which they all meet and coincide...To this end the stars came into being,
that the created heaven might imitate the eternal nature.

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,