BOOK II. VI. 28-32 



their fall that someone's life is being extinguished. 



There is no such close alliance between us and the 



sky that the radiance of the stars there also shares 



our fate of mortality. When the stars are believed Asirorumy. 



to fall, what happens is that owing to their being 



overfed with a draught of liquid they give back the 



surplus with a fiery flash, just as with us also we see 



this occur with a stream of oil when lamps are ht. 



But the heavenly bodies have a nature that is eternal 



— they interweave the world and are blended with 



its weft ; yet their potency has a powerful influence 



on the earth, indeed it is owing to the effects that they 



produce and to their brilliance and magnitude that 



it has been possible for them to become known with 



such a degree of precision, as we shall show in the 



proper place." Also the system of the revolutions 



of the sky will be more appropriately stated when we 



deal with geography,'' since it is entirely related to 



the earth ; only we must not postpone the dis- 



coveries that have been made as to the zodiac. 



Tradition says that Anaximander of Miletus in the 



fifty-eighth Olympiad '^ was the first person to dis- 



cover the obliquity of the zodiac, that is, to open the 



portals of science ; and that next Cleostratus 



explained the signs in it, beginning with the Ram 



and the Archer ; the firmament itself having been 



explained long before by Atlas. 



Let us now leave the frame of the world itself and The piand. 

 treat the remaining bodies situated between the sky 

 and the earth. The following points are certain: 

 (1) The star called Saturn's is the highest and conse- 

 quently looks the smallest and revolves in the largest 

 orbit, returning in thirty years at the shortest to its 

 initial station. (2) The motions of all the planets, 



