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Book II Chapters I - VII
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| I. THE world, and this - whatever other name men have chosen to designate
the sky whose vaulted roof encircles the universe - is fitly believed to
be a deity, eternal, immeasurable, a being that never began to exist and
never will perish. What is outside it does not concern men to explore and
is not within the grasp of the human mind to guess. It is sacred, eternal,
immeasurable, wholly within the whole, nay rather itself the whole, finite
and resembling the infinite, certain of all things and resembling the uncertain,
holding in its embrace all things that are without and within, at once
the work of nature and nature herself.
That certain persons have studied, and have dared to publish, its dimensions, is mere madness; and again that others taking or receiving occasion from the former, have taught the existence of a countless number of worlds, involving the belief in as many systems of nature, or, if a single nature embraces all the worlds, nevertheless the same number of suns, moons and other unmeasurable and innumerable heavenly bodies, as already in a single world; just as if owing to our craving for some End the same problem would not always encounter us at the termination of this process of thought, or as if, assuming it possible to attribute this infinity of nature to the artificer of the universe, that same property would not be easier to understand in a single world, especially one that is so vast a structure. It is madness, downright madness, to go out of that world, and to investigate what lies outside it just as if the whole of what is within it were already clearly known; as though, forsooth, the measure of anything could be taken by him that knows not the measure of himself, or as if the mind of man could see things that the world itself does not contain. |
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| II. Its shape has the rounded appearance of a perfect sphere. This is shown first of all by the name of 'orb' which is bestowed upon it by the general consent of mankind. It is also shown by the evidence of the facts: not only does such a figure in all its parts converge upon itself; not only must it sustain itself, enclosing and holding itself together without the need of any fastenings, and without experiencing an end or a beginning at any part of itself; not only is that shape the one best fitted for the motion with which, as will shortly appear, it must repeatedly revolve, but our eyesight also confirms this belief, because the firmament presents the aspect of a concave & hemisphere equidistant in every direction, which would be impossible in the case of any other figure. | ||
| III. The world thus shaped then is
not at rest but eternally revolves with indescribable velocity, each revolution
occupying the space of 24 hours: 2 the rising and setting of the sun have
left this not doubtful. Whether the sound of this vast mass whirling in
unceasing rotation is of enormous volume and consequently beyond the capacity
of our ears to perceive, for my own part I cannot easily say - any more
in fact than whether this is true of the tinkling of the stars that travel
round with it, revolving in their own orbits; or whether it emits a sweet
harmonious music that is beyond belief charming. To us who live within
it the world glides silently alike by day and night. Stamped upon it are
countless figures of animals and objects of all kinds - it is not the case,
as has been stated by very famous authors, that its structure has an even
surface of unbroken smoothness, like that which we observe in birds' eggs:
this is proved by the evidence of the facts, since from seeds of all these
objects, falling from the sky in countless numbers, particularly in the
sea, and usually mixed together, monstrous shapes are generated; and also
by the testimony of sight - in one place the figure of a bear, in another
of a bull, in another a wain, in another a letter of the alphabet, the
middle of the circle across the pole being more radiant.
For my own part I am also influenced by the agreement of the nations. The Greeks have designated the world by a word that means 'ornament' and we have given it the name of mundus, because of its perfect finish and grace! As for our word caelum, it undoubtedly has the signification 'engraved,' as is explained by Marcus Varro. Further assistance is contributed by its orderly structure, the circle called the Zodiac being marked out into the likenesses of twelve animals; and also by the uniform regularity in so many centuries of the sun's progress through these signs. |
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| IV. As regards the elements also I observe that they are accepted as being four in number: topmost the element of fire, source of yonder eyes of all those blazing stars; next the vapour which the Greeks and our own nation call by the same name, air - this is the principle of life, and penetrates all the universe and is intertwined with the whole; suspended by its force in the centre of space is poised the earth, and with it the fourth element, that of the waters. Thus the mutual embrace of the unlike results in an interlacing, the light substances being prevented by the heavy ones from flying up, while on the contrary the heavy substances are held from crashing down by the upward tendency of the light ones. In this way owing to an equal urge in opposite directions the elements remain stationary, each in its own place, bound together by the unresting revolution of the world itself; and with this always running back to its starting-point, the earth is the lowest and central object in the whole, and stays suspended at the pivot of the universe and also balancing the bodies to which its suspension is due; thus being alone motionless with the universe revolving round her she both hangs attached to them all and at the same time is that on which they all rest. Upheld by the same vapour between earth and heaven, at definite spaces apart, hang the seven stars which owing to their motion we call 'planets,' although no stars wander less than they do. In the midst of these moves the sun, whose magnitude and power are the greatest, and who is the ruler not only of the seasons and of the lands, but even of the stars themselves and of the heaven. Taking into account all that he effects, we must believe him to be the soul, or more precisely the mind, of the whole world, the supreme ruling principle and divinity of nature. He furnishes the world with light and removes darkness, he obscures and he illumines the rest of the stars, he regulates in accord with nature's precedent the changes of the seasons and the continuous re-birth of the year, he dissipates the gloom of heaven and even calms the storm-clouds of the mind of man, he lends his light to the rest of the stars also; he is glorious and pre-eminent, all-seeing and even all-hearing -this I observe that Homer the prince of literature held to be true in the case of the sun alone. | ||
| V. For this reason I deem it a mark of human weakness
to seek to discover the shape and form of God. Whoever God is - provided
there is a God - and in whatever region he is, he consists wholly of sense,
sight and hearing, wholly of soul, wholly of mind, wholly of himself. To
believe in gods without number, and gods corresponding to men's vices as
well as to their virtues, like the Goddesses of Modesty, Concord, Intelligence,
Hope, Honour, Mercy and Faith - or else, as Democritus held, only two,
Punishment and Reward, reaches an even greater height of folly. Frail,
toiling mortality, remembering its own weakness, has divided such deities
into groups, so as to worship in sections, each the deity he is most in
need of. Consequently different races have different names for the deities,
and we find countless deities in the same races, even those of the lower
world being classified into groups, and diseases and also many forms of
plague, in our nervous anxiety to get them placated. Because of this there
is actually a Temple of Fever consecrated by the nation on the Palatine
Hill, and one of Bereavement at the Temple of the Household Deities, and
an Altar of Misfortune on the Esquiline. For this reason we can infer a
larger population of celestials than of human beings, as individuals also
make an equal number of gods on their own, by adopting their own private
Junos and Genii; while certain nations have animals, even some loathsome
ones, for gods, and many things still more disgraceful to tell of - swearing
by rotten articles of food and other things of that sort. To believe even
in marriages taking place between gods, without anybody all through the
long ages of time being born as a result of them, and that some are always
old and grey, others youths and boys, and gods with dusky complexions,
winged, lame, born from eggs, living and dying on alternate days - this
almost ranks with the mad fancies of children; but it passes all bounds
of shamelessness to invent acts of adultery taking place between the gods
themselves, followed by altercation and enmity, and the existence of deities
of theft and of crime. For mortal to aid mortal - this is god; and this
is the road to eternal glory: by this road went our Roman chieftains, by
this road now proceeds with heavenward step, escorted by his children,
the greatest ruler of all time, His Majesty Vespasian, coming to the succour
of an exhausted world. To enrol such men among the deities is the most
ancient method of paying them gratitude for their benefactions. In fact
the names of the other gods, and also of the stars that I have mentioned
above, originated from the services of men: at all events who would not
admit that it is the interpretation of men's characters that prompts them
to call each other Jupiter or Mercury or other names, and that originates
the nomenclature of heaven? That that supreme being, whate'er it be, pays
heed to man's affairs is a ridiculous notion. Can we believe that it would
not be defiled by so gloomy and so multifarious a duty? Can we doubt it?
It is scarcely pertinent to determine which is more profitable for the
human race, when some men pay no regard to the gods at all and the regard
paid by others is of a shameful nature: they serve as the lackeys of foreign
ritual, and they carry gods on their fingers; also they pass sentence of
punishment upon the monsters they worship, and devise elaborate viands
for them; they subject themselves to awful tyrannies, so as to find no
repose even in sleep; they do not decide on marriage or having a family
or indeed anything else except by the command of sacrifices; others cheat
in the very Capitol and swear false oaths by Jupiter who wields the thunder-bolts
- and these indeed make a profit out of their crimes, whereas the others
are penalised by their religious observances. Nevertheless mortality has
rendered our guesses about God even more obscure by inventing for itself
a deity intermediate between these two conceptions. Everywhere in the whole
world at every hour by all men's voices Fortune alone is invoked and named,
alone accused, alone impeached, alone pondered, alone applauded, alone
rebuked and visited with reproaches; deemed volatile and indeed by most
men blind as well, wayward, inconstant, uncertain, fickle in her
favours and favouring the unworthy. To her is debited an that is spent
and credited all that is received, she alone fills both pages in the whole
of mortals' account; and we are so much at the mercy of chance that Chance
herself, by whom God is proved uncertain, takes the place of God. Another
set of people banishes fortune also, and attributes events to its star
and to the laws of birth, holding that for all men that ever are to be
God's decree has been enacted once for all, while for the rest of time
leisure has been vouchsafed to Him. This belief begins to take root, and
the learned and unlearned mob alike go marching on towards it at the double:
witness the warnings drawn from lightning, the forecasts made by oracles,
the prophecies of augurs, and even inconsiderable trifles - sneeze, a stumble
- counted as omens. His late Majesty put abroad a story that on the day
on which he was almost overthrown by a mutiny in the army he had put his
left boot on the wrong foot. This series of instances entangles unforeseeing
mortality, so that among these things but one thing is in the least certain
- that nothing certain exists, and that nothing is more pitiable, or more
presumptuous, than man! inasmuch as with the rest of living creatures their
sole anxiety is for the means of life, in which nature's bounty of itself
suffices, the one blessing indeed that is actually preferable to every
other being the fact that they do not think about glory, money, ambition,
and above all death.
But it agrees with life's experience to believe that in these matters the gods exercise an interest in human affairs; and that punishment for wickedness, though sometimes tardy, as God is occupied in so vast a mass of things, yet is never frustrated; and that man was not born God's next of kin for the purpose of approximating to the beasts in vileness. Put the chief consolations for nature's imperfection in the case of man are that not even for God are all things possible - for he cannot, even if he wishes, commit suicide, the supreme boon that he has bestowed on man among all the penalties of life, nor bestow eternity on mortals or recall the deceased, nor cause a man that has lived not to have lived or one that has held high office not to have held it - and that he has no power over what is past save to forget it, and (to link our fellowship with God by means of frivolous arguments as well) that he cannot cause twice ten not to be twenty or do many things on similar lines: which facts unquestionably demonstrate the power of nature, and prove that it is this that we mean by the word 'God.' It will not have been irrelevant to have diverged to these topics, which have already been widely disseminated because of the unceasing enquiry into the nature of God. |
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| VI. Let us return from these questions to the remaining facts of nature.
We have stated that the stars are attached to the firmament, not assigned
to each of us in the way in which the vulgar believe, and dealt out to
mortals with a degree of radiance proportionate to the lot of each, the
brightest stars to the rich, the smaller ones to the poor, the dim to those
who are worn out; they do not each rise with their own human being, nor
indicate by their fall that someone's life is being extinguished. There
is no such close alliance between us and the sky that the radiance of the
stars there also shares our fate of mortality. When the stars are believed
to fall, what happens is that owing to their being over fed with a draught
of liquid they give back the surplus with a fiery flash, just as with us
also we see this occur with a stream of oil when lamps are lit. But the
heavenly bodies have a nature that is eternal - they interweave the world
and are blended with its weft; yet their potency has a powerful influence
on the earth, indeed it is owing to the effects that they produce and to
their brilliance and magnitude that it has been possible for them to become
known with such a degree of precision, as we shall show in the proper place.
Also the system of the revolutions of the sky will be more appropriately
stated when we deal with geography, since it is entirely related to the
earth; only we must not postpone the discoveries that have been made as
to the zodiac. Tradition says that Anaximander of Miletus in the fifty-eighth
Olympiad was the first person to discover the obliquity of the zodiac,
that is, to open the portals of science; and that next Cleostratus explained
the signs in it, beginning with the Ram and the Archer; the firmament itself
having been explained long before by Atlas.
Let us now leave the frame of the world itself and treat the remaining bodies situated between the sky and the earth. The following points are certain: (1) The star called Saturn's is the highest and consequently looks the smallest and revolves in the largest orbit, returning in thirty years at the shortest to its initial station. (2) The motions of all the planets, and among them the sun and moon, follow a course contrary to that of the world, namely to the left, the world always running to the right. (3) Although they are borne on by it and carried westward with an unceasing revolution of immeasurable velocity, nevertheless they travel with an opposite motion along their respective tracks. (4) Thus it comes about that the air is not massed in a dull lethargic ball by revolving in the same direction because of the eternal rotation of the world, but is scattered into separate portions by the opposite impact of the stars. (5) Saturn is of a cold and frozen nature. The orbit of Jupiter is much below it and therefore revolves much faster, completing one rotation every twelve years. The third star is Mars, called by some Hercules; owing to the proximity of the sun it has a fiery glow; it revolves once in about two years, and consequently, owing to its excessive heat and Saturn's frost, Jupiter being situated between them combines the influence of each and is rendered healthy. (6) Next, the sun's course is divided into 360 parts, but in order that an observation taken of the shadows that it casts may come round to the starting-point, five and a quarter days per annum are added; consequently to every fourth a year an intercalary day is added to make our chronology tally with the course of the sun. Below the sun revolves a very large star named Venus, which varies its course alternately, and whose alternative names in themselves indicate its rivalry with the sun and moon - when in advance and rising before dawn it receives the name of Lucifer, as being another sun and bringing the dawn, whereas when it shines after sunset it is named Vesper, as prolonging the daylight, or as being a deputy for the moon. This property of Venus was first discovered by pythagoras of Samos about the 42nd Olympiad, 142 years after the foundation of Rome. Further it surpasses all the other stars in magnitude, and is so brilliant that alone among stars it casts a shadow by its rays. Consequently there is a great competition to give it a name, some having called it Juno, others Isis, others the Mother of the Gods. Its influence is the cause of the birth of all things upon earth; at both of its risings it scatters a genital dew with which it not only fills the conceptive organs of the earth but also stimulates those of all animals. It completes the circuit of the zodiac every 348 days, and according to Timaeus is never more than 46 degrees distant from the sun. The star next to Venus is Mercury, by some called Apollo; it has a similar orbit, but is by no means similar in magnitude or power. It travels in a lower circle, with a revolution nine days quicker, shining sometimes before sunrise and sometimes after sunset, but according to Cidenas and Sosigenes never more than 22 degrees away from the sun. Consequently the course of these stars also is peculiar, and not shared by those above mentioned: those are often observed to be a quarter or a third of the heaven away from the sun and travelling against the sun, and they all have other larger circuits of full revolution, the specification of which belongs to the theory of the Great Year. But the wonder of everyone is vanquished by the last star, the one most familiar to the earth, and devised by nature to serve as a remedy for the shadows of darkness - the moon. By the riddle of her transformations she has racked the wits of observers who are ashamed that the star which is nearest should be the one about which we know least - always waxing or waning, and now curved into the horns of a sickle, now just halved in size, now rounded into a circle; spotted and then suddenly shining clear; vast and full-orbed, and then all of a sudden not there at all; at one time shining all night and at another rising late and for a part of the day augmenting the light of the sun, eclipsed and nevertheless visible during the eclipse, invisible at the end of the month when she is not believed to be in trouble; again at one time low down and at another up aloft, and not even this in a uniform way, but sometimes raised to the sky and sometimes touching the mountain-tops, now borne up to the North and now carried down to the South. The first human being to observe all these facts about her was Endymion - which accounts for the traditional story of his love for her. We forsooth feel no gratitude towards those whose assiduous toil has given us illumination on the subject of this luminary, while owing to a curious disease of the human mind we are pleased to enshrine in history records of bloodshed and slaughter, so that persons ignorant of the facts of the world may be acquainted with the crimes of mankind. The moon then is nearest to the pole, and therefore has the smallest orbit, completing the same distance every 27 1/3 days that Saturn the highest star covers, as we have said, in 30 years. Then she lingers two days in conjunction with the sun, and after the 30th day at latest sets out again on the same course - being perhaps our teacher as to all the facts that it has been possible to observe in the heavens; (1) that the year is to be divided into twelve monthly spaces, because she herself that number of times follows the sun in his return to his starting point; (2) that she is governed by the sun's radiance as are the rest of the stars, as in fact she shines with a light entirely borrowed from him, like the light which we see flickering reflected in water; (3) that consequently she only causes water to evaporate with a rather gentle and imperfect force, and indeed increases its quantity, whereas the sun's rays dry it up; (4) also that the reason why she is seen to vary in her light is that she is full only when opposite to the sun, and on the remaining days shows as much light from herself to the earth as she herself conceives from the sun; though (5) she is indeed invisible when in conjunction with the sun, because being turned towards him she gives back the entire draught of light to the source from which she receives it; (6) but that the stars are undoubted nourished by the moisture of the earth, since she is sometimes seen spotted in half her orb, clearly because she has not yet got sufficient strength to go on drinking - her spots being merely dirt from the earth taken up with the moisture; (7) but that her eclipses and those of the sun, the most marvellous and indeed portentous occurrence in the whole of our observation of nature, serve as indications of their dimensions and shadow. |
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| VII. It is in fact obvious that the sun is hidden by the passage across it of the moon, and the moon by the interposition of the earth, and that they retaliate on one another, the same rays of the sun being taken away from the earth by the moon intervening and from the moon by the earth: at the transit of the former a sudden shadow passes over the earth, and in return the shadow of the latter dims the heavenly body (the moon), and the darkness is merely the earth's shadow, but the shape of the shadow is conical, resembling a spinning-top upside down, as it impinges only with its point and does not go beyond the altitude of the moon, because no other star is obscured in the same way, and a conical figure always tapers off into a point: that shadows are made to disappear by distance is proved when birds fly to extreme heights. Consequently the frontier between the moon and the other heavenly bodies is at the point where the air ends and the aether begins. All the space above the moon is clear and filled with continual light, but to us the stars are visible through the night in the same way as other lights in shadows. And these are the reasons why the moon wanes in the night-time; but both of her wanings are irregular and not monthly, because of the slant of the zodiac and the widely varying curves of the moon's course, as has been stated, the motion of the heavenly bodies not always tallying in minute fractional quantities. | ||
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| Following Chapters: VIII - XVII |