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INTRODUCTION 1. The authenticity of this dialogue has sometimes been questioned but without any plausible reason. cf. S. Günther, quoted by M. Adler, Diss. Phil. Vind. x (1910), p. 87, and R. Pixis, Kepler als Geograph, p. 105. Wilamowitz (Commentariolum Grammaticum, iii, pp. 27-28) suggested that the dialogue was published under the name of Lamprias; and this notion that Lamprias was in some sense either the real or the reputed author was adopted by Christ in the third edition of his Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1898), p. 662, and by Hirzel (r Dialog, ii, p. 185). On the other hand, despite statements to the contrary, it is certainly mutilated at the beginning,Mutilation was assumed by Xylander, Kepler, and Dübner and has been reasserted by Pohlenz (B.P.W. xxxii [1912], pp. 649-650), von Arnim (Plutarch über Dämonen und Mantik, p. 38), Raingeard (Le ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΠΡΟΣΟΠΟΥ de Plutarque, pp. 49-50 on 920 B 1), and K. Ziegler (Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 214). It was denied by Wilamowitz (loc. cit.), Hirzel (r Dialog, ii, p. 186, n. 6), and M. Adler (Diss. Phil. Vind. x, pp. 88-89). Wyttenbach contended that either nothing or no great part had perished. although one cannot tell whether much or little has been lost; this follows not merely from the abruptness of the opening as we have it, the lack of any kind of introduction, and the failure to identify the main speaker until two-thirds of the dialogue have been finished, but even more surely from the nature of the text in the opening sentences .Those who have defended ὁ μὲν οὖν Σύλλας ταῦτ εἶρε τῷ γ’ ἐμῷ μύθῳ προσήκει κτλ. as a possible opening apparently were unaware that the reading of E is Ὀαυνοσυλλας ταῦτα εἰρε. τῷ γὰρ ἐμῷ μύθῳ προσήκει κτλ.. and that B’s ὁ μὲν οῦν Σύλλας is in all probability a conjecture made by the scribe of that MS. This being so, it is unjustifiable to emend the γὰρ of τῷ γὰρ ἐμῷ μύθῳ, the reading of both E and B; and, if this γὰρ stands, it is certain that our MSS. do not preserve the beginning of the dialogue. The next sentence, ἀλλ εἰ δεῖ τι προσανακροῦσαθαι, πρῦτον ἡδέως ἄν μοι δοκῶ πυθέσθαι, which Wyttenbach needlessly emended, implies that some introduction of Sulla and his myth preceded the present beginning; and 937 C (Σύλλαν οἷον ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς ἀκροατὴν γεγενημένον) suggests what the nature of this introduction may have been. Even the tense of τί δ’ οὐκ ἐμέλλομεν implies some preceding reference to an earlier conversation or a conversation itself interrupted by the arrival of Sulla. 2. In the dialogue as it stands the first speaker is Sulla. His chief function is to recount the myth which he mentions in the first extant words and which occupies the final fifth of the work; but he interrupts the dialogue proper at 929 E 930 A to ask whether a certain difficulty was treated in the discussion which Lucius is reporting. He is a Carthaginian (cf. 942 C), presumably the Sextius Sulla cited by Plutarch in his Romulus, chap. 15 (26 C), and the same as the Carthaginian Sulla who gave a dinner for Plutarch in Rome ( Quaest. Conviv. 727 B). He is probably the Sulla who appears as the interlocutor of Fundanus in the Cohibenda Ira (note b, 453 A) but probably not the same as the Sulla of Quaest. Conviv. 636 A (ὁ ἑταῖρος) and 650 A (one of τῶν συνήθων). The second speaker, at once the narrator of the whole conversation and the leader of the dialogue proper, is Lamprias,His name is not mentioned until 937 D. There at the beginning of a section which serves as the transition from the main or scientific part of the dialogue to the myth Theon calls Lamprias by name, as Sulla does also at the beginning of his myth (940 F) and at the end of it (945 D). It is probable that in the lost beginning of the work Lamprias was similarly identified. who is also the narrator of the Defectu Oraculorum (cf. 413 D), a dialogue in which he plays the leading role. cf. Flaceliére, Plutarque: Sur la Disparition des Oracles (Paris, 1947), pp. 19-22. In the E apud Delphos, where Lamprias appears with Plutarch, Plutarch calls him brother (385 D); and he is frequently identified as Plutarchs brother in the Quaest. Conviv. (cf. 635 A, 726 D - E, 744 C [with 745 A], and possibly 626 A). He is characterized as a wit and a tease (726 D - E, 740 A), one accustomed to speak out in a loud voice (617 E-F), and capable of inventing a story as evidence to support his argument ( E 386 A); he is an expert in culinary matters (643 E, 669 C, 670 E) and in the dance (747 B) and shrinks from appearing as a kill-joy to younger men (704 E). He is made to emphasize his close relations with a Cynic ( Defectu Oraculorum, 413 B); but he is no Cynic himself, and he is mortified to think that he might be supposed to have used his skill in argument to discredit any pious belief (435 E). He is said to honour the school of Aristotle above that of Epicurus (Quaest Conviv. 635 A - B); but he does not hesitate to disagree with Aristotle in the Defectu Oraculorum (424 C ff.) and to espouse against him the doctrine of the Academy (430 E ff.). In the De Facie he is a vehement critic of Stoic doctrine and a supporter of the Academic position (cf 922 F). Lamprias bore the name of his grandfather; but this does not prove, as has sometimes been asserted, that he was older than his brothers, Plutarch and Timon. Defectu Oraculorum, 431 C - D, has been thought to show that he was a priest of the oracle in Lebadeia,Hirzel, r Dialog, ii, p. 189, n. 3; Flaceliére, Op. cit. p. 251, n. 233; Ziegler, Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 10. though this is not a necessary implication of that passage; and a Delphic inscription proves him to have been an archon at Delphi towards the end of Trajan’s reign or in the beginning of Hadrian’s. Dittenberger, S. I. G. ii. 868 C, n. 6; Stein, R. E. xii. 1. 586, s.v. Λαμπρίας 4. Apollonides, the third speaker, is at once identified as expert in geometry (920 F), and Lamprias indicates that the scope and limitations of his specialty coincide with those of Hipparchus, the great astronomer (921 d, cf. 925 A). He puts forward objections to Lamprias’s explanation of the face based upon astronomical terminology and calculations (933 f, 935 d-e). An Apollonides appears at Quaest Conviv. 650 F along with Sulla; but he is called o( taktiko\s *)apollwni/dhs, and there is no compelling reason to identify the two.Ziegler (Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 34) says that the sentence at 927 B, οὐ γὰρ ἐν στρατορέδῳ τακτικῶν ὄφελος κτλ., is spoken obviously with reference to the interlocutor Apollonides; but this is pretty obviously not true. Lamprias is not here speaking in answer to Apollonides; and his subsequent words, οὐδὲ κηρουρῶν οὐδ’ οἰκοδόμων, certainly have reference to none of the present company. These are in fact stock examples of the argument from design. Prickard may well be right in saying that the name Apollonides here was used by Plutarch to mean one of the clan of Apollonius, i.e. a mathematician who, like Apollonius,Apollonius of Perga; cf. Hultsch, R. E. ii. 151-160. is interested in astronomical theory. Certainly Aristotle, who puts forward the orthodox Peripatetic theory of the heavenly bodies (928 E ff.), is only a name chosen by Plutarch to signify the school that he represents (cf. 920 F), even as the representative Epicurean in Sera Numinis Vindicta is called Epicurus.There is no reason to change Ἐπίκουρος of the MSS. in 548 A to Ἐπικούρειος, as Fabricius did. Aristotle here supports Epicurus there. The Stoic position is represented by Pharnaces. This name was borne by the son of Mithridates, of whom Plutarch tells in the Lives of Pompey and Caesar, as well as by several notable Persians mentioned by Herodotus and ThucydidesThere was also a city in Pontus named Pharnaceia ( Lucullus, 17 [502 F]).; and Plutarch probably chose it for his Stoic because of its Asiatic sound.Hirzel (Der Dialog, ii, p. 186, n. 4) says that Pharnaces is certainly a former slave, one who had shared the fate and sentiments of Epictetus. This, of course, is the merest fancy; not all Asiatics, not even all in Rome at this time, had been slaves. For Athenians named Pharnaces cf. I. G. ii². 1039. 84 and 202. 55. After the role of Lamprias the largest in the dialogue proper is that of Lucius, who is probably the same as Lucius, the pupil of Moderatus the Pythagorean, from Etruria, a guest at the dinner which Sulla gave for Plutarch in Rome ( Quaest. Conviv viii. 7-8 [727 B ff., 728 D ff.]).Another Lucius, the son of Florus, appears in Quaest. Conviv vii. 4 [702 F]; cf. Ziegler, Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 55. Early in the dialogue (921 F) Lamprias turns to Lucius for aid; he seems to think it appropriate that Lucius should set forth the strict demonstration of the Academic theory concerning the moon (cf. 928 D - E); and in fact the statement and defence of this position are shared by the two of them.It is Lucius who demands that the Stoic theory should not be passed over without refutation (921 F). It is he who replies when Pharnaces complains of Lamprias’s violent treatment of the Stoics (922 F). His speeches extend from 922 F to 923 F, where Lamprias takes over to give him time to collect his thoughts, from 928 F to 929 E, from 930 A to 931 C, and from 931 D to 933 E. Theon, whom Lamprias asks to identify a quotation (923 F) and whom he later teases for admiring Aristarchus to the neglect of Crates (938 D), is recognized as the literary authority in the group (cf. 931 E, 940 A). He is probably to be identified with Θέων ὁ γραμμοτικός, who was a guest at Sulla’s dinner along with Lucius (Quaest. Conviv 728 F) and who also dined with Plutarch at the house of Mestrius Florus (Quaest. Conviv 626 E).This Theon, whose home was Egypt (cf. 939 C - D), is certainly not the same as Θέων ὁ ἑταῖρος ( Quaest. Conviv 620 A, E, 386 D), who is probably the Theon of Pythiae Oraculis, Non Posse Suaviter Vivi, and Quaest. Conviv 667 A and 726 A ff. In the Facie his chief contribution is a speech (937 D 938 C) which he makes after the main part of the dialogue has been concluded and which Lamprias praises as a kind of relaxation after the seriousness of the scientific discussion. The last of the persons present is Menelaus the mathematician. Lucius addresses him directly once (930 A), but Menelaus makes no reply and neither speaks nor is spoken to elsewhere in the dialogue as we have it,Unless the plural ὑμῖν used twice by Lamprias at 939 C - D is meant to include Menelaus as well as Theon; cf. note a on p. 170 s.v.. He is not mentioned anywhere else by Plutarch either; but he is probably meant to be the Menelaus of Alexandria whom Ptolemy once calls ὁ γεωμέτρης and twice cites for astronomical observations which he made at Rome in the first year of Trajan (A.D. 98). Ptolemy, Syntaxis, vii. 3 (ii, p. 30. 18 ff. and p. 33. 3 ff. ([Heiberg]); cf. Orinsky, s.n. Menelaos 16 in Pauly-Wissosa, R. E. xv. 1. 834 f. 3. From 937 C - D it follows that the interlocutors have hitherto been promenading as they talked and that now they sit down upon the steps, seats, or benches (ἐπὶ τῶν βάθρων) and remain seated to the end. No other indication of the scene or location is given in the work as we have it. It had generally been assumed that the dialogue was meant to take place in Chaeronea cf. Hirzel, r Dialog, ii, p. 184, n. 1, who discusses and rejects the suggestion that the scene is Delphi. Raingeard in his note on 939 C (p. 129 of his commentary) says that ὥσπερ ἄνω περὶ Θήβας there would allow the inference that the speakers are on the coast of Egypt. No such inference is justified by this phrase, of course; in fact, the preceding ὕλην δὲ καὶ καρποὺς αὐτοῦ (or αὐτόθι, as Raingeard conjectures) μὲν ὄμβροι τρέφουσιν and the subsequent παρ’ ὑμῖν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ (939 D 1) show that the scene of the dialogue is not anywhere in Egypt.; but nothing in the text requires this, and F. H. Sandbach has adduced strong arguments for believing that the dramatic location is Rome or the vicinity of Rome.F. H. Sandbach, The Date of the Eclipse in Plutarch’s De Facie Class. Quart. xxiii (1929), pp. 15-16; cf. Ziegler, Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 73-74. I am indebted to Mr. Sandbach for sending me, along with copies of his publications, many of his unpublished opinions concerning points in the De Facie and copies of his correspondence with J. K. Fotheringham occasioned by the publication of the article cited above. The persons in the dialogue furnish one of these arguments. Apollonides, Aristotle, and Pharnaces occur nowhere else in Plutarch’s writings and are probably all fictitious characters. Plutarch nowhere else mentions Menelaus the mathematician either, but we know that Menelaus spent some time in Rome (see note a, p. 8). Sulla, Lucius, and Theon all appear together at a dinner given for Plutarch when he had returned to Rome after an interval of absence (Quaest Conviv. viii. 7-8); and none of these three is ever mentioned as being anywhere but in Rome or its vicinity (see § 2, supra). Lamprias alone belongs to Plutarch’s circle at Chaeronea; but it is by no means certain that he did not visit Rome as Plutarch did, though there seems to be no definite evidence either way.Lamprias at least pretends to be conversant with Latin (Quaest. Conviv 726 E ff.). On Plutarch’s visits to Rome cf. Ziegler, Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 19-20. The other argument for the dramatic location is connected with the question of the dramatic date of the dialogue. At 931 d-e Lucius refers to a recent total solar eclipse, saying: if you will call to mind this conjunction recently which, beginning just after noonday, made many stars shine out from many parts of the sky δότε μοι, ταύτης ἔναγχος τῆς συνόδου μνησθέντες ἥ πολλὰ μὲν ἄστρα πολλαχόθεν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ διέφηνεν εὐθὺς ἐκ μεσημβρίας ἀρκαμένη GinzelF. K. Ginzel, Spezieller Kanon der Sonnen- und Mondfinsternisse für das Ländergebiet der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Berlin, 1899), pp. 202-204; cf. also Plates X and XI for the paths of solar eclipses during the first and second centuries a.d. The data for the eclipses of 75 and 83, s.v., come from Ginzel’s tables, Op. cit. p. 78 and pp. 110-111. identified this eclipse with the one which occurred on 20 March a.d. 71, for he found that all other solar eclipses visible in Chaeronea during Plutarch’s lifetime fell too far short of totality to permit the appearance of stars. His conclusion was generally acceptedStruyck (cited by Ginzel, Op. cit. p. 203) appears to have come to this conclusion before Ginzel; and Ginzel’s identification was accepted by M. Adler (Zwei Beiträge zum plutarchischen Dialog, De Facie [Nikolsburg, 1910], p. 4) and by Fotheringham as cited by A. O. Prickard (Plutarch on the Face of the Moon [1911], p. 75, and Plutarch, Select Essays, ii, p. 253). Hirzel (r Dialog, ii, p. 182, n. 1), following Volkmann, does not even mention the eclipses of 59, 71, and 75, which Ginzel held to be the only ones worthy of consideration. until Sandbach Op. cit. in note c, p. 8 supra. pointed out that, since this eclipse reached its maximum phase at about 11 A.M. local solar time in Chaeronea,10hr, 58m, 4 according to Ginzel (Op. cit. p. 204); 11hr, 4m, 1 according to Fotheringham as quoted by Prickard (Plutarch, Select Essays, ii, p. 253). Plutarch could not have referred to it as having begun after noonday. Ginzel had assumed that the place of observation was Chaeronea; Sandbach, having recognized that this assumption is unwarranted, was able to consider two other eclipses, that of 5 January A.D. 75 and that of 27 December A.D. 83. The latter was total at Alexandria shortly before 15 hours. The former was total in Carthage a little after 15 hours and in the latitude of Rome on the eastern side of the Adriatic at about 15 hours, 20 minutes; at Rome itself the maximum obscuration was 11 · 5 digits, so that, since according to Fotheringham Historical Eclipses (1921), cited by Fotheringham in a letter to Sandbach (22 January 1929); in this letter Fotheringham states that a certain number of stars were visible at Rome in 75. cf. Ginzel, Op. cit. p. 14: Bei den zentralen Sonnenfinsternissen einzelne Sterne treten mitunter hervor, bevor die Phase 11 zöllig geworden ist. stars other than Venus have been visible where the solar obscuration was 10 · 7 digits, it is perfectly possible that some stars would have been seen at Rome about 3.20 p.m. local solar time on 5 January A.D. 75. This eclipse of A.D. 75 as seen in Rome certainly fits the conditions of Lucius’ statement better than does the one of A.D. 71 as seen in Chaeronea, even though it was rather late to be described as beginning just after noonday.Its beginning, which would have been at approximately 13.50 hours, could not have been observed with the naked eye; but Plutarch was capable of calculating it roughly. In any case, whether the συνόδον ἣ ἀρξαμένη is to be taken strictly or in the sense of the time when darkness began, μεσημβρία, as Sandbach has said, is an extended period of time and not an astronomical moment; and Lucius means that the conjunction began just after noonday was over. It must be emphasized that there is no reason to assume that Plutarch himself saw the eclipse to which Lucius refers. He had undoubtedly heard that it had been seen in or near Rome; he almost certainly had seen the eclipse of A.D. 71 in Chaeronea and may have seen that of A.D. 83 in AlexandriaWe do not know when Plutarch visited Alexandria. In Quaest. Conviv v. 5 (678 C ff.) his grandfather is present at a banquet given for him after his return from Alexandria. Sandbach (loc. cit.) thinks that this could have been after 83; but, whether this is so or not, we do not know whether there may not have been more visits to Alexandria than this one.; and what he had seen during one or both of these eclipses he may very well have applied to the eclipse of A.D. 75, which he had not seen.If 932 B (περιφαίνεταί τις αὐγὴ περὶ, τὴν ἴτυν . . .) means, as has sometimes been supposed, that Plutarch had seen the corona, he must have had this experience in 71 or 83. No one in or near Rome would have seen it in 75. I doubt that these words apply to the corona at all, however, for the subsequent oὐκ εὦσα βαθεῖαν γενέσθαι τὴν σκιὰν καὶ ἄκρατον would be a remarkably tame way of describing that spectacle. If the passage refers to any observed phenomenon, it is more likely to have reference to an annular eclipse. We may then conclude that the dramatic date of the dialogue is later than A.D. 75, but how much later it is remains uncertain despite Lucius’ reference to the eclipse as recent. The word which he uses, ἔναγχος, like the English recent, has a meaning relative to its context, and in the case of anything so unusual as a total solar eclipse might refer to an event that had taken place at any time within a decade or more; it seems in this passage not to be used of the immediate past, for Lucius expressly reckons with the possibility that his audience may not recall the recent conjunction and may have to fall back upon literary evidence for the impression made by a total solar eclipse.931 E: εἰ δὲ μή, Θέων ἡμῖν τὸν Μίμνερμον ἐπάσει, κτλ. Of course, this is primarily a literary device to excuse the introduction of the literary references; but it shows that Plutarch does not expect his readers to remember what a total solar eclipse is like. The attempts to find a historical reference in 945 B which would help to fix the date of the dialogue are quite perverseHirzel (r Dialog, ii, p. 182, n. 1) excised Τυφών in 945 B (Τιτυοὶ δὲ καὶ Τυφῶνες ὅ τε Δελφοὺς κατασχὼν καὶ συνταράξας τὸ χρηστήριον ὕβρει καὶ βίαλ Τυφὼν ἐξ ἐκείνων κτλ.), took ὁ συνταράξας βίαλ as a reference to Nero, and concluded that Plutarch must have written this after the devastation of Delphi and before the restoration of the oracle. Adler (Zwei Beiträge, etc. [see note a, p. 10], pp. 5-7) defended the text of the mss., which he interpreted to mean demons of the nature of Tityus and Typho and among these especially the Typhon who, etc., and followed Pomtow (Rhein. Mus. li [1896], pp. 377 ff.), who showed that the extinction of the Delphic oracle during the time from Nero to Hadrian was pure invention and who took Τυφών in Facie, 945 B, as a reference to the conflagration in 83 B.C. Adler then, assuming that after the ceremonious restoration of the temple in A.D. 84 Plutarch would not remind his readers of its devastation, concluded that the dialogue must have been written before A.D. 84. This argument was criticized by K. Mras (Zeitschrift für die österreichischen Gymnasien, lxv [1914], p. 187), who in turn deleted Τυφὦνες from the text and read Τιτυοὶ δὲ καὶ ὁ Τυφὼν ὁ νφών Δελφούς βίαλ κτλ. This violent alteration is even less justifiable than Hirzel’s excision of Τυφών, with which it shares the fault of producing the hiatus βιάλ ἐξ; but the text of the MSS. is impossible despite Adler, for (a) one does not say in any language such creatures as Tityus and Typho and in particular Typho . . ., (b) nowhere else is Typho himself said to have done the deed here ascribed to him, and (c) a reference to the conflagration is at least as improbable as the supposed reference to Nero. Kaltwasser’s change of Τυφών to Πύθων, on the other hand, is practically certain. Confusion of π and τ and of θ and φ is easy and common, and πύθων coming after τυφώνες would very easily be assimilated to it. Moreover, in Defectu Oraculorum, 421 C, τὰ περὶ Πύθωνα are included among δαιμόνων πάθη along with τὰ Τυφωνικά and τὰ Τιτανικά. In 414 A - B the oracle at Delphi is said to have been long deserted in what is represented as ancient times; and, if it is denied that the beast (which is not here named but is certainly Pythons3) was the cause, that is done in order to ascribe the cause to Δαίμονες. Finally, Πύθων and Τιτυός are named together by Plutarch in Pelopidas, 16 (286 C) as they are by Strabo (ix. 3. 12 [cc. 422-423]) and Apollodorus (Bibliotheca, i. 4. 1. 3-5 [22-23]).; and we are restricted by the evidence at present available to the conclusion that the conversation was meant to have taken place in or about Rome some time and perhaps quite a long time after A.D. 75. So much for the dramatic date. There is no reason at all for Hirzel’s assertion r Dialog, ii, p. 184, n. 1. that this and the date of composition coincide. Certain striking similarities between the Facie and the Defectu Oraculorum have often been observed, but from these can be drawn equally cogent — and equally hypothetical — arguments for the priority of either to the otherM. Adler (Diss. Phil. Vind. x, pp. 115-116) contends that in the Defectu Plutarch excerpts the Facie; but see Raingeard, p. xxviii of his edition of Facie.; and, since in any case the date of the Defectu is uncertain,Ziegler, Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 76, gives about 100 as the date; but cf. Flaceliére, Plutarque: Sur la Disparition des Oracles, note 4 and pp. 13-17. the relative chronology of the two if established would not determine the date of the Facie. 4. The structure of the De Facie is complicated. The whole of the work is narrated by Lamprias who speaks in the first person and quotes those who took part in the conversation, including himself, some few times in indirect discourse (e.g. 933 F) but for the most part directly. The last part of his narration (chaps. 26-30 [940 F 945 D] consists entirely of Sulla’s myth given in Sulla’s own words; this myth, Sulla himself says, is a story told to him by an unnamed stranger, whom he quotes first indirectly and then (942 D ff.) directly to the end. The second or eschatological part of the myth the stranger had told Sulla that he had himself heard from the chamberlains and servitors of Cronus (cf. 945 D). Hearing it from Lamprias now, the reader has this part at fourth hand and the geographical introduction of the stranger at third hand.Cf, Plato’s Parmenides and Shorey, What Plato Said, p. 287. From 937 C it appears that Sulla had promised to tell his myth in return for an account of what had been said in an earlier discussion about the nature of the face which appears in the moon. Such a compact may have been expressly made in the beginning of the dialogue which is lost, where Sulla may have come upon the company already engaged in reviewing that earlier discussion (see note a, p. 3). So much is no more than conjecture. It is certain, however, that most of what Lamprias narrates from chapter 2 through chapter 23 is a conversation which is itself represented as containing a resume or report of what was said at an earlier conversation. This the beginning of chapter 24 (937 C) states explicitly: ἡμεῖς μὲν οὖν, ἔφην, ὅσα μὴ διαπέφευγε τὴν μνήμην τῶν ἐκεῖ λεχθέντων ἀπηγγέλκαμεν, and the ἐδόκει λέγεσθαι at the end of chapter 2 (920 F) implies that what Lamprias has hitherto said in that chapter had been used as an argument in the earlier discussion. The leader of that discussion, which is referred to as a διατριβή,By Lucius at 929 B: ὁ μὲν οὖν ἑταῖρος ἐν τῷ διατριβῇ τοῦτο ἀποδεικνὺς ἠυδοκίμησεν. was not Lamprias or Lucius, who here recapitulate it, cf. besides 937 C, 920 F, and 929 B, which have already been cited, especially 921 F, 930 A, 932 D, 933 C. but someone to whom Lamprias, Lucius, and Sulla refer as our comrade and who probably is meant to be Plutarch himself. cf. 921 F, 929 B, 929 F, and see note a on p. 48 s.v.. Lamprias and Lucius are, of course, presumed to have been present at that discussion with their comrade and Sulla to have been absent from it.The logic of the situation demands this; but it is also implied by Sulla’s question at 929 F. Of the others, Apollonides certainly was not present,This is implied by his question in 920 F and confirmed by that in 921 B: ἀλλὰ πῇ τὸν ἔλεγχον αὐτῷ προσῆγες; (in this latter passage Pohlenz [B. P. W. xxxii, 1912, p. 649] argued for retention of the MSS, reading, προσῆγε, understanding as subject ὁ ἑταῖρος, who he assumes was mentioned in the lost beginning of the dialogue; but surely this sentence is too far from even such a hypothetical antecedent, and Adler’s προσῆγες is an obvious and highly probable correction). nor was TheonThis is certainly implied by his interchange with Lucius in 932 D - E.; Pharnaces probably was notThis is the most reasonable inference to be drawn from 921 F, where Lucius requests that Pharnaces be given some consideration, and from Pharnaces’ comment in 922 F upon the attack of Lamprias. Nevertheless, Pharnaces’ words in the latter passage, ἐμὲ δ’ οὖν οὐκ ἐξλαξεσθε τήμερον κτλ., are open to the interpretation that he had been present at the earlier discussion and had there been drawn out by the Academic gambit.; and concerning Aristotle and Menelaus the text as we have it allows no clear inference to be drawn.Lucius’s one remark to Menelaus (930 A), αἰσχύνομαι σοῦ παρόντος κτλ., seems to imply that the latter had not been present at the earlier discussion; but this is not decisive, especially in view of the fact that Menelaus makes no reply. Aristotle’s silence when Lamprias addresses him in 920 F might be taken to mean that he had heard this before; and πρὸς Κλέαρχον, ὦ Ἀριστότελες, ἐδόκει λέθεσθαι τὸν ὑμέρτον could be interpreted as a reminder, although what follows, ὑμέτερος γὰρ ἁνὴρ κτλ., sounds as if this were something new. In 929 B Lucius in a speech addressed especially to Aristotle refers to what our comrade said ἐν τῇ διατριβῇ and adds that he will not repeat what he learned παρ ὑμῶν μεθ ὑμῶν, which might be taken to imply that Aristotle too had attended the διατριβή in question, although it might have a more general meaning. What these men other than Lamprias and Lucius say in chapters 2-23 is not, then, part of the report of that earlier discussion; but neither is all that Lucius says, for in several places his remarks or arguments are expressly declared to be his own contribution. cf. Lamprias’s comment, οὐχ οὕτως δ’ ὁ ἑταῖρος ἡμῶν, in 921 F and his καλῷ λόγῳ καλὴν ἀναλογίαν προσλεθηκας: οὐ γὰρ ἀποστερητόν σε τῶν ἰδίων (931 D). The latter marks the last sentence of Lucius’s preceding speech (δότε δή μοι γεωμετρικῶς εἰρεῖν κτλ.) as his own, while Lucius’s own subsequent statement (οὐκοῦν καὶ δεύτερον ἀναλογίᾳ προσχρητέον) makes the same claim for what follows. In 933 C (παρίημι δ’ ὅσα ἐλέχθη) and possibly in 929 B (ἐγὼ δὲ ταῦτα μὲν οὐκ ἐρῶ κτλ. [see note b supra]) Lucius indicates that he is not giving a full account of the earlier discussion. That earlier discussion cannot, however, be identified with any that Plutarch may have had with his friends or with any lecture that he may have given; it is primarily a literary fiction, part of the structure of the dialogue for which it provides a specious motivation. The recapitulation of this fictitious discussion along with the incidental arguments provoked by it contains all that Plutarch would consider to be scientific in the dialogue. At its conclusion Lamprias is ready for Sulla’s myth (chap. 24 init. [937 C - D]); but before Sulla can begin to speak Theon raises the question of the habitability of the moon, contending that, if it is not habitable, there can be no reason for it to exist with the nature or composition that according to Lamprias and Lucius it does have. cf. 937 D: εἰ δυνατὸν ἐκεῖ κατοικεῖν. εἰ γὰρ δυνατόν, ἄλογον καὶ τὸ γῆν εἰναι τὴν σελήνην: δόκει γάρ πρὸς οὐδὲν ἀλλὰ μάτην γεγονέναι κτλ. Lamprias calls Theon’s speech a kind of relaxation after the seriousness of the preceding discussion. In fact, however, Theon has raised the metaphysical problem of the final cause; and to this Lamprias replies at length (chap. 25). He argues first that the moon, constituted as he contends it is, need not, even if uninhabitable, be without a purpose in the universe (938 C - F), and secondly that, even if uninhabitable by corporeal human beings, it may still be inhabited by living beings of an entirely different kind to whom the moon may justly appear to be the only real earth and our earth the slime and dregs of the universe, uninhabitable by creatures that have warmth and breath and motion. Here Sulla checks Lamprias (chap. 26 init. [940 F]) lest the latter encroach upon his myth; and Lamprias was upon the very threshold of it, for the myth, as it turns out, teaches that the moon is inhabited by souls that have left their bodies after death on earth or have not yet been incorporated by birth into terrestrial bodies. So the episode consisting of Theon’s speech and Lamprias’s reply (chaps. 24-25) is not merely a formal literary device. It is, to be sure, a transition from the scientific part of the dialogue, in which it is argued that the lunar phenomena imply the earth-like constitution of the moon, to the concluding myth in which the purpose of such a moon in the universe is imaginatively portrayed; but this transitional episode raises the philosophical question, without the answer to which the strictly astronomical conclusion could to a Platonist or Aristotelian be no complete or satisfactory explanation, and itself contains the metaphysical answer, of which the myth is, despite all its intrinsic interest, essentially a poetical embellishment. When this transition is properly attended to, there can be no question about the integral unity of the whole dialogue or any doubt that the purpose of the whole is to establish and defend the position that the moon is entirely earthy in its constitution and that on this hypothesis alone can the astronomical phenomena and the existence of the moon itself be accounted for. cf. M. Pohlenz, Gött. Gel. Anz. clxxx [1918], p. 323. 5. The main part of the dialogue is of extraordinary interest for the history of astronomy, cosmology, geography, and catoptrics; and this aspect of the work deserves more attention than it has usually received.J. O. Thomson, History of Ancient Geography (Cambridge, 1948), pp. 330 f., gives a brief outline of this part of the work and cites Duhem’s and Humboldt’s praise of it. A. O. Prickard has some general remarks on the subject in the introductions to his two translations of the dialogue (Plutarch on the Face which appears on the Orb of the Moon [Winchester and London, 1911], pp. 9-15, and Plutarch: Select Essays, ii [Oxford, 1918], pp. 246-253). So has S. Günther in his outline of the dialogue, Vergleichende Mondund Erdkunde (Braunschweig, 1911), pp. 24-35, nearly half of which, however, is concerned with the myth. Hirzel in his treatment of the dialogue (r Dialog [Leipzig, 1895], ii, pp. 182-189) has little or nothing specific to say of its scientific aspect. The most extensive monograph on the dialogue, Maximilian Adler’s Quibus Ex Fontibus Plutarchus Libellum De Facie in Orbe Lunae Hauserit (Diss. Phil. Vind. x [1910], pp. 85-180), is concerned with the scientific passages only in so far as the author thinks that from them he can draw support for his thesis that Posidonius was Plutarch’s source for the dialogue. A similar purpose limits the treatment of the work by K. Praechter in his Hierokles der Stoiker (Leipzig, 1901), p. 26 and pp. 109-120. cf. also the notes of W. Norlind, Eranos, xxv (1927), pp. 265-277. It is not a technical scientific treatise and is not to be judged as if it were meant to be such; but it is all the more significant that in a literary work intended for an educated but non-technical audience towards the end of the first century a.d. Hipparchus and Aristarchus of Samos are familiarly cited and a technical work of the latter is quoted verbatim, the laws of reflection are debated, the doctrine of natural motion to the universal centre is rejected, and stress is laid upon the cosmological importance of the velocity of heavenly bodies. It is interesting to compare the treatise of Ibn Al-Haitham (965-1039) which was translated from the Arabic by Carl Schoy under the title Abhandlung des Schaichs Ibn Alî Al-Hasan Ibn Al-Hasan Ibn Al-Haitham: über die Natur der Spuren [Flecken], die man auf der Oberfläche des Mondes sieht (Hannover, 1925). Ibn Al-Haitham’s explanation of the face is that the nature of the moon’s substance must differ from place to place, since the variation in illumination can be the result only of a difference in the power to absorb and reflect light, and the spots are places of greater density and less power of absorption (pp. 20 ff. and 29-31). Though Schoy appears to have been unaware of it and Plutarch does not mention it, this explanation is ascribed to οἱ ἀρὸ τῶν μαθηματικῶν in Aëtius, ii. 30. 7 (Dox. Graeci, p. 362. 5-13). Ibn Al-Haitham rejects the theory that the spots are shadows cast by prominences on the moon, arguing that such shadows would not always have the same shape and position, as the spots do (pp. 14-17). Like Plutarch, however, he knows and refutes the notion that they are a reflection of the terrestrial ocean or any other terrestrial feature (pp. 1-2, 5-7; Facie, chaps. 3-4); and he also adduces the colour of the moon in eclipse (pp. 31 f.; Facie, 934 B - D). He proves impossible as well (pp. 4-5, cf. p. 2) an explanation unmentioned by Plutarch but recorded by Simplicius ( Caelo, p. 457. 25-30) that the spots are the result of vapours rising from below and obscuring the moon’s brilliance (cf., however, for something similar, Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 415-420, and Facie, 922 B - C). Like Cleomedes (ii. 4. 103 [p. 186. 14-27 Ziegler]), Ibn Al-Haitham seems to hold that the moon as a reflecting convex mirror would have to appear as a single point of light (pp. 7 f. with Schoy’s note, p. 8, n. 1). Most of the attention given to the dialogue, however, has been attracted by the concluding myth.It was probably the myth as much as the more strictly astronomical part of the dialogue that caused Kepler to make his Latin translation and commentary of the Facie, which he did shortly before his death. This is printed in volume viii of Joannis Kepleri Opera Omnia, ed. Dr. Ch. Frisch (Francofurti a. M., 1870). cf. R. Schmertosch, Keppler zu Plutarchs Schrift Vom Gesicht im Monde, Phil.-Hist. Beiträge Curt Wachsmuth zum 60. Geburtstag überreicht (Leipzig, 1897), pp. 52-55, and R. Pixis, Kepler als Geograph (Munich, 1899). This consists of two parts. The second and main part is the eschatological myth, which establishes the purpose of the moon in the cosmos by explaining her role in the life-cycle of souls and which the stranger told Sulla he had from the chamberlains of Cronus (942 D 945 D); the first is the introduction to this myth or frame-story, in which the stranger explained to Sulla how from the continent on the other side of the Atlantic he came to the Isle of Cronus, one of several that lie westwards of Britain, and thence, after having served thirty years, travelled to Carthage where he met Sulla (941 A 942 C). This geographical introduction has aroused the wildest speculations. Kepler was convinced that the trans-Atlantic continent was America, and he tried to identify the islands mentioned in the myth cf. notes 97, 98, 103, and 105 to Kepler’s translation (see note a, p. 20 supra) and note 2 to his Somnium sive Astronomia Lunaris. In Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Abrahami Ortelii (Antwerp, 1593), p. 5, this passage of Plutarch was used, apparently for the first time, to prove that the ancients knewthe American continent.; W. Christ in 1898 still could assert that Plutarch’s continent is obviously America and proves that about A.D. 100 sailors reached the North American coast via Iceland, Greenland, and Baffinland Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur, Dritte Auflage (1898), p. 662, n. 1. W. Schmid and O. Stählin in the sixth edition of this work (Zweiter Teil, Erste Hälfte [1920], p. 498) suppress this note of Christ’s but write aus dem Festland jenseits des atlantischen Ozeans (Amerika ?). ; and in 1909 G. Mair argued that the source of this knowledge of America was reports of Carthaginian seafarers who had penetrated into the Gulf of Mexico, that the Isle of Cronus is Scandinavia, and that the northern geography of the myth derives from accounts of the voyages of Pytheas of Massilia.G. Mair, Pytheas’ Tanais und die Insel des Kronos in Plutarchs Schrift Das Gesicht im Monde (Jahresbericht des K.K. Staats-Gymnasiums in Marburg ÁD, 1909). A fair example of Mair’s argument is his identification (p. 18) of the κόλρος mentioned in 941 B with the Christiana-Fjord, although according to Plutarch it is in the trans-Atlantic continent. Moreover, all of Plutarch’s islands lie to the West and North-West of Britains3 Even before Mair had published his fantastic theory Ebner had conclusively demonstrated that Plutarch could not have referred to any real crossing of the Atlantic or any rumours of such a crossing, that by using the name Ogygia at the beginning (941 A - B) he had clearly indicated the purely mythical intention of his geography, and that this geographical setting is simply an imitation of Plato’s Atlantis in the spirit of Hecataeus story of the Hyperboreans, Theopompus Meropis, and the Sacred Records of Euhemerus.E. Ebner, Geographische Hinweise und Anklänge in Plutarchs Schrift, de facie in orbe lunae (Munich, 1906). A. von Humboldt had concluded long before that the geographical frame is entirely mythical (Kritische Untersuchungen über die historische Entwicklung der geographischen Kenntnisse von der Neuen Welt [Berlin, 1836], pp. 174-185). H. von Arnim (Plutarch über Dämonen und Mystik, pp. 37-47 [Verhand. K. Akad. van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, Afd. Letterk., 1921]) contended that Plutarch’s source for chapter 26 was a fantastic travel-romance that had nothing to do with philosophy or moon-demonology, but in which the demons of Cronus served the purpose of prophesying to the hero about his future. W. Hamilton (Class. Quart. xxviii [1934], pp. 24 ff., cf. p. 24, n. 1), while citing as parallels to the geographical myth Hecataeus, Euhemerus, Theopompus, and the Abaris of Heraclides Ponticus (cf. also Hirzel, r Dialog, ii, p. 187, n. 4), maintains that Plutarch wrote the whole of his myth in direct imitation of Plato’s story of Atlantis. Rohde (r griechische Roman, 204-276 = 3rd edition [Leipzig, 1914], pp. 219-296) places Plutarch’s geographical myth in its proper environment with the romances of Theopompus, Hecataeus, Euhemerus, Iambulus, Antonius Diogenes, and Marcellus. cf. also H. Martin, Ètudes sur le TimÈe de Platon (Paris, 1841), i, pp. 290-304, and J. O. Thomson, Op. cit. (note b, p. 18), pp. 237-238. The additional geographical particulars are the usual corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. The theme of the sleeping Cronus may have been suggested to Plutarch by Demetrius of Tarsus, who in the Defectu Oraculorum (419 E 420 A) is made to say that on an island near Britain Cronus is kept prisoner by the bonds of sleep and is guarded by Briareus and attended by Spirits who are his servitors. This Demetrius appears to have been an historical person who did travel to Britain, whence in the dialogue he is said to have recently returned; and he may have told Plutarch some Celtic legend or superstition which the latter hellenized and wove into the fabric of his myth.For Demetrius cf. R. Flaceliére, Plutarque: Sur la Disparition des Oracles (Paris, 1947), pp. 26-28, and K. Ziegler, Plutarchos von Chaironeia (Stuttgart, 1949), 36. If Demetrius did hear a Celtic tale of a god or hero asleep on some western island, it would have been easy for him or Plutarch to identify the subject with Cronus (cf. Hesiod, Works and Days, 169, and Pindar, Olympian, ii. 77 [70] ff.; see also note a on p. 182 and note a on 942 A s.v.). Pohlenz’s notion (R.E. xi. 2013) that Posidonius, who was familiar with the northern world, was the intermediary of this Kyffhäusermotiv has nothing to support it. Posidonius was the source of the Cronus-motif as well as of the whole geographical part of the myth according to M. Adler, Op. cit. (note b, p. 18), pp. 169-170, who has no trouble in showing that Schmertosch adduced no real reason for designating Xenocrates as Plutarch’s source for this section; but Hamilton (loc. cit. [note a, p. 22]) has proved that Posidonius could not have been the source either. The discussion of the second part of the myth, the demonology and eschatology, has also been concerned mainly with the problem of Plutarch’s sources. Heinze attempted to prove that this myth had been put together out of material drawn from Xenocrates and from Posidonius and that in the resulting combination the parts that belong to those two authors are distinguishable.Richard Heinze, Xenokrates (Leipzig, 1892), pp. 123 ff. M. Pohlenz, Vom Zorne Gottes (Göttingen, 1909), p. 133, n. 1, approved Heinze’s conclusion in general but differed with him in some particulars. Adler vigorously attacked this thesis and argued that Posidonius was Plutarch’s source for the whole myth and for whatever there is in it that may have come ultimately from XenocratesMaximilian Adler, Op. cit. (note b, p. 18), pp. 166 ff. Adler’s dissertation was reviewed by Pohlenz in B.P.W. xxxii (1912), 648-654, and his thesis concerning the source of the myth criticized, ibid. 653. P. Capelle ( luna stellis lacteo orbe animarum sedibus [Halle, 1917], pp. 14-15) held that chapter 28 came from Posidonius’s account of the state of souls after death and chapters 29 and 30 from his supposed commentary on the Timaeus.; but R. M. Jones The Platonism of Plutarch (Chicago Dissertation, Menasha, Wisconsin, 1916), pp. 48-56 and 58-60. proved conclusively that neither Heinze’s conclusions nor Adler’s will bear scrutiny, that Posidonius could not have been the source, and that, while Plutarch combined various eschatological notions which were current and some of which were probably held in common by different philosophers, his myth is in the main an interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus. Later, against Karl Reinhardt’s attempt to trace the myth back to a hypothetical solar esehatology of Posidonius, Jones re-established the Platonic character of Plutarch’s eschatology, psychology, and demonology here and the impossibility of taking Posidonius for the source.K. Reinhardt, Kosmos und Sympathie (Munich, 1926), pp. 313 ff. (cf. also F. Cumont, La ThÈologie solaire du paganisme romain, Mèm. de lAcad. des Inscriptions, xii [1909]); R. M. Jones, Posidonius and Solar Eschatology, Class. Phil. xxvii (1932), pp. 113-135, especially pp. 116-131. P. BoyancÈ, Ètudes sur le Songe de Scipion (Bordeaux and Paris, 1936), pp. 78-104, follows Jones in refuting Cumont and Reinhardt. Hamilton later contended even more positively that Plutarch took the Timaeus as the model for the whole of his myth in the Facie and that, since the Animae Procreatione in Timaeo shows that he regarded the Timaeus seriously, he must have intended the corresponding portion of his myth in the Facie to contain an equally serious exposition of his own beliefs concerning the nature and fate of the soul.W. Hamilton, Class. Quart. xxviii (1934), pp. 24-30. Hamilton expressly opposes the theory of von Arnim, who, in his Plutarch über Dämonen und Mystik (see note a, p. 22), pp. 24-65, argues that Plutarch took the geographical myth and the eschatological myth from two different sources and the latter from an eclectic Platonist later than Antiochus. As to Hamilton’s notion of the seriousness with which Plutarch intended the myth, Ziegler is surely right in saying (Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 217) that Sulla’s final sentence, taken together with Lamprias’s remark in 920 B - C, shows that Plutarch had no intention of insisting upon the literal truth of the myth; in this attitude also he follows Plato: see note a on p. 223 s.v.. Soury in his extensive study of the myth, while emphasizing the possible influence of the mysteries, agrees in general with Hamilton that it is preponderantly Platonic.G. Soury, Rev. Èt. Gr. liii (1940), pp. 51-58, and La Dèmonologie de Plutarque (Paris, 1942), pp. 73-82 and 177-210. Anyone who without a preconceived thesis to defend reads the De Facie will recognize, I believe, that Plato was Plutarch’s inspiration throughout the dialogue but that Plutarch is himself the true author of the whole work and that, while there is in it a distillation of his wide and varied scientific and philosophical reading, he cannot possibly have composed it by copying out any source or combination of sources. I have tried in the exegetical notes to indicate the parallels which will help the reader to understand the dialogue itself by seeing its relation to the rest of ancient scientific and philosophical thought. Among these parallels some of the most striking are drawn from later writers, especially Neo-Platonists; these I have mentioned not in order to insinuate that they show Plutarch’s direct influence upon those later writers, although many of them certainly were acquainted with him, but because they illuminate the meaning of the Facie and at the same time indicate what may have been contained in some of the philosophical writings known to Plutarch and long since lost to us, and may help to cast some flicker of light upon that obscure and controversial problem, the prehistory of Neo-Platonism. 6. The Facie, which is No. 73 in the so-called Catalogue of Lamprias and No. 71 in the Planudean order, is apparently preserved in only two MSS. of the Bibliothéque Nationale, Grec 1672 (saec. XIV) and 1675 (saec. XV), conventionally called Parisinus E and Parisinus B respectively.On the MSS. of Plutarch generally cf. the references cited by M. Pohlenz, Plutarchi Moralia, i (Teubner, 1925), Praefatio, p. vi, n. 1, and pp. xxvi and xxviii f. on B and E respectively. These have hitherto been supposed to be independent copies of a single archetypeWyttenbach (Plutarchi Moralia [Oxford, 1795], p. xliv) says of B ut videtur, ex E, aut ejusdem exempli codice, ita descriptus ut antiquiores melioresque simul adhiberentur; unde quaedam lacunae uberius etiam expletae, et plura menda sanata. M. Treu, Zur Geschichte der Uberlieferung von Plutarchs Moralia, ii (Ohlau, 1881), pp. 5-7, argued that B derives from the same source as E, which B must have used later; and his conclusion was generally accepted by later editors. Raingeard’s more complicated stemma (p. xiv of his edition of the Facie) is, in any case, entirely unjustified.; but recently G. R. Manton has put forward strong arguments for thinking that B is a descendant of E through an intermediate manuscript, a copy of E, which was worked over by a scholar who filled in lacunae and inserted conjectures of his own. The Manuscript Tradition of Plutarch Moralia 70-7, Class. Quart. xliii (1949), pp. 97-104. Among the passages discussed by Manton where B has readings other than those of E are none from the Facie, for the text of which Manton (Op. cit. p. 99, n. 1) depended upon Treu’s collation supplemented by Bernardakis’ list in vol. i of his edition, pp. 1 ff.; but I have found no variant reading of B in this essay that would surely gainsay Manton’s hypothesis. Those which might suggest that B is not descended from E are the following: 927 F: τὸν -B for E’s correct τὰ before ἐμβριθῆ; 929 B: ἔχων δὲ -B, ἔχων δὲ τοῦτο -B for the correct ἑκὼν δὲ; 932 D: πεποιημένων -B for E’s correct πεπεισμένων: 937 F: ἐπιφερομένη -B, φερομένη -E for the probable original ἀντιφερομένη; 938 D: ἀναγινώσκων -B for E’s correct ἀναγινώσκοντος; 943 D: καταγινομένας -B for E’s correct καταδυομένας, Manton’s conclusion has been rejected by K. Hubert (Rhein. Mus. xciii [1950], pp. 330-336), but Hubert’s defence of the independence of B and E has been counterattacked by Einarson and De Lacy (Class. Phil. xlvi [1951], pp. 103 and 106, with notes 36 and 56). I have collated both manuscripts from Photostats which were generously put at my disposal by Dr. William C. Helmbold; and I have recorded under the usual symbols the variant readings of each of them, for I soon discovered that not only is Bernardakis’ report of the mss. untrustworthy, but that the same must be said of Raingeard’s in his recent edition of the dialogue, and that even Treu’s collation (see note b, p. 26) is not free of errors. I have not recorded mere omissions or variations of accent or breathing, however, unless the sense is affected by them; and I have regularized crasis and elision without regard to the manuscripts or report of them, for they show no consistency in this matter.For example, in 931 D they have τὰ αὐτὰ πάσχειν ὑπὸ τοῦ αὐτοῦ ταὐτὰ (B, ταυτὰ -E) ποιεῖν ταὐτὸν . . . and occasionally οἶδ ὅρως and ἀλλ ὅρως, although they do not ordinarily elide the α of oἶda and ἀλλά. Almost invariably both E and B have μὴ δὲ instead of μηδὲ or μηδ. On these matters cf. T. Doehner, Quaestionum Plutarch. Particula Altera and Tertia (Meissen, 1858 and 1862), especially iii, p. 51, and ii, p. 35, n.%2%2; and on the question of hiatus cf. Helmbold, Class. Phil. xxxiii (1938), pp. 244-245, and xlv (1949), pp. 64 f. with his references, and for a much stricter view Ziegler, Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 295-298. To emend for the sole purpose of eliminating hiatus is to take unwarranted liberty with the text; but, on the other hand, to introduce hiatus by emendation is certainly inadmissible. It should be observed, however, that in the Facie, besides the exceptions to avoidance of hiatus listed by Ziegler (Op. cit. 296-297), final αι, οι, ει, and ου before an initial vowel may always be possible (cf. for ου e.g. τοῦ ἰδίου ἀέρος in 944 A), ἄνω and κάτω are permissible before any word beginning with a vowel (cf. ἄνω ἔχειν and κάτω ἄνυθεν in 924 C which guarantee ἄνω ἐστιν in 926 A), and other cases of hiatus which cannot reasonably be eliminated occasionally occur (e.g. χείλη εἰκόνας [921 C], τουτὶ εἴρω [935 D]). In conformity with the usage of Professor Babbitt and regardless of the manuscripts, I have printed the forms γίγνεσθαι, γιγνώσκειν, and οὐδείς, though the manuscripts usually have γίνεσθαι, γινώσκειν, and οὐθείς; but I have adopted the form duei=n throughout. I have tried to the best of my ability to assign emendations to those who first proposed them; but for some which appear without ascription in all modern editions, and the author of which I have been unable to discover, I have had to be content with the unsatisfactory note, editors. For the suggestions said to be written in three different hands on the margins of the copy of the Aldine edition now in the Bibliothéque Nationale (RÈs. J. 94), I have had to rely upon the report of Raingeard in the apparatus criticus of his edition (cf pp. xvi f. of his Introduction)P. Raingeard, Le ΠΕΡΟ ΤΟΥ ΠΡΟΣΠΟΥ de Plutarque, texte critique avec traduction et commentaire (Paris, 1935). Raingeard’s text is fantastically conservative, reproducing E for the most part even where E gives impossible Greek; and yet his report of the manuscripts is frequently erroneous either explicitly or by implication. The translation is worse even than the text; and the commentary, especially where it touches upon philosophical and scientific questions, is more often wrong than right, almost everywhere inadequate, and frequently absurd.; all of these I indicate without differentiation by the formula, Anon., Aldine, R.J. 94. Upon Raingeard’s report and those of Reiske, Wyttenbach, Hutten, and Bernardakis I have had to rely for the variant readings of the Aldine edition and of the edition of Xylander; but the edition of Froben (Basiliensis, 1542), as well as those of Stephanus (1624), Reiske, Wyttenbach, Hutten, Dübner, Bernardakis, and Raingeard, and the translations of Xylander, Amyot, Kepler, Kaltwasser, the two translations of Prickard,See note b, p. 18. Prickard’s translation of 1911 was reviewed by W. R. Paton, Class. Rev. xxvi (1912), p. 269, and by L. C. Purser, Hermathena, xvi (1911), pp. 309-324, whose review is rather a series of notes and suggestions for almost two score passages in the essay. and that of portions of the essay by Heath,Sir Thomas L. Heath, Greek Astronomy (London, 1932), pp. 166-180. I have consulted and compared throughout. Those emendations which, so far as I know, are original with me are indicated by the initials H. C. Besides the editions, translations, and articles already mentioned in this Introduction, the chief aids to my study of the text have been the following: Adler, Maximilian: Diss. Phil. Vind. x (1910), pp. 87 ff. (cf. note b, p. 18). Wiener Studien, xxxi (1909), pp. 305-309. Zwei Beiträge zum plutarchischen Dialog De Facie in Orbe Lunae, Jahresbericht des K. K. Staatsgymnasiums in Nikolsburg, 1909-1910 (Nikolsburg, 1910). Wiener Studien, xlii (1920-1921), pp. 163-164. Festschrift Moris Winternitz (Leipzig, 1933), pp. 298-302. Apelt, Otto: Zu Plutarch und Plato, Jahresbericht Gymnasium Carolo-Alexandrinum zu Jena, 1904-1905 (Jena, 1905). Kritische Bemerkungen, Jahresbericht Jena, 1905-1906 (Jena, 1906). Chatzidakis, G. N.: Athena, xiii (1901), pp. 462-714. Cobet, C. G.: Novae Lectiones (Leiden, 1858). Variae Lectiones (Leiden, 1878). Collectanea Critica (Leiden, 1878). Emperius, A.: Emperii Opuscula Philologica et Historica . . . ed. F. G. Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1847), pp. 287-295. Hartman, J. J.: Plutarcho Scriptore et Philosopho (Leiden, 1916), pp. 557-563. Herwerden, H. van: Lectiones Rheno-Traiectinae (Traj. ad Rhen., 1882). Mnemosyne, xxii (1894), pp. 330-337, and xxxvii (1909), pp. 202-223. Kronenberg, A. J.: Mnemosyne, lii (1924), pp. 60-112, and Ser. III, x (1941), pp. 33-47. Kunze, R.: Rhein. Mus. lxiv (1909), pp. 635-636. Madvig, J. N.: Adversaria Critica, I (Hauniae, 1871), pp. 664-666. Mras, K.: Zeitsckrift für die österreich. Gymnasien, lxv (1914), pp. 187-188. Naber, S. A.: Mnemosyne, xxviii (1900), pp. 329-364. Papabasileios, G. A.: Athena, x (1898), pp. 167-242. Pohlenz, Max: Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift, xxxii (1912), pp. 648-654. Götting. Gelehrte Anzeig. clxxx (1918), pp. 321-343. Sandbach, F. H.: Proc. of the Cambridge Philological Soc., 1943. Harold Cherniss Addendum Since this Bibliography was compiled in February 1953 some publications dealing with the De Facie have come to my attention which require a brief notice. Konrat Ziegler in Plutarch über Gott und Vorsehung, Dämonen und Weissagung (Zürich, Artemis-Verlag, 1952) has written a brief summary of the essay (pp. 42-45) and has translated the myth (940 F 945 D into German (pp. 268-278) with the addition of a few explanatory notes. He makes one noteworthy alteration in the text at 941 A - B: adopting τὸν δὲ βριάρεων ἔχοντα φρονρόν, after which he puts a full stop, he removes the following words, τῶν τε νήσων παρακάτω κεῖσθαι (?), from their position in the MSS. and places them after κυκλῳ θάλαττα in 941 B three lines below. The question of the MSS., which is touched upon in the Introduction § 6 supra, has been discussed, though without specific reference to the Facie, by R. Flaceliére in his edition and translation of the Amatorius (Plutarque: Dialogue sur lamour [Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1952], pp. 35-37) and in an article, La Tradition manuscrite des traitÈs 70-77 de Plutarque, Rev. Ètudes Grecques, lxv (1952), pp. 351-362. By a different route he reaches the same conclusion as did G. R. Manton, namely that B is derived from E, probably through an intermediate manuscript now lost. cf. Irigoin, Rev. de Philologie, xxviii (1954), pp. 117-119. In Gnomon, xxv (1953), pp. 556-557 K. Hubert replied to Flaceliére’s arguments and again sought to establish the independence of B with respect to E. Flaceliére in his article entitled Plutarque et les Èclipses de la lune (Rev. tudes Anciennes, liii [1951], pp. 203-221) is primarily concerned with the interpretation of De Genio Socratis, 591 C, but in connection with this he discusses Facie, 933 D - E and 942 D - E and argues that in the former of these two passages Plutarch depends upon the calculations of Hipparchus (cf. my note in Class. Phil. xlvi [1951], p. 145 referred to in note e on 933 E s.v.). G. Zuntz in Rhein. Mus. xcvi (1953), pp. 233-234 has proposed several emendations in the text of the essay: 940 E: He is right in assuming that Bernardakis’ ὑμεῖς is a misprint for ἡμεῖς of the MSS., but ὅσαπερ which he condemns and emends is, of course, correct; he apparently misunderstood the construction, ὅσαπερ ἡμεῖς (scil. χρώμεθα) ἄερι. 942 F: After τίς δ’ οὗτός ἐστιν; he would add [ἔφην· ὁ δ’·], thus producing the same effect as did Reiske’s punctuation. cf. on this sentence my note in Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 150-151. 943 D: He would write τὸ ἄλογον καὶ [τὸ] ραθητικόν on the strength of Def. Orac. 417 B (p. 75. 23 [Sieveking]). This would be possible but is unnecessary, since καὶ can here be taken as explicative. 944 C: He suggests Φερσεφόνης οὖδος ἀντιχθόνιος or Φερσεφόνης οὖδος ἀντίχθονος, apparently unaware of von Arnim’s far more probable emendation (see notes d and e on p. 221 s.v.). His further supplement, τὰ δὲ [πρὸς τὰ] ἐνταῦθα, is quite unnecessary. 944 E: To ἔρωτι τῆς περὶ τὸν ἥλιον εἰκόνος he would add [τoῦ ἑνὸς] or [τoῦ νοητoῦ] or [τἀγαθoῦ] on the ground that the phrase as it stands is unintelligible. The following words, δι’ ἧς ἐπιλάμπει κτλ., themselves explain what Plutarch means (see note g on 944 E s.v.), and there is no excuse for any supplement at all. 945 B: He rightly defends Kaltwasser’s alteration of Τυφὼν to Πύθων (see Introduction, p. 12, note b supra). H. C. November 1954 To my great regret I have been unable to take account of Professor M. Pohlenz’s edition of this essay in Plutarchi Moralia, vol. v, Fasc. 3 (Leipzig, Teubner, 1955), since it became available only after this volume had already been paged and corrected for printing. H. C. February 1956

These were Sullas words.

1

For it concerns my story and that is its source; but I think that I should first like to learn whether there is any need to put back for a fresh startFor the metaphor cf. An Seni Respublica Gerenda Sit, 787 E, and Plato, Philebus, 13 D; the meaning is guaranteed by ἀρωσθέντες (driven from our course) infra. Of. the nautical metaphor with which Sulla interrupts Lamprias at 940 F s.v. (τὸν μῦθον ἐξοκείλας). to those opinions concerning the face of the moon which are current and on the lips of everyone.

What else would you expect us to have done,

I said,

3

since it was the difficulty in these opinions that drove us from our course upon those others? As people with chronic diseases when they have despaired of ordinary remedies and customary regimens turn to expiations and amulets and dreams, just so in obscure and perplexing speculations, when the ordinary and reputable and customary accounts are not persuasive, it is necessary to try those that are more out of the way and not scorn them but literally to chant over ourselves cf. Plato, Phaedo, 77 E and 114 D, Republic, 608 A. the charms of the ancients and use every means to bring the truth to test.

Well, to begin with, you see that it is absurd to call the figure seen in the moon an affection of vision in its feebleness giving way to brilliance, a condition which we call [bedazzlement]. Anyone who asserts this

1

does not observe that this phenomenon should rather have occurred in relation to the sun, since the sun lights upon us keen and violent (as Empedocles

2

too somewhere not infelicitously renders the difference of the two:

The sun keen-shafted and the gentle moon,

referring in this way to her allurement and cheerfulness and harmlessness), and moreover does [not] explain why dull and weak eyes discern no distinction of shape in the moon but her orb for them has an even and full light, whereas those of keen and robust vision make out more precisely and distinctly the pattern of facial features and more clearly perceive the variations. In fact the contrary, I think, should have been the case if the image resulted from an affection of the eye when it is overpowered: the weaker the subject affected, [the clearer] should be the appearance of the image. The unevenness also entirely refutes the hypothesis, for the shadow that one sees is not continuous and confused but is not

badly depicted by the words of Agesianax

3

: She gleams with fire encircled, but within Bluer than lapis show a maiden’s eye And dainty brow, a visage manifest. In truth, the dark patches submerge beneath the bright ones which they encompass and confine them, being confined and curtailed by them in turn; and they are thoroughly intertwined with each other [so as to] make the [delineation] of the figure resemble a painting. [This], Aristotle, seemed

4

to be a point not without cogency against your Clearchus

5

also.

For the man is yours, since he was an associate of the ancient Aristotle, although he did pervert many doctrines of the School.

6

Apollonides broke in and inquired what the opinion of Clearchus was.

You are the last person,

I said,

who has any right not to know a theory of which geometry is, as it were, the very hearth and

home. The man, you see, asserts that what is called the face consists of mirrored likenesses, that is images of the great ocean reflected in the moon,

1

for the visual ray when reflected naturally reaches from many points objects which are not directly visible and the full moon is itself in uniformity and lustre

2

the finest and clearest of all mirrors. Just as you think, then, that the reflection of the visual ray to the sun accounts for the appearance of the (rainbow) in a cloud where the moisture has become somewhat smooth and (condensed),

3

so Clearchus thought that the outer ocean is seen in the moon, not in the place where it is but in the place whence the visual ray has been deflected to the ocean and the reflection of the ocean to us.

So Agesianax again has somewhere said:

Or swell of ocean surging opposite

Be mirrored in a looking-glass of flame.

4

Apollonides was delighted.

What an original and absolutely novel contrivance the hypothesis is,

he said,

the work of a man of daring and culture; but how did you proceed to bring your counterargument against it?

In the first place,

I said,

in that, although the outer ocean is a single thing, a confluent and continuous sea, cf. Strabo, i. 1. 8 (i, p. 6. 4-7 [Meineke]). the dark spots in the moon do not appear as one but as having something like isthmuses between them, the brilliance dividing and delimiting the shadow. Hence, since each part is separated and has its own boundary, the layers of light upon shadow,The language is that of painting; cf. Lucian, Zeuxis, 5: τῶν χρωμάτων ἀκριβῆ τὴν κρᾶσιν καὶ εὔνκαφον τὴν ἐπιβολὴν ποιήσασθαι. assuming the semblance of height and depth, have produced a very close likeness of eyes and lips. Therefore, one must assume the existence of several outer oceans separated by isthmuses and mainlands, which is absurd and false; or, if the ocean is single, it is not plausible that its reflected image be thus discontinuous. Tell me whether for in your presence it is safer to put this as a question than as an assertion whether it is possible, though the inhabited world has length and breadth, that every visual ray when reflected from the moon should in like manner reach the ocean, even the visual rays of those who are sailing in the great ocean itself, yes and who dwell in it as the Britons do, and that too even though the earth, as you say,i.e. you mathematicians; see oἴεσθ’ ὑμεῖς in 921 A supra. The reference is to the eccentrics of Hipparchus’s theory of the motion of the moon. For defence of the text and a detailed interpretation of this sentence cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 137-138. does not have the relation of centre to the orbit of the moon. Well, this,

I said,

it is your business to consider; but the reflection of vision either in respect to the moon or (in general) is beyond your province and that of Hipparchus too.Because Hipparchus was a mathematician and not a physicist (φυσιολόγος); on the difference cf. Geminus in Simplicius, Phys. pp. 291. 23-292. 29, and the phrase, διὰ τὸ μὴ ἐφωδιάσθαι ἀπὸ φυσιολογίας, which Theon of Smyrna (p. 188. 19-20) uses of Hipparchus. Although Hipparchus was industrious, still many find him unsatisfactory in his explanation of the nature of vision itself, (which) is more likely to involve a sympathetic compound and fusionPlato’s theory; cf. Timaeus, 45 C and Placitis, 901 B- C = Aëtius, iv. 13. 11 (Dox. Graeci, p. 404). than any impacts and rebounds such as those of the atoms that Epicurus invented. cf. Adv. Coloten, 1112 C and Placitis, 901 A - B = Aëtius, iv. 13. 1 (Dox. Graeci, p. 403. 2-4). The present passage seems to imply that Hipparchus’s explanation of vision resembled that of Epicurus. In Placitis, 901 B = Aëtius, iv. 13. 9 (Dox. Graeci, p. 404) a theory of vision is attributed to Hipparchus, however, which does not at all resemble that of the atomists; but the name Hipparchus there is probably a mistake, cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), p. 154, n. 6. Moreover, Clearchus, I think, would refuse to assume with us that the moon is a body of weight and solidity instead of an ethereal and luminiferous star as you sayLamprias addresses Apollonides and Aristotle, for that the moon is an ethereal and luminiferous star is the Peripatetic theory (cf. the statement of Aristotle at 928 E s.v. and the references in the note there) and that is why it is ascribed to Clearchus. Obviously then ὑμῖν of the MSS. must be an error and should be changed to ἡμῖν, for that the moon is a body with weight and solidity is the opinion of the Academy, i.e. of Lamprias, Lucius, and their circle (cf. 926 C, 928 C, 931 B - C s.v.).; (and) such a moon ought to shatter and divert the visual ray so that reflection would be out of the question. But if anyone dismisses our objections, we shall ask how it is that the reflection of the ocean exists as a face only in the moon and is seen in none of all the many other stars, although reason requires that all or none of them should affect the visual ray in this fashion. But [let us have done with this; and do you]],

I said with a glance at Lucius,

recall to me what part of our position was stated first.

Whereat Lucius said:

Nay, lest we give the impression of flatly insulting Pharnaces by thus passing over the Stoic opinion unnoticed, do now by all means address some remark to the gentleman who, supposing the moon to be a mixture of air and gentle fire, then says that what appears to be a figure is the result of the blackening of the air as when in a calm water there runs a ripple under the surface.

1

You are [very] nice, Lucius,

I said,

to dress up the absurdity in respectable language. Not so our comradeSee 929 B and 929 F s.v.. This comrade was the leader of the earlier discussion, which is here being recapitulated, and is probably to be identified with Plutarch himself (so Hirzel, r Dialog, ii, p. 184, n. 2, and Hartman, Plutarcho, p. 557); cf. Tuenda Sanitate, 122 F for a similar situation and Quaest. Conviv. 643 C, where Hagias addresses Plutarch as comrade. ; but he said what is true, that they blacken the Moon’s eye defiling her with blemishes and bruises, at one and the same time addressing her as Artemis cf. S. V. F. ii, p. 212. 38-39 (Chrysippus), iii, p. 217. 12-13 (Diogenes of Babylon); in general Quaest. Conviv 658 F 659 A, and Roscher, über Selene und Verwandtes, p. 116. and Athena cf. 938 B s.v.. In Iside, 354 C Isis, who later is identified with the moon (372 D), is identified with Athena (cf. 376 A). cf. Roscher, Op. cit. pp. 123 f. (on the supposed fragment of Aristotle there cited see V. Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, pp. 616 [no. 4] and 617). and making her a mass compounded of murky air and smouldering fire neither kindling nor shining of herself, an indiscriminate kind of body, forever charred and smoking like the thunderbolts that are darkling and by the poets called lurid. cf. Odyssey, xxiii. 330 and xxiv. 539; Hesiod, Theogony, 515; Pindar, Nemean, x. 71; Aristotle, Meteorology, 371 A 17-24. Yet a smouldering fire, such as they suppose that of the moon to be, cannot persist or subsist at all unless it get solid fuel that shelters and at the same time nourishes itSee 934 B - C s.v..; this some philosophers, I believe, see less clearly than do those who say in jest that Hephaestus is said to be lame because fire without wood, like the lame without a stick, makes no progress. cf. Cornutus, chap. 18 (p. 33. 18-22 Lang); Heracliti Quaestiones Homericae, § 26 (p. 41. 2-6 Oelmann). If the moon really is fire, whence came so much air in it? For the region that we see revolving above us is the place not of air but of a superior substance, the nature of which is to rarefy all things and set them afire; and, if air did come to be there, why has it not been etherealized by the fire cf. S. V. F. ii, p. 184. 2-5: ἑξαιθερoῦσθαι πάντα εἰς πῦρ αἰθερῶδες ἀναλυομένων πάντων. The ether here is Stoic ether, i.e. a kind of fire (cf. Primo Frigido, 951 c-d and note d on 928 D s.v.), not Aristotle’s fifth essence, which does not enter into the process of the alteration of simple bodies. and in this transformation disappeared but instead has been preserved as a housemate of fire this long time, as if nails had fixed it forever to the same spots and riveted it together? Air is tenuous and without configuration, and so it naturally slips and does not stay in place; and it cannot have become solidified if it is commingled with fire and partakes neither of moisture nor of earth by which alone air can be solidified. cf. Primo Frigido, 951 D, 952 B, 953 D 954 A: but the Stoic opinion given in 949 B ( = S. V. F. ii, p. 142. 6-10) was that solidification (φῦξις) is a state produced in water by air, and Galen reports (S. V. F. ii, p. 145. 8-11) that according to the Stoics the hardness and resistance of earth are caused by fire and air. Moreover, velocity ignites the air in stones and in cold lead, not to speak of the air enclosed in fire that is whirling about with such great speed. cf. Aristotle, Caelo, 289 A 19-32, Meteorology, 341 A 17-19; Ideler, Aristotelis Meteorologica, i, pp. 359-360. Why, they are vexed by Empedocles because he represents the moon to be a hail-like congelation of air encompassed by the sphere of fireEmpedocles, A 60 (i, p. 294. 24-31 [Diels-Kranz]); cf. [Plutarch], Stromat. § 10 = Dox. Graeci, p. 582. 12-15 = i, p. 288. 30-32 (Diels-Kranz); and C. E. Millard, On the Interpretation of Empedocles, pp. 65-68.; but they themselves say that the moon is a sphere of fire containing air dispersed about it here and there, and a sphere moreover that has neither clefts nor depths and hollows, such as are allowed by those who make it an earthy body, but has the air evidently resting upon its convex surface. That it should so remain is both contrary to reason and impossible to square with what is observed when the moon is full. On that assumption there should have been no distinction of dark and shadowy air; but all the air should become dark when occulted, or when the moon is caught by the sun it should all shine out with an even light. For with us too, while the air in the depths and hollows of the earth, wherever the suns rays do not penetrate, remains shadowy and unlit, that which suffuses the earth outside takes on brilliance and a luminous colour. The reason is that air, because of its subtility, is delicately attuned to every quality and influence; and, especially if it touches light or, to use your phrase, merely is tangent to it, it is altered through and through and entirely illuminated.Chrysippus, frag. 570 (S. V. F. ii, p. 178. 20-22), cf. Primo Frigido, 952 F. With the words ὥς φατε Lamprias addresses Pharnaces as representative of the Stoics, for whose doctrine of the instantaneous alteration of air by light see 930 F s.v. and the references there; cf. especially κατὰ νύξιν ἣ ψαῦσιν there with ἂν ἐριψαύσῃ μόνον, ὥς φατε, here. Aristotle originated the doctrine that the transparent medium is altered instantaneously throughout its whole extent by the mere presence of light at any point (cf. Sensu, 446 B 27 447 A 10 and Anima, 418 B 9 ff.). So this same point seems right handsomely to re-enforce those who pack the air on the moon into depths of some kind and chasms, even as it utterly refutes you who make her globe an unintelligible mixture or compound of air and fire for it is not possible i.e. on the Stoic theory. that a shadow remain upon the surface when the sun casts his light upon all of the moon that is within the compass of our vision.

Even while I was still speaking Pharnaces spoke:

Here we are faced again with that stock manoeuvre of the AcademyThe word τὸ περίακτον occurs in Comp. Lys. Sulla, iii, 476 E, where it seems to mean the old saw, though it may refer to a proverbial state of inside out and wrong side to. In Gloria Atheniensium, 348 E Plutarch mentions μηχανὰς ἀπὸ σκηνῆς περιάκτους, but that rather tells against taking τὸ περίακτον as the name of this stage-machine. He uses περιαγωγή in Genio Socratis, 588 D in the sense of distraction and in Praecepta Gerendae Reipublicae, 819 A in the sense of a trick of diversion, a sense which certainly suits τὸ περίακτον in the present context. The complaint of Pharnaces is frequently made by the interlocutors of Socrates; cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia, iv, 4. 9; Plato, Republic, 336 C; Aristotle, Soph. Elench. 183 B 6-8. : on each occasion that they engage in discourse with others they will not offer any accounting of their own assertions but must keep their interlocutors on the defensive lest they become the prosecutors. Well, me you will not to-day entice into defending the Stoics against your charges until I have called you people to account for turning the universe upside down.

Thereupon Lucius laughed and said:

Oh, sir, just don’t bring suit against us for impiety as Cleanthes thought that the Greeks ought to lay an action for impiety against Aristarchus the Samian on the ground that he was disturbing the hearth of the universe because he sought to save (the) phenomena by assuming that the heaven is at rest while the earth is revolving along the ecliptic and at the same time is rotating about its own axis.= S. V. F. i, p. 112, frag. 500; the title, Against Aristarchus, appears in the list of Cleanthes writings given by Diogenes Laertius, vii. 174. For the theory of Aristarchus cf. Plutarch, Plat. Quaest. 1006 c; Placitis 891 A = Aëtius, ii. 24. 8 (Dox. Graeci, p. 355); Archimedes, Arenarius, i. 1.4-7 (Opera Omnia, ii, p. 218 Heiberg); Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. x. 174; T. L. Heath, Aristarchus of Samos, pp. 301 ff. We i.e. we Academics, the party which did in fact maintain that the moon is an earthy body. express no opinion of our own now; but those who suppose that the moon is earth, why do they, my dear sir, turn things upside down any more than you i.e. you Stoics; cf. Achilles, Isagogê, 4 = S. V. F. ii, frag. 555, p. 175. 36 ff. do who station the earth here suspended in the air? Yet the earth is a great deal larger than the moonThis would not have been admitted by most of the Stoics, who thought that the moon is larger than the earth; but in this Posidonius and possibly others disagreed with the earlier members of the school; cf. Aëtius, ii. 26. 1 (Dox. Graeci, p. 357 and p. 68, n. 1), and M. Adler, Diss. Phil. Vind. x (1910), p. 155. according to the mathematicians who during the occurrences of eclipses and the transits of the moon through the shadow calculate her magnitude by the length of time that she is obscured. cf. Cleomedes, ii. 1, § 80 (p. 146. 18 ff. Ziegler); Simplicius, Caelo, p. 471. 6-11. For the shadow of the earth grows smaller the further it extends, because the body that casts the light is larger than the earth cf. Cleomedes, ii. 2. §§ 93-94 (p. 170. 11 ff. Ziegler); Theon of Smyrna, p. 197. 1 ff. (Hiller); Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 11 (8), 51.; and that the upper part of the shadow itself is taper and narrow was recognized, as they say, even by Homer, who called night nimble because of the sharpness of the shadow. cf. Defectu Oraculorum, 410 D. Homer uses the phrase θοὴ νύξ frequently (e.g. Iliad, x. 394 [cf. Leaf’s note ad loc.], Odyssey, xii. 284). Another θοός, supposedly meaning pointed, sharp and cognate with ἐθόωσα in Odyssey, ix. 327, is used of certain islands in Odyssey, xv. 299 (cf. Strabo, viii. 350-351; Pseudo-Plutarch, Vita et Poesi Homeri, B, 21 [vii, p. 347. 19 ff. Bernardakis]). The latter passage so understood was used to support the hypothesis that θοὴ νυξ referred to the sharpness of the earth’s shadow: cf. Heracliti Quaestiones Homericae, §§ 45-46 (p. 67. 13 ff. Oelmann). Eustathius (Comment. ad Iliadem, 814. 15 ff.) mentions besides this another astronomical interpretation of the phrase by Crates of Mallos. Yet captured by this part in eclipsesFor this temporal dative without ἐν cf. Theon of Smyrna, p. 194. 1-3 (Hiller). the moon barely escapes from it in a space thrice her own magnitude. Consider then how many times as large as the moon the earth is, if the earth casts a shadow which at its narrowest is thrice as broad as the moon. cf. An. Proc. in Timaeo, 1028 D where Plutarch ascribes to geometers the approximate calculation of three to one as the ratio of the earth’s diameter to that of the moon and of twelve to one as the ratio of the sun’s diameter to that of the earth, figures which agree roughly with those of Hipparchus (t: 1: s = 1 . 1/3 . 12 1/3; cf. Heath, Aristarchus of Samos, pp. 342 and 350 after Hultsch). Hipparchus, however, considered the breadth of the shadow at the moon’s mean distance from the earth in eclipses to be lunar diameters (Ptolemy, Syntaxis, iv. 9 [i, p. 327. 1-4 Heiberg]), while Aristarchus, whose calculations of the moon’s diameter Plutarch quotes at 932 B s.v., declared the shadow to be 2 lunar diameters in breadth (cf. Aristarchus, Hypothesis 5 [Heath, Op. cit. p. 352. 13]; Pappus, Collectionis Quae Supersunt, ii, p. 554. 17-18 and p. 556. 14-17 [Hultsch]), the figure given by Cleomedes as well (pp. 146. 18-19 and 178. 8-13 [Ziegler]; cf. Geminus, Elementa, ed. Manitius, p. 272). Plutarch may here simply have assumed that the ratio of the lunar diameter to the breadth of the shadow would be the same as the Hipparchean ratio of the lunar diameter to the diameter of the earth; but he may also have erroneously supposed that the time taken by the moon to enter the shadow, the time of complete obscuration, and the time taken to leave the shadow equal three diameters instead of two (cf. Cleomedes, p. 146. 21-25 [Ziegler] and M. Adler, Diss. Phil. Vind. x [1910], p. 156, n. 2). All the same, you fear for the moon lest it fall; whereas concerning the earth perhaps Aeschylus has persuaded you that Atlas Stands, staying on his back the prop of earth And sky no tender burden to embrace.Aeschylus, Prometheus Vinct. 351-352 (Smyth). Or, while under the moon there stretches air unsubstantial and incapable of supporting a solid mass, the earth, as Pindar says, is encompassed by steel-shod pillarsPindar, frag. 88 (Bergk) = 79 (Bowra).; and therefore Pharnaces is himself without any fear that the earth may fall but is sorry for the Ethiopians or Taprobanians, i.e. the Sinhalese; cf. Strabo, ii. 1. 14, chap. 72 and xv. 1. 14, chap. 690; Pliny, Nat. Hist. vi. 22 (24). who are situated under the circuit of the moon, lest such a great weight fall upon them. Yet the moon is saved from falling by its very motion and the rapidity of its revolution, just as missiles placed in slings are kept from falling by being whirled around in a circle. cf. Aristotle, Caelo, 284 A 24-26 and 295 A 16-21 (on Empedocles [Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy, p. 204, n. 234]). Plutarch himself in Lysander, xii. 3-4 (439 D) ascribes to Anaxagoras the notion that the heavenly bodies are kept from falling by the speed of their circular motion. For each thing is governed by its natural motion unless it be diverted by something else. That is why the moon is not governed by its weight: the weight has its influence frustrated by the rotatory motion. Nay, there would be more reason perhaps to wonder if she were absolutely unmoved and stationary like the earth. As it is, while [the] moon has good cause for not moving in this direction, the influence of weight alone might reasonably move the earth, since it has no part in any other motion; and the earth is heavier than the moon not merely in proportion to its greater size but still more, inasmuch as the moon has, of course, become light through the action of heat and fire.Here Lucius assumes the Stoic theory of the composition of the moon in order to rebut the Stoic objections. In short, your own statements seem to make the moon, if it is fire, stand in greater need of earth, that is of matter to serve it as a foundation, as something to which to adhere, as something to lend it coherence, and as something that can be ignited by it, for it is impossible to imagine fire being maintained without fuel, cf. Seneca, Nat. Quaest. vii. 1. 7: magni fuere viri, qui sidera crediderunt ex duro concreta et ignem alienum pascentia. nam per se, inquiunt, flamma diffugeret, nisi aliquid haberet, quod teneret et a quo teneretur, conglobatamque nec stabili inditam corpori, profecto iam mundus turbine suo dissipasset. but you people say that earth does abide without root or foundation.

17

Certainly it does,

said Pharnaces,

in occupying the proper and natural place that belongs to it, the middle, for this is the place about which all weights in their natural inclination press against one another and towards which they move and converge from every direction, whereas all the upper space, even if it receive something earthy which has been forcibly hurled up into it, straightway extrudes it into our region or rather lets it go where its proper inclination causes it naturally to descend.

18

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

Which of the tragic poets was it, Theon,

I asked,

who said that physicians With bitter drugs the bitter bile purge?

Theon replied that it was Sophocles.

1

Yes,

I said,

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

Nevertheless, though of tall tales of such a kind and number they have shouldered and lugged in not a wallet-full, by heaven, but some juggler’s pack and hotchpotch, still they say

1

that others are playing the buffoon by placing the moon, though it is earth, on high and not where the centre is. Yet if all heavy body converges to the same point and is

compressed in all its parts upon its own centre,

2

it is no more as centre of the sum of things than as a whole that the earth would appropriate to herself the heavy bodies that are parts of herself; and [the downward tendency] of falling bodies

3

proves not that the [earth] is in the centre of the cosmos but that those bodies which when thrust away from the earth fall back to her again have some affinity and cohesion with her.

4

For as the sun attracts to itself the parts of which it consists

5

so the earth too accepts as [her] own the stone

6

that has properly a downward tendency, and consequently every such thing

ultimately unites and coheres with her. If there is a body, however, that was not originally allotted to the earth or detached from it but has somewhere independently a constitution and nature of its own, as those men

7

would say of the moon, what is to hinder it from being permanently separate in its own place, compressed and bound together by its own parts? For it has not been proved that the earth is the centre of the sum of things,

8

and the way in which things in our region press together and concentrate upon the earth suggests how in all probability things in that region converge upon the moon and remain there. The man who drives together into a single region all earthy and heavy things and makes them part of a single body — I do not see for what reason he does not apply the same compulsion to light objects in their turn but allows so many separate concentrations of fire and, since he does not collect all the stars together, clearly does not think that there must also be a body common to all things that are fiery and have an upward tendency.

Now, said I, my dear Apollonides, you mathematiciansThis is implied by the second person plural addressed to Apollonides, cf. 925 B s.v. and 920 F, 921 C supra. say that the sun is an immense distance from the upper circumference and that above the sun Venus and Mercury and the other planetsFor the order of the planets cf. Dreyer, History of the Planetary Systems, pp. 168-170, and Boyancè, Ètudes sur le Songe de Scipion, pp. 59-65; the order here given is not the one adopted by most of the astronomers of Plutarch’s time, by the later Stoics, or in all probability by Posidonius. revolve lower than the fixed stars and at great intervals from one another; but you think that in the cosmos there is provided no scope and extension for heavy and earthy objects. You see that it is ridiculous for us to deny that the moon is earth because she stands apart from the nether region and yet to call her a star although we see her removed so many thousands of miles from the upper circumference as if plunged [into] a pit. So far beneath the stars is she that the distance cannot be expressed, but you mathematicians in trying to calculate it run short of numbers; she practically grazes the earth and revolving close to it Whirls like a chariot’s axle-box about, Empedocles says,Empedocles, frag. B 46 (i, p. 331 [Diels-Kranz]). That skims [the post in passing]. Frequently she does not even surmount the earth’s shadow, though it extends but a little way because the illuminating body is very large; but she seems to revolve so close, almost within arm’s reach of the earth, as to be screened by it from the sun unless she rises above this shadowy, terrestrial, and nocturnal place which is earth’s estate. Therefore we must boldly declare, I think, that the moon is within the confines of [the] earth inasmuch as she is occulted by its extremities.

Dismiss the fixed stars and the other planets and consider the demonstrations of Aristarchus in his treatise,

On Sizes and Distances

, that

the distance of the sun is more than 18 times and less than 20 times the distance of the moon,

that is its distance from us.

1

According to the highest estimate, however, the moon’s distance from us is said to be 56 times the radius of the earth.

2

Even according to the mean calculations this radius is 40,000 stades; and, if we reckon from this, the sun is more than 40,300,000 stades distant from the moon. She has migrated so far from the sun on account of her weight and has moved so close to the earth that, if properties

3

are to be determined by locations, the lot, I mean the position, of earth lays an action against the moon and she is legally assignable by right of propinquity and kinship to the chattels real and personal of earth. We do not err at all, I think, if granting such altitude and extension to the things called

upper

we leave what is

down below

also

some room to move about in and so much latitude as there is from earth to moon. For as he is immoderate who calls only the outermost surface of the heaven

up

and all else

down,

so is he intolerable who restricts

down

to the earth or rather to the centre; but both there and here some extension must be granted since the magnitude of the universe permits it. The claim that everything away from the earth is

ipso facto

up

and

on high

answered by a counter-claim that what is away from the circuit of the fixed stars is

ipso facto

down.

After all, in what sense is earth situated in the middle and in the middle of what? The sum of things is infinite; and the infinite, having neither beginning nor limit, cannot properly have a middle, for the middle is a kind of limit too but infinity is a negation of limits. He who asserts that the earth is in the middle not of the sum of things but of the cosmos is naive if he supposes that the cosmos itself is not also involved in the very same difficulties.

1

In fact, in the sum of things no middle has been left for the cosmos either, but it is without hearth and habitation,

2

moving in infinite void to nothing of its own; [or], if it has come to rest because it has found some other reason for abiding, not because of the nature of its location,

3

similar inferences are permissible in the cases of both earth and moon, that the former is stationary

here and the latter is in motion there by reason of a different soul or nature rather [than] a difference [of location]. Besides this, consider whether they

4

have not overlooked an important point. If anything in any way at all off the centre of the earth is

up

, no part of the cosmos is

down

; but it turns out that the earth and the things on the earth and absolutely all body surrounding or enclosing the centre are

up

and only one thing is

down,

that incorporeal point

5

which must be in opposition to the entire nature of the cosmos, if in fact

down

and

up

are natural opposites.

6

This, moreover, does not exhaust the absurdity. The cause of the descent of heavy objects and of their motion to this region is also abolished, for there is no body that is

down

towards which they are in motion and it is neither likely nor in accordance with the intention of these men that the incorporeal should have so much influence as to attract all these objects and keep them together around itself.

7

On the contrary, it proves to be entirely unreasonable and inconsistent with the facts for the whole cosmos to be

up

and nothing but an incorporeal and unextended limit to be

down

; but that statement of ours is reasonable, that ample space and broad has been divided between

up

and

down

.

All the same, let us assume, if you please, that

the motions of earthy objects in the heaven are contrary to nature; and then let us calmly observe without any histrionics and quite dispassionately that this indicates not that the moon is not earth but that she is earth in an unnatural location. For the fire of Aetna too is below earth unnaturally, but it is fire; and the air confined in skins,

1

though by nature it is light and has an upward tendency, has been constrained to occupy an unnatural location.

As to the soul herself

, I said,

by Zeus, is her confinement in the body not contrary to nature, swift as she is and fiery, as you say, cf. S. V. F. ii, p. 217, frag. 773: οἱ μὲν γὰρ Στωϊκοὶ πνεῦμα λέγουσιν αὐτὴν ἔνθερμον καὶ διάπυρον. and invisible in a sluggish, cold, and sensible vehicle? Shall we then on this account deny that there is soul in body or that mind, a divine thing, though it traverses instantaneously in its flight all heaven and earth and sea,For this commonplace of the flight of the mind through the universe cf. R. M. Jones, Class. Phil. xxi (1926), pp. 97-113. has passed into flesh and wines and marrow under the influence of weight and density and countless qualities that attend liquefaction?This is a reference to the Stoic notion that the embodiment of soul was a process of condensation or liquefaction. cf. Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1053 B - C ( = S. V. F. ii, frag. 605) and for the qualities that would attend liquefaction S. V. F. ii, p. 155. 34: γῆς τε καὶ ὕδατος, παχνμερῶν καὶ βαρέων καὶ ἀτόνων ὅντων. This Zeus of yours too, is it not true that, while in his own nature he is single, a great and continuous fire, at present he is slackened and subdued and transformed, having become and continuing to become everything in the course of his mutations?= S. V. F. ii, p. 308, frag. 1045. Zeus in his own nature is the state of the universe in the ecpyrosis, while at present he is the universe in the state of diacosmesis; cf. Placitis, 881 F 882 A (= Aëtius, i. 7. 33 = S. V. F. ii, frag. 1027), Diogenes Laertius, vii. 137 ( = S. V. F. ii, frag. 526), Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1052 C ( = S. V. F. ii, frags. 1068 and 604), Communibus Notitiis 1075 A - C ( = S. V. F. ii, frag. 1049), and S. V. F. ii, frags. 1052, 1053, and 1056. So look out and reflect, good sir, lest in rearranging and removing each thing to its natural location you contrive a dissolution of the cosmos and bring upon things the Strife of Empedocles — or rather lest you arouse against nature the ancient Titans and GiantsThe Strife of Empedocles is connected with the mythical war of the Giants by Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem Comment. p. 849, 13-15 (ed. Cousin, Paris, 1864) = p. 659 (ed. Stallbaum). and long to look upon that legendary and dreadful disorder and discord [when you have separated] all that is heavy and [all] that is light.

The suns bright aspect is not there descried, No, nor the shaggy might of earth, nor sea

as Empedocles says.

7

Earth had no part in heat, water no part in air; there was not anything heavy above or anything light below; but the principles of all things

8

were untempered and unamiable

9

and

solitary, not accepting combination or association with one another, but avoiding and shunning one another and moving with their own peculiar and arbitrary motions

10

they were in the state in which, according to Plato,

11

everything is from which God is absent, that is to say in which bodies are when mind or soul is wanting. So they were until desire came over nature providentially, for Affection arose or Aphrodite or Eros, as Empedocles says and Parmenides and Hesiod,

12

in order that by changing position and interchanging functions and by being constrained some to motion and some to rest and compelled to give way and shift from the

natural

to the

better

[the bodies] might produce a universal concord and community.

If not a single one of the parts of the cosmos ever got into an unnatural condition but each one is naturally situated, requiring no transposition or rearrangement and having required none in the beginning either, I cannot make out what use there is of providence

1

or of what Zeus, the master-craftsman

2

is maker and father-creator.

3

In an army, certainly, tacticians are useless if each one of the soldiers should know of himself his post and position and the moment when he must take and keep them. Gardeners and builders are useless too if here water all of itself

naturally

moves to the things that require it and irrigates them with its stream, and there bricks and timbers and stones by following their

natural

inclinations and tendencies assume of themselves their appropriate position and arrangement. If, however, this notion eliminates providence forthwith and if the arrangement of existing things pertains to God and [the] distributing of them too,

4

what wonder is there that nature has been so marshalled and disposed that here in our region there is fire but the stars are yonder and again that earth is here but the moon is established on high, held fast by the bonds of reason which are firmer than the bonds of nature?

5

For, if all things really must follow their

natural

inclinations and move with their

natural

motions, you must order the sun not to revolve and Venus too and every other star as well, for light and fiery bodies move

naturally

upwards

and not in a circle.

6

If, however, nature includes such variation in accordance with location that fire, though it is seen to move upwards here, as soon as it has reached the heavens revolves along with their rotation, what wonder is there that the same thing has happened to heavy and earthy bodies that have got there and that they too have been reduced by the environment to a different kind of motion? For it certainly cannot be that heaven

naturally

deprives light objects of their upward motion but is unable to master objects that are heavy and have a downward inclination; on the contrary, by [whatever] influence it rearranged the former it rearranged the latter too and employed the nature of both of them for the better.

What is more, if we are finally to throw off the habits [and] opinions that have held our minds in thrall and fearlessly to say what really appears to be the case, no part of a whole all by itself seems to have any order, position, or motion of its own which could be called unconditionally

natural.

1

On the contrary, each and every such part, whenever its motion is usefully and properly accommodated to that for the sake of which the part has come to be and which is the purpose of its growth or production, and whenever it acts or is affected or disposed so that it contributes to the preservation or beauty or function

of that thing, then, I believe, it has its

natural

position and motion and disposition. In man, at any rate, who is the result of

natural

process if any being is, the heavy and earthy parts are above, chiefly in the region of the head, and the hot and fiery parts are in the middle regions; some of the teeth grow from above and some from below, and neither set is

contrary to nature

; and it cannot be said that the fire which flashes in the eyes above is

natural

whereas that in the bowels and heart is

contrary to nature,

but each has been assigned its proper and useful station. Observe, as Empedocles says,

2

the nature of

Tritons and tortoises with hides of stone

and of all testaceans,

Thoult see earth there established over flesh;

and the stony matter does not oppress or crush the constitution

3

on which it is superimposed, nor on the other hand does the heat by reason of lightness fly off to the upper region and escape, but they have been somehow intermingled and organically combined in accordance with the nature of each.

Such is probably the case with the cosmos too, if it really is a living being

1

: in many places it has

earth and in many fire and water and breath as the result not of forcible expulsion

2

but of rational arrangement. After all, the eye has its present position in the body not because it was extruded thither as a result of its lightness, and the heart is in the chest not because its heaviness has caused it to slip and fall thither but because it was better that each of them should be so located. Let us not then believe with regard to the parts of the cosmos either that earth is situated here because its weight has caused it to subside or that the sun, as Metrodorus of Chios

3

once thought, was extruded into the upper region like an inflated skin by reason of its lightness or that the other stars got into their present positions because they tipped the balance, as it were, at different weights. On the contrary, the rational principle is in control; and that is why the stars revolve fixed like

radiant eyes

4

in the countenance of the universe, the sun in the hearts capacity transmits and disperses out of himself heat and light as it were blood and breath, and earth and sea

naturally

serve the cosmos to the ends that bowels and bladder do an animal. The moon, situate between sun and earth as the liver or another of the soft

viscera

5

is between heart and bowels, transmits hither the warmth from above and sends upwards the exhalations from our region, refining them in herself by a kind of concoction and purification.

6

It is not clear to us whether her earthiness and solidity have any use suitable to other ends also. Nevertheless, in everything the better has control of the necessary.

7

Well, what probability can we thus conceive in the statements of the Stoics? They say that the luminous and tenuous part of the ether by reason of its subtility became sky and the part which was condensed or compressed became stars, and that of these the most sluggish and turbid is the moon.

8

Yet all the same anyone can see that the moon has not been separated from the ether but that there is

still a large amount of it about her in which she moves and much of it beneath her in which [they themselves assert that the bearded stars] and comets whirl. So it is not the inclinations consequent upon weight and lightness that have circumscribed the precincts

9

of each of the bodies, but their arrangement is the result of a different principle.

With these remarks I was about to yield the floor to Lucius,

1

since the proofs of our position were next in order; but Aristotle smiled and said:

The company is my witness that you have directed your entire refutation against those who suppose that the moon is for her part semi-igneous and yet assert of all bodies in common that of themselves they incline either upwards or downwards. Whether there is anyone, however, who saysThis is Aristotle, of course: Caelo, 269 A 2-18, 270 A 12-35; cf. [Aristotle], Mundo, 392 A 5-9 and Placitis, 887 D = Aëtius, ii. 7. 5 (Dox. Graeci, p. 336). that the stars move naturally in a circle and are of a substance far superior to the four substances hereI have added this word in the translation in order to make it clear that the four are the four sublunar substances, earth, water, air, and fire. did not even accidentally come to your notice, so that I at any rate have been spared trouble.

And Lucius [broke in and] said:

good friend, probably one would not for the moment quarrel with you and your friends, despite the countless difficulties involved, when you ascribe to the other stars and the whole heaven a nature pure and undefiled and free from qualitative change and

moving in a circle whereby [it is possible to have the nature] of endless revolution too; but let this doctrine descend and touch the moon, and in her it no longer preserves the impassivity and beauty of that body. Not to mention her other irregularities and divergencies, this very face which she displays is the result of some alteration of her substance or of the admixture somehow of another substance.

4

That which is subjected to mixture, however, is the subject of some affection too, for it loses its purity, since it is perforce infected by what is inferior to it. The moon’s sluggishness and slackness of speed and the feebleness and faintness of her heat [which], in the words of Ion,

ripes not the grape to duskiness,At Quaest. Conviv 658 C Plutarch quotes the whole line, Ion, frag. 57 (Nauck²).

to what shall we ascribe them except to her weakness and alteration, [if] an eternal and celestial

6

body can have any part in [alteration]? The fact is in brief, my dear Aristotle, that regarded as earth the moon has the aspect of a very beautiful, august, and elegant object; but as a star or luminary or a divine and heavenly body she is, I am afraid, misshapen, ugly, and a disgrace to the noble title, if it is true

that of all the host in heaven she alone goes about in need of alien light,

7

as Parmenides says

Fixing her glance forever on the sun.= Parmenides, frag. B 15 (i, p. 244. 3 [Diels-Kranz]), quoted also at Quaest. Rom. 282 B.

Our comrade in his discourse

9

won approval by his demonstration of this very proposition of Anaxagorass that

the sun imparts to the moon her brilliance

10

; for my part, I shall not speak about these matters that I learned from you or in your company but shall gladly proceed to what remains. Well then, it is plausible that the moon is illuminated not by the suns irradiating and shining through her in the manner of glass

11

or ice

12

nor again as the result of some sort of concentration of brilliance or aggregation of rays, the light increasing as in the case of torches.

13

Were that true, we should see the moon at the full on the first of the month no less than in the middle of the month, if she does not conceal and obstruct the sun but because of her subtility lets his light through or as a result of combining with it flashes forth and joins in kindling the light in herself.

14

Certainly her deviations or aversions

15

cannot be

alleged as the cause of her invisibility when she is in conjunction, as they are when she is at the half and gibbous or crescent; then, rather,

standing in a straight line with her illuminant

, says Democritus,

she sustains and receives the sun,

16

so that it would be reasonable for her to be visible and to let him shine through. Far from doing this, however, she is at that time invisible herself and often has concealed and obliterated him.

His beams she put to flight,

as Empedocles says,

From heaven above as far as to the earth,

Whereof such breadth as had the bright-eyed moon

She cast in shade,= Empedocles, frag. B 42 (i, p. 330. 11-13 [Diels-Kranz]).

just as if the light had fallen into night and darkness and not upon

an

other star. As for the explanation of Posidonius that the profundity of the moon prevents the light of the sun from passing through her to us,

18

this is obviously refuted by the fact that the air, though it is boundless and has many times the profundity of the moon, is in its entirety illuminated and filled with sunshine by the rays. There remains then the theory of Empedocles that the moonlight which we see comes from the moons reflection of

the sun. That is why there, is neither warmth

19

nor brilliance in it when it reaches us, as we should expect there to be if there had been a kindling or mixture of [the] lights [of sun and moon].

20

To the contrary, just as voices when they are reflected produce an echo which is fainter than the original sound and the impact of missiles after a ricochet is weaker,

Thus, having struck the moon’s broad disk, the ray= Empedocles, frag. B 43 (i, p. 330. 20 [Diels-Kranz]).

comes to us in a refluence weak and faint because the deflection slackens its force.

Sulla then broke in and said:

No doubt this position has its plausible aspects; but what tells most strongly on the other side, did our comradeSee 929 B and note a on p. 48 supra. explain that away or did he fail to notice it?

What’s that?

said Lucius,

or do you mean the difficulty with respect to the half-moon?

Exactly,

said Sulla,

for there is some reason in the contention that, since all reflection occurs at equal angles,This expression is intended to have the same sense as πρὸς ἴσας γίγνεσθαι γωνίας ἀνάκλασιν πᾶσαν (930 A s.v.), and both of them mean (pace Raingeard, p. 100, and Kepler in note 28 to his translation) the angle of reflection is always equal to the angle of incidence. cf. [Euclid], Catoptrica aà (= Euclid, Opera Omnia, vii, p. 286. 21-22 [Heiberg]) with Olympiodorus, In Meteor. p. 212. 7 = Hero Alexandrinus, Opera, ii. 1, p. 368. 5 (Nix-Schmidt) and [Ptolemy], Speculis, ii = Hero Alexandrinus, Opera, ii. 1, p. 320. 12-13 (Nix-Schmidt); and contrast the more precise formulation of Philoponus, In Meteor. p. 27. 34-35. whenever the moon at the half is in mid-heaven the light cannot move earthwards from her but must glance off beyond the earth. The ray that then touches the moon comes from the sun on the horizonKepler in note 19 to his translation points out that this is true only if μεσουρανῇ is in mid-heaven refers not to the meridian but to the great circle at right-angles to the ecliptic. and therefore, being reflected at equal angles, would be produced to the point on the opposite horizon and would not shed its light upon us, or else there would be great distortion and aberration of the angle, which is impossible.

4

Yes, by Heaven,

said Lucius,

there was talk of this too

; and, looking at Menelaus the mathematician as he spoke, he said:

In your presence, my dear Menelaus, I am ashamed to confute a mathematical proposition, the foundation, as it were, on which rests the subject of catoptrics. Yet it must be said that the proposition, all reflection occurs at equal angles, See note e on 929 F supra. is neither self-evident nor an admitted fact.It has been suggested that οὔθ’ ὁμολογούμενον is a direct denial of ὡμολογηένον ἐστι παρὰ πᾶσιν at the beginning of Hero’s demonstration (Schmidt in Hero Alexandrinus, Opera [ed. Nix-Schmidt], ii. 1, p. 314. However that may be, the law is assumed in Proposition XIX of Euclid’s Optics, where it is said to have been stated in the Catoptrics (Euclid, Opera Omnia, vii, p. 30. 1-3 [Heiberg]); and a demonstration of it is ascribed to Archimedes (Scholia in Catoptrica, 7 = Euclid, Opera Omnia, vii, p. 348. 17-22 [Heiberg]; cf. Lejeune, Isis, xxxviii [1947], pp. 51 ff.). It is assumed by Aristotle in Meteorology, iii. 3-5 and possibly also by Plato (cf. Cornford, Platos Cosmology, pp. 154 f. on Timaeus, 46 B); cf. also Lucretius, iv. 322-323 and [Aristotle], Problemata, 901 B 21-22 and 915 B 30-35. Proposition XIX of Euclids Optics, referred to above, is supposed to be part of the Dioptrics of Euclid which Plutarch cites at Non Posse Suaviter Vivi, 1093 E (cf. Schmidt, Op. cit. p. 304). It is refuted in the case of convex i.e. cylindrical, not spherical, convex mirrors; cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 142-143 for the construction and meaning of this sentence. mirrors when the point of incidence of the visual ray produces images that are magnified in one respect; and it is refuted by folding mirrors,For such mirrors cf. [Ptolemy], Speculis, xii = Hero Alexandrinus, Opera, ii. 1, p. 342. 7 ff. either plane of which, when they have been inclined to each other and have formed an inner angle, exhibits a double image, so that four likenesses of a single object are produced, two reversed on the outer surfaces and two dim ones not reversed in the depth of the mirrors. The reason for the production of these images Plato explains,Plutarch means Timaeus, 46 B - C, where Plato, however, describes a concave, cylindrical mirror, not a folding plane mirror. Plutarch apparently mistook the words ἔνθεν καὶ ἔνθεν ὕξη λαβoῦσα, by which Plato describes the horizontal curvature of the mirror, to mean that the two planes of a folding mirror were raised to form an angle at the hinge which joined them. for he has said that when the mirror is elevated on both sides the visual rays interchange their reflection because they shift from one side to the other. So, if of the visual rays (some) revert straight to us (from the plane surfaces) while others glance off to the opposite sides of the mirrors and thence return to us again, it is not possible that all reflections occur at equal angles.See note e on 929 F supra. Consequently (some people) take direct issue (with the mathematicians) and maintain that they confute the equality of the angles of incidence and reflection by the very streams of light that flow from the moon upon the earth, for they deem this fact to be much more credible than that theory. Nevertheless, suppose that this i.e. the theory that the angle of reflection is always equal to the angle of incidence. must be conceded as a favour to geometry, the dearly beloveds3 In the first place, it is likely to occur only in mirrors that have been polished to exact smoothness; but the moon is very uneven and rugged, with the result that the rays from a large body striking against considerable heights which receive reflections and diffusions of light from one another are multifariously reflected and intertwined and the refulgence itself combines with itself, coming to us, as it were, from many mirrors. In the second place, even if we assume that the reflections on the surface of the moon occur at equal angles, it is not impossible that the rays as they travel through such a great interval get fractured and deflectedWith these words Plutarch means to refer to the effects of refraction; cf. Placitis, 894 C = Aëtius, iii. 5. 5 (Dox. Graeci, p. 372. 21-26); Cleomedes, ii. 6. 124-125 (p. 224. 8-28 [Ziegler]); Alexander, In Meteor. p. 143. 7-10. so as to be blurred and to bend their light. Some people even give a geometrical demonstration that the moon sheds many of her beams upon the earth along a line extended from the surface that is bent away from us cf. the argument given by Cleomedes, ii. 4. 103 (pp. 186. 14-188.7 [Ziegler]) and especially: ὅτι δ᾽ ἀπὸ παντὸς τοῦ κύκλου αὐτῆς φωτίζεται ἡ γῆ, γνώριμον. εὐθέως γὰρ ἅμα τῷ τὴν πρώτην ἴτυν ἀνασχεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ὁρίζοντος φωτίζει τὴν γῆν, τούτων τῶν μερῶν αὐτῆς περικλινῶν ὄντων καὶ πρός τὸν οὐρανόν, ἀλλ᾽οὐχί, μὰ Δία, πρὸς τὴν γῆν ὁρώντων For ἡ ἐκκεκλιμένη cf. Hippocrates, Art. 38 (iv, p. 168. 18 [Littrè]).; but I could not construct a geometrical diagram while talking, and talking to many people too.

Speaking generally,

he said,

I marvel that they adduce against us the moon’s shining upon the earth at the half and at the gibbous and the crescent phases too. i.e. the moon at the half, gibbous, and crescent phases presents such a great difficulty for the Stoics themselves that it is strange for them to adduce these phenomena as refutation of the theory that the moon shines by reflected light. Wyttenbach’s conjecture, ἐκπίπτουσαν for ἐμπίπτουσαν, approved by Purser and apparently adopted by Prickard in his translation of 1918, betrays a misapprehension of the meaning of the text. After all, if the mass of the moon that is illuminated by the sun were ethereal or fiery, the sun would not leave herFor ἀπέλειπεν cf. 931 C s.v.. The dative with the verb is unobjectionable, cf. e.g. [Reg. et Imp. Apophthegm.] 178 D, 195 F. a hemisphere that to our perception is ever in shadow and unilluminated; on the contrary, if as he revolves he grazed her ever so slightly, she should be saturated in her entirety and altered through and through by the light proceeding easily in all directions. Since wine that just touches water at its surfaceFor κατὰ πέρας cf. Communibus Notitiis, 1080 E ( = S. V. F. ii, frag, 487): ψαύειν κατὰ πέρας τὰ σώματα λέγουσι and S. V. F. ii, frag. 433 cited in note d on 930 F s.v.. The emendations of Emperius and Papabasileios are consequently ill-advised. or a drop of blood fallen into liquid at the moment [of contact] stains all the liquid red, cf. Communibus Notitiis, 1078 D - E ( = S. V. F. ii, frag. 480) and S. V. F. ii, frags. 473, 477, 479. and since they say that the air itself is filled with sunshine not by having any effluences or rays commingled with it but by an alteration and change that results from impact or contact of the light, cf. S. V. F. ii, frag. 433 (Galen, In Hippocr. Epidem. vi Comment. iv, vol. xvii, B, p. 161 [Kühn], especially: τοῖς ἄνω πέρασιν αὐτοῦ (scil. τοῦ ἀέρος) προσπιπτούσης τῆς ἡλιακῆς αὐγῆς ὅλος ἀλλοιοῦταί τε καὶ μεταβάλλεται συνεχὴς ὢν ἑαυτῷ). cf. also note a on 922 E supra. how do they imagine that a star can come in contact with a star or light with light and instead of blending and producing a thorough mixture and change merely illuminate those portions of the surface which it touches? cf. Cleomedes, ii. 4. 101 (p. 182. 20 ff. [Ziegler]) for the doctrine of Posidonius, which Plutarch here turns against him and the Stoics generally: τρίτη ἐστὶν αἵρεσις ἡ λέγουσα κιρνᾶσθαι αὐτῆς (scil. τῆς σελήνης) τὸ φῶς ἔκ τε τοῦ οἰκείου καὶ τοῦ ἡλιακοῦ φωτὸς καὶ τοιοῦτον γίνεσθαι οὐκ ἀπαθοῦς μενούσης αὐτῆς ἀλλ᾽ ἀλλοιουμένης ὑπὸ τοῦ ἡλιακοῦ φωτὸς καὶ κατὰ τοιαύτην τὴν κρᾶσιν ἴδιον ἰσχούσης τὸ φῶς cf. ibid. 104 (p. 188. 4-7). In fact, the circle which the sun in its revolution describes and causes to turn about the moon now coinciding with the circle that divides her visible and invisible parts and now standing at right angles to it so as to intersect it and be intersected by it, by different inclinations and relations of the bright part to the dark producing in her the gibbous and crescent phases, cf. Cleomedes, ii. 5. 109-111 (pp. 196. 28-200. 23 [Ziegler]). conclusively demonstrates that her illumination is the result not of combination but of contact, not of a concentration of light within her but of light shining upon her from without. In that she is not only illuminated herself, however, but also transmits to us the semblance of her illumination, she gives us all the more confidence in our theory of her substance. There are no reflections from anything rarefied or tenuous in texture, and it is not easy even to imagine light rebounding from light or fire from fire; but whatever is to cause a repercussion or a reflection must be compact and solid,Here ἐμβριθές is used as the opposite of λεπτομερές (cf. Liddell and Scott, s.v. ἐμβρίθεια ii) as πυκνόν is of ἀραιόν. in order that it may stop a blow and repel it. cf. Cleomedes, ii. 4. 101-102 (p. 184. 9-18 [Ziegler]). Cleomedes, assuming that the moon is μανόν, uses this as an argument against reflection; Plutarch, having established the necessity of reflection, uses the argument to support the contention that the moon is earthy. At any rate, the same sunlight that the air lets pass without impediment or resistance is widely reflected and diffused from wood and stone and clothing exposed to its rays. The earth too we see illuminated by the sun in this fashion. It does not let the light penetrate its depths as water does or pervade it through and through as air does; but such as is the circle of the sun that moves around the moon and so great as is the part of her that it intercepts, just such a circle in turn moves around the earth, always illuminating just so much and leaving another part unilluminated, cf. Cleomedes, ii. 5. 108 (p. 194. 20 ff. [Ziegler]). for the illuminated portion of either body appears to be slightly greater than a hemisphere.Cleomedes, ii. 5. 109 (p. 198. 6-9 [Ziegler]). Give me leave then to put it in geometrical fashion in terms of a proportion. Given three things approached by the light from the sun: earth, moon, air; if we see that the moon is illuminated not as the air is rather than as the earth, the things upon which the same agent produces the same effects must be of a similar nature.

12

When all had applauded Lucius, I said:

Congratulations upon having added to an elegant account an elegant proportion, for you must not be defrauded of what belongs to you,

He smiled thereat and said:

Well then proportion must be used a second time, in order that we may prove the moon to be like the earth not only because the effects of the same agent are the same on both but also because the effects of both on the same patient are the same. Now, grant me that nothing that happens to the sun is so like its setting as a solar eclipse. You will if you call to mind this conjunction recently which, beginning just after noonday, made many stars shine out from many parts of the skyConcerning this eclipse see the Introduction, § 3 supra on the date of the dialogue. and tempered the air in the manner of twilight.For λυκανγές see 941 D s.v. and Lucian, Vera Hist. ii, 12. Prickard takes the κρᾶσις to refer to the degree of heat; Raingeard, like Amyot and Wyttenbach, takes it to refer to colour or light. Either is possible, but I think a reference to colour the more probable; for κρᾶσις used of colour cf. Quaest. Conviv 647 c. If you do not recall it, Theon here will cite us Mimnermus cf. Anthologia Lyrica Graeca, ed. Diehl², i. 1, pp. 50-57, and Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus, i, pp. 82-103; Mimnermus is mentioned in the pseudo-Plutarchean Musica, chap. 8, 1133 f. and Cydias cf. Plato, Charmides, 155 d; Edmonds, Lyra Graeca, iii, p. 68; Wilamowitz, Textgeschichte der griechischen Lyriker, p. 40, n. 1. and Archilochus cf. Archilochus, frag. 74 (Anthologia Lyrica Graeca, ed. Diehl², i. 3, p. 33 = Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus, ii, p. 134). and Stesichorus besides and Pindar, cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 12, § 54: quo in metu fuisse Stesichori et Pindari vatum sublimia ora palam est deliquio solis. who during eclipses bewail the brightest star bereft = Pindar, Paean, ix. 2-3: ἄστρον ὑπέρτατον ἐν ἁμέρᾳ κλεπτόμενον. and at midday night falling Possibly Stesichorus, cf. Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci⁴ , iii, p. 229 (frag. 73), and Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus, i, p. 102, n. 1. and say that the beam of the sun [is sped] the path of shade cf. Pindar, Paean, ix. 5: ἐτίσκοτον ἀτραπὸν ἐσσυμένα. For the genitive σκότους cf. Audiendis Poetis, 36 E, and Latenter Vivendo, 1130 B.; and to crown all he will cite Homer, who says the faces of men are covered with night and gloomAdapted from Odyssey, xx. 351-352. and the sun has perished out of heaven Odyssey, xx. 356-357. speaking with reference to the moon and [hinting that] this naturally occurs When waning month to waxing month gives say. Odyssey, xix. 307. For this interpretation of the Homeric lines cf. Vita et Poesi Homer, chap. 108 (vii, p. 388. 15 ff. [Bernardakis]), and Heraclitus, Quaestiones Homericae, § 75 (pp. 98. 20-99. 18 [Oelmann]). For the rest, I think that it has been reduced by the precision of mathematics to the [clear] and certain [formula] that night is the shadow of earth cf. Primo Frigido, 953 A and Plat. Quaest. 1006 F, where on Timaeus, 40 C Plutarch quotes Empedocles to this effect. Aristotle refers to the definition, Topics, 146 B 28 and Meteorology, 345 B 7-8. and the eclipse of the sun is the shadow of the moon cf. the lines of Empedocles quoted at 929 c-d supra. In Placitis, 890 F = Aëtius, ii. 24. 1 this explanation of solar eclipses is ascribed to Thales — quite unhistorically, as the subsequent entries show. whenever the visual ray encounters it. The fact is that in setting the sun is screened from our vision by the earth and in eclipse by the moon; both are cases of occultation, but the vespertine is occultation by the earth and the ecliptic by the moon with her shadow intercepting the visual ray. cf. Cleomedes, ii. 3. 94-95 (p. 172. 6-10 [Ziegler]) and ii. 4. 106 (p. 192. 16-24); Geminus, x (pp. 130. 11-132. 12 [Manitius]). What follows from this is easy to perceive. If the effect is similar, the agents are similar, for it must be the same agents that cause the same things to happen to the same subject. Nor should we marvel if the darkness of eclipses is not so deep or so oppressive of the air as night is. The reason is that the body which produces night and that which produces the eclipse while the same in substance are not equal in size. In fact the Egyptians, I think, say that the moon is one seventy-second part (of the earth),I know of no other reference to such an estimate. and Anaxagoras that it is the size of the PeloponnesusAccording to Hippolytus, Refut. i. 8. 6-10 ( = Dox. Graeci, p. 562 = Anaxagoras, frag. A 42 [ii, p. 16. 16-31, Diels-Kranz]), Anaxagoras said that the sun exceeds the Peloponnesus in size (cf. Aëtius, ii. 21. 3 and Diogenes Laertius, ii. 8). The statement here concerning the moon is missing from Diels-Kranz.; and Aristarchus demonstrates that the ratio of [the earth’s diameter to] the diameter of the moon is smaller than 60 to 19 and greater than 108 to 43.This is Proposition 17 of Aristarchus’s essay, On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon (cf. Heath’s edition and translation in his Aristarchus of Samos, pp. 351 ff.). Although Plutarch does not say that this contradicts Stoic doctrine, the older, orthodox Stoics held that the moon as well as the sun is larger than the earth ( Placitis, 891 C = Aëtius, ii. 26. 1 = S. V. F. ii, frag. 666; cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 11 [8]. 49). Consequently the earth because of its size removes the sun from sight entirely, for the obstruction is large and its duration is that of the night. Even if the moon, however, does sometimes cover the sun entirely, the eclipse does not have duration or extension; but a kind of light is visible about the rim which keeps the shadow from being profound and absolute. cf. Cleomedes, ii. 4. 105 (p. 190. 17-26). The ancient Aristotle gives this as a reason besides some others why the moon is observed in eclipse more frequently than the sun, saying that the sun is eclipsed by interposition of the moon but the moon [by that of the earth, which is much larger].= Aristotle, frag. 210 (Rose). The reference is not to Caelo, 293 B 20-25, for in that passage Aristotle gives not his own opinion but that of some Pythagoreans (cf. Cherniss, Aristotles Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy, pp. 198-199, and Aëtius, ii. 29. 4 cited there). For the terminology σελήνης or γῆς ἀντίφραξις cf. Aristotle, Anal. Post. 90 a 15-18, and with the whole passage cf. Pseudo-Alexander, Problem. 2. 46 (quoted by Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, § 194, p. 222), and Philoponus, In Meteor. p. 15. 21-23. Posidonius gave this definition: The following condition is an eclipse of the sun, conjunction of the moon’s shadow with whatever [parts of the earth it may obscure], for there is an eclipse only for those whose visual ray the shadow of the moon intercepts and screens from the sun cf. Cleomedes, ii. 3. 94-95 (p. 172. 6-17 [Ziegler]) and 98 (p. 178. 13-24), ii. 4. 106 (p. 192. 14-20).; — since he concedes then that a shadow of the moon falls upon us, he has left himself nothing to say that I can see. Of a star there can be no shadow, for shadow means the unlighted and light does not produce shadow but naturally destroys it.Posidonius ranked the moon as a star; cf. Arius Didymus, Epitome, frag. 32 (Dox. Graeci, p. 466. 18-21), and Edelstein, A. J. P. lvii (1936), p. 297. For the theory that the light of the moon is a product of her own proper light and the solar light which produces an alteration in her cf. Cleomedes, ii. 4.101 (pp. 182. 20-184. 3 [Ziegler]) and 104 (p. 188. 5-27), the latter of which indicates how the present contention of Plutarch could have been answered from the point of view of Posidonius.

Well now,

he said,

which of the proofs came after this?

And I replied,

That the moon is subject to the same eclipse.

Thank you,

he said,

for reminding me; but now shall I assume that you have been persuaded and do hold the moon to be eclipsed by being caught in the shadow and so turn straightway to my argument,The argument that the moon is earthy, which at the beginning of chap. 19 (931 D) Lucius stated in the form of a proportion. or do you prefer that I give you a lecture and demonstration in which each of the arguments is enumerated?

By heaven,

said Theon,

do give these gentlemen a lecture. As for me, I want some persuasion as well, since I have only heard it put this way: when the three bodies, earth and sun and moon, get into a straight line, eclipses take place because the earth deprives the moon or the moon, on the other hand, deprives the earth of the sun, the sun being eclipsed when the moon and the moon when the earth takes the middle position of the three, the former of which cases occurs at conjunction and the latter at the middle of the month.

2

Whereupon Lucius said,

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

When Lucius said this, almost while [he was speaking] Pharnaces and Apollonides sprang forth together. Then, Apollonides having yielded, Pharnaces said that this very point above all proves the moon to be a star or fire, since she is not entirely invisible in her eclipses but displays a colour smouldering and grim which is peculiar to her.

1

Apollonides raised an objection concerning the

shadow

on the ground that scientists always give this name to the region that is without light and the heaven does not admit shadow.

2

This,

I said,

is the objection of one who speaks captiously to the name rather than like a natural scientist and mathematician to the fact. If one refuses to call the region screened by the earth shadow and insists upon calling it lightless space, nevertheless when the moon gets into it she must [be obscured since she is deprived of the solar light]. Speaking generally too, it is silly,

I said,

to deny that the shadow of the earth reaches

that point [from which on its part] the shadow of the moon by impinging upon the sight and [extending] to the earth produces an eclipse of the sun. Now I shall turn to you, Pharnaces. That smouldering and glowing colour of the moon which you say is peculiar to her is characteristic of a body that is compact and a solid, for no remnant or trace of flame will remain in tenuous things nor is incandescence possible unless there is a hard body that has been ignited through and through and sustains the ignition.

3

So Homer too has somewhere said:

But when fire’s bloom had flown and flame had ceased

He smoothed the embers. . . Iliad, ix. 212-213 in our texts read: αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ κατὰ πῦρ ἐκάη καὶ φλὸξ ἐμαράνθη,

ἀνθρακιὴν στορέσας ὀβελοὺς ἐφύπερθε τάνυσσε, but the first line as Plutarch gives it was known to Aristarchus, who rejected it (cf. Ludwich, Aristarchs Homerische Textkritik, i, p. 302; Eustathius, Ad Iliadem, 748. 41; Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem, ed. Dindorf, i, p. 312).

The reason probably is that what is igneous

6

is not fire but body that has been ignited and subjected to the action of fire, which adheres to a solid and stable mass and continues to occupy itself with it, whereas flames are the kindling and flux of tenuous nourishment or matter which because of its feebleness is swiftly dissolved. Consequently there would be no other proof of the moons earthy and compact nature so manifest as the smouldering colour, if it

really were her own. But it is not so, my dear Pharnaces, for as she is eclipsed she exhibits many changes of colour which scientists have distinguished as follows, delimiting them according to time or hour.

7

If the eclipse occurs between eventide and half after the third hour, she appears terribly black; if at midnight, then she gives off this reddish and fiery colour; from half after the seventh hour a blush arises

8

on her face; and finally, if she is eclipsed when dawn is already near, she takes on a bluish or azure

9

hue, from which especially it is that the poets and Empedocles give her the epithet

bright-eyed.

10

Now, when one sees the moon take on so many hues in the shadow, it is a mistake to settle upon the smouldering colour alone, the very one that might especially be called alien to her and rather an admixture or remnant of the light shining round about through the shadow, while the black or earthy

colour should be called her own.

11

Since here on earth places near lakes and rivers open to the sun take on the colour and brilliance of the purple and red awnings that shade them, by reason of the reflections giving off many various effulgences, what wonder if a great flood of shade debouching as it were into a heavenly sea of light, not calm or at rest but undergoing all sorts of combinations and alterations as it is churned about by countless stars, takes from the moon at different times the stain of different hues and presents them to our sight?

12

A star or fire could not in shadow shine out black or glaucous or bluish; but over mountains, plains, and sea flit many kinds of colours from the sun, and blended with the shadows and mists his brilliance

13

induces such tints as brilliance does when blended with a painter’s pigments. Those of the sea Homer has endeavoured somehow or other to designate, using the terms

violet

14

and

wine-dark deep

15

and again

purple swell

16

and elsewhere

glaucous sea

17

and

white calm

18

; but he passed over as being an endless multitude the variations of the colours that appear differently at different times about the land. It is likely, however, that the moon has not a single plane surface like the sea but closely resembles in constitution the earth that the ancient Socrates made the subject of a myth,

19

whether he really was speaking in riddles about this earth or was giving a description of some other.

20

It is in fact not incredible or wonderful that the moon, if she has nothing corrupted or slimy [in] her but garners pure light from heaven and is filled with warmth, which is fire not glowing or raging but moist

21

and harmless and in its natural state, has got open regions of marvellous beauty and mountains flaming bright and has zones of royal purple with gold and silver not scattered in her depths but bursting forth in abundance on the plains or openly visible on the smooth heights.

22

If through the shadow there comes to us a glimpse of these, different at different times because of some variation and difference of the atmosphere, the honourable repute of the moon is surely not impaired nor is her divinity because she is held by men to be a [celestial and] holy earth rather than, as the Stoics say, a fire turbid and dreggish.

23

Fire, to be sure, is given barbaric honours among the Medes and Assyrians, who from fear by way of propitiation worship the maleficent forces rather than the reverend; but to every Greek, of course, the name of earth is dear and honourable, and it is our ancestral tradition to revere her like any other god. As men we are far from thinking that the

moon, because she is a celestial

24

earth, is a body without soul and mind and without share in the firstfruits that it beseems us to offer to the gods, according to custom requiting them for the goods we have received and naturally revering what is better and more honourable in virtue and power. Consequently let us not think it an offence to suppose that she is earth and that for this which appears to be her face, just as our earth has certain great gulfs, so that earth yawns with great depths and clefts which contain water or murky air; the interior of these the light of the sun does not plumb or even touch, but it fails and the reflection which it sends back here is discontinuous.

25

Here Apollonides broke in.

Then by the moon herself,

he said,

do you people think it possible that any clefts and chasms cast shadows which from the moon reach our sight here; or do you not reckon the consequence, and shall I tell you what it is? Please listen then, though it is not anything unknown to you. The diameter of the moon measures twelve digits in apparent size at her mean distance cf. Cleomedes, ii. 3. 95 (p. 172. 25-27 [Ziegler]); on this measurement of 12 digits cf. Heath, Aristarchus of Samos, p. 23, n. 1.; and each of the black and shadowy spots appears greater than half a digit and consequently would be greater than one twenty-fourth of her diameter. Well then, if we should suppose that the circumference of the moon is only thirty thousand stades and her diameter ten thousand each of the shadowy spots on her would in accordance with the assumption measure not less than five hundred stades.Apodonides exaggerates for the sake of his point, for 500 stades is 1/20 not 1/24 of 10,000: but he has guarded himself by saying that each of the spots is more than half a digit and so more than 1/24 of the diameter. On the other hand, he intends his estimate of the moon’s size to err, if at all, on the side of conservatism: cf. only thirty thousand stades. Such small figures, even as minima, are remarkable, however. Cleomedes (ii. 1. 80-81 [pp. 146. 25-148. 3, Ziegler]) gives 40,000 stades as the lunar diameter, basing this upon the assumption that the earth is twice as large as the moon and has a circumference of 250,000 stades according to the measurement of Eratosthenes and a diameter therefore of more than 80,000 stades. Plutarch adopted the same figure for the terrestrial diameter (see 925 D supra) but supposed this and the terrestrial circumference to be three times those of the moon (see 923 B supra and note d there), figures which should have given him more than 26,000 stades as the lunar diameter. According to Hultsch, however, Posidonius must have calculated the lunar diameter to be 12,000 stades (cf. Abhand. K. Gesell. Wissensch. zu Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Kl., N.F. i, No. 5, p. 38), which by the usual approximation would have given 36,000 stades for the lunar circumference; and Apollonides minimal estimate may have been based upon these figures. For the common rough approximation 3-1 as the relation of circumference to diameter cf. Archimedes, Arenarius, ii. 3 (Opera Omnia, ii, p. 234. 28-29 [Heiberg]). Consider now in the first place whether it is possible for the moon to have depths and corrugations so great as to cast such a large shadow; in the second place why, if they are of such great magnitude, we do not see them.

Then I said to him with a smile:

Congratulations for having discovered such a demonstration. Apollonides. It would enable you to prove that both you and I are taller than the famous sons of Aloeus,Otus and Ephialtes: cf. Exilio, 602 d; Iliad, v. 385-387; Odyssey, xi. 305-320; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 7. 4. 2-4. not at every time of day to be sure but early in the morning particularly and in late afternoon, if, when the sun makes our shadows enormous. you intend to supply sensation with this lovely reasoning that, if the shadow cast is large, what casts the shadow is immense. I am well aware that neither of us has been in Lemnos; we have both, however, often heard this line that is on everyone’s lips: Athos will veil the Lemnian heifer’s flank.The verse, which comes from an unidentified tragedy of Sophocles, is elsewhere quoted with καλύπτει or σκιάζει and with πλευρά or νῶτα (cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag.² , p. 299, frag. 708). For the shadow of Athos cast upon Lemnos cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. iv. 12 (23). 73; Apollonius Rhodius, i. 601-604; Proclus, In Timaeum, 56 B (i, p. 181. 12 ff. [Diehl]). The point of this apparently is that the shadow of the mountain, extending not less than seven hundred stades over the sea,Proclus (loc. cit.) says that this is the distance of Lemnos from Athos, Plutarch rather that it is the length of the shadow cast by the mountain. According to Eustathius (Ad Iliadem, 980. 45 ff.), Athos is 300 stades distant from Lemnos, according to Pliny (loc. cit.) 87 Roman miles (unless this is a scribal error for XXXXVII). The actual distance is said to be about 50 miles; and Athos, which is 6350 feet high, could cast a shadow for almost 100 miles over open sea. falls upon a little bronze heifer; [but it is not necessary, I presume,] that what casts the shadow be [seven hundred stades] high, for the reason that shadows are made many times the size of the objects that cast them by the remoteness of the light from the objects.In this Plutarch is guilty either of an error or of an intentional sophism; cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), p. 145. Come then, observe that, when the moon is at the full and because of the shadows depth exhibits most articulately the appearance of the face, the sun is at his maximum distance from her. The reason is that the remoteness of the light alone and not the magnitude of the irregularities on the surface of the moon has made the shadow large. Besides, even in the case of mountains the dazzling beams of the sun prevent their crags from being discerned in broad daylight, although their depths and hollows and shadowy parts are visible from afar. So it is not at all strange that in the case of the moon too it is not possible to discern accurately the reflection and illumination, whereas the juxtapositions of the shadowy and brilliant parts by reason of the contrast do not escape our sight.

There is this, however,

I said,

which seems to be a stronger objection to the alleged reflection from the moon. It happens that those who have placed themselves in the path of reflected rays see not only the object illuminated but also what illuminates it. For example, if when a ray of light rebounds from water to a wall the eye is situated in the place that is itself illuminated by the reflection, the eye discerns all three things, the reflected ray and the water that causes the reflection and the sun itself, i.e. the image of the sun in the water or the reflecting surface. the source of the light which has been reflected by impinging upon the water. On the basis of these admitted and apparent facts those who maintain that the moon illuminates the earth with reflected light are bidden (by their adversaries) i.e. by the Stoics; cf. e.g. the argument of Cleomedes (ii. 4. 101-102 [p. 184. 4 ff., Ziegler]) against the explanation of the moon’s light as reflection. The following argument in this passage is printed by von Arnim, S. V. F. ii, p. 199 as frag. 675 of Chrysippus. to point out in the moon at night an appearance of the sun such as there is in water by day whenever there is a reflection of the sun from it. Since there is no such appearance, (these adversaries) think that the illumination comes about in another way and not by reflection and that, if there is not reflection, neither is the moon an earth.

What response must be made to them then?

said Apollonides,

for the characteristics of reflection seem to present us with a problem in common.

3

In common in a way certainly,

said I,

but in another way not in common either. In the first place consider the matter of the image, i.e. the reflected image, not the simile, as Amyot and Prickard interpret it. how topsy-turvy and like rivers flowing uphillFor the proverbial expression cf. Hesychius, s. v. ἄνω ποταμῶν; Euripides, Medea, 410; Lucian, Dialogi Mortuorum, 6. 2. they conceive it. The fact is that the water is on earth and below, and the moon above the earth and on high; and hence the angles produced by the reflected rays are the converse of each other, the one having its apex above at the moon, the other below at the earth.As Kepler says in his note 64 ad loc., ratio nihil ad rem. So they must not demand that every kind of mirror or a mirror at every distance produce a similar reflection, since (in doing so) they are at variance with the manifest facts. Those, on the other hand, who declare that the moon is not a tenuous or a smooth body as water is but a heavy and earthy one, i.e. those who hold the view of the moon’s nature that Lamprias himself espouses. I do not understand why it is required of them that the sun be manifest to vision in her. For milk does not return such mirrorings either or produce reflections of the visual ray, and the reason is the irregularity and roughness of its particles cf. Quaest. Conviv 696 A; and observe that the phrase, ἀνωμαλία καὶ τραχύτης, used here of milk is in 930 D supra and 937 A s.v. applied to the moon.; how in the world the is it possible for the moon to cast the visual ray back from herself in the way that the smoother mirrors do? Yet even these, of course, are occluded if a scratch or speck of dirt or roughness covers the point from which the visual ray is naturally reflected, and while the mirrors themselves are seen they do not return the customary reflection.For the phenomenon referred to cf. [Ptolemy], Speculis, vi = Hero Alexandrinus, Opera, ii. 1, p. 330. 4-22 (Nix-Schmidt). For τυφλόω meaning to deaden, muffle, occlude cf. Defectu Oraculorum, 434 c, Quaest. Conviv 721 B, Esu Carnium, 995 f. One who demands that the moon either reflect our vision from herself to the sun as well or else not reflect the sun from herself to us either is naive, for he is demanding that the eye be a sun, the vision light, and the human being a heaven. Since the light of the sun because of its intensity and brilliance arrives at the moon with a shock, it is reasonable that its reflection should reach to us; but the visual ray, since it is weak and tenuous and many times slighter, what wonder if it does not have an impact that produces recoil or if in rebounding it does not maintain its continuity but is dispersed and exhausted, not having light enough to keep it from being scattered about the irregularities and corrugations (of the moon)? From water, to be sure, and from mirrors of other kinds it is not impossible for the reflection (of the visual ray) to rebound to the sun, since it is still strong because it is near to its point of originPlutarch has to explain how the image of the sun can be seen in water and mirrors though it is not seen in the moon, and he does so by stressing the proximity of the former to the point of origin. This point of origin can only be our eyes, so that he must be thinking of the visual ray as reflected from water and mirrors to the sun and as failing to be reflected from the moon to the sun. The reading of the mss., ἐπὶ τὸν ἥλιον, is necessary to the argument and all suggestions for altering it are wrong.; but from the moon, even if the visual rays do in some cases glance off, they will be weak and dim and prematurely exhausted because of the magnitude of the distance. i.e. the distance from the eye to the reflecting surface of the moon. What is more too, whereas mirrors that are concave make the ray of light more intense after reflection than it was before so as often even to send off flames,For the concave burning-glass cf. [Euclid], Catoptrica Prop. 30 (Euclid, Opera Omnia, vii, pp. 340-342 [Heiberg]) 154. convex and spherical mirrorsNot two kinds of mirrors, as Raingeard says ad. loc., but one, convex, i.e. convex spherical, for (1) spherical mirrors that are concave are the burning-glasses in the preceding category, and (2) convex mirrors that are not spherical would not provide the obvious analogy with the moon that is wanted. by not exerting counterpressure upon it from all points [give it off] weak and faint. You observe, I presume, whenever two rainbows appear, as one cloud encloses another, that the encompassing rainbow produces colours that are faint and indistinct. The reason for this is that the outer cloud, being situated further off from the eye, returns a reflection that is not intense or strong.On the double rainbow and the reason why the outer bow is less distinct cf. Aristotle, Meteorology, 375 A 30-b 15. Aristotle’s explanation, which Plutarch here adopts, is attacked by Kepler in a long note on the present passage (note 70). Nay, what need of further arguments? When the light of the sun by being reflected from the moon loses all its heatSee note a on 929 E supra. and of its brilliance there barely reaches us a slight and feeble remnant, is it really possible that of the visual ray travelling the same double-courseThe moon is thought of as the καμπτήρ or turning-post in the stadium. The sun’s rays travel from sun to moon to eye, and the visual ray would have to travel the same course in reverse. any fraction of a remnant should from the moon arrive at the sun? For my part, I think not; and do you too,

I said,

consider this. If the visual ray were affected in the same way by water and by the moon, the full moon ought to show such reflections of the earth and plants and human beings and stars as all other mirrors do; but, if there occur no reflections of the visual ray to these objects either because of the weakness of the ray or the ruggedness of the moon, let us not require that there be such reflection to the sun either.

So we for our part,

said I,

have now reported as much of that conversationSee 921 f, 929 B, 929 F supra. as has not slipped our mind; and it is high time to summon Sulla or rather to demand his narrative as the agreed condition upon which he was admitted as a listener. So, if it is agreeable, let us stop our promenade and sit down upon the benches, that we may provide him with a settled audience.

To this then they agreed; and, when we had sat down, Theon said:

Though, as you know, Lamprias, I am as eager as any of you to hear what is going to be said, I should like before that to hear about the beings that are said to dwell on the moonIn Placitis, 892 A = Aëtius, ii. 30. 1 this notion is ascribed to the Pythagoreans (and in the version of Stobaeus specifically to Philolaüs). Diogenes Laertius, ii. 8 ascribes it to Anaxagoras — if on the basis of frag. B 4 (ii, p. 34. 5 ff. [Diels-Kranz]), wrongly; and Cicero’s ascription of it to Xenophanes (Acad. Prior. II, xxxix. 123) is certainly an error (despite Lactantius, Div. Inst. iii. 23. 12) but more probably due to confusion with Xenocrates than, as is usually said, a mistake for Anaxagoras (cf. J. S. Reid ad loc.; Diels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok.⁵ , i, p. 125. 40; Diels, Dox. Graeci, p. 121, n. 1). The moon-dwellers became characters of scientific fiction at least as early as Herodorus of Heraclea (cf. Athenaeus, ii. 57 f). — not whether any really do inhabit it but whether habitation there is possible. If it is not possible, the assertion that the moon is an earth is itself absurd, for she would then appear to have come into existence vainly and to no purpose, neither bringing forth fruit nor providing for men of some kind an origin, an abode, and a means of life, the purposes for which this earth of ours came into being, as we say with Plato, our nurse, strict guardian and artificer of day and night. Timaeus, 40 B-C. Though ἀτρεκῆ does not appear there, it is introduced into the passage by Plutarch at 938 E s.v. and at Plat. Quaest. 1006 E, which indicates that he meant it as part of the quotation. Since there appears to be no other reference to the words τροφὸν ἡμετέραν in Plutarch’s extant works, one cannot be sure that τροφήν here is not his own misquotation rather than a scribal error. (The phrase, τροφαῖς ζῴων, in Superstitione, 171 A is probably not part of the adaptation of the Timaeus-passage there.) You see that there is much talk about these things both in jest and seriously. It is said that those who dwell under the moon have her suspended overhead like the stone of Tantalus cf. the sarcastic remarks of Lucius in 923 C supra. For the stone of Tantalus cf. Nostoi, frag. x ( = Athenaeus, 281 B - C); Pindar, Olympian, i. 57-58 and Isthmian, viii. 10-11: and Scholia in Olymp. i. 91 a, where reference is made to the interpretation that the stone which threatens Tantalus is the sun, this being his punishment for having declared that the sun is an incandescent mass (cf. also scholiast on Euripides, Orestes, 982-986). and on the other hand that those who dwell upon her, fast bound like so many IxionsFor the myth of Ixion on his wheel cf. Pindar, Pythian, ii. 21-48 and for Ixion used in a cosmological argument cf. Aristotle, Caelo, 284 A 34-35. by such great velocity, [are kept from falling by being whirled round in a circle]. Yet it is not with a single motion that she moves; but she is, as somewhere she is in fact called, the goddess of three ways,An epithet of Hecate (cf. Athenaeus, vii. 325 A) applied to the moon only after she had been identified with the moongoddess, after which her epithets had to be explained by reference to lunar phenomena. cf. e.g. Cleomedes, ii. 5. 111 (p. 202. 5-10 [Ziegler]) on τριπρόσωπος, and Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compend. 34 (p. 72. 7-15 [Lang]) on τρίμορφος and τριοδῖτις. The etymology here put into Theons mouth had already been given by Varro in his Lingua Latina, vii. 16. For the moon as Hecate cf. notes b on 942 D and g on 944 C s.v.. for she moves on the zodiac against the signs in longitude and latitude and in depth at the same time. Of these movements the mathematicians call the first revolution, the second spiral, and the third, I know not why, anomaly, although they see that she has no motion at all that is uniform and fixed by regular recurrences,For the text, terminology, and intention of these two sentences cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 146-147. There is reason to wonder then not that the velocity caused a lion to fall on the Peloponnesus cf. Epimenides, frag. B 2 (i, p. 32. 22 ff. [Diels-Kranz]); Anaxagoras, frag. A 77 (ii, p. 24. 25-26 and 28-30 [DielsKranz]). It may be that Anaxagoras referred to this legend in connection with his theory concerning the meteoric stone of Aegospotami, the fall of which he is said to have predicted (Lysander, 12 [439 D-F]; Diogenes Laertius, ii. 10; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 58 [59], 149-150). Kepler (note 77) suggests that the story of the lion falling from the sky may have arisen from a confusion of λάων (gen. pl. of λᾶας) and λέων or, as Prickard puts it, between λᾶς and λίς. Diogenes Laertius (viii. 72) quotes Timaeus to the effect that Heraclides Ponticus spoke of the fall of a man from the moon, an incident which Voss after Hirzel refers to a dialogue of his that may have influenced Plutarch (Voss, Heraclidis Pontici Vita et Scriptis, p. 61). but how it is that we are not forever seeing countless Men falling headlong and lives spurned away, Aeschylus, Supplices, 937; cf De Curiositate, 517 f, where also Plutarch gives βίων instead of Aeschylus’s βίου. tumbling off the moon, as it were, and turned head over heels. It is moreover ridiculous to raise the question how the inhabitants of the moon remain there, if they cannot come to be or exist. Now, when Egyptians and Troglodytes, i.e. Ethiopians: cf. Herodotus, iv. 183. 4; Strabo, ii. 5. 36 (c. 133). for whom the sun stands in the zenith one moment of one day at the solstice and then departs, are all but burnt to a cinder by the dryness of the atmosphere, is it really likely that the men on the moon endure twelve summers every year, the sun standing fixed vertically above them each month at the full moon? Yet winds and clouds and rains, without which plants can neither arise nor having arisen be preserved, because of the heat and tenuousness of the atmosphere cannot possibly be imagined as forming there, for not even here on earth do the lofty mountains admit fierce and contrary storms cf. Aristotle, Meteorology, 340 B 36 341 A 4, 347 A 2935, and Alexander, Meteor. p. 16. 6-15, where lines 10-11 guarantee and explain the ἐναντίους in Plutarch’s text. but the air, [being tenuous] already and having a rolling swellCf 939 E s.v. and Plat. Quaest. 1005 E. as a result of its lightness, escapes this compaction and condensation. Otherwise, by Heaven, we shall have to say that, as Athena when Achilles was taking no food instilled into him some nectar and ambrosia, cf. Iliad, xix. 340-356. so the moon, which is Athena in name and fact,See 922 A supra and note C there. nourishes her men by sending up ambrosia for them day by day, the food of [the] gods themselves as the ancient Pherecydes believes.= Pherecydes, frag. B 13 a (i, p. 51. 5-9 [Diels-Kranz]). For even the Indian root which according to Megasthenes the Mouthless Men, who [neither eat] nor drink, kindle and cause to smoulder and inhale for their nourishment,Megasthenes, frag. 34 (Frag. Hist. Graec. ii, pp. 425-427 [Müller]); cf. Strabo, ii. 1. 9 (c. 70) and xv. 1. 57 (c. 711); Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 2. 25. Aristotle (Parva Nat. 445 A 16-17) mentions the belief of certain Pythagoreans that some animals are nourished by odours; cf. the story told of Democritus, frags. A 28 and 29 (ii, p. 89. 23 ff. [Diels-Kranz]), and Lucian on the Selenites (Vera Hist. i. 23), a passage which, however, looks like a parody of Herodotus, i. 202. 2. how could it be supposed to grow there if the moon is not moistened by rain ?

When Theon had so spoken, I said

[Bravo], you have most excellently [smoothed our] brows by the sport of your speech, wherefore we have been inspired with boldness to reply, since we anticipate no very sharp or bitter scrutiny. It is, moreover, a fact that there really is [no] difference between those who in such matters are firm believers and those who are violently annoyed by them and firmly disbelieve and refuse to examine calmly what can be and what might be.

1

So, for example, in the first

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

Ocean, that is the universal source

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

Yet it is by no means for nothing that these parts have come to be. The sea gives off gentle exhalations, and the most pleasant winds when summer is at its height are released and dispersed from the uninhabited and frozen region by the snows that are gradually melting there.

3

A strict guardian and artificer of day and night

has according to Plato

4

been stationed in the centre. Nothing then prevents the moon too, while destitute of living beings, from providing reflections for the light that is diffused about her and for the rays of the stars a point of confluence in herself and a blending whereby she digests the exhalations from the earth and at the same time slackens the excessive torridity and harshness of the sun.

5

Moreover, conceding a point perhaps to ancient tradition also, we shall say that she was held to be Artemis on the ground that she is a virgin and sterile but is helpful and beneficial to other females.

6

In the second place, my dear Theon, nothing that has been said proves impossible the alleged inhabitation of the moon. As to the rotation, since it is very gentle and werene, it smooths the air and distributes it in settled order, so that there is no danger of falling and slipping off for those who stand there. And if it is not simple either,

7

even this complication and variation of the motion is not attributable to irregularity or confusion; but in them astronomers demonstrate a marvellous order and progression, making her revolve with circles that unroll about other circles, some assuming that she is herself motionless and others that she retrogresses smoothly and regularly

with ever constant velocity,

8

for these superpositions of the circles and their rotations and relations to one another and to us combine most harmoniously to produce the apparent variations of her motion in altitude and the deviations in latitude at the same time as her revolutions in longitude.

9

As to the great heat and continual scorching of the sun, you will cease to fear it, if first of all you set the conjunctions over against the twelve summery full-moons

10

and suppose that the continuousness of the change produces in the extremes, which do not last a long time, a suitable tempering and removes the excess from either. Between these then, as is likely, they have a season most nearly approaching spring. In the second place, upon us the sun sends, through air which is turbid and which exerts a concomitant pressure, heat that is nourished by the exhalations, whereas there the air being tenuous and translucent scatters and diffuses the sun’s light, which has no tinder or body to sustain it.

11

The fruits of tree and field here in our region are nourished by rains; but elsewhere, as up in your home

12

around Thebes and Syene, the land drinking water that springs from earth instead of rain-water and enjoying breezes and dews

13

would refuse, I think, to adapt itself

14

to the fruitfulness that attends the most abundant rainfall, and that because of a certain excellence and temperament that it has. Plants of the same kind, which in our region if sharply nipped by winter bear good fruit in abundance, in Libya and in your home in Egypt are very sensitive to cold and afraid of winter.

15

And, while Gedrosia and Ethiopia which comes down to the ocean is barren and entirely treeless because of the aridity, in the adjacent and surrounding sea there grow and thrive down in the deep plants of great magnitude, some of which are called olives, some laurels, and some

tresses of Isis

16

; and the plants here called

love-restorers

when lifted out of the earth and hung up not only live as long as you wish but sprout

17

[. . .]. Some plants are sown towards winter, and some at the height of summer as sesame and millet.

18

Thyme or centaury, if sown in good, rich soil and wetted and watered, departs from its natural quality and loses its strength, whereas drought delights it and causes it to reach its proper stature

19

; and some plants, as they say, cannot stand even dew, as is true of the majority of Arabian plants, but are blighted and destroyed by being moistened.

20

What wonder then if on the moon there grow roots and seeds and trees that have no need of rain nor yet of snow but are naturally adapted to a summery and rarefied air? And why is it unlikely that winds arise warmed by the moon and that breezes steadily accompany the rolling swell of her revolution and by scattering off and diffusing dews and light moisture suffice for the vegetation and that she herself is not fiery or dry in temperament but soft and humidifying? After all, no influence of dryness comes to us from her but much of

moistness and femininity

21

: the growth of plants, the decay of meats, the souring and flattening of wine, the softening of timbers, the easy delivery of women.

22

Now that Pharnaces is quiet I am afraid of provoking and arousing him again if I cite, in the words of his own school, the flood-tides of Ocean and the swelling of the straits when they are increased and poured abroad by the liquefying action of the moon.

23

Therefore I shall rather turn to you, my dear Theon, for when you expound these words of Alcman’s,

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

you tell us that at this point he calls the air

Zeus

and says that it is liquefied by the moon and turns to dew-drops.

25

It is in fact probable, my friend, that the moon’s nature is contrary to that of the sun, if of herself she not only naturally softens and dissolves all that he condenses and dries but liquefies and cools even the heat that he casts upon her and imbues her

with. They err then who believe the moon to be a fiery and glowing body; and those who demand that living beings there be equipped just as those here are for generation, nourishment, and livelihood seem blind to the diversities of nature, among which one can discover more and greater differences and dissimilarities between living beings than between them and inanimate objects.

26

Let there not be mouthless men nourished by odours who [Megasthenes] thinks [do exist]

27

; yet the Hungerbane,

28

the virtue of which he was himself trying to explain to us, Hesiod hinted at when he said

Nor what great profit mallow has and squill Works and Days, 41.

and Epimenides made manifest in fact when he showed that with a very little fuel nature kindles and sustains the living creature, which needs no further nourishment if it gets as much as the size of an olive.

30

It is plausible that the men on the moon, if they do exist, are slight of body and capable of being nourished by whatever comes their way.

31

After all, they say that the moon herself, like the sun which is an

animate being of fire many times as large as the earth, is nourished by the moisture on the earth, as are the rest of the stars too, though they are countless; so light and frugal of requirements do they conceive the creatures to be that inhabit the upper region.

32

We have no comprehension of these beings, however, nor of the fact that a different place and nature and temperature are suitable to them. Just as, assuming that we were unable to approach the sea or touch it but only had a view of it from afar and the information that it is bitter, unpotable, and salty water, if someone said that it supports in its depths many large animals of multifarious shapes and is full of beasts that use water for all the ends that we use air, his statements would seem to us like a tissue of myths and marvels, such appears to be our relation to the moon and our attitude towards her is apparently the same when we disbelieve that any men dwell there. Those men, I think, would be much more amazed at the earth, when they look out at the sediment and dregs

33

of the universe, as it were, obscurely visible in moisture, mists, and clouds as a lightless, low, and motionless spot, to think that it engenders and nourishes animate beings which partake of motion, breath, and warmth. If they should chance to hear somewhere these Homeric words,

Dreadful and dank, which even gods abhor Iliad, xx. 65.

and

Deep under Hell as far as Earth from Heaven, Iliad, viii. 16.

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

Almost before I had finished, Sulla broke in.

Hold on, Lamprias,

he said,

and put to the wicket of your discourse cf. Sollertia Animalium, 965 B. lest you unwittingly run the myth aground, as it were, and confound my drama, which has a different setting and a different disposition. Well, I am but the actor of the piece, but first I shall say that its author began for our sake — if there be no objection with a quotation from HomerOn the text of this sentence cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 148-149.: An isle, Ogygia, lies far out at sea, Odyssey, vii. 244. On the geographical introduction to the myth see the Introduction, § 5, and especially Hamilton, Class. Quart. xxviii (1934), pp. 15-26, who points out the parallel between Plutarch’s geographical scheme and Plato’s location of Atlantis in Timaeus, 24 E 25 A. a run of five days off from Britain as you sail westward; and three other islands equally distant from it and from one another lie out from it in the general direction of the summer sunset. In one of these, according to the tale told by the natives, Cronus is confined by Zeus, and the antique [Briareus], holding watch and ward over those islands and the sea that they call the Cronian main, has been settled close beside him. cf. Defectu Oraculorum, 420 A and on the text Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), p. 149. For Briareus as a guard set by Zeus over Cronus and the Titans cf. Hesiod, Theogony, 729-735 and Apollodorus, i. 7 ( = i. 2. 1). The pillars of Heracles are said to have had the older name Βριάρεω στῆλαι (cf. Aelian, Var. Hist. v. 3 = Aristotle, frag. 678) and before that Κρόνου στῆλαι (cf. Charax, frag. 16 = Frag. Hist. Graec. iii, p. 640); cf. also Clearchus, frag. 56 (Frag. Hist. Graec. ii, p. 320) and Parthenius, frag. 21 (Diehl) = frag. 31 (Martin). The great mainland, by which the great ocean is encircled, cf. Timaeus 24 E 5 25 A 5. while not so far from the other islands, is about five thousand stades from Ogygia, the voyage being made by oar, for the main is slow to traverse and muddy as a result of the multitude of streams.Plutarch’s language really implies that the way is so long — not just that it takes a long time — because the sea is hard to traverses3 The streams are discharged by the great land-mass and produce alluvial deposits, thus giving density and earthiness to the sea, which has been thought actually to be congealed. cf. Strabo, i. 4. 2 (c. 63): ἥν (i.e. Θούλνἠ φησι Πυθέας ἐγγὺς εἶναι τῆς πεπηγυίας θαλάττης, and Pliny, Nat. Hist. iv. 16 (104): a Tyle unius diei navigatione mare concretum a nonnullis Cronium appellatur (n. b. that for Apollonius Rhodius [iv. 327, 509, 546] the Adriatic is the Cronian sea); cf. Tacitus, Agricola, § 10 and Germania, § 45. Plutarch denies that the sea is really congealed as it is reputed to be and explains its nature in imitation of Plato ( Timaeus, 25 d 3-6, Critias, 108 E 6 109 A 2); but, since he cannot adduce as the cause of the muddy shallows the settling of the island, Atlantis, under the sea, he falls back upon alluvial deposits from the rivers on the great continent, a notion familiar from many sources (cf. Exilio, 602 D with Thucydides, ii. 102. 6; Aristotle, Meteorology, 351 B 28-32; Herodotus, ii. 10; Strabo, i. 2. 29-30 [cc. 36-37]). For the congealed sea cf. further K. Müllenhoff, utsche Altertumskunde, i (1890), pp. 410-425; E. Janssens, Hist. ancienne de la mer du Nord² (1946), pp. 20-22; J. O. Thomson, Hist, of Ancient Geography, pp. 148-149, 241, and 54-55 (on Avienus, Ora Maritime, 117-129). On the coast of the mainland Greeks dwell about a gulf which is not smaller than the MaeotisThe Sea of Azov, the size of which Herodotus had greatly exaggerated (iv. 86); Strabo reduced its perimeter to 9000 stades (ii. 5. 23 [c. 125]). and the mouth of which lies roughly on the same parallel as the mouth of the Caspian sea.The Caspian was thought to be a gulf of the outer ocean from the time of Alexander until Ptolemy corrected the error (Alexander, chap. 44; Strabo, xi. 6. 1 [c. 507]), though Herodotus (i. 202-203) and Aristotle (Meteorology, 354 A 3-4) had known that it was connected with no other sea. These people consider and call themselves continentals [and the] inhabitants of this land [islanders] because the sea flows around it on all sides; and they believe that with the peoples of Cronus there mingled at a later time those who arrived in the train of Heracles and were left behind by him and that these latter so to speak rekindled again to a strong, high flame the Hellenic spark there which was already being quenched and overcome by the tongue, the laws, and the manners of the barbarians. Therefore Heracles has the highest honours and Cronus the second. Now when at intervals of thirty years the star of Cronus, which we call Splendent Φαίνων as the name of the planet Saturn occurs in An. Proc. in Timaeo, 1029 B (acc.: Φαίνωνα); Aëtius, ii. 15. 4 (where mss. vary between Φαίνωνα and Φαίνοντα, cf. Diels, Dox. Graeci, p. 344 ad loc.); [Aristotle], Mundo, 392 A 23 (Φαίνοντος); cf. Cicero, Natura Deorum, ii. 20. 52. There is a similar variation in the mss. as between Στίλβοντ and Στίλβωνα (cf. Diels, Dox. Graeci, p. 345 on Aëtius, ii. 15. 4), though at 925 A supra the mss. of Facie agree on Στίλβοντα. but they, our author said, call Nightwatchman, enters the sign of the Bull,Taurus is the sign of the moon’s exaltation (cf. Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, i. 20 [p. 44. 2, Boll-Boer]; Porphyry, Antro Nymph. 18), and it is for this reason that the expedition begins when Saturn enters this sign. For the thirty years cf. Aëtius, ii. 32. 1 (Dox. Graeci, p. 363); Cleomedes, i. 3. 16-17 (p. 30. 18-21 [Ziegler]); Cicero, Natura Deorum, ii. 20, 52. they, having spent a long time in preparation for the sacrifice and the [expedition], choose by lot and send forth [a sufficient number of envoys] in a correspondingly sufficient number of ships, putting aboard a large retinue and the provisions necessary for men who are going to cross so much sea by oar and live such a long time in a foreign land. Now when they have put to sea the several voyagers meet with various fortunes as one might expect; but those who survive the voyage first put in at the outlying islands, which are inhabited by Greeks,These islands lie out westward or north-westward from Ogygia, cf. 941 A supra. It has not previously been said that they are inhabited by Greeks; in fact, 941 B seems to imply that Greeks live only on the mainland. and see the sun pass out of sight for less than an hour over a period of thirty days,I have tried to preserve the ambiguity of Plutarch’s language, though he probably meant to say less than an hour each day for thirty days (so Kepler understood, who thought that the reference was to Greenland). For the length of summer-days in Britain and in Thule cf. Cleomedes, i. 7. 37-38 (pp. 68. 6-70. 22 [Ziegler]) and Pytheas and Crates in Geminus, vi. 9-21 (pp. 70-76 [Manitius]). Pliny, Nat. Hist. iv. 16 (104) says that in Thule at the summer solstice there is no night at all, i.e. while the sun is in Cancer; but he adds here, what he had before (ii. 75 [186-187]) ascribed to Pytheas, that some think that in Thule there is a continuous day of six months duration. — and this is night, though it has a darkness that is slight and twilight glimmering from the west. There they spend ninety days regarded with honour and friendliness as holy men and so addressed, and then winds carry them across to their appointed goal. cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), p. 149 and note 91. Nor do any others inhabit it but themselves and those who have been dispatched before them, for, while those who have served the god together for the stint of thirty years are allowed to sail off home, most of them usually choose to settle in the spot, some out of habit and others because without toil or trouble they have all things in abundance while they constantly employ their time in sacrifices and celebrations or with various discourse and philosophy, for the nature of the island is marvellous as is the softness of the circumambient air. Some when they intend to sail away are even hindered by the divinity which presents itself to them as to intimates and friends not in dreams only or by means of omens, but many also come upon the visions and the voices of spirits manifest. For Cronus himself sleeps confined in a deep cave of rock that shines like gold — the sleep that Zeus has contrived as a bond for him —, and birds flying in over the summit of the rock bring ambrosia to him, and all the island is suffused with fragrance scattered from the rock as from a fountain; and those spirits mentioned before tend and serve Cronus, having been his comrades what time he ruled as king over gods and men. Many things they do foretell of themselves, for they are oracular; but the prophecies that are greatest and of the greatest matters they come down and report as dreams of Cronus, for all that Zeus premeditates Cronus sees in his dreamsFor the sleep of Cronus as his bonds and for the spirits who are his servitors cf. Defectu Oraculorum, 420 A. For the sleeping Cronus cf. also Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta, frags. 149 and 155; in these Orphic or Neo-Platonic passages, however, Cronus prophesies, furnishes Zeus with plans, or thinks the world order before Zeus is aware of it (cf. Damascius, Dub. et Sol. 305 v-306 r [ii, pp. 136. 19-137. 8, Ruelle] and Proclus, In Cratylum, p. 53. 29 ff. [Pasquali]), which is the opposite of what Plutarch’s words imply. Because of Tertullian, Anima, 46. 10 (f. 156) J. H. Waszink (Tertullian, Anima, p. 496) thinks it certain that the ultimate source of the story was one of Aristotle’s lost dialogues. Pohlenz (R. E. xi. 2013. s.v. Kronos) supposes that Plutarchs source was Posidonius and that Posidonius was inspired by Nordic legends3 The feature of the birds that bring Cronus ambrosia appears to have been adapted from the story of Zeus’s nectar; cf. Sept. Sap. 156 F and Odyssey, xii. 63-65. Besides J. H. Waszink ( Tertullian, Anima, p. 496) see the same author’s articles in Vigiliae Christianae, i (1947), pp. 137-149 (especially pp. 145-149) and in Mèlanges Henri Grègoire, ii (1950), pp. 639-653 (especially pp. 651-653). Waszink mistakenly believes that in Plutarch’s story special demons convey to Zeus [the thoughts that arise in Cronus’s dreams] who makes use of them for his government of the universe, and consequently he overlooks the important difference between Plutarch’s version and the Orphic passages that I have pointed out in this note. and the titanic affections and motions of his soul make him rigidly tense [until] sleep [restores] his repose once more and the royal and divine element is all by itself, pure and unalloyed. cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 149-150. Here then the strangerThis is the first mention of the stranger, unless he was referred to in the lost beginning of the dialogue. Hitherto he has merely been implied by the indirect discourse and τὸν ποιητήν in 941 A supra; cf. the reference in note c there. was conveyed, as he said, and while he served the god became at his leisure acquainted with astronomy, in which he made as much progress as one can by practising geometry, and with the rest of philosophy by dealing with so much of it as is possible for the natural philosopher. φιλοσοφίας χρώμενος is highly condensed; it must be construed: φιλοσοφίας δὲ πῆς ἄλλης ῾ἐμπειρίαν ἔσχἐ, χρώμενος ῾αὐτῇ ἐφ᾽ ὅσον̓ τῷ φυσικῷ ῾δυνατόν ἐστιν̓. For the distinction between ἀστρολογία and φυσική here referred to cf. Geminuss quotation of Posidonius in Simplicius, Physica, pp. 291. 23-292. 9 (Diels). Since he had a strange desire and longing to observe the Great Island (for so, it seems, they call our part of the world), when the thirty years had elapsed, the relief-party having arrived from home, he saluted his friends and sailed away, lightly equipped for the rest but carrying a large viaticum in golden beakers. Well, all his experiences and all the men whom he visited, encountering sacred writings and being initiated in all rites — to recount all this as he reported it to us, relating it thoroughly and in detail, is not a task for a single day; but listen to so much as is pertinent to the present discussion. He spent a great deal of time in Carthage inasmuch as [Cronus] receives great [honour] in our country,For the special position of Cronus at Carthage cf. Superstitione, 171 C, Sera Numinis Vindicta, 552 A; Diodorus, v. 66. 5. and he discovered certain sacred parchments that had been secretly spirited off to safety when the earlier city was being destroyed and had lain unnoticed in the ground for a long time.Nothing in the subsequent account supports the frequently expressed notion that the myth is supposed to have been discovered in these parchments, and 945 D s.v. expressly invalidates any such assumption. Among the visible gods cf. Timaeus, 40 D (τὰ περὶ θεῶν ὁρατῶν), 41 A (ὅσοι περιπολοῦσιν φανερῶς θεοί); Epinomis, 985 D (τοὺς ὄντως ἡμῖν φανεροὺς ὄντας θεούς). he said that one should especially honour the moon, and so he kept exhorting me to do, inasmuch as she is sovereign over life [and death], bordering as she does [upon the meads of Hades].

When I expressed surprise at this and asked for a clearer account, he said

1

:

Many assertions about the gods, Sulla, are current among the Greeks, but not all of them are right. So, for example, although they give the right names to Demeter and Cora, they are wrong in believing that both are together in the same region. The fact is that the former is in the region of earth and is sovereign over terrestrial things, and the latter is in the moon and mistress of lunar things. She has been called both Cora and Phersephone,For identification of Persephone and the moon cf. Epicharmus, frag. B 54 (i, p. 207. 9-11 [Diels-Kranz] = Ennius in Varro, Lingua Latina, v. 68); Porphyry, Antro Nymph. 18; Iamblichus in John Laurentius Lydus, Mensibus, iv. 149; Martianus Capella, ii. 161-162. Plutarch in Iside, 372 D notices the identification of Isis and the moon and in 361 E that of Isis and Persephassa (cf. note c on 922 A supra for Athena). The Pythagoreans are said to have called the planets the hounds of Persephone (Porphyry, Vita Pythag. 41 = Aristotle, frag. 196; Clement, Stromat. v. 50 [676 P, 244 S]); and Plutarch in Defectu Oraculorum, 416 E refers to some who call the moon χθονίας ὁμοῦ καὶ οὐρανίας κλῆρον Ἑκάτης (cf. Iside, 368 E). cf. further, Roscher, über Selene und Verwandtes, pp. 119 ff. the latter as being a bearer of light cf. for the ancient etymologies of Φερσεφόνη Bräuninger, R. E. xix. 1. 946-947, and Roscher, Lexicon, ii. 1288; there seems to be no ancient parallel to the one given here, to which Plutarch does not refer in Iside, 377 D, where he mentions the etymology proposed by Cleanthes. In the Orphic Hymn to Persephone (xxix. 9 = Orphica, rec. E. Abel, p. 74. 9) the epithet, φαεσφόρος, is used of the goddess but not by way of etymology (cf. line 16); nor is she expressly identified with the moon, although she is called φαεσφόρος, ἀγλαόμορφε, εὐφεγγές, κερόεσσα. and Cora because that is what we call the part of the eye in which is reflected the likeness of him who looks into it cf. [Plato], Alcibiades I, 133 A. The word κόρη means girl, maiden, for which reason it was used of such goddesses as Athena and Persephone, and also doll, whence like Latin pupilla it came to mean the pupil of the eye; cf. English the baby in the eye. as the light of the sun is seen in the moon. The tales told of the wandering and the quest of these goddesses contain the truth [spoken covertly], i.e. the wandering of Demeter in search of Persephone after the abduction of the latter by Hades: cf. e.g. the Homeric Hymn 11 to Demeter and Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 5. In the myth, however, Demeter was the wanderer; but the earth, which she is here supposed to represent, is stationary. In the myth Persephone is in darkness when she is separated from her mother and with Hades, whereas Plutarch’s interpretation requires that Persephone, the moon, be in darkness and night when she is in the embrace of her mother, the earth. for they long for each other when they are apart and they often embrace in the shadow. The statement concerning Cora that now she is in the light of heaven and now in darkness and night is not false but has given rise to error in the computation of the time, for not throughout six months but every six months we see her being wrapped in shadow by the earth as it were by her mother, and infrequently we see this happen to her at intervals of five months, cf. 933 E supra and Genio Socratis, 591 C: σελήνη φεύγει τὴν Στύγα μικρὸν ὑπερφέρουσα λαμβάνεται δ᾽ ἅπαξ ἐν μέτροις δευτέροις ἑκατὸν ἑβδομήκοντα ἑπτά (177 days = one-half of a lunar year, 6 synodic months). for she cannot abandon Hades since she is the boundary of Hades, as Homer too has rather well put it in veiled terms: But to Elysium’s plain, the bourne of earth. Odyssey, iv. 563 but with ἀλλά ς᾽ ἐς instead of ἀλλ᾽ εἰς. Where the range of the earth’s shadow ends, this he set as the term and boundary of the earth. cf. Stobaeus, Eclogae, i. 49 (i, p. 448. 5-16 [Wachsmuth]) = frag. 146 β (vii, p. 176 [Bernardakis]), where Odyssey, iv. 563-564 is taken to indicate that the region of the moon is the seat of righteous souls after death (cf. Eustathius, Ad Odysseam, 1509. 18). There Ἠλύσιον πεδίον is said to mean the surface of the moon lighted by the sun (cf. 944 C s.v.) and πείρατα γαίης the end of the earth’s shadow which often touches the moon; but there is no mention of Hades, Persephone, or Demeter. In the present passage Plutarch does not say why his interpretation of Homer’s line justifies him in calling the moon τοῦ Ἅιδου πέρας, but the rest of the myth makes it certain that Hades is the region between earth and moon (cf. 943 C s.v.). This agrees with the myth of Genio Socratis, where (591 A-C) this region is the portion of Persephone and the earth’s shadow is Styx and the road to Hades and where (590 F) Hades and Earth are clearly identical (cf. Heinze, Xenokrates, p. 135; R. M. Jones, The Platonism of Plutarch, p. 57 and n. 147). Probably then Plutarch here thought that, if Homer could be shown to have set the boundary of earth at the moon, it follows that he understood the moon to be the boundary of Hades. In Genio Socratis, 591 B the moon is expressly made the boundary between the portion of Persephone, which is Hades, and the region which extends from moon to sun. Nevertheless, in 944 C s.v. the Elysian plain is said to be the part of the moon that is turned to heaven, i. e. away from the earth; and, though this does not explicitly contradict the present passage, it might still seem to suggest the notion ascribed to Iamblichus by John Laurentius Lydus ( Mensibus, iv. 149 [p. 167. 24 ff.]): τὸν ὑπὲρ σελήνης ἄχρις ἡλίου χῶρον τῷ Ἅιδῃ διδούς, παρ᾽ ᾧ φησὶ καὶ τὰς ἐκκεκαθαρμένας ἐστάναι ψυχάς, καὶ αὐτὸν μὲν εἶναι τὸν Πλούτωνα, Περσεφόνην δὲ τὴν σελήνην. To this point rises no one who is evil or unclean, but the good are conveyed thither after death and there continue to lead a life most easy to be sureCf, Odyssey, iv. 565: τῇ περ ῥηίστη βιοτὴ πέλει ἀνθρώποισιν. though not blessed or divine until their second death.In Quaest. Rom. 282 A Plutarch cites Castor (cf. 266 E) for the notion that after death souls dwell on the moon, for which cf. in general P. Capelle, De luna stellis lacteo orbe animarum sedibus (Halis Saxonum, 1917), pp. 1-18 and n. b. Iamblichus, Vit. Pyth. 18. 82; Varro in Augustine, Civ. Dei, vii. 6 (i, p. 282. 14-17 [Dombart]); S. V. F. ii, frag. 814.

And what is this, Sulla? Do not ask about these things, for I am going to give a full explanation myself. Most people rightly hold man to be composite but wrongly hold him to be composed of only two parts. The reason is that they suppose mind to be somehow part of soul, thus erring no less than those who believe soul to be part of body, for in the same degree as soul is superior to body so is mind better and more divine than soul. The result of soul [and body commingled is the irrational or the affective factor, whereas of mind and soul] the conjunction produces reason; and of these the former is source of pleasure and pain, the latter of virtue and vice.

1

In the composition of these three factors earth furnishes the body, the moon the soul, and the sun furnishes mind [to man] for the purpose of his generation

2

even as it furnishes light to the moon herself. As to the death we die, one death reduces man from three factors to two and another reduces him from two to one

3

; and the former takes place in the [earth] that belongs to Demeter [[wherefore

to make an end

is called]

to render [one’s life] to her

and Athenians used in olden times to call the dead

Demetrians

],

4

[the latter] in the moon that belongs to Phersephone, and associated with the former is Hermes the terrestrial, with the latter Hermes the celestial.

5

While the goddess here

6

dissociates the soul from the body swiftly and violently, Phersephone gently and by slow degrees detaches the mind from the soul and has therefore been called

single-born

because the best part of man is

born single

when separated off [by] her.

7

Each of the two separations naturally occurs in this

fashion: All soul, whether without mind or with it,

8

when it has issued from the body

9

is destined to wander [in] the region between earth and moon but not for an equal time. Unjust and licentious souls pay penalties for their offences; but the good souls must in the gentlest part of the air, which they call

the meads of Hades,

10

pass a certain set time sufficient to purge and blow away [the] pollutions contracted from the body as from an evil odour.

11

[Then], as if brought home from banishment abroad, they savour joy most like that of initiates, which attended by glad expectation is mingled with confusion

and excitement.

12

For many, even as they are in the act of clinging to the moon, she thrusts off and sweeps away; and some of those souls too that are on the moon they see turning upside down as if sinking again into the deep.

13

Those that have got up, however, and have found a firm footing first go about like victors crowned with wreaths of feathers called wreaths of steadfastness,

14

because in life they had made the irrational or affective element of the soul orderly and tolerably tractable to reason

15

; secondly, in appearance resembling a ray of light but in respect of their nature, which in the upper region is buoyant as it is here in ours, resembling the ether about the moon,

16

they get from it both tension and strength

as edged instruments get a temper,

17

for what laxness and diffuseness they still have is strengthened and becomes firm and translucent. In consequence they are nourished by any exhalation that reaches them, and Heraclitus was right in saying:

Souls employ the sense of smell in Hades.

18

First they behold the moon as she is in herself

1

: her magnitude and beauty and nature, which is not simple and unmixed but a blend as it were of star and earth. Just as the earth has become soft by having been mixed with breath and moist[ure] and as blood gives rise to sense-perception in the flesh with which it is commingled,

2

so the moon, they say,

3

because it has been permeated through and through by ether is at once animated and fertile and at the same time has the proportion of lightness to heaviness in equipoise. In fact it is in this way too, they say, that the universe itself has entirely escaped local motion, because it has been constructed out of the things that naturally move upwards and those that naturally move downwards.

4

This was

also the conception of Xenocrates who, taking his start from Plato, seems

5

to have reached it by a kind of superhuman reasoning. Plato is the one who declared that each of the stars as well was constructed of earth and fire bound together in a proportion by means of the [two] intermediate natures, for nothing, as he said, attains perceptibility that does not contain an admixture of earth and light

6

; but Xenocrates says that the stars and the sun are composed of fire and the first density, the moon of the second density and air that is proper to her, and the earth of water [and air] and the third kind of density and that in general neither density all by itself nor subtility is receptive of soul.

7

So much for the moon’s substance. As to her breadth or magnitude, it is not what the geometers say but many times greater. She measures off the earth’s shadow with few of her own magnitudes not because it is small but she more ardently hastens her motion in order that she may quickly pass through the gloomy place bearing away [the souls] of the good which cry out and urge her on because when they are in the shadow they no longer catch the sound

of the harmony of heaven.

8

At the same time too with wails [and] cries the souls of the chastised then approach through the shadow from below. That is why most people have the custom of beating brasses during eclipses and of raising a din and clatter against the souls,

9

which are frightened off also by the socalled face when they get near it, for it has a grim and horrible aspect.

10

It is no such thing, however; but just as our earth contains gulfs that are deep and extensive,

11

one here pouring in towards us through the Pillars of Heracles and outside the Caspian and the Red Sea with its gulfs,

12

so those features are depths and hollows of the moon. The largest of them is called

13

Hecate’s Recess,

14

where the souls suffer and exact penalties for whatever they have endured or committed after having already become

Spirits

15

; and the two long ones are called

the Gates

,

16

for through them pass the souls now to the side of the moon that faces heaven and now back to the side that faces earth.

17

The side of the moon towards heaven is named

Elysian plain,

18

the hither side

House of counter-terrestrial Phersephone.

19

Yet not forever do the Spirits tarry upon the moon; they descend hither to take charge of oracles, they attend and participate in the highest of the mystic rituals, they act as warders against misdeeds and chastisers of them, and they flash forth as saviours manifest in war and on the sea. cf. Defectu Oraculorum, 417 A-B and Genio Socratis, 591 C; R. M. Jones, The Platonism of Plutarch, pp. 29, 59, and 55-56. Iamblichus, Vit. Pyth. vi. 30 (p. 18. 4 Deubner]) says that some people considered Pythagoras to be such a Spirit from the moon. In the last clause of the sentence above Plutarch refers to the Dioscuri: cf. Lysander, 14 (439 C); Defectu Oraculorum, 426 C. For any act that they perform in these matters not fairly but inspired by wrath or for an unjust end or out of envy they are penalized, for they are cast out upon earth again confined in human bodies. cf. 926 C supra (ἡ ψυχή τῷ σώματι συνεῖρκται), An. Proc. in Timaeo, 1023 C (τῷ σώματι συνειργμένη scil. ἡ ψυχή); for the misbehaviour of Spirits cf. Defectu Oraculorum, 417 B, 417 E-F, Iside, 361 A ff., where the punishment of these Spirits is mentioned in 361 C (cf. Defectu Oraculorum, 415 C). To the former class of better Spirits i.e. not those who for misdeeds are cast out upon earth again. The attendants of Cronus are the δαίμονες of 942 A supra. cf. Porphyry’s account of good and evil spirits in Abstinentia, ii. 38-39. the attendants of Cronos said that they belong themselves as did aforetime the Idaean DactylsCf. Numa, 15 (70 C-D); [Plutarch], Fluviis, xiii. 3 (vii, p. 305. 4-12 [Bernardakis]); Strabo, x. 3. 22 (c. 473); Pausanias, v. 7. 6-10; Diodorus, v. 64. 3-7. in Crete and the Corybants cf. Schwenn, R. E. xi. 2 (1922), 1441-1446, and Lobeck, Aglaophamos, pp. 1139-1155. in Phrygia as well as the Boeotian Trophoniads in UdoraThis place seems to be mentioned nowhere else; but, since Plutarch here refers to inactive oracles from which the Spirits have departed, the change to Λεβαδείᾳ cannot be right, for in Defectu Oraculorum, 411 E-F Lebadeia is said to be the only remaining active oracle in Boeotia where there are many others now silent or even deserted. and thousands of others in many parts of the world whose rites, honours, and titles persist but whose powers tended to another place as they achieved the ultimate alteration. They achieve it, some sooner and some later, once the mind has been separated from the soul. cf. 943 B supra. It is separated by love for the image in the sun through which shines forth manifest the desirable and fair and divine and blessed towards which all nature in one way or another yearns,Plato’s Republic, 507-509 is Plutarch’s main inspiration. It is a passage which he echoes or cites many times (e.g. Iside, 372 A, E, 393 D, Defectu Oraculorum, 413 C and 433 D-E, Ad Principem Inerud. 780 F and 781 F, Plat. Quaest. 1006 F 1007 A); and his references to it show that the image in the sun, τῆς περὶ τὸν ἥλιον εἰκόνος, here means the visible likeness of the good which the sun manifests and not, as Kepler suggests, the reflection of the sun seen in the moon as in a mirror. The last part of the sentence with the notion that all nature strives towards the good and the term ἐφετόν itself are drawn from Aristotle ( Physics, 192 A 16-19 and the whole of Physics A, 9 and Metaphysics A, 7); cf. Iside. 372 E-F and Amatorius, 770 B. for it must be out of love for the sun that the moon herself goes her rounds and gets into conjunction with him in her yearning to receive from him what is most fructifying.The specific nature of this fertilization is described in 945 C s.v.; the conception of the sun as an image of god is connected with a reference to its fructifying force in E, 393 d. For sexual language used of the moon and sun see the references in note a on 929 C supra. The substance of the soul is left upon the moon and retains certain vestiges and dreams of life as it were; it is this that you must properly take to be the subject of the statement Soul like a dream has taken wing and sped, Odyssey, xi. 222. for it is not straightway nor once it has been released from the body that it reaches this state but later when, divorced from the mind, it is deserted and alone. Above all else that Homer said his words concerning those in Hades appear to have been divinely inspired Thereafter marked I mighty Heracles — His shade; but he is with the deathless gods Odyssey, xi. 601-602. Similar interpretations of this passage are common among the Neo-Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonists: cf. especially [Plutarch], Vita et Poesi Homeri, chap. 123; Plotinus, Enn. i. 1. 12; iv. 3. 27 and 32; vi. 4. 16; Proclus, In Rem Publicam, i, p. 120. 22 ff. and p. 172. 9 ff. (Kroll); Cumont, Rev. de Philologie, xliv (1920), pp. 237-240, who contends that the doctrine itself arose in Alexandria where Aristarchus became acquainted with it. In fact the self of each of us is not anger or fear or desire just as it is not bits of flesh or fluids either but is that with which we reason and understand cf. Sera Numinis Vindicta, 564 C and Adv. Coloten, 1119 A. For the νοῦς as the true self cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1166 A 16-17 and 22-23, 1168 B 35, 1169 A 2, 1178 A 2-7. Plato usually speaks of the ψυχή without further qualification as the true self (e.g. Laws, 959 A, Phaedo, 115 C [cf. the Pseudo-Platonic Alcibiades I, 130 A-C and Axiochus, 365 E]), although such passages as Republic, 430 E 431 A, 588 C 589 B, 611 C-E can be taken to imply that he meant the rational soul only (cf. Plotinus’s use of the last passage in Enn. i. 1. 12). cf. also Cicero, Republica, vi. 26 ( mens cuiusque is est quisque ) and Marcus Aurelius, ii. 2 with Farquharson’s note ad loc.; and the soul receives the impression of its shape through being moulded by the mind and moulding in turn and enfolding the body on all sides, so that, even if it be separated from either one for a long time, since it preserves the likeness and the imprint it is correctly called an image. cf. Sera Numinis Vindicta, 564 A, where the souls are described as τύπον ἐχούσας ἀνθρωποειδῆ, and [Plutarch], Vita et Poesi Homeri, chap. 123 (εἴδωλον ὅπερ ἦν ἀποπεπλασμένον [?] τοῦ σώματος); Porphyry in Stobaeus, I. xlix. 55 ( = i, p. 429. 16-22 [Wachsmuth]). The notion that the soul after death retains the appearance of the body was common (cf Lucian, Vera Hist. ii, 12), although Alexander Polyhistor in Diogenes Laertius, viii. 31 gave it as Pythagorean doctrine (but cf. Antisthenes, frag. 33 [Mullach]). With the special point of the present passage that the body is given its form by the imprint of the soul, which has itself been moulded by the mind, cf. Proclus, In Rem Publicam, ii, pp. 327. 21-328. 15 (Kroll); Plotinus, iv. 3. 9. 20-23 and i/ 10. 35-42; Macrobius, Somn. Scip. I. xiv. 8; Sextus, P. H. i. 85. In Laws, 959 a-b Plato calls the body an attendant semblance of the self and uses the word εἴδωλα of corpses. The notion that soul encompasses body instead of being contained by it comes ultimately from Plato, Timaeus, 34 B. Of these, as has been said, i.e. 943 A supra. the moon is the element, for they are resolved into itFor later Neo-Platonic opinions concerning the dissolution of the lower soul see Proclus, In Timaeum, iii, p. 234. 9 ff. (Diehl) and cf. Plotinus, Enn. iv. 7. 14 (ἀφειμένον δὲ τὸ χεῖρον οὐδὲ αὐτὸ ἀπολεῖσθαι ἕως ἂν ᾖ ὅθεν ἔχει τὴν ἀρχήν). as the bodies of the dead are resolved into earth. This happens quickly to the temperate souls who had been fond of a leisurely, unmeddlesome, and philosophical life, for abandoned by the mind and no longer exercising the passions for anything they wither quietly away. Of the ambitious and the active, the irascible and those who are enamoured of the body, however, some pass their timeThe expression correlative to αἱ μέν is ἐπεὶ δ᾽ αὐτάς, and the contrast between ἐπεὶ δ᾽ αὐτὰς ἐξίστησι and the present clause requires that διαφέρονται mean pass their time rather than toss about, be distraught, the meaning that it has in Genio Socratis, 591 D. as it were in sleep with the memories of their lives for dreams as did the soul of EndymionThere seems to be no other reference to Endymion’s dreams; but Plutarch may here have been influenced by the story that Endymion’s endless sleep was a punishment for his passion for Hera (cf. Scholia in Apollonium Rhodium Vetera, iv. 57-58 [p. 265, Wendel]) and Scholia in Theocritum Vetera, iii. 49-51 b [p. 133, Wendel]).; but, when they are excited by restlessness and emotion and drawn away from the moon to another birth, she forbids them [to sink towards earth] cf. Sera Numinis Vindicta, 565 D-E, 566 A; Plato, Phaedo, 81 B-E, 108 A-B. and keeps conjuring them back and binding them with charms, for it is no slight, quiet, or harmonious business when with the affective faculty apart from reason they seize upon a body. Creatures like Tityus cf. Odyssey, xi. 576-581; Pindar, Pythian, iv. 90; Eustathius, Comment, ad Odysseam, 1581. 54 ff. and Typho cf. especially Iside, chaps. 27 and 30. and the Python Πύθων and Τιτυός are named together by Plutarch in Pelopidas, 16 (286 C); cf. Strabo, ix. 3. 12 (cc. 422-423) and Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 4. 1. 3-5 (22-23). that with insolence and violence occupied Delphi and confounded the oracle belonged to this class of souls, void of reason and subject to the affective element gone astray through delusionFor the play on Τυφών - τῦφος cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 230 A, which is quoted by Plutarch in Adv. Coloten, 1119 B; and cf. also Marcus Aurelius, ii. 17 (τὰ δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς ὄνειρος καὶ τῦφος . . .).; but even these in time the moon took back to herself and reduced to order. Then when the sun with his vital force has again sowed mind in her she receives it and produces newsouls, and earth in the third place furnishes body. cf. 943 A and 944 E-F supra. In the latter passage ὀρεγομένην ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ τὸ γονιμώτατον [δέχεσθαι] (cf. E, 393 D [τὸ περὶ αὐτὴν γόνιμον]] and Aqua an Ignis, 958 E [τοῦ πυρὸς οἷον τὸ ζωτικὸν ἐνεργαζομένου]) shows that τῷ ζωτικιῳ here is to be construed with the preceding words rather than with those that follow (so Reinhardt, Kosmos und Sympathie, pp. 320, 329). On Reinhardt’s treatment of this passage in general and his attempt to derive it from Posidonius (Op. cit. pp. 329 ff.) cf. R. M. Jones, Class. Phil. xxvii (1932), pp. 118-120, 129-131, 134-135; n.b. Timaeus, 41-42 where the demiurge is said to have sowed (ἔσπειρεν) in the earth, the moon, and the other planets the souls that he had fashioned himself, i.e. the minds (cf. 41 E, 42 d), and the interpretation of Timaeus Locrus, 99 D-E, according to which this means that the souls are brought to earth from the various planets (cf. also R. M. Jones, The Platonism of Plutarch, pp. 49-51, and especially Porphyry in Proclus, In Timaeum, i, p. 147. 6-13 [n.b. εἰς τὸ τῆς σελήνης σῶμα σπείρεσθαί φησιν ] and p. 165. 16-23 [Diehl]). In fact, the earth gives nothing [in giving back] after death all that she takes for generation, and the sun takes nothing but takes back the mind that he gives, whereas the moon both takes and gives and joins together and divides asunder in virtue of her different powers, of which the one that joins together is called Ilithyia and that which divides asunder Artemis.Cf Quaest. Conviv 658 f: ὅθεν οἶμαι καὶ τὴν Ἄρτεμιν Λοχείαν καὶ Εἰλείθυιαν, οὐκ οὖσαν ἑτέραν ἢ τὴν σελήνην, ὠνομάσθαι. Here, however, Artemis and Ilithyia are supposed to be names for two contrary faculties of the moon. In 938 F supra the identification of the moon with Artemis because she is sterile but is helpful and beneficial to other females implies that Artemis is Ilithyia, as she is in Plato’s Theaetetus, 149 B (cf. Cornutus, p. 73, 7-18 [Lang]). Artemis was associated with easy, painless death, however (cf. Odyssey, xi. 172-173; xviii. 202); and Plutarch probably connects this notion with the gentleness of the death on the moon (cf. 943 B supra). L. A. Post has suggested that he may also have intended ἀρταμεῖν as an etymology of Ἀρτεμις. Ilithyia and Artemis are sometimes sisters (cf. Diodorus Siculus, v. 72. 5), but then they have the same function. Of the three Fates too Atropos enthroned in the sun initiates generation, Clotho in motion on the moon mingles and binds together, and finally upon the earth Lachesis too puts her hand to the task, she who has the largest share in chance.In Genio Socratis, 591 B Atropos is situated in the invisible, Clotho in the sun, and Lachesis in the moon. The order there is the same as it is here and different from that in the Fato (568 E), where in interpretation of Republic, 617 C Clotho is highest, Lachesis lowest, and Atropos intermediate. Both orders differ from that of Xenocrates (frag. 5 [Heinze]), which was Atropos (intelligible and supracelestial), Lachesis (opinable and celestial), Clotho (sensible and sublunar). The order of Facie and Genio Socratis is that of Plato’s Laws, 960 C, where Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos are named in ascending order as the epithet of Atropos, Τρίτη σώτειρα, shows; here in the Facie it is the passage of the Republic, however, that Plutarch has in mind, for his συνζφάπτεται is an echo of Plato’s ἐφαπτομένην and ἐφάπτεσθαιι there. cf. H. Dörrie, Hermes, lxxxii (1954), pp. 331-342 (especially pp. 337-339), who discusses the relation of these passages to the pre-history of the Neoplatonic doctrine of hypostases and argues that in writing them Plutarch was inspired by Xenocrates. For the inanimate is itself powerless and susceptible to alien agents, and the mind is impassible and sovereign; but the soul is a mixed and intermediate thing, even as the moon has been created by god a compound and blend of the things above and below and therefore stands to the sun in the relation of earth to moon. This, said Sulla, I heard the stranger relate; and he had the account, as he said himself, from the chamberlains and servitors of Cronus. You and your companions, Lamprias, may make what you will of the tale. cf. Sera Numinis Vindicta, 561 B, Genio Socratis, 589 f; Plato’s Phaedo, 114 D, Meno, 86 B, Gorgias, 527 A, Phaedrus, 246 A.