M. MANILIUS

ASTRONOMICON

BOOK ONE

[v. 126] ...separated and, having brought forth the shining world,
the darkness, driven away, fled into the infernal shadows;
whether nature remains, after a thousand ages, to return
into the same state, having been loosened from individual
principles, and was taken from almost nothing and will be nothing,
and blind matter perfected the sky and the globe;
whether fire fashioned the work, and the twinkling flames,
which made the eyes of the world and inhabit the whole
body and shape the vibrating thunderbolts in the sky;
or whether liquid brought this forth, without which the dry
matter of things grows stiff and consumes the fire itself, by which it is loosened;
or whether the earth does not know a father, nor flame, nor air,
nor moisture, and they make the god through four limbs
and have built the globe of the world and forbid anything to be sought
beyond them, since all things are created through themselves,
nor should the cold lack the hot, or the wet the dry,
the spirit the solids, and let this discord be concord,
which fashions the fitting bond and the generative work
and renders the elements capable of all birth; —
always will the genus be in a fight, and it will remain doubtful
which lies hidden and is only above man and god; —
but in whatever face, nevertheless, under the origin of things,
it is agreed and the body is digested in a certain order.
Fire lifted itself, winged, into the ethereal shores
and, having embraced the highest peaks of the starry sky,
it made the walls of nature with a rampart of flames.
Next, the spirit descended into the thin airs
and extended the air through the middle of the voids of the world;
the breath, placed under the neighboring stars, feeds the fire.
The third lot spread the waves and the swimming floods
poured through the whole sea, being born in the deep,