Simeon Seth

Symeon Seth[a] (c. 1035 – c. 1110)[1] was a Byzantine scientist, translator and official under Emperor Michael VII Doukas.

[2] He wrote four original works in Greek and translated one from Arabic,[3] and offered early proofs that the Earth was round.

[3] According to the Alexiad (c.1148), the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos asked Symeon to translate the Arabic fable collection Kalīlah wa Dimnah into Greek.

[3] Around 1112, Symeon appears to have sold a gospel book bound between wood covers to the monastery founded by Michael Attaleiates in Constantinople.

[6][7] Paul Moore says "the text is really an explanation of Aetius Amidenus Iatricorum libri xvi, with material drawn from Dioscorides Liber de alimentis.

The first concerns the earth; the second, the elements; the third, the sky and the stars; the fourth, matter, form, nature and the soul (sense perception); the fifth, the final cause and divine providence.

He noted that since the sun rises in the east before it sets in the west, it can be afternoon in Persia when it is still morning in Byzantine lands.