VI. Here Pharnaces, while I was still speaking, broke in: ‘Round it goes again, the old scene-shifter of the Academy brought out against us; they amuse themselves with arguing against other people, but in no case submit to be examined on their own views, they treat their opponents as apologists, not accusers. I can speak for myself at any rate; you are not going to draw me on to-day to answer your charges against the Stoics, unless we first get an account of your conduct in turning the universe upside down.’ Lucius smiled: ‘Yes, my friend,’ he said, ‘only do not threaten us with the writ of heresy, such as Cleanthes used to think that the Greeks should have |923| had served upon Aristarchus of Samos, for shifting the hearth of the universe, because that great man attempted “to save phenomena” with his hypothesis that the heavens are stationary, while our earth moves round in an oblique orbit, at the same time whirling about her own axis. We Academics have no view of our own finding, but do tell me this—why are those, who assume that the moon is an earth, turning things upside down, any more than you, who fix the earth where she is, suspended in mid air, a body considerably larger than the moon? |B| At least mathematicians tell us so, calculating the magnitude of the obscuring body from what takes place in eclipses, and from the passages of the moon through the shadow. For the shadow of the earth is less as it extends, because the illuminating body is greater, and its upper extremity is fine and narrow, as even Homer,[[310]] they say, did not fail to notice. He called night “pointed” because of the sharpness of the shadow. Such, at any rate, is the body by which the moon is caught in her eclipses, and yet she barely gets clear by a passage equal to three of her own diameters. Just consider how many moons go to make an earth, if the earth cast a shadow as broad, at its shortest, as three moons. Yet you have fears for the moon lest she should tumble, while as for our earth, Aeschylus[[311]] has perhaps satisfied you that Atlas |C|
Stands, and the pillar which parts Heaven and Earth
His shoulders prop, no load for arms t’ embrace.
Then, you think that under the moon there runs light air, quite inadequate to support a solid mass, while the earth, in Pindar’s[[312]] words, is compassed “by pillars set on adamant”. And this is why Pharnaces has no fear on his own account of the earth’s falling, but pities those who lie under the orbit of the moon, Ethiopians, say, or Taprobanes, on whom so great a weight might fall! Yet the moon has that which helps her against falling, in her very speed and the swing of her passage round, as objects placed in slings are hindered from falling by the |D| whirl of the rotation. For everything is borne on in its own natural direction unless this is changed by some other force. Therefore the moon is not drawn down by her weight, since that tendency is counteracted by her circular movement. Perhaps it would be more reasonable to wonder if she were entirely at rest as the earth is, and unmoved. As things are, the moon has a powerful cause to prevent her from being borne down upon us; but the earth, being destitute of any other movement, might naturally be moved[[313]] by its own weight; being heavier than the moon not merely in proportion to its greater bulk, |E| but because the moon has been rendered lighter by heat and conflagration. It would actually seem that the moon, if she is a fire, is in need of earth, a solid substance whereon she moves and to which she clings, so feeding and keeping up the force of her flame. For it is impossible to conceive fire as maintained without fuel. But you Stoics say that our earth stands firm without foundation or root.’ ‘Of course,’ said Pharnaces, ‘it keeps its proper and natural place, namely the essential middle point, that place around which all weights press and |F| bear, converging towards it from all sides. But all the upper region, even if it receive any earth-like body thrown up with force, immediately thrusts it out hitherward, or rather lets it go, to be borne down by its own momentum.’
VII. At this point, wishing Lucius to have time to refresh his memory, I called on Theon: ‘Theon, which of the tragic poets has said that physicians
Purge bitter bile with bitter remedies?’
Theon answered that it was Sophocles.[[314]] ‘And physicians must be allowed to do so,’ I said, ‘we cannot help it. But philosophers must not be listened to, if they choose to meet paradoxes with paradoxes, and, when contending against strange views, to invent views which are more strange and wonderful still. |924| Here are these Stoics with their “tendency towards the middle”! Is there any paradox which is not implicit there? That our earth, with all those depths and heights and inequalities, is a Sphere? That there are people at our antipodes who live like timber-worms or lizards, their lower limbs turned upper-most as they plant them on earth? That we ourselves do not keep perpendicular as we move, but remain on the slant, swerving like drunkards? That masses of a thousand talents’ weight, borne through the depth of the earth, stop when they reach the middle point, though nothing meets or resists them; or, if mere momentum carry them down beyond the middle point, they wheel round and turn back of themselves? That |B| segments of beams[[315]] sawn off at the surface of the earth on either side, do not move downwards all the way, but as they fall upon the surface receive equal thrusts from the outside inwards and are jammed around the middle? That water rushing violently downwards, if it should reach this middle point—an incorporeal point as they say—would stand balanced around it for a pivot, swinging with an oscillation which never stops and never can be stopped? Some of these a man could not force himself |C| to present to his intellect as possible, even if untrue! This is to make
Up down, down up, where Topsy-Turvy reigns,[[316]]
all from us to the centre down, and all below the centre becoming up in its turn! So that if a man, by the “sympathy” of earth, were to stand with the central point of his own body touching the centre, he would have his head up and his feet up too! And if he were to dig into the space beyond, the down part of his body would bend upwards, and the soil would be dug out from above to below; and if another man could be conceived meeting him, the feet of both would be said to be up, and would really become so!
VIII. ‘Such are the monstrous paradoxes which they shoulder and trail along, no mere wallet, Heaven help us! but |D| a conjurer’s stock-in-trade and show-booth; and then they call other men triflers, because they place the moon, being an earth, up above, and not where the middle point is. And yet if every weighty body converges to the same point with all its parts, the earth will claim the heavy objects, not so much because she is middle of the whole, as because they are parts of herself; and the inclination of falling bodies will testify, |E| not to any property of earth[[317]], as middle of the universe, but rather to a community and fellowship between earth and her own parts, once ejected, now borne back to her. For as the sun draws into himself the parts of which he has been composed, so earth receives the stone as belonging to her, and drawn down towards herself; and thus each of such objects becomes united with her in time and grows into herself. If there is any body neither assigned originally to the earth, nor torn away from it, |F| but having somehow a substance and nature of its own, such as they would describe the moon to be, what is there to prevent its existing separately, self-centred, pressed together and compacted by its own parts? For it is not proved that earth is the middle of the universe, and, further, the way in which bodies here are collected and drawn together towards the earth suggests the manner in which bodies which have fallen together on to the moon may reasonably be supposed to keep their place with reference to her. Why the man who forces all earth-like and heavy objects into one place, and makes them parts of one body, does not apply the same law of coercion to light bodies, I cannot see, instead of allowing all those fiery structures to exist apart; nor why he does not collect all the stars into the same place, and hold distinctly that there must be a body common to all upward-borne and fiery units.