overed with a bright
cloud. Pythagoras, that the body of the moon was of a nature resembling
a mirror.

CHAPTER XXVI. OF THE SIZE OF THE MOON.

The Stoics declare, that in magnitude it exceeds the earth, just as the
sun itself doth. Parmenides, that it is equal to the sun, from whom it
receives its light.

CHAPTER XXVII. OF THE FIGURE OF THE MOON.

The Stoics believe that it is of the same figure with the sun,
spherical. Empedocles, that the figure of it resembles a quoit.
Heraclitus, a boat. Others, a cylinder.

CHAPTER XXVIII. FROM WHENCE IS IT THAT THE MOON RECEIVES HER LIGHT?

Anaximander thinks that she gives light to herself, but it is very
slender and faint. Antiphon, that the moon shines by its own proper
light; but when it absconds itself, the solar beams darting on it
obscure it. Thus it naturally happens, that a more vehement light puts
out a weaker; the same is seen in other stars. Thales and his followers,
that the moon borrows all her light of the sun. Heraclitus, that the
sun and moon are after the same manner affected; in their configurations
both are shaped like boats, and are made conspicuous to us by receiving
their light from moist exhalations. The sun appears to us more
refulgent, by reason it is moved in a clearer and purer air; the moon
appears more duskish, it being carried in an air more troubled and
gross.

CHAPTER XXIX. OF THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON.

Anaximenes believes that the mouth of the wheel, about which the moon
is turned, being stopped is the cause of an eclipse. Berasus, that it
proceeds from the turning of the dark side of the lunar orb towards us.
Heraclitus, that it is performed just after the manner of a boat turned
upside downwards. Some of the Pythagoreans say, that the splendor arises
from the earth, its obstruction from the Antichthon (or counter-earth).
Some of the later philosophers, that there is such a distribution of
the lunar flame, that it gradually and in a just order burns until it be
full moon; in like manner, that this fire decays by degrees, until its
conjunction with the sun totally extinguisheth it. Plato, Aristotle, the
Stoics, and all the mathematicians agree, that the obscurity with which
the moon is every month affected ariseth from a conjunction with the
sun, by whose more resplendent beams she is darkened; and the moon is
then eclipsed when she falls upon the shadow of the earth, the earth
interposing between the sun and moon, or (to