BOOK VI

Summary

Regarding the Size of the Sun.

After my work had been finished, some questioned us about the figure of the world, saying: “ How can the sun possibly be hidden, as you hold, by the northern parts of the earth, which according to you are very high, while he is many times larger than the earth? For in the case of the sphere which we advocate, however much greater the sun may be than the earth, he will always, when giving light to one part of her surface, leave the other in shadow.” To those so questioning us we have made a very brief reply, that such a thing is false and a pure fiction, having shown first from the climates which they themselves, recognise, that the sun projects shadows between which there is no difference, and next from what we ourselves saw with our own eyes in the parts of Axômis in Ethiopia. For, at the beginning of the summer solstice on the twenty-fifth day of the month Paÿni at the sixth hour of the day when the sun is now at the meridian, we plainly saw that a man's shadow inclined to the south.