The City of the Sun | Page 5

will be the changes of weather on land and sea.
Furthermore, under the flag a book is always kept written with letters
of gold.
G.M. I pray you, worthy hero, explain to me their whole system of
government; for I am anxious to hear it.
Capt. The great ruler among them is a priest whom they call by the
name Hoh, though we should call him Metaphysic. He is head over all,
in temporal and spiritual matters, and all business and lawsuits are
settled by him, as the supreme au- thority. Three princes of equal power
-- viz., Pon, Sin, and Mor -- assist him, and these in our tongue we
should call Power, Wisdom, and Love. To Power belongs the care of
all matters relating to war and peace. He attends to the military arts, and,
next to Hoh, he is ruler in every affair of a warlike nature. He governs
the military magistrates and the soldiers, and has the management of
the munitions, the fortifications, the storm- ing of places, the
implements of war, the armories, the smiths and workmen connected

with matters of this sort.
But Wisdom is the ruler of the liberal arts, of mechanics, of all sciences
with their magistrates and doctors, and of the discipline of the schools.
As many doctors as there are, are under his control. There is one doctor
who is called Astrolo- gus; a second, Cosmographus; a third,
Arithmeticus; a fourth, Geometra; a fifth, Historiographus; a sixth,
Poeta; a seventh, Logicus; an eighth, Rhetor; a ninth, Grammaticus; a
tenth, Medicus; an eleventh, Physiologus; a twelfth, Politicus; a thir-
teenth, Moralis. They have but one book, which they call Wisdom, and
in it all the sciences are written with conciseness and marvellous
fluency of expression. This they read to the people after the custom of
the Pythagoreans. It is Wisdom who causes the exterior and interior,
the higher and lower walls of the city to be adorned with the finest
pictures, and to have all the sciences painted upon them in an admirable
manner. On the walls of the temple and on the dome, which is let down
when the priest gives an address, lest the sounds of his voice, being
scattered, should fly away from his audience, there are pictures of stars
in their different magnitudes, with the powers and motions of each,
expressed separately in three little verses.
On the interior wall of the first circuit all the mathematical figures are
conspicuously painted -- figures more in number than Archimedes or
Euclid discovered, marked symmetrically, and with the explanation of
them neatly written and contained each in a little verse. There are
definitions and propositions, etc. On the exterior convex wall is first an
immense drawing of the whole earth, given at one view. Following
upon this, there are tablets setting forth for every separate country the
customs both public and private, the laws, the origins and the power of
the inhabitants; and the alphabets the different people use can be seen
above that of the City of the Sun.
On the inside of the second circuit, that is to say of the second ring of
buildings, paintings of all kinds of precious and com- mon stones, of
minerals and metals, are seen; and a little piece of the metal itself is
also there with an apposite explanation in two small verses for each
metal or stone. On the outside are marked all the seas, rivers, lakes, and

streams which are on the face of the earth; as are also the wines and the
oils and the different liquids, with the sources from which the last are
extracted, their qualities and strength. There are also vessels built into
the wall above the arches, and these are full of liquids from one to 300
years old, which cure all diseases. Hail and snow, storms and thunder,
and whatever else takes place in the air, are represented with suitable
figures and little verses. The inhabitants even have the art of
representing in stone all the phenomena of the air, such as the wind,
rain, thunder, the rain- bow, etc.
On the interior of the third circuit all the different families of trees and
herbs are depicted, and there is a live specimen of each plant in
earthenware vessels placed upon the outer parti- tion of the arches.
With the specimens there are explanations as to where they were first
found, what are their powers and natures, and resemblances to celestial
things and to metals, to parts of the human body and to things in the sea,
and also as to their uses in medicine, etc. On the exterior wall are all the
races of fish found in rivers, lakes, and seas, and their habits and values,
and ways of breeding, training, and living,