‹‹‹ Vitr. 9.1.9 | Table of Contents | Vitr. 9.1.11 ›››
10Mars, on about the six hundred and eighty-third day, completes the circuit of the signs, and returns to his place; and if, in any sign, he move with a greater velocity, his stationary state in others equalizes the motion, so as to bring him round in the proper number of days. Jupiter moving also in contrary rotation, but with less velocity, takes three hundred and sixty days to pass through one sign; thus lengthening the duration of his circuit to eleven years and three hundred and twenty-three days before he returns to the sign in which he was seen twelve years before his setting out. Lastly, Saturn, remaining thirty-one months and some days in each sign, returns to his point of departure at the end of twenty-nine years, and about one hundred and sixty days, or nearly thirty years.Hence, the nearer he is to the extremity of the universe, the larger does his circuit appear, as well as the slower his motion.
10Mars, after traversing the spaces of the constellations for about six hundred and eighty-three days, arrives at the point from which he had before set out at the beginning of his course, and while he passes through some of the signs more rapidly than others, he makes up the required number of days whenever he comes to a pause. Jupiter, climbing with gentler pace against the revolution of the firmament, travels through each sign in about three hundred and sixty days, and finishes in eleven years and three hundred and thirteen days, returning to the sign in which he had been twelve years before. Saturn, traversing the space of one sign in twenty-nine months plus a few days, is restored after twenty-nine years and about one hundred and sixty days to that in which he had been thirty years before. He is, as it appears, slower, because the nearer he is to the outermost part of the firmament, the greater is the orbit through which he has to pass.