Why have I narrated these incidents? My purpose was to make it 5 evident that neither is fire necessarily extinguished by having the whole sea poured over it, nor its violence prevented from bursting out by the weight of huge waves. Asclepiodotus, a pupil of Posidonius, has left it on record that the height to which the fire mounted, after overcoming the resistance of the waves, was a hundred fathoms. Now, if such a huge mass of water was unable to overcome the force of the flames that rose from its depths, how much less can the thin, dewy moisture in the clouds extinguish fire in the atmosphere? In short, the 6 moisture of the clouds is so far from presenting any obstacle to the formation of fire that lightning is never seen to flash except when the sky threatens rain. A clear sky has no bolts to hurl. No terror of that sort proceeds from a bright day, nor for the matter of that from a night that is not enveloped in cloud. But what! I hear some one say. Does it not sometimes lighten in a calm night when the stars are visible? It does, but you must remember that there are clouds all the 7 same in that quarter whence issues the flash; only, the earth’s hump does not allow them to be seen by us. Add, too, what is quite possible, that low clouds near the earth may produce fire through friction. This fire when forced up to the upper regions becomes visible in the clear bright part of the sky, but none the less its place of origin was in the dark vicinity of earth. XXVII