Book 3
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This description being given by me of Meteors, or those things that are above us, I must pass to those things which are terrestrial.
Chapter IX. OF THE EARTH, WHAT IS ITS NATURE AND MAGNITUDE.
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THALES and his followers say that there is but one earth. Hicetes the Pythagorean, that there are two earths, this and the Antichthon, or the earth opposite to it. The Stoics, that this earth is one, and that finite and limited. Xenophanes, that the earth, being compacted of fire and air, in its lowest parts hath laid a foundation in an infinite depth. Metrodorus, that the earth is mere sediment and dregs of water, as the sun is of the air.
Chapter X. OF THE FIGURE OF THE EARTH.
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THALES, the Stoics, and their followers say that the earth is globular. Anaximander, that it resembles a smooth stony pillar. Anaximenes, that it hath the shape of a table. Leucippus, of a drum. Democritus, that it is like a quoit in its surface, and hollow in the middle.
Chapter XI. OF THE SITE AND POSITION OF THE EARTH.
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THE disciples of Thales say that the earth is the centre of the universe. Xenophanes, that it is first, being rooted in the infinite space. Philolaus the Pythagorean gives to fire the middle place, and this is the hearth-fire of the universe; the second place to the Antichthon; the third to that earth which we inhabit, which is seated in opposition unto and whirled about the opposite,—which is the reason that those which inhabit that earth cannot be seen by us. Parmenides was the first that confined the habitable world to the two solstitial (or temperate) zones.
Chapter XII. OF THE INCLINATION OF THE EARTH.
