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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 54

Chapter 54 · Smell

On smell.²⁰²⁴

1 · The brain and inhaled odors

⟨Aëtius.⟩

Alcmaeon holds that the ruling faculty is in the brain; we therefore smell by means of this faculty as it draws in odors through inhalation.²⁰²⁵

2 · Smell and obstructed breathing

Empedocles holds that odor enters together with the inhalations of air. Thus, when breathing becomes labored, roughness prevents its being perceived at the same time, as happens to those suffering from a discharge.²⁰²⁶

3 · The intervening medium

⟨Didymus.⟩

Aristotle. We smell when the intervening body is filled with odorous matter.²⁰²⁷

4.1 · Why odors lack fixed kinds

Plato, from the Timaeus.

“As for the power of the nostrils, there are no ⟨distinct kinds⟩. For the whole realm of odors is half-formed, and no form has the appropriate proportion for possessing any odor.”²⁰²⁸

4.2 · The size of the nasal passages

“Rather, our passages concerned with these things are too narrow for the kinds of earth and water, but too wide for those of fire and air. Hence no one has ever perceived any odor from any of these; odors arise only when certain things are soaked, decay, melt, or give off fumes.”²⁰²⁹

4.3 · Smoke and mist

“For when water changes into air and air into water, odors arise between the two, and all odors are smoke or mist. Of these, what passes from air into water is mist, and what passes from water into air is smoke. Thus all odors are finer than water but coarser than air.”²⁰³⁰

4.4 · Air passing through a barrier

“This becomes evident when something has been placed as a barrier to breathing and someone forcibly draws air into himself: then no odor is filtered through with it, but the air alone follows, stripped of odors.”²⁰³¹

4.5 · Two clear distinctions

“For these reasons their varieties have remained unnamed, since they are not made up of many forms or of simple ones; instead, let only the pleasant and the painful be clearly distinguished here as a pair:”²⁰³²

4.6 · Painful and pleasant odors

“the one roughening and violently affecting the whole cavity in us between the crown of the head and the navel, the other soothing that same region and agreeably restoring it to its natural condition.”²⁰³³

2024.The editor supplies the heading from the Laurentian witness and Photius p. 112b32; it is absent from FP. The short reports concern the ruling faculty, inhalation, and the intervening medium. The longer Platonic excerpt asks how odors arise and why they resist a detailed classification.

2025.The supplied attribution covers excerpts 1-2: Aëtius IV.17.1-2, Diels p. 407, line 2. Hēgemonikon is singular here, unlike the governing parts in I.53.4. The English takes toutōi as referring to the ruling faculty located in the brain.

2026.The report connects odor with inhaled pneuma. Trachytēs is roughness, retained without supplying an unprinted anatomical explanation. Rheumatizomenoi are people affected by a flow or discharge, here in the context of impaired breathing and smell; the word is not the name of modern rheumatism.

2027.The Latin editorial attribution identifies Didymus, Physics fragment 17, Diels p. 456; the Greek heading names Aristotle. The intervening body is the medium between the object and the perceiver. Osphranta means things perceptible to smell, rendered odorous matter in this compressed account.

2028.The edition identifies Timaeus 66d-67a and supplies eidē men from the Platonic text. The English marks distinct kinds for the supplied phrase; men is a connective particle without a separate equivalent. Half-formed renders hēmigenes: the following account places odors between water and air, rather than assigning a characteristic odor to each fully constituted elemental form.

2029.Phlebes is translated passages because the argument concerns channels admitting material to the organ of smell, not specifically blood vessels. The account relates passage size to elemental bodies. The four processes in the final clause are retained in their printed order; the basic elements themselves are said to lack perceptible odor.

2030.The distinctions between smoke and mist, and the opposite directions of change, follow the printed text. Finer and coarser render comparative thickness or fineness in this physical model. Smoke is the passage’s term for the transition from water toward air, not a modern chemical classification.

2031.The passage appeals to a filtering comparison. It does not specify the material placed across the breathing passage. The statement is translated as part of the ancient argument; no particular modern filter or experimental procedure is introduced.

2032.The difficult phrase ouk ek pollōn oude haplōn eidōn is retained: not made up of many forms or of simple ones. The precise force of this denial is uncertain and the Greek is not rewritten to remove the difficulty. The dual forms monō and legesthon identify the two broad effects, pleasant and painful, rather than a list of individually named odors.

2033.The description takes the painful odor first and the pleasant second, reversing the order in which the pair was just named. Kytos is the bodily cavity or hollow region. The claim concerns the effects of smell over the extent of the body specified by the text. This completes chapter 54.