Let us explain the nature of the sea and the reason why such a large mass of water is salt and the way in which it originally came to be.
The old writers who invented theogonies say that the sea has springs, for they want earth and sea to have foundations and roots of their own.
Presumably they thought that this view was grander and more impressive as implying that our earth was an important part of the universe. For they believed that the whole world had been built up round our earth and for its sake, and that the earth was the most important and primary part of it. Others, wiser in human knowledge, give an account of its origin. At first, they say, the earth was surrounded by moisture. Then the sun began to dry it up, part of it evaporated and is the cause of winds and the turnings back of the sun and the moon, while the remainder forms the sea. So the sea is being dried up and is growing less, and will end by being some day entirely dried up. Others say that the sea is a kind of sweat exuded by the earth when the sun heats it, and that this explains its saltness: for all sweat is salt. Others say that the saltness is due to the earth. Just as water strained through ashes becomes salt, so the sea owes its saltness to the admixture of earth with similar properties.
We must now consider the facts which prove that the sea cannot possibly have springs. The waters we find on the earth either flow or are stationary. All flowing water has springs. (By a spring, as we have explained above, we must not understand a source from which waters are ladled as it were from a vessel, but a first point at which the water which is continually forming and percolating gathers.) Stationary water is either that which has collected and has been left standing, marshy pools, for instance, and lakes, which differ merely in size, or else it comes from springs. In this case it is always artificial, I mean as in the case of wells, otherwise the spring would have to be above the outlet. Hence the water from fountains and rivers flows of itself, whereas wells need to be worked artificially. All the waters that exist belong to one or other of these classes.
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On the basis of this division we can sec that the sea cannot have springs. For it falls under neither of the two classes; it does not flow and it is not artificial; whereas all water from springs must belong to one or other of them. Natural standing water from springs is never found on such a large scale.
Again, there are several seas that have no communication with one another at all. The Red Sea, for instance, communicates but slightly with the ocean outside the straits, and the Hyrcanian and Caspian seas are distinct from this ocean and people dwell all round them. Hence, if these seas had had any springs anywhere they must have been discovered.
It is true that in straits, where the land on either side contracts an open sea into a small space, the sea appears to flow. But this is because it is swinging to and fro. In the open sea this motion is not observed, but where the land narrows and contracts the sea the motion that was imperceptible in the open necessarily strikes the attention.
The whole of the Mediterranean does actually flow. The direction of this flow is determined by the depth of the basins and by the number of rivers. Maeotis flows into Pontus and Pontus into the Aegean. After that the flow of the remaining seas is not so easy to observe. The current of Maeotis and Pontus is due to the number of rivers (more rivers flow into the Euxine and Maeotis than into the whole Mediterranean with its much larger basin), and to their own shallowness. For we find the sea getting deeper and deeper. Pontus is deeper than Maeotis, the Aegean than Pontus, the Sicilian sea than the Aegean; the Sardinian and Tyrrhen-ic being the deepest of all. (Outside the pillars of Heracles the sea is shallow owing to the mud, but calm, for it lies in a hollow.) We see, then, that just as single rivers flow from mountains, so it is with the earth as a whole: the greatest volume of water flows from the higher regions in the north. Their alluvium makes the northern seas shallow, while the outer seas are deeper. Some further evidence of the height of the northern regions of the earth is afforded by the view of many of the ancient meteor-ologists. They believed that the sun did not pass below the earth, but round its northern part, and that it was the height of this which obscured the sun and caused night.
So much to prove that there cannot be sources of the sea and to explain its observed flow.
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We must now discuss the origin of the sea, if it has an origin, and the cause of its salt and bitter taste.
What made earlier writers consider the sea to be the original and main body of water is this. It seems reasonable to suppose that to be the case on the analogy of the other elements. Each of them has a main bulk which by reason of its mass is the origin of that element, and any parts which change and mix with the other elements come from it. Thus the main body of fire is in the upper region; that of air occupies the place next inside the region of fire; while the mass of the earth is that round which the rest of the elements are seen to lie. So we must clearly look for something analogous in the case of water. But here we can find no such single mass, as in the case of the other elements, except the sea. River water is not a unity, nor is it stable, but is seen to be in a continuous process of becoming from day to day. It was this difficulty which made people regard the sea as the origin and source of moisture and of all water. And so we find it maintained that rivers not only flow into the sea but originate from it, the salt water becoming sweet by filtration.
But this view involves another difficulty. If this body of water is the origin and source of all water, why is it salt and not sweet? The reason for this, besides answering this question, will ensure our having a right first conception of the nature of the sea.
The earth is surrounded by water, just as that is by the sphere of air, and that again by the sphere called that of fire (which is the outermost both on the common view and on ours). Now the sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved in-to vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth. This, as we have said before, is the regular course of nature.
Hence all my predecessors who supposed that the sun was nourished by moisture are absurdly mistaken. Some go on to say that the solstices are due to this, the reason being that the same places cannot always supply the sun with nourishment and that without it he must perish. For the fire we are familiar with lives as long as it is fed, and the only food for fire is moisture. As if the moisture that is raised could reach the sun! or this ascent were really like that performed by flame as it comes into being, and to which they supposed the case of the sun to be analogous!
Really there is no similarity. A flame is a process of becoming, involving a constant interchange of moist and dry. It cannot be said to be 773
nourished since it scarcely persists as one and the same for a moment.
This cannot be true of the sun; for if it were nourished like that, as they say it is, we should obviously not only have a new sun every day, as Heraclitus says, but a new sun every moment. Again, when the sun causes the moisture to rise, this is like fire heating water. So, as the fire is not fed by the water above it, it is absurd to suppose that the sun feeds on that moisture, even if its heat made all the water in the world evaporate. Again, it is absurd, considering the number and size of the stars, that these thinkers should consider the sun only and overlook the question how the rest of the heavenly bodies subsist. Again, they are met by the same difficulty as those who say that at first the earth itself was moist and the world round the earth was warmed by the sun, and so air was generated and the whole firmament grew, and the air caused winds and solstices. The objection is that we always plainly see the water that has been carried up coming down again. Even if the same amount does not come back in a year or in a given country, yet in a certain period all that has been carried up is returned. This implies that the celestial bodies do not feed on it, and that we cannot distinguish between some air which preserves its character once it is generated and some other which is generated but becomes water again and so perishes; on the contrary, all the moisture alike is dissolved and all of it condensed back into water.
The drinkable, sweet water, then, is light and is all of it drawn up: the salt water is heavy and remains behind, but not in its natural place. For this is a question which has been sufficiently discussed (I mean about the natural place that water, like the other elements, must in reason have), and the answer is this. The place which we see the sea filling is not its natural place but that of water. It seems to belong to the sea because the weight of the salt water makes it remain there, while the sweet, drinkable water which is light is carried up. The same thing happens in animal bodies. Here, too, the food when it enters the body is sweet, yet the residuum and dregs of liquid food are found to be bitter and salt. This is because the sweet and drinkable part of it has been drawn away by the natural animal heat and has passed into the flesh and the other parts of the body according to their several natures. Now just as here it would be wrong for any one to refuse to call the belly the place of liquid food because that disappears from it soon, and to call it the place of the residuum because this is seen to remain, so in the case of our present subject.
This place, we say, is the place of water. Hence all rivers and all the water that is generated flow into it: for water flows into the deepest place, and the deepest part of the earth is filled by the sea. Only all the light 774
and sweet part of it is quickly carried off by the sun, while herest remains for the reason we have explained. It is quite natural that some people should have been puzzled by the old question why such a mass of water leaves no trace anywhere (for the sea does not increase though innumerable and vast rivers are flowing into it every day.) But if one considers the matter the solution is easy. The same amount of water does not take as long to dry up when it is spread out as when it is gathered in a body, and indeed the difference is so great that in the one case it might persist the whole day long while in the other it might all disappear in a moment-as for instance if one were to spread out a cup of water over a large table. This is the case with the rivers: all the time they are flowing their water forms a compact mass, but when it arrives at a vast wide place it quickly and imperceptibly evaporates.
But the theory of the Phaedo about rivers and the sea is impossible.
There it is said that the earth is pierced by intercommunicating channels and that the original head and source of all waters is what is called Tartarus-a mass of water about the centre, from which all waters, flowing and standing, are derived. This primary and original water is always surging to and fro, and so it causes the rivers to flow on this side of the earth’s centre and on that; for it has no fixed seat but is always oscillating about the centre. Its motion up and down is what fills rivers. Many of these form lakes in various places (our sea is an instance of one of these), but all of them come round again in a circle to the original source of their flow, many at the same point, but some at a point opposite to that from which they issued; for instance, if they started from the other side of the earth’s centre, they might return from this side of it. They descend only as far as the centre, for after that all motion is upwards. Water gets its tastes and colours from the kind of earth the rivers happened to flow through.
But on this theory rivers do not always flow in the same sense. For since they flow to the centre from which they issue forth they will not be flowing down any more than up, but in whatever direction the surging of Tartarus inclines to. But at this rate we shall get the proverbial rivers flowing upwards, which is impossible. Again, where is the water that is generated and what goes up again as vapour to come from? For this must all of it simply be ignored, since the quantity of water is always the same and all the water that flows out from the original source flows back to it again. This itself is not true, since all rivers are seen to end in the sea except where one flows into another. Not one of them ends in the earth, but even when one is swallowed up it comes to the surface again. And 775
those rivers are large which flow for a long distance through a lowying country, for by their situation and length they cut off the course of many others and swallow them up. This is why the Istrus and the Nile are the greatest of the rivers which flow into our sea. Indeed, so many rivers fall into them that there is disagreement as to the sources of them both. All of which is plainly impossible on the theory, and the more so as it derives the sea from Tartarus.
Enough has been said to prove that this is the natural place of water and not of the sea, and to explain why sweet water is only found in rivers, while salt water is stationary, and to show that the sea is the end rather than the source of water, analogous to the residual matter of all food, and especially liquid food, in animal bodies.
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We must now explain why the sea is salt, and ask whether it eternally exists as identically the same body, or whether it did not exist at all once and some day will exist no longer, but will dry up as some people think.
Every one admits this, that if the whole world originated the sea did too; for they make them come into being at the same time. It follows that if the universe is eternal the same must be true of the sea. Any one who thinks like Democritus that the sea is diminishing and will disappear in the end reminds us of Aesop’s tales. His story was that Charybdis had twice sucked in the sea: the first time she made the mountains visible; the second time the islands; and when she sucks it in for the last time she will dry it up entirely. Such a tale is appropriate enough to Aesop in a rage with the ferryman, but not to serious inquirers. Whatever made the sea remain at first, whether it was its weight, as some even of those who hold these views say (for it is easy to see the cause here), or some other reason-clearly the same thing must make it persist for ever. They must either deny that the water raised by the sun will return at all, or, if it does, they must admit that the sea persists for ever or as long as this process goes on, and again, that for the same period of time that sweet water must have been carried up beforehand. So the sea will never dry up: for before that can happen the water that has gone up beforehand will return to it: for if you say that this happens once you must admit its recurrence. If you stop the sun’s course there is no drying agency. If you let it go on it will draw up the sweet water as we have said whenever it approaches, and let it descend again when it recedes. This notion about the 776
sea is derived from the fact that many places are found to be drier now than they once were. Why this is so we have explained. The phenomenon is due to temporary excess of rain and not to any process of becoming in which the universe or its parts are involved. Some day the opposite will take place and after that the earth will grow dry once again. We must recognize that this process always goes on thus in a cycle, for that is more satisfactory than to suppose a change in the whole world in order to explain these facts. But we have dwelt longer on this point than it deserves.
To return to the saltness of the sea: those who create the sea once for all, or indeed generate it at all, cannot account for its saltness. It makes no difference whether the sea is the residue of all the moisture that is about the earth and has been drawn up by the sun, or whether all the flavour existing in the whole mass of sweet water is due to the admixture of a certain kind of earth. Since the total volume of the sea is the same once the water that evaporated has returned, it follows that it must either have been salt at first too, or, if not at first, then not now either. If it was salt from the very beginning, then we want to know why that was so; and why, if salt water was drawn up then, that is not the case now.
Again, if it is maintained that an admixture of earth makes the sea salt (for they say that earth has many flavours and is washed down by the rivers and so makes the sea salt by its admixture), it is strange that rivers should not be salt too. How can the admixture of this earth have such a striking effect in a great quantity of water and not in each river singly?
For the sea, differing in nothing from rivers but in being salt, is evidently simply the totality of river water, and the rivers are the vehicle in which that earth is carried to their common destination.
It is equally absurd to suppose that anything has been explained by calling the sea ‘the sweat of the earth’, like Empedicles. Metaphors are poetical and so that expression of his may satisfy the requirements of a poem, but as a scientific theory it is unsatisfactory. Even in the case of the body it is a question how the sweet liquid drunk becomes salt sweat whether it is merely by the departure of some element in it which is sweetest, or by the admixture of something, as when water is strained through ashes. Actually the saltness seems to be due to the same cause as in the case of the residual liquid that gathers in the bladder. That, too, becomes bitter and salt though the liquid we drink and that contained in our food is sweet. If then the bitterness is due in these cases (as with the water strained through lye) to the presence of a certain sort of stuff that is carried along by the urine (as indeed we actually find a salt deposit 777
settling in chamber-pots) and is secreted from the flesh in sweat (as if the departing moisture were washing the stuff out of the body), then no doubt the admixture of something earthy with the water is what makes the sea salt.
Now in the body stuff of this kind, viz. the sediment of food, is due to failure to digest: but how there came to be any such thing in the earth requires explanation. Besides, how can the drying and warming of the earth cause the secretion such a great quantity of water; especially as that must be a mere fragment of what is left in the earth? Again, waiving the question of quantity, why does not the earth sweat now when it happens to be in process of drying? If it did so then, it ought to do so now. But it does not: on the contrary, when it is dry it graws moist, but when it is moist it does not secrete anything at all. How then was it possible for the earth at the beginning when it was moist to sweat as it grew dry? Indeed, the theory that maintains that most of the moisture departed and was drawn up by the sun and that what was left over is the sea is more reasonable; but for the earth to sweat when it is moist is impossible.
Since all the attempts to account for the saltness of the sea seem unsuccessful let us explain it by the help of the principle we have used already.
Since we recognize two kinds of evaporation, one moist, the other dry, it is clear that the latter must be recognized as the source of phenomena like those we are concerned with.
But there is a question which we must discuss first. Does the sea always remain numerically one and consisting of the same parts, or is it, too, one in form and volume while its parts are in continual change, like air and sweet water and fire? All of these are in a constant state of change, but the form and the quantity of each of them are fixed, just as they are in the case of a flowing river or a burning flame. The answer is clear, and there is no doubt that the same account holds good of all these things alike. They differ in that some of them change more rapidly or more slowly than others; and they all are involved in a process of perishing and becoming which yet affects them all in a regular course.
This being so we must go on to try to explain why the sea is salt. There are many facts which make it clear that this taste is due to the admixture of something. First, in animal bodies what is least digested, the residue of liquid food, is salt and bitter, as we said before. All animal excreta are undigested, but especially that which gathers in the bladder (its extreme lightness proves this; for everything that is digested is condensed), and also sweat; in these then is excreted (along with other matter) an identical substance to which this flavour is due. The case of things burnt is 778
analogous. What heat fails to assimilate becomes the excrementary residue in animal bodies, and, in things burnt, ashes. That is why some people say that it was burnt earth that made the sea salt. To say that it was burnt earth is absurd; but to say that it was something like burnt earth is true. We must suppose that just as in the cases we have described, so in the world as a whole, everything that grows and is naturally generated always leaves an undigested residue, like that of things burnt, consisting of this sort of earth. All the earthy stuff in the dry exhalation is of this nature, and it is the dry exhalation which accounts for its great quantity. Now since, as we have said, the moist and the dry evaporations are mixed, some quantity of this stuff must always be included in the clouds and the water that are formed by condensation, and must redescend to the earth in rain. This process must always go on with such regularity as the sublunary world admits of. and it is the answer to the question how the sea comes to be salt.
It also explains why rain that comes from the south, and the first rains of autumn, are brackish. The south is the warmest of winds and it blows from dry and hot regions. Hence it carries little moist vapour and that is why it is hot. (It makes no difference even if this is not its true character and it is originally a cold wind, for it becomes warm on its way by incorporating with itself a great quantity of dry evaporation from the places it passes over.) The north wind, on the other hand, comb ing from moist regions, is full of vapour and therefore cold. It is dry in our part of the world because it drives the clouds away before it, but in the south it is rainy; just as the south is a dry wind in Libya. So the south wind charges the rain that falls with a great quantity of this stuff. Autumn rain is brackish because the heaviest water must fall first; so that that which contains the greatest quantity of this kind of earth descends quickest.
This, too, is why the sea is warm. Everything that has been exposed to fire contains heat potentially, as we see in the case of lye and ashes and the dry and liquid excreta of animals. Indeed those animals which are hottest in the belly have the hottest excreta.
The action of this cause is continually making the sea more salt, but some part of its saltness is always being drawn up with the sweet water.
This is less than the sweet water in the same ratio in which the salt and brackish element in rain is less than the sweet, and so the saltness of the sea remains constant on the whole. Salt water when it turns into vapour becomes sweet, and the vapour does not form salt water when it condenses again. This I know by experiment. The same thing is true in every case of the kind: wine and all fluids that evaporate and condense back 779
into a liquid state become water. They all are water modified by a certain admixture, the nature of which determines their flavour. But this subject must be considered on another more suitable occasion.
For the present let us say this. The sea is there and some of it is continually being drawn up and becoming sweet; this returns from above with the rain. But it is now different from what it was when it was drawn up, and its weight makes it sink below the sweet water. This process prevents the sea, as it does rivers, from drying up except from local causes (this must happen to sea and rivers alike). On the other hand the parts neither of the earth nor of the sea remain constant but only their whole bulk. For the same thing is true of the earth as of the sea: some of it is carried up and some comes down with the rain, and both that which remains on the surface and that which comes down again change their situations.
There is more evidence to prove that saltness is due to the admixture of some substance, besides that which we have adduced. Make a vessel of wax and put it in the sea, fastening its mouth in such a way as to prevent any water getting in. Then the water that percolates through the wax sides of the vessel is sweet, the earthy stuff, the admixture of which makes the water salt, being separated off as it were by a filter. It is this stuff which make salt water heavy (it weighs more than fresh water) and thick. The difference in consistency is such that ships with the same cargo very nearly sink in a river when they are quite fit to navigate in the sea. This circumstance has before now caused loss to shippers freighting their ships in a river. That the thicker consistency is due to an admixture of something is proved by the fact that if you make strong brine by the admixture of salt, eggs, even when they are full, float in it. It almost becomes like mud; such a quantity of earthy matter is there in the sea. The same thing is done in salting fish.
Again if, as is fabled, there is a lake in Palestine, such that if you bind a man or beast and throw it in it floats and does not sink, this would bear out what we have said. They say that this lake is so bitter and salt that no fish live in it and that if you soak clothes in it and shake them it cleans them. The following facts all of them support our theory that it is some earthy stuff in the water which makes it salt. In Chaonia there is a spring of brackish water that flows into a neighbouring river which is sweet but contains no fish. The local story is that when Heracles came from Erytheia driving the oxen and gave the inhabitants the choice, they chose salt in preference to fish. They get the salt from the spring. They boil off some of the water and let the rest stand; when it has cooled and the heat 780
and moisture have evaporated together it gives them salt, not in lumps but loose and light like snow. It is weaker than ordinary salt and added freely gives a sweet taste, and it is not as white as salt generally is.
Another instance of this is found in Umbria. There is a place there where reeds and rushes grow. They burn some of these, put the ashes into water and boil it off. When a little water is left and has cooled it gives a quantity of salt.
Most salt rivers and springs must once have been hot. Then the original fire in them was extinguished but the earth through which they percolate preserves the character of lye or ashes. Springs and rivers with all kinds of flavours are found in many places. These flavours must in every case be due to the fire that is or was in them, for if you expose earth to different degrees of heat it assumes various kinds and shades of flavour.
It becomes full of alum and lye and other things of the kind, and the fresh water percolates through these and changes its character. Sometimes it becomes acid as in Sicania, a part of Sicily. There they get a salt and acid water which they use as vinegar to season some of their dishes.
In the neighbourhood of Lyncus, too, there is a spring of acid water, and in Scythia a bitter spring. The water from this makes the whole of the river into which it flows bitter. These differences are explained by a knowledge of the particular mixtures that determine different savours.
But these have been explained in another treatise.
We have now given an account of waters and the sea, why they persist, how they change, what their nature is, and have explained most of their natural operations and affections.
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Let us proceed to the theory of winds. Its basis is a distinction we have already made. We recognize two kinds of evaporation, one moist, the other dry. The former is called vapour: for the other there is no general name but we must call it a sort of smoke, applying to the whole of it a word that is proper to one of its forms. The moist cannot exist without the dry nor the dry without the moist: whenever we speak of either we mean that it predominates. Now when the sun in its circular course approaches, it draws up by its heat the moist evaporation: when it recedes the cold makes the vapour that had been raised condense back into water which falls and is distributed through the earth. (This explains why there is more rain in winter and more by night than by day: though the 781
fact is not recognized because rain by night is more apt to escape observation than by day.) But there is a great quantity of fire and heat in the earth, and the sun not only draws up the moisture that lies on the surface of it, but warms and dries the earth itself. Consequently, since there are two kinds of evaporation, as we have said, one like vapour, the other like smoke, both of them are necessarily generated. That in which moisture predominates is the source of rain, as we explained before, while the dry evaporation is the source and substance of all winds. That things must necessarily take this course is clear from the resulting phenomena themselves, for the evaporation that is to produce them must necessarily differ; and the sun and the warmth in the earth not only can but must produce these evaporations.
Since the two evaporations are specifically distinct, wind and rain obviously differ and their substance is not the same, as those say who maintain that one and the same air when in motion is wind, but when it