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Book I Chapter 31

8 Arrian: The highest mountains

That mountains rising vertically more than twenty stadia above the earth (and these are few in number, at least in our part of the world) have never been seen receiving rain or being swept by wind, nor has a cloud been seen above them or settling on them.⁹²⁸

8 Arrian: The ashes on Oeta

Indeed, there is a report that sacrifices are offered each year on the summit of Oeta to both Heracles and Philoctetes, in memory of the suffering of old, and that the ash on the pyre remains in its place.⁹²⁹

8 Arrian: The air above

For the air high above the earth is already fine, clear, and luminous; and in this way the vapors that are carried farther upward are dispersed.⁹³⁰

8 Arrian: Dew and its colors

Any fine vapor that, instead of rising far and dispersing, cools and descends to earth becomes dew. Scorched by the sun, it turns red or black. They call its red form miltos ⟨or⟩ phoinias, and whatever is black erysibē.⁹³¹

8 Arrian: Frost and snow

When it freezes and falls to earth, it becomes frost. And further, snow stands to rain just as frost does to dew. That cloud too, when it gathers without freezing, separates into rain, but when frozen gathers into snowfall.⁹³²

8 Arrian: Why snow is white

That the cloud freezes into snow before it has fully gathered into water can also be inferred from snow’s color, for it is white and luminous. This is because it freezes and breaks up before turning into water, enclosing with it no small share of airy matter, which is luminous. Hence its color very closely resembles foam, since foam too contains a great deal of airy matter, as the bubbles seething upon it show.⁹³³

9 Plato, from the Timaeus: Fluid and soft

Of water mixed with fire, whatever is fine is called fluid because of its motion and the course it takes as it rolls over the earth; and it is called soft because its bases, being less stable than those of earth, give way.⁹³⁴

9 Plato: Hail, ice, snow, and frost

When this water is separated from fire and isolated from air, it becomes more uniform and is pressed in upon itself by the constituents that leave it. When it freezes in this way, what undergoes these changes most fully above the earth is hail; on the earth it is ice. What undergoes them less fully and is still half-frozen is called snow when above the earth, and frost when it forms from dew and congeals on the earth.⁹³⁵

928.The clause begins abruptly with hoti, “that.” Wachsmuth sees this and the repeated hoti clauses below as traces of an epitomator’s summary. The fragmentary form is retained rather than recast as a direct observation by Arrian.

929.The story links the two heroes with Heracles’s pyre on Oeta. Here the supposedly undisturbed ash serves as evidence for the claim that the mountaintop is beyond wind and rain. Logos marks the account as something reported.

930.Wachsmuth retains tauta in the sense of tautē, “in this way,” instead of inserting dia, “because of these things.” The luminous upper air is part of the explanation given for the dispersal of vapor.

931.The Greek names are retained because their ordinary senses do not fully explain this passage: miltos denotes red ochre or ruddle, while erysibē denotes blight or mildew; phoinias is the red form named here. The text explains these appearances as altered dew. Usener restores milton and supplies ē, “or”; these printed decisions are retained.

932.The printed kai eti, “and further,” is retained, as is the abrupt “that” clause. The comparison distinguishes condensation without freezing from the frozen condition, rather than treating every form of falling water alike.

933.The Greek retains brackets around the rejected second ou, “not.” Pneuma is rendered “airy matter” in this explanation of snow and foam; the report calls it light-like or luminous. The English follows the argument as printed without replacing it with a modern account of reflected light.

934.Timaeus 59d-e. “Bases” belongs to Plato’s account of the geometric bodies assigned to the elements; it concerns the stability of their surfaces. The Greek wording here is compressed, with hygron, “fluid,” repeated. The translation states the two explanations of the names “fluid” and “soft.”

935.The departing constituents are the fire and air just mentioned. Plato classifies the results by both the degree of freezing and their position above or upon the earth. These categories close the chapter; the next chapter turns to winds.