Page 122, 142, 237.

On the authority of this explanation the word μιλάν has sometimes been translated in the foregoing extracts obscurity, darkness. Raffaello Borghini, in his attempt to describe the doctrine of Aristotle with a view to painting, observes—"There are two principles which concur in the production of colour, namely, light and transparence." But he soon loses this clue to the best part of the ancient theory, and when he has to speak of the derivation of colours from white and black, he evidently understands it in a mere atomic sense, and adds—"I shall not at present pursue the opinion of Aristotle, who assumes black and white as principal colours, and considers all the rest as intermediate between them."—Il Riposo, 1. ii. Accordingly, like Lodovico Dolce, he proceeds to a subject where he was more at home, namely, the symbolical meaning of colours.

This word is only strictly applied to unctuous substances, and may confirm the views of those writers who have conjectured that asphaltum was a chief ingredient in the atramentum of the ancients.