therefore first confirme it by sufficient authority of divers authours, both ancient and moderne, that so I may the better cleare it from the prejudice either of an upstart fancy, or an absolute errour. This is by some attributed to Orphesis, one of the most ancient Greeke Poets, who speaking of the Moone, saies thus, ἡ πολλ᾽ οὔρεα ἔχει, πολλ᾽ ἄστεα, πολλὰ μέλαθρα[1], That it hath many mountaines and cities, and houses in it. To him assented Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Heraclitus,[2] all who thought it to have firme solid ground, like to our earth,[3] containing in it many large fields, champion grounds, and divers inhabitants, unto these agreed Pythagoras, who thought that our earth was but one of the Planets which moved round about the Sunne, (as Aristotle[4] relates it of him) and the Pythagoreans in generall did affirme, that the Moone also was terrestriall, that she was inhabited
