Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/78

 44 plint's natueal histoet, [Book II, on the latitude of the planets and the obliquity of the zodiac. It is through this belt that the stars which I have spoken of are carried, nor is there any part of the world habitable, ex- cept what lies under it^ ; the remainder, which is at the poles, being in a wild desert state. The planet Venus alone exceeds it by 2 degrees, which we may suppose to be the cause why some animals are produced even in these desert regions of the earth. The moon also wanders the whole breadth of the zodiac, but never exceeds it. Next to these the planet Mer- cury moves through the greatest space ; yet out of the 12 de- grees (for there are so many degrees of latitude in the zodiac^), it does not pass through more than 8, nor does it go equally tlfrough these, 2 of them being in the middle of the zodiac, 4 in the upper part, and 2 in the lower part^. Next to these the Sun is carried through the middle of the zodiac, winding unequally through the two parts of his tortuous circuit^. The star Mars occupies the four middle degrees ; Jupiter the middle degree and the two above it ; Saturn, like the refers iii the stoiy of Phaeton, where he is describing the daily path of the sun ; Metam, ii. 63-67. 1 " quam quod illi subjacet ;" under this designation the author obvi- ously meant to include the temperate zones, although it technically ap- plies only to the part between the tropics. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that modern discoveries have shown that this opinion respecting the Arctic zone is not strictly correct. 2 The breadth of the zodiac, which was limited by the ancients to 12 degrees, has been extended by the modern astronomers to 18, and wotdd require to be much farther extended to include the newly discovered planet. Herschel's Astronomy, § 254. 3 There is considerable difficulty in ascertaining the meaning of the terms employed by our author in describing the coiu'se of the planet Mercury tln-ough the zodiac; "medio ejus," "supra," and "infra." Hardouin's comment is as follows: "Duas zodiaci partes sen gradus pererrat, quum ipse per medium incedit signiferum : supra, quum deflectit ad Aquilonem, per quatuor ahas ejusdem partes vagatur : infra, quum descendit ad Austrimi, discedit duabus." Lemaire, ii. 271, 272. But Marcus has shown that the opinion of Hardoxiin is inadmissible and in- consistent with the facts ; Ajasson, ii. 338-341. He proposes one, which be conceives to be more correct, but we may probably be led to the con- clusion, that the imperfect knowledge and incorrect opinions of our au- thor on these subjects must render it impossible to afford an adequate explanation. appeUaient dragons les bracelets, les hausse-cols, les chainettes, et gene- rulement tout ce qui avait une figure armillaire ;" i. 79, 80.
 * " flexuoso dracommi meatu ;" Poinsinet remarks, " Les Grecs