Complete Works of Plutarch Part 54

Threefold was our part.i.tion: each obtain'd His meed of honor due.

And in the division of the whole, Zeus obtained the element fire, Poseidon water, and Hades that of air. Him he also calls "aerial darkness," because the air has no proper light, but is lightened by the sun, moon, and other planets.

The fourth part was left common to all, for the primal essence of the three elements is always in motion. The earth alone remains unmoved, to which he added also Olympus; it may have been because it is a mountain, being a part of the earth. If it belongs to heaven, as being the most brilliant and purest part of it, this may be the fifth essence in the elements, as certain distinguished philosophers think. So he, with reason, has conjectured it was common, the lowest part belonging to the earth by its weight, and the top parts to Olympus by their lightness.

The natures between the two are borne upward to the one and downward to the other.

Since the nature of the elements is a combination of contraries, of dryness and moisture, hot and cold, and since by their relation and combination all things are constructed and undergo partial changes,--the whole not admitting of dissolution,--Empedocles says all things exist in this manner: "Sometimes in love all things meeting together in one.

Sometimes, again, each being carried away by animosity of hate." The concord and unity of the elements he calls love, their opposition, hate.

Before his time Homer foreshadowed love and hate in what he says in his poetry (I. xiv. 200):--

I go to visit old Ocea.n.u.s The sire of G.o.ds, and Tethys, I go to visit them and reconcile a lengthen'd feud.

A similar meaning has the myth about, Aphrodite and Ares, the one having the same force as Empedocles's love, the other his hate. When they sometimes come together, and again separate, the sun reveals them, Hephaestus binds them, and Poseidon releases them. Whence it is evident that the warm and dry essence, and the contrary of these, the cold and wet, sometimes combine all things and again dissolve them.

Related to these is what is said by other poets that by the intercourse of Ares and Aphrodite arises Harmony; a combination of contraries grave and acute a.n.a.logously accommodating themselves to one another. By which arrangement things which are endowed with a contrary nature are all mutually opposed. The poet seems to have signified this enigmatically in the conflict of the G.o.ds, in which he makes some help the Greeks and some the Trojans, showing allegorically the character of each. And he set over against Poseidon Phoebus, the cold and wet against the hot and dry: Athene to Ares, the rational to the irrational, that is, the good to the bad. Hera to Artemis, that is, the air to the moon, because the one is stable and the other unstable. Hermes to Latona, because speech investigates and remembers, but oblivion is contrary to these.

Hephaestus to the River G.o.d, for the same reason that the sun is opposed to the sea. The spectator of the fight was the primary G.o.d, and he is made taking joy in it.

From the afore-mentioned matter Homer seems to show this: that the world is one and finite. For if it had been infinite, it would never have been divided in a number having a limit. By the name "all" he signifies the collective whole. For in many other cases he uses the plural for the singular. He signifies the same thing more clearly in saying (I. xiv.

200):--

The ends of the earth,--and again where he says (I. vii. 478):--

Nor should I care Though thou wert thrust beneath the lowest deep Of earth and ocean,--and in

On the very top of many-peaked Olympus where there is a top, there, too, is a limit.

His opinions about the sun are plain. That it has an orbicular energy sometimes appearing over the earth, sometimes going under it, this he makes evident by saying (O. x. 190):--

My friends, lo we know not where is the place of darkness or of dawning, nor where the sun that gives light to men goes beneath the earth, nor where he rises.

And that he is always preceding over us and on this account is called Hyperion by our poet; that he makes the sun rising from the water which surrounds the earth the ocean, that the sun descends into it, is clearly expressed. First, as to the rising (O. iii. l):--

Now the sun arose and left the lovely mere speeding to the brazen heaven, to give light to the immortals and to mortal men on the earth.

Its setting (I. vii. 486):--

The sun, now sunk beneath the ocean wave, Drew o'er the teeming earth the veil of night.

And he declares its form (O. xix. 234):--

He was brilliant as the sun,

and its size (I. xi. 735):--

We as sunlight overspread the earth.

and more in the following (O. iv. 400):--

So often as the sun in his course has reached the mid-heaven,--and its power (O. ii. log):--

Of Helios, who overseeth all and ordereth all things.

Finally that it has a soul, and in its movement is guided by choice in certain menaces it makes (O. xii. 383):--

I will go down to Hades and shine among the dead.

And on this thus Zeus exhorts him:--

Helios, see that thou shine on amidst the deathless G.o.ds amid mortal men upon the earth, the grain giver.

From which it is plain that the sun is not a fire, but some more potent being, as Aristotle conjectured. a.s.suredly, fire is borne aloft, is without a soul, is easily quenchable and corruptible; but the sun is...o...b..cular and animate, eternal and imperishable.

And as to the other planets scattered through the heavens, that Homer is not ignorant is evident in his poems (I. xviii. 480):--

Pleiads and Hyads and Orions might.

The Bear which always encircles the North Pole is visible to us. By reason of its height it never touches the horizon, because in an equal time, the smallest circle in which the Bear is, and the largest in which Orion is, revolves in the periphery of the world. And Bootes, slowly sinking because it makes a frequent setting, has that kind of position, that is carried along in a straight line. It sinks with the four signs of Zodiac, there being six zodiacal signs divided in the whole night.

That he has not gone through all observations of the stars, as Aratus or some of the others, need be surprising to no one. For this was not his purpose.

He is not ignorant of the causes of disturbances to the elements as earthquakes and eclipses, since the whole earth shares in itself air, fire, and water, by which it is surrounded. Reasonably, in its depths are found vapors full of spirit, which they say being borne outward move the air; when they are restrained, they swell up and break violently forth. That the spirit is held within the earth they consider is caused by the sea, which sometimes obstructs the channels going outward, and sometimes by withdrawing, overturns parts of the earth. This Homer knew, laying the cause of earthquakes on Poseidon, calling him Earth Container and Earth Shaker.

Now, then, when these volatile movements are kept within the earth, the winds cease to blow, then arises the darkness and obscurity of the sun.

Let us see whether he was aware also of this. He made Poseidon moving the earth after Achilles issued forth to fight. For he had previously mentioned on the day before what the state of the air was. In the incident of Sarpedon (I. xvi. 567):--

Zeus extended opaque shadows over the fight,--

and again in the case of Patroclus (I. xvii. 366):--

Now might ye deem the glorious sun himself nor moon was safe, for darkest clouds of night overspread the warriors.

And a little while afterward Ajax prays (I. xvii. 645):--

O Father Jove, from o'er the sons of Greece, Remove this cloudy darkness; clear the sky That we may see our fate.

But after the earthquake, the vapor issuing forth, there are violent winds, whence Hera says (I. xxi. 334):--

While from the sea I call the strong blast Of Zephyr and brisk Notus who shall drive The raging flames ahead.

On the following day Iris calls the winds to the pyre of Patroclus (I.

xxiii. 212):--

They with rushing sound rose and before them drove the hurrying clouds.

So the eclipse of the sun takes place in a natural manner, when the moon on its pa.s.sage by it goes under it perpendicularly and is darkened. This he seems to have known. For he said before that Odysseus was about to come (O. xiv. 162):--

As the old moon wanes, and the new is born;--