well, both produce and receive new forms? In the middle of
the day, thy waters, horned Ammon,[27] are frozen, at the rising and at
the setting {of the sun} they are warm. On applying its waters,
Athamanis[28] is said to kindle wood when the waning moon has shrunk
into her smallest orb. The Ciconians have a river,[29] which when drunk
of, turns the entrails into stone, and lays {a covering of} marble on
things that are touched by it. The Crathis[30] and the Sybaris adjacent
to it, in our own country, make the hair similar {in hue} to amber and
gold.

"And, what is still more wonderful, there are some streams which are
able to change, not only bodies, but even the mind. By whom has not
Salmacis,[31] with its obscene waters, been heard of? {Who has not
heard}, too, of that lake of AEthiopia,[32] of which, if any body drinks
with his mouth, he either becomes mad, or falls into a sleep wondrous
for its heaviness? Whoever quenches his thirst from the Clitorian
spring[33] hates wine, and in his sobriety takes pleasure in pure water.
Whether it is that there is a virtue in the water, the opposite of
heating wine, or whether, as the natives tell us, after the son of
Amithaon,[34] by his charms and his herbs, had delivered the raving
daughters of Proetus from the Furies, he threw the medicines for the
mind in that stream; and a hatred of wine remained in those waters.

"The river Lyncestis[35] flows unlike that {stream} in its effect; for
as soon as any one has drunk of it with immoderate throat, he reels,
just as if he had been drinking unmixed wine. There is a place in
Arcadia, (the ancients called it Pheneos,)[36] suspicious for the
twofold nature of its water. Stand in dread of it at night; if drunk of
in the night time, it is injurious; in the daytime, it is drunk of
without any ill effects. So lakes and rivers have, some, one property,
and some another. There was a time when Ortygia[37] was floating on the
waves, now it is fixed. The Argo dreaded the Symplegades tossed by the
assaults of the waves dashing against them; they now stand immoveable,
and resist {the attacks of} the winds.

"Nor will AEtna, which burns with its sulphureous furnaces, always be a
fiery {mountain}; nor yet was it always fiery. For, if the earth is an
animal, and is alive, and has lungs that breathe forth flames in many a
place, it may change the passages for its breathing, and oft as it is
moved, may close these caverns {and} open others; or if th