Prayer to Earth

In the eighth book of the Thebaid, shortly after the ground opened and swallowed the seer Amphiaraus alive, a hymn to Earth is sung. The placement is calculated: she who has just eaten a man is being praised.

The construction is hymnic, made of definitions alone: eternal creatress of men and gods, bringing forth rivers, woods, souls and all seeds. Two traditions about the origin of humankind are named in succession and left unreconciled — "the hands of Prometheus" (clay) and "the stones of Pyrrha" (thrown over the shoulder after the flood). An ancient hymn does not choose between versions, it lists both as achievements.

Then the history of civilisation in a single line: "you first gave food to the unfed, and changed it for them". Acorns, then grain; the change of diet is the exit from savagery.

And cosmology, also in one phrase: "firm and immovable strength of the world that never sets" — and immediately "hanging in empty air". The Earth is motionless and at the same time rests on nothing. The ancient picture of the world is set out with no attempt to remove the contradiction, because none was seen there: being immovable and being suspended are different properties, not competing claims.