(34)
There never was nor will be a man who has certain knowledge about the gods and about all the things I speak of. Even if he should chance to say the complete truth, yet he himself knows not that it is so. But all may have their fancy.[1] R. P. 104.
(35)
Let these be taken as fancies[2] something like the truth. R. P. 104 a.
(36)
All of them[3] that are visible for mortals to behold.
(37)
And in some caves water drips. . . .
(38)
If god had not made brown honey, men would think figs far sweeter than they do.
58.The heavenly bodies. Most of these fragments are not in any way philosophical and those that appear to be so are easily accounted for otherwise. The intention of one of them (fr. 32) is clear. "Iris too" is a cloud, and we may infer that the same thing had been said of the sun, moon, and stars; for the doxographers tell us that these were all explained as "clouds ignited by motion."[4] To the same context clearly belongs the explanation of the St. Elmo's fire which Aetios has preserved. "The things like stars that appear on ships," we
- ↑ It is more natural to take πᾶσι as masculine than as neuter, and ἐπὶ πᾶσι can mean "in the power of all."
- ↑ Reading δεδοξάσθω with Wilamowitz.
- ↑ As Diels suggests, this probably refers to the stars, which Xenophanes held to be clouds.
- ↑ Cf. Diels ad loc. (P. Ph. Fr. p. 44), "ut Sol et cetera astra, quae cum in nebulas evanescerent, deorum simul opinio casura erat."
