138 l/-20 to l/-21
mass of fire moving quickly in the air, creating the presentation [i.e.,
appearance] of length. Rain is a change from cloud to water, when
moisture is borne up from earth or sea and is not consumed by the sun.
When it is cooled, it is called frost. Hail is a frozen cloud broken up by
the wind. Snow is moisture from a frozen cloud, as Posidonius says in
book eight of his Account of Physics. Lightning is a kindling of clouds
which are rubbed together or broken by the wind, as Zeno says in his
On the Universe. Thunder is the noise produced by these [clouds] when
they are rubbed together or broken. 154. A thunderbolt is a vigorous
kindling of clouds which falls on the earth with great violence when
clouds are rubbed together or broken by the wind. Others say it is a
compacted mass of fiery air which descends violently. A typhoon is a
great thunderbolt, violent and windlike, or a wind like smoke from a
broken cloud. A tornado is a cloud split by fire together with wind.
when wind is closed up in the earth, as Posidonius says in book eight.
Some of them are 'shaking' [earthquakes], some 'openings', some 'slip-
pings', and others are 'bubblings'.
- They believe that the organization is like this: in the middle is
earth, playing the role of centre, after which is water spherically arranged
with the same centre as the earth so that the earth is inside the water.
After water is a sphere of air. There are five circles in the heaven; of
these the first, the arctic, is always apparent; the second is the summer
tropic; the third is the equinoctial circle; the fourth the winter tropic;
the fifth is the antarctic, which is invisible. They are called parallels in
that they do not converge; still, they are inscribed about a common
centre. The zodiacal [circle] is oblique, since it crosses the parallel circles.
There are five zones on the earth; 156. the first is the northern zone,
beyond the arctic circle, uninhabited because of the cold; the second is
temperate; the third is uninhabited because of scorching heat and is called
the torrid zone; the fourth is the counter-temperate; the fifth is the
southern, uninhabited because of cold.
They believe that nature is a craftsmanlike fire, proceeding methodi-
cally to generation, i.e., a fiery and craftsmanly pneuma. And soul is acapable of sense perception. And this [soul] is the inborn pneuma
in us. Therefore, it is a body and lasts after death. It is destructible, but
the soul of the universe, of which the souls in animals are parts, is
indestructible. 157. Zeno of Citium and Antipater in their treatises On
the Soul and Posidonius [say] that the soul is a warm pneuma. For by
means of this we live and breathe and by this we are moved. So Cleanthes
says that all [souls] last untilconflagration, but Chrysippus says
that only those of the wise do so.