has dominion over the things around the earth, and is in the earth, while the other is in the moon and has dominion over the things around the moon. She is called both Kore and Persephone - the latter name because she is a light-bringer, the former because we also give the name ‘kore’ (pupil) to that part of the eye in which the image of the beholder is reflected back, just as the light of the sun is seen reflected in the moon.
And in what is said about their wandering and their search for one another there is truth: for when apart they long for one another, and they are often entwined about the shadow. But that Kore is now in heaven and light, now in darkness and night, is no falsehood, though the reckoning of the time has caused an error in the number; for it is not for six months but at intervals of six months that we see her taken by the earth’s shadow, as if by her mother, and only rarely does this happen to her at intervals of five months. For it is impossible for her ever to leave Hades altogether, since she is the boundary of Hades - just as Homer too, veiling his meaning, put it not badly when he spoke of ‘the Elysian plain and the ends of the earth’: for where the shadow of the earth, extending outward, comes to an end, that is the point he set as the limit and boundary of the earth.
To this place no base or impure person ascends, but the good, once conveyed there after death, live out a life that is thus very easy, though not yet blessed or divine, until their second death.” “And what is this second death, Sulla?” “Do not ask me about that now, for I am about to explain it myself. Most people are right to consider man a composite being, but wrong to think him composed of only two elements; for they suppose that mind is somehow a part of the soul, erring no less than those who think the soul a part of the body. For mind is superior to and more divine than soul, by as much as soul is superior to body. Now the union of soul and body produces the irrational and passionate element, while the union of mind and soul produces reason - of which the one is the source of pleasure and pain, the other of virtue and vice.
Of these three constituents joined together, the earth furnished the body, the moon the soul, and the sun furnished the mind for our generation, just as the sun in turn furnishes the moon with light. As for the death that we die, the one death makes man two out of three, and the other makes one out of two. The former takes place in the domain of Demeter, on the earth itself - which is why the Athenians of old called the dead ‘Demeter’s people’ - while the latter takes place in the moon, in the domain of Persephone. And each of these deities has a Hermes dwelling with her, the one an earthly Hermes, the other a heavenly one. This earthly Hermes severs the soul from the body quickly and violently, but Persephone gently and over a long time separates the mind from the soul, and for this reason she has been called ‘only-begotten’ - for it is only the best part of a man, when separated by her, that becomes something ‘one alone.’
And each of these two deaths comes about naturally in the following way: every soul, whether mindless or possessed of mind, upon falling out of the body, is destined to wander for a time - not the same length of time for all - in the region between earth and moon; but the unjust and unrestrained souls pay the penalty for their wrongdoings there, while the decent souls must spend a fixed period of time in the mildest part of the air, which they call the meadows of Hades, purifying and breathing away the pollutions they have contracted from the body, as from some noxious vapor. Then, as though returning home from exile in a foreign land, they taste a joy such as those being initiated into mysteries taste, mingled above all with confusion and awe, blended with a sweet hope.
For the moon repels and washes back like a wave many souls even as they are already reaching for it, and some who are up there they see turning downward again and being submerged as if into an abyss. But those who succeed in rising and are firmly established there first go about, like victors in a contest, crowned with wreaths called wreaths of steadfastness, made of feathers, because the irrational and passionate part of their soul has been made obedient to reason with reasonable ease and has been kept orderly during their lifetime.
Secondly, in appearance they resemble a ray of light, and their soul, buoyed upward by fire, receives from the aether around the moon - just as, here below, iron receives its temper - firmness and strength, as things do when they are tempered by a quenching bath; for what was still rarefied and diffused becomes solidified and grows steady and translucent, so that it is nourished by whatever exhalation happens to reach it. And Heraclitus put it well when he said that ‘souls in Hades perceive by smell.’”
Now these souls behold, first of all, the size and beauty of the moon itself, and its nature, which is neither simple nor unmixed, but a kind of blend of star and earth: for just as the earth, mingled with breath and moisture, has become soft, and blood, mingled into the flesh, gives it sensation, so too, they say, the moon, being mingled with aether throughout its depth, is at once ensouled and generative, and at the same time possesses an even balance between weight and lightness. For in this way the cosmos itself, being composed of things that by nature move upward and things that move downward, has been freed altogether from motion in respect of place.
Xenocrates too seems to have grasped this by some divinely inspired reasoning, taking his starting point from Plato. For it is Plato who declared that each of the stars is composed of earth and fire, joined together through intermediate natures given in proportion; for nothing, he held, can reach our perception in which no admixture of earth and light is present. Xenocrates, for his part, says that the stars and the sun are composed of fire and the first density, while the moon is composed of the second density and its own peculiar air, while the earth is composed of water and air and the third of the dense substances; and that, in general, neither the dense taken by itself nor the rarefied is capable of receiving soul.
So much, then, for the substance of the moon. As for its breadth and size, it is not what the geometers say, but is many times larger; the moon measures out...
...but the earth's shadow only rarely exceeds the moon's own dimensions a few times over — not because of the shadow's smallness, but because of the moon's heat, by which it hastens its motion so as to pass quickly through the dark region, carrying off the souls of the good, who hurry along and cry out, for once they are in the shadow they no longer hear the harmony of the heavens. At the same time, from below, the souls of those being punished are then borne up through the shadow, wailing and shrieking. That is why most people are accustomed, during eclipses, to beat bronze vessels and make noise and clatter on behalf of the souls. They are also frightened by the so-called Face, whenever they come near it, since it appears grim and terrible to look upon.
But it is not really like that. Rather, just as our own earth has deep, great gulfs — one here, poured in through the Pillars of Heracles toward us, and outside, the Caspian and the seas around the Red Sea — so too these are the depths and hollows of the moon. The greatest of them they call the Hollow of Hecate, where souls pay and exact the penalties for whatever they have suffered or done once they have already become spirits; the two long ones...
for the souls cross over through them, now toward the parts of the moon facing heaven, now again toward the parts facing earth. The parts facing heaven are named the Elysian Plain, and the ones here the plain of Persephone, the Counter-Earth. The spirits do not always spend their time upon it, but come down here to attend to oracles, and they are present at and share in celebrating the highest rites,
becoming, in the mystic ceremonies, both chastisers and guardians against wrongdoing, and shining forth as saviors both in wars and at sea. But whatever they do amiss in these matters — whether from anger, or for the sake of some unjust favor, or out of envy — they pay the penalty for it: they are thrust back down to earth again, confined within human bodies. From among those better spirits, both the followers of Cronus,
so it was said, were themselves such beings; and earlier, in Crete, the Idaean Dactyls had come to be, and in Phrygia the Corybantes, and around Boeotia at Oudora the Trophoniadae, and countless others in many places of the inhabited world, whose shrines and honors and titles still remain, though the powers of some have faded, as they have attained a different place through the finest of transformations. Some attain it
sooner, others later, whenever the intellect is separated from the soul; and it is separated out of desire for the reflection that surrounds the sun, through which shines forth what is desirable and beautiful and divine and blessed, which every nature, each in its own way, reaches for. Indeed the moon herself, out of desire for the sun, forever circles and unites with him, longing to draw from him what is most fruitful. But there remains
behind, on the moon, the nature of the soul, preserving, as it were, certain traces of a life, and dreams. Concerning this it is rightly held that the line was spoken: 'and the soul, like a dream, having flown away, has taken wing' — for it does not undergo this at once, nor as soon as it is freed from the body, but later, when, bereft and alone, it becomes separated from the intellect. And of all that Homer said, he seems to have spoken most truly of all, and in accord with a god, concerning the dead in Hades,
when he said 'and after him I recognized mighty Heracles' — meaning his phantom — 'but he himself is among the immortal gods.' For each of us is, in truth, not anger, nor fear, nor desire, any more than we are flesh or bodily fluids, but that with which we think and understand; and the soul, being molded by the intellect, and in turn molding the body
and enfolding it on every side, is stamped throughout with its form, so that even if it should exist apart from either one for a long time, it preserves the likeness and the imprint, and is rightly called an image. Of these things the moon, as has been said, is the element: for into her the bodies of the dead are dissolved, just as into the earth the bodies of the dead are dissolved — quickly, the temperate souls, who at leisure have embraced a life free from business and devoted to philosophy; for, released
by the intellect and no longer employing the passions for anything, they wither away and fade out. But among the ambitious, the active, those given over to desire for bodies, and the spirited, some are kept in turmoil, as though in sleep, by dreams that are memories of their life — as was true of Endymion's soul. But when instability and susceptibility to feeling drive them out of themselves and drag them away from the moon toward another birth,
she does not allow it, but calls them back and charms them into calm. For it is no small, quiet, or settled task, whenever, without the intellect, they take hold of the body's passionate part. The Tityoi and the Typhons, and the one who seized Delphi and threw the oracle into confusion with insolence and violence — Typhon — were, it seems, drawn from just such souls, when their passionate part strayed through lack of reason and through delusion. But in time the moon
received even these back into herself and set them in order; then, once the sun has again sown intellect into the vital principle, she receives it and makes new souls; and the earth furnished a third body. For the earth gives nothing after death except what it receives back for a new birth; the sun receives nothing, but takes back the intellect while giving it in turn; and the moon both receives and gives, and combines and divides,
according to one power and another — of which the one that combines is called Eileithyia, and the one that divides, Artemis. And of the three Fates, Atropos, stationed about the sun, initiates the beginning of generation; Clotho, moving about the moon, binds together and blends; and last, Lachesis, who has the greatest share of chance, takes hold near the earth. For what is soulless is itself powerless and passive, acted upon by other things, while the intellect is impassive and self-ruling; but the soul, being mixed and intermediate, like the moon, has been made by god as a blend and mingling of the things above and below — standing, then, in the same relation to the sun that the earth has to the moon."
"These things," said Sulla, "I myself heard the stranger relate; and to him the attendants and servants of Cronus, as he himself said, reported them. But it is for you, Lamprias, to make use of the account, if you wish."