CHAP. 19. (21.)-OF THE DISTANCES OR THE STARS.
Many persons have attempted to discover the distance of
the stars from the earth, and they have published as the
result, that the sun is nineteen times as far from the moon,
as the moon herself is from the earth [Note]. Pythagoras, who
was a man of a very sagacious mind, computed the distance
from the earth to the moon to be 126,000 furlongs, that
from her to the sun is double this distance, and that it is
three times this distance to the twelve signs [Note]; and this was
also the opinion of our countryman, Gallus Sulpicius [Note].
