Aristotle METEOROLOGY Complete

Translated by E. Webster.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

100 pages - You are on Page 31

On the basis of this division we can sec that the sea cannot have springs. For it falls under neither of the two classes; it does not flow and it is not artificial; whereas all water from springs must belong to one or other of them. Natural standing water from springs is never found on such a large scale.

Again, there are several seas that have no communication with one another at all. The Red Sea, for instance, communicates but slightly with the ocean outside the straits, and the Hyrcanian and Caspian seas are distinct from this ocean and people dwell all round them. Hence, if these seas had had any springs anywhere they must have been discovered.

It is true that in straits, where the land on either side contracts an open sea into a small space, the sea appears to flow. But this is because it is swinging to and fro. In the open sea this motion is not observed, but where the land narrows and contracts the sea the motion that was imperceptible in the open necessarily strikes the attention.

The whole of the Mediterranean does actually flow. The direction of this flow is determined by the depth of the basins and by the number of rivers. Maeotis flows into Pontus and Pontus into the Aegean. After that the flow of the remaining seas is not so easy to observe. The current of Maeotis and Pontus is due to the number of rivers (more rivers flow into the Euxine and Maeotis than into the whole Mediterranean with its much larger basin), and to their own shallowness. For we find the sea getting deeper and deeper. Pontus is deeper than Maeotis, the Aegean than Pontus, the Sicilian sea than the Aegean; the Sardinian and Tyrrhenic being the deepest of all. (Outside the pillars of Heracles the sea is shallow owing to the mud, but calm, for it lies in a hollow.) We see, then, that just as single rivers flow from mountains, so it is with the earth as a whole: the greatest volume of water flows from the higher regions in the north. Their alluvium makes the northern seas shallow, while the outer seas are deeper. Some further evidence of the height of the northern regions of the earth is afforded by the view of many of the ancient meteorologists. They believed that the sun did not pass below the earth, but round its northern part, and that it was the height of this which obscured the sun and caused night.

So much to prove that there cannot be sources of the sea and to explain its observed flow.

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