As therefore, if we were unable to come near and touch the sea, but could only see it at a distance, and had heard that its water is brackish, salt, and undrinkable, any one who should tell us that there are in its depths many and great animals of various forms and shapes, and that it is full of great and monstrous beasts who make the same use of the water as we do of the air, would be thought only to relate a parcel of strange and uncreditable stories, newly found out and invented for delight and amusement; in the same manner we seem to be affected and disposed towards the moon, not believing that there are any who inhabit it. And I am of opinion, that they themselves do much more wonder, when they behold the earth,—which is, as it were, the dregs and mud of the universe, appearing to them through moist and foggy clouds and mists, a little place, a low, abject, and immovable thing without any brightness or light whatever,—how this pitiful inconsiderable thing should be able to produce, nourish, and maintain animals that have motion, respiration, and heat. And if peradventure they had ever heard these verses of Homer, A filthy squalid place, abhorred even by The Gods themselves;[103] and again, Hell is as far beneath, as heaven above The earth;[104] they would certainly think them to have been written of this place where we live, and that here is hell and Tartarus, and that the earth which is equally distant from heaven and hell is only the moon. 26. I had not well ended my discourse, when Sylla interrupting me said: Forbear Lamprias, and put a stop to your discourse, lest running (as they say) the vessel of your story on ground, you confound and spoil all the play, which has at present another scene and disposition. I myself therefore shall be the actor, but shall, before I enter upon my part, make known to you the poet or author; beginning, if there is nothing to hinder, with that of Homer, An isle Ogygia lies in Ocean’s arms,[105]