Res Gestae

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English translation, Vols. I-III. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; W. Heinemann, 1935-1940 (printing).

Then, proceeding to the greatest distance and attaining the fifth sign, she shows the figure called

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amphicyrtos,[*](The gibbous moon; ἀμφίκυρτος means curved on each side, gibbous. ) and has humps on both sides. But when she has taken a place directly opposite the sun she will gleam with full light, making her home in the seventh sign; and still keeping her place in that same sign, but advancing a little she grows smaller, the process which we call ἀπόκρουσις[*](Waning.) ; and she repeats the same forms as she grows old,[*](But in inverse order.) and it is maintained by the unanimous learning of many men that the moon is never seen in eclipse except at the time of her mid-course.[*](That is, at the full moon.)

But when we said that the sun had its course now in the ether and now in the world below,[*](That is, below our horizon and on the other side of the world.) it must be understood that the heavenly bodies (so far as the universe is concerned) neither set nor rise, but that they seem to do so to an eyesight whose fixed situation is on the earth; this is kept hanging in space by some inner force and in its relation to the universe is like a tiny point; and that now we seem to see the stars, whose order is eternal, fixed in the sky, and often through the imperfection of human vision we think that they leave their places. But let us now return to our subject.