Sophisticated theories of light, color, and vision were produced in the ancient Greek world, committed to writing and transmitted in treatises by Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, Galen, and others. Perspectiva represented in the thirteenth century by influential standard texts that treated the physics and mathematics of light, color, and vision. Although scholars in early-medieval Christian Europe had only fragmentary access to the Greek traditions, the major Greek works were translated into Arabic after the advent of Islam and stimulated scholarly activity within the Islamic world in each of the areas of Greek achievement. The intellectual life of Europe was enriched and transformed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by the translation of Greek and Arabic books into Latin. Nobody contributed more to the development of the science of Perspectiva in the West than Roger Bacon. Rainbows, spectacular natural phenomena as well as symbols of God's promise to Noah, could be overlooked by medieval scholars claiming an interest in light and vision.