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On Weights is an alchemical chapter by Zosimus of Panopolis, the Egyptian alchemist active around AD 300. It opens by declaring that the doctrine of weights holds together the whole mystery of the cooking, being at once composition, weight, whitening and yellowing. Zosimus argues that when the older authorities speak of scattering or burning, they are describing hidden proportions, interprets 'scatter with lead' as grinding, cites Agathodaimon, and closes with a recipe that combines two parts of lime with sulphur, arsenic and sandarach.
The chapter shows how Zosimus read the obscure instructions of his predecessors as coded technical statements. It also reveals, beneath the secretive language, the importance of proportion and measurement in ancient alchemical practice, and it refers to a fuller work of his own on weight, showing how his treatises were meant to be read together.
About this edition. The Greek text comes from the Eulogikon open corpus of public-domain editions (standard reference: CAAG II 178–179 (III.xx)). Every word has been analyzed with odyCy, a neural language model for Ancient Greek — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ).