10.214, which has compos salts. But it was a common kind of expression in classical poetic
Book I 179 have been no part in which it could let night in to follow it, because it would not itselfhave withdrawn from anywhere to make room for it. Or was itjust made on one side of the earth, so that as it circled round it would allow night from the other side to circle round too in its wake? Since water, you see, was still covering the whole earth, there was nothing to stop the mass of this watery globe from causing day on one side from the presence of light, and night on the other from the absence of light, which would follow round to the first side at the time of evening, while the light sank down to the other side.
As the water under heaven hadfirst covered the whole earth, where did it recede to, for the dry land to appear?
26. So then, where were the waters collected together, if they had previously occupied the whole surface of the earth—those waters, that is to say, which were drawn aside so that the earth could be laid bare, what part were they collected into?13 lf there was already, you see, a piece of bare earth where they could be collected, the dry land had already appeared, and the abyss did not occupy the whole surface of the earth; but if it had occupied the whole surface, what was the place for the waters to be collected in for the earth to appear as dry? They were not, surely, collected into a pile, as happens on the threshing floor when the harvest that has been threshed is winnowed and then swept into a heap, and so lays bare the place it had been spread over and covered?
Who would ever say such a thing, when they can see the fields of the sea14 spread out level on all sides, because even when waves raise up what seem like mountains of water, they are smoothed out again the moment the storm abates? And even if some shores are more extensively laid bare by the ebbing tide, it cannot be said that there are no other spaces of land where what has been drawn away from somewhere else can go to, and then return again to the place it had departed from.15 But since it was quite simply the whole earth that was covered by the surges of the watery element, where would this retreat to in order to lay bare some parts? Or perhaps it was a more rarified water-like mist that was covering all the lands, and this was collected together by being condensed, so that out ofmany parts it could lay bare those in which the dry land might appear? Though again, the earth too, by subsiding and sinking far and wide, could have provided hollow places to receive the waters flowing together into them in
13. SeeGn 1:9. 14. A poetic expression, not exactly quoted, but in all probability derived from VitgiVsAeneid, 10.214, which has compos salts. But it was a common kind of expression in classical poetic literature. 15. The only sea Augustine had experience ofwas the Mediterranean, which is almost tideless. But he will have known of course about Atlantic tides beyond the Pillars of Hercules—the straits of Gibraltar.