404 COSMOS. 



move the Moon, the Sun, and five other stars, which have 

 received the name of planets; the whole, therefore, in seven 

 revolutions." 3 In the old Pythagorean representation of the 

 celestial system, according- to Philolaus, the five planets were 

 mentioned in a similar manner among the ten deified bodies 

 which revolve round the central fire (the focus of the 

 universe, etrrta) " immediately beneath the region of fixed 

 stars ;' ?4 these were succeeded by the Sun, Moon, Earth, 

 and the av-iyOuv (the anti-Earth). Even Ptolemy always 

 speaks of only five planets. The enumeration of the 

 planets in systems of seven, as Julius Firmicus distri- 

 buted them among the decani, 5 as they are represented 

 in the zodiacal circle of Bianchini (probably of the third 

 century after Christ), examined by myself elsewhere, 6 and 

 as they are met with in the Egyptian monuments of the 

 time of the Ca3sars, does not belong to the ancient astronomy, 

 but to the subsequent epochs, in which astrological chimeras 

 had become universally diffused. 7 We must not be surprised 



3 Plato, in the Timceus, p. 38, Steph. Davis's translation, 

 ed. Bohn, p. 342. 



4 Bockh, de Platonico systemate ccclestium globorum et de 

 vera indole astronomies Philolaicce, p. xvii., and the same in 

 Philolaus, 1819, p. 99. 



5 Jul. Firmicus Maternus, Astron., libriviii. (ed. Pruckner, 

 Basil, 1551), lib. ii. cap. 4, of the time of Constantine the 

 Great. 



6 Humboldt, Momimens des peuples indigenes de I* Ameriqiie 9 

 vol. ii. pp. 42-49. I have already directed attention in 1812 

 to the analogy between the zodiac of Bianchini and that of 

 Dendera. Compare Letronne, Observations critiques sur les 

 representations zodlacales, p. 97; and Lepsius, Chronologic 

 tier JEgypter, 1849, p. 80. 



7 Letromie, Sur I Origins du Zodiaque grec. p. 29. Lep- 

 sius, Chronol. der JEyypt., p. 83. Letronne opposes the old 

 Chaldean origin of the planetary week on account of the 

 number seven. 



