8.  Let us return to the words which follow.  “Let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.” Gen. i. 14.  We have spoken about signs.  By times, we understand the succession of seasons, winter, spring, summer and autumn, which we see follow each other in so regular a course, thanks to the regularity of the movement of the luminaries.  It is winter when the sun sojourns in the south and produces in abundance the shades of night in our region.  The air spread over the earth is chilly, and the damp exhalations, which gather over our heads, give rise to rains, to frosts, to innumerable flakes of snow.  When, returning from the southern regions, the sun is in the middle of the heavens and divides day and night into equal parts, the more it sojourns above the earth the more it brings back a mild temperature to us.  Then comes spring, which makes all the plants germinate, and gives to the greater part of the trees their new life, and, by successive generation, perpetuates all the land and water animals.  From thence the sun, returning to the summer solstice, in the direction of the North, gives us the longest days.  And, as it travels farther in the air, it burns that which is over our heads, dries up the earth, ripens the grains and hastens the maturity of the fruits of the trees.  At the epoch of its greatest heat, the shadows which the sun makes at mid-day are short, because it shines from above, from the air over our heads.  Thus the longest days are those when the shadows are shortest, in the same way that the shortest days are those when the shadows are longest.  It is this which happens to all of us “Hetero-skii” i.e. throwing a shadow only one way at noon,—said of those who live north and south of the tropics, while those who live in the tropics cast a shadow sometimes north, sometimes south, vide Strabo ii. 5. § 43.  It was “incredible” to Herodotus that Necho’s Phœnician mariners, in their circumnavigation of Africa, had “the sun on their right hand.”  Her. iv. 42. (shadowed-on-one-side) who inhabit the northern regions of the earth.  But there are people who, two days in the year, are completely without shade at mid-day, because the sun, being perpendicularly over their heads, lights them so equally from all sides, that it could through a narrow opening shine at the bottom of a well.  Thus there are some who call them “askii” (shadowless).  For those who live beyond the land of spices i.e. Arabia.  cf. Lucan., Phars. iii. 247:  Ignotum vobis Arabes venistis in orbem, Umbras mirati nemorum non ire sinistras. see their shadow now on one side, now on another, the only inhabitants of this land of which the shade falls at mid-day; thus they are given the name of “amphiskii,” “Simili modo tradunt in Syene oppido, quod est super Alexandriam quinque millibus stadiorum, solstitii die medio nullam umbram jaci; puteumque ejus experimenti gratia factum, totum illuminari.”  Pliny ii. 75.  cf. Lucan., Phars. 507, “atque umbras nunquam flectente Syene.” (shadowed-on-both-sides ).  All these phenomena happen whilst the sun is passing into northern regions:  they give us an idea of the heat thrown on the air, by the rays of the sun and of the effects that they produce.  Next we pass to autumn, which breaks up the excessive heat, lessening the warmth little by little, and by a moderate temperature brings us back without suffering to winter, to the time when the sun returns from the northern regions to the southern.  It is thus that seasons, following the course of the sun, succeed each other to rule our life.