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Derived Light and Eclipses in the Fifth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

D. O'Brien
D. O'Brien
Affiliation:
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
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Extract

In a study earlier in this volume, ‘The Relation of Anaxagoras and Empedocles’, pp. 93–113, I listed the ancient evidence to the effect that Anaxagoras first gave the correct explanation of an eclipse, and that he was followed in this by Empedocles. A more extensive examination of the evidence raises certain difficulties. For what are, or might appear to be, Anaxagoras' theories are attributed elsewhere to earlier thinkers.

There are two principal elements in this contradiction, the one direct and the other indirect.

1. There is a direct contradiction when Thales, Anaximenes and some Pythagoreans are said to have given the correct explanation of an eclipse, at least if we suppose the Pythagoreans in question to have been earlier than Anaxagoras.

2. There has been thought to be an indirect contradiction when several thinkers before Anaxagoras are said to have derived the moon's light from the sun. For a theory of derived light for the moon has been thought, whether rightly or wrongly, to entail the correct explanation of an eclipse.

In what follows I shall attempt to solve these, and some other incidental difficulties.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 88 , November 1968 , pp. 114 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1968

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References

1 i 74 (DK 11A5, these references are to Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 5th edn. onwards). There are frequent references in later writers, cf. n. 61 below.

2 i 23 (DK 11A1), cf. Eudemus fr. 144 Wehrli.

3 Clem. Strom. i 65 (DK 11A5), fr. 143 Wehrli.

4 Diog. Laert. i 23 (DK 11A1), fr. 144 Wehrli.

5 Theo Smyrnaeus, quoting Dercyllides, , Expositio rerum mathematicarum ad legendum Platonem utilium, 198.14–18Google Scholar Hiller (DK 11A17), fr. 145 Wehrli.

6 N.H. ii 53 (DK 11A5).

7 Suda, s.v. Θαλῆς (DK 11A2): repeated in Cedrenus, , Historiarum compendium i 275.15–16Google Scholar Bekker.

8 Aet. ii 24.1 (DK 11A17a). In Remp. 600A (DK 11A3). In Aet. ii 29.6 (cf. DK 59A77), Thales is listed with those who gave the correct explanation of the moon's eclipse, an idea which is repeated in Simplicius, , Cat. 191.5–7Google Scholar and 194.12–13 (not in DK). This would have been a natural step, once it was thought that Thales had given the correct explanation of an eclipse of the sun.

9 Kirk, , The Presocratic Philosophers 80.Google ScholarDicks, , ‘Thales’ in CQ n.s. ix (1959) 296.Google Scholar Both writers speak of Eudemus' error hypothetically. Guthrie, is even more tentative, A History of Greek Philosophy i 49.Google Scholar

10 Fr. 134 Wehrli (DK 11A20). Cf. Dicks, ‘Thaies’ 303.

11 Boll rightly notes that the entry in Theo is simply an extension of the version recorded by Clement and Diogenes, but he does not make it clear that the genesis of the error lies in the formula and his simplified form of quotation, helps to obscure the point, ‘Finsternisse’, Pauly-Wissowa, RE, vol. vi 2 col. 2341.Google Scholar

12 Ref. i 8.10 (DK 59A42). Cf. my earlier article, pp. 107 and 109.

13 Wehrli suggests that Aetius ii 24, is taken from Eudemus and not Theophrastus, , Die Schule des Aristoteles, Eudemos von Rhodos 120.Google Scholar If this were so, it would perhaps be significant that the entry on eclipses of the moon, which attributes the correct explanation to Thales among others, ii 29.6 (DK 59A77), continues in Stobaeus' version with an additional half-entry, specifically referred to Theophrastus. Diels, , Doxographi Graeci 217–18Google Scholar, supposes that both parts of this kind of double entry are taken, at different dates, from Theophrastus. On Wehrli's view it could perhaps be argued that they show a collation of material from Eudemus and from Theophrastus.

14 Aet. ii 25.2 (DK 13A16). A reconciliation of this report with the report from Eudemus that ‘the moon has her light from the sun’ is attempted in section III, see especially 123 below.

15 It was possible to hold such a theory in later antiquity, but only in virtue of a theory of light that was essentially Stoic and Aristotelean, see 123 below. Anaxagoras' moon was also described as διάπυρος and πεπυρωμένος: I shall try to show that in his case this was not incompatible with the moon's shining by reflection, 125–127 below.

16 Hippol. Ref. i 7.6 (DK 13A7). Aet. ii 16.6 (DK 13A14).

17 Cf. Aet. ii 23.1 (DK 13A15). Anaximenes' earth ‘rides’ or floats on a cushion of air, Hippol. Ref. i 7.4 (DK 13A7); [Plut.] Strom. 3 (DK 13A6); Aet. iii 15.8 (DK 13A20); cf. Arist. De caelo 294b13 ff. (DK 13A20).

18 Hippol. Ref. i 7.6 (DK 13A7). Cf. Arist. Meteor. 354a27–32 (DK 13A14).

19 Hippol. Ref. i 7.5 (DK 13A7). A slightly different form of words in Aet. ii 13.10 (DK 13A14). Tannery, , Pour l'histoire de la science hellène (2nd edn. by Diès, ), 157–8.Google Scholar

20 Burnet, , Early Greek Philosophy 478.Google Scholar Boll, ‘Finsternisse’, col. 2342. Heath, , Aristarchus of Samos 44.Google Scholar

21 Kirk, , Pres. Phil. 155–6.Google ScholarGuthrie, , History i 135 n. 1.Google Scholar

22 Aet. ii 29.6–7 (DK 59A77).

23 Kirk, loc. cit., argues that Diogenes' ἀφανεῖς λίθοι, used to explain meteors (Aet. ii 13.9 = DK 64A12) have been read back into Anaximenes. With Tannery's suggestion there is no need to suppose that the evidence has been falsified.

Gershenson and Greenberg argue the other way round from Kirk, , Anaxagoras and the Birth of Physics (New York, London, Toronto, 1964) 351 and 353.Google Scholar They assume that Anaximenes' γεώδεις φύσεις were used to explain eclipses, but suppose that the passage in Hippolytus has wrongly attributed this, as well as the correct explanation, to Anaxagoras. But they do not mention that the same double explanation is attributed to Anaxagoras by Aetius, specifically quoting Theophrastus, nor that the same duality recurs in accounts of Pythagoreans. Cf. 124 below.

24 The position of Anaximander's stars is determined by Hippol. Ref. i 6.5 (DK 12A11) and Aet. ii 15.6 (DK 12A18). Stobaeus' version of the entry in Aetius adds Metrodorus of Chios and Crates. For Leucippus, Diog. Laert. ix 33 (DK 67A1). Contrast the report on Democritus, Aet. ii 15.3 (DK 68A86). In a report on Parmenides, Aet. ii 15.4 (DK 28A40a), the stars are apparently put below the sun; but the difficulties in the arrangement of Parmenides' heavens are still unresolved, and it may be that this entry reflects misunderstanding of frr. 10–12, as Zeller, argues, Die Philosophie der Griechen, Teil i Abteilung 1 (6th edn. by Nestle, ) 714 n. 2.Google Scholar

It is significant that when Anaxagoras' ‘invisible bodies’ are first introduced by Hippolytus they are specifically said to be carried around with the sun and moon below the stars, Ref. i 8.6 (DK 59A42). In the account of eclipses they are said to be below the moon, Ref. i 8.9 (DK ibid.), Aet.ii 29.6–7 (DK 59A77).

25 The fact that Anaximenes' stars Hippol. Ref. i 7.6 (DK 13A7), need not show that they are further away from us than the sun, for their heat will presumably be proportionate to their size as well as to their distance. At Aet. ii 14.3 (DK 13A14), Anaximenes' stars are said to be fastened to the firmament; but mention of shows that the first part of the entry in fact belongs to Empedocles.

26 A more radical, and less likely, explanation would be that Eudemus or Dercyllides thought that the correct explanation of the moon's eclipse followed from the fact of the moon's derived light.

27 For the sun, ii 22.5 and ii 24.6 (not in DK), reconstituted from a single entry in Stobaeus by Diels, , Dox. Gr. 352 and 354.Google Scholar For the moon, ii 29.4 (DK 58B36).

28 This is Zeller's argument, Teil i Abteilung 1 532 n. 2. Simplicius writes, De caelo 515.25–26: The dubitative note in δύναται seems to me to tell against Guthrie, 's suggestion, History i 283 n. 1Google Scholar, that Alexander is here drawing on Aristotle's lost work on the Pythagoreans. For Alexander would presumably have accepted Aristotle's authority on such a point as conclusive. On one occasion when Alexander disagrees with a point in Aristotle's history of the Pythagoreans he is at pains not to blame Aristotle, but to suppose that Aristotle's account ap. Simpl. De caelo 392.12–32.

Stocks' Oxford translation, taken over by Guthrie, in his Loeb edition of the De caelo, seems to me to misplace the καί in the first sentence quoted in the text above: ‘Some of them even consider it possible …’ (my italics). The force of the καί would seem to be intensitive, ‘quite a number of such bodies’, or additive, ‘several such bodies as well (as the antichthon)’.

29 Burnet, , EGP 177 n. 1 and 272.Google Scholar Guthrie tentatively proposes this reconstruction in the second volume of his History 196–7, although in his first volume, 285–7, he supposes that the Pythagorean explanation of eclipses is later than Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Boll is inconsistent in another way. At one point he uses the evidence for Anaximenes to reject Anaxagoras' priority over the Pythagoreans, ‘Finsternisse’, col. 2343: ‘Die Annahme eines Einflusses des Anaxagoras auf diese Pythagoreer … ist angesichts des Anaximenes unnötig’. But in the preceding column he had rejected the evidence for Anaximenes: ‘Denn eine Erklärung der Mond-Finsternisse durch den Erdschatten ist bei des Anaximenes Vorstellung von der Erde als breiter Platte und von der nur seitlichen Bewegung der Gestirne kaum denkbar.’

30 This is Zeller's view, Teil i Abteilung 1 532 n. 2.

31 References 119 and 120–121 below.

32 Pp. 106–109 above.

33 Fr. 14, Adv. Col. 1116A (partly quoted DK 28B14). Fr. 15, De facie 929A–B (partly quoted DK 28B15). In these two places the implication is quite clear that the moon depends for her light upon the sun. In another place, (Quaest. rom. 282B (not in DK), fr. 15 is quoted with a slightly looser implication: (i.e. ) (fr. 15),

34 Fr. 145 Wehrli = Smyrnaeus, Theo, Expositio, 198.18–199.2Google Scholar Hiller (DK 13A16). The report of derived light for Anaximander in Diog. Laert. ii 1 (DK 12A1) is clearly false, since it conflicts with the account of the moon as an opening in a wheel of fire, Aet. ii 25.1, ii 29.1 (DK 12A22), cf. Diels, , Dox. Gr. 167Google Scholar, Parmenides Lehrgedicht (Berlin, 1897) 111.

35 Jointly, ii 28.5. For Parmenides alone, ii 26.2 (DK 28A42); cf. ii 30.4 (DK 28B21).

36 409A–B (DK 59A76). The passage has been quoted in my earlier article, 107 above.

37 Science hellène 215–19. Boll, ‘Finsternisse’, col. 2342, remarks against Tannery that the evidence for derived light before Parmenides is ‘absolut sicher’. Diels' attempted reconciliation of the evidence on Parmenides, seems to me unsatisfactory, Parmenides Lehrgedicht 110–12.Google Scholar In effect Diels simply applies to Parmenides what we are told of Anaxagoras and Democritus by Aristotle and Olympiodorus (roughly the passages cited below 126–127).

38 The Pres. Phil. 156 n. 2.

39 Aet. ii 28.1 (DK 21A43).

40 Guthrie, , History i 286Google Scholar, cf. ii 66. Heath, , Aristarchus 19 and 75–77.Google Scholar On the question of derived light, Guthrie speaks of ‘the doubtful exception of their (i.e. Anaxagoras' and Empedocles') near-contemporary Parmenides’. But if the supposed priority of Empedocles or Anaxagoras is to be breached by Parmenides, for whom there is good evidence of derived light, then there is no longer any reason, on grounds simply of priority, for refusing to allow the notion of derived light to other thinkers, as well as Parmenides, who are earlier than Empedocles and Anaxagoras.

41 At De recta ratione audiendi 45A–B (DK 28A16), Parmenides is listed with Archilochus, Phocylides (then still extant, see Pauly-Wissowa, vol. xx I col. 505), Euripides and Sophocles. At Quomodo adolescens, 16C (DK 28A15), he is listed with Empedocles (whom Plutarch knew well), Nicander and Theognis. In a quite different context, De Pythiae oraculis 402E (DK 11A1), designed to flatter Serapion by the antiquity of the tradition he follows of the poet philosopher, the list includes Orpheus and perhaps Thales.

42 i 3.4 (DK 13B2).

43 Γάρ is in Stobaeus and Eusebius, xv 27.2; it is lacking in Pseudo-Plutarch and Galen, see Dox. Gr. 357a6, b10, 627.19. Diels, following Karsten, (Parmenidis Eleatae carminis reliquiae [Amstelodami, 1835] 248 n. 80Google Scholar), dismisses the inclusion of γάρ as absurd, Prol. 62–63, and cites as ‘omnino contraria’, 62 n. 1, the Stoic idea that the sun is Diog. Laert. vii 144. But the connexion of thought implied in γάρ seems to me perfectly possible for the fifth century; and the argument of the Stoics, far from telling against it, seems to me to indicate a similar attitude of mind. (Cf. ‘Anaximander's measurements’, CQ, n.s. xvii [1967] 426. The point slightly affects the present argument, in that without γάρ the additional sentence is perhaps the more likely to be a simple repetition of the general attribution of derived light to Parmenides and others at ii 28.5.

44 I have added these observations on the quality of the evidence, partly in order to off-set the generalisations recently put forward by Dicks, in CQ n.s. ix (1959) 294–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and to a lesser extent in JHS lxxxvi (1966) 26–40. Dicks, writes, CQ 299Google Scholar, ‘… it can confidently be said that the chances that the original works of the earlier Pre-Socratics were still readily available to his (sc. Aristotle's) pupils, such as Theophrastus and Eudemus … are extremely small’. Again, CQ 301, ‘There is, therefore, no justification whatsoever for supposing that very late commentators, such as Proclus (5th century A.D.) and Simplicius (6th century A.D.), can possibly possess more authentic information about the Pre-Socratics than the earlier epitomators and excerptors …’

But Simplicius in fact quotes what appears to be a large part of Parmenides' Way of Truth, and the extent and style of his quotations from Empedocles show that he must have had access to a large part, if not the whole, of the physical poem: see Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle (Cambridge, 1968) 150–1.

I would not claim to distinguish between ‘available’ and ‘readily available’ in the case of Theophrastus and Eudemus. Apollodorus found Anaximander's work, Diog. Laert. ii 2 (DK 12A1); and Simplicius records a direct quotation from it, which is taken presumably from Theophrastus, , Phys. 24.18–21Google Scholar (DK 12A9 = Theophr. fr. 2, Dox. Gr. 476).

In this instance Dicks' judgment has perhaps been coloured by his belief that of the series of three pairs of figures offered by Tannery in his reconstruction of Anaximander, 's system, ‘only 27 in the series has any textual authority’, JHS 36.Google Scholar This is a thoughtless simplification of Kahn, , Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology 88 n. 2Google Scholar, cf. 68. In fact 27, 28 and 19 are recorded in the doxographical tradition, if Diels' text is to be trusted, Dox. Gr. 348a3–4, b2–3, 351a8, 355a18–19, b16–17. These figures, and the report that ‘the sun is equal to the earth’, Aet. ii 21.1 (DK 12A21), cf. Diog. Laert. ii 1 (DK 12A1), very possibly explain Eudemus' claim that Anaximander was concerned if we suppose that in Simplicius' rather ragged context, De caelo 471.2–11 (DK 12A19), this has become attached to planets instead of to sun, moon and stars. By insisting on the formal connexion with planets, Dicks finds the report from Eudemus, ‘nonsensical’, JHS 30.Google Scholar For Tannery's reconstruction of Anaximander, , see ‘Anaximander's Measurements’, CQ n.s. xvii (1967) 424–7.Google Scholar

45 ‘Finsternisse’, col. 2343.

46 Cf. 106–107 above.

47 ii 25.2 (DK 13A16); ii 25.3 (DK 28A42). Theodoretus makes a composite entry, and writes, more emphatically Graecarum affectionum curatio iv 23 (Dox. 356).

48 ii 7.1 (DK 28A37). A later and shorter entry, ii 20.8a (DK 28A43), says that the sun comes from the rarer and hotter part of the Milky Way, while the moon comes from the denser and colder part. Zeller, Teil i Abteilung 1 715 n. 1, and Guthrie, History ii 66, more or less despair over the discrepancies in these two reports and in those cited in the preceding footnote. They can best be reconciled if Theodoretus is taken as a rewriting of the (original of the) more specific entries in Stobaeus (the only representative here of Aetius), ii 25.2 and 3, and if these and the report at ii 20.8a are taken as equally one-sided versions of the exceptionally full statement at ii 7.1, where the moon is a mixture of fire and a colder element. It is not unnatural for the moon to be colder than the sun, if her light is derived light: cf. n. 54 below.

49 Anaxagoras' moon is also described as διάπυρος and πεπυρωμένος. I shall try to show that in his case this was compatible with a theory of reflection, 125–127.

Empedocles' moon is made of air solidified by the action of fire: Plut. De facie 922C (DK 31A60); Aet. ii 25.15 (DK ibid.); [Plut.] Strom. 10 (DK 31A30); cf. the account of the formation of the firmament, Aet. ii 11.2 (DK 31A51). There is no need to accept the inference of Aetius that it is composed of fire: that it is an inference is shown by ὥστε.

50 The position outlined in the last paragraph but one is more or less that taken by Tarán, , Parmenides, a text with translation, commentary, and critical essays (Princeton University Press, 1965) 245 nn. 39 and 40.Google Scholar But to achieve this position Tarán has to deny the reports of a fiery moon for Parmenides (in fact he offers the hesitant formula, that the moon is ‘most probably composed entirely or predominantly of air (Night)’, 244–5, my italics); to ignore the report of a fiery moon for Anaximenes; to relate Plato's remark in the Cratylus exclusively to the explanation of eclipses; and to ignore, or overlook, the specific mention of lighting in Plutarch and Hippolytus.

51 Ferguson suggests that derived light in Pseudo-Plutarch's report on Empedocles, , Stromateis 10Google Scholar (DK 31A30), could mean kindled light and not reflected light, ‘Two notes on the Preplatonics’ in Phronesis ix (1964) 99. But he rightly rejects this idea, without considering whether the distinction would explain the evidence for thinkers other than Empedocles.

52 The views are marked (i) and (ia), (ii) and (iia), to make it clear that there are two, and only two, principal theories, each of which is once repeated. Cherniss, in the Loeb edition of the De facie, gives separate attributions for glass and ice in (i), for (ii), and for (iia), thus suggesting that there are three (or four) different theories involved, and so confusing the structure of the piece.

Two of Cherniss' attributions are questionable. View (i) cannot be taken simply as Empedocles' view, for it is the theory that light shines through the moon, whereas Empedocles is introduced a moment later, 929E, to illustrate what is clearly intended to be a different view, that light is reflected from the moon. View (ii) is not adequately paralleled by the Pythagoreans mentioned in Aetius ii 29.4 (DK 58B36), for there the moon which is kindled and extinguished is not said to be kindled from the sun, which is an essential element in the theory which Plutarch speaks of.

The use of torches to describe kindling is interesting. Cleomedes, quoted 119 above, uses the same image to describe the ‘ancient’ theory of the moon's light.

53 Apart from the passages in Plutarch and Cleomedes, the idea of kindling seems to make a fleeting appearance in Capella, Martianus, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ii ii8Google Scholar, ‘quis Lunam flammet vel minuat radius’, if flammare has a literal sense, and possibly in Philo, De prov. ii 95 Aucher, ‘iubar Lunae … secundum perceptionem et redintegrationem lucis Solaris’, although on p. 92 the idea is of reflection. Reflection seems to be the usual view, although the phrasing is not always explicit: Geminus, Elementa astronomiae, chapters 9–11; Macrobius, , In somn. Scip., i 15.10–12Google Scholar, cf. i 19.8–14; Pliny, , NH ii 8.11Google Scholar; Basil, , Hexaemeron 189A.Google Scholar Possibly incensa and accensa should be taken literally in Cicero's brief descriptions of the moon at De nat. deor. i 8.7 and De Rep. vi 17.

54 This would explain why, although Parmenides' moon is fiery, it is apparently not as fiery as the sun, cf. n. 48 above.

55 Xenophanes: Aet. ii 13.14 (DK 21A38). Metrodorus: [Plut.] Strom. 11 (DK 70A4).

56 Aet. ii 23.4 (DK 64A13).

57 Aet. ii 29.4 (DK 58B36).

58 Diog. Laert. ix 92.

59 Ap. Smyrnaeus, Theo, Expositio 199.21–200.2Google Scholar Hiller.

60 Anaximander: Aet. ii 20.1, ii 21.1, ii 25.1 (DK 12A21 and 22); Hippol. Ref. i 6.5 (DK 12A11). Empedocles: Aet. ii 31.1 (DK 31A61). Cf. ‘Anaximander's Measurements’, CQ n.s. xvii (1967) 423–9. There was of course in the fifth century a difference of opinion over the position of the stars, see 116—117.

61 They do of course include the passage from Plutarch in their translation of the testimonia, 128, but Plutarch is not mentioned in the note to the passage quoted above, 474, nor in the brief discussion of the point later in the work, 351 and 353.

Plutarch and Hippolytus are cited above, in the discussion of Anaxagoras' priority, 106–107. For the passage from Aetius, ii 29.6–7 (DK 59A77), cf. 116 n. 22 above. In the second half of this entry the καί in may imply that the correct explanation as well as the additional bodies were attributed to Anaxagoras by Theophrastus. On the nature of this double entry cf. n. 13 above.

There are of course less ‘reliable’ reports in later writers, who associate Anaxagoras with the forecast or the explanation of an eclipse, e.g. Maximus, Valerius, Facta et dicta memorabilia viii 11Google Scholar, ext. 2 (not in DK), Philostratus, , Vita Apollonii i 2Google Scholar (DK 59A6).

62 ‘Larger’: Hippol. Ref. i 8.8 (DK 59A42); Diog. Laert. ii 8 (DK 59A1); Theodoret, . Graec. aff. cur. iv 22Google Scholar (Dox. Gr. 351). ‘Many times larger’: Aet. ii 21.3 (DK 59A72); Eus. Praep. Evang. xv 24.2 (cf. Dox. Gr. 351). Galen's Statement, that the sun is larger than the earth, Hist. philos. 63 (Dox. Gr. 626), although it may be true in substance, is probably in Galen simply a random error, arising from the fact that the preceding sentence, on Anaximander, twice makes a comparison of sun and earth. (The corresponding statement, that the moon is the same size as the Peloponnese, quoted by Plutarch, , De facie 932BGoogle Scholar, is missing from Diels-Kranz.)

63 Meteor. 345a25–31 (DK 59A80), discusseci more fully below, 126.

64 Teil i Abteilung 2, 1241–2. Zeller notes without comment, 1241 n. 3, the evidence for the priority of Anaxagoras' explanation of an eclipse.

65 See 93 n. 3 and 94–96 above.

66 The three statements come respectively from Achilles, Isag. 21 p. 49.4–7 Muller (DK 59A77); Aet. ii 25.9 (DK ibid.); and Aet. ii 30.2 (DK ibid.).

67 Meteor. 345a25–31 (DK 59A80). Repeated in Aet. iii 1.5 (DK 59A80); Diog. Laert. ii 9 (DK 59A1); Hippol. Ref. i 8.10 (DK 59A42). The idea that the light of the moon, or of the stars of the Milky Way, shines out brightly in the darkness, but is, or would be, overwhelmed by the light of the sun became fairly common. In one form or another it is attributed to Democritus, Arist. Meteor. 345a25–31 (DK 68A91); and to Antiphon, Aet. ii 28.4 (DK 87B27); and it reappears in Plutarch, 's De facie 933C–EGoogle Scholar; in Cleomedes, , De motu 180.2–13Google Scholar and 216.28–218.6 Ziegler. For the general theory of weak and strong lights, Arist. De caelo 305a9–13.

68 The smouldering light of the moon when she eclipses the sun is described in Larousse Encyclopedia of Astronomy (revd. edn. 1966) 159–60, with a colour photograph, facing p. 166.

69 Hippol. Ref. i 8.6 (DK 59A42). Aet. ii 13.3 (DK 59A71): I take to explain καταφλέξαντα as well as ἀναρπάσαντα. Diog. Laert. ii 12 (DK 59A1). For the motion of the moon as earth, see Plato, Apol. 26D (DK 59A35), and Achilles, hag, 21 p. 49.4–7 Muller (DK 59A77).

70 For the stars: Hippol. Ref i 8.7 (DK 59A42). For the moon: Aet. ii 30.2 (DK 59A77), cf. Hippol. Ref. i 8.9(DK 59A42).

71 Aet. ii 28.4 (DK 87B27). There is a somewhat similar theory of natural and derived light for the moon in Gregory of Nyssa, , Hexaem. 117 B–C.Google Scholar But here the moon's own light is suppressed not by the stronger light of the sun, but by the density of the moon's own nature:

72 The bodies ‘below the moon’ (cf. 116 above) may have been retained (from Anaximenes) to explain eclipses when the occulting body did not show any light of its own, or to explain the greater frequency of lunar over solar eclipses.

Gershenson, and Greenberg, , Anaxagoras 338–40Google Scholar, argue that the tradition of a fiery moon is wholly false, and arose ‘by generalizing from the sun to all the heavenly bodies’. The trouble with this argument is that it makes the process of generalisation go back at least to Aristotle, since Aristotle says that the stars of the Milky Way had a residual light of their own: but a generalising tradition of this kind would more naturally have arisen in a doxographical compilation, where the original work was no longer known, and where there would be pressure to make Anaxagoras' views conform to other accounts of a fiery moon.

73 Ferguson, , Phronesis ix (1964) 100Google Scholar, notes the ‘very strange picture’ which Plato gives of the Anaxagoreans; but he appears to think that Plato's account is incompatible with a theory of reflection.

It is interesting that the moon is in fact now thought to have some light of her own, see the report in The Times, 20 Nov. 1967, p. 6.