8. But lo, from the old school, Pythagoras and his fellows, grave and silent men, deliver to me other doctrines, as mysteries, and among them this great and ineffable one, HE HATH SAID. The principle of all things is unity, but from its forms and numbers are produced the elements, and the number and form and measure of each of these is thus somehow declared. Fire is completed out of four-and-twenty right-angled triangles, being contained by four equilateral ones. Each equilateral one is composed of six triangles, whence also they liken it to a pyramid. But air is completed by forty-eight triangles, - 198 - being contained by eight equilateral ones. But it is likened to an octahedron, which is contained by eight equilateral triangles, each of which is divided into six right-angled ones, so that they are forty-eight in all. But water being contained by an hundred and twenty, is likened also to a figure having twenty sides, which indeed consists of twenty-six equal and equilateral triangles .... and ... ¹¹. But the aether is completed of twelve equilateral pentagons, and is similar to a figure having twelve sides, Earth is completed of forty-eight triangles, and is also contained by six equilateral triangles, and is like a cube. For the cube is contained by six squares, each of which extends to four triangles; so that all together are twenty-four.