[footnote] *The remarkable passage in Plut., 'de plac. Philos.', ii., 13,
runs thus: "Anaxagoras teaches that the surrounding ether is a fiety
substance, which, by the power of its rotation, tears rocks from the earth,
inflames them, and converts them into stars." Applying an ancient fable to
illustrate a physical dogma, the Clazomenian appears to have ascribed the
fall of the Nem??an Lion to the Peloponnesus from the Moon to such a
rotatory or centrifugal force. (?®lian., xii., 7; Plut., 'de Facie in Orge
Lun??' c. 24; Schol. ex Cod. Paris., in 'Apoll. Argon.', lib. i., p. 498,
ed. Schaef., t. ii., p. 40; Meineke, 'Annal. Alex.', 1843, p. 85.) Here,
instead of stones from the Moon, we have an animal from the Moon! According
to an acute remark of B??ckh, the ancient mythology of the Nem??an lunar
lion has an astronomical origin, and is symbolically connected in chronology
with the cycle of intercalation of the lunar year, with the moon-worship at
Nem??a, and the games by which it was accompanied.
These views must not, therefore, be confounded with what is commonly termed
the telluric or atmospheric origin of meteoric stones, nor yet with the
singular opinion of Aristotle, which supposed the enormous mass of ?®gos
Potamos to have been raised by a hurricane.
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