Tried and convicted of "impiety" in an Athenian court, Anaxagoras spent the remaining years of his life in exile. The following passage (from the third-century CE theologian Hippolytus) records some of the theories that might well have provided the prosecution with ammunition for its case against the philosopher. (Translation by Kirk and Raven, revised.)
 

The earth (he thinks) is flat in shape, and stays suspended from where it is because of its size, because there is no void and because the air, which is very strong, keeps the earth afloat on it... The sun, the moon, and all the stars are red-hot stones which the rotation of the aithêr carries round with it. Beneath the stars are certain bodies, invisible to us, that are carried around with the sun and moon. We do not feel the heat of the stars because they are so far from the earth. Moreover, they are not as hot as the sun and occupy a colder region. The moon is beneath the sun and nearer to us. The sun is larger than the Peloponnese. The moon has no light of its own but derives it from the sun... Eclipses of the moon are due its being screened by the earth or, sometimes, by the bodies beneath the moon; eclipses of the sun, to screening by the moon.