Anaximenes believes that the mouth of the wheel, about which the moon
is turned, being stopped is the cause of an eclipse. Berasus, that it
proceeds from the turning of the dark side of the lunar orb towards us.
Heraclitus, that it is performed just after the manner of a boat turned
upside downwards. Some of the Pythagoreans say, that the splendor arises
from the earth, its obstruction from the Antichthon (or counter-earth).
Some of the later philosophers, that there is such a distribution of
the lunar flame, that it gradually and in a just order burns until it be
full moon; in like manner, that this fire decays by degrees, until its
conjunction with the sun totally extinguisheth it. Plato, Aristotle, the
Stoics, and all the mathematicians agree, that the obscurity with which
the moon is every month affected ariseth from a conjunction with the
sun, by whose more resplendent beams she is darkened; and the moon is
then eclipsed when she falls upon the shadow of the earth, the earth
interposing between the sun and moon, or (to speak more properly) the
earth intercepting the light of the moon.