[261] Plato, Phaedo, 109. Schaefer is in error when he asserts (Entwicklung der Ansichten der Alten ueber Gestalt and Grösse der Erde, 16) that Plato in the Timaeus (55, 56) assigns a cubical form to the earth. The question there is not of the shape of the earth, the planet, but of the form of the constituent atoms of the element earth.
Terra pilae similis, nullo fulcimine nixa,
Aëre subjecto tam grave pendet onus.
[Ipsa volubilitas libratum sustinet orbem:
Quique premit partes, angulus omnis abest.
Cumque sit in media rerum regione locata,
Et tangat nullum plusve minusve latus;
Ni convexa foret, parti vicinior esset,
Nec medium terram mundus haberet onus.]
Arte Syracosia suspensus in aëre clauso
Stat globus, immensi parva figura poli;
Et quantum a summis, tantum secessit ab imis
Terra. Quod ut fiat, forma rotunda facit.
(Ovid, Fasti, vi. 269-280.)
The bracketed lines are found in but a few MSS. The last lines refer to a globe said to have been constructed by Archimedes.