Talk:Metrodorus of Chios

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[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 04:17, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Metrodorus on plural worlds

I have cut Vmaldia's addition here for comment:

Another version is: "To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow."
source: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/Metrodorus.html

The Greek text of the quote (or rather paraphrase) runs as follows:

Μητρόδωρος ὁ καθηγητὴς Ἐπικούρου φησὶν ἄτοπον εἶναι ἐν μεγάλωι πεδίωι ἕνα στάχυν γενηθῆναι καὶ ἕνα κόσμον ἐν τῶι ἀπείρωι.

This is litterally rendered as:

Metrodorus the teacher of Epicurus says that it is strange that in a large field one ear of corn should have come about and (that) one world in the infinite (universe) (should have come about).

In the article I have rendered this a little more freely as:

"A single ear of corn in a large field is as strange as a single world in infinite space." (Aëtius Placita i.5.4)

In the version offered by the above internet-page the quote has been expanded to refer specifically to populated worlds, but this is not according to the Greek. --Fabullus 10:11, 15 November 2007 (UTC)