28 SPECIAL RESULTS IN THE URANOLOGICAL 



first signification among the Greeks of set or fixed in the 

 crystal firmament, or according to the later and more Roman 

 interpretation of steadfast, resting, and immoveable. One 

 of these ideas necessarily implied and led to the other. In 

 Grecian antiquity (at least going back as far as Anaxi- 

 menes, who belonged to the Ionic school, or as the 

 Pythagorean Alcmseon), all the stars or heavenly bodies were 

 divided into moving (uarpa TrXavw/^va or TrXav^ra) and non- 

 moving stars (dTrXave'ig aartpeg or cnr\avij affrpa). ( 50 ) 

 Besides this latter generally employed term, which Macrobius 

 latinises in the Somnium Scipionis by Sphsera aplanes,( 51 ) 

 we find in Aristotle repeatedly (as if he wished to in- 

 troduce a new technical term) the name of ej^e^eVa aorpa, 

 instead of airXavij. ( 52 ) From this form of expression there 

 followed, with Cicero, sidera irifixa ccelo ; with Pliny, stellas 

 quas putamus affixas ; and with Manilius, even astra fixa, 

 just like our " fixed stars." ( 53 ) The idea of being fixed or 

 set in the solid sky, led to the secondary implied idea of 

 immobility, or ' { remaining fixed in one place " and thus, in 

 Latin versions, throughout the whole middle ages, the original 

 meaning of the word infixum or affixum sidus, was gradually 

 set aside, and the idea of immobility alone retained. We 

 find the impulse to this already given in the highly rhe- 

 torical passage of Seneca (Nat. Qusest. vii., 24), on the 

 possibility of discovering new planets : " credis autem in 

 hoc maximo et pulcherrimo corpore inter innumerabiles 

 stellas, qua? noctem decore vario distinguunt, quse aera 

 minime vacuum et inertem esse patiuntur, quinque solas 

 esse, quibus exercere se liceat ; ceteras stare Jixum et im- 

 mobilem populum ?" This "quiet^ immoveable people" is 

 nowhere to be found. 



