Note 47 — Chapter VI · THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

Stob. i. 554 (Plut. Pl. ii. 26, 1). This statement, however, appears only to be true of the sun, to which, indeed, it is confined by Diog. 144. That the sun is much larger than the earth, Posidonius proved; not only because its light extends over the whole heaven, but also because of the spherical form of the earth’s shadow in eclipses of the moon. Diog. l.c.; Macrob. Somn. i. 20; Heracl. Alleg. Hom. c. 46; Cleomed. Met. ii. 2. According to Cleomed. p. 79, he allowed to it an orbit 10,000 times as large as the circumference of the earth, with a diameter of four million stadia. The Stoic, in Cic. N. D. ii. 40, 103, only calls the moon half that size; and Cleomed. p. 97, probably following Posidonius, calls it considerably smaller than the earth. The other stars, according to Cleomed. p. 96, are some of them as large as, and others larger than, the sun. Posidonius, according to Plin. Hist. N. ii. 23, 85, estimated the moon’s distance from the earth at two million, and the sun’s distance from the moon at 500 million stadia. He estimated the earth’s circumference at 240,000, according to Cleomed.; at 180,000 according to Strabo, ii. 2, 2, p. 95. ↑