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On the Nature of Things

Titus Lucretius Carus · c. 60–55 BCE (books composed over this period) primary

passage 68 of 143 · BOOK I > BOOK IV (6/6)

↪ you wandered here via “binocular vision interpupillary angle” — the connecting lines are tinted below

in brief
He describes mirror inversion (right/left reversed), image transmission through multiple mirrors, curved mirrors and idol-films matching our movements, and warns that bright light can burn and disorder the eyes.

In those which render from the mirror's plane A vision back, since each thing comes to pass By means of the two airs. Now, in the glass The right part of our members is observed Upon the left, because, when comes the image Hitting against the level of the glass, 'Tis not returned unshifted; but forced off Backwards in line direct and not oblique,-- Exactly as whoso his plaster-mask Should dash, before 'twere dry, on post or beam, And it should straightway keep, at clinging there, Its shape, reversed, facing him who threw, And so remould the features it gives back: It comes that now the right eye is the left, The left the right. An image too may be From mirror into mirror handed on, Until of idol-films even five or six Have thus been gendered. For whatever things Shall hide back yonder in the house, the same, However far removed in twisting ways, May still be all brought forth through bending paths And by these several mirrors seen to be Within the house, since nature so compels All things to be borne backward and spring off At equal angles from all other things. To such degree the image gleams across From mirror unto mirror; where 'twas left It comes to be the right, and then again Returns and changes round unto the left. Again, those little sides of mirrors curved Proportionate to the bulge of our own flank Send back to us their idols with the right Upon the right; and this is so because Either the image is passed on along From mirror unto mirror, and thereafter, When twice dashed off, flies back unto ourselves; Or else the image wheels itself around, When once unto the mirror it has come, Since the curved surface teaches it to turn To usward. Further, thou might'st well believe That these film-idols step along with us And set their feet in unison with ours And imitate our carriage, since from that

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topics: matter, motion, and cause · perception and the senses · the human body and its parts

On the Nature of Things · Titus Lucretius Carus · 60–55 BCE