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This evening I would like to present some passages from Plutarch's treatise De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet, a work which made a deep impression on me when I first read it ten years ago. As you will see, it contains much food for thought!
3. Apollonides broke in and inquired what the opinion of Clearchus was. "You are the last person," I said, "who has any right not to know a theory of which geometry is, as it were, the very hearth and home. The man, you see, asserts that what is called the face consists of mirrored likenesses, that is images of the great ocean reflected in the moon,1 for the visual ray when reflected naturally reaches from many points objects which are not directly visible and the full moon is itself in uniformity and lustre the finest and clearest of all mirrors. Just as you think, then, that the reflection of the visual ray to the sun accounts for the appearance of the rainbow in a cloud where the moisture has become somewhat smooth and condensed, so Clearchus thought that the outer ocean is seen in the moon, not in the place where it is but in the place whence the visual ray has been deflected to the ocean and the reflection of the ocean to us.
So Agesianax again has somewhere said:
h)/ po/ntou me/ga ku=ma kata/ntia kumaino/ntov
dei/kelon i)nda/lloito puriflege/qontov e)so/ptrou2
4. Apollonides was delighted. "What an original and absolutely novel contrivance the hypothesis is," he said, "the work of a man of daring and culture; but how did you proceed to bring your counter-argument against it?" "In the first place," I said, "in that, although the outer ocean is a single thing, a confluent and continuous sea, the dark spots in the moon do not appear as one but as having something like isthmuses between them, the brilliance dividing and delimiting the shadow. Hence, since each part is separated and has its own boundary, the layers of light upon shadow, assuming the semblance of height and depth, have produced a very close likeness of eyes and lips. Therefore, one must assume the existence of several outer oceans separated by isthmuses and mainlands, which is absurd and false; or, if the ocean is single, it is not plausible that its reflected image be thus discontinuous. Tell me whether — for in your presence it is safer to put this as a question than as an assertion — whether it is possible, though the inhabited world has length and breadth, that every visual ray when reflected from the moon should in like manner reach the ocean, even the visual rays of those who are sailing in the great ocean itself, yes and who dwell in it as the Britons do, and that too even though the earth, as you say, does not have the relation of centre to the orbit of the moon. Well, this," I said, "it is your business to consider; but the reflection of vision either in respect to the moon or in general is beyond your province and that of Hipparchus too. Although Hipparchus was industrious, still many find him unsatisfactory in his explanation of the nature of vision itself, which is more likely to involve a sympathetic compound and fusion than any impacts and rebounds such as those of the atoms that Epicurus invented. Moreover, Clearchus, I think, would refuse to assume with us that the moon is a body of weight and solidity instead of an ethereal and luminiferous star as you say;3 and such a moon ought to shatter and divert the visual ray so that reflection would be out of the question. But if anyone dismisses our objections, we shall ask how it is that the reflection of the ocean exists as a face only in the moon and is seen in none of all the many other stars, although reason requires that all or none of them should affect the visual ray in this fashion. But let us have done with this; and do you," I said with a glance at Lucius, "recall to me what part of our position was stated first."
I'm sure you'll agree that this is a fascinating concept; moreover, it has the ring of truth to it! To entertain such a possibility necessarily entails several other disturbing ideas: that our existing assumptions about mapping the earth's surface are somehow distorted or false, and that the purported examinations and explorations of the Moon's surface are an elaborate hoax. There are even intimations here of the theory of Terra Concava—but that is a subject for some future posting!
De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet contains another passage (27-30) which I have never forgotten. It discusses (among other things) the Dark Side of the Moon and the Second Death:
[The Moon] cannot abandon Hades since she is the boundary of Hades, as Homer too has rather well put it in veiled terms:
a)ll’ ei)v )Hlu/sion pedi/on kai\ pei/rata gai/hv (Odyssey, iv.563)4
[But to Elysium's plain, the bourne of earth]
Where the range of the earth's shadow ends, this he set as the term and boundary of the earth. To this point rises no one who is evil or unclean, but the good are conveyed thither after death and there continue to lead a life most easy to be sure though not blessed or divine until their second death.
28. And what is this, Sulla? Do not ask about these things, for I am going to give a full explanation myself. Most people rightly hold man to be composite but wrongly hold him to be composed of only two parts. The reason is that they suppose mind to be somehow part of soul, thus erring no less than those who believe soul to be part of body, for in the same degree as soul is superior to body so is mind better and more divine than soul. The result of soul and body commingled is the irrational or the affective factor, whereas of mind and soul the conjunction produces reason; and of these the former is source of pleasure and pain, the latter of virtue and vice. In the composition of these three factors earth furnishes the body, the moon the soul, and the sun furnishes mind to man for the purpose of his generation even as it furnishes light to the moon herself. As to the death we die, one death reduces man from three factors to two and another reduces him from two to one. . . . (29) As to [the Moon’s] breadth or magnitude, it is not what the geometers say but many times greater. She measures off the earth's shadow with few of her own magnitudes not because it is small but she more ardently hastens her motion in order that she may quickly pass through the gloomy place bearing away the souls of the good which cry out and urge her one because when they are in the shadow they no longer catch the sound of the harmony of heaven. At the same time too with wails and cries the souls of the chastised then approach through the shadow from below. That is why most people have the custom of beating brasses during eclipses and of raising a din and clatter against the souls, which are frightened off also by the so‑called face when they get near it, for it has a grim and horrible aspect. It is no such thing, however; but just as our earth contains gulfs that are deep and extensive, one here pouring in towards us through the Pillars of Heracles and outside the Caspian and the Red Sea with its gulfs, so those features are depths and hollows of the moon. The largest of them is called "Hecate's Recess," ( ((Hka/thv mu=xon)5 where the souls suffer and exact penalties for whatever they have endured or committed after having already become Spirits; and the two long ones are called "the Gates" (ai( Pu/lai),6 for through them pass the souls now to the side of the moon that faces heaven and now back to the side that faces earth. The side of the moon towards heaven is named "Elysian plain" ( ((Hlu/sion pe/dion), the hither side "House of counter-terrestrial Persephone" (Fersefo/nhv oi=/kov a)nti/xqonov).
30. Yet not forever do the Spirits tarry upon the moon; they descend hither to take charge of oracles, they attend and participate in the highest of the mystic rituals, they act as warders against misdeeds and chastisers of them, and they flash forth as saviours manifest in war and on the sea.
Well, I hope you have found Plutarch to be interesting and entertaining, just as I have. The Classical authors are truly a treasure-trove of challenging ideas!
BELTRANO
NOTES:
1Similar theories are referred to by Aëtius, II.30.1 (Dox. Graeci, p361b 10‑13) = Stobaeus, Eclogae, I.26.4; Lucian, Icaromenippus, §20; Simplicius, De Caelo, p457, 15‑16. Such a theory is recorded and refuted by Ibn Al‑Haitham, the Arabic astronomer of the tenth and eleventh centuries (cf. Schoy's translation, pp1‑2 and 5‑6). Emperor Rudolph II believed the spots on the moon to be the reflection of Italy and the large Italian islands (cf. Kepler, Opera Omnia, II, p491 cited by Pixis, Kepler als Geograph, p102); and A. von Humboldt (Kosmos, III, p544 [Stuttgart, 1850] tells of a Persian from Ispahan who assured him that what we see in the moon is the map of our earth (cf. Ebner, Geographische Hinweise und Anklänge in Plutarchs Schrift, de facie, p13, n3). [footnote from Loeb edition]
2Greek Prosody is another topic which is very dear to me, and will no doubt be the subject of a number of future postings. For now, I will limit my discussion of it to a demonstration of how these two hexameters are to be pronounced:
h)/ po/ntou me/ga ku=ma kata/ntia kumaino/ntov
dei/kelon i)nda/lloito puriflege/qontov e)so/ptrou
[IY pon-TAW miy-gə KYUW-mə kə-TÆN-tiy-ə KYUW-may-NON-tos
DAY-kə-lon IN-dæl-LOY-tow pyuw-RIF-leg-ə-THON-tos ə-SOP-traw]
The six stressed syllables in each hexameter are indicated by capital letters. Every line is pronounced with the same six-beat rhythm; which makes it surprisingly easy to memorize long passages, and indeed technical matter was often summarized in hexameter verses for that very reason. It will come as no surprise that there is an English Pronunciation of Greek, parallel to the Latin pronunciation introduced in an earlier posting. There are a number of important differences between the two systems. For example, in Latin TI coalesces into a sibilant (e.g. ratio [REY-shiy-ow]), but this is not done in Greek. So the word kata/ntia would be pronounced in Latin as kə-TÆN-shiy-ə; but in Greek it is simply kə-TÆN-tiy-ə. The Greek vowel u is traditionally pronounced as [yuw], but there is an alternative pronunciation which makes it equivalent to i, so that it is pronounced as [iy] or [i] depending on its quantity. This latter pronunciation simply reflects the equivalency of I and Y in the pronunciation of Latin.
3Lamprias addresses Apollonides and Aristotle, for that the moon is an ethereal and luminiferous star is the Peripatetic theory (cf. the statement of Aristotle at 928E infra and the references in the note there) and that is why it is ascribed to Clearchus. Obviously then ὑμῖν of the MSS. must be an error and should be changed to ἡμῖν, for that the moon is a body with weight and solidity is the opinion of the Academy, i.e. of Lamprias, Lucius, and their circle (cf. 926C, 928C, 931B‑C infra). [footnote from Loeb edition]
4Pronunciation: a)ll’ ei)v )Hlu/sion pedi/on kai\ pei/rata gai/hv
[ÆL ays IY-luw-siy-ON piy-diy-ON kay PAY-rə-tə GAY-iyz]
5This is the Mare Imbrium, visible near the Moon’s northwest limb.
6Mare Nectaris and Mare Foecunditatis, the two finger-like channels visible near the Moon’s east limb.
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