All this I knew before Theognis' day,2as the comic poet has it. But is it your desire to learn what property the air possesses and what power it exerts in its constant contact, so that it has imparted a colouring to the bronze ?’ As Diogenianus assented, Theon said, ‘And so also is it my desire, my young friend ; let us, therefore, investigate together, and before anything else, if you will, the reason why olive-oil most of all the liquids covers bronze with rust. For, obviously, the oil of itself does not deposit the rust, since it is pure and stainless when applied.’ ‘Certainly not,’ said the young man. ‘My own opinion is that there must be something else that causes this, for the oil is thin, pure, and transparent, and the rust, when it encounters this, is most visible, but in the other liquids it becomes invisible.’ ‘Well done, my young friend,’ said Theon, ‘and excellently said. But consider, if you will, the reason given by Aristotle.’ 3 ‘Very well,’ said he, ‘I will.’ [p. 267] ‘Now Aristotle says that when the rust absorbs any of the other liquids, it is imperceptibly disunited and dispersed, since these are unevenly and thinly constituted ; but by the density of the oil it is prevented from escaping and remains permanently as it is collected. If, then, we are able of ourselves to invent some such hypothesis, we shall not be altogether at a loss for some magic spell and some words of comfort to apply to this puzzling question.’
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‘What do you think, then,’ said Diogenianus,
‘has been the cause of the colour of the bronze here ?’
Theon replied, ‘When of the primal and simplest
[p. 265]
elements in Nature, as they are called and actually
are — fire, earth, air, and water — there is none other
that comes near to the bronze or is in contact with it,
save only air, it is clear that the bronze is affected by
this, and that because of this it has acquired whatever
distinctive quality it has, since the air is always about
it and environs it closely.1 Of a truth
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 5.
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