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Section 111

"Such is the nature of the whole earth and the things around it. In the earth itself, around its hollows, there are many regions. Some are deeper and more open than the one we dwell in; others are deeper with a narrower opening; and still others are shallower than ours and broader. All these are connected underground in many places by passages, some narrower, some wider, so that large quantities of water flow from one to another, as if into mixing bowls. And there are huge, unceasing underground rivers of hot and cold waters, and fire, and great rivers of liquid mud, some clearer, some thicker, like the rivers of mud that flow in Sicily before the lava, and the lava itself. These regions are filled by whichever river happens to flow into them at the time. A kind of oscillation within the earth moves all these up and down. The nature of this oscillation is something like this: One of the chasms in the earth happens to be especially large and goes straight through the entire earth. This is the one Homer spoke of: 'Far away, where the deepest abyss lies beneath the earth.' This he and many other poets have called Tartarus. Into this chasm all rivers flow together, and from it they flow out again. Each river takes on the nature of the earth through which it flows. The reason they all flow out and into here is that this liquid has no bottom or resting place. So it oscillates and surges up and down, and the air and wind around it do the same. They follow it when it rushes to the far side of the earth, and when it rushes back here. Just as the breath flows in and out during respiration, so the wind oscillating with the liquid causes terrible and unimaginable blasts coming in and out. When the water retreats into the region we call 'below,' it flows into the rivers of that region and fills them like an irrigation ditch. When it leaves there and rushes 'here,' it fills our rivers again. Once filled, they flow through channels and through the earth, arriving at those places to which each makes its way, creating seas, lakes, rivers, and springs. From there they sink back into the earth, some taking longer, winding paths, some shorter, and empty back into Tartarus—some much lower than where they were pumped out, others only slightly. But all pour in below their point of outflow. Some flow in on the opposite side from where they came out, others on the same side. There are even those that make a complete circle, coiling once or even several times around the earth like serpents, before descending as low as possible to pour back in. It is possible to descend as far as the center from either side, but no further, for the opposite side is an uphill climb for streams from either direction."