Castigationes Plinianae et in Pomponium Melam

Annus Metonicus

Annus Maximus

Annus Mundanus

Endimion

From the ninth chapter.

"The nearest ignored star." I read "to be ignored" original: "ignorari". And below: "We are surely not ungrateful." The old reading has "grateful," that is, to Endymion, who was the first to have discovered the course of the Moon: that the gratitude of having benefited was not to be rendered to her, so that they might invent fables about him being captured by the love of the star. But what follows soon after is taken almost entirely from Seneca, in the third book of the Natural Questions. "How much better it is," he says, "to extinguish one's own evils than to pass on another's to posterity, how much better to celebrate the works of the gods than the robberies of Philip or Alexander, who, for the destruction of nations, were no less plagues to mortals than a flood or a conflagration." From the same ninth [chapter].

"In the conjunction indeed it is not seen because it returns all its captured light to the side from where it received it." I read "turned away" original: "auersa"; for "opposite" original: "aduersa" is full; those things which are not seen and which lie hidden we call "turned away," but those things which lie open and can be seen entirely are "opposite." Nor does Pliny generally name it otherwise; those things which the Greeks say are opposed "through the diameter," that is, through the line of the diameter. This also has the reasoning of a more remote doctrine handed down by Berosus: that the body of the Moon is a ball, half white and half blue, and in the conjunction it is seized and turned by the heat of the sun, and its shining part, by the property of its nature to draw light to light, is turned away from us, and its blue, that is, its lower part, is obscured because of the similarity of the air, not because it is dark, as Vitruvius says. Regarding this same thing, Apuleius in the God of Socrates, following the opinion of the Chaldeans, says that the Moon is seen as sharing a part of the light, and a part as void. From the same ninth chapter.

"Because sometimes they are seen as spotted by half the orb." It must be read "it is seen" original: "cernatur". "The Moon itself," he says, "taught, or—which is the same thing—was the teacher, that other stars also are fed by earthy moisture, since in its own middle orb dirt and spots are sometimes visited; for this in the others, even if it is not seen, is nevertheless an argument that those also, like the Moon, are refreshed by earthy vapor." The Peripatetics feel differently and attribute the spots of the Moon to the density of certain parts in it.

From the tenth chapter.

"But its own defects and those of the sun." I would prefer to read "of it," that is, of the Moon, rather than "its own." But perhaps we can also defend "its own." For the sense depends on that word which we brought forward just above. "Of all things," he says, "that could be foreknown in the sky, the Moon was the teacher," that is, it taught; therefore, if you say "the Moon shows its own defects and those of the Sun, existing as indicators of their magnitudes and their shadow," you have spoken nothing absurd or un-Latin. To these, add the words of Cato which Pliny also recites in the seventeenth book: "If the vineyard has grown, burn its trimmings." Apuleius, who says "they cultivate the sentiment, since there is no fruit in the wilderness, they go to steal someone else's." A little below: "They stood out." It must be written, as we have said, "to exist" original: "existere", that is, the defects of the Sun and Moon themselves send their magnitudes and shadows, so that the word "shadow" falls by paternal chance. For Cleomenes himself says, and a little below Pliny, and Macrobius in the Dream of Scipio, made manifest both the magnitude and the kind of shadow; for example, the image of a top original: "meta" when the Moon is blocked and eclipsed by the Earth. But a "meta" is the same as an inverted top, called "conos" by the Greeks; just as an upright top is called "calathos"; for the figure of a column that is cast down is called "cylindroides." From the same tenth chapter.

Meta

Turbo

Conos

Calathos

Cylindroides

"Nor should it exceed the latitude of the moon." Some read "altitude," since a little later he says: "No star obscures it in the same way. Also above: the Moon, he says, is pure and full of lasting light." But the old reading can nevertheless be preserved; for it is not entirely true that the Earth's shadow stops short of the Moon; but that it does not exceed its latitude, that is, the abacus and the orb of the body; and therefore he adds that others are not obscured in the same way, even if they arrive at the shadow of Mercury, as some have thought. What if the shadow could not exceed the altitude of the Moon, since it attacks with a point, the result would be that it would never be entirely eclipsed, but only the part that the tip and apex of the shadow would as if graze. And so it is not true concerning the altitude, just as it is still doubtful concerning the latitude itself, by which the Earth's shadow is not only covered, but it is established that it sometimes is [covered], according to whether the Moon has been more or less in its perigee or apogee. Why then does he say above the Moon that "all things are pure?" Surely because no other star can be eclipsed by the interposition of the earth: not Saturn, not Jupiter, not Mars. Because the Earth's shadow is consumed by space; not Mercury, which is never opposite the Sun; not Venus, for both reasons. And it can indeed happen that those also are obscured and eclipsed. But for us, and certainly in another way than the Moon. For just as the Moon is blocked by the Earth, so the other stars can be taken from us by the interposition of the Moon.

From the eleventh chapter.

"The entire sun could not be taken from the lands if the earth were larger than the moon." The most famous authors perhaps said this, but arguments indicate that the Moon is larger than the Earth by almost three and two-fifths parts. And Claudius Ptolemy and the entire following age sanctioned this with great consensus. Martianus also wanted the Earth to be larger than the Moon six times over. Cicero in the second book on the nature of the gods says: "The Moon, as the mathematicians show, is larger than half the Earth." But what is brought forward here in place of proof is a mere quibble; for no one admits that in a solar eclipse the entirety of the Earth is eclipsed at once, but elsewhere the whole, elsewhere half, and then through other portions: according to the situation of the places where the parallaxes, that is, the differences of our view, have been; and although I would have conceded that it is taken from the lands that are trodden by human footprint, it does not hold that it should be admitted for the whole Earth, since a fourth part of it is gathered, [and] the other three [are] either by waters or...