Read "Plutarch's Natural Questions" by Plutarch online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Is it because depth is the mother of darkness, so that it doth dim and mar the sunbeams before they can descend so low as it? As for the uppermost superficies of the water, because it is immediately affected by the sun, it must needs receive the white brightness of the light; the which Empedocles verily approveth in these verses.
A river in the bottom seems By shade of color black; The like is seen in caves and holes, By depth, where light they lack.