DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE GREEKS 381 



Apuleius,* or of Chrysippus,f or of any other author. In 

 the place of the passages relating to natural scenery which 

 we cannot venture to ascribe to Aristotle, we possess, how- 

 ever, a genuine fragment which Cicero has preserved to 

 us from a lost work of Aristotle. : It runs thus: "If 

 there were beings who lived in the depths of the earth, in 

 dwellings adorned with statues and paintings, and everything 

 which is possessed in rich abundance by those whom we 

 esteem fortunate; and if these beings could receive tidings 

 of the power and might of the gods, and could then emerge 

 from their hidden dwellings through the open fissures of the 

 earth, to the places which we inhabit; if they could suddenly 

 behold the earth, and the sea, and the vault of heaven; could 

 recognise the expanse of the cloudy firmament and the might 

 of the winds of heaven, and admire the sun in its majesty, 

 beauty, and radiant effulgence ; and, lastly, when night veiled 

 the earth in darkness, they could behold the starry heavens, 

 .the changing moon, and the stars rising and setting in the 

 unvarying course ordained from eternity; they would surely 

 exclaim, ' there are gods, and such great things must be the 

 work of their hands.' " It has been justly observed, that this 

 passage is alone sufficient to corroborate Cicero's opinion of 

 "the golden flow of Aristotle's eloquence," and that his 

 words are pervaded by something of the inspired force of 

 Plato's genius. Such a testimony to the existence of the 

 heavenly powers, drawn from the beauty and stupendous 

 greatness of the works of creation, is rarely to be met with in ) 

 the works of antiquity. 



* See Stahr, Aristoteles lei den R8mern, 1834, g. 173--177. Osann, 

 Beitrdge zur griech. und rom. Litteraturgeschichte, bd. i., 1835, s. 

 165-192. Stahr (s. 172) supposes, like Heumann, that the present 

 Greek is an altered translation of the Latin text of Apuleius. The 

 latter says distinctly (de Mundo, p. 250, Bip.), " that he has followed 

 Aristotle and Theophrastus, in the composition of his work." 



t Osann, op. cit., s. 194-266. 



$ Cicero, de Natura Deorum, ii. 37. A passage in which Sextus 

 Empiricus (adversus Physicos, lib. ix. 22, p. 554, Fabr.) instances a 

 similar expression of Aristotle, deserves the more attention from the 

 fact that the same writer shortly before (ix. 20) alludes to another woik 

 of Aristotle (on divination and dreams) which is also lost to us. 



" Aristoteles flumen orationis aureum fundens." Cic., A cad. Qucest., 

 ii. cap. 38. (Compare Stahr, Aristotelia, th. ii. s. 161, and Aristoteles 

 tei dtn liomern, s. 53.) 



