She roused the swift North and brake the waves before him.

Their contention he explains naturally (O. v. 331):--

Now the South would toss it to the North to carry, and now
again the East would yield it to the West.

He knew besides that the North Pole is suspended over the earth, and how
it weighs on the men who dwell in that climate. But the South Pole,
on the contrary, is profound; as when he says of the North Pole (O. v.
296):--

And the North that is born in the bright air rolling on a
great wave on the Southwest wind.

(O. iii. 295):--

Where the Southwest wind drives a great wave against the
left headland."

For by saying "rolling" he notes the force of the wave rushing on from
above, but the wind "driving" signifies a force applied to what is
higher, coming from what is lower.

That the generation of rains comes from the evaporation of the humid, he
demonstrates, saying (I. xi. 54):--

Who sent from Heav'n a show'r of blood-stained rain,--

and (I. xvi. 459):--

But to the ground some drops of blood let fall,--

for he had previously said (I. vii. 329):--

Whose blood, beside Scamander's flowing stream,
Fierce Mars has shed, while to the viewless shade
Their spirits are gone,--

where it is evident that humors of this sort exhaled from the
waters about the earth, mixed with blood, are borne upward. The same
argument is found in the following (I. xvi. 385):--

As in the autumnal season when the earth with weight of rain is
saturate,--for then the sun on account of the dryness of the ground
draws out humors from below and brings from above terrestrial
disturbances. The humid exhalations produce rains, the dry ones, winds.
When the wind is in impact with a cloud and by its force rends the
cloud, it generates thunder and lightning. If the lightning falls, it
sends a thunderbolt. Knowing this our poet speaks as follows (I. xvii.
595):--

His lightnings flash, his rolling thunders roar.

And in another place (O. xii. 415):--

In that same hour Zeus thundered and cast his bolt upon
the ship.

Justly thinking men consider that gods exist, and first of all Homer.
For he is always recalling the gods (I. i. 406):--

The blessed gods living a happy life.

For being immortal they have an easy existence and an inexhaustible
abundance of life. And they do not need food of which the bodies of
mortal men have need (I. v. 34