113. It will be observed that day and night have been explained without
reference to the sun. Day is produced by the light of the fiery diurnal
hemisphere, while night is the shadow thrown by the earth when the fiery
hemisphere is on the other side of it (fr. 48). What, then, is the sun?
The Plutarchean _Stromateis_[607] again give us the answer: “The sun is
not fire in substance, but a reflexion of fire like that which comes
from water.” Plutarch himself makes one of his personages say: “You
laugh at Empedokles for saying that the sun is a product of the earth,
arising from the reflexion of the light of heaven, and once more
‘flashes back to Olympos with untroubled countenance.’”[608] Aetios
says:[609] “Empedokles held that there were two suns: one, the
archetype, the fire in one hemisphere of the world, filling the whole
hemisphere always stationed opposite its own reflexion; the other, the
visible sun, its reflexion in the other hemisphere, that which is filled
with air mingled with fire, produced by the reflexion of the earth,
which is round, on the crystalline sun, and carried round by the motion
of the fiery hemisphere. Or, to sum it up shortly, the sun is a
reflexion of the terrestrial fire.”
Footnote 606:
Arist. _de Caelo_, Β, 13. 295 a 16 (R. P. 170 b). The experiment with
τὸ ἐν τοῖς κυάθοις ὕδωρ, which κύκλῳ τοῦ κυάθου φερομένου πολλάκις
κάτω τοῦ χαλκοῦ γινόμενον ὅμως οὐ φέρεται κάτω, reminds us of the
experiment with the _klepsydra_ in fr. 100.
Footnote 607:
[Plut.] _Strom._ fr. 10 (_Dox._ p. 582, 11; R. P. 170 c).
Footnote 608:
Plut. _de Pyth. Or._ 400 b (R. P. 170 c). We must keep the MS. reading
περὶ γῆν with Bernardakis and Diels. The reading περιαυγῆ in R. P. is
a conjecture of Wyttenbach’s; but cf. Aet. ii. 20, 13, quoted in the
next note.
Footnote 609:
Aet. ii. 20, 13 (_Dox._ p. 350), Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δύο ἡλίους· τὸν μὲν
ἀρχέτυπον, πῦρ ὂν ἐν τῷ ἑτέρῳ ἡμισφαιρίῳ τοῦ κόσμου, πεπληρωκὸς τὸ
ἡμισφαίριον, αἰεὶ κατ’ ἀντικρὺ τῇ ἀνταυγείᾳ ἑαυτοῦ τεταγμένον· τὸν δὲ
φαινόμενον, ἀνταύγειαν ἐν τῷ ἑτέρῳ ἡμισφαιρίῳ τῷ τοῦ ἀέρος τοῦ
θερμομιγοῦς πεπληρωμένῳ, ἀπὸ κυκλοτεροῦς τῆς γῆς κατ’ ἀνάκλασιν
γιγνομένην εἰς τὸν ἥλιον τὸν κρυσταλλοειδῆ, συμπεριελκομένην δὲ τῇ
κινήσει τοῦ πυρίνου. ὡς δὲ βραχέως εἰρῆσθαι συντεμόντα, ἀνταύγειαν
εἶναι τοῦ περὶ τὴν γὴν πυρὸς τὸν ἥλιον.
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