Anaximander says, that the sun is a circle eight and twenty times
bigger than the earth, and has a circumference very much like that of
a chariot-wheel, which is hollow and full of fire; the fire of which
appears to us through its mouth, as by an aperture in a pipe; and this
is the sun. Xenophanes, that the sun is constituted of small bodies
of fire compacted together and raised from a moist exhalation, which
condensed make the body of the sun; or that it is a cloud enfired. The
Stoics, that it is an intelligent flame proceeding from the sea. Plato,
that it is composed of abundance of fire. Anaxagoras, Democritus, and
Metrodorus, that it is an enfired stone, or a burning body. Aristotle,
that it is a sphere formed out of the fifth body. Philolaus the
Pythagorean, that the sun shines as crystal, which receives its splendor
from the fire of the world and so reflecteth its light upon us; so that
first, the body of fire which is celestial is in the sun; and secondly,
the fiery reflection that comes from it, in the form of a mirror; and
lastly, the rays spread upon us by way of reflection from that mirror;
and this last we call the sun, which is (as it were) an image of an
image. Empedocles, that there are two suns; the one the prototype, which
is a fire placed in the other hemisphere, which it totally fills, and
is always ordered in a direct opposition to the reflection of its own
light; and the sun which is visible to us, formed by the reflection of
that splendor in the other hemisphere (which is filled with air mixed
with heat), the light reflected from the circular sun in the opposite
hemisphere falling upon the crystalline sun; and this reflection is
borne round with the motion of the fiery sun. To give briefly the full
sense, the sun is nothing else but the light and brightness of that fire
which encompasseth the earth. Epicurus, that it is an earthy bulk well
compacted, with ores like a pumice-stone or a sponge, kindled by fire.