93. The first thing we have to observe is that it is quite unjustifiable to regard these “crowns” as spheres. The word στέφαναι can mean “rims” or “brims” or anything of that sort, but it seems incredible that it should be used of spheres. It does not appear, either, that the solid circle which surrounds all the crowns is to be regarded as spherical. The expression “like a wall” would be highly inappropriate in that case. We seem, then, to be face to face with something of the same kind as the “wheels” of Anaximander, and it is obviously quite likely that Pythagoras should have taken this theory from him. Nor is evidence altogether lacking that the Pythagoreans did regard the heavenly bodies in this way. In Plato’s Myth of Er, which is certainly Pythagorean in its general character, we do not hear of spheres, but of the “lips” of concentric whorls fitted into one another like a nest of boxes.[470] Even in the _Timaeus_ there are no spheres, but bands or strips crossing each other at an angle.[471] Lastly, in the Homeric _Hymn to Ares_, which seems to have been composed under Pythagorean influence, the word used for the orbit of the planet is ἄντυξ, which must mean “rim.”[472] Footnote 470: _Rep._ x. 616 d 5, καθάπερ οἱ κάδοι οἱ εἰς ἀλλήλους ἁρμόττοντες; e 1, κύκλους ἄνωθεν τὰ χείλη φαίνοντας (σφονδύλους). Footnote 471: _Tim._ 36 b 6, ταύτην οὖν τὴν σύστασιν πᾶσαν διπλῆν κατὰ μῆκος σχίσας, μέσην πρὸς μέσην ἐκατέραν ἀλλήλαις οἷον χεῖ (the letter Χ) προσβαλὼν κατέκαμψεν εἰς ἓν κύκλῳ. Footnote 472: _Hymn to Ares_, 6: πυραυγέα κύκλον ἑλίσσων αἰθέρος ἑπταπόροις ἐνὶ τείρεσιν, ἔνθα σε πῶλοι ζαφλεγέες τριτάτης ὑπὲρ ἄντυγος αἰὲν ἔχουσι. So, in allusion to an essentially Pythagorean view, Proclus says to the planet Venus (h. iv. 17): εἴτε καὶ ἑπτὰ κύκλων ὑπὲρ ἄντυγας αἰθέρα ναίεις. The fact is, there is really no evidence that any one ever adopted the theory of celestial spheres at all, till Aristotle turned the geometrical construction which Eudoxos had set up as a hypothesis “to save appearances” (σῴζειν τὰ φαινόμενα ) into real things.[473] From that time forward we hear a great deal about spheres, and it was natural that later writers should attribute them to the Pythagoreans; but there is no occasion to do violence to the language of Parmenides by turning his “crowns” into anything of the sort. At this date, spheres would not have served to explain anything that could not be explained more simply without them. Footnote 473: On the concentric spheres of Eudoxos, see Dreyer, _Planetary Systems_, chap. iv. It is unfortunate that the account of Plato’s astronomy given in this work is wholly inadequate, owing to the writer’s excessive reliance on Boeckh, who was led by evidence now generally regarded as untrustworthy to attribute all the astronomy of the Academy to their predecessors, and especially to Philolaos.