c. 24. Sylla’s myth is now called for, and the company sits down to hear it. But Theon interposes: Can the moon have inhabitants or support any life, animal or vegetable? If not, how is she ‘an earth’, and what is her use?
c. 25. Theon’s sally is taken in good part, and gravely answered at some length by Lamprias.
c. 26. The mention of life on the moon calls up Sylla, who again feels that he has been anticipated. He begins his myth, heard from a stranger met in Carthage, who had himself made the northward voyage and returned. Once in every thirty years (or year of the planet Saturn) an expedition is sent out from Carthage to certain islands in the Northern Atlantic where Cronus (Saturn) reigns in banishment. The stranger had charged Sylla to pay special honour to the moon,
cc. 27-29. instructing him as to the functions of Persephone in bringing about the second death—the separation of mind from soul—which takes place on the moon, and the genesis of ‘daemons’,
c. 30. to whom are assigned certain functions on earth. Sylla commends the myth to his hearers.
OF THE FACE WHICH APPEARS
ON THE ORB OF THE MOON
I. Here Sylla said:[[303]] ‘All this belongs to my story, and comes |920 B| out of it. But I should like to ask in the first place whether you really backed on to those views about the moon’s face which are in every one’s hand and on every one’s lips.’ ‘Of course we did,’ I answered, ‘it was just the difficulty which we found in these which thrust us off upon the others. In chronic diseases, patients grow weary of the common remedies and plans of treatment, and turn to rites and charms and dreams. Just so in obscure and perplexing enquiries, when the common, received, familiar accounts are not convincing, |C| we cannot but try those which lie further afield; we must not despise them, but simply repeat to ourselves the spells which the old people used, and use all means to elicit the truth.
II. ‘To begin, you see the absurdity of calling the figure which appears in the moon an affection of our eyesight, too weak to resist the brightness, or, as we say, dazzled; and of not observing that this ought rather to happen when we look at the sun, who meets us with his fierce strong strokes. Empedocles has a pretty line giving the difference between the two:
The sun’s keen shafts, and moon with kindly beams.
Thus he describes the attractive, cheerful, painless quality of her light. Further, the reason is given why men of dim and weak eyesight do not see any distinct figure in the moon; |D| her orb shines full and smooth to them, whereas strong-sighted persons get more details, and distinguish the features impressed there with clearer sense of contrast. Surely the reverse should happen if it were a weakness and affection of the eye which produced the image; the weaker the organ the clearer should be the appearance. The very irregularity of the surface is sufficient to refute this theory; this image is not one of continuous and confluent shadow, but is well sketched in the words of Agesianax: |E|