The Earth floats on water. That was a common belief in 585 B.C., the year of a famous solar eclipse. Conceive a greater hope of a person who in the beginning of one’s life is hurried away by some evil habit than one who fastens on nothing. On the Nature of things, the ancients have a map and celestial model, as well as an account of how the natural World functions and how it reached its present form. Beginning from a first principle called the Boundless or Infinite, something capable of generating Hot and Cold was separated off…and a sphere of fire from this source grew around the air in the region of Earth like bark around a tree. When this sphere was torn off ad enclosed in certain rings, the Sun and the Moon and the stars came into existence. These Heavenly bodies are wheel-like, compressed masses of air filled with fire, which exhale flames from an orifice at one point. Eclipses and lunar phases are often explained by obstruction of the orifices. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

 The path of an eclipse across the Earth’s surface can be calculated millennia in advance. Although it is entirely predictable, a total eclipse of the Sun is still perhaps the most sublime spectacle among the great cosmic phenomena. In the brief time—the few moments of totality—years of anticipation are subsumed. It is a sight capable of stretching the most fervent imagination. And when the Sun at last reappears from behind the Moon’s black shroud, something then makes you sigh with relief: “It is still there…” A total solar eclipse of the Sun is one of Nature’s grandest and most impressive events, perhaps more imposing than any other. It is a case of emotion in its pure state, almost primordia—similar, I believe, to the sense of wonder felt by ancient peoples who stood in the grip of total solar eclipse.  #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

Once we are convinced that there is a God, and that we are here to save our souls, it were surely folly in the extreme to think of anything except him. No wonder ancient peoples viewed eclipses as fateful signs—even more than the apparition of comets or meteor showers. Indeed, ancient civilizations had a profound relationship with everything that happened in the sky. They had to know how to extract fundamental signs from the Heavens that could guarantee the survival of their communities, signs that reflected the procession of the seasons, atmospheric variations or the will of the gods. In effect, every celestial event had to have an Earthly counterpart. No astronomical event was ever without consequence for the fate of the community.  Him whose name is but a syllable, but whose hand is over all the Earth, God Almighty is just and gracious, and gives not His assent to rash inhumane curses. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

Thus, because life on Earth depended (and still depends today) upon the two great luminaries, the Sun and the Moon, the disappearance of one of these—especially the brighter one—even for a tiny period of time was considered an upheaval f cosmic magnitude. As noted above, one such famous episode is recounted in the course of a rather long war between the Lydians and the Medes that had already lasted five years. While they were engaged in battle during the sixth year, the day suddenly turned into night just when combat was the most heated….When the Lydians and the Medes saw night take the place of day, they quit fighting and, with deep solicitude, prayed that peace be made. The event was the eclipse of 28 May 585. There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the sense.  #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

Usually, eclipse were viewed as the Sun or the Moon being eaten by Rahu, one of the demons that fought the gods for possession of the goddess Laksmi (Venus)—and of a divine nectar similar to ambrosia, the god Narayana surprised him and cut off his head. Ever since, Rahu has wandered the skies, lying in ambush for the Sun and the Moon. Among the Buriats living in east Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, the belief in a monster named Alkha was widespread. Alkha continually chased and devoured the Sun and the Moon. He repeatedly darkened the World, until the exasperated gods cut him in two. The lower half fell to Earth, but the upper half continues to stalk the skies, which explains why eclipses still happen every so often. What are the comprehend with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God. Human life partakes of the unraveable inscrutableness of God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

The sea is what remains of the primeval moisture, the rest having been evaporated as air or dried up by the celestial fire to form the Earth. Land, sea, air and Heavens are thus all explained by a continual process of separating off from the primeval pair of Hot (dry) and Cold (wet). Wind, rain, lighting, thunder, and related phenomena are explained by the interaction of these elemental principles (water, air, fire) and opposite powers (hot, cold; dry, moist; thick, thin; light, dark). The origin of living things is explained as part true and later transferred to dry land. The first examples of membrane. In an interesting anticipation of modern ideas, the first human beings could never have survived as helpless infants, but most have been born from living things of another kind, since other animals are quickly able to look for their own food, whole humans require prolonged nursing.  #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

What creature but a madman would not rather do good than ill, when it is plain that good or ill, it must return upon oneself. Cosmic justice explains that out of those things whence is the generation of existing things, into them also does their destruction take place, as is right and due; for they may retribution and pay the penalty to one another for their offense [or injustice], according to the ordering of time. Basically, the eventual reabsorption of all things back into the apeiron (untraversable or limitless rather than infinite in any precise mathematical sense) is the only fitting atonement. It is now generally agreed that offense and compensation must both refer to the strife of opposing principles (such as the hot and cold), and that the ordering of time stands primarily for periodic regularity in the daily and seasonal variation of heat, moisture, daylight, and the like. Whether there is also a reference here to larger cycle in which the cosmos itself would perish into its sources is more doubtful.  #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

This aperion is ageless and immortal, and probably even divine (to theion). This apeiron surrounds and embraces al things and apparently steers or governs them as well. It seems to have been conceived as ungenerated as well as imperishable, and thus contrasts in every respect with the limited, perishable World it engenders. Our sources refer to “Worlds” (kosmoi) in the plural; a succession rather than a simultaneous plurality of Worlds seems to be meant. The Boundless transcends this process of World creation, circumscribing each individual World in space, outlasting all of them in time, and providing the inexhaustible material source, the eternal motive power, the vital energy, and (presumably) the geometrical form and cyclical regularity for the cosmic process as a whole. In its archaic complexity, the apeiron is thus both physical and a metaphysical or theological concept, and points the way not only to the infinite void of the atomists, but also to the cosmic deity of Xenophanes, Aristotle, and the Stoics.  #RandolphHarris 8 of 8