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Updated: June 14, 2025
I will set down presently the epistles themselves which he wrote to the generals concerning them, but will first produce the testimony of Polybius of Megalopolis; for thus does he speak, in the sixteenth book of his history: "Now Scopas, the general of Ptolemy's army, went in haste to the superior parts of the country, and in the winter time overthrew the nation of the Jews?"
By Saturday we had finished all the consecrations, and the oracle fixed the regeneration of Semiramis for the following Tuesday, in the hours of the sun, Venus, and Mercury, which follow each other in the planetary system of the magicians, as also in Ptolemy's.
Ptolemy's ingenuity, however, pointed out a thoroughly satisfactory method by which the times of sunset at two places could be compared. He was acquainted with the fact, which must indeed have been known from the very earliest times, that the illumination of the moon is derived entirely from the sun.
From the irregularities of the solar motion he soon found that this was the case, and that the motion was uniform about a point on the line from the sun to the centre of the earth's orbit, such that the centre bisected the distance from the sun to the "Equant"; this fully supported Ptolemy's principle.
"Common sense," he said, "tells me differently." "Common sense is a liar of the first magnitude," Judith said. "It has misled man ever since he first climbed down from the trees. It was common sense that inspired Ptolemy's theory of cosmogony. It was common sense that inspired the burning of Giordano Bruno...."
Ptolemy raised a large portion of the money required for his payments by confiscating the estates belonging to those friends of Berenice's government whom he ordered to be slain. It was said, in fact, that the numbers were very much increased of those that were condemned to die, by Ptolemy's standing in such urgent need of their property to meet his obligations.
Another point in which Ptolemy's system strongly influenced modern opinion was his departure from the previous assumption that the world was surrounded by the ocean, derived from Homer.
If it did not appear that a planet moved in a fixed circle, then the ready answer was provided by Ptolemy's theory that the circle in which the planet did move was itself in motion, so that its centre described another circle.
They knew how strong was his feeling of reverence and regard for Ptolemy, the King of Egypt, his father-in-law, and they accordingly forged a letter to him in Ptolemy's name, enjoining him to make peace with Antipater, and withdraw from Macedon.
Assuming this, it followed, in Ptolemy's opinion, and in that of those who came after him for fourteen centuries, that all the tracks of the heavenly bodies were in some way or other to be reduced to circles. Ptolemy succeeded in devising a scheme by which the apparent changes that take place in the heavens could, so far as he knew them, be explained by certain combinations of circular movement.
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