METAMORPHOSES BOOK I
and separated the ethereal heavens from the dense atmosphere. When thus he had released these elements and freed them from the blind heap of things, he set them each in its own place and bound them fast in harmony. The fiery weightless element that forms heaven's vault leaped up and made place for itself upon the topmost height. Next came the air in lightness and in place. The earth was heavier than these, and, drawing with it the grosser elements, sank to the bottom by its own weight. The streaming water took the last place of all, and held the solid land confined in its embrace.
When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side. Then he bade the waters to spread abroad, to rise in waves beneath the rushing winds, and fling themselves around the shores of the encircled earth. Springs, too, and huge, stagnant pools and lakes he made, and hemmed down-flowing rivers within their shelving banks, whose waters, each far remote from each, are partly swallowed by the earth itself, and partly flow down to the sea: and being thus received into the expanse of a freer flood, beat now on shores instead of banks. Then did he bid plains to stretch out, valleys to sink down, woods to be clothed in leafage, and the rock-ribbed mountains to arise. And as the celestial vault is cut by two zones on the right and two on the left, and there is a fifth zone between, hotter than these, so did the providence of God mark off the enclosed mass with the same number of zones, and the same tracts were stamped upon the earth. The central zone of these may not be dwelt in by
5
