men tumbling off through the air and turning somersaults. Yet [Sidenote: 938] it is ridiculous to raise a discussion about their remaining there, if they can neither come into being nor subsist at all. When we see Egyptians and Troglodytes, over whose heads the sun stands for the space of one brief day at the solstice and then passes on, all but shrivelled up by the dryness of the air around them, is it likely, I ask you, that people in the moon can endure twelve summers in each year, the sun standing plumb straight above them at every full moon? Then as to winds and clouds and [Sidenote: B] showers, without which plants can neither receive nor maintain existence, it is out of the question to conceive of their being formed, because the surrounding atmosphere is too hot and too rare. For even here the highest mountain tops do not get our fierce and conflicting storms, the air being already in turmoil from its lightness escapes any such condensation. Or are we really to say that, as Athena dropped a little nectar and ambrosia into Achilles’ mouth when he was refusing nourishment, even so the moon, who is called and who is Athena,[355] feeds man by sending up ambrosia day by day, in which form old Pherecydes [Sidenote: C] thinks that the Gods take food! For as to that Indian root, of which Megasthenes tells us that men, who neither eat nor drink but are without mouths,[356] burn a little, and make a smoke, and are nourished by the smells, how is it to be found growing there if there is no rain on the moon?’ XXV. When Theon had finished: ‘Well and kindly done,’ I said, ‘to unbend our brows by your witty argument; it makes us bold in reply, since we have no very harsh or severe criticism to expect. It is a true saying that there is little to choose between those who are vehemently convinced in such matters and those who are vehemently offended at them and incredulous, and will not look quietly into the possibilities. To begin, supposing that men do not inhabit the moon, it does not follow [Sidenote: D] that she has come into being just for nothing. Why, our earth, as we see, is not in active use or inhabited in her whole extent; but a small part of her only, mere promontories or peninsulas which emerge from the abyss, is fertile in animals and plants; of the other parts, some are desert and unfruitful owing to storms and droughts, while most are sunk under the ocean. But you, lover and admirer of Aristarchus that you are, do not attend to Crates and his reading: _Ocean, the birth and being of us all, Both men and Gods, covers the most of earth._[357]