Note 684 — Chapter VI · COSMOGONY, COSMOLOGY, AND COSMOGRAPHY

Im. du monde, III, 16. Neckam (De nat. rer., I, 8), with whose text the Image du monde here corresponds, borrowed from Ptolemy certain details in regard to the relative sizes of sun, earth, planets, and stars. The sun is by far the largest body in the universe, 166 and a fraction times larger than the earth. Next after the sun rank fifteen of the largest fixed stars; Jupiter ranks in the third place, Saturn in the fourth, the remainder of the fixed stars in the fifth, Mars in the sixth, the earth in the seventh, Venus in the eighth, the moon in the ninth, and Mercury in the tenth. See Ptolemy, Almagest, V, 16.