If you look at the stars, cutting off the rays (as may be done by looking through a very small hole made with the extreme point of a very fine needle, placed so as almost to touch the eye), you will see those stars so minute that it would seem as though nothing could be smaller; it is in fact their great distance which is the reason of their diminution, for many of them are very many times larger than the star which is the earth with water.  Now reflect what this our star must look like at such a distance, and then consider how many stars might be added—­both in longitude and latitude—­between those stars which are scattered over the darkened sky.  But I cannot forbear to condemn many of the ancients, who said that the sun was no larger than it appears; among these was Epicurus, and I believe that he founded his reason on the effects of a light placed in our atmosphere equidistant from the centre of the earth.  Any one looking at it never sees it diminished in size at whatever distance; and the rea-

[Footnote 879-882:  What Leonardo says of Epicurus—­ who according to LEWIS, The Astronomy of the ancients, and MADLER, Geschichte der Himmelskunde, did not devote much attention to the study of celestial phenomena—­, he probably derived from Book X of Diogenes Laertius, whose Vitae Philosophorum was not printed in Greek till 1533, but the Latin translation appeared in 1475.]

880.

sons of its size and power I shall reserve for Book 4.  But I wonder greatly that Socrates

[Footnote 2:  Socrates; I have little light to throw on this reference.  Plato’s Socrates himself declares on more than one occasion that in his youth he had turned his mind to the study of celestial phenomena (METEWPA) but not in his later years (see G. C. LEWIS, The Astronomy of the ancients, page 109; MADLER, Geschichte der Himmelskunde, page 41).  Here and there in Plato’s writings we find incidental notes on the sun and other heavenly bodies.  Leonardo may very well have known of these, since the Latin version by Ficinus was printed as early as 1491; indeed an undated edition exists which may very likely have appeared between 1480—­90.

There is but one passage in Plato, Epinomis (p. 983) where he speaks of the physical properties of the sun and says that it is larger than the earth.

Aristotle who goes very fully into the subject says the same.  A complete edition of Aristotele’s works was first printed in Venice 1495-98, but a Latin version of the Books De Coelo et Mundo and De Physica had been printed in Venice as early as in 1483 (H.  MULLER-STRUBING).]