Earth, heavier than either of these, drew down the largest elements, and was compressed by its own weight. The weightless fire, that forms the heavens, darted upwards to make its home in the furthest heights.
When he had disentangled the elements, and freed them from the obscure mass, he fixed them in separate spaces in harmonious peace. This conflict was ended by a god and a greater order of nature, since he split off the earth from the sky, and the sea from the land, and divided the transparent heavens from the dense air. Nothing retained its shape, one thing obstructed another, because in the one body, cold fought with heat, moist with dry, soft with hard, and weight with weightless things. Though there was land and sea and air, it was unstable land, unswimmable water, air needing light. There was no Titan yet, shining his light on the world, or waxing Phoebe renewing her white horns, or the earth hovering in surrounding air balanced by her own weight, or watery Amphitrite stretching out her arms along the vast shores of the world. You, gods, since you are the ones who alter these, and all other things, inspire my attempt, and spin out a continuous thread of words, from the world's first origins to my own time.īefore there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything, Nature appeared the same throughout the whole world: what we call chaos: a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter, badly combined discordant atoms of things, confused in the one place. I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms.
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