On the Heavenly Bodies

Since the Sun is of a fiery nature, it grows hotter through its perpetual motion, by which it circles the globe in the space of one day and night. God established different courses, locations, and times for the Sun, lest its daily heat consume everything if it always lingered in one place. If the Sun remained fixed in the sky, all days and nights would be equal. The Sun, however, holds its path through the midday; when it has come to its setting in the west, it travels through unknown paths beneath the earth and returns again to the east.

Poets claim that the Sun is an eye, and that it is larger than the earth. Among the ancients, the Sun is figuratively depicted as a boy, because it rises daily and is born with new light. He is shown having a quadriga quadriga: a chariot drawn by four horses, often symbolizing the four seasons or the four parts of the day of horses and the outpouring of a biga biga: a two-horse chariot when he is driven with a rapid course through the ether. It is a fable that the Sun was once called Apollo or Titan original: "titana". Many have written about his son, Phaethon, who set the lands on fire while recklessly driving his father's chariot.

Luna, the Moon, is so named because she receives her light from the Sun and reflects what she has received. She is depicted as a maiden and has a biga drawn by oxen; for this reason, she moves in an oblique course, so that the Sun does not fall into the center of the earth and frequently suffer an eclipse eclipse: the obscuring of one celestial body by another; here, the author explains the moon's tilted orbit. It has been concluded by the wise that the Moon is the six-hundredth part of her own entire orbit, and that the orbit itself is a hundred times larger than the earth original: "tellure".