Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​They say that the moon is more earth-like, inasmuch as it is also closer to the earth. These fiery bodies and the other stars are nourished, the sun being an intelligent kindling from the great sea, the moon from drinkable fresh waters, since it happens to be mixed with air and is close to the earth, as Posidonius says in the sixth book of the Physical Discourse, and the other stars from the earth. They hold that both the stars and the earth, which is motionless, are spherical. The moon does not possess its own light, but receives it from the sun, being illuminated by it. The sun is eclipsed when the moon obstructs it on the side facing us, as Zeno records in On the Whole.

​For it is seen passing under it at the conjunctions, concealing it and again moving past; and this is observed by means of a basin containing water. The moon, on the other hand, is eclipsed when it falls into the shadow of the earth; whence it is eclipsed only at the full moon, although it stands diametrically opposite to the sun each month, because, moving obliquely in relation to the sun, it varies in latitude, becoming either more northerly or more southerly. When, however, its latitude coincides with the solar path and the ecliptic (the central circle), and then it becomes diametrically opposite to the sun, then it is eclipsed; and its latitude coincides with the ecliptic in the Claws, Scorpio, Aries, and Taurus, as Posidonius and his followers say.

​God is an immortal, rational, perfect or intelligent animal in happiness, insusceptible to any evil, foreseeing the cosmos and the things in the cosmos; he is not, however, anthropomorphic. He is the demiurge of all things and as it were the father of all, both generally and in respect of that part of him which pervades all things, which is addressed by many names according to its powers. For they call him Dias because all things exist through him, and they call him Zen insofar as he is the cause of life or has passed through all living; Athena according to the extension of his commanding faculty into the ether, Hera according to its extension into the air, Hephaestus according to that into the crafting fire, Poseidon according to that into moisture, and Demeter according to that into earth; and similarly they assigned the other names, holding fast to a certain affinity.

​Zeno says that the substance of god is the whole cosmos and heaven, and likewise Chrysippus in the first book of On Gods and Posidonius in the first book of On Gods. Antipater in the seventh book of On the Cosmos says his substance is air-like; and Boethus in On Nature says that the substance of god is the sphere of the fixed stars. Nature they define at times as that which holds the cosmos together, at times as that which brings forth what is on earth. Nature is a self-moving disposition according to seminal principles, producing and holding together what comes from it within determinate times, and performing things such as those from which it was separated.

​Nature aims both at utility and at pleasure, as is evident from the creation of man. That all things happen according to fate is stated by Chrysippus in On Fate, Posidonius in the second book of On Fate, Zeno, and Boethus in the first book of On Fate. Fate is an interconnected cause of existing things, or the reason according to which the cosmos is conducted. Furthermore, they assert that divination in all its forms is real, if providence also exists; and they establish it as an art because of certain outcomes, as Zeno and Chrysippus say in the second book of On Divination, Athenodorus, and Posidonius in the second book of the Physical Discourse and in the fifth book of On Divination. Panaetius, however, says it has no real existence.