Archimedes Texts

* Bandola that
end of a skeen
where with house
wives fasten their
hankes of yarn,
thread or silk.

The grand dif
ficulty in Coper
nicus his Doctrine,
is that which con
cerns the Phæno
mena of the Sun
and fixed stars.

* Pettine, it is
the stay in a Wea
vets Loom, that
permitteth no knot
or snarle to passe
it, called by them
the Combe of the
Loom.

SALV. These are scruples worthy of the ingenuity of Sagre
dus, and this doubt is so intricate, that even Copernicus himself
almost despaired of being able to explain the same, so as to
render it intelligible, which we see as well by his own confession
of its obscurity, as also by his, at two several times, taking two
different wayes to make it out. And, I ingenuously confesse that
I understood not his explanation, till such time as another me
thod more plain and manifest, had rendred it intelligible; and
yet neither was that done without a long and laborious applica
tion of my thoughts to the same.

SIMP. Aristotle saw the same scruple, and makes use there

of to oppose certain of the Ancients, who held that the Earth
was a Planet; against whom he argueth, that if it were so, it
would follow that it also, as the rest of the Planets, should have a
plurality of motions, from whence would follow these variati
ons in the risings and settings of the fixed stars, and likewise in
the Meridian Altitudes. And in regard that he propoundeth the
difficulty, and doth not answer it, it must needs be, if not im
possible, at least very difficult to be resolved.

Aristotles argu
ment against the
Ancients, who held
that the Earth
was a Planet.

SALV. The stresse and strength of the knot rendereth the
solution thereof more commendable and admirable; but I do
not promise you the same at this time, and pray you to dispense
with me therein till too morrow, and for the present we will go
considering and explaining those mutations and differences that
by means of the annual motion ought to be discerned in the fix
ed stars, like as even now we said, for the explication whereof
certain preparatory points offer themselves, which may facili
tate the answer to the grand objection. Now reassuming the
two motions ascribed to the Earth (two I say, for the third is
no motion, as in its place I will declare) that is the annual and

diurnal, the first is to be understood to be made by the centre of
the Earth in or about the circumference of the grand Orb, that
is of a very great circle described in the plain of the fixed and
immutable Ecliptick; the other, namely the diurnal, is made
by the Globe of the Earth in it self about its own centre, and
own Axis, not erect, but inclined to the Plane of the Ecliptick,
with the inclination of 23. degrees and an half, or thereabouts,
the which inclination is maintained all the year about, and that
which ought especially to be observed, is alwayes situate to
wards the same point of Heaven: in so much that the Axis of the

diurnal motion doth alwayes remain parallel to it self; so that
if we imagine that same Axis to be continued out until it reach
the fixed stars, whilst the centre of the Earth is encircling the
whole Ecliptick in a year, the said Axis describeth the super