238 SEE— TEMPERATURE, SECULAR COOLING [April 20, 



is in a like degree fairer than any here; and there are hills, and stones in 

 them in a like degree smoother, and more transparent, and fairer in color 

 than our highly valued emeralds and sardonyxes and jaspers, and other gems, 

 which are but minute fragments of them: for there all the stones are like 

 our precious stones, and fairer still. The reason of this is that they are 

 pure, and not, like our precious stones, infected or corroded by the corrupt 

 briny elements which coagulate among us, and which breed foulness and 

 disease both in earth and stones, as well as in animals and plants. They are 

 the jewels of the upper earth, which also shines with gold and silver and the 

 like, and they are visible to sight and large and abundant and found in every 

 region of the earth, and blessed is he who sees them. And upon the earth 

 are animals and men, some in a middle region, others dwelling about the air 

 as we dwell about the sea; others in islands which the air flows round, near 

 the continent: and in a word, the air is used by them as the water and the 

 sea are by us, and the ether is to them what the air is to us. Moreover, the 

 temperament of their seasons is such that they have no disease, and live much 

 longer than we do, and have sight and hearing and smell, and all the other 

 senses, in far greater perfection, in the same degree that air is purer than 

 water or the ether than air. Also they have temples and sacred places in 

 which the gods really dwell, and they hear their voices and receive their 

 answers, and are conscious of them and hold converse with them, and they 

 see the sun, moon, and stars as they really are, and their other blessedness 

 is of a piece with this. 



" * Such is the nature of the whole earth, and of the things which are 

 around the earth; and there are divers regions in the hollows on the face 

 of the globe everywhere, some of them deeper and also wider than that which 

 we inhabit, others deeper and with a narrower opening than ours, and some 

 are shallower and wider; all have numerous perforations, and passages broad 

 and narrow in the interior of the earth, connecting them with one another; 

 and there flows into and out of them, as into basins, a vast tide of water, 

 and huge subterranean streams of perennial rivers, and springs hot and cold, 

 and a great fire, and great rivers of fire, and streams of liquid mud, thin or 

 thick (like the rivers of mud in Sicily, and the lava-streams which follow 

 them), and the regions about which they happen to flow are filled up with 

 them. And there is a sort of swing in the interior of the earth which moves 

 all this up and down. Now the swing is in this wise. There is a chasm 

 which is the vastest of them all, and pierces right through the whole earth; 

 this is that which Homer describes in the words, — 



" ' Far off, where is the inmost depth beneath the earth ' ; and which he 

 in other places, and many other poets, have called Tartarus. And the swing' 

 is caused by the streams flowing into and out of this chasm, and they each 

 have the nature of the soil through which they flow. And the reason why 

 the streams are always flowing in and out is that the watery element has no 

 bed or bottom, and is surging and swinging up and down, and the surround- 

 ing wind and air do the same ; they follow the water up and down, hither 

 and thither, over the earth — just as in respiring the air is always in process 

 of inhalation and exhalation ; and the wind swinging with the water in and 

 out produces fearful and irresistible blasts : when the waters retire with a 



