At some time around 200 A.D., the Stoic philosopher and teacher Cleomedes delivered a set of lectures on elementary astronomy as part of a complete introduction to Stoicism for his students. The result was The Heavens (Caelestia), the only work by a professional Stoic teacher to survive intact from the first two centuries A.D., and a rare example of the interaction between science and philosophy in late antiquity. This volume contains a clear and idiomatic English translation--the first ever--of The Heavens, along with an informative introduction, detailed notes, and technical...

Though the digression closing Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's De caelo 2.12 has long been misread as a history of early Greek planetary theory, it is in fact a creative reading of Aristotle to maintain the authority of the De caelo as a sacred text in Late Platonism and to refute the polemic mounted by the Christian, John Philoponus. This book shows that the critical question forced on Simplicius was whether his school's acceptance of Ptolemy's planetary hypotheses entailed a rejection of Aristotle's argument that the heavens are made of a special matter that moves by...