lace because, as they say, when
the sun is a great distance off, the paths on which these stars wander
are without light on account of that distance, and so the darkness
retards and hinders them. But I do not think that this is so. The
splendour of the sun is clearly to be seen, and manifest without any
kind of obscurity, throughout the whole firmament, so that those very
retrograde movements and pauses of the stars are visible even to us.

12. If then, at this great distance, our human vision can discern that
sight, why, pray, are we to think that the divine splendour of the stars
can be cast into darkness? Rather will the following way of accounting
for it prove to be correct. Heat summons and attracts everything towards
itself; for instance, we see the fruits of the earth growing up high
under the influence of heat, and that spring water is vapourised and
drawn up to the clouds at sunrise. On the same principle, the mighty
influence of the sun, with his rays diverging in the form of a triangle,
attracts the stars which follow him, and, as it were, curbs and
restrains those that precede, not allowing them to make progress, but
obliging them to retrograde towards himself until he passes out into
the sign that belongs to a different triangle.

13. Perhaps the question will be raised, why the sun by his great heat
causes these detentions in the fifth sign from himself rather than in
the second or third, which are nearer. I will therefore set forth what
seems to be the reason. His rays diverge through the firmament in
straight lines as though forming an equilateral triangle, that is, to
the fifth sign from the sun, no more, no less. If his rays were diffused
in circuits spreading all over the firmament, instead of in straight
lines diverging so as to form a triangle, they would burn up all the
nearer objects. This is a fact which the Greek poet Euripides seems to
have remarked; for he says that places at a greater distance from the
sun are in a violent heat, and that those which are nearer he keeps
temperate. Thus in the play of Phaethon, the poet writes: [Greek: kaiei
ta porro, tangythen d eukrat echei].

14. If then, fact and reason and the evidence of an ancient poet point
to this explanation, I do not see why we should decide otherwise than as
I have written above on this subject.

Jupiter, whose orbit is between those of Mars and Saturn, traverses a
longer course than Mars, and a shorter than Saturn. Likewise with