The whole progeny of the ancient Daemons, at least in the Minds of the Vulgar, sprung out of Fear, and were supported by it: though notwithstanding, this Fear, when in a Being void of all true sense of Divine goodness, hath not escaped the censure of Superstition in Varro’s judgment, whose Maxim it was, as S. Austin tells us, Deum a religioso vereri, a superstitioso timeri: which distinction Servius seems to have made use of in his Comment upon Virgil, Aeneid 6, where the Poet describing the torments of the wicked in hell, he runs out into an Allegoricall exposition of all, it may be too much in favour of Lucretius, whom he there magnifies. His words are these, Ipse etiam Lucretius dicit per eos super quos jamjam casurus imminet lapis, Superstitiosos significare, qui inaniter semper verentur, et de Diis et Cœlo et locis superioribus male opinantur; nam Religiosi sunt qui per reverentiam timent.
But that we may the more fully unfold the Nature of this πάθος, and the effects of it, which are not alwaies of one sort, we shall first premise something concerning the Rise of it.
The Common Notions of a Deity, strongly rooted in Mens Souls, and meeting with the Apprehensions of Guiltiness, are very apt to excite the Servile fear: and when men love their own filthy lusts, that they may spare them, they are presently apt to contrive some other waies of appeasing the Deity and compounding with it. Unhallowed minds, that have no inward foundation of true Holiness to fix themselves upon, are easily shaken and tossed from all inward peace and tranquillity; and as the thoughts of some Supreme power above them seize upon them, so they are struck with the lightning thereof into inward affrightments, which are further encreas’d by a vulgar observation of those strange, stupendious, and terrifying Effects in Nature, whereof they can give no certain reason, as Earthquakes, Thundrings, and Lightnings, blazing Comets and other Meteors of a like Nature, which are apt to terrifie those especially who are already unsetled and Chased with an inward sense of guilt, and, as Seneca speaks, inevitabilem metum ut supra nos aliquid timeremus incutiunt. Petronius Arbiter hath well described this business for us,
From hence it was that the Libri fulgurales of the Romanes, and other such volumes of Superstition, swelled so much, and that the pulvinaria Deorum were so often frequented, as will easily appear to any one a little conversant in Livy, who everywhere sets forth this Devotion so largely, as if he himself had been too passionately in love with it.
And though as the Events in Nature began sometimes to be found out better by a discovery of their immediate Natural Causes, so some particular pieces of Superstitious Customs were antiquated and grown out of date (as is well observ’d concerning those Charms and Februations anciently in use upon the appearing of an Eclipse, and some others) yet often affrights and horrours were not so easily abated, while they were unacquainted with the Deity, and with the other mysterious events in Nature, which begot those Furies and unlucky Empusas ἀλάστορας καὶ παλαμναίους δαίμονας, in the weak minds of men. To all which we may adde the frequent Spectres and frightfull Apparitions of Ghosts and Mormos: all which extorted such a kind of Worship from them as was most correspondent to such Causes of it. And those Rites and Ceremonies which were begotten by Superstition, were again the unhappy Nurses of it, such as are well described by Plutarch in his De defect. Oracul., Ἑορταὶ καὶ θυσίαι, ὥσπερ ἡμέραι ἀποφράδες, καὶ σκυθρωπαί, ἐν αἷς ὠμοφαγίας, &c. Feasts and Sacrifices, as likewise observations of unlucky and fatall dayes, celebrated with eating of raw things, lacerations, fastings, and howlings, and many times filthy Speeches in their sacred rites, and frantick behaviour.
But as we insinuated before, This Root of Superstition diversely branched forth it self, sometimes into Magick and Exorcismes, other times into Pædanticall Rites and idle observations of Things and Times, as Theophrastus hath largely set them forth in his Tract περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας: in others it displayed itself in inventing as many new Deities as there were severall Causes from whence their affrights proceeded, and finding out many φρικτὰ μυστήρια appropriate to them, as supposing they ought to be worshipt cum sacro horrore. And hence it is that we hear of those inhumane and Diabolicall sacrifices called ἀνθρωποθυσίαι, frequent among the old Heathens (as among many others Porphyry in his De abstinentia hath abundantly related) and of those dead mens bones which our Ecclesiastick writers tell us were found in their Temples at the demolishing of them. Sometimes it would express itself in a prodigall way of sacrificing, for which Ammianus Marcellinus (an heathen Writer, but yet one who seems to have been well pleased with the simplicity and integrity of Christian Religion) taxeth Julian the Emperor for Superstition. Iulianus, Superstitiosus magis quam legitimus sacrorum observator, innumeras sine parsimonia pecudes mactans, ut æstimaretur, si revertisset de Parthis, boves iam defuturos: like that Marcus Caesar, of whom he relates this common proverb, οἱ λευκοὶ βέες Μάρκῳω τῷ Καίσαρι, ἄν συ νικήσῃς, ἡμεῖς ἀπωλόμεθα. Besides many other ways might be named wherein Superstition might occasionally shew it self.
All which may best be understood, if we consider it a little in that Composition of Fear and Flattery which before we intimated: and indeed Flattery is most incident to base and slavish minds; and when the fear and jealousy of a Deity disquiet a wanton dalliance with sin, and disturb the filthy pleasure of Vice, then this fawning and crouching disposition will find out devices to quiet an angry conscience within, and an offended God without, (though as men grow more expert in this cunning, these fears may in some degree abate). This the ancient Philosophy hath well taken notice of, and therefore well defin’d δεισιδαιμονία by κολακεία, and useth these terms promiscuously. Thus we find Max. Tyrius in his Dissert. 4 concerning the difference between a Friend and a Flatterer. ὁ μὲν εὐσεβής, φίλος θεῷ, ὁ δὲ δεισιδαίμων, κόλαξ θεοῦ· καὶ μακάριος ὁ εὐσεβής, ὁ φίλος θεοῦ, δυστυχὴς δὲ ὁ δεισιδαίμων. ὁ μὲν θαρσῶν τῇ ἀρετῇ, πρόσεισι τοῖς θεοῖς ἄνευ δέους· ὁ δὲ ταπεινὸς διὰ μοχθηρίαν, μετὰ πολλοῦ δέους, δύσελπις, καὶ δεδιὼς τοὺς θεοὺς ὥσπερ τοὺς τυράννους. The sense whereof is this, The Pious man is God’s friend, the Superstitious is a flatterer of God: and indeed most happy and blest is the condition of the Pious man, God’s friend, but right miserable and sad is the state of the Superstitious. The Pious man, emboldened by a good Conscience and encouraged by the sense of his integrity, comes to God without fear and dread: but the Superstitious being sunk and deprest through the sense of his own wickedness, comes not without much fear, being void of all hope and confidence, and dreading the Gods as so many Tyrants. Thus Plato also sets forth this Superstitious temper, though he mentions it not under that name, but we may know it by a property he gives of it, viz.: to colloque with Heaven, Lib. 10, de Legibus, where he distinguisheth of Three kinds of Tempers in reference to the Deity, which he then calls πάθη, which are, Totall Atheism, which he saies never abides with any man till his Old age; and Partial Atheism, which is a Negation of Providence; and a Third, which is a perswasion concerning the Gods ὅτι εὐπαράμυθοί εἰσι θύμασι καὶ εὐχαῖς, that they are easily won by sacrifices and prayers, which he after explaines thus, ὅτι παραιτητοί εἰσι τοῖσιν ἀδικοῦσιν, δεχόμενοι δῶρα, &c., that with gifts unjust men may find acceptance with them. And this Discourse of Plato’s upon these three kinds of Irreligious πάθη Simplicius seems to have respect to in his comment upon Epictetus, cap. 38, which treats about Right Opinions in Religion; and there having pursued the two former of them, he thus states the latter, which he calls ἀθεΐας λόγον as well as the other two, as a conceit θεοὺς παρατρέπεσθαι δώροις, καὶ ἀναθήμασι, καὶ κερματίου διαδόσεσιν, quod muneribus et donariis et stirpis distributione a sententia deducuntur, such men making account by their devotions to draw the Deity to themselves, and winning the favour of Heaven, to procure such an indulgence to their lusts as no sober man on earth would give them; they in the meanwhile not considering ὡς μεταμέλειαι, καὶ ἱκετεῖαι, καὶ εὐχαί, καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα, ἀναλογοῦσι τῷ κάλῳ, that Repentance, Supplications, and Prayers, &c., ought to draw us nearer to God, not God nearer to us; as in a ship, by fastning a Cable to a firm Rock, we intend not to draw the Rock to the Ship, but the Ship to the Rock. Which last passage of his is therefore the more worthy to be taken notice of, as holding out so large an Extent that this Irreligious temper is of, and of how subtil a Nature. This fond and gross dealing with the Deity was that which made the scoffing Lucian so much sport, who in his Treatise De Sacrificiis tells a number of stories how the Daemons loved to be feasted, and when and how they were entertained, with such devotions which are rather used Magically as Charms and Spells for such as use them, to defend themselves against those Evils which their own Fears are apt perpetually to muster up, and to endeavour by bribery to purchase Heaven’s favour and indulgence, as Juvenal speaks of the Superstitious Aegyptian,
Though all this while I would not be understood to condemn too severely all servile fear of God, if it tend to make men avoid true wickedness, but that which settles upon these lees of Formality.
To conclude, Were I to define Superstition more generally according to the ancient sense of it, I would call it Such an apprehension of God in the thoughts of men, as renders him grievous and burdensome to them, and so destroys all free and cheerfull converse with him; begetting in the stead thereof a forc’d and jejune devotion, void of inward Life and Love. It is that which discovers itself Pædantically in the worship of the Deity, in anything that makes up but onely the Body or outward Vesture of Religion; though then it may make a mighty bluster; and because it comprehends not the true Divine good that ariseth to the Souls of men from an internall frame of Religion, it is therefore apt to think that all its insipid devotions are as so many Presents offered to the Deity and gratifications of him. How variously Superstition can discover and manifest itself, we have intimated before: To which I shall only adde this, That we are not so well rid of Superstition, as some imagine when they have expell’d it out of their Churches, expunged it out of their Books and Writings, or cast it out of their Tongues, by making Innovations in names (wherein they sometimes imitate those old Caunii that Herodotus speaks of, who that they might banish all the forrein Gods that had stollen in among them, took their procession through all their Country, beating and scourging the Aire along as they went;) No, for all this, Superstition may enter into our chambers, and creep into our closets, it may twine about our secret Devotions, and actuate our Formes of belief and Orthodox opinions, when it hath no place else to shroud itself or hide its head in; we may think to flatter the Deity by these, and to bribe it with them, when we are grown weary of more pompous solemnities: nay it may mix it self with a seeming Faith in Christ; as I doubt it doth now in too many, who laying aside all sober and serious care of true Piety, think it sufficient to offer up their Saviour, his Active and Passive Righteousness, to a severe and rigid Justice, to make expiation for those sins they can be willing to allow themselves in.
ON THE FACE WHICH APPEARS ON THE ORB OF THE MOON
A DIALOGUE
INTRODUCTION
Plutarch’s Dialogue on The Face in the Moon is not a scientific treatise, and its author would have disclaimed any intention of writing to advance science. It is discussion for the sake of discussion, the ‘good talk’ of which Plutarch wished that Athens should have no monopoly, any more than she had when the Boeotian Simmias and Cebes were among the trusted friends of Socrates, or, later, when ‘plain living and high thinking’ could be exhibited in lofty perfection in the Theban home of Epaminondas. A mixed company, which includes an astronomer, another mathematician, a literary man, and professed philosophers (there is no Epicurean here), with Lamprias, Plutarch’s brother, for president, discusses the movements and physical nature of the moon, from many points of view. Reference is made throughout to a previous discussion at which Lamprias, and Lucius, another of the speakers, had been present, when a person called ‘Our Comrade’ had dealt faithfully with the Peripatetic view, endorsed by the Stoics, that the moon is not of substance like our earth, but is a fiery or starlike body. This discussion had wandered into mystical theories as to the moon’s office in the birth and death of human souls, and her connexion with ‘daemons’. Sylla has joined the present company with a myth to relate bearing on these deep subjects, which had come to him at Carthage as a traveller’s tale. Its production is delayed until the end of the Dialogue, which it closes after the manner of a Platonic myth; the phrases with which it is opened and dismissed may be compared with those of the Gorgias. This double device, of referring part of the matter to a former conversation (as the E at Delphi is a recollection of an old discourse by Ammonius), and part to a new and strange tale, skilfully relieves this elaborate Dialogue. Some difficulty is caused by the imperfect, or doubtful, condition of the text of the opening chapter, as no complete explanation seems to be given as to the place or time of the former discussion. Probably this abruptness is intentional, but the text requires careful attention.
Perhaps this Dialogue throws more light on the views about the solar system accepted or under discussion in the first century of our era than a scientific treatise could have done. No reference is made to the great astronomical work of Ptolemy, which belongs to the second century, and closed most questions until the sixteenth. The estimate, e.g. of the moon’s distance (56 earth’s radii) is not Ptolemy’s (59). Some of the geographical details, as that of the Caspian Sea, seem to show that Ptolemy’s geographical work was not known to the Author.
It may be useful to enumerate some of the simpler of the accepted views about the heavens :
(1) That the earth is a Sphere was known to Pythagoras and allowed by Plato (Phaedo 110 B), and affirmed by Aristotle, De Caelo, 2, 14, 297 b 18. The moon, and, according to Aristotle, the stars, are also spherical.
(2) That the moon derived her light from the sun was a discovery due to Anaxagoras (fifth century B.C.).
(3) The true cause of eclipses was known to the Pythagoreans, and is stated by Aristotle, and, with more precision, by Posidonius.
(4) The inclination of the equator to the sun’s path is stated by Oenopides of Chios (a little after Anaxagoras).
(5) That the moon revolves round the earth at a moderate distance is stated by Empedocles.
(6) The other planets (including the sun) revolve round the earth at a distance vastly less than that of the fixed stars. (No actual estimate of the distances or sizes is given even by Ptolemy, who is not able to state a parallax for any, or an angular diameter.)
(7) That the planets share in the (apparent) daily motion of the stars, and also have an (apparent) motion of their own in the reverse direction was held by Pythagoras.
All these refer to physical facts and can be stated without the use of mathematical language, though many of the discoverers were expert mathematicians. Gradually, and certainly from the time of the great astronomer Hipparchus (about 130 B.C.), attention came to be fixed upon the accurate mathematical interpretation of observed apparent facts; in a favourite phrase, the object was ‘to save the phenomena’, irrespective of physical and actual fact.
In the case of the moon, the two lines of inquiry are less sharply divided than in that of other bodies. Very correct statements as to her size and distance from the earth may be gathered from Plutarch’s Dialogue. A guess is even hazarded that she is lighter than the earth, bulk for bulk, because of the action of fire in the past.
The mathematical account of the movements of the moon has its history. As we have seen, it was early realized that she revolved round and near the earth in a circular orbit. Soon it appeared that there were irregularities in this movement. The ‘First Anomaly’, a difference of speed observed at different parts of the orbit, was well understood by Hipparchus. It could be expressed, so as to ‘save the phenomena’, by either of two methods, both resting on the assumption that no curve except a circle was admissible, and both superseding the ingenious but cumbrous arrangement of ‘concentric Spheres’ known to Aristotle. One was that of ‘movable eccentrics’, where the orbit of the planet was round a point outside the earth, itself shifting. The other, which prevailed, and was finally adopted by Ptolemy, was that of epicycles, circles described round points in the primary orbit, by means of which the planet’s motion could be retarded or quickened at will, and its position modified. By this device, the visible movement could be, and was, recorded with great accuracy, but sometimes at the expense of physical truth. Thus the epicyclic arrangement for the moon’s orbit involved, if closely looked into, the consequence that her distance from us at nearest must be half that at the farthest, and her angular diameter double! Kepler, after the work of a lifetime (1571-1630), discovered the cause of this ‘anomaly’ in the shape of the orbit, which is elliptical, not circular, and substituted ‘eccentricity’ for ‘anomaly’ as the key-word. Newton (1642-1727) proved that a body revolving round another must move in an ellipse, with the larger body at one focus. Thus the wheel had come full circle, and physical and mathematical inquiry met after two thousand years of separation. The ‘Second Anomaly’ due to the action of the sun (the ‘Evection’) was indicated by Hipparchus, worked out as a phenomenon by Ptolemy, and its physical cause explained by Newton. The inclination of the moon’s path to the sun’s was known to Hipparchus as 5°, and the recession of her nodes was familiar to him. A third anomaly now known as ‘Variation’ is instructive because its discovery has been claimed for an Arabian astronomer of about A.D. 1000. After an exhaustive discussion during the last century (1836-71), it seems to be proved that the claim rested upon a mistake, and that the sole credit is due to Tycho Brahe (see Dreyer, p. 252). In fact, whatever in astronomy does not belong to modern science is Greek, after allowing for what the Greeks may have learnt in early ages from Chaldaeans or Egyptians. The Romans contributed nothing, the Indians learnt much from scientific men who accompanied Alexander, and used it skilfully, but did not advance it. And the modern makes a really continuous whole with the ancient Greeks, for it is not only astronomy which should be considered, but the essential preliminaries, such as the study of the Conic Sections, which, in its geometrical form, is purely Greek.
One authority to whom Plutarch twice refers by name requires special mention. This was Aristarchus of Samos, who belongs to the middle or later part of the third century B.C. He is the author of a work on ‘The Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon’ which is extant. It was well edited by Wallis for the Oxford Press in 1688, and more recently (1913) and in a modern form, by Sir Thomas Heath, F.R.S., who has prefixed an invaluable history of astronomy prior to Aristarchus. The book is rigorously mathematical, and contains six ‘hypotheses’, and eighteen propositions deduced from them. The second of the hypotheses, ‘That the earth is in the relation of a point and centre to the sphere in which the moon moves’, is quoted by Plutarch, apparently as being accepted by Hipparchus. The sixth, ‘That the moon subtends one-fifteenth part of a sign of the Zodiac (i. e. 2°)‘, raises a curious point which is fully considered by Sir T. Heath. That Aristarchus should at any time have thus exaggerated (multiplied by four) a measurement which seems open to some sort of simple observation, and have based good work upon it, seems very strange, firstly, because he must have considered the matter, (since he is aware that the same figure may stand for sun and moon); and, secondly, because Archimedes (287-212 B.C.), whose knowledge and good faith are beyond question, says that ‘Aristarchus discovered that the sun appeared to be about one seven hundred and twentieth part of the circle of the Zodiac (30´)‘, which is roughly correct.[302]
The fourth hypothesis runs: ‘That when the moon appears to us halved, its distance from the sun is then less than a quadrant by one-thirtieth of a quadrant (i.e. is 87°).’ From this is directly deduced (Hypothesis 6 is not here used) Prop. 7, an elaborate proof that ‘the distance of the sun from the earth is greater than eighteen times, but less than twenty times, the distance of the moon from the earth’, quoted by Plutarch in c. 10. The fact assumed does not appear to be open to observation; perhaps Aristarchus, or a predecessor, arrived at it by comparing the average times taken by the moon over the first and second quarters of her orbit. The true (theoretical) figure is 89° 50´. The sequel is very interesting. Hipparchus, a century later, adopted the result in calculating the parallax of the sun, which he found to be 3´ of arc (more than twenty times too much). This was adopted by Ptolemy in the second century A.D., and remained the official estimate until nearly A.D. 1700, though both Hipparchus and Kepler had protested, the latter stating as his opinion that the parallax could not be greater than one minute of arc, or the distance less than twelve millions of miles. Shortly before A.D. 1700 improved knowledge of the orbit and distances of Mars enabled the sun’s parallax to be reduced to 9-1/2 seconds of arc, and his distance stated at eighty-seven millions of miles, which is not very inadequate. It was a great achievement of Aristarchus, though he led the world into error, to state a reasoned figure at all, and to think in such mighty units.
His cosmical speculation is even more daring. It is known to us from this Dialogue (c. 6) and also from Archimedes, who records it in his (extant) Arenarius without comment. Aristarchus proposed to ‘disturb the hearth of the universe’ by his hypothesis that the heaven of the stars is fixed, while the earth has a daily motion on her axis and an annual motion round the sun. It was a brilliant intuition, possible in an age of comparatively simple knowledge, which could not easily have been advanced when the complexity of the several orbits was increasingly realized (see Dreyer, pp. 147-8). Dr. Dreyer (p. 145) makes the interesting suggestion that Aristarchus took the idea from some early form of the system of ‘movable eccentrics’, and, further (p. 157), that if that system had prevailed against that of epicycles, it must have flashed, sooner or later, upon some bright mind, that there was one eccentric point, namely, one in the sun, central to the orbits of all the planets.
It is to be observed that ‘Heraclides of Pontus’ (at one time a pupil of Plato’s) discovered the movement of the two inner planets round the sun. It is possible (as contended by Sciaparelli) that he believed all the planets to move round the sun, and the sun round the earth, in fact anticipated Tycho Brahe. Further, there is a statement that he anticipated Aristarchus as to the movement of the earth; but Sir T. Heath, who examines the evidence very fully, concludes that the evidence has been misread. Aristarchus certainly contended for the diurnal rotation of the earth, but this was rejected by Hipparchus and passed out of account for many centuries.
The history of the emergence of the heliocentric theory has a curiously close counterpart in that of the circulation of the blood. Harvey communicated his discovery to the College of Physicians on April 17, 1616, but he had kept it back for twelve years out of deference to the great and deserved authority of Galen, which it was dangerous to dispute, as Copernicus held back his ‘Treatise of Revolutions’ for thirty years, because it was very dangerous, even for the nephew of a Bishop, himself the Canon of a cathedral far north of the Alps, to question the findings of Ptolemy. ‘Yet for years the profession had been in latent possession of a knowledge of the circulation. Indeed a good case has been made out for Hippocrates, in whose works occur some remarkably suggestive sentences’ (see The Growth of Truth, the Harveian Oration of 1906, by Sir William Osler, M.D., F.R.S.). Bacon, who ‘writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor’—i.e. seeks to eliminate error from facts stated, and then to apply the law (see De Morgan, Bundle of Paradoxes, p. 50)—, would have none of the Copernican hypothesis. Nor would Sir Thomas Browne, though he preferred Dr. Harvey’s discovery ‘to that of America’. But truth will out, at her own time and through the ministers of her choice.
Behind the horseplay of the Stoics and Academics, on the subject of the centre of the universe and the laws which light and heavy bodies obey, there seems to lie some real groping after a general cosmic law, such as gravitation. Thus the earth and the moon draw bodies, each from its own surface to its own centre, and if the earth draws the moon, it is as a part of herself, once ejected and now reclaimed.
There is no direct evidence of the time or place when this Dialogue is supposed to take place, nor of the date of its composition. Much of the matter is common to it with the Dialogue On the cessation of the Oracles, one passage of which has been thought (by Adler) to be an extract from it. Lamprias takes the principal place in both, and Plutarch is not present, at least under his own name. The solar eclipse mentioned in c. 19 as recent would give a clue if it could be identified. Ginzel (Spezieller Kanon) has selected three for special consideration, viz., those of April 30, A.D. 59, March 20, A.D. 71, and January 5, A.D. 75. By the kindness of J. K. Fotheringham, Esq., D.Litt., Fellow of Magdalen College, who has made the laborious computation, I am able to state the respective magnitude of these eclipses at Chaeroneia as 11·08, 11·82, 10·38 (totality = 12). Thus Ginzel’s preference for No. 2 is confirmed; it was there a large partial eclipse, and the time of greatest phase was 11 hours 4·1 minutes local solar time. Several stars would become visible, 66/67 of the sun’s diameter being obscured; a few might be visible during No. 1, none during No. 3.
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE
1. Sextius Sylla, the Carthaginian, mentioned in the Life of Romulus (c. 15) as ‘a man wanting neither learning nor ingenuity’, who had supplied Plutarch with a piece of archaeological information. Elsewhere (De cohib. ira, c. 1) he is addressed as ‘O most eager Sylla!’ In another Dialogue he declines to be led into a discussion on all cosmology by answering the question ‘whether the egg or the bird comes first?’ (Sympos. 2, 3).
He has a story, or myth, to tell about the moon, which he is impatient to begin. This story, which he had heard from a friend in Carthage, is mainly geographical in interest. The details remind us of those quoted from Pytheas about his journeys to Britain and the Northern Seas. The whole conception of the globe is clearly earlier than that of Ptolemy (see especially as to the Caspian Sea, c. 26). The myth also introduces us to the worship of Cronus as practised at Carthage, and connects it with the wonders of the moon, and her place in the heavenly system.
In c. 17 Sylla raises a good point, about the half-moon, which was being passed over.
2. Lamprias, a brother, probably an elder brother, of Plutarch directs the course of the conversation, and himself expounds the Academic view, referring to Lucius for his recollections of a recent discussion at which both had been present, when the Stoic doctrines on physics had been criticized.
In some of the Symposiacs and other dialogues Lamprias takes a similar place; in others both brothers take part. Lamprias probably died early.
‘Evidently a character, a good trencherman, as became a Boeotian, one who on occasion could dance the Pyrrhic war dance, who loved well a scoff and a jest ... and who, if he thrust himself somewhat brusquely into discussions which are going forward, was quite able to justify the intrusion.’—Archbishop Trench.
3. Apollonides, astronomer and geometrician; perhaps the latter would be the more correct designation. In another Dialogue (Sympos. 3, 4) a ‘tactician’ of the name appears.
As Apollonius, the great mathematician (living about 200 B.C.) was also a geometrician who contributed to astronomical theory, not himself an astronomer, it seems likely that the name Apollonides has been coined by Plutarch for ‘one of the clan of Apollonius’, i. e. a young professor of geometry. Apollondes is treated rather brusquely by Lamprias, certainly with less respect than Menelaus. He seems to have cast in his lot with the Stoics in their physical opinions.
4. Aristotle, a Peripatetic. Perhaps the name was given to him to mark the School to which he belonged. In the Dialogue On the Delays in Divine Punishment an ‘Epicurus’ is a representative Epicurean.
5. Pharnaces, a Stoic, who sturdily supports his physical creed against all comers.
6. Lucius, an Etruscan pupil of Moderatus the Pythagorean, spoken of in one place (Sympos. 8, 7 and 8) as ‘Lucius our comrade’. He is elsewhere reticent as to the inner Pythagorean teaching, but is courteous and ready to discuss ‘what is probable and reasonable’.
Kepler is inclined to complain of his professorial tone and longwindedness in the present Dialogue. This is hardly fair, as he is for the most part reporting a set discourse heard elsewhere, and that by request. Lamprias has to give him time to remember the points (c. 7). In c. 5 he asks that justice may be done to the Stoics. He associates himself with the Academics on physical matters.
7. Theon (see Preface, p. xii), represents literature (as he does in other Dialogues, notably in that on the E at Delphi). He is a welcome foil to the more severe disputants. In c. 24 he interrupts by moving the previous question—‘Why a moon at all?’ and is congratulated on the cheerful turn which he has given to the discussion. Theon may sometimes recall to readers of Jules Verne’s pleasant Voyage autour de la lune the sallies of Michel Ardan the poet.
8. Menelaus, a distinguished astronomer who lived and observed at Alexandria. Observations of his, which include some taken in the first year of Trajan, A.D. 98, are recorded by Ptolemy (Magna Syntaxis, 7, 3, p. 170) and other writers.
ANALYSIS
[The opening chapters are lost. There must have been an introduction of the speakers, with some explanation as to time and place, a reference to a set discussion at which some of the speakers had been present, and a promise of Sylla to narrate a myth, bearing upon the moon and her markings, which he had heard in Carthage. This conversation had taken a turn, prematurely as Sylla thinks, towards the mythical or supernatural aspects of the moon.] But see note (1) on p. 309.
c. 1. It is agreed that the current scientific or quasi-scientific views on the markings of the moon’s face shall be first considered, then the supernatural.
cc. 2-4. Lamprias mentions
(i) The view that the markings are due to weakness of human eyesight. This is easily refuted.
(ii) The view of Clearchus, the Peripatetic, that they are caused by reflexion of the ocean on the moon’s face. But ocean is continuous, the markings are broken; they are seen from all parts of the earth, including ocean itself (and the earth is not a mere point in space, but has dimensions of its own); and, thirdly, they are not seen on any other heavenly body.
c. 3. The mention of Clearchus brings up the view, adopted from him by the Stoics, that the moon is not a solid or earth-like body, but is fire or air, like the stars. This view had been severely handled in the former conference.
c. 6. Pharnaces complains that the Academics always criticize, never submit to be criticized. Let them first answer for their own paradox in confusing ‘up’ and ‘down’, if they place a heavy body, such as the moon is now said to be, above. Lucius retorts: ‘Why not the moon as well as the earth, a larger body, yet poised in space?’ Pharnaces is unconvinced.
cc. 7-15. To give Lucius time to remember his points, Lamprias reviews the absurd consequences from the Stoic tenet that all weights converge towards the centre of our earth. Why should not every heavy body, not earth only, attract its parts towards its own centre? Again, if the moon is a light fiery body, how do we find her placed near the earth and immeasurably far from the sun, planets, and stars? How can we assume that earth is the middle point of the Whole, that is, of Infinity? Lastly, allow that the Moon, if a heavy body, is out of her natural place. Yet why not? She may have been removed by force from the place naturally assigned to her to one which was better. Here the tone of the speaker rises as he lays down, often following the thought and the words of Plato’s Timaeus, the theory of creative ‘Necessity’ and ‘The Better’.
c. 16. Lucius is now ready to speak, but Aristotle intervenes with a reference to the view, held by his namesake, that the stars are composed of something essentially different from the four elements, and that their motion is naturally circular, not up or down. Lucius points out that it is degrading to the moon to call her a star, being inferior to the stars in lustre and speed, and deriving her light from the sun. For this, the view of Anaxagoras and of Empedocles, is the only one consistent with her phases as we see them (not that quoted from Posidonius the Stoic).
cc. 17, 18. To an inquiry from Sylla whether the difficulty of the half-moon (i. e. how does reflexion, being at equal angles, then carry sunlight to the earth, and not off into space beyond us?) had been met, Lucius answers that it had. The answer given was: (i) Reflexion at equal angles is not a law universally admitted or true; (ii) there may be cross lights and a complex illumination; (iii) it may be shown by a diagram, though this could not be done at the time (such a diagram is supplied by Kepler), that some rays would reach the earth; (iv) the difficulty arises at other phases also. He repeats the argument drawn from the phases as we see them; and ends with an analogy: Sunlight acts on the moon as it does on the earth, not as on the air; therefore the moon resembles earth rather than air.
c. 19. This is well received, and Lucius refers (a second analogy) to solar eclipses, and in particular to a recent one, to show that the moon, like the earth, can intercept the sun’s light, and is therefore, like it, a solid body. The fact that the track of the shadow is narrow in a solar eclipse is explained.
c. 20. Lucius continues his report, and describes in detail what happens in a lunar eclipse. If the moon, he concludes, were fiery and luminous, we should only see her at eclipse times, i. e. at intervals, normally of six months, occasionally of five.
c. 21. Pharnaces and Apollonides both rise to speak. Apollonides raises a verbal point about the word ‘shadow’; Pharnaces observes that the moon does show a blurred and fiery appearance during an eclipse, to which Lamprias replies by enumerating the successive colours of the moon’s face during eclipse, that proper to herself being dark and earth-like, not fiery. He concludes that the moon is like our earth, with a surface broken into heights and gullies, which are the cause of the markings.
c. 22. Apollonides objects that there can be no clefts on the moon with sides high enough to cast such shadows. Lamprias replies that it is the distance and position of the light which matter, not the size of objects which break it;
c. 23. And goes on himself to supply a stronger objection—that we do not see the sun’s image in the moon—and the answer. This is twofold: (a) general, the two cases differ in all details; (b) personal to those who, like himself, believe the moon to be an earth, and to have a rough surface. Why should we see the sun mirrored in the moon, and not terrestrial objects or stars?
c. 24. Sylla’s myth is now called for, and the company sits down to hear it. But Theon interposes: Can the moon have inhabitants or support any life, animal or vegetable? If not, how is she ‘an earth’, and what is her use?
c. 25. Theon’s sally is taken in good part, and gravely answered at some length by Lamprias.
c. 26. The mention of life on the moon calls up Sylla, who again feels that he has been anticipated. He begins his myth, heard from a stranger met in Carthage, who had himself made the northward voyage and returned. Once in every thirty years (or year of the planet Saturn) an expedition is sent out from Carthage to certain islands in the Northern Atlantic where Cronus (Saturn) reigns in banishment. The stranger had charged Sylla to pay special honour to the moon,
cc. 27-29. instructing him as to the functions of Persephone in bringing about the second death—the separation of mind from soul—which takes place on the moon, and the genesis of ‘daemons’,
c. 30. to whom are assigned certain functions on earth. Sylla commends the myth to his hearers.
OF THE FACE WHICH APPEARS
ON THE ORB OF THE MOON
I. Here Sylla said:[303] ‘All this belongs to my story, and comes |920 B| out of it. But I should like to ask in the first place whether you really backed on to those views about the moon’s face which are in every one’s hand and on every one’s lips.’ ‘Of course we did,’ I answered, ‘it was just the difficulty which we found in these which thrust us off upon the others. In chronic diseases, patients grow weary of the common remedies and plans of treatment, and turn to rites and charms and dreams. Just so in obscure and perplexing enquiries, when the common, received, familiar accounts are not convincing, |C| we cannot but try those which lie further afield; we must not despise them, but simply repeat to ourselves the spells which the old people used, and use all means to elicit the truth.
II. ‘To begin, you see the absurdity of calling the figure which appears in the moon an affection of our eyesight, too weak to resist the brightness, or, as we say, dazzled; and of not observing that this ought rather to happen when we look at the sun, who meets us with his fierce strong strokes. Empedocles has a pretty line giving the difference between the two:
Thus he describes the attractive, cheerful, painless quality of her light. Further, the reason is given why men of dim and weak eyesight do not see any distinct figure in the moon; |D| her orb shines full and smooth to them, whereas strong-sighted persons get more details, and distinguish the features impressed there with clearer sense of contrast. Surely the reverse should happen if it were a weakness and affection of the eye which produced the image; the weaker the organ the clearer should be the appearance. The very irregularity of the surface is sufficient to refute this theory; this image is not one of continuous and confluent shadow, but is well sketched in the words of Agesianax: |E|
For the shadowy parts really pass beneath the bright ones which they encircle, and in turn press and are cut off by them; thus light and shade are interwoven throughout, and the face-form |F| is delineated to the life. The argument was thought to meet your Clearchus also, Aristotle, no less unanswerably; for yours he is, and an intimate of your namesake of old, although he perverted many doctrines of the Path.’
III. Here Apollonides interposed to ask what the view of Clearchus was. ‘No man’, I said, ‘has less good right than you to ignorance of a doctrine which starts from geometry, |921| as from its native hearth. Clearchus says that the face, as we call it, is made up of images of the great ocean mirrored in the moon. For our sight[304] being reflected back from many points, is able to touch objects which are not in its direct line; and the full moon is of all mirrors the most beautiful and the purest in uniformity and lustre. As then you geometers think that the rainbow is seen in the cloud when it has acquired a moist and smooth consistence, because our vision is reflected on to the sun,[305] so Clearchus held that the outer ocean is seen |B| in the moon, not where it really is, but in the place from which reflexion carried our sight into contact with it and its dazzle. Agesianax has another passage: