d Venus sometimes delay in one sign for a good many
days, and at others advance pretty rapidly into another sign. They do
not spend the same number of days in every sign, but the longer they
have previously delayed, the more rapidly they accomplish their journeys
after passing into the next sign, and thus they complete their appointed
course. Consequently, in spite of their delay in some of the signs, they
nevertheless soon reach the proper place in their orbits after freeing
themselves from their enforced delay.

8. Mercury, on his journey through the heavens, passes through the
spaces of the signs in three hundred and sixty days, and so arrives at
the sign from which he set out on his course at the beginning of his
revolution. His average rate of movement is such that he has about
thirty days in each sign.

9. Venus, on becoming free from the hindrance of the sun's rays, crosses
the space of a sign in thirty days. Though she thus stays less than
forty days in particular signs, she makes good the required amount by
delaying in one sign when she comes to a pause. Therefore she completes
her total revolution in heaven in four hundred and eighty-five days, and
once more enters the sign from which she previously began to move.

10. Mars, after traversing the spaces of the constellations for about
six hundred and eighty-three days, arrives at the point from which he
had before set out at the beginning of his course, and while he passes
through some of the signs more rapidly than others, he makes up the
required number of days whenever he comes to a pause. Jupiter, climbing
with gentler pace against the revolution of the firmament, travels
through each sign in about three hundred and sixty days, and finishes in
eleven years and three hundred and thirteen days, returning to the sign
in which he had been twelve years before. Saturn, traversing the space
of one sign in twenty-nine months plus a few days, is restored after
twenty-nine years and about one hundred and sixty days to that in which
he had been thirty years before. He is, as it appears, slower, because
the nearer he is to the outermost part of the firmament, the greater is
the orbit through which he has to pass.

11. The three that complete their circuits above the sun's course do not
make progress while they are in the triangle which he has entered, but
retrograde and pause until the sun has crossed from that triangle into
another sign. Some hold that this takes p