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next, the creation of climate
And as five zones th’ aetherial regions bind,
Five, correspondent, are to Earth assign’d:
the five zones are the equatorial zone, the two
temperate zones, and the polar zones
The sun with rays, directly darting down,
Fires all beneath, and fries the middle zone:
the equator gets the brunt of it
The two beneath the distant poles, complain
Of endless winter, and perpetual rain.
the poles get the other brunt of it
Betwixt th’ extreams, two happier climates hold
The temper that partakes of hot, and cold.
“temper”, as in “temperate”, as in zones
The fields of liquid air, inclosing all,
Surround the compass of this earthly ball:
fields of liquid air, cloud covers
The lighter parts lye next the fires above;
fires above, the sun and the stars
The grosser near the watry surface move:
“grosser” air, less pure, less aetherial
Thick clouds are spread, and storms engender there,
And thunder’s voice, which wretched mortals fear,
And winds that on their wings cold winter bear.
they gravitate towards the denser earth, creating
conditions “there” for storms, strife, thunder
ever so ominously
Nor were those blustring brethren left at large,
On seas, and shores, their fury to discharge:
blustring brethren, the winds, are not, we learn,
not apportioned, not not allocated
Bound as they are, and circumscrib’d in place,
They rend the world, resistless, where they pass;
And mighty marks of mischief leave behind;
Such is the rage of their tempestuous kind.
tempests, tsunamis, hurricanes
they call the winds
First Eurus to the rising morn is sent
(The regions of the balmy continent);
And Eastern realms, where early Persians run,
To greet the blest appearance of the sun.
Westward, the wanton Zephyr wings his flight;
Pleas’d with the remnants of departing light:
Fierce Boreas, with his off-spring, issues forth
T’ invade the frozen waggon of the North.
where we encounter, incidentally, aurorae borealis
While frowning Auster seeks the Southern sphere;
And rots, with endless rain, th’ unwholsom year.
it is to be noted that in 8 AD, when Metamorphoses
was purportedly first published, one gathers from
the text that the world was understood to be
spherical, with two poles, the boreal and the
austral, from which we later get the eponymously
named Australia
the world went flat, note, only later in the
Middle Ages
R ! chard
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