alleging that he could produce such proofs as the following: that in the midst of earth, and in mountains, shells are discovered; and also in Syracuse he affirms was found in the quarries the print of a fish and of seals, and in Paros an image of a laurel[1] in the bottom of a stone, and in Melita[2] parts of all sorts of marine animals. And he says that these were generated when all things originally were embedded in mud, and that an impression of them was dried in the mud, but that all men had perished[3] when the earth, being precipitated into the sea, was converted into mud; then, again, that it originated generation, and that this overthrow occurred to all worlds.
Chapter xiii.
Ecphantus—his Scepticism—Tenet of Infinity.
One Ecphantus, a native of Syracuse, affirmed that it is not possible to attain a true knowledge of things. He defines, however, as he thinks, primary bodies to be indivisible,[4] and that there are three variations of these, viz. bulk, figure, capacity, from which are generated the objects of sense. But that there is a determinable multitude of these, and that this is infinite.[5] And that bodies are moved neither by weight nor by impact, but by divine power, which he calls mind and soul; and that of this the world is a representation; wherefore also it has been made in the form of a sphere by divine power.[6] And that the earth in the middle of the cosmical system is moved round its own centre towards the east.
- ↑ Or, "anchovy."
- ↑ Or, "Melitus."
- ↑ The textual reading is in the present, but obviously requires a past tense.
- ↑ Some confusion has crept into the text. The first clause of the second sentence belongs probably to the first. The sense would then run thus: "Ecphantus affirmed the impossibility of dogmatic truth, for that every one was permitted to frame definitions as he thought proper."
- ↑ Or, "that there is, according to this, a multitude of defined existences, and that such is infinite."
- ↑ Or, "a single power."
