The true earth (Socrates continues) is like a ball of divers colours, all purer and more brilliant than those we know in our murky dwelling-place. The flowers and trees are more beautiful, and there is abundance of precious stones whose lustre is never impaired. The climate banishes sickness; men there behold the gods face to face, and know the sun, moon and stars as they truly are.

There follows a contrasted picture of the hollows, especially of Tartarus, the great watery hollow which pierces through the whole of the earth's sphere; from Tartarus all rivers flow, and into it all return; the point of re-entry is always lower (that is, nearer the earth's centre) than the point of issue, and no river can flow beyond the centre.

'Well then, my friend, in the first place it is said that the earth, viewed from above, looks like one of those balls made of twelve pieces of leather, painted in various colours, of which the colours familiar to us through their use by painters are, so to say, samples. Up there the whole earth displays such colours, and indeed far brighter and purer ones than these. One part is a marvellously beautiful purple, another golden; the white is whiter than chalk or snow, and so it is with all the colours in the earth's composition, which are more in number and more beautiful than any we have beheld.