Pagina 436 di 788

Farther off glitter the two pans of the heavenly Scales. Upon

them God on the day of creation-as old men say-weighed in turn

the earth and all the planets before he set the burden of them in

the abysses of the air; then he hung up in heaven the gilded

scales: on these men have modelled their balances and scale pans.

To the north shines the circle of the starry Sieve,141 through

which God, as they say, gifted grains of corn, when he cast them

down from heaven for Adam our father, who had been banished for

his sins from paradise.