Those then that imagined that both were one and the same God have with good reason dedicated and consecrated this oracle to Apollo and to the earth, deeming it to be the sun which imprinted this temperature and disposition on the earth, from whence arose this predictive exhalation. For as Hesiod, with far better reason than other philosophers, calls the earth The well-fixed seat of all things; so do we esteem it eternal, immortal, and incorruptible. But as to the virtues and faculties which are in it, we believe that some fail in one place, and spring up anew in another. It seems also (for so some experiments incline us to conjecture) that these transitions, changes, and revolutions in process of time do circulate and return to the same place, and begin again where they left off. In some countries we see lakes and whole rivers and not a few fountains and springs of hot waters have sometimes failed and been entirely lost, and at others have fled and absconded themselves, being hidden and concealed under the earth; but perhaps some years after do appear again in the same place, or else run hard by. And so of metal mines, some have been quite exhausted, as the silver ones about Attica; and the same has happened to the veins of brass ore in Euboea, of which the best blades were made and hardened in cold water, as the poet Aeschylus tells us, Taking his sword, a right Euboean blade. It is not long since the quarry of Carystus has ceased to yield a certain soft stone, which was wont to be drawn into a fine thread; for I suppose some here have seen towels, net-work, and coifs woven of that thread, which could not be burnt; but when they were soiled with using, people flung them into the fire, and took them thence white and clean, the fire only purifying them. But all this is vanished; and there is nothing but some few fibres or hairy threads, lying up and down scatteringly in the grain of the stones, to be seen now in the quarry.