L. VIVES.
FIrst (a) fabulare The word Snetonius vseth: Hee loued (saith hee of Tiberius) the reading of Fabular History, euen were it ridiculous and foolish. (b) Second] The Platonist•…•…, (chiefly the Stoikes) reduced all these goddes fables vnto naturall causes and natures selfe, as their heads. (Plato in Cratylo Cic. de nat. deor. Phurnut. and others.) But this they doe wring for sometimes in such manner that one may see they do but dally. (c) Heraclitus] an Ephesian: he wrote a book that needed an Oedipus or the Delian Swimmer, and therfore he was called Scotinus, darke. He held fire the beginning, and end of all thinges, and that was full of soules and daemones, spirits. His opinion of the fire, Hippasus of Metapontus followed. (d) Num∣bers Pithagoras held that God, our soules, and all things in the world consisted vpon numbers and that from their harmonies were all things produced. These numbers Plato learning of the Italian Pythagoreans, explained them and made them more intelligible: yet not so but that the r•…•…ader must let a great part of them alone: This Cicero to Atticus calleth an obscure thing, Plato his numbers. (c) Or of Atomes] Epicurus in emulation of Democritus taught that all things consisted of little indiuisible bodies, called therefore 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, from which notwithstan∣ding he excluded neither forme, magnitude, nor waight. (f) Then which they hold] Nature knoweth nothing more faire, or more spacious. Seneca. Plato in Timeo. Tull. de nat. deor. 2. and other Phylosophers hold this.