Mortals have made up their minds to name two forms, one of which they should not name,[[445]] and that is where they go astray from the truth. They have distinguished them as 55 opposite in form, and have assigned to them marks distinct from one another. To the one they allot the fire of heaven, gentle, very light, in every direction the same as itself, but not the same as the other. The other is just the opposite to it, dark night, a compact and heavy body. Of these I tell thee 60 the whole arrangement as it seems likely; for so no thought of mortals will ever outstrip thee. R. P. 121.
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Now that all things have been named light and night, and the names which belong to the power of each have been assigned to these things and to those, everything is full at once of light and dark night, both equal, since neither has aught to do with the other.
And thou shalt know the substance of the sky, and all the signs in the sky, and the resplendent works of the glowing sun’s pure torch, and whence they arose. And thou shalt learn likewise of the wandering deeds of the round-faced moon, and of her substance. Thou shalt know, too, the heavens that surround 5 us, whence they arose, and how Necessity took them and bound them to keep the limits of the stars ... how the earth, and the sun, and the moon, and the sky that is common to all, and the Milky Way, and the outermost Olympos, and the burning might of the stars arose. 10 R. P. 123, 124.
The narrower rings are filled with unmixed fire, and those next them with night, and in the midst of these rushes their portion of fire. In the midst of these circles is the divinity that directs the course of all things; for she is the beginner of all painful birth and all begetting, driving the female to the 5 embrace of the male, and the male to that of the female. R. P. 125.
First of all the gods she contrived Eros. R. P. 125.