OF THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON.
Anaximenes believes that the mouth of the hollow wheel, about which
the moon is turned, being stopped is the cause of an eclipse. Berosus,
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 in this, 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.