Dream of Scipio and Stoic Paradoxes

of motion, produce seven distinct sounds separated by intervals, which is the cause of most harmonies. Learned men have imitated this on strings and with singing, and thus have opened for themselves a path of return to this place. Just as others who, with superior intellects, have pursued divine studies during human life. This sound, filling the ears of men, has made them deaf. Nor is there any sense in you more dull, just as where the Nile rushes down from high mountains to the places called the Cataracts, the people living nearby lack the sense of hearing due to the magnitude of the sound. Here, however, the sound of the entire universe’s most rapid rotation is so great that human ears cannot perceive it, just as you cannot look directly at the sun, and its rays overcome your sight and senses." Wondering at this, I nonetheless turned my eyes back to the earth repeatedly. Then Africanus said, "I perceive that you are now contemplating the home and dwelling of men. If it appears small to you, as it truly is, always look at these celestial things and despise those human ones. For what fame from the speech of men, or what glory worth seeking, can you attain? You see that it is inhabited in sparse and narrow places, and in these very spots, which are like specks, vast solitudes are found. And those who inhabit the earth are so scattered that nothing can pass between them. Some are oblique, some transverse, and some even stand opposite you, from whom you can certainly gain no glory. You also see the same earth as if girded and surrounded by certain belts, of which you see two, distant from each other and resting on the very poles of the heavens, frozen with frost. The middle one, however, is scorched by the heat of the sun. Two are habitable: the southern one, where those who stand there walk with their feet opposite yours, has no relation to your people. But this other one, under the northern sky, which you inhabit, see how small a part of it touches you. For all the earth which is cultivated by us, narrowed at the poles and wider at the sides, is a small island surrounded by that sea which is called Atlantic, or