to these things and to those, everything is full at once of light and dark night, both equal, since neither has aught to do with the other.
(10, 11)
And thou shalt know the substance of the sky, and all the signs in the sky, and the resplendent works of the glowing sun's pure torch, and whence they arose. And thou shalt learn likewise of the wandering deeds of the round-faced moon, and of her substance. 5Thou shalt know, too, the heavens that surround us, whence they arose, and how Necessity took them and bound them to keep the limits of the stars . . . how the earth, and the sun, and the moon, and the sky that is common to all, and the Milky Way, and the outermost Olympos, and the burning might of the stars arose. 10R. P. 123, 124.
(12)
The narrower bands were filled with unmixed fire, and those next them with night, and in the midst of these rushes their portion of fire. In the midst of these is the divinity that directs the course of all things; for she is the beginner of all painful birth and all begetting, driving the female to the embrace of the male, 5and the male to that of the female. R. P. 125.
(13)
First of all the gods she contrived Eros. R. P. 125.
(14)
Shining by night with borrowed light,[1] wandering round the earth.
(15)
Always looking to the beams of the sun.
(16)
For just as thought stands at any time to the mixture of its erring organs, so does it come to men; for that which thinks
- ↑ Note the curious echo of Il. v. 214. Empedokles has it too (fr. 45). It appears to be a joke, made in the spirit of Xenophanes, when it was first discovered that the moon shone by reflected light. Anaxagoras may have introduced this view to the Athenians (§ 135), but these verses prove it was not originated by him.
