point of its course. In his retreat the earth seems locked up in sadness; in his return it appears exhilarated with the heavens. The moon, which, as mathematicians demonstrate, is bigger than half the earth, makes her revolutions through the same spaces[1] as the sun; but at one time approaching, and at another receding from, the sun, she diffuses the light which she has borrowed from him over the whole earth, and has herself also many various changes in her appearance. When she is found under the sun, and opposite to it, the brightness of her rays is lost; but when the earth directly interposes between the moon and sun, the moon is totally eclipsed. The other wandering stars have their courses round the earth in the same spaces,[2] and rise and set in the same manner; their motions are sometimes quick, sometimes slow, and often they stand still. There is nothing more wonderful, nothing more beautiful. There is a vast number of fixed stars, distinguished by the names of certain figures, to which we find they have some resemblance.
XLI. I will here, says Balbus, looking at me, make use of the verses which, when you were young, you translated from Aratus,[3] and which, because they are in Latin, gave me so much delight that I have many of them still in my memory. As then, we daily see, without any change or variation,
the rest[4]
Swiftly pursue the course to which they're bound;
And with the heavens the days and nights go round;
the contemplation of which, to a mind desirous of observing the constancy of nature, is inexhaustible.
The extreme top of either point is call'd
The pole.[5]
- ↑ In the zodiac.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ These verses of Cicero are a translation from a Greek poem of Aratus, called the Phænomena.
- ↑ The fixed stars.
- ↑ The arctic and antarctic poles.
duced by the Stoic as proofs of design and reason in the universe; and, notwithstanding the errors in his planetary system, his intent is well answered, because all he means is that the regular motions of the heavenly bodies, and their dependencies, are demonstrations of a divine mind. The inference proposed to be drawn from his astronomical observations is as just as if his system was in every part unexceptionably right: the same may be said of his anatomical observations.
