Images
“simulacra/idols of things”
idea · 2 works · 3 mentions · 19 anchored passages
images · effigies · films · idol-films · idols · innumerability of atoms · likenesses · streaming visions · the theory of images
in the texts
On the Nature of the Gods
The Epicurean doctrine that thin films or images (eidola) emanate from bodies and strike the mind, explaining perception including the perception of gods.
but you say that the images of Gracchus and Octavius remain, which, when they have reached the Capitol, are then referred to my mind — and that the same happens with god, by whose frequent appearance our minds are struck, whence the gods are understood to be blessed and eternal.
and that its vision is such as to be discerned by likeness and passage, and that the accession of like things from the infinite bodies never fails, and that from this it comes about that our mind, fixed upon these, deems that nature blessed and everlasting.
And what of the fact that different images of the same man fall upon mine, others upon yours?
De Rerum Natura
Lucretius's central Epicurean doctrine that thin films (simulacra) constantly shed from the surfaces of things, or spontaneously formed in the air, fly through space and strike the senses, producing sight, dreams, mirror reflections, and mental apparitions.
That tenuous images from things are sent,
'Tis therefore that from them the images
Fashioned from images of things sent out.