Lightning and thunderbolt

Use in the book

Anaxagoras’ report explains lightning by brilliance against a dark cloud and the bolt by the quantity and magnitude of light. Democritus describes the bolt through purer, finer, closely fitted fire-producing constituents forcing their way through. The vocabulary also appears in poetry, but the physical explanations here make precise local distinctions.

Places to read

1. I.29.1.4Lightning and the bolt are distinguished within one sequence.
2. I.29.1.9Friction and passage through rarefied spaces explain lightning.
3. I.29.1.10A more uniform moving structure explains the bolt.
4. I.29.2.1Striking the earth gives several phenomena the collective name skēptoi.

Translation in this edition

The two nouns remain distinguishable. The terminology of fiery whirlwinds likewise follows each report instead of imposing a single classification on the chapter.

A collective name for striking phenomena

Skēptos names something striking or swooping down. At I.29.2.1 it covers several aerial phenomena when they strike the ground, including ones distinguished by their degree of fire. “Thunderstrike” would be too narrow if it implied that every member of this group was explicitly a fiery thunderbolt.