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PLINY'S  NATURAL HISTORY

Book II 

Chapters  LVII - LXVIII

LVII. Besides these events in the lower sky, it is entered in the records that in the consulship of Manius Acilius and Gaius Porcius it rained milk and blood, and that frequently on other occasions there it has rained flesh, for instance in the consulship of Publius Volumnius and Servius Sulpicius, and that none of the flesh left unplundered by birds of prey went bad; and similarly that it rained iron in the district of Lucania the year before Marcus Crassus was killed by the Parthians and with him all the Lucanian soldiers, of whom there was a large contingent in his army; the shape of the iron that fell resembled sponges; the augurs prophecied wounds from above. But in the consulship of Lucius Paullus and Gaius Marcellus it rained wool in the vicinity of Compsa Castle, near which Titus Amlius Milo was killed a year later. It is recorded in the annals of that year that while Milo was pleading a case in court it rained baked bricks.

LVIII. We are told that during the wars with the Cimbri a noise of clanging armour and the sounding of a trumpet were heard from the sky, and that the same thing has happened frequently both before then and later. In the third consulship of Marius the inhabitants of Ameria and Tuder saw the spectacle of heavenly armies advancing from the East and the West to meet in battle, those from the West being routed. It has often been seen, and is not at all surprising, that the sky itself catches fire when the clouds have been set on fire by an exceptionally large flame.

LIX. The Greeks tell the story that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae in the 2nd year of the 78th Olympiad was enabled by his knowledge of astronomical literature to prophecy that in a certain number of days a rock would fall from the sun; and that this occurred in the daytime in the Goat's River district of Thrace (the stone is still shown - it is of the size of a wagon-load and brown in colour), a comet also blazing in the nights at the time. If anyone believes in the fact of this prophecy, that involves his allowing that the divining powers of Anaxagoras covered a greater marvel, and that our understanding of the physical universe is annihilated and everything thrown into confusion if it is believed either that the sun is itself a stone or ever had a stone inside it. But it will not be doubted that stones do frequently fall. A stone is worshipped for this reason even at the present day in the exercising ground at Abydos - one of moderate size, it is true, but which the same Anaxagoras is said to have prophesied as going to fall in the middle of the country. There is also one that is worshipped at Cassandria, the place that has been given the name of Potidaea, and where a colony was settled on account of this occurrence. I myself saw one that had recently come down in the territory of the Vocontii.

LX. The common occurrences that we call rainbows have nothing miraculous or portentous about them, for they do not reliably portend even rain or fine weather. The obvious explanation of them is that a ray of the sun striking a hollow cloud has its point repelled and is reflected back to the sun, and that the diversified colouring is due to the mixture of clouds, fires and air. Rainbows certainly do not occur except opposite to the sun , and never except in semi-circular shape, and not at night time, although Aristotle does state that a rainbow has been sometimes seen at night, though he also admits that it cannot happen except on the 14th day of the lunar month. Rainbows in winter occur chiefly when the day is drawing in after the autumnal equinox; when the day draws out again after the vernal equinox they do not occur, nor in the longest days about the solstice, but they occur frequently in midwinter; also they are high in the sky when the sun is low and low when it is high; and smaller but of wider breadth at sunrise or sunset, and narrow but of large circumference at midday. In summer they are not seen during midday, but after the autumn equinox they are seen at any hour; and never more than two are seen at once.

LXI. I observe that the facts as to the other phenomena of the same kind are generally familiar: viz. that hail is produced from frozen rain and snow from the same fluid less solidly condensed, but hoar frost from cold dew; that snow falls during winter but not hail, and hail itself falls more often in the daytime than at night, and melts much faster than snow; that mists do not occur in summer nor in extremely cold weather, nor dew in frosty or very hot or windy weather, and only on fine nights; that liquid is reduced in bulk by freezing, and when ice is thawed the bulk produced is not the same v; that variations of colour and shape are seen in the clouds in proportion as the fire mingled with them gains the upper hand or is defeated; LXII. and moreover that particular places have particular special qualities: the nights of Africa are dewy in summer, in Italy rainbows are seen every day at Locri and at the Veline Lake, at Rhodes and Syracuse there is never such a thick curtain of cloud that the sun is not visible at some hour of the day. Such special features will be more suitably related in their places.
So much on the subject of the air. 

LXIII. Next comes the earth, the one division of the natural world on which for its merits we have bestowed the venerable title of mother. She belongs to men as the sky belongs to God: she receives us at birth, and gives us nurture after birth, and when once brought forth she upholds us always, and at the last when we have now been disinherited by the rest of nature she embraces us in her bosom and at that very time gives us her maternal shelter; sanctified by no service more than that whereby she makes us also sacred, even bearing our monuments and epitaphs and prolonging our name and extending our memory against the shortness of time; whose divinity is the last which in anger we invoke to lie heavy on those who are now no more, as though we did not know that she is the only element that is never wroth with man. Water rises in mist, freezes into hail, swells in waves, falls headlong in torrents; air becomes thick with clouds and rages with storms; but earth is kind and gentle and indulgent, ever a handmaid in the service of mortals, producing under our compulsion, or lavishing of her own accord, what scents and savours, what juices, what surfaces for the touch, what colours! how honestly she repays the interest lent her! what produce she fosters for our benefit! since for living creatures that are noxious the breath of life is to blame - she is compelled to receive them when their seed is sown and to maintain them when they have been born; but their harm lies in the evils of those that generate them. When a serpent has stung a man she harbours it no more, and she exacts retribution even on the account of the helpless; she produces medicinal herbs, and is ever fertile for man's benefit; nay, even poisons she may be thought to have invented out of compassion for us, lest, when we were weary of life, hunger, the death most alien to earth's beneficence, should consume us with slow decay, lest precipices should scatter in fragments our lacerated body, lest we should be tortured by the perverted punishment of the noose which imprisons the breath whose departure it is seeking; lest if we sought death in the deep our burial should serve for fodder a; lest the torture of the steel should cleave our body. So is it! in mercy did she generate the potion whereof the easiest draught - as men drink when thirsty - might painlessly just blot us out, without injury to the body or loss of blood, in such wise that when dead no birds nor beasts should touch us, and one that had perished for himself should be preserved for the earth. Let us own the truth: what earth has produced as a cure for our ills, we have made into a deadly poison; why, do we not also put her indispensable gift of iron to a similar use? Nor yet should we have any right to complain even if she had engendered poison to serve the purpose of crime. In fact in regard to one of nature's elements we have no gratitude. For what luxuries and for what outrageous uses does she not subserve mankind? She is flung into the sea, or dug away to allow us to let in the channels. Water, iron, wood, fire, stone, growing crops, are employed to torture her at all hours, and much more to make her minister to our luxuries than our sustenance. Yet in order to make the sufferings inflicted on her surface and mere outer skin seem endurable, we probe her entrails, digging into her veins of gold and silver and mines of copper and lead; we actually drive shafts down into the depth to search for gems and certain tiny stones; we drag out her entrails, we seek a jewel merely to be worn upon a finger! How many hands are worn away with toil that a single knuckle may shine resplendent ! If any beings of the nether world existed, assuredly even they would have been dug up ere now by the burrowings of avarice and luxury! And can we wonder if earth has also generated some creatures for our harm? since the wild animals, I well believe, are her guardians, and protect her from sacrilegious hands; do not serpents infest our mines, do we not handle veins of gold mingled with the roots of poison? Yet that shows the goddess all the kinder towards us, because all these avenues from which wealth issues lead but to crime and slaughter and warfare, and her whom we besprinkle with our blood we cover with unburied bones, over which nevertheless, when at length our madness has been finally discharged, she draws herself as a veil, and hides even the crimes of mortals.
I would reckon this too among the crimes of our ingratitude, that we are ignorant of her nature. 

LXIV. But her shape is the first fact about which men's judgement agrees. We do undoubtedly speak of the earth's sphere, and admit that the globe is shut in between poles. Nor yet in fact do all these lofty mountains and widely spreading plains comprise the outline of a perfect sphere, but a figure whose circuit would produce a perfect sphere if the ends of all the lines were enclosed in a circumference. This is the consequence of the very nature of things, it is not due to the same causes as those we have adduced in the case of the heaven; for in the heaven the convex hollow converges on itself and from all sides rests upon its pivot, the earth, whereas the earth being a solid dense mass rises like an object swelling, and expands outward. The world converges to its centre, whereas the earth radiates outward from its centre, the ceaseless revolution of the world around her forcing her immense globe into the shape of a sphere.

LXV. Here there is a mighty battle between learning on one side and the common herd on the other: the theory being that human beings are distributed all round the earth and stand with their feet pointing towards each other, and that the top of the sky is alike for them all and the earth trodden under foot at the centre in the same way from any direction, while ordinary people enquire why the persons on the opposite side don't fall off - just as if it were not reasonable that the people on the other side wonder that we do not fall off. There is an intermediate theory that is acceptable even to the unlearned crowd - that the earth is of the shape of an irregular globe, resembling a pine cone, yet nevertheless is inhabited all round. But what is the good of this theory when there arises another marvel, that the earth herself hangs suspended and does not fall and carry us with it? As if forsooth there were any doubt about the force of breath, especially when shut up inside the world, or as if it were possible for the earth to fall when nature opposes, and denies it any place to fall to! For just as the sole abode of fires is in the element of fire, and of waters in water, and of breath in breath, so earth, barred out by all the other elements, has no place except in itself. Yet it is surprising that with this vast level expanse of sea and plains the resulting formation is a globe. This view has the support of Dicaearchus, a savant of the first rank, who with the support of royal patrons took the measurement of mountains, and published that the highest of them was Pelion, with an altitude of l250 paces, inferring that this was no portion of the earth's general sphericity. To me this seems a questionable guess, as I know that some peaks of the Alps rise to a great height, not less than 50,000 paces.
But what the crowd most debates is if it must believe that the conformation of the waters also rises in a curve. Nevertheless nothing else in the natural world is more visibly manifest. For (l) hanging drops of liquid always take the shape of small round globes; (2) when dropped on dust or placed on the downy surface of leaves they are seen to be absolutely spherical; (3) in goblets when filled the surface curves upward most at the centre, though owing to the transparency of the liquid and its fluidity tending to find its own level this is more easily discovered by theory than by observation; and (4) a still more remarkable fact is that when a very little additional liquid is poured into a cup that has already been filled the surplus overflows, but the opposite happens when weighty solids, often as many as 20 coins, are put into it, presumably because these pass inside the liquid and raise its surface to a peak, whereas liquids poured on to the upward curving surface slip off. (5) The same cause explains why the land is not visible from the deck of a ship when in sight from the masthead; and why as a vessel passes far into the distance, if some shining object is tied to the top of the mast it appears slowly to sink and finally it is hidden from sight. Lastly (6) what other conformation could have caused the ocean, which we acknowledge to be at the extreme outside, to cohere and not fall away, if there is no boundary beyond to enclose it? The very question as to how, although the sea is globular in shape, its edge does not fall away, itself ranks with the marvellous. On the other side the Greek investigators, greatly to their delight and to their glory, prove by subtle mathematical reasoning that it cannot possibly be the case that the seas are really flat and have the shape that they appear to have. For, they argue, while it is the case that water travels downward from an elevation, and this is its admitted nature, and nobody doubts that the water on any coast has reached the farthest point allowed by the slope of the earth, it is manifest beyond doubt that the lower an object is the nearer it is to the centre of the earth, and that all the lines drawn from the centre to the nearest bodies of water are shorter than those drawn from the edge of these waters to the farthest point in the sea: it therefore follows that all the water from every direction converges towards the centre, this pressure inward being the cause of its not falling off.

LXVI. The reason for this formation must be thought to be the inability of earth when absolutely dry to cohere of itself and without moisture, and of water in its turn to remain still without being held up by earth; the intention of the Artificer of nature must have been to unite earth and water in a mutual embrace, earth opening her bosom and water penetrating her entire frame by means of a network of veins radiating within and without, above and below, the water bursting out even at the tops of mountain ridges, to which it is driven and squeezed out by the weight of the earth, and spurts out like a jet of water from a pipe, and is so far from being in danger of falling down that it leaps upward to all the loftiest elevations. This theory shows clearly why the seas do not increase in bulk with the daily accession of so many rivers. The consequence is that the earth at every point of its globe is encircled and engirdled by sea flowing round it, and this does not need theoretical investigation, but has already been ascertained by experience.

LXVII. Today the whole of the West is navigated from Cadiz and the Straits of Gibraltar all round Spain and France. But the larger part of the Northern Ocean was explored under the patronage of his late Majesty Augustus, when a fleet sailed round Germany to the promontory of the Cimbri and thence seeing a vast sea in front of them or learning of it by report, reached the region of Scythia and localities numb with excessive moisture. On this account it is extremely improbable that there is no sea in those parts, as there is a superabundance of the moist element there. But next, on the Eastward side, the whole quarter under the same star stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Caspian Sea was navigated throughout by the Macedonian forces in the reigns of Seleucus and Antiochus, who desired that it should be called both Seleucis and Antiochis after themselves. And many coasts of Ocean round the Caspian have been explored, and very nearly the whole of the North has been completely traversed from one side to the other by galleys, so that similarly also there is now overwhelming proof, leaving no room for conjecture, of the existence of the Maeotic Marsh, whether it be a gulf of that Ocean, as I notice many have believed, or an overflow from it from which it is separated off by a narrow space. On the other side of Cadiz, from the same Western point, a great part of the Southern gulf is navigated today in the circuit of Mauretania. Indeed the greater part of it Alexander the Great's eastern conquests also explored as far as the Arabian gulf; in which, when Augustus's son Gaius Caesar a was operating there, it is said that figureheads of ships from Spanish wrecks were identified. Also when the power of Carthage flourished, Hanno sailed round from Cadiz to the extremity of Arabia, and published a memoir of his voyage, as did Himilco when despatched at the same date to explore the outer coasts of Europe. Moreover we have it on the authority of Cornelius Nepos that a certain contemporary of his named Eudoxus when flying from King Lathyrus emerged from the Arabian Gulf and sailed right round to Cadiz; and much before him Caelius Antipater states that he had seen someone who had gone on a trading voyage from Spain to Ethiopia. Nepos also records as to the northern circuit that Quintus Metellus Celer, colleague of Afranius in the consulship but at the time pro-consul of Gaul, received from the King of the Swabians a present of some Indians, who on a trade voyage had been carried off their course by storms to Germany. Thus there are seas encircling the globe on every side and dividing it in two, so robbing us of half the world, since there is no region affording a passage from there to here or from here to there. This reflexion serves to expose the vanity of mortals, and appears to demand that I should display to the eye and exhibit the extent of this whole indefinite region in which men severally find no satisfaction.

LXVIII. In the first place it is apparently reckoned as forming one half of the globe - just as if no part were cut off for the ocean itself, which surrounding and encircling the whole of it, and pouring forth and reabsorbing the waters and pasturing and all the moisture that goes to form the clouds, the stars themselves with all their numbers and their mighty size, can be supposed to occupy a space - of what extent, pray? The freehold owned by that mighty mass is bound to be enormous - without limit! Add that of what is left more than half is taken by the sky. For this has five divisions called zones, and all that lies beneath the two outermost zones that surround the poles at either end - both the pole named from the Seven Oxen and the one opposite to it called after Auster - is all crushed under cruel frost and everlasting cold. In both regions perpetual mist prevails, and a light that the invisibility of the milder stars a renders niggardly and that is only white with hoarfrost. But the middle portion of the lands, where the sun's orbit is, is scorched by its flames and burnt up by the proximity of its heat: this is the torrid zone. There are only two temperate zones between the torrid one and the frozen ones, and these have no communication with each other because of the fiery heat of the heavenly body.
Thus the sky has stolen three quarters of the earth. The extent of the trespass of ocean is unascertained; but even the one portion left to us suffers perhaps an even greater loss, inasmuch as the same ocean, spreading out, as we shall describe, into a number of bays, advances with its threatening roar so close to the inner seas that there is only a distance of 115 miles between the Arabian Gulf and the Egyptian Sea and of 375 between the Caspian and the Black Sea; and also with its inner channels through so many seas whereby it sunders Africa, Europe and Asia, it occupies - what area of the land? Calculate moreover the dimensions of all those rivers and vast swamps, add also the lakes and pools, and next the ridges too that rise into the heaven and are precipitous even to the eye, next the forests and steep glens, and the deserts and areas for a thousand reasons left deserted; subtract all these portions from the earth or rather from this pin-prick, as the majority of thinkers have taught, in the world - for in the whole universe the earth is nothing else: and this is the substance of our glory, this is its habitation, here it is that we fill positions of power and covet wealth, and throw mankind into an uproar, and launch even civil wars and slaughter one another to make the land more spacious! And to pass over the collective insanities of the nations, this is the land in which we expel the tenants next to us and add a spade-full of turf to our own estate by stealing from our neighbour's - to the end that he who has marked out his acres most widely and banished his neighbours beyond all record may rejoice in owning - how small a fraction of the earth's surface? or, when he has stretched his boundaries to the full measure of his avarice, may still retain - what portion, pray, of his estate when he is dead?
 


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