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Book I Chapter 29

Chapter 29: Thunder and lightning

On thunder, lightning, thunderbolts, fiery whirlwinds, and whirlwinds.⁸⁶⁰

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Anaximander

Anaximander said that these phenomena arise from wind. When wind enclosed in a thick cloud forces its way out through the fineness of its particles and its lightness, the rupture produces the noise, while the opening produces the flash against the darkness of the cloud.⁸⁶¹

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Anaximenes

Anaximenes held the same view, adducing what happens at sea, where the water sparkles as the oars cleave it.

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Metrodorus

Metrodorus held that, when wind strikes a cloud solidified by its density, the shattering produces the crash, while the impact and splitting produce a flash. Through the swiftness of its motion, taking on additional heat from the sun, it discharges a thunderbolt; the weakening of the thunderbolt turns it into a fiery whirlwind.

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras held that, when ⟨the⟩ hot enters the cold (that is, a portion of aether enters a portion of air), its noise produces thunder, and its color against the darkness of the cloud produces lightning. The quantity and magnitude of the light produce a thunderbolt; fire with a greater bodily mass produces a whirlwind, and fire mixed with cloud a fiery whirlwind.⁸⁶²

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Archelaus and Xenophanes

Archelaus gives the same account, adducing what happens when red-hot stones are lowered into cold water.

Xenophanes held that lightning occurs when clouds become bright in their motion.

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Empedocles

Empedocles held that light falls into a cloud and excludes the air that resists it. Its quenching and breaking up produce a crash, and its shining produces lightning; a thunderbolt is the intensity of the lightning.⁸⁶³

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Diogenes

Diogenes held that fire falls into a wet cloud, producing thunder as it is quenched and lightning by its flash. He also regards wind as a contributing cause.

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Heraclitus and Leucippus

Heraclitus held that thunder arises from the whirling together of winds and clouds and currents of air entering the clouds; lightning from the ignition of exhaled matter; and fiery whirlwinds from clouds catching fire and being extinguished.

Leucippus declares that the violent escape of fire enclosed in very thick clouds produces thunder.

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Democritus on thunder and lightning

Democritus held that thunder arises from an irregular aggregate which forces the cloud enclosing it to move downward. Lightning is a collision of clouds, through which the constituents that generate fire, gathered together by friction, are filtered through rarefied spaces containing many voids.⁸⁶⁴

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Democritus on bolts and whirlwinds

A thunderbolt occurs when the movement of the constituents that generate fire forces its way through, these being purer and finer, more uniform and closely fitted together, as he himself writes. A fiery whirlwind occurs when aggregates of fire containing more voids are confined in regions full of voids and within their own enclosing membranes; taking bodily form through their varied mixture, they acquire an impulse in the direction of weight.⁸⁶⁵

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Chrysippus on sight and sound

Chrysippus held that lightning is the ignition of clouds rubbed against one another or torn apart by wind, and that thunder is the resulting noise. Thunder and lightning occur simultaneously in the air, but we perceive the lightning first because sight is quicker than hearing.⁸⁶⁶

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Chrysippus on degrees of heat

When the movement of the wind becomes more violent and fiery, a thunderbolt is produced. When the wind bursts out in a compact mass and is less intensely ignited, a fiery whirlwind occurs; when the wind is still less intensely ignited, a whirlwind.

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Aristotle

Aristotle held that these phenomena too arise from the dry exhalation. When it encounters the moist exhalation and forces its way out, the friction and rupture produce the noise, while the ignition of the dry matter produces lightning.

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: Strato

Strato held that these phenomena occur when the hot yields to the cold and is forced out: thunder through the breaking away, lightning through the light, and a thunderbolt through the speed. Fiery whirlwinds and whirlwinds arise through an excess of the material that each draws along with it: hotter material in a fiery whirlwind, faster material in a whirlwind.⁸⁶⁷

1 ⟨Aëtius⟩: The Stoics

The Stoics held that thunder is a collision of clouds, lightning an ignition caused by friction, a thunderbolt a more violent flash, and a fiery whirlwind a more sluggish one.

1 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Aristotle on whirlwinds

Aristotle’s view. Aristotle held that whirlwinds occur when a squall descends in a whirl. The wind, prevented from going straight by a contrary wind, cold, density, or some other cause, and driven on by what comes up behind it, turns back and coils in a circle within the cloud, bringing the cloud down to earth with it. Then, as it moves, it violently snatches up whatever it encounters and throws it down again: the phenomenon is, as it were, an undigested squall.⁸⁶⁸

1 Aristotle on fiery whirlwinds

Fiery whirlwinds occur when the wind, descending violently, catches fire in its motion. The air burns along with it, taking its color from ⟨the⟩ burning, and for this reason it shines out even at night. These too snatch up and overturn things in the same way, being, as it were, whirlwinds of fire.⁸⁶⁹

1 Aristotle on bright and smoky thunderbolts

A thunderbolt occurs when a large quantity of fine wind enclosed in the clouds is ignited, squeezed out, and hurled to earth with powerful momentum. If it is exceedingly fine and therefore does not scorch, it is called “bright,” in the poets’ language; if it is less fine and does scorch, “smoky.” The former, because of its fineness, passes swiftly on before it can set anything alight, without even blackening anything beneath it. The latter, being somewhat slower, stains things as though with soot, but passes by without destroying anything.⁸⁷⁰

1 Aristotle on resistance and passage

Hence things that resist it are burned, while those that admit it into their pores suffer no harm. Thus, when a shield was struck, its bronze covering melted but the wood suffered no harm: because the material was porous, the wind passed through before burning could occur. Likewise, when it passed through clothing, it did not burn it up but reduced it to something like rags. Such was his account of these matters.⁸⁷¹

860.Astrapē is the lightning flash; keraunos is the striking thunderbolt. “Fiery whirlwind” and “whirlwind” render prēstēr and typhōn, but the authors distinguish these phenomena in different ways. Their definitions, including differences in the role of fire, are preserved below.

861.Pneuma here is wind or a current of air. The bracketed Aëtius attribution is Wachsmuth’s editorial identification of the source, not an author-heading transmitted as part of the excerpt.

862.The article before “hot” is supplied by Meineke. In this account even the typhōn, translated “whirlwind,” involves fire; it is the mixture with cloud that distinguishes the prēstēr. The terms do not carry one fixed classification throughout the chapter.

863.The report is highly compressed. The relative “its” most naturally connects the quenching and shining with the light, although “air” intervenes in the Greek. Tonos, rendered “intensity,” conveys tension or force.

864.Synkrima, “aggregate,” denotes a composite mass. The description explains the phenomenon through the arrangement, friction, and passage of material constituents; “voids” translates the repeated reference to empty spaces within these structures.

865.“In the direction of weight” retains baros, the printed reading: downward, where weight tends. Wachsmuth explicitly defends it against Diels’s proposed bathos, “depth.” The membranes and the bodily formation belong to this account’s description of the composite structures.

866.The account distinguishes the simultaneous occurrence of the two events from the order in which we perceive them. The comparative oxutera can mean keener or swifter; the context concerns the priority of sight. Arrian’s account below instead places the production of lightning after thunder.

867.The source prints tachuteran, “faster,” agreeing with “material.” The apparatus records the alternative pachuteran, “thicker,” from a parallel tradition. Although “thicker” might seem easier here, this translation retains Wachsmuth’s printed reading.

868.Wachsmuth identifies this longer report with Arius Didymus’s epitome, physical fragment 12; the transmitted heading names Aristotle. It closely parallels Meteorology III.1. Eknephias is a squall issuing from a cloud; “undigested” preserves apepton, the metaphor for a process that has not fully developed.

869.The article before “burning” is supplied by Usener. The explanation connects the visible glow with air ignited during the violent downward movement.

870.The poetic names are argēs, “bright,” and psoloeis, “smoky” or “sooty.” Here the distinction concerns the effects left by the bolt: no darkening, or a soot-like stain. The account explains these effects through the fineness and speed of the moving wind.

871.The shield and clothing examples also occur in Aristotle, Meteorology III.1. The contrast is between resistance that delays passage and porosity that permits it. Arrian repeats a related explanation below, with gold inside a wooden box.