eul_aid: clc
DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20335421
Aristombrotus the Philosopher
Ἀριστόμβροτος ὁ φιλόσοφος

Aristombrotus on Vision and Light

1 work

Aristombrotus wrote On Vision. Stobaeus 1.52.21 quotes a Doric physics of sight: sight, light, and air have a natural mixture and kinship; air is seen by the bright; sight is black and moist, air black and rare; potential transparency lies in both, kin-light in the eye, sunlight in the air. A second paragraph proves that moist sight has kindred light because the transparent and bright is never without some light, pressed or rubbed from the eye.

The excerpt is printed in the Åbo collection of the Pythagorean texts of the Hellenistic period (1965), pp. 53–54. The attribution is dated, uncertainly, to the fourth century BCE.

The page is that optical excerpt: a Hellenistic Pythagorean theory of seeing, not a blank sage.

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