But if we wish to know a little more accurately the positions of sun and moon among the stars, we must carefully compare the passages bearing on this question. Commentators differ so much that while some think the sun’s annual motion is ignored, and it is assumed to be at the equinox all the time, others maintain that it was at the equinox on the first day and moved on through Aries at the rate of about one degree a day (as it should do, since there are 365 days in a year and 360° in the circumference of the sphere);[512] while others again say that it was merely somewhere in Aries from the beginning. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [512] Alfraganus, as we saw, gives the daily movement of the sun eastward in the zodiac as about 59 minutes of arc. (A degree contains 60 minutes). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ What are the actual indications of its position? No one questions that it was in Aries throughout the Vision, for this is often indicated, sometimes directly, as in _Inf._ i. 38-40, sometimes by mentioning Taurus as the sign following the sun,[513] or Pisces as the sign preceding.[514] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [513] _Purg._ xxv. 2, 3. [514] _Inf._ xi. 113; _Purg._ i. 21, xix. 4-6. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are four detailed descriptions:— (1) On the first morning, the sun rose among those stars which were with him at the Creation.[515] As we have seen, this may mean merely some point in Aries, or the first point of Aries, at which the sun was thought to have been placed when created. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [515] _Inf._ i. 38-40. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (2) On the seventh day it rose near a point where three crosses are formed by the intersection of four circles.[516] One naturally thinks of the horizon as one of these circles; the equator and ecliptic, whose intersection define the equinox, suggest themselves as two more; the fourth is doubtless the colure which passes through the equinoctial points and the poles, although curiously enough this is not mentioned by Ptolemy or Alfraganus, who only speak of the solstitial colure. Fig. 51 shows how the horizon makes a cross with each of the other three when the equinox is upon it. The sun is at the point of intersection when rising with the equinox, and it was _near_ there when it rose this morning—“quasi.” It was therefore near, but not exactly at the equinox, and we know that it was the vernal, not the autumnal equinox, from the many allusions to Aries. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [516] _Par._ i. 38, 39. ------------------------------------------------------------------------