Thus far the universal animal was made in the divine image, but
the other animals were not as yet included in him. And God
created them according to the patterns or species of them which
existed in the divine original. There are four of them: one of
gods, another of birds, a third of fishes, and a fourth of
animals. The gods were made in the form of a circle, which is the
most perfect figure and the figure of the universe. They were
created chiefly of fire, that they might be bright, and were made
to know and follow the best, and to be scattered over the
heavens, of which they were to be the glory. Two kinds of motion
were assigned to them—first, the revolution in the same and
around the same, in peaceful unchanging thought of the same; and
to this was added a forward motion which was under the control of
the same. Thus then the fixed stars were created, being divine
and eternal animals, revolving on the same spot, and the
wandering stars, in their courses, were created in the manner
already described. The earth, which is our nurse, clinging around
the pole extended through the universe, he made 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 labour of
telling all the figures of them, moving as in dance, and their
juxta-positions and approximations, and when and where and behind
what other stars they appear to disappear—to tell of all this
without looking at a plan of them would be labour in vain.
The knowledge of the other gods is beyond us, and we can only
accept the traditions of the ancients, who were the children of
the gods, as they said; for surely they must have known their own
ancestors. Although they give no proof, we must believe them as
is customary. They tell us that Oceanus and Tethys were the
children of Earth and Heaven; that Phoreys, Cronos, and Rhea came
in the next generation, and were followed by Zeus and Here, whose
brothers and children are known to everybody.