_which near the mid axle...._ For she often fails to clear even the shadow of earth, rising but little,[319] because the illuminating body is so vast. But so nearly does she seem to graze the earth and to be almost in its embrace as she circles round, that she is shut off from the sun by it unless [Sidenote: C] she rises enough to clear that shaded, terrestrial region, dark as night, which is the appanage of earth. Therefore I think we may say with confidence that the moon is within the precincts of earth when we see her blocked by earth’s extremities. X. ‘Now leave the other fixed stars and planets, and consider the conclusion proved by Aristarchus in his _Magnitudes and Distances_;[320] that the distance of the sun is to the distance of the moon from us in a ratio greater than eighteen to one, [Sidenote: D] less than twenty to one. Yet the highest estimate of the distance of the moon from us makes it fifty-six times the earth’s radius, and that is, even on a moderate measurement, forty thousand stades. Upon this basis, the distance of the sun from the moon works out to more than forty million three hundred thousand stades. So far has she been settled from the sun because of her weight, and so nearly has she approached the earth, that, if we are to distribute estates according to localities, the “portion and inheritance of the earth” invites the moon to join her, and the moon has a next claim to chattels and persons [Sidenote: E] on earth, in right of kinship and vicinity. And I think that we are not doing wrong in this, that while we assign so great and profound an interval to what we call the upper bodies, we also leave to bodies below as much room for circulation as the breadth from earth to moon. For he who confines the word “upper” to the extreme circumference of heaven, and calls all the rest “lower”, goes too far, and on the other hand he who circumscribes “below” to earth, or rather to her centre, is preposterous. On this side and on that the necessary interval must be granted,[321] since the vastness of the universe permits. Against the claim that everything after we leave the earth is “up” and poised on high, sounds the counterclaim that everything [Sidenote: F] after we leave the circle of the fixed stars is “down”!