Book 10
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And the rising and setting of the sun, moon, and stars may be due to kindling and quenching,The opinion of Heraclitus (p. 32 B, 6 D) and Xenophanes, and Metrodorus of Chios. Servius, however (ad Verg. G. i. 249, Aen. iv. 584), attributes the theory to the Epicureans. provided that the circumstances are such as to produce this result in each of the two regions, east and west: for no fact testifies against this. Or the result might be produced by their coming forward above the earth and again by its intervention to hide them: for no fact testifies against this either. And their motionsCf. Lucr. v. 509 f. may be due to the rotation of the whole heaven, or the heaven may be at rest and they alone rotate according to some necessary impulse to rise, implanted at first when the world was made ...
1.93
and this through excessive heat, due to a certain extension of the fire which always encroaches upon that which is near it.From Lucr. v. 519 f. it is probable that words are lost from the text which ascribed these motions to the quest of fiery atoms by the heavenly bodies.
1.93
The turnings of the sun and moon in their course may be due to the obliquity of the heaven, whereby it is forced back at these times.Cf. Lucr. v. 614 f. Again, they may equally be due to the contrary pressure of the air or, it may be, to the fact that either the fuel from time to time necessary has been consumed in the vicinity or there is a dearth of it. Or even because such a whirling motion was from the first inherent in these stars so that they move in a sort of spiral. For all such explanations and the like do not conflict with any clear evidence, if only in such details we hold fast to what is possible, and can bring each of these explanations into accord with the facts, unmoved by the servile artifices of the astronomers.
