For the shadow of the cliff falls, it seems, on a certain brazen [Sidenote: 936] heifer over a stretch of sea of not less than seven hundred stades. Will you think then that the height which casts the shadow is the cause, forgetting that distance of the light from objects makes their shadows many times longer? Now consider the sun at his greatest distance from the moon, when she is at the full, and shows the features of the face most expressly because of the depth of the shadow; it is the mere distance of the light which has made the shadow large, not the size of the several [Sidenote: B] irregularities on the moon. Again, in full day the extreme brightness of the sun’s rays does not allow the tops of mountains to be seen, but deep and hollow places appear from a long distance, as also do those in shadow. There is nothing strange then if it is not possible to see precisely how the moon too is caught by the light, and illuminated, and yet if we do see by contrast where the parts in shadow lie near the bright parts. XXIII. ‘But here’, said I, ‘is a better point to disprove the alleged reflexion from the moon; it is found that those who stand in reflected rays, not only see the illuminated but also the illuminating body. For instance, when light from water [Sidenote: C] leaps on to a wall, and the eye is placed in the spot so illuminated by reflexion, it sees the three objects, the reflected rays, the water which caused the reflexion, and the sun himself, from whom proceeds the light so falling on the water and reflected. All this being granted and apparent, people require those who contend that the earth receives the moon’s light by reflexion, to point out the sun appearing in the moon at night, as he appears in the water by day when he is reflected off it. Then, as he does not so appear, they suppose that the illumination is caused by some process other than reflexion, and that, failing reflexion, [Sidenote: D] the moon is no earth.’