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Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3: Essays and Miscellanies

Plutarch · c. AD 1–120 (composed across the early Imperial period; exact dates vary by essay) primary

passage 86 of 555 · BOOK I.

↪ you wandered here via “Pythagorean philosophy” — the connecting lines are tinted below

Thales, the Stoics, and their followers say that the earth is globular. Anaximander, that it resembles a smooth stony pillar. Anaximenes, that it hath the shape of a table. Leucippus, of a drum. Democritus, that it is like a quoit externally, and hollow in the middle.

The disciples of Thales say that the earth is the centre of the universe. Xenophanes, that it is first, being rooted in the infinite space. Philolaus the Pythagorean gives to fire the middle place, and this is the source fire of the universe; the second place to the Antichthon; the third to that earth which we inhabit, which is placed in opposition unto and whirled about the opposite,--which is the reason that those which inhabit that earth cannot be seen by us. Parmenides was the first that confined the habitable world to the two solstitial (or temperate) zones.

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Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3: Essays and Miscellanies · Plutarch · 1–120