Greek Texts & Translations

Time too is incorporeal, being the measure of the world's motion. And time past and time future are infinite, but time present is finite. They hold that the world must come to an end, inasmuch as it had a beginning, on the analogy of those things which are understood by the senses. And that of which the parts are perishable is perishable as a whole. Now the parts of the world are perishable, seeing that they are transformed one into the other. Therefore the world itself is doomed to perish. Moreover, anything is destructible if it admits of deterioration ; therefore the world is so, for it is first evaporated and again dissolved into water.

The world, they hold, comes into being when its substance has first been converted from fire through air into moisture and then the coarser part of the moisture has condensed as earth, while that whose particles are fine has been turned into air, and this process of rarefaction goes on increasing till it generates fire. Thereupon out of these elements animals and plants and all other natural kinds are formed by their mixture. The generation and the destruction of the world are discussed by Zeno in his treatise On the Whole, by Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics, by Posidonius in the first book of his work On the Cosmos, by Cleanthes, and by Antipater in his tenth book On the Cosmos. Panaetius, however, maintained that the world is indestructible.

The doctrine that the world is a living being, rational, animate and intelligent, is laid down by Chrysippus in the first book of his treatise On Providence, by Apollodorus in his Physics, and by Posidonius. 7.1.143 It is a living thing in the sense of an animate substance endowed with sensation ; for animal is better than non-animal, and nothing is better than the world, ergo the world is a living being. And it is endowed with soul, as is clear from our several souls being each a fragment of it. Boëthus, however, denies that the world is a living thing. The unity of the world is maintained by Zeno in his treatise On the Whole, by Chrysippus, by Apollodorus in his Physics, and by Posidonius in the first book of his Physical Discourse. By the totality of things, the All, is meant, according to Apollodorus, (1) the world, and in another sense (2) the system composed of the world and the void outside it. The world then is finite, the void infinite.

Of the stars some are fixed, and are carried round with the whole heaven ; others, the wandering stars or planets, have their special motions. The sun travels in an oblique path through the zodiac. Similarly the moon travels in a spiral path. The sun is pure fire : so Posidonius in the seventh book of his Celestial Phenomena. And it is larger than the earth, as the same author says in the sixth book of his Physical Discourse. Moreover it is spherical in shape like the world itself according to this same author and his school. That it is fire is proved by its producing all the effects of fire ; that it is larger than the earth by the fact that all the earth is illuminated by it ; nay more, the heaven beside. The fact too that the earth casts a conical shadow proves that the sun is greater than it. And it is because of its great size that it is seen from every part of the earth.

The moon, however, is of a more earthy composition, since it is nearer to the earth. These fiery bodies and the stars generally derive their nutriment, the sun from the wide ocean, being a fiery kindling, though intelligent ; the moon from fresh waters, with an admixture of air, close to the earth as it is : thus Posidonius in the sixth book of his Physics ; the other heavenly bodies being nourished from the earth. They hold that the stars are spherical in shape and that the earth too is so and is at rest ; and that the moon does not shine by her own light, but by the borrowed light of the sun when he shines upon her.

An eclipse of the sun takes place when the moon passes in front of it on the side towards us, as shown by Zeno with a diagram in his treatise On the Whole. 7.1.146 For the moon is seen approaching at conjunctions and occulting it and then again receding from it. This can best be observed when they are mirrored in a basin of water. The moon is eclipsed when she falls into the earth's shadow : for which reason it is only at the full moon that an eclipse happens [and not always then], although she is in opposition to the sun every month ; because the moon moves in an oblique orbit, diverging in latitude relatively to the orbit of the sun, and she accordingly goes farther to the north or to the south. When, however, the moon's motion in latitude has brought her into the sun's path through the zodiac, and she thus comes diametrically opposite to the sun, there is an eclipse. Now the moon is in latitude right on the zodiac, ^note when she is in the constellations of Cancer, Scorpio, Aries and Taurus : so Posidonius and his followers tell us.