Commentary

This doctrine, reported by Hippolytus, describes the stars, sun, and moon as wheels or rings of fire enclosed in layers of air and mist, with apertures through which the fire shows. The model accounts for the appearance of celestial bodies and their motion as a consequence of the structure of the rings rather than of divine agency. G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield discuss the rings as a clear example of the early Milesian effort to explain the heavens by material means, while stressing the lateness of the testimony. Charles Kahn argues that the ring model reflects a mechanical picture of the cosmos that was distinctive of Anaximander, and that it makes the heavens subordinate to the same ordering processes that govern the earth. Jonathan Barnes notes that the terminology of rings and openings may reflect the vocabulary of later writers and should not be taken as Anaximander's own. Guthrie observes that the model anticipated later accounts of planetary motion in terms of concentric structures. The sentence is a paraphrase of a doxographical report and should be labelled accordingly.