Thus Euripides:-- The starry splendor of the skies, The beautiful and varied work of that wise Creator, Time.
From this the knowledge of a god is conveyed to man; that the sun, the moon, and the rest of the stars, being carried under the earth, rise again in their proper color, magnitude, place, and times.

Therefore they who by tradition delivered to us the knowledge and veneration of the gods did it by these three manner of ways:--first, from Nature; secondly, from fables; thirdly, from the testimony supplied by the laws of commonwealths.

Philosophers taught the natural way; poets, the fabulous; and the political way is to be had from the constitutions of each commonwealth.

All sorts of this learning are distinguished into these seven parts.

The first is from things that are conspicuous, and the observation of those bodies which are in places superior to us.