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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
1
495-98, 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).]
should have depreciated that solar body, saying that it was of the
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