This is what we have to say to show that the unevennesses of the earth are no proof that the world is created and will be destroyed. To the proof which they attempt to draw from the diminution of the sea, the following answer may justly be given. Do not perpetually fix your eyes merely on the islands which have emerged or any segments which were submerged long ago and in the course of time have been rejoined to the mainland. For contentiousness is a foe to the nature study which holds the investigation of truth to be profoundly desirable. Busy yourselves also with the converse of this, namely, all the parts of the mainland, not only on the sea-coast but in the centre, which have been swallowed up, and all the dry land which has been turned into sea and is the sailing ground of ships of considerable tonnage. Do you not know the celebrated story of the sacred Sicilian straits? In old days Sicily joined on to the mainland of Italy but under the assault on either side of great seas driven by violent winds from opposite directions, the land between them was inundated and broken up and at its side a city was founded, whose name of Rhegium records what happened to it. The result was the opposite of what one would have expected. The seas which were hitherto divided joined together through their confluence, while the land once united was divided by the intervening straits, by which Sicily, which had been mainland, was forced to become an island. Many other cities also are stated to have been swallowed up and to have disappeared overwhelmed by the sea. And so too in Peloponnese they say that the three, Aegira, Bura, lofty Heliceia, Whose walls would soon be clad with thick sea-moss, which were most flourishing in old times were inundated by a great inroad of the sea. And the island of Atlantis “greater than Libya and Asia put together,” as Plato says in the Timaeus , “in a single day and night through extraordinary earthquakes and floods sank below the sea and suddenly disappeared,” turning into a sea which was not navigable but full of abysses. So then the fiction which they propound that the sea is diminished contributes nothing to show that the world is destroyed, for it is clear that the sea withdraws from some places and inundates others. And judgement should not be given on observation of one of the phenomena but of both together, just as also in the disputes of ordinary life the law-abiding judge will not declare his decision until he has heard both litigants.
On the Eternity of the World 26
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