Note 87 — BOOK II. AN ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD AND THE ELEMENTS.

Cicero, in his Timæus, uses the same phraseology; “Omne igitur cœlum, sive mundus, sive quovis alio vocabulo gaudet, hoc a nobis nuncupatum est,” § 2. Pomponius Mela’s work commences with a similar expression; “Omne igitur hoc, quidquid est, cui mundi cœlique nomen indideris, unum id est.” They were probably taken from a passage in Plato’s Timæus, “Universum igitur hoc, Cœlum, sive Mundum, sive quo alio vocabulo gaudet, cognominemus,” according to the translation of Ficinus; Platonis Op. ix. p. 302. The word cœlum, which is employed in the original, in its ordinary acceptation, signifies the heavens, the visible firmament; as in Ovid, Met. i. 5, “quod tegit omnia, cœlum.” It is, in most cases, employed in this sense by Lucretius and by Manilius, as in i. 2. of the former and in i. 14. of the latter. Occasionally, however, it is employed by both of these writers in the more general sense of celestial regions, in opposition to the earth, as by Lucretius, i. 65, and by Manilius, i. 352. In the line quoted by Cicero from Pacuvius, it would seem to mean the place in which the planets are situated; De Nat. Deor. ii. 91. The Greek word οὐρανὸς may be regarded as exactly corresponding to the Latin word cœlum, and employed with the same modifications; see Aristotle, De Mundo and De Cœlo, and Ptolemy, Mag. Const. lib. i. passim; see also Stephens’s Thesaurus, in loco. Aratus generally uses it to designate the visible firmament, as in l. 10, while in l. 32 it means the heavenly regions. Gesner defines cœlum, “Mundus exclusa terra,” and mundus, “Cœlum et quidquid cœli ambitu continetur.” In the passage from Plato, referred to above, the words which are translated by Ficinus cœlum and mundus, are in the original οὐρανὸς and κόσμος; Ficinus, however, in various parts of the Timæus, translates οὐρανὸς by the word mundus: see t. ix. p. 306, 311, et alibi.