from Gerard O'Daly's AUGUSTINE's THE CITY OF GOD
A Reader's Guide (2020, Oxford Univ. Press, 2nd edition)
Chapter 10, pages 250-1 : on Book 20
Augustine at this point in De Civitate Dei
adduces the example of natural phenomena
to support his argument that things can
survive fire, and bodies may be immune
to decay: the salamander, volcanoes, the
flesh of the peacock. . .Fire itself is some-
thing full of contradictory powers. It both
destroys and preserves, it burns most
things black but some white (e.g. stones).
It can be stored in lime, and then activated
by the addition of water, which normally
extinguishes fire, but it is not activated
by oil, which is normally a fuel for fire.
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