(5) Rivers take their being both from the rains and from the waters in
the earth; for the earth is hollow and has waters in its cavities. And
the Nile rises in summer owing to the water that comes down from the
snows in Ethiopia.[717]
(6) The sun and the moon and all the stars are fiery stones carried
round by the rotation of the aether. Under the stars are the sun and
moon, and also certain bodies which revolve with them, but are
invisible to us.
(7) We do not feel the heat of the stars because of the greatness of
their distance from the earth; and, further, they are not so warm as
the sun, because they occupy a colder region. The moon is below the
sun, and nearer us.
(8) The sun surpasses the Peloponnesos in size. The moon has not a
light of her own, but gets it from the sun. The course of the stars
goes under the earth.
(9) The moon is eclipsed by the earth screening the sun’s light from
it, and sometimes, too, by the bodies below the moon coming before it.
The sun is eclipsed at the new moon, when the moon screens it from us.
Both the sun and the moon turn in their courses owing to the repulsion
of the air. The moon turns frequently, because it cannot prevail over
the cold.
(10) Anaxagoras was the first to determine what concerns the eclipses
and the illumination of the sun and moon. And he said the moon was of
earth, and had plains and ravines in it. The Milky Way was the
reflexion of the light of the stars that were not illuminated by the
sun. Shooting stars were sparks, as it were, which leapt out owing to
the motion of the heavenly vault.
(11) Winds arose when the air was rarefied by the sun, and when things
were burned and made their way to the vault of heaven and were carried
off. Thunder and lightning were produced by heat striking upon clouds.
(12) Earthquakes were caused by the air above striking on that beneath
the earth; for the movement of the latter caused the earth which
floats on it to rock.
Footnote 714:
_Ref._ i. 8, 3 (_Dox._ p. 562).
Footnote 715:
This is an addition to the older view occasioned by the Eleatic denial
of the void.
Footnote 716:
The text here is very corrupt, but the general sense can be got from
Aet. iii. 16. 2.
Footnote 717:
The MS. reading is ἐν τοῖς ἄρκτοις, for which Diels adopts Fredrichs’
ἐν τοῖς ἀνταρκτικοῖς. I have thought it safer to translate the ἐν τῇ
Αἰθιοπίᾳ which Aetios gives (iv. 1, 3). This view is mentioned and
rejected by Herodotos (ii. 22). Seneca (_N. Q._ iv. 2, 17) points out
that it was adopted by Aischylos (_Suppl._ 559, fr. 300, Nauck),
Sophokles (fr. 797), and Euripides (_Hel._ 3, fr. 228).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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