For vines and date palms and peach trees and 'sweet fig trees and olives', as the poet says, and trees which, though they bear no fruits, have other uses, plane trees and pines and box trees, Alder and poplar tree and cypress breathing sweet odours, and trees which produce autumn crops pleasant but also difficult to store, Pear trees and pomegranate trees and apple trees gloriousfruited, and animals, both wild and tame, feeding in the air or on the earth or in the water, all are born and come to their prime and decay in obedience to the ordinances of God; for, in the words of Heraclitus, 'every creeping thing grazes at the blow of God's goad'.