Meditations VII.50

All that is earth-born gravitates earthwards, Dust unto dust; and all that from ether Grows, speeds swiftly back again heavenward;⁶⁵

that is, either there is a breaking up of the closely-linked atoms or, what is much the same, a scattering of the impassive elements.

• 65.Euripides, Chrysippus, Fragment 836. Constantly quoted. Compare Lucretius ii. 991; Genesis iii. 19: γῆ εἶ καὶ ἐς γῆν ἀπελεύσῃ; Ecclesiasticus xl. 11.

  Euripides’ Chrysippus is a lost play. Lucretius was the Roman poet of On the Nature of Things, an exposition of Epicurean physics. The Greek of Genesis 3:19, in translation: “earth thou art, and to earth thou shalt return.” Ecclesiasticus 40:11 has “All things that are of the earth shall turn to the earth again” (King James).