User:Bellerops/sandbox

Latin and early Christian sources
Vitruvius, a Roman architect and writer of the 1st century BCE, advised that libraries be placed facing eastwards to benefit from morning light, but not towards the south or the west as those winds generate bookworms.

Aristotle claimed that eels were lacking in sex and lacking milt, spawn and the passages for either. Rather, he asserted eels emerged from earthworms. Later authors dissented. Pliny the Elder did not argue against the anatomic limits of eels, but stated that eels reproduce by budding, scraping themselves against rocks, liberating particles that become eels. Athenaeus described eels as entwining and discharging a fluid which would settle on mud and generate life. On the other hand, Athenaeus also dissented towards spontaneous generation, claiming that a variety of anchovy did not generate from roe, as Aristotle stated, but rather, from sea foam.

As the dominant view of philosophers and thinkers continued to be in favour of spontaneous generation, some Christian theologians accepted the view. Augustine of Hippo discussed spontaneous generation in The City of God and The Literal Meaning of Genesis, citing Biblical passages such as "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life" as decrees that would enable ongoing creation.