Ancient Meteorology

L'iride e la Trinità: Osservazioni sulle fonti di Basil. Ep. 38.5

The focus of this contribution is to examine the section 5 (Courtonne) of Basil’s Letter 38 devoted to the rainbow considered as a physical metaphor of the Trinity. The main purpose is to scrutinize the likely ancient pagan sources of Basil’s description of rainbow’s formation. The present article concludes by pointing out that the sources used by Basil could be traced back to Aristotle’s Meteorology and the Stoics (especially Posidonius), without denying an Epicurean influence too.

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