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Cleomedes' Lectures on AstronomyA Translation of The Heavens$
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Cleomedes' Lectures on Astronomy: A Translation of The Heavens

Cleomedes and Lawrence Witmer

Print publication date: 2004

Print ISBN-13: 9780520233256

Published to California Scholarship Online: March 2012

DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520233256.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use.date: 17 May 2022

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Chapter:
(p.136) Chapter Four
Source:
Cleomedes' Lectures on Astronomy
Author(s):

Alan C. Bowen

Robert B. Todd

Publisher:
University of California Press
DOI:10.1525/california/9780520233256.003.0013

This chapter shows that the Moon is illuminated neither by inherent light, nor by reflection, but by the mingling of the Sun's light with the Moon's body. Several theories concerning the illumination of the Moon are presented. In addition, the impossibility of the Moon sending out light by reflection is outlined by arguments. The Sun is eclipsed through being obstructed by the Moon; certainly this happens only at their conjunction. Also, a solar eclipse is a condition affecting not the deity itself, but human's line of sight. A lunar eclipse, by contrast, is a condition affecting the deity itself, since the Moon, whenever it falls into the Earth's shadow, is deprived of the Sun's light and plunged into darkness.

Keywords:   Moon, Sun, solar eclipse, lunar eclipse, light, reflection, illumination

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