M. MANILIUS

ASTRONOMICON

BOOK ONE

[v. 157] ...so that the liquid might exhale thin airs and vomit them out
and feed the air, drawing seeds from the liquid itself.
The earth settled last with a gathered weight,
160 and the mud, mixed with wandering sands, came together
gradually to the top as the thin liquid fled;
and the more the moisture withdrew into pure waves,
and the more the dried seas built up the earth,
and the fluid sea lay in the hollow valleys,
165 mountains emerged from the straits, and the orb, through the waves,
leaped out, though closed in everywhere by the vast sea.
And it holds the middle seat from all sides of the whole;
and therefore it remains stable, because the whole world
recoils just as much from it and, by falling, made it so that
170 it would not fall from anywhere. It is the middle and lowest part of the whole.
And bodies struck against struck bodies stand in their blows
and by colliding prohibit them from going further.
But if the earth did not hang with a balanced weight,
Phoebus the sun would not drive the courses of the world with the stars following
175 to the west and would never return to the east,
nor would the moon guide its submerged courses through the voids,
nor would Lucifer the morning star shine in the morning hours,
which Hesperos the evening star had given light to in the inverted Olympus.
Now because the earth is not thrown down into the lowest depth,
180 but remains suspended in the middle, all things are passable,
where the sky may fall and go under and rise again.
For I cannot believe in the fortuitous rising of the stars
nor the world being born so often
or the constant births and daily fates of the sun,
185 when the same face remains in the signs through the ages,
the same Phoebus goes from the same parts of the sky,
and the moon is changed through the same number of lights and orbs,