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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 52

19.2 · The inner fire filtered through the eyes

“For they made the pure fire within us, which is akin to this fire, flow through the eyes in a smooth, compact stream. They compressed the entire eye, especially its center, so that it would hold back all the other, coarser material and filter through only this pure fire.”¹⁹⁹⁷

19.3 · Inner and outer light join

“When daylight surrounds the stream of vision, like then issues toward like; joining firmly with it, it forms one kindred body along the eyes’ direct line of sight, wherever what strikes from within presses against what it encounters outside.”¹⁹⁹⁸

19.4 · Transmission to the soul and the coming of night

“Because of its likeness, the whole body comes to share the same affections. Whatever it touches, and whatever else touches it, it transmits their movements throughout the body as far as the soul, producing the perception by which we say that we see. But when the kindred fire departs into night, the stream is cut off. For on issuing toward what is unlike itself, it is altered and extinguished, no longer growing together with the neighboring air, since that air contains no fire.”¹⁹⁹⁹

19.5 · The eyelids and sleep

“The perceiver therefore ceases to see, and the condition also induces sleep. For when one closes the eyelids, that structure which the gods contrived to safeguard sight, it confines the power of the fire within. This power spreads out and smooths the internal movements. When they are smoothed, quiet arises; and when the quiet is great, sleep with few dreams follows.”²⁰⁰⁰

19.6 · Residual movements and dreams

“But if some stronger movements remain, then, according to their character and the places where they remain, they produce images corresponding in kind and number, formed as likenesses within and remembered by those awakened from outside.”²⁰⁰¹

19.7 · Images on smooth surfaces

“It is no longer at all difficult to understand the production of images in mirrors and in all clear, smooth surfaces. For through the sharing of the inner and outer fires with one another, and their repeatedly becoming one at the smooth surface and being reshaped in many ways, all such appearances necessarily arise: the fire around the face joins firmly with the fire of vision as it forms at the smooth, bright surface.”²⁰⁰²

20.1 · The class of colors

⟨In the same work.⟩ [For the section on colors.]

“There is a perceptible class for us to distinguish, containing many varieties within it, all of which we have called colors: a flame flowing from each body, with particles proportioned to sight so as to be perceived. As for sight, the matter of the causes of its generation was discussed earlier.”²⁰⁰³

20.2 · Particles and the visual stream

“Accordingly, this is the most likely way to proceed concerning colors, and it would be fitting for a reasonable person to explain in words: the particles traveling from other things and striking the visual stream are some smaller, some larger, and some equal to the parts of that visual stream itself.”²⁰⁰⁴

20.3 · Transparency, contraction, and expansion

“The equal particles we call imperceptible and transparent. The larger and smaller ones, the former contracting the visual stream and the latter expanding it, are akin to the hot and cold acting on flesh, and to the astringent acting on the tongue and all the heating things we called pungent. These would be white and black: the same affections as those others, occurring in a different class, but appearing different for these reasons.”²⁰⁰⁵

20.4 · White, black, and a more violent fire

“They should therefore be named as follows: what expands the visual stream is white, and its opposite black. A swifter motion, belonging to another kind of fire, strikes and expands the visual stream all the way to the eyes, forces its way through the eyes’ own passages, and pours from them a mass of fire and water, which we call a tear; itself fire, it meets this from the opposite direction.”²⁰⁰⁶

20.5 · Dazzling brightness

“With one fire leaping out as though from lightning and the other entering and being quenched in the moisture, all sorts of colors arise in this circling motion. We have called the experience dazzling flashes, and have named what produces it bright and gleaming.”²⁰⁰⁷

20.6 · Red and golden yellow

“The intermediate kind of fire reaches the moisture of the eyes and blends with it without gleaming. By giving a bloodlike color to the fire’s radiance as it mingles through the moisture, it receives the name red. Brightness mixed with red and white becomes golden yellow.”²⁰⁰⁸

20.7 · The limits of specifying proportions

“As for how great the measure is and how great it is not, even if someone knew, it makes no sense to state it, when one could offer neither any necessary explanation nor even a moderately likely account of it.”²⁰⁰⁹

20.8 · Purple, dusky, flame red, gray, pale yellow

“Red blended with black and white becomes purple, and becomes dusky when more black is blended with these after they have been mixed and burned. Flame red arises from a blending of golden yellow and gray, gray from white and black, and pale yellow from white mixed with golden yellow.”²⁰¹⁰

20.9 · Blue and green mixtures

“White combined with brightness and falling into deep black produces a dark blue color; dark blue blended with white produces pale blue, and flame red with black produces leek green. From these the others are fairly clear: one can infer the mixtures by which they would be reproduced while preserving the likely account.”²⁰¹¹

1997.The printed sentence moves from the flowing fire to the compression of the eyes. The English supplies stream as an aid to following that transition. The filter comparison explains how the finer visual fire is separated from coarser material; no modern account of ocular anatomy is substituted.

1998.The visual stream and daylight form a continuous body through their likeness. The compressed last clause is rendered provisionally as contact between the outward stream and what meets it externally. Euthyōria is the direct line or direction of sight, not a claim that the whole surrounding field is uniformly seen.

1999.The movement travels through the joined visual body to the perceiver’s body and soul. The English makes the shifting references to body explicit. Night removes the external fire needed for continuity; this explains the interruption of sight within the passage’s physical model.

2000.The Greek shifts construction around the eyelids and their closure; the English makes the practical sequence explicit. Brachyoneiros means having few or slight dreams, not sleeping briefly. The account relates the degree of inner stillness to the character of sleep.

2001.The difficult printed construction is retained provisionally. The words exōthen te egertheisin are taken as by those awakened from outside; the apparatus records exō in the direct Platonic tradition, but it is not substituted. Phantasmata are the dream appearances produced by residual motions. Their correspondence concerns both character and number, toiauta kai tosauta.

2002.The explanation extends the joining of inner and outer fire to reflected images. Metarrythmisthen means rearranged or reshaped. The final participial construction is difficult; the English follows the printed dative xympagei gignomenōi, treating it as describing the visual fire at the surface, rather than replacing it with a different Platonic reading.

2003.The edition identifies Timaeus 67c-68d. The work reference is supplied; the bracketed direction is rejected as an old reader’s cross-reference to I.16, where almost all this passage recurs. The present wording differs at several points, and is translated independently as printed. Aisthētikon is here provisionally perceptible, referring to the class being distinguished; the wording does not call it the fourth class as the earlier extract does.

2004.The printed ton epieikē logōi is grammatically awkward. The translation provisionally takes ton epieikē as a reasonable person and logōi as in words; the apparatus records epieikē logon, a reasonable account, in another reading, but it is not silently adopted. Opsis is rendered visual stream where the account treats it as composed of particles.

2005.The particle sizes are related to contraction and expansion of the visual stream, then compared with touch and taste. The list white and black need not follow the order of larger and smaller; the next sentence specifies which effect receives which name. Astringent renders stryphnon, the contracting taste.

2006.The incoming fire and the material driven out of the eye meet in opposite directions. The English takes the tear as the discharged combination of fire and water. Unlike the parallel text in I.16, this extract does not include the words and melting after forcing through; they are not imported.

2007.The printed kyklēsis is a circling motion. The apparatus records kykēsis, a stirring or commotion, in Plato; the latter is not substituted here. Marmarygai are flashing or dazzling visual effects. Brightness is treated as a specific effect of the fiery interaction.

2008.The construction describing mingled radiance is compressed; the English follows its connection with the moisture and the bloodlike color. The color names follow the choices used in I.16: erythron, red, and xanthon, golden yellow. These are approximate English counterparts of ancient color terms.

2009.The difficult printed hoson metron hoson ou is preserved and translated closely; the apparatus records hosois in Plato. The sentence is provisionally understood as declining to specify exact mixing proportions whose rationale cannot adequately be explained. Its wording is not silently harmonized with the parallel in I.16.

2010.The English preserves all ingredients and the reference to burning. It takes mallon with the greater admixture of black; its position also permits association with the burning. Halourgon is purple, orphninon dusky, pyrrhon flame red, phaion gray, and ōchron pale yellow. The labels maintain continuity with I.16 without implying exact modern color coordinates.

2011.Kyanoûn, glaukon, and prasinon are rendered dark blue, pale blue, and leek green, consistently with I.16. Ancient ranges need not match modern pigment names. The list belongs to the passage’s physical explanation, not a verified recipe for mixing paints. Eikōs mythos is a likely account or story.