By them therefore it appears that fire is what gives beginning to all things, and is that in which all things receive their period.
Epicurus the son of Neocles, the Athenian, his philosophical sentiments being the same with those of Democritus, affirms that the principles of all being are bodies which are only perceptible by reason; they admit not of a vacuity, nor of any original, but being of a self-existence are eternal and incorruptible; they are not liable to any diminution, they are indestructible, nor is it possible for them to receive any transformation of parts, or admit of any alterations; of these reason is only the discoverer; they are in a perpetual motion in vacuity, and by means of the empty space; for the vacuum itself is infinite, and the bodies that move in it are infinite.

Those bodies acknowledge these three accidents, figure, magnitude, and gravity.

Democritus acknowledged but two, magnitude and figure.

Epicurus added the third, to wit, gravity; for he pronounced that it is necessary that bodies receive their motion from that impression which springs from gravity, otherwise they could not be moved.

The figures of atoms cannot be incomprehensible, but they are not infinite.