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Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3: Essays and Miscellanies

Plutarch · c. AD 1–120 (composed across the early Imperial period; exact dates vary by essay) primary

passage 78 of 555 · BOOK I.

COMES TO PASS THAT THE MOON APPEARS TO US TERRESTRIAL.

The Pythagoreans say, that the moon appears to us terraneous, by reason it is inhabited as our earth is, and in it there are animals of a larger size and plants of a rarer beauty than our globe affords; that the animals in their virtue and energy are fifteen degrees superior to ours; that they emit nothing excrementitious; and that the days are fifteen times longer. Anaxagoras, that the reason of the inequality ariseth from the commixture of things earthy and cold; and that fiery and caliginous matter is jumbled together, whereby the moon is said to be a star of a counterfeit aspect. The Stoics, that on account of the diversity of her substance the composition of her body is subject to corruption.

Empedocles declares, that the distance of the moon from the sun is double her remoteness from the earth. The mathematicians, that her distance from the sun is eighteen times her distance from the earth. Eratosthenes, that the sun is remote from the earth seven hundred and eighteen thousand furlongs.

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Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3: Essays and Miscellanies · Plutarch · 1–120