III
1
2
3
Democritus, the most acute of all the ancient philosophers, says he suspects there are several stars whose orbits are erratic. But he has given neither their number nor their names, as the motions of the five planets were not in his time understood. Eudoxus was, in fact, the first to import from Egypt into Greece the knowledge of these motions, though he says nothing about comets. From this it becomes plain that, even among the Egyptians, the people that bestowed most care on observation of the sky, the portion of astronomy that relates to comets had not been worked out. Subsequently Conon, who was himself a careful investigator, made a record of the sun’s eclipses that had been observed by the Egyptians; but he made no mention of comets, though he would certainly not have omitted anything definite on the subject that he had learned in Egypt. So much is certain; two authors, Epigenes and Apollonius of Myndus, the latter highly skilled in casting horoscopes, who say that they studied among the Chaldaeans, are at variance in their accounts. The latter asserts that comets are placed by the Chaldaeans among the number of the wandering stars (i.e. planets), and that their orbits have been determined. Epigenes, on the contrary, asserts that the Chaldaeans have ascertained nothing regarding comets, which are thought by them to be fires produced by a kind of eddy of violently rotating air.