11. About Democritus

But Democritus was an acquaintance of Leucippus. This was Democritus of Abdera, son of Damasippus, who met with many Gymnosophists among the Indians and with priests and astrologers in Egypt and with Magi in Babylon. But he speaks like Leucippus about elements, to wit, fulness and void, saying that the full is that which is but the void that which is not, and he said this because things are ever moving in the void. He said also that the ordered worlds are boundless and differ in size, and that in some there is neither sun nor moon, but that in others both are greater than with us, and in yet others more in number. And that the intervals between the ordered worlds are unequal, here more and there less, and that some increase, others flourish and others decay, and here they come into being and there they are eclipsed. But that they are destroyed by colliding with one another. And that some ordered worlds are bare of animals and plants and of all water. And that in our cosmos the earth came into being first of the stars and that the moon is the lowest of the stars, and then comes the sun and then the fixed stars: but that the planets are not all at the same height. And he laughed at everything, as if all things among men deserved laughter.