OF THE TURNING AND RETURNING OF THE SUN, OR THE SUMMER AND WINTER
SOLSTICE.
Anaximenes thinks that the stars are forced by a condensed and
resisting air. Anaxagoras, by the repelling force of the northern
air, which is violently pushed on by the sun, and thus rendered more
condensed and powerful. Empedocles, that the sun is hindered from
a continual direct course by its spherical vehicle and by the two
circular tropics. Diogenes, that the sun, when it comes to its utmost
declination, is extinguished, a rigorous cold damping the heat. The
Stoics, that the sun maintains its course only through that space in
which its aliment is seated, let it be the ocean or the earth; by the
exhalations proceeding from these it is nourished. Plato, Pythagoras,
and Aristotle, that the sun receives a transverse motion from the
obliquity of the zodiac, which is guarded by the tropics; all these the
globe clearly manifests.