HKB
Empedocles and the Stoics believe that winter is caused by the thickness of the air prevailing and mounting upwards; and summer by fire, it falling downwards.
This description being given by me of Meteors, or those things that are above us, I must pass to those things which are terrestrial.
Thales and his followers say that there is but one earth. Hicetes the Pythagorean, that there are two earths, this and the Antichthon, or the earth opposite to it. The Stoics, that this earth is one, and that finite and limited. Xenophanes, that the earth, being compacted of fire and air, in its lowest parts hath laid a foundation in an infinite depth. Metrodorus, that the earth is mere sediment and dregs of water, as the sun is of the air.