Of Those Sentiments Concerning Nature with Which Philosophers Were Delighted by Plutarch

The disciples of Thales say that the earth is the centre of the universe. Xenophanes, that it is first, being rooted in the infinite space. Philolaus the Pythagorean gives to fire the middle place, and this is the hearth-fire of the universe; the second place to the Antichthon; the third to that earth which we inhabit, which is seated in opposition unto and whirled about the opposite,-which is the reason that those which inhabit that earth cannot be seen by us. Parmenides was the first that confined the habitable world to the two solstitial (or temperate) zones.