r the whole circumference of heaven, which
was to be a true cosmos or glorious world spangled with them all over.
And he gave to each of them two movements: the first, a movement on the
same spot after the same manner, whereby they ever continue to think
consistently the same thoughts about the same things; the second, a
forward movement, in which they are controlled by the revolution of the
same and the like; but by the other five motions they were unaffected,
in order that each of them might attain the highest perfection. And
for this reason the fixed stars were created, to be divine and eternal
animals, ever-abiding and revolving after the same manner and on the
same spot; and the other stars which reverse their motion and are
subject to deviations of this kind, were created in the manner already
described. The earth, which is our nurse, clinging (or 'circling')
around the pole which is extended through the universe, he framed to be
the guardian and artificer of night and day, first and eldest of gods
that are in the interior of heaven. Vain would be the attempt to tell
all the figures of them circling as in dance, and their juxtapositions,
and the return of them in their revolutions upon themselves, and their
approximations, and to say which of these deities in their conjunctions
meet, and which of them are in opposition, and in what order they get
behind and before one another, and when they are severally eclipsed to
our sight and again reappear, sending terrors and intimations of the
future to those who cannot calculate their movements--to attempt to
tell of all this without a visible representation of the heavenly system
would be labour in vain. Enough on this head; and now let what we have
said about the nature of the created and visible gods have an end.

To know or tell the origin of the other divinities is beyond us, and we
must accept the traditions of the men of old time who affirm themselves
to be the offspring of the gods--that is what they say--and they must
surely have known their own ancestors. How can we doubt the word of the
children of the gods? Although they give no probable or certain proofs,
still, as they declare that they are speaking of what took place in
their own family, we must conform to custom and believe them. In this
manner, then, according to them, the genealogy of these gods is to be
received and set forth.

Oceanus and Tethys were the children of Earth and Heaven, and from these
spr