Note III.
Know, first, that heaven, and earth's compacted frame,
And flowing waters, and the starry flame,
And both the radiant lights, &c.—P. 416.
Principio cælum, et terras, camposque liquentes,
Lucentemque globum lunæ, Titaniaque astra, &c.
Here the sun is not expressed, but the moon only, though a less, and also a less radiant, light. Perhaps the copies of Virgil are all false, and that, instead of Titaniaque astra, he writ, Titaniaque, et astra; and according to these words I have made my translation. It is most certain, that the sun ought not to be omitted; for he is frequently called the life and soul of the world: and nothing bids so fair for a visible divinity to those who know no better, than that glorious luminary. The Platonists call God the archetypal sun, and the sun the visible deity, the inward vital spirit in the centre of the universe, or that body to which that spirit is united, and by which it exerts itself most powerfully. Now it was the received hypothesis amongst the Pythagoreans, that the sun was situate in the centre of the world. Plato had it from them, and was himself of the same opinion, as appears by a passage in the Timæus; from which noble dialogue is this part of Virgil's poem taken.