Read "Of Those Sentiments Concerning Nature with Which Philosophers Were Delighted" by Plutarch online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A figure is the exterior appearance, the circumscription, and the boundary of a body.
The Pythagoreans say that the bodies of the four elements are spherical, fire being in the supremest place only excepted, whose figure is conical.