… and sat among the people
Teaching them what was worthy, and they listened
In silence, wondering at the revelations
How the great world began, the primal cause,
The nature of things, what God is, whence the snows
Come down, where lightning breaks from, whether wind
Or Jove speaks in the thunder from the clouds,
The cause of earthquakes, by what law the stars
Wheel in their courses, all the secrets hidden
From man’s imperfect knowledge.

(From “The Teachings of Pythagoras”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book XV, trans. Rolfe Humphries)