“Veins are like roots”: Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature

1,350 years before La Mettrie wrote his materialist L’Homme plante (Man a Plant), Nemesius reminded us that we’re part plant: “The veins are like roots of the liver that draw the food from the stomach, as the roots of plants draw it from the earth…”

For more on this: Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature is out now with Oxford University Press.