The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics 0521845912, 9780521845915

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The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics PART I

Edited and translated by

DAN I E L W. G RAHAM

UCAMBRIDGE � UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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©Cambridge University Press 2010 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may cake place without the written permission of CambridgeUniversity Press. First published 2010 Printed in che United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

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To my beloved wife Diana anno xxxv

Contents

Abbreviations A note on text references Preface

Introduction Part I: Cosmologists and ontologists

A. The sixth century BC I.

Thales (Ths)

page ix XI Xlll

I

15 15 17

2. Anaximander (Axr)

45

3. Anaximenes (Axs)

72

4. Xenophanes (Xns)

95

5. Heraclitus (Hct)

135

B . The fifth century BC

201

6. Parmenides (Prm)

203

7. Zeno (Zno)

245

8 . Anaxagoras (Axg)

271

9 . Empedocles (Emp)

326

IO.

Diogenes of Apollonia (Dgn)

434

Melissus (Mis)

462

12. Philolaus (Phs)

486

13. The Atomises: Leucippus and Democritus (Lcp, Dmc)

516

14. The Atomises, continued: Democritus' ethical fragments

630

II.

Part II: Sophists

687

15. Protagoras (Prt)

689

16. Gorgias (Grg)

725

17. Antiphon (Ant)

789 Vil

Contents

18. Prodicus (Prd)

841

19. Anonymous texts

863

A.

Anonymus Iamblichi (Anl)

B . Dissoi Logoi (DsL) Appendix: Pythagoras (Prh)

General Bibliography Concordance Index ofSources Index ofPassages General Index

Vlll

863 877 90 5 934 939 957 1000 1006

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations have been used throughout.

DG =

Diels, Hermann. Doxographi Graeci. Berlin, 1879. Reprint, Berlin, 1965. DK = Diels, Hermann. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Edited by Walther Kranz. 6th edn. (3 vols. ) . Berlin, 19 51-52. EC = Graham, Daniel W Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy. Princeron, 2006. FGrH =Jacoby, Felix (1923-) Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, 15 vols. , Berlin. Reprint Leiden 1957-63 . HCP = Guthrie, WK. C. A History of Greek Philosophy (6 vols.) . Cambridge. Vol. l, The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans, 1962; vol. 2 , The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus, 1965; vol. 3 , The Sophists and Socrates, 1969. KR = Kirk, G. S . and ). E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge, 1957· KRS = Kirk, G. S . , ). E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers. 2nd edn. Cambridge, 1983. LS) = Liddell, Henry George and Robert Scott, eds. A Greek-English Lexi­ con. Revised by Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie. Oxford, 1968. PP = Barnes, Jonathan. The Presocratic Philosophers, revised edn. London, 1982.

Abbreviations for textual notes Letters for manuscripts are drawn from standard editions (the Index of Sources gives editors for more commonly cited editions) . Ancient authors and works are abbreviated according to usage of LS) (most Greek sources) or The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn.) (most Larin sources) , except in a few cases where the abbreviations might cause confusion with letters for manuscripts. Common abbreviations (Latin verbs are used in perfect tense; I render them idiomatically into the English present tense) :

IX

Abbreviations

abbreviation

stands for

English

a.c. add. cod(d). corr. m mg. lac. leg. man. om. p.c. scr. sec!. suppl. transp.

ante correctionem addidit codex (codices) correxit m margme lacuna(m) legit man us omisit post correctionem scnps1t seclusit supplevit transposuit

before correction adds manuscript(s) corrects in the margin lacuna, gap in text reads hand, copyist omits after correction writes, emends deletes supplies, inserts transposes

[]

< >

t

.

.

text deleted by editor text supplied by editor corrupt text

For papyri: [ ...] .

[]




'abc' c;.

lacuna with approximate number of letters; any text m brackets 1s supplied by editor text deleted by ancient hand text supplied by editor text inserted above the line by ancient hand damaged letter

Note: footnotes apply to preceding word only, unless otherwise specified.

x

A note on text references

For ease of reference, each philosopher has been assigned a three-letter abbrevia­ tion (e.g. Anaximander Axr) , listed in the Table of Contents. Each text has been assigned a consecutive number, while quotations or near-quotations ("fragments") have also been assigned a fragment number. Thus the first fragment of Anaximan­ der is Axr9 [F1] , that is: text 9, fragment l of the texts assigned to Anaximander. Each text comes from its own ancient source, cited in the heading of the text on the verso page according to a standard edition of that source. (The Greek sources can be found in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, http://stephanus. tlg.uci.edu. The DK material is also included in the database, under the names of individual philosophers.) The standard numbering system for the Presocratics is that found in DK. Each philosopher is assigned a number by DK; for instance '12' refers to Anax­ imander. 'A' refers to the section of testimonia or ancient reports identified for each philosopher by DK; 'B' refers to the section of fragments or quo­ tations accepted as authentic by DK. Thus Anaximander's first fragment is 12B1, found in testimony 1 2A9 (in this case Diels' numbers and mine coin­ cide; usually they do not) . I give the DK number in parentheses at the end of each citation. A concordance of DK numbers is found in the back of the book. (I cite the DK author number only where a reference may be ambigu­ ous, which is frequently the case in ch. 13, where '67' refers to Leucippus, ' 68' to Democritus.) DK often groups several texts conveying similar information together under a single testimony number; I assign a different text number to each source. DK collects fragments separately; I intersperse them with testimonies, sometimes leaving them in their literary context, sometimes setting them apart from this but locating them in the context of relevant testimonies. I put fragments in boldface for emphasis. One ancient source requires a brief explanation. Aetius in his Placita made a summary of earlier doxographical sources (see Introduction) . In DG Diels reconstructed his work from two main sources, pseudo-Plutarch's Placita and Stobaeus' Anthology (plus some other witnesses - see Mansfeld and Runia 1997) . Diels' numbering system follows and further articulates that of ps.Plutarch (with some interpolations) . When referring to Aetius I cite both major sources where possible, designating the former 'P' followed by Diels' number and the latter 'S' followed by the numbering of Wachsmuth's text. When a passage is not found in S but not P, I give the ps. Plutarch number in brackets, e.g. ' [P 2.13.10] , ' =

XI

A note on text references

since it contains Diels' (reconstructed) Aetius reference; when the passage is not found in S, I simply omit the 'S' number. When both numbers are present and I append ' (S)' or ' (P) , ' I am indicating which of the sources I follow most closely in my rendering, in cases where there is a significant difference in their reports.

Xll

Preface

Everyone who has done serious work in the Presocratics knows that the field has suffered for lack of a decent sourcebook. Well, almost everyone. When I floated the idea for this work some years ago to an editor who thought the project would be met with enthusiasm, he heard back from his referees that scholars in the field did not need such a work because they already had Diels-Kranz. No doubt Hermann Diels' Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, edited in its latest editions by Walther Kranz, is one of the great collections of classical studies. Yet the reply seemed curious to me. In the first place, Diels-Kranz was written in German rather than English. In the second place, its last edition was published more than a half century ago, in 1 9 5 1-52, and a few things have happened in the scholarly world since then. In the third place Diels and Kranz did not translate testimonies, but only fragments, and not all of them. In the fourth place, they included among their list of ninety Presocratics a large number of figures who are mere names, some who are not generally considered philosophers, some who are precursors, and some who were writing as late as the late fourth century, whereas Socrates died in the first year of that century; thus the collection seems a bit promiscuous, including both pre-Presocratics and post-Socratics, as well as non-philosophers. Finally, what was wanted was, in any case, not so much an exhaustive collection as a bridge between the introductory textbook and the exhaustive collection, a kind of portable and up-to-date assemblage of the texts everyone should have access to for the figures everyone studies. Unchastened by the rejection, I continued to work away at this project. In truth, I was driven to work on it by frustration with the lack of a usable alternative. I will readily admit to being merely a philosopher with classical training rather than a card-carrying classicist of the type who should be editing texts and doing variorum editions and translations from exotic sources. Nevertheless, those with better credentials were busy doing other projects which were no doubt more respectable in the world of classical letters. In any case, when the editors of Cambridge University Press came to Brad Inwood in search of someone to do a collection of the Presocratics, he was kind enough to point them in my direction. I have gone through a number of referees and some protracted negotiations about format and content. But I am grateful to Michael Sharp, classics editor, the Syndics of Cambridge University Press, and a set of patient and very helpful readers for guiding me through this project. The final product does not precisely represent the vision of any one of my advisers, but it has benefited from their suggestions at every stage.

Xlll

Preface This book consists of nineteen chapters dealing with eighteen figures and two anonymous treatises, plus one further figure in an appendix. I have restricted my set of Presocratics to those with a strong tradition of testimonies and (in most cases) an appreciable number of fragments. I n each case there is a brief introduction to each figure, a set of texts in Greek and Latin, a translation, a brief commentary and a select bibliography. I added the commentary at the request of the Press, who rightly judged that the texts were not sufficiently self-explanatory to stand on their own. Full citation of the classical source is given with the original text. I have for the most part given modern English names and translated tides for the sources, to make them more accessible to a broader audience, since many of the Latin tides are not well known even to classicists. I have appended a general bibliography to the general introduction, and supplied a concordance for my numbers and the Diels-Kranz references, an index of sources, an index of other passages, and a general index. The text is supplied with textual notes (rather than a full apparatus) , which identify more substantive textual variants. I have used the best critical texts available to me to determine the textual readings, but I have not made any original collations of manuscripts. In most cases there are adequate critical texts (though there is one major deficiency, in Diogenes Laertius; an improved text is in preparation, but not in print) . I have been reluctant to make my own interventions in the text, but on a few occasions I have felt compelled to do so by the impossibility or implausibility of the available readings. I have benefited from the advice of scholars too numerous to mention. But my special thanks go to Patricia Curd, who used my manuscript as a text for her classes and gave me valuable comments. I acknowledge generous financial support from Brigham Young University. I have been aided by several talented student assistants: Joshua Gillon, Steven Stakland, Tyler Stoehr, and Mark Bailey. I am indebted to Bernard Dod for careful copy-editing and insightful suggestions. I thank Mark Bailey for producing the indexes. After years of labor, I send this book into the world with trepidation, knowing that it contains many more errors than those I have been able to identify and correct. I take some comfort in the fact that I have found errors even in the ven­ erable Diels-Kranz with its many editions and printings, and in the distinguished Kirk-Raven-Schofield. Truly it is, as Simonides warned, vain to seek "a man all blameless, among us who wrest our harvest from the broad-based earth. "

XIV

Introduction

The Presocratics introduced a new kind of wisdom to the world. They appeared suddenly in the sixth century BC as sages who wanted to explain, not just this or that fact or custom or institution, but everything at once. They began as students of nature, who took nature as a independent realm to be understood in terms of its own capacities. In their time of mythical and magical thinking even the very concept of nature was stunningly new and unprecedented. They gave birth to two important disciplines that have characterized Western thought ever since: philosophy and science; the former perhaps more fertile in future developments than we usually imagine today, the latter less imposing than it would become in modern times, but certainly at the center of their project. They wrote the first learned treatises and pioneered the concepts we take for granted today. In time their works were lost and their ideas obscured by later developments, but from an early time they were recognized as the founders of a new way of thinking about the world and relating to it.

1

•

Who they were

Ancient scholars agree that philosophy began with a movement in Miletus, a cosmopolitan port city on the eastern shore of the Aegean with numerous daughter colonies and trading partners throughout the Mediterranean allowing for contact with the great civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia. Thales, then Anaximander, then Anaximenes of Miletus began to think about the world in a new way, to philosophize, as later generations would say. Thales said all was water. Anaximander wrote the first philosophical treatise, showing how the world arose out of some boundless reality, and Anaximenes added to his theory an account of elemental change and an argument for the primacy of air over other substances. All of them explained the world as we know it as a result of natural processes acting on everyday stuffs. If their theories seem to us simplistic, it is because our knowledge of nature has increased exponentially since their time. But it was their lisping expressions, as Aristotle pointed out, that raised the possibilities of a rigorous knowledge of the world in the first place. Before them, poets explained the events of the world as products of supernatural actions of divine agents. At the beginning of the Iliad, Apollo rains arrows upon the Danaans, and Homer mentions in passing that this is a plague. Elsewhere Zeus throws thunderbolts and Poseidon causes storms. The sun is a god Helios driving a golden chariot across the sky, and the

The Texrs of Early Greek Philosophy

rainbow is the passing of the goddess Iris. Calamiries like the plague are caused by angry' gods, and they can only be stopped by appropriate acts of propitiation. The great civilizations of Babylonia, Egypt, and Persia, more highly organized and technologically advanced than the Greeks, had different pantheons but employed similar kinds of myrhological explanation. What was new, even shocking, about the Presocratic approach was that it gave no direct credence to traditional lore. The philosophers simply ignored the kinds of explanations that were imbedded in myths and advanced their own accounts on the basis, nor of tradition, but of reasons. These reasons had nothing to do with the actions and motivations of divine beings with supernatural powers. They presupposed only mundane substances wirh natural powers. Clouds arose from rising vapors, not from the action of the Cloud-gatherer (Zeus) . Thunderbolts resulted from wind bursting out of a cloud, not from Zeus' acrion. Earthquakes were caused by the motions of a subterranean sea or the drying and cracking of earth, not from the shaking of Poseidon. The world of nature was an autonomous realm with its own elements, powers and behavior, which was governed by universal rules. Indeed the word for nature, phusis, seems to have originally been applied in the sense of the nature peculiar to any kind of body, which gradually led to a conception of Nature as the totality of such natures. What the new approach brought was a conception of nature as the possible object of knowledge that could arise from observation and inference alone, independent of tradition or revelation. To understand the events around them, the philosophers needed not theology but science. No doubt every contemporary of the Presocratics knew much the same about everyday events as the philosophers: fire cooks meat and boils water, rain comes from clouds and hail from thunderclouds, the sun hears the earth. What was different about the philosophers' approach was their refusal to allow any super­ natural actions to govern natural processes. The rejection of the supernatural, however, did not make the philosophers atheisrs. Rather, it made them subor­ dinate divine action to natural law, or, in some cases, to combine the divine with the natural - to invest natural principles with divine attributes. Ultimately it led to a penetrating criticism of conventional religion, most prominently by Xenophanes, as all too human, and pointed the way to a more refined con­ ception of deity. The gods of Homer were, after all, divinities behaving badly, and critical reflection demanded much more from them than did traditional religion. For the Presocratics, the world was a product of lawlike interactions of natural substances. Many of rhem provided a cosmogony in which they told how the world we know arose from a primordial state of uniformity. The world arose, not ex nihilo, but from a redistribution of matter, a diakosmesis, in which the familiar features of the world appeared. The world processes of the present world were then described, often including an account of seasons, weather, plants, animals, and human beings. The Presocratics thus explained the origin and present composition of the world, and almost everything in it. They offered a 2

Introduction comprehensive account which would explain everything from heavenly bodies to human society. If the Presocratics rejected traditional explanations, they remained nonetheless indebted to traditional ways of thinking and acting. There is a fair amount of continuity between the mythical cosmology of Hesiod (evident also in sketchy accounts in Homer) and the speculative cosmologies of the Presocratics. The world envisaged by most Presocratics - a flat disk-shaped earth with a firmament of heaven above and perhaps an underworld beneath - had much in common with Hesiod's traditional conception. Furthermore, the very type of explanation which predominated in Presocratic accounts, namely a story of how the world came to be, is anticipated in Hesiod's Theogony. To be sure, Hesiod's tale is about the birth of cosmic gods, while Presocraric accounts are about natural processes. Bur the crucial explanation aims to tell where the present world came from and how it got to be as it is. There are also indications that in studying the world, the philosophers used the simple instruments available from neighboring cultures, the gnomon or vertical rod in the ground, the sundial, the klepsydra or pipette, the column drum. Nevertheless, their ideas were relatively free from traditional constraints, and they put old ideas to new uses and developed novel arguments for and against models they in part borrowed. The fifth century BC also began with a sustained critique of cosmology itself, and an approach to a more logical and metaphysical way of chinking in place of an almost exclusive concern for naturalistic accounts and physical models. And the century ended with more radical rethinking in the form of relativistic and humanistic approaches to experience. The atomises developed a theory char would continue to inspire research until it displaced all others with the authority of experimental science. All this showed that the new philosophy was not stagnant or complacent, but quite capable or reinventing itself in surprising ways. Only in the early fourth century, with the rise of the Socratic schools and their personal approach to moral self-knowledge - and their contempt for abstract speculation - did the early style of philosophy fade out. And even then, many of the advances of early philosophy were incorporated into Socratic philosophy. 2. Schools and movements

One thing that is striking about the Presocratics is how unique each of their theories was. The Presocratics do not easily fall into schools as do the Hellenistic philosophers. Indeed, though later generations grouped them into schools, the notion of a school is anachronistic for this early time. In the rime of the Preso­ cratics there were no formal institutions of learning, bur at best only informal associations between a master and his students, so far as we can discern. Later Greeks had several competing ways of grouping the Presocratics. There were the eastern Ionians vs. the westerners, which in modern times have been roughly mapped to the scientific vs. the mystical thinkers; the natural philosophers vs.

The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy

the opponents of natural philosophy; the monists vs. the pluralists; and finally the several "schools" : the lonians, the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, the atomists. All of these groupings have advantages and drawbacks. The advantages are that there is usually some interesting correlation among members of each group. The drawback is that none provides more than a superficial correlation . Some of the leading westerners are immigrants from the east (Pythagoras, Xenophanes) , and at least one may have never actually lived in the west (Melissus) . At least two alleged opponents of natural philosophy provide extensive theories of natural philosophy themselves (Xenophanes, Parmenides) . Of alleged monists, several are highly suspect (Anaximander, sometimes classified as a pluralist even by Aristotle; Xenophanes, variously classified as a monist, a dualist, a pluralist; Heraclitus; even Anaximenes and Parmenides are controversial) ; of pluralists some are problematic (Empedocles plays with both the one and the many; Anaxagoras has been seen as a metaphysical dualist; the atomists can be seen as monists, dualists or pluralists). Of the schools, only the Pythagoreans offer some sort of society, and with them it is not clear whether religious association entailed intellectual transmission or orthodoxy. Of the Eleatics, only Parmenides and Zeno are likely to have known each other. The lonians include one group of possible associates, the Milesians, but most of the others probably did not know each other. Some figures seem to fit into no groups (Heraclitus was famously misanthropic) or into too many groups (Empedocles combines Pythagorean, Eleatic, and Ionian tendencies) . The sophists for their part include cosmologists (Antiphon) and anti-cosmologists (Gorgias) , easterners and westerners, realists and anti-realists. In view of these problems, it seems risky to provide an a priori classifica­ tion of the Presocratics (as e.g. KRS does) . I have made some minimal conces­ sions to school connections: Zeno after Parmenides, Leucippus and Democritus together (since they are seldom distinguished by sources) . And I have grouped the cosmologists and their opponents together, as against the sophists, who can be distinguished by their professional activities, which focus on a practical and anthropocentic curriculum. There is one historical development which has proved fairly robust: Parmenides' criticisms seem to have made a notable difference i n the discussion of philosophical problems. What precisely h i s criticism was, what it was directed against, and what its effect was have become increasingly con­ troversial. But that he made a difference is not in question. Thus Parmenides has emerged as the watershed figure in early Greek philosophy, and historically philosophy can be divided into the pre-Parmenidean and post-Parmenidean roughly, the sixth century and the fifth century, since Parmenides wrote at the beginning of the fifth century. He influenced the sophists no less than later cos­ mologists with his discussions of what-is and what-is-not, and cast a shadow over all later philosophy. In broadest terms we can identify four movements in early Greek philosophy. The earliest was an attempt to explain the cosmos, its origin, nature, and phe­ nomena in a quasi-scientific way. This movement led to a reaction among the so­ called Eleatics that produced an anti-cosmological movement that challenged the 4

Introduction

possibility of explaining changeable phenomena, giving rise to a kind of metaphys­ ical analysis. Subsequent cosmologists took account of Eleatic criticisms, though they may have read Parmenides in particular as a revisionary cosmologist rather than as an anti-cosmologist. Finally the sophistic movement of the middle and later fifth century focussed on human concerns and practical education. Often attacked by Plato and his followers as mercenary teachers of success seminars, the sophists are perhaps more generously understood as the first promoters of higher education. They taught political science and oratory, and in general prepared their students to participate effectively in the nascent democracies of the time. Many of them also pursued cosmological interests, dealt with Eleatic arguments, and also extended inquiry into new areas of social studies and linguistics. They were the first humanists and social scientists. It should be noted that there was no standard name for philosophers before the fourth century. Plato, Aristotle, and their rival Isocrates distinguished between "philosophers" (good) and "sophists" (bad) in the fourth century, but their dis­ tinction was a novel one, unknown to previous centuries. Aristotle refers to the cosmologists as phusikoi, phusiologoi, and meteorologoi. He speaks of "the first philosophizers, " hoi protoi philosophesantes (Metaphysics 983b6) generically in a non-technical way. We see no clear indication that the first philosophers had any particular name for themselves (since neither philosophos nor sophistes had yet acquired a specialized meaning) . Yet they clearly took part in an increasingly peculiar debate that was recognized by other groups such as medical writers as a sort of professional discourse. With or without a name, they emerged as a force to be reckoned with. And increasingly philosophers, whatever their affiliations, had more in common with each other than they did with non-philosophers. If the affiliations of philosophers were not clear, neither was their precise chronological order. But I have in general ordered the philosophers according to our best information as to their activity. I hope that this order will tend to invite rather than to obstruct comparisons among the figures. 3 . Texts and contexts

The Presocratics were pioneers in writing. Anaximander was one of the first if not the first thinker to write his ideas down in a prose composition, at a time when reading was a relatively new art in Greece and writing materials were dear. In fact his treatise started a whole genre that came to be known by the tide Peri phuseos, On Nature. The tide itself emerged only in the late fifth century when books began to carry titles. But it indicated the kind of cosmogony/cosmology that early philosophers favored. Early works On Nature were probably short summaries of a life's work of thinking and perhaps teaching, usually in a single book, or papyrus roll. They became scarce and were often hard to find even for ancient Greeks after Aristotle's time. They have disappeared completely, except for reports about them ("testimonies") by ancient sources and quotations ("fragments") imbedded

The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy

in other works or in a few surviving scraps of manuscript. The task left to a modern reader is to reconstruct from these disiecta membra an understanding of the original thought - no small challenge. Reconstructions must begin with evidence, which consists of a set of texts passed down from antiquity. Before the invention of the printing press in rhe fifteenth century AD, all books had to be copied by hand and recopied generation after generation as the writing materials (papyrus or parchment) deteriorated, if they were to survive. Because of the cost of the materials and the man-hours required for copying, books were relatively expensive and scarce. Over rhe long term, the survival of books depended on the tastes of readers and rhe chances of history. From the fourth century BC on there were public libraries. Eventually the libraries of Alexandria in Egypt and Pergamon in Asia Minor became the largest and best stocked in the world. There were notable libraries in Athens, Rome, and other parts of the Mediterranean world. Eventually rhe great libraries perished, and smaller public and private libraries had to supply manuscripts. Because every ancient text is a copy of a copy of a copy, and so on, errors can creep in at every stage. Surviving manuscripts disagree at some points and the original text itself must be reconstructed from the variant readings. Editors of texts bring considerable knowledge and skill to the work of producing a critical edition, but ultimately the texts before us are only approximations of the original. In the texts of this collection will be found the more important variant readings, in footnotes, which can provide clues to other interpretations than the one adopted. Even with a reliable set of texts in front of us, the work of interpretation is j ust beginning. The challenge is to understand the thought of a thinker who lived far away and long ago in a foreign culture speaking a foreign language. To the ancient Greeks we would count as barbarians, strangers to their language, customs and culture. We need somehow to understand their world and their concerns. The testimonies of ancient interpreters are a help, since their authors had some knowledge of the Presocratics, and some of them (but not all) enjoyed access to their complete writings. On the other hand, most of them lived at least a century after the thinkers they were writing about, in a different time and under different historical conditions, if still in the same broad cultural community. Furthermore, they were neither so conscious of historical changes of perspective nor so scrupulous about responsible reconstruction as are modern scholars. So they were liable to misunderstand their predecessors. That is why fragments are important: to allow us to check what ancient inter­ preters say about the Presocratics against their own sayings. When we do that, we sometimes find reasons to doubt later interpretations. In other words, we can sometimes correct ancient misconceptions on the basis of careful reconstructions of our own. On the other hand, we must be aware that fragments can be mis­ quoted, misattribured, and taken our of context. Nevertheless, the more material we have of the original author, the more confident we can be that we can control the secondary reports and make a plausible reconstruction of our own. 6

Introduction There has been some recent controversy about the extent to which the context we find the fragments in can help us understand chem. Some scholars have recommended leaving the fragments imbedded in as much context as possible so chat we can discern the purposes of the author who quoted chem and sometimes glean further information about how the fragments were connected. Certainly chis is in principle what we should always do in studying the fragments. Bue the reality is that often the contexts are not very helpful for understanding the fragments themselves. The real challenge for the philosopher has always been how to see the forest for the trees. With too much context, the reader tends to get lost in the underbrush without the ability to emerge and see the whole landscape. Consider an analogy with archaeological practice: some gifted archaeologists might prefer to see the potsherds in their original matrix, but most students would find it much more helpful to see chem reconstructed into a pot. On the ocher hand, without any context, the fragments tend to lose any connection with each other or with any possible interpretation. The traditional way of presenting the fragments (pioneered by Hermann Diels) is to present a set of testimonies (his A-texts: Ar , A2, etc.) , followed by a set of fragments (B-cexts) extracted from the former. This procedure keeps testimonies and fragments clearly separated, but it tends to leave the fragments unconnected from each other and from unifying accounts. What I have done here is to combine testimonies and fragments into a global order, distinguishing the fragments (or possible fragments in some cases) by putting them in boldface type. I risk misleading the reader into chinking my order is the right one when it may be mistaken. Still, I think one can do more with a mistaken order than with a random one (such as Diels intentionally used for Heraclitus) . So in the collections the testimonies provide some kind of context for the fragments, which in turn provide some kind of evidence for the testimonies. I could have provided more context, but at the risk of focussing attention on the secondary source rather than the primary author. So chis collection remains closer to Diels' project than some scholars would like, but I hope it will prove itself in being the more accessible to the lay reader. 4. Sources for the Presocratics

Our knowledge of the Presocratics comes through ancient secondary sources who have their own attitudes to and interests in the Presocratics. I shall discuss them under four headings.

4.1 Philosophers Lacer philosophers have their own philosophies to advance. They tend to look at the Presocratics as predecessors who were engaged in a common project, and who may be either allies or antagonists in an ongoing debate. Plato is the first philosopher of whom we have extensive writings (in fact all of his known 7

The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy writings are extant) . He writes not as a historian, and not even as a straight philosopher, but as an author of literary dialogues, usually with Socrates as chief spokesman. Presocratic figures generally come in as partisans to a debate, for instance Heraclitus and Protagoras in the Theaetetus. Plato is usually content to refute them as part of the ongoing argument. In the Theaetetus, however, he has Protagoras stand up for himself and criticize Socrates for creating a straw man (166-68) . For the first time in the extant literature a philosopher makes a plea for a charitable statement of an opponent's view, part of the ethics of philosophical discussion that is still our ideal. Nonetheless, such care for an opposing position is the exception rather than the rule in antiquity. Aristotle writes treatises rather than dialogues (to be more precise, the literary compositions he wrote are lost, while his lectures or school treatises have survived) . In them he divides up areas of knowledge into disciplines and often begins with a search of the literature, in which he reviews previous theories on a given subject (e.g. On the Soul I ) , often including a generous treatment of Presocratic views. He never treats his predecessors' theories as ends in themselves, but he does take them seriously and respond to them, sometimes carefully, sometimes summarily. In fact, he makes it a point of procedure that the philosopher should evaluate and respond to previous positions, "for the solution of a [dialectical] problem is a discovery" (Nicomachean Ethics u46b7-8; cf. Topics l .!4) . Aristotle's student and colleague, Theophrastus, took his master's method to extremes and published a sixteen-book compendium, Doctrines on Nature, at least partly organized in a dialectical way dealing with opposed opinions. The opinions were probably divided up by topic and set side-by-side with competing views on a given narrow topic. The point of this exercise seems to be to produce a dictionary of ideas for any occasion.

4.2 Doxographers This brings us to a new genre of writing, the "Doxography" (a word coined by Hermann Diels from Greek roots) . Given the difficulty of reproducing books and the apparently lively market for dictionaries of ideas, abbreviated versions ("epitomes") of Theophrastus' work remained in circulation until late antiquity. Apparently there was already one in the early third century B C , that has been called by modern scholars The Earliest Doctrines ( Vetustissima Placita) ; another around the first century B C known as The Ear!J1 Doctrines ( Vetusta Placita) , and another in the first century A D , the Placita of Aetius. Each time the work seems to have gotten shorter, but to have included the next generation of philosophers. Aetius' version was further excerpted by pseudo-Plutarch and imbedded by Stobaeus in his massive Anthology. The core material of these collections goes back to Theophrastus, but new material is grafted in as well. The continued existence of doxographical collections indicates the lasting demand for such works. Indeed, John Stobaeus (fifth century AD ) seems to have thought a multi-volume anthology was the ultimate educational resource, and inflicted his collection on his hapless

Introduction

son. It is quite possible that most of the authors of these digests had little more to go on than earlier digests and cribs (Stobaeus was an exception) , so the information steadily deteriorated over time. Still, given their pedigree, the Placita collections convey valuable information.

4. 3 . Biographers Another genre that appeared after Aristotle was the inrellectual biography. Aris­ totle's student Aristoxenus wrote some biographies of philosophers, and in the second century BC the Peripatetic Sotion wrote a Successions of the Philosophers in thirteen books. While it was relatively easy to get biographical material on Plato or Aristotle, the Presocratics presented problems. Scraps of information, anecdotes, and fabrications had to do. Philosophical biographies were filled out with doctrines taken from doxographies. But whereas in standard doxographies opinions were divided up by topic, the biographer had to go through a doxo­ graphical handbook and pull out each doctrine belonging to a given philosopher and reassemble the collection, giving an impression of a philosophical survey. This method, however, did not assure any systematic exposition, but only j uxta­ posed minimal doctrines. The great collection that survived antiquity was that of Diogenes Laertius, a biographer of the early third century AD, who is more of a cut-and-paste hack than a scholar. Still, in the ten books of his Lives of the Emi­ nent Philosophers he preserves priceless information, along with misinformation, slanders, comic lampoons and bad verse.

4+ Other sources Other kinds of writers sometimes provide information about the Presocratics . The historian Herodotus is aware of Presocratic theories and enters into one of their debates. The orator Isocrates is aware of the major theories of the Presocratics, which he criticizes as irrelevant to important concerns. Philosopher and essayist Plutarch provides some important information about several Presocratics. Com­ mentators on Aristotelian texts sometimes fill out references to the Presocratics with background information . By far the most important is the sixth-century AD commentator Simplicius who quotes extensively from rare books of several Presocratics. In general educated people seem to have had a superficial knowledge of the sort preserved in doxographies of the Presocratics, but only a few studious individuals knew more than what was passed on in summaries.

5

.

Historiography

5 . 1 Anti q uity History is a complex art, not merely a habit of passing on old information. We philosophers take it for granted that the history of philosophy is an important 9

The Texrs of Early Greek Philosophy

component of a philosopher's knowledge. In antiquity there was no real history of philosophy. Plato is often merely playful in dealing with earlier theories. Aristotle's Metaphysics I comes about as close to history of philosophy as we can find, and it is indeed valuable. But it is part of Aristotle's vindication of his own method, not a disinterested study of past theories, and it focuses narrowly on theories of causarion or explanation. Yet we find in both Plato and Aristotle schematic treatments of predecessors that seem to be inherited from earlier writers: monists vs. pluralists, advocates of motion vs. advocates of rest, and the like. These appear to derive from the sophists Hippias of Elis and Gorgias of Leontini. So there was a kind of proto-doxographical tradition even before Aristotle. Theophrastus continues pigeon-holing philosophers, and much of subsequent study consists merely of crude classifications of particular doctrines. Some of Aristotle's followers wrote critical works of historia such as Eudemus' work on astronomy, which sometimes detailed the first discoveries of phenomena; but here historia is not "history" but something like a general investigation: his Astrologike historia is The Study of Astronomy, probably more a dialectical than a historical treatise. Hellenistic philosophers breathed new life into the study of Presocratic phi­ losophy. Epicurus built his theory on the foundations of Democritean atomism, though he tended to be critical rather than admiring of his a to mist forebears. Zeno and Cleanthes borrowed Heraclitean physics for their Stoicism, and Cleanthes wrote a monograph on Heraclitus. Skeptics found Xenophanes and Democritus, and sometimes Heraclitus, to be congenial forerunners. Pythagoras was redis­ covered, or perhaps reinvented, by neo-Pythagoreans and neo-Platonists, and Parmenides was much admired by the latter. The emperor Tiberius' astrologer royal, Thrasyllus, did an edition of Democritus' extensive writings. Yet it is seldom clear how well later thinkers understood the systematic views of their predecessors.

5 . 2 The Middle Ages and Renaissance In the fifth century AD the western half of the Roman empire was overrun by barbarian invasions. Meanwhile the eastern half continued with its capital in Constantinople (Byzantium) as what we now call the Byzantine Empire. Greek was still spoken and written, and the study of ancient philosophy and literature continued. In addition, there were still Greek-speaking communities (descendants of early Greek colonies) in southern Italy and Sicily through the Middle Ages. In the Middle East Arab tribes were unified by the religion of Islam and conquered a huge area from the borders of India to Morocco and Spain. Islamic scholars translated many works of Greek science and philosophy into Arabic, often from intermediate Syriac translations. In western Europe, civilization collapsed over time, and monasteries and reli­ gious institutions became the main centers of education and book-making. The Latin language was preserved as the language of church communication and liturgy as local dialects and languages replaced the mother tongue. Greek, which all well-educated Romans learned from childhood, was forgotten after the

IO

Introduction fall of Rome, and Greek manuscripts disappeared from the West. After about 1000 AD western Europe began to recover from invasions; the population increased, towns and cities reappeared and grew in size, and new educational opportunities appeared. In the twelfth century scholars began to search out manuscripts of Aristotle, which they translated from Arabic or Greek sources. This caused a great demand for commentaries and related works. Universities were founded, and Aristotle quickly became the main focus of the curriculum of arts. Diogenes Laertius was translated into Latin in the twelfth century but then was lost for a time. Apparently complete works of Anaxagoras and Empedocles were still available in Greek during this period, but were later lost. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there was a great blossoming of learning, starting in Italy and spreading north. Books were imported from Greece, along with scholars to interpret them. When Constantinople was overrun by Ottoman Turks in 1453 many Greeks fled to Italy, some with valuable manuscripts. The invention of the printing press made it possible to mass-produce copies of works, and to make critical editions with the errors corrected and variant readings compared. Critical editions of Plato, Aristotle, and many other philosophers were published. Diogenes Laertius was first published in Basie in 1533· Most philosophers remained followers of either Plato (in Neoplatonic interpretations) or Aristotle (in scholastic interpretations) .

5 - 3 The modern period Progress was made in classical scholarship in the seventeenth century, but not much in the history of philosophy. The eighteenth century was a time of large systematic projects such as Dr. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary and most remarkably of all the great French Encyclopedie. But the dominant attitude of the philosophes to the past was that it was a record of mistakes and superstitions to be corrected by reason and science. In the early nineteenth century, however, history came into its own. German philosophy began to stress the importance of history to ideas, culminating in the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel, which saw the march of human history as a kind of glorified history of ideas. At German universities the ideal of Altertumswissenschaft, an approach to ancient studies that sought to integrate all aspects of ancient study, from archaeology to history to philosophy and literature, brought new standards to what had been one of the main subjects of university study. Eduard Zeller brought out a heavily researched history of ancient philosophy, Die Philosophie der Griechen, in three volumes (1844-52) , in the first of many editions. Zeller grasped the idea of an integral historical development, though he still somewhat uncritically accepted Aristotle's views on the one hand, while he adopted a priori schemes of development (from Hegel's legacy) on the other. As yet there was no sourcebook for the study of the Presocratics. In 1879, Hermann Diels published his massive study, Doxographi graeci, which collected the doxographical sources necessary for reconstructing Presocratic thought. After writing several special studies on figures such as Heraclitus and Parmenides and an

II

The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy edition of the philosophical poets, he published Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker in 1903, which immediately became the bible for Presocraric studies (and made the name 'Presocratic' the standard designation for early philosophers) . This work (now in the sixth edition, 19 51-52) remains the standard sourcebook, although it is now more than half a century out of date (there are plans for new individual editions of the Presocraric philosophers) . In the nineteenth century it became plain that the student of ancient philoso­ phy must appreciate the ancient philosopher's thought in his own rime, not j ust in terms of present concerns. In the twentieth century Harold Cherniss (Aris­ totle 's Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy, 1935) systematically criticized Aristotle for his failure to appreciate the Presocrarics historically, and John McDiarmid similarly criticized Theophrastus. Ir became increasingly evident (in the work of Karl Reinhardt, Cherniss, and others) that Parmenides marked a turning-point in Presocraric thought, a fact not appreciated by Aristotle or by modern scholars working before the twentieth century. In the English-speaking world Cambridge University was the center of Presocratic studies, led by F. M. Cornford and WK. C. Guthrie of the Classics Faculty. Cambridge scholars tended to down­ play the importance of philosophy in their research (although they were better read in that field than they let on) . After World War II a new generation of scholars tried consciously to combine the logical and conceptual precision of philosoph­ ical analysis with the linguistic and historical rigor of classical philology, led by G. E. L. Owen in the UK and Gregory Vlastos in the US. The standard advanced textbook has been G. S. Kirk and ] . E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (1957, second edition with M . Schofield, 1983) . W K. C. Guthrie's A History of Greek Philosophy (6 vols. , 1962-81, esp. vols. 1-3 on the Presocrarics) offers a derailed history of the Presocrarics. Jonathan Barnes has presented a challenging study of Presocratic arguments examined in light of contemporary philosophical methods in The Presocratic Philosophers (1979/81) .

6. The texts The interpretation of philosophical texts is a demanding enterprise under the best of circumstances. In the case of the Presocrarics we are dealing with the earliest texts reflecting the earliest consciously philosophical thought. The texts are fragmentary and imbedded in the works of other authors with their own agendas. Some new texts have come to light in recent years which add to our body of works, but what is missing is still far greater than what has been preserved. The language of the texts varies from poetry to prose, from Ionic to Doric to Attic dialect, from simple exposition to oratorical showpieces, from fifth-century BC to twelfth-century (and later) AD, from pagan religion to Christian heresiography, from epic diction to comic lampoon, from history to medicine to lexicography. Yet we enjoy excellent dictionaries and grammars and comprehensive databases of Greek literature to help recover the meanings of the texts. The conceptual 12

Introduction differences of Presocratic thinkers are daunting, but historical, linguistic and archaeological research makes it possible to reconstruct much of the physical and social world of early antiquiry and so to link words with meaningful concepts. The art of philosophical interpretation has advanced greatly in recent years. In some sense our views of the past are always conditioned by our present interests, and so interpretations are bound to change over time. Furthermore, over time we have the advantage of evaluating a growing body of competing interpretations. Although we can offer increasingly sophisticated interpretations, we are in no position to offer any final readings. In studying the Presocratics we are, for better or worse, part of a continuing process of evaluation that began in the late fifth century BC and continues to the present. We cannot tell where it will lead, but we do know that any worthwhile interpretation we can make begins with a set of texts, and j ustifies itself by its abiliry to illuminate those texts. The present work is an attempt to assemble these texts: the complete fragments and most important testimonies of the leading Presocratic thinkers. It is limited by the need to keep the material to a manageable length, providing an enchiridion or handbook. I have passed over some figures I might have included, for lack of adequate fragments, for instance Hippias, Critias, Archelaus. I have passed over others for chronological reasons: Di els' list of Presocratics includes figures who are contemporary with or even later than Aristotle, on the grounds that they were not influenced by Socrates ("pre-" in a dialectical sense) . I have kept my population ro those active in the sixth and fifth centuries, that is, not later than Socrates' life in their activiry. Thus you will not find Archytas or Nausiphanes. The selection and arrangement of material inevitably presuppose some kind of preliminary interpretation on my part. Further, some commentary was deemed necessary to make sense of otherwise incomprehensible material. (The commentary stresses philosophical over philological issues, but deals with both kinds.) By keeping the commentary separate from the texts, I seek at least to make it relatively easy for the reader to approach the texts with a minimum of intervention. By j uxta­ posing the texts with the translation I seek to allow the reader immediately to evaluate the latter and consider alternative readings as necessary. Of course every ordered collection of testimonies and putative fragments con­ stitutes an interpretative hypothesis that is based on a limited amount of scholarly consensus, a fair amount individual evaluation, and a large amount of specula­ tion; it is, accordingly, subject to critical scrutiny. The present work is, as all works of its kind, a tentative reconstruction. It com es at the end of a process of schol­ arly engagement, research, and evaluation, but can offer only a starting-point for further inquiry and reflection. This is the first bilingual sourcebook of the Presocratics with English as the target language. If it does not contain everything it might, what it does con­ tain will, I hope, make the figures covered more accessible and ultimately more comprehensible. At best a collection like this can assemble a partial record of a lost conversation about the nature of things, one that began with sudden burst of creative energy and then evolved in response to searching objections and 13

The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy

new information. If there are major gaps in the record, there remains enough information to challenge us to make our best efforts to fill in the gaps, however provisionally, and to trace in it the origins of!ater ideas. As I have worked through this material, I have been impressed anew by the precocious brilliance of these first philosophers and scientists. I hope that studying this collection will stimulate you, dear reader, to rethink the ideas raised by the foundational documents of Western philosophical thought, and to renew a conversation that began long ago, appropriately enough, where East meets West: on the western shores of Anatolia, Land of the Sunrise.

14

Part I Cosmologists and ontologists A. The sixth century

BC

r

Thales

Introduction

Thales is recognized as the founder of philosophy (1 5, 20) , and as such occupies a major place in historical accounts of philosophy. Unfortunately, he seems to have left no writings on which early students of philosophy could rely, and much of what we know about him is tinged with legend and myth. Nevertheless, we can recognize in him the first steps in scientific philosophy. Thales was recognized as one of Seven Sages during his own lifetime. Others in this exclusive club were poets and statesmen; only Thales can claim to be a philosopher and scientist. Thales is credited with being a wise political adviser, but also a philosopher, a scientist, a mathematician and an engineer. He is alleged to have traveled and studied in Egypt, whence he brought back geometry; to have learned practical navigation from the Phoenicians, and (in modern accounts) to have learned astronomy from the Babylonians. All these influences are possible, but in the process of absorbing whatever he did from his contemporaries, Thales seems to have gone beyond them in formulating some sort of theory about the world. In studying Thales we can only appeal to ancient hearsay evidence in the absence of primary texts. All history of philosophy involves some reconstruction. In the case ofThales, we have to make our reconstruction on the basis of unreliable evidence. Yet whatever we decide in the end, we must allow that his reputation proceeds from some sort of major accomplishment that was amazing to his contemporaries. The testimonies about Thales make several connections to Egypt. That Thales went to Egypt is quite plausible, given that his city founded a colony, Naucratis, in the Nile delta, perhaps during Thales' lifetime (Strabo Geography 17.r.18) . References to his theory of the Nile floods are early and, to my mind, convincing. According to this theory, the northerly etesian winds that blow in the summer in the Mediterranean cause the Nile to back up. Here we have a purely naturalistic theory based on correlations with weather conditions, which purports to explain a remarkable phenomenon (attributed to a river god by the Egyptians) . This is the sort of theory that Greek thinkers from Thales onwards proposed to account for events above the earth, on the earth, and under the earth, a sort of proto­ scientific explanation of events that hitherto had been viewed as marvelous and prodigious. In this case the data come from Egypt, bur the theory is uniquely Greek.

17

Thales

Meanwhile, the Babylonians had been recording close observations on the heavenly bodies for at least a millennium, and repositories of their records have been found in Asia Minor. In Thales' time Babylonian priests were beginning to be able to make predictions about when an eclipse was possible. They were essentially astrologers who wished to anticipate omens from the heavens to guard against certain kinds of calamities. Thales' most spectacular success was pre­ dicting the eclipse of May 28, 585 BC, a prediction he apparently made at an annual festival of the Ionian Greeks. If he did make this prediction, he must have done it on the basis of Babylonian tables. It is important to recognize, however, that these tables are records of repeating cycles that do not entail a physical explanation of an eclipse. Accordingly, it does not follow from this prediction that Thales understood the causes of eclipses, as Greek historians inferred (24-2 5) . In any case, his intellectual successors in Miletus, Anaximander and Anaximenes, had theories of eclipses which show no awareness of the true causes. It is possible that Thales brought back a knowledge of "geometry" from Egypt. The roots of the Greek word mean "earth-measurement," indicating the kind of science he would have encountered there: practical surveying. Stories about Thales' use of geometry indicate a creative application of principles inherent in surveying. That he actually progressed to the point of making proofs of these principles is doubtful; again historians seem to have inferred that he made proofs from the report that he used the principles. Most central to our story is the question of whether he advanced a unified theory to account for the world. According to our testimonies, he derived the world from water, beginning the tradition of providing a basic source or prin­ ciple (arche) of all things, from which the world can be constructed. Hence a kind of chemical theory is used to generate meteorological and cosmological explanations. Thales seems to have said that all is water, a belief he could have gotten from some Eastern world-views. He seems to have posited a flat earth floating like a raft on a vast primordial sea. Unlike his successors, he left no account of how the present arrangement of the earth, sea, and heavenly bodies came about. Yet he may have seen water as the basic starting-point of every­ thing. This does not mean, however, that he had a rigorous theory like the one Aristotle attributes to him (1 5) , or that he j ustified it in the way Aristotle suggests. The story about Thales' great engi neering feat of fording the Halys (6) is, I think, untenable, not because it was impossible for him, but because it violated the political principles that are plausibly attributed to him. His real contribution, in any case, was not the practical one of crossing rivers or measuring the distance of ships at sea; it was in proposing physical the­ ories to explain natural phenomena. In this he eclipsed all his predecessors, as Theophrastus said (13), and opened the way to a new conception of the world.

18

Texts

Thales

Texts

Diogenes Laertius r . 22-27, 37-3 8 (Ar)

I

1-lv Toivvv 6 8a/.. fi s , ws µEv 'H p6ooTos Kai Llovp1s Kai Llri µ6Kpn6s cpacri , TiaTpos µEv 'E�aµvov, ' µ1ppos OE K/.. r n�ov/.. i vris. EK Twv 8rit.. 1 owv, o\'. EiO"I cDoivtKES, EvyEvfoTaT01 Twv aTio Kao µov Kai :i\yfivopos. < iiv OE Twv ETITa crocpwv, > 2 Kaea Kai nt.. a TWV epav5 TOV µrivos TplaKaOa ElTIEV. TIPWTOS OE Kai mpl oTEpl) t 01af3aTos EYEVETo. 7 Plato

Theaetetus 174�-8 (A9)

wcrTTEP Kai 8ai\i'jv 6:crTpovoµouvTa . . . Kai &vw [3i\ETTovTa, TTWOVTa Eis q>pfop, 8paLTTCx TIS EµµEi\ii s Kai xapiwcra 6EpaTTatvis CxTTOO"KW\jJat i\EyETat, ws Ta µEV EV ovpavwt TTpo6vµo!To ElOEVat, Ta 0 EµTTpocr6Ev2 aVTOU Kai TTapa TTOOas i\aveavot OVTOV.

8 Aristotle Politics 1259a5-21 (Aro+) TTCxVTa yap Wq>Ei\tµa TOUT EcrTi TOlS TL µWcrt Tii v xp11 µaTLO"TtKTiv, oTov Kai TO 8ai\Ew TOU M ti\T)criov. TOUTO yap EO"Tl KaTav611 µa Tl xp11 µaTLO"TLKOV · 6:i\7\ EKEivwt µiov Ota Tiiv croq>iav TTpocraTTTOVcrt , TvyxavEt OE Ka66i\ov TL ov. 6vE101l;6vTwv yap avTwt 01a Tiiv mviav ws 6:vwq>Ei\ous Ti'j s q> ti\ocroq>ias ovcr11s. KaTavoiicrai:Ta q>acriv avTov Ei\aiwv q>opav fooµEvl)v EK Ti'js 6:crTpoi\oyias, ht XELµwvos OVTOS EVTTopiicraVTa XPT) µCxTWV oi\iywv 6:ppa[3wvas O taOOUVat TWV Ei\movpyiwv3 TWV T EV M 1i\iiTw1 Kai Xiwt TTCxVTwv, 6i\iyov µ1cr6wcraµEvov aT ovoEvos Em[3ai\i\oVTos. EmtoTi o 6 Katpos TlKE, TToi\i\wv l;T)TovµEvwv &µa Kai E�aiq>VT)S, EKµtcr6ouvTa ov Tp6TTov fi f3ovi\no, TToi\i\a xpii µaTa crvi\i\E�aVTa ETTLOEl�at , OTL pVEpoµEVTJS Kai aipoVO'TJS4 avTa ElS TO mptEXOV. ovcriav 6EOv crcpatpoEtOi'j , µTJOEV o µotov §xovcrav av6pwTTWL · OAOV 8E 6pav Kai OAOV OKOVELV, µii µEvTOl avaTTVElV· crvµTTaVT6: TE ETvat vovv Kai TJcri OE LwTiwv TTpwTov avTov ElTTE'iv aKaTOATJ TTTa ETvat Ta TTOVTa, TTAavwµEvos.6 (5 here] Kai fjKµa�E KaTa Tiiv E�TJKOcrTTiv 'O/.. v µm6:8a. q>TJcri OE �TJ µfi Tp1os 6 7 VTTO TWV nveayoptKWV napµEVlO'KOV Kai '0pEcrT6:8ov, Ka66: TJO'l ov Kai crwµaT' ETioiovv T01av6' oT6v TIEP KavToi OEµas ETxov < EKacrT0 1 > .3

33 [F2 1 ] Ibid. 7.22 (B16)4 Ai6ioTIES TE < 6Eovs crq>ETEpovs> cr1µovs µEAavas TE 9pfj 1KES TE yf.avKovs Kai Tivppovs < q>acr1 TIEAecr6m > . 34 [F22] Scholium o n Aristophanes Knights 408 (B17) ecrT5:cr1v o ' ef-aTT) S < �aKxo1 > 5 TIVK1v6v TIEpi owµa. 3 5 [F23] Clement Miscellanies 5 . 109 (B23) els 6E6s, fo TE 6eoicri Kai 6:v6pwTI01cr1 µEy1crTos, OVTI OEµas 6VT)TOicrlv 6µoiios ovoe VOT) µa. 36 [F24] Sextus Empiricus Against the Professors 9 . 144 (B24) ovf.os 6p5:i, ovf.os oe voEi, ovf.os OE T, 6:KOVEI. 37 [F25] Simplicius Physics 23 . 20 (B25) 6:f.f.' 6:Tiavev6E TI6vo10 v6ov q>pEvi TiavTa KpaoaivE1. 38 [F26] Ibid. 23 . n-12 (B26) o:iEi o' ev TaVTWI µ{µvE16 K1vovµEvo57 ovoEv ovoe µETEPXEcr6ai µ1v ETI17TpETIE18 aAAOTE CxAAT) l. 39 Plato Sophist 242c8-d7 (A29) µ066v T1vo: EKacrTOS qio:ivETai µ01 8rr1yEicr6m Timcriv ws o\Jcr1v i) µ'i'v, 6 µEv ws Tpio: Ta ovTo:, TIOAEµE'i' 8E 6:At.. Tj f.01s evioTE o:vTwv aTTa TIT) l , TOTE OE Kai qiif.. a y1yv6µEva yaµovs TE Kai T6Kovs Kai Tpoq>as Twv eKyovwv TiaPEXETo:t· 8vo OE ETEpOS Eim::i v , vypov Kai �T) pOV Tl 6Ep µov Kai 'fVXPOV, O"VVOIKl�El TE aVTCx Kai eKoiowcr1· To 8E Tiap' i) µ'i'v9 'Ef.. e o:T1Kov Eevos, C:mo =:Evoqiavovs TE Kai h1 Tip6cr6Ev 6:p�6:µEvov, ws i:vos ovTos Twv TI6:vTwv KaAovµEvwv, ovTw 81E�EPXETo:t To'i's µveo1s. ' Theodor. : 0µ0To1 Clem.Al . , Eus. 2 suppl. Sylburg. 3 suppl. Herwerden. Diels' reconsrrucrion: Ai6ioTIES TE µ€;\o:vo:s cn µovs TE Gpii:tKES TE Tivppovs Kai y!-o:vKovs codd. 5 Wachsmuth: EACxTE 8: EACxTTj V. 6 µEvE1 aF. 7 E" F : KtvovµEvov aDE. 8 DE": ETilTpETIEl E: µfiv €mi Tip€m1 aF. 9 Theodoret Par. 1808: fi µwv �TW Eus.

4

IIO

Texts 33-3 9 horses like horses and cattle like cattle would draw the forms of gods, and make their bodies just like the body < each of them> had. 33

[F2 1 ] Africans < say their gods are> snub-nosed and black, Thracians blue-eyed and red-haired.1

34

[F22] < Bacchants > of pine stand about the stout house.

35

[F23] One God, greatest among gods and men, not at all like to mortals in body nor in thought.

36

[F24] All of him sees, all thinks, all hears.

37

[F2 5] But without any toil he shakes all things by the thought of his mind.

38

[F26] He remains ever in the same place moving not at all, nor is it appropriate for him to Hit now here, now there.

39 [Visitor from Elea:] Each one seems to me to explain things to us in a story form as if we were children. One says that there are three existing things, and sometimes some of them are at war with each other in a way, then he has them make friends and marry, beget children, and raise their offspring. Another says they are two, wet and dry or hot and cold, and gives them in marriage to each other. The Eleatic race among us, starting from Xenophanes and even earlier, recounts in stories how of the so-called totality of things there is a unity.

' This fragmenr is heavily reconstructed by Diels.

III

4

Xenophanes

40 Aristotle Metaphysics 9 8 6b18-27 (A30) napµEVlOT)S µEv yap EolKE TOV KaTa TOV Myov EVOS CXTTTECJ6at, M Ei\touos OE TOV KaTa Ti]v VAT)V· 010 Kai 6 µEv mmpaaµEvov, 6 o ' &m1p6v q>T)CJIV ETvai m'.n6· =EVOETEol npos Ti]v vvv l;fiTT)CJlV, ot µEv ovo Kai naµnav ws OVTES µ1Kpov aypotKOTEpot, =EVO T017 µfi ov Elvat · TOVTO yap OVTE µfoov OVTE apxfiv Kai TEAOS OVT' &i\i\o OVOEV µEpos EXElV, TOIOVTOV OE ETvat TO &m1pov · oTov OE TO µfi 6v, OVK av Elvai To ov· mpaivE1v OE npos &i\i\T)i\a, El ni\Eiw E'iT) . To OE Ev ovTE TW1 ovK 6vT1 ovTE TOlS noi\i\ols wµo1wa6at· EV yap < OV > '8 OVK EXElv,'9 npos OT! TTEpavEl. 20 1 Text based on Diels 1900. 2 Diels: TaVTa LR. 3 Ka\ 6 µoiws L. 4 o(h'; 6:v6µ01ov R. H. Gomperz: TO ovK ov I:� ovTos LR. 6 5Ti R. 7 &v R. 8 6µ01os wv R. 9 Karsten: n6:vTa KpaTEfo6m LR. 10 Bonitz: 6Eov LR. 1 1 Hoffmann: qivcn µ01 R: qiv ai v L. 12 sec!. Blass. 1 3 Wendland: 6p ecv TE Ka\ CxKOVE\V LR. 14 sec!. Diels. '5 o0Tw L. 16 suppl. Wendland. 17 Bonitz: µE:v 8 L: 8 R. 18 suppl. Blass. 19 Bonitz: EXEi LR. 20 nEpav6EiT) L. 5

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Texts 40-41 40 Parmenides seems to deal with the one in definition, Melissus the one in mat­

ter; that is why the former says it is limited, the latter unlimited. But Xenophanes, who was the first to posit a unity (for Parmenides is supposed to have been his student) did not make anything clear, nor did he seem to touch on the nature of either of these things, but with a view to the whole heaven he says the one is god. Now these thinkers, we have said, should be ignored in the present inquiry - two of them completely as being a bit too unsophisticated: Xenophanes and Melissus. 41 He says it is impossible, if something is, for it to have come to be, saying this

about God. For what has come to be must have come to be either from what is like or what is unlike. And neither is possible. For it is no more fitting for what is like to be begotten from the like than to beget (for all the same properties belong to what is equal and alike in relation to each other) , nor could the unlike come to be from unlike. (2 ) For if the stronger should come to be from the weaker, the greater from the lesser, the better from the worse, or on the contrary worse things from better, what-is would come from what-is-not, which is impossible. According to this reasoning God is everlasting. (3) If God is the mightiest being of all, he says, it is fitting for him to be one. For if there were two or more, he would no longer be mightiest and best of all. For each of the many gods, being alike, would have the same character. For this is god and the power of god: to rule but not be ruled, and to be the mightiest of all. So insofar as he is not strongest, he is not God. (4) Thus if there were many gods, and some were stronger than the others and some weaker, they would not be gods; for it is in the nature of the divine not to be ruled. (5) But if they were equal, they would not have the nature of a god, to be most powerful: the equal is neither better nor worse than its equal. So if there should be a god, and god should have this character, god would be unique. Nor would a god be able to do all he wished if there were many gods; hence there is only one. ( 6) Since there is one god he is alike everywhere, seeing and hearing and having the other senses throughout; otherwise the parts of God would rule and be ruled by each other, which is impossible. (?) Since he is everywhere alike he is spherical; for he is not here of this character and there not, but everywhere the same. (8) Since he is everlasting, one, < alike and> spherical he is neither unlimited nor limited. < For> what-is-not is unlimited. For this has neither middle nor beginning nor end, nor any other part, and the unlimited has this character. What-is would not have the same character as what-is-not, but it would be limited by the others, if there were many. But what is one is like neither what-is-not nor the many, for < being> one it does not have anything by which it is limited.

n3

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Xenophanes

(9) TO 5T) 1"0lOV1"0V EV, OV1 1"0V eeov dvm 11Eye1 , OVTE KlVEla8m OVTE CxKlVfl1"0V2 dvm · 6:Kivri1ov3 µEv yap dvm TO µT) OV· OVTE yap &v els av10 hepov 001' EKElVO els &Mo EA8elv. K1vefo8m 5E 1a TTAEiw ov1a Evos· hepov yap Els hepov 5elv KlVEta8at. ElS µEV o\Jv 1"0 µT) OV ov5EV av KlVfl8f\val. (IO) 1"0 yap µT) OV ov5aµf\ 1 Elvm, El 5E els &7'7'ri7'a µnaf36:7'7'01 , TTAElW av10 &v4 dvm EVOS. 51a 1av1a 5T) KlVEla8m µEv &v Ta 5vo i\ TTAEiw EVOS, ii pEµElV 5E Kai CxKlVfl1"0V dvm 10 ov5fo. (11) 10 5E Ev ov1e 6:1peµelv ov1e K1vefo8m· o01e yap 1w1 µT) ov11 ov1e 1ols TTo7'7'ols 0µ01ov Elvm· Kaia TT6:v1a 5E ov1ws §xov1a5 1ov 8e6v , 6:i5 t6v TE Kai Eva, 0µ016v TE Kai acpmpoe15f\ 6v1a, o01e aTTE1pov o01e TTETTEpaaµEvov, ov1E Ti peµovv1a6 ov1E K1vri1ov7 e!vai.

42 Simplicius Physics 22. 22-23 . 19 (A31) µ{av 5E 1T) v 6:pxi)v f\101 EV 10 av Kai mS:v Kai o01e TTETTEpaaµEvov o01e aTTE1pov o01e K1vovµevov o01e ii peµovv =:evocp6:vriv 1ov Ko7'ocpwv1ov 1ov Tiap µevi5ov 5166:0-KaAov VTT01i8m8ai Cj>flO"lV 6 8e6cppaa1os oµoAoywv hEpas dvm µaAAov i\ •Tis mpi cpvaews la1opias 1T)v µvi wriv •Ti s 1ov1ov 56�ris. 10 yap EV 10010 Kai TTav 1ov 8eov EAeyev 6 =:evocp6:vri s· ov Eva µEv 5eiKvvaiv EK TOV TT6:v1wv Kp6:11a1ov Elvm · TTAEIOVWV y6:p, cpriaiv, OVTWV oµoiws VTT6:pxe1v 6:v6:yKfl TTOO"l 10 Kpa1Elv · 10 5E TT6:v1wv Kp6:11a1ov Kai &p1a1ov 8e6s. 6:yEVfl1"0V 5E E5EiKVVEV EK TOV 5Elv TO y1v6µevov i\ E� oµo{ov i\ E� 6:voµoiov yivmem. 6:7'?\a TO µEV 0µ01ov CxTTa8Es Cj>flO"lV VTTO TOV oµoiov· ov5Ev yap µaAAov yevvav i\ yevvaaem TTpoaiiKEl 1"0 0µ01ov EK TOV oµoiov· El 5E E� 6:voµo{ov yivo110, fo1m 10 ov EK 100 µT) ov1os. Kai ov1ws 6:yEvri1ov Kai 6:i51ov E5EiKVV. OVTE 5E OTTEl pov OVTE TTETTEpaaµEVOV dvm , 51611 OTTEl pov µEV 1"0 µT) av ws o01e 6:pxi)v §xov o01e µfoov o01e 1E7'os, mpaive1v 5E TTpos &Mrilla 1a TTAEiw. TTapaTTAflO"lWS 5E Kai 1T)v KlVflO"lV 6:cpmpET Kai 1T)v fi peµiav. CxKlVflTOV µEv yap eTvm 10 µT) av· o01e yap &v els av10 hepov o01e av10 TTpos &Mo EA8elv · K1vETa8m 5E 1a TTAEiw 100 Eves· E1epov yap Els hepov µnaf36:Me1v.8 wa1e Kai 01av EV 1av1w1 µEVElV 11Eyri 1 Kai µT) K1vefo8m [F26] . ov Kaia 1T)v ii peµiav 1T)v CxVTlKElµEVflV 1f\ 1 KlViiO"El µEVElV av16 Cj>flO"lV, 6:Ma Kala 1T)v CxTTO KlVii O"EWS Kai fi peµias E�fl lpfl µEVfl V µoviiv. N 1K6Aaos 5E 6 LlaµaaKrivos ws &m1pov Kai CxKlVflTOV /\Eyonos av1ov 1T)v 6:pxi)v EV 1f\ 1 Tiepi eewv CxTToµvri µovEVEl , /\7'E�av5pos 5 E ws TTmepaaµEvov av10 Kai acpmpoe15Es. 6:M' 011 µEv ov1E aTTE1pov o01E TTETTEpaaµEvov av10 5eiKvvaiv, EK 1wv TTpoe1pri µEvwv 5f\7'ov· TTETTEpaaµEvov 5E Kai acpmpoe15Es av10 51a 10 TTav1ax68ev 0µ01ov 11Eye1v. Kai TT6:v1a voe'iv 5E cpria1v av10 Mywv [F25] . I Diels: EV, OV L: av, Ev ov R. ' K\VT]TOV R. J CxVOVT]TOV R. 4 OVTO av scripsi: aVTOV LR: av TO EV Karsten. I Apelt: ex11 6 Diels: ii pE µiv L: fi pEµEiv R. 7 FUlleborn: CxKlVTJTOV LR. 8 Usener post Karsten : µETa�6:i\i\E1 LR.

I I4

L: exo15 R.

Text

42

(9) What has the character of being one, which he says God is, is neither in motion nor < not> in motion. For what-is-not is unmoved. For another does not come to it nor does it come to another. But the things that are more than one are moved, for one must move to another. Now nothing could move to what-is-not. (ro) For what-is-not in no way is. But if things displace each other, it would be more than one. For this reason the two or more than one would move, but what is nothing would rest, i.e. be motionless. (n) But the one is neither without motion nor in motion. For it is like neither what-is-not nor the many. But being of this nature in every respect, god is everlasting and one, all like and spherical, neither unlimited nor limited, neither at rest nor in motion.

42 If the source is one, surely it is one in being and whole, and neither limited nor unlimited, neither in motion nor at rest, as Xenophanes of Colophon, the instructor of Parmenides supposes, according to Theophrastus (who acknowl­ edges that the content of his views belongs to some study other than that of nature) . [4-5] ' This one totality Xenophanes said was God, and he proves he is one from his being mightiest of all. For if there were many, since they were alike, might would belong to them all. For the mightiest and best of all is God. [r] And he proves he is ungenerated from the fact that what comes to be must come to be either from what is like or what is unlike. But, he says, the like is unaffected by the like, for it is in no way more fitting for the like to beget than to be begotten by the like. But if it should come from the unlike, what is would come to be from what is not. And thus he proved it is ungenerated and everlasting. [8] And it is neither limited nor unlimited because what is not is unlimited in that it has neither beginning, middle, nor end, whereas the many are limited by each other. [9-n] Similarly he rejects motion and rest. For what-is-not is without motion, for neither could another come to it nor could it come to another. But the things that are more than one move because one can displace another. So when he says it stays in the same place without moving [F26] , he does not mean it stays with that rest that is opposite to motion, but with that permanence which is a deprivation of both motion and rest. Nicolaus of Damascus records in his On the Gods that he says the source is unlimited and unmoved, but Alexander records that it is limited and spherical. But that he proves it is neither limited nor unlimited is clear from the foregoing argument; [7] and he says it is limited and spherical insofar as it is everywhere alike. And he indicates that it thinks all things when he says: [F2 5] .

1

These numbers correspond to the section numbers of text 4r . Il5

Xenophanes

4

43 Cicero On Divination 1 . 3 . 5 (A52) philosophorum vero exquisita quaedam argumenta cur esset vera divinatio collecta sum, e quibus, ut de antiquissumis loquar, Colophonius Xenophanes, unus qui deos esse diceret, divinarionem funditus sustulit; reliqui vero omnes praeter Epicurum balbutientem de natura deorum divinationem probaverunt. 44 Aetius P 5 . 1 . 2 (A52) =EVOq>aVT] S Kai 'ElriKovpos CxVatpovcrt Ti)V µaVTlK�V.

45 [Hippocrates] (Polybus?) On the Nature ofMan 1. q>ao-i TE yap EV Tl1 Eivm, 0 Tl EO"Tl, Kai TOVT' Eivm TO EV TE Kai TO mxv, KaTa OE Ta ovv6µaTa ovx 6µof.. o yfovcrtv· AEYEl o ' aVTEWV 6 µEV TIS q>6:o-KWV i]Epa ElVat TOVTO TO EV TE Kai TO mxv, 6 OE lTVp, 6 OE voe.up, 6 OE yijv.

46 Theodoret Therapy for Greek Diseases 4. 5 (A36, B27) :=:: E voq>6:vri s µEv oi'.iv 6 'Op6oµEvovs 6 Kof.. o q>wv1os 6 TT\S 'Ef.. m TtKT\S alpfoEWS i]yrio-6:µEvos EV ETvm TO TTav Eq>T]O-E o-q>mpoEtOES Kai TTETTEpao-µfoov, ov YEVT]TOV aM' aio1ov Kai TTaµTTav CxKlVT]TOV. TTaAlV OE ai'.i TWVOE TWV f.. 6 ywv ElTlAa66µEVOS EK TT\ S yijs q>vvm aTTaVTa E'ipT]KEV· aVTOV yap oi) TOOE TO foos EO"TiV·

[F2 7 ] 2 EK yairis yap TTavTai Kai Eis yijv TTavTa4 Tef.. e vTfo. 47 Stobaeus 1 . 10.12 :=:: e voq>6:vri s apxiiv TWV TTaVTWV eTvm Ti)V yijv. yp6:q>El y a p E V T W l TIEpi q>VO"EWS

[F2 7 ] . 4 8 Olympiodorus O n the Sacred Art 24 Ti)v µEv yap yijv OVOEiS EOO�aO"EV Eivm apx�v, ei µi) :=::e voq>6:vris 6 KoAOq>WVlOS.

49 Galen On Hippocrates ' On the Nature ofMan 15.25 KaKWS OE Kai TWV E�TlYTlTWV EVlOl KaTElflEVO"aVTO :::: E voq>6:vovs wo-mp Kai La�Tvos WOE lTWS yp6:1f1as avTois 6v6µacriv· " Ol'.he yap TTaµTTaV CxEpa Aioyw TOV &vepwlTOV wo-mp f\va�t µEVT] S OVTE voe.up ws 8af.. Tj s OVTE yijv ws EV Tl VI :::: E voq>aVT] S." OVOaµ66ev yap EVplO-KETat 0 :=:: e voq>aVT] S CxlTOT]VaµEVOS OVTWS . . . Kai 8e6q>pao-TOS o' av EV Tais Twv q>VO"lKWV oo�wv ElTlTO µais Ti)v :=:: E voq>6:vovs o6�av, e'i mp OVTWS ElXEV , EyEyp6:q>EL

50 Philoponus Physics 125. 27-32 (30) ; Simplicius Physics 189 . 1 (A29,

B29) 6 f1opq>vp16s q>T]crt TOV :=:: e voq>6:vri TO �ri pov Kai TO vypov 8o�6:o-m apx6:s, Ti)v yijv AEYW Kai TO voe.up, Kai xpi\o-tv aVTOV TTapaTi6ETat TOVTO OT]AOVo-av ' MV: TE A. Also in Sexrus Empiricus Against the Professors 10.313. 3 Tel n6:vTa Stob. 4 Tel n6:vTa Stob. F. '

u6

Texts 43-50

43 Certain arguments worked out by philosophers concerning the validity of divination have been gathered, from which - to speak of the earliest - Xenophanes of Colophon, one who said there were gods, completely rejected divination. Virtually all the rest except for Epicurus, with his obscure remarks about the nature of the gods, have supported divination. 44 Xenophanes and Epicurus reject divination.

D . Physical theory 45 [Theorists] say that whatever-is is a unity, and this is the one and the totality, but they do not agree on its name; one of them maintains that air is that which is the one and the totality, one fire, one water, one earth. 46 Now Xenophanes son of Orthomenes, of Colophon, founder of the Eleatic school, said the totality was one, spherical and limited, not generated but ever­ lasting and completely without motion. But then forgetting this theory he said all things grow from the earth, for this line is from him: [F2 7] For from earth are all things and into earth do all things die. 47 Xenophanes says the source of all existings things is earth; for he writes in On Nature: [F2 7]

48 Earth no one thought to be a source except Xenophanes of Colophon. 49 Some interpreters badly misinterpret Xenophanes, as does Sabin us, who writes in these words, "I do not mean man is completely air as Anaximenes says, or water as Thales says, or earth as Xenophanes says somewhere." Nowhere is Xenophanes found making this statement . . . and Theophrastus would have recorded this doctrine of Xenophanes in his summaries of Opinions on Nature if Xenophanes had held the view.

50 Porphyry says that Xenophanes holds the dry and the wet to be sources - I mean earth and water - and he cites a passage of his that supports this:

II7

4

Xenophanes [f28] yf\ Kai v 5 w p ;rav-r' fo6' OO'a1 yivov-r' Ti5e q>VOVTat.2

TaVTT)S 8€ Tf\S 86�ris 8oKEl Kai "O µri pos ElVat EV oTs 14 oµf3p1ov 05wp, 6:/.. /.. a µeyas rr6vTos yEvhwp vEqiewv 6:veµwv TE Kai rroTaµwv. Philoponus: TTOV Eavf\vat.

66 Aetius P 2.24.9, S 1.25-Jk (A{1a) =:Evoq>avris TTof..A o vs Eivm Tj f.. i ovs Kai crEf.. i] vas KaT' Tj µwv Kai OVTC.US wcrmp KEVEµl3aTOVVTa EKAEl\j.llV VTTOq>aivEtV.4 6 o' aVTOS TOV fi/\tov Eis aTTEtpov µEv lTpo"iEVat , OOKElV OE KvKf.. ETcr6m 01a Ti]v aTT6crTacr1v.

67 Aetius P 2.25.4, S 1.26.1d (A{3) =:Evoq>avris vEq>os dvm TTETTvpc.uµEvov TTETTtA'fl µEvov. 5

68 Aerius P 2.28.1, S 1.26.2 (S) f\va�iµavopos, =EVOq>CxVT] S, 13fi pc.ucros6 'iotov avTi]v EXElV q>ws.

69 Aerius [P 2.29 . 5] S 1 . 26.3 =:Evoq>avri s Kai T i] v µrivtaiav aTT6KpV\j.ltV KaTa crl3fotv.7 70 Aerius

P 3 . 2.n, S 1.28.ia (A{4)

:::: E voq>avri s lTCxVTa Ta TOtaVTa VEq>WV lTETTvpc.uµEVC.UV CJ"VCJ"Tfi µaTa Ti Ktvi] µaTa.

71 Aerius [P 3 . 3 . 6] S 1 . 29 . 1 (A{5) =EVOq>CxVT]S CxO"TpaTTaS yivm6at f.. a µTTpvvoµEVC.UV TWV VEq>WV KaTa TTjV KlV'flCJ"lV.

72 [F34] Scholium BLT on Iliad 11.27 (B32) fiv T>Tl p1v Kaf.. f ovm VEq>OS Kai TOVTO TTEq>VKE, lTOpq>VpEOV Kai q>OlVlKEOV Ka\ XA C.U p O V i8fo6o:i. ,

73 Aerius P 2.18.1, S 1 . 24.m (A39) :::: E voq>avri s Tovs ETTi Twv TTf.. o ic.uv q>mvoµEvovs oTov acrTEpas, ovs Kai b. tocrKovpovs Kaf.. o vcri TlVES,8 VEq>EAta Eivat KaTa Ti]v lTOtav KlVT]CJ"lV TTapaf.. a µTTOVTa. ' [Plu.J (praeter EVTEAT\ M) : ev TEAEt Stob. [Plu.J : EKTTtTTTEIV Stob. Stob. 4 VTToµeve1v [Plu.] mAEa Eus. j TTETTvpwµevov TTETTIAfl µevov Runia 1989: TTETTIAfl µevov [Plu.J AEa Stob. Eus . : TTETTvpwflri­ µevov M: TTrnvpwµevov m [Gal.) Lydus. 6 =:Evoqi6:vris. 13fi pwaos om. [Plu.] . 7 Diels: Km6:af3m1v FP. 8 ovs . . . TIVES Stob . : om. [Plu. J . '

3 oiKovµevri s

1 24

65 Xenophanes [says an eclipse of the sun; rather its setting] is a quenching, and another sun in turn comes to be in the east. He reported by the way that an eclipse of the sun lasted a whole month, and indeed a complete eclipse, in which day appeared as night. 66 Xenophanes [says] there are many suns and moons according to the regions, sections, and zones of the earth, and at a certain time the disk falls into a section of the earth not inhabited by us, and j ust as if it were treading on nothing it produces an eclipse. The same said the sun goes on without end but seems to circle around because of its distance.

67 Xenophanes says [the moon] is an incandescent felted cloud.

68 Anaximander, Xenophanes, Berosus [say] it has its own light.

69 Xenophanes [says] its monthly disappearance [comes about] as a result of quenching. 70 Xenophanes [says] all such phenomena [comets, shooting stars, meteors] are formations and motions of burning clouds. ii. Meteorolo gy

71 Xenophanes [says] lightning comes to be when clouds flash owing to their movement. 72

[F34] She whom they call Iris [rainbow] , this too is in reality cloud, purple and scarlet and green to the view.

73 Xenophanes [says] the star-like appearances on ships, which some call the Dioscuri [i.e. St. Elmo's fire] , are little clouds glowing because of a certain motion.

125

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Xenophanes

74 [F35] Sextus Empiricus Against the Professors 7-49 .IIO; Diogenes Laertius 9 .72 (1-2) ; Plutarch How to Study Poetry 17e-f (1-2)

(B34) Kai TO µEv ovv craT]O"IV OT\ Zfivwv TT]v \j)VXfiV AEYEI afo6ricr1v, ij3 6:va6vµiacr1v Ka6amp 'H paKAEITOS. �ovMµEvos yap Eµcpavicrm 0T1 al \j)Vxai 6:va6vµtwµEVO\ VOEpai 6:Ei yivOVTOI , ElKaO"EV avTas TOlS TIOTaµols, Mywv OVTWS· TIOTaµoicn Toiow avTofotv Eµ�aivovcrtv hepa Kai hepa voaTa Emppei. Kai \j)VXai OE CxTIO TWV vypwv 6:va6vµtwVTal. (3) 6:va6vµiacrtv µEv o0v oµoiws TWI 'H paKAElTW l TT]v \j)VXfiV 6:-rr o cpaivEl Zfivwv, aicr6T)TlKT]v OE avTT]v Elvm Ota TovTo MyE1 0T1 Tvnovcr6ai YE ovvaTm To µEyE6os4 To µEpos To TiyovµEVOV avTf\ S CxTIO TWV OVTWV Kai vnapxoVTWV Ola TWV aicr6T]TT] piwv Kai napaoExwem Tas TvnwcrE1s. TavTa yap 'i81a l.j.IVXT\ S EcrTt. cXAf16Evoµev r. 2 aVTOlS EJ r. 3 alcr6riaw fi codd. (punct. Mouraviev) : a\CJ6flTIKi]v Wellmann . 4 TO µ€ye6os secl. Vigerus. •

182

Texts 1 67-70

1 67 Further, since [certain early thinkers who believed sensation was knowledge] observed chat the whole of nature was in motion and were aware that no statement was true of what was changing, or at least about what was completely changing in every way, it was not possible to make true statements. From this assessment the most radical of the aforementioned theories emerged, chat of chose claiming to follow Heraclitus, such as the view Cratylus held. He finally decided that he could not express any thought in speech but only pointed with his finger; and he criticized Heraclitus for saying that it is not possible to step twice into the same river. For he thought it was not possible to step in even once! 1 68 It seems that the theory of Heraclitus, which maintains that all things are and are not, makes all statements true . . . In light of these distinctions it is obvious that the one-sided theories about everything are untenable, those which people hold, some claiming that there are no true statements . . . some that all statements are true. These theories are virtually the same as Heraclitus', who says that all statements are true and all false, and asserts each conj unct separately, so that if the conj uncts are impossible, so is the conj unction. 1 69 Wherefore, those who have thought fire is the matter of things and the totality is composed of fire only have clearly fallen far from the true account. Heraclitus first joined battle as their general, thought brilliant for his dark utterance more among the empty-headed than among serious Greeks who seek the truth. For dimwits admire and love all things which they can discern hidden under twisted words, and they regard as true words that prettily tickle their ears, and are colored with graceful sound.

635

640

170 Concerning soul, Cleanthes as he is setting out the teachings of Zeno for comparison with those of other natural philosophers says that Zeno calls the soul sensation, or exhalation like Heraclitus. For wishing to show that souls being nourished by exhalations are always intelligent, he compares them to rivers, saying, [ 62 [F39] ] On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow. And souls too are nourished by moist exhalations. (3) Now Zeno like Heraclitus declares the soul to be an exhalation, and he says it is perceptive because the governing part of it (in terms of importance) is able to be impressed through sense organs by things that exist and subsist, and it is able to receive their impressions; for these things are proper to the soul.

Heraclitus 1 7 1 Sextus Empiricus

Against the Professors 7.126-34 (AI6)

0 OE 'H paKAElTOS, ElTEi lTCxAlV EOOKEl ovcriv wpyavwcrem 0 &vepwlTOS lTpos Tfiv Ti\ S aA-r16Eias yvwaiv, alcr6iicrEl TE Kai Myw 1 , TOVTWV Tfiv < µEV > 1 afo6ri cr1v lTapalTAT) criws Tots 1TpoEtpT) µEvo1s cpvaiKoTs &mcrTov Elvm vEv6µ1KEV, Tov OE Myov VlTOTi6nm Kpnii p1ov. a/..A a Tfiv µEv afo6ri aiv EAEYXEl Mywv KaTa AE�lV [35[F22]] , omp \aov fiv TW12 �ap�apwv EO"Ti \jJVXWV TalS aMyo1s alcr6iicrm1 mcrTEVEtv. (127) Tov oE Myov Kpnfiv Tfjs aAT)6Eias alTocpaivETm , ov Tov OlTOlOVOiilTOTE, aAAa TOV KOIVOV Kai 6EtoV. TlS o ' EO"Tiv oihos, O"VVT6µws VlTOOElKTEoV. apfoKEl yap TWl i s nor shall be beside what-is, since Fate shackled it

10

15

w

25

30

35

' Omitting µii. AJrernare rranslarion: whar-is would lack everything. Eov can be read either as a circumsranrial participle or as a subsranrive. 217

6

Parmenides

ov/.. o v 6:Kiv11T6v T, EµEvat· ' TWI TiavT' 6v6µacnai, 2 ocrcra � poToi KaTEeEVTO 1TE1T0!60TES ETVat a/.. 11 6f\ , yiyvecr6a{ TE Kai OAAV0"6at , Elva{ TE Kai ovxi, Kai T01TOV CxAACxO"O"EIV 816: TE xpoa AE�as Kai apTTJ pias Kai vevpa Kai OO"TCx Kai Tvyx6:ve1v µEv eiv. Kai TOV yat.a�iav ovaKAamv dvat cpwTos < Twv VTTo > 8 Ti!.iov9 µfi KaTaAaµTToµevwv [Twv] I° &crTpwv. Tovs OE KoµT]Tas crvvooov TTAaVflTWV cp!.6yas ocp1eVTwv· Tovs TE 016:iTTovTas oTov crmv6Tj pas OTTO Tov ai6epos11 oTToTT6:AAecr6m. oveµovs yivecr6m AmTvvo µevov Tov oepos vTTo Tov Tit.iov. [?>povTOS crvyKpOVCJIV12 vecpwv· OO"TpaTTOS EKTPllfllV vecpwv· CJEIO"µov VTTOVOO"TflCJIV oepos eis yf\v. l;w1a yivecr6at E� vypov Kai 6epµov Kai yewoovs, VO"TEpov OE E� OAAT]AWV· Kai &ppeva µl;v OTTO Twv oe�1wv, 6fi!.ea 81; OTTO Twv op1crTepwv.

1 suppl. Diels. yf\v /::,. . 3 Diels false; v . Sider: Ti yf\ PJla. 4 suppl. Schorn. � 179.ro: Ai6os crvµm)yvvTm 1 55.22. 6 BPP : f\Tot Ai6ov TIETivpwµEvov add. . 7 ws Ti']v yf\v fl : om. BPV. 8 suppl. Aldobr. 9 Von der Muehl!: i']f.. t aKov codd. 10 secl. Aldobr., cf. 38.ro. Roeper et Capelle ex Aerio: 6:Epos codd. 1 2 BPfl : crvyKplCJlV . '

II

294

Texts 3 5-37

C. Physical theory 35 [F1 8 ] The dense, < the > wet, the cold, and the dark came together here, where earth now is, while the rare, the hot, < the bright> , and the dry retreated to the farther parts of the aether.

36 [F1 9] From these things being separated earth is compacted. For from clouds water is separated, from water earth, and from earth stones are compacted by the cold. These stones move out more than water.

37 He said the sun was a fiery molten mass and greater than the Pelopon­ nesus . . . The moon has dwellings, but also hills and valleys. The principles are the homoeomeries. For j ust as gold is composed of so-called grains, so the totality is compounded of tiny homoeomerous bodies. And Mind is the source of motion. Of bodies the heavy occupy the nether regions, as does earth, the light the upper regions, as does fire, and water and air the region between them. So on the earth, which is flat, the sea settled after the [excess] moisture had been evaporated by the sun. (9) The heavenly bodies at first traveled as around a dome, so that the pole always appeared at the zenith above the earth, but later it inclined. And the Milky Way is the reflection of the light of stars not illuminated [?] < by > the sun. Comets are a conj unction of planets releasing flames. Shooting stars are like sparks emitted by the air. Winds arise when the air is refined by the sun. Thunder is a clashing together of clouds, lightning a friction of clouds. Earthquake is a sinking of air into earth. Animals arose from the moist, hot, and earthy, and later from each other; and males from the right side [of the womb] , females from the left.

295

8

Anaxagoras

38

Hippolytus Refutation 1 . 8 . 1-13 (A.42)

µna TovTov yivnai f\va�ay6pas 'Hyricr1 f3ov/..o v 6 K/.. a soµevios. oihos Eq>TJ Tfiv TOV ITaVTOS apxfiv vovv Kai VATJV · TOV µEv vovv ITOlOVVTa, Tiiv OE VATJV yivoµEvTJV. OVTWV yap ITCxVTWV oµov, vovs ETIEA6wv OlEKOcrµTJ crEV. Tas o' VAtKas apxas amipovs VITCxPXElV Kai Tas crµtKpOTEpas aVTWV &mtpa AEyEt. (2) KtvficrEWS OE µETEXEtV Ta ITCxVTa VITO Tov vov KtvovµEva crVVEA6ETv TE Ta oµota. Kai Ta µEV KaTa TOV ovpavov KEKOcrµfjcr6ai VITO TTl S EYKVKAiov KtvficrEWS· TO µEv oi:iv ITVKVOV Kai < TO > vypov Kai TO crKOTElVOV Kai < T0 > 1 \j)VXPOV Kai ITCxVTa Ta 13apfo2 crVVEA6Elv EITi TO µfoov, E� wv 1TayEVTWV Tfiv yfjv VITOcrTTjvm· Ta o ' CxVTlKEiµEva TOVTOIS, < TO apmov Kai > 3 TO 6Epµov Kai TO Aaµ1Tpov Kai TO �ri pov Kai TO KOVOV, Eis TO 1Tp6crw TOV ai6epos opµfjcrat. (3) Tfiv OE yfjv TWl crxfi µaTt ITAaTElaV ElVaJ Kai µevEtV µnewpov Ota TO µeyE6os Kai Ota TO µfi ElVaJ KEVOV Kai Ota TO TOV aepa icrxvp6TaTOV OVTa q>EpEtV EITOXOVµEvTJV Tfiv yfjv. (4) TWV OE EITi yfjs vypwv Tfiv µEv 66:/.. a crcrav VITCxp�ai < EK > 4 TE TWV EV avTTj t VOCxTWV, < WV > E�aTµtcr6EV < TWV> Ta VITOcrT6:VTa5 ovTws yEyovevai , Kai a1To Twv KaTappEvcr6:vTwv ITOTaµwv. (5) Tovs oE ITOTaµovs Kai OITO TWV 6µf3pwv Aaµf36:vEtV Tfiv VITOcrTacrtv, Kai E� vo6:Tu:w6 TWV EV Tfj t yfj t. dvai yap avTfiv KOlATJV Kai EXElV vowp EV TOlS KOtAwµacrtv. TOV OE N ET/.. o v av�Ecr6ai KaTa TO 6epos KaTaq>Epoµevwv Eis aVTOV VOCxTWV CxlTO TWV EV TOlS < OVT> apKT < tK > o[s7 XlOVWV. (6) fi/.. i ov oE Kai crEAfivriv Kai 1T6:vTa Ta &crTpa /.. i 6ovs Etvai EµITvpovs crvµmp11'.ri qi6eVTas VITO Tfjs ateepos mptopav VITO yfjv yivm6a1 . (9) EKAEimtv OE Tfiv crE/.. fi vriv yfjs avTtq>panovcrris, EvioTE OE Kai Twv VITOK6:Tw TTlS crEAfivris. Tov oE fi /.. 1 ov TaTs vovµrivims crEAfivris avTtq>panovcrris. TpOITaS OE ITOlEtcr6ai Kai i'jAtOV Kai crEAfivriv a1Tw6ovµevovs11 VITO TOV aepos. crE/.. fi vriv oE 1ToAA6:KtS Tpemcr6ai ota To µfi ovvacr6ai KpaTElv Tov \j)vxpov. (IO) oOTOS aqiwptcrE ITpWTOS Ta12 mpi Tas EKAEl\j)ElS Kai q>WTtcrµovs. Eq>TJ OE YTJ lVTJV ETvai Tfiv crEAfivriv EXElV TE EV avTTj tIJ moia < Kai 6pri > 14 Kai qi6:payyas. TOV OE ya/.. a �iav av6:KAacrtv dvai Tov q>WTOS Twv &crTpwv Twv µfi KaTaAaµ1Toµevwv15 VITO Tov Ti/.. i ov. Tovs O E µnal3aivoVTas acrTepas wcrEi

crmv6fi pas aqiaMoµevovs yivm6at EK TiiS KtvficrEWS TOV ITOAOV. 1 suppl. Marcovich. 2 Salvini: (3apEia, (3apEia codd. 3 suppl. C. W. Muller. suppl. Diels. 5 Diels: TO TE EV avTfi 08aTa E�aTµtcr6EVTa VlTOO"TOVTa codd. 6 L in mg. : avTWV codd. 7 Roeper: apKTOlS codd. 8 Roeper: f)f.. t ov Kai O"EAi)vriv codd. 9 L1 : µaKpex L2 0 : µaKpov B. 1 0 secl. Duncker ec Schneidewin. c'm weovµEVT)S LO: cmo6ovµEVT)S B. 1 2 Gronov: TCxS codd. IJ Diels: avTfi codd. 14 suppl. Marcovich ex Aecio 2.25.9. 15 Menage: KaTaf.. a µf3oµEvwv codd. 4

II

Texr 38

38 Afrer [Anaximenes) came Anaxagoras son of Hegesibulus, of Clazomenae. He said the principles of all things were mind and matter, mind being active and matter passive. For when all things were together, mind came and set chem in order. The material principles are infinite and rhe smaller parts of them he calls infinite. (2) Everyrhing participares in motion being moved by mind, and like things come together. And things in the heaven are ordered by the circular motion: the dense, < the> moist, the dark, < the> cold, and everything heavy came together to the middle, so that the earth arose from their compaction. The things opposite to these, < the rare, > the hot, the bright, the dry and the light, moved to the farther parts of the aether [F1 7 ] . ( 3 ) The earth i s flat in shape and remains in the air because of its size, because there is no void and because air being very powerful holds it suspended. (4) Of moisture on the earth, the sea arose < from > the waters in it - < from> which, as the waters evaporated, the residual water came to be as it now is - and from the runoff of rivers. (5) Rivers get their existence from rains and from waters in the earth. For earth is hollow and has water in its hollows. The Nile swells in summer as waters from the melting snows flow into it from the southern regions. (6) The sun and moon and all the heavenly bodies are fiery stones carried around by the revolution of the aether. And there are below the stars certain bodies invisible to us which are carried around with the sun and moon. (7) We do not feel the heat of the stars because of their great distance from the earth; moreover, they are not as hot as the sun because they occupy a colder region. The moon is below the sun and nearer to us. (8) The sun exceeds the Peloponnesus in size. The moon does not have its own light, but gets it from the sun. The revolution of the stars carries them under the earth. (9) The moon is eclipsed when the earth blocks it, or sometimes one of the bodies below the moon; the sun is eclipsed when the moon blocks it at the time of the new moon . The sun and the moon make their turnings when they are deflected by the air. The moon makes frequent turnings because it cannot overcome the cold. (10 ) He first correctly explained eclipses and illuminations. He said the moon was earthy and had in it plains, < mountains, > and valleys. The Milky Way is the reflection of the light of stars that are not illuminated by the sun. Shooting stars are generated by the motion of the heaven, being emitted like sparks. 1

1 A

possible quorarion according to Sider, 28. 29 7

Anaxagoras

8

( r r ) avEµovs 8i: yivrn6ai AmTvvoµEvov Tov aEpos vTio Tov fi/\iov Kai Twv EKKaioµEvwv Tipos Tov TI67'ov vTioxwpovvTwv Kai < avT> aTioq>EpoµEvwv.1 [3povTas 8i: Kai c'xcnpaTias aTio 6Epµov yivrneai EµTiiTITOVTOS Eis Ta vEcp11 . (12) cmcrµovs 8i: yivrneai Tov &vw6Ev 6:Epos Eis Tov vTio yf\v EµTiiTITovTos·2 TOVTOV yap KlVOVµEVOV Kai Ti]v 6xovµEV11V yf\v vTI' aVTOV CJaAEvrneai. swta 8i: Ti]v µi:v apxfi v EV vypwt yEvfoeai, µETa TaVTa 8i: E� c'x/\Aij/\wv· Kai &ppEvas µi:v yivrneai , ihav aTio TWv 8E�1wv µEpwv aTI0Kp16i:v TO CJTIEpµa Tols 8E� 10Ts µEprn1 Tf\ S µi]Tpas Ko7'7'116f\ 1 , Ta 8i: 6ij/\m KaTa TovvavTiov. (13) OVTOS f\KµaCJEV 3 hovs TipwTov Tf\ S 6y8011KoCJTT\ S 6y8611s 'O/\vµm6:8os, Ka6' ov Kaipov Kai f17'6:Twva 7'Eyovcr1 YEYEvf\ cr6ai. TOVTov /\Eyovcr1 Kai TipoyvwCJTtKov yEyovEva1.

3 9 Aristotle

On the Heavens 293b3 3-294a4

TOlS µi:v yap 8oKEI ETvai crcpaipoEtOi]s, TOlS OE TIAaTEla Kai TO crxf\ µa TVµTiavoE18fis· TIOlOVVTa\ 8i: TEKµij p1ov OT! ovvwv Kai 6:vaTEAAwv 6 fi/\1os Ev6Elav c'x/\A' ov mptq>Epf\ Ti]v aTI6KpVl.j)tV cpaivETai TI01ovµEvos vTio Tf\S yf\s, ws OEoV, dmp fiv CJalpOElOijS, 1TEplq>Epf\ yivrn6ai Ti]V aTIOTOµijv. 40 Martianus Capella 6. 590, 592 formam totius terrae n o n planam, u t aetimant, positioni4 qui earn disci diffusioris assimulant, neque concavam, ut alii, qui descendere imbrem dixere telluris in gremium, sed rotundam, globosam eriam [sicut Secundus] 5 Dicaearchus asseverat . . . ( 59 2) sed quoniam posterior asserrio mage despicabilis opinationis 6 cassae7 vilitate 8 cenuatur, illam priorem, cui eciam physicus Anaxagoras accessit, praestat exigere, quamvis nonnullas credacur ascruere rationes; quippe dicic planam terram ortu occasuve solis auc lunae perspicue comprobari, qui, mox9 p rimi luminis fulgor emerserit, confestim ad obtutus noscros directi s lineis diriguntur, quod magis indubicabilis probamenti fiet, si in licore consistentes obscacula montium relinquamus. 41 Plutarch

The Face on the Moon 932a

:A-va�ay6pav 8 ' [sc. 6:vm ETvai Ti]v CJE7'i]v11v] ocr11 f1EAOTI6vv11cros. 42 Aetius P 2 . 8 . 1 ,

S 1 . 1 5 . 6c (A67)

l'.1oyEv11 s Kai :A-va�ay6pas ECj>1lCJav µET6: TO CJVCJTf\vai TOV KOCJµov Kai TCx swta EK Tf\S yf\s E�ayayETv EyK7'16f\vai TIWS Tov Kocrµov EK Tov avTo µ6:Tov Eis To µEcr11 µ[3p1vov avTov'0 µEpos, fows V1TO 1Tpovo[as, Iva a µi:v" cXOLKT]Ta YEV1lTa\ a 8i: oiK11Ta µEp1l TOV KOCJµov KaTa l.j.IV�lV Kai EKTIVPWCJIV Kai EVKpacriav. I

Usener: 6:noq>EpoµEVWV LB: cmoqimvoµfowv 0 . , B : EKTTlTTTOVTOS LO . J suppl. Diels. " positione b: positionem rC. 5 sec!. Willis. 6 opinionis L m rC. 7 causae A' AL"' b. 8 utilitate R. 9 ut add. aM v: mox . . . falgor ut b. S to b . : a µEV TlVQ [Plu. J : TO µEV Eus. '0 Meineke, Diels: QVTOV [Plu.] , Stob. II

Texts 39-42 (n) Winds arise when the air is refined by the sun and when bodies that are ignited recede to the vault of heaven and fall < back> down. Thunder and lightning arise when heat collides with the clouds. (12) Earthquakes occur when air from above clashes with the air under the earth; for when this moves, the earth riding on top is shaken by it. Animals originated in moisture, and after­ wards from each other; and males come to be when seed secreted from the right parts adheres to the right side of the mother's womb, and females the opposite. (13) He flourished < and died> in the first year of the eighty-eighth Olympiad (428), around the time they say Plato was born. They say he could even predict the future.

i. Geology and astronomy 39 Some think [the earth] is spherical, some flat and drum-like in shape; they find evidence for this view in the fact that when the sun sets or rises the earth makes a straight line where it covers the sun rather than a curved one, as it should, if the earth were spherical, appear in its segment. 40

The shape of the whole earth is not flat, as they who compare it to the fi g ure of an extended disk believe, nor concave as others believe, who have said that rain descended into the lap of Earth,' but Dicaearchus maintained that it is round, that is, spherical . . . (592) Whereas the latter view is more disreputable insofar as it is vitiated by an untenable assumption, it is worthwhile to consider the former, which even the natural philosopher Anaxagoras subscribed to, inasm uch as he is said to have contributed certain arguments in favor of it. For he said that the flatness of the earth was clearly proved by the rising and setting of the sun and moon, which, as soon as rhe brightness of their first light appears, are immediately brought to our view in straight lines. This proof is even more incontestable if we observe while standing on a beach away from the mountains that block our view. 41

Anaxagoras [says the moon is] as large as the Peloponnesus.

42 Diogenes and Anaxagoras said after the world was formed and brought forth living things from the earth, the world somehow spontaneously inclined towards its southern portion, perhaps by providence, that some regions of the world might be uninhabited, some inhabited on the basis of cooling, heating, and moderation of temperature.

' Cf. Virgil Georgics 2.3 25-26. 299

8

Anaxagoras

43 Plutarch Lysander 12. 1-2 (A.12) ot OE Kai Tiiv Tov /.. i 6ov TITwcrtv ETii Twt m:X6Et TOVTWt cr1 wET6v cpacr1 yEvfo601 · KOTT] VEX6TJ yap, ws Ti o6�a TWV TIOAAWV, E � ovpavov TiaµµEyEeri s Ai6os E l ) A iyos TioTaµovs. (2) Kai 0EiKvvTa1 µEv h1 vvv, crE�oµEvwv avTov Twv XEppovricr1Twv· AEyETm OE t\va�ay6pav TipOElTIElV ws TWV KaTa TOV ovpavov EVOEOEµEVWV crw µaTwv, yEvoµEvov Ttvos 6/.. 1 cr6ii µaT05 il cra/.. o v, pt\fllS EcrTa\ Kai TITwcr15 evos cmoppayEVTOS· Elva! OE Kai TWV &crTpwv EKaO"TOV OUK EV Tit TIEVKOTa q>EpECJ6at &vw , EµTiiTITOvTa o ' ElS Ta K6:Tw TfiS yfis Kai Ta KoTha KlVElV avTiiv · Ta µEv yap &vw crvvaAT) Aiq>6at' Ola TOVS 6µ[3povs, ETIEl q>VCJEl YE Tiacrav 6µoiws ETvai croµq>iiv . . . (Evri6ES) Kai To 1'EyE1v µEv ws 01a To µl:yE6os ETii Tov al:pos µl:vEtv , 2 crEiECJ6at OE q>6:CJKE1V TVTITOµEvT)V K6:Tw6Ev &vw oi OAT) s.l npos OE TOVTOIS ov6Ev OTIOOlOWCJl TWV crvµ[3atvOVTWV mpi TOVS O"Elcrµovs· OVTE yap xwpat OVTE wpat al TVXOVCJal µETEXOVCJl TOVTOV TOV n6:6ovs.

54 Aeschylus

fr. 300 Radt

yl:vos µEv aivEiv EKµa6wv4 bricnaµai Ai6101Tioos yfi s, Ev6a 'N Eif.. o s E-rn6:povs5 yalav KVAivowv TivEvµ6:Twv ETioµf3piai, Ev Tj 1 nvpwnov fi /.. 1 os6 EKA6:µ\jlas7 q>Mya TrlKEl TIETpaiav XlOva· m)cra o ' EV6aATl S A'iyvnTos 6:yvov v6:µaTOS TI A Tl povµl:vri q>Epfo[31ov t:.iiµTJTPOS OVTEAAE18 cn6:xvv. 55 Herodotus

Histories 2 . 22 . 1 (A91)

Ti OE TpiTTJ Twv 6owv nof..M v EmE1KECJT6:TTJ Eovcra µ6:/.. t crTa E\fJEVcrTat . 1'EyE1 yap oil ovo ' aVTT)9 ovol:v, q>aµl:vri TOV N EThov pi:Etv OTIO TT)KOµl:vris x16vos, OS pi:Et µEv EK /\1 [3vri s 016: µfowv A i616nwv, EK0 1ool 0E ES Ai'.yvnTov. 5 6 Seneca

Natural Questions 4a. 2.17

Anaxagoras a i t e x Aethiopiae iugis solucas nives a d Nilum usque decurrere. In eadem opinione omnis vetustas fuic ; hoc Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides tradunt. 57 Athenaeus

Epitome 2. 57d (B22)

f\va�ay6pas Ev Tols ct>vcr1Kois [To KaAovµEv6v] '0 q>T)crtv 6pv16os y6:/.. a To Ev Tois c.010\s ETvai /.. evK6v. 5 8 Irenaeus Against Heresies 2 . 14. 2 (A113) Anaxagoras autem, cui et acheus cognominatus est, dogmatizavic facta animalia decidentibus e caelo in terram seminibus. ' E corr. F corr. N corr. : crvvaATJ AEt 1 ETil '3 TE Tfi i lTOAITElat cpaivecr6at · OlTOV OE af.. a i';6va Kai cpiAaVTOV EV Tfi i lTOJfi crEJ.14 1l;o µevov1 avTEcrTT)crav avTov Tf\ 1 Ka66ow1 oi Twv EX6pwv Cx-rr 6 yovo1· 8t6mp EIS TIEAoTI6vvricrov aTioxwpiicras ETEAEVTT) CTEV . . . (69) . . . 'I TITio�oTos oe qiricr1v E�avacrTavTa avTov w8EvKEvm ws ETii TT]v Ahvriv, Eha TiapayEvoµEvov ETii Tovs KpaTTjpas Tov Tivpos Eva/..E cr 6m Kai aqiav1cr6Tj vm , �ovAOµEVOV TT]v mpi a1hov2 qiii µriv �E�atwcrm OT! YEYOVOl 6EOS, VCTTEpov OE yvwcr6f\vm, avappm1cr6Eicrris aVTOV µ16:s TWV KpT)TilOWV· xaAKas yap E\'etcrTO (moOE!cr6a1. TipOS Tov6' 0 Tiavcravias CxVTEAEyE. ·

2 Suda

s . v.

Empedokles (A2)

'E µmOOKAT\ s M ETWVOS, oi OE Apx1v6µov, oi o "E�mvhov.3 Kai a8E:Aqiov OE EcrXE KaAAlKpaTJOT)V. i]Kpo6:craTO OE TIPWTOV napµEvioov, OVTIVOS, ws aAT\ s xpvcrovv Kai aµVKAas EV Tots Tiocri xa:AK6:S Kai CTTEµµaTa 6EA Bernardakis. ' GIT: 800 V: f3' M.

Texrs 6-1 5

6

=

7

456 BC: Empedocles and Parmenides were well-known natural philosophers.

Axg8

8 Around that time [477-450 BC] Empedocles of Acragas excelled in the study of natural philosophy.

9 Empedocles convicted the chief citizens of assault and embezzlement. He alleviated damage to crops and the plague by walling off the mountain passes through which the south wind burst into the plain.

IO

Empedocles of Acragas wore purple clothing and bronze shoes.

1 1 Aristotle says that Empedocles was the first one to promote rhetoric. 12 Empedocles is said to be the first one after those the poets referred to, to promote anything about rhetoric. The earliest writers of textbooks [on rhetoric] , Corax and Tisias were from Sicily, followed by Gorgias of Leontini, a man of the same island, who was, as it is reported, a student of Empedocles. I I . Works

1 3 His verses On Nature and The Purifications extend to five thousand lines, his Medical Treatise to six hundred. We have already spoken abo ut his tragedies. 14 He wrote On the Nature of Things in epic ve rs e rwo books (about rwo thousand lines) , Medical Works in prose and much more. ,

15

And [there are those] who thi nk all things from four things: from fi.re, earth, breath, and rain, can grow, among the chief of whom is Empedocles of Acragas, whom the island brought forth in its three-cornered coastline of lands Nothing, however, more splendid than this man is she found to have in her, nor more holy, marvelous, and dear; poetic verses too from his divine breast

339

9

Empedocles vociferantur et exponunt praeclara reperca, ut vix humana videatur stirpe creams.

1 6 Aristotle Poetics 1447b17-20 (A22) OVOEV OE KO\VOV E 2 yevEo-601, EVTE 8 ' OTIOKp1vewcn, TO 8 ' av 8vcr8ai µova TIOTµOV· �\ 6eµ1s < ov > 3 KaAfovcr1 , voµw14 8 ' enicp11 µ1 Kai mhos.

34 [F1 3 ] Ibid. m3b (Bro) 66:vaTov . . . 6:!.ohriv5

3 5 [F14 ] Ibid. m3c (Bu) vi] TIIOI· OV yap cr speak rightly, but I myself concur in the custom.

34 [F13] death . . . the avenger 35

[F14] Fools! Their reflections are not far-reaching, who expect what was not before to come to be, or that something will die out and perish utterly.

36

[F1 5] For from what in no way is, it is impossible to come to be, and for what-is to perish cannot be fulfilled or known, for it will always be there wherever one puts it at any time.

37

[F1 6] A wise man would not divine these things in his mind, that as long as they live what they call life, they exist, and enjoy bad and good, but before they are composed as mortals and < after> they are dissolved, they are nothing.

38 Similarly Empedocles says there is everlasting motion of things congregating continuously through the whole of time, saying there is [F17] nothing void in the totality: whence then would anything else come to be? When it congregates into one form so as to be one, he says:

[F1 8 a] There is nothing that is empty or overflowing.

349

9

Empedocles

3 9 [F1 8 b ] Aetius P 1 . 1 8 . 2 , S 1 . 1 8 .1a (B13)

ov5e' Tl TOV TIOVTOS KEVEOV2 TIEAEl ov5E TIEplO"O"OV.

40 Hippolyrus Refutation 7.29.9-10; ibid. 6 . 2 5 . 1 (B16) foT1 n6:vTwv Twv yeyov6Twv Tf\ S yevfoews frri µ1 ovpyos Kai TTOlT)TT]S TO N e!Kos To 6i\E6p1ov, Tf\ S OE EK Tov Koo-µov Twv yeyov6Twv E�aywyf\ s Kai µETaf3oi\f\s Kai eis TOV Eva 6:TioKaTacrT6:crews Ti 6sipoVTo 51aµmpes, ovKh' &v tj crav· a(i) 1 TOVTO 5 ' ETiav�ijcrm TO TIOV Ti Ks ; l Kai TI66sv EA66v ; 7Tfi i 5e KE KTj �aTIOAOIT0,4 Emi Twv5' ov5ev EpT) µov ; a/.. /.. ' avT' EcrTlV TaVTa, 5 i CxAAijAwv 5e 6foVTa yiyvETa\ CxAAOTE CxAAa Kai TjvEKES5 aiev 6 µoia. a/.. /.. ' E v µev if.. 6 TT)Tl crvvspx6] µsv' s i s eva K9crµov, 6 Ev 5e "Ex6pT) t ys TI6:A1v 51eq>v TIAE] ov' E� eves sTva1 , E� WV TI6:VT' ocra T' tj v ocra T' Ecr6' 00" ] cra T' focrn' OTijcrcrw· 5E5 pca T' E�AaO"TT)O"E Kai avepss] fi5e yvvaiKES 6] fi pes7 T, oiwv9j [TE Kai] y5mo6p [eµµovss ix6vs K] ai TE 6coi 5o/.. 1 xa[iwv]ss T1µfi1cr [ 1 q>ep1crT01. E] v Tfi l 5 ' aicrcroVTa [51aµTI] �pes ov5[aµa Aijys1 TI] yKvfi 1cr1v 5iVT) l0" [1V . . . V) ��EµES, OV5E TIO[ T . . . TIOAA] oi 5 aiwvss i;rp6Tsp[ 01 . . . Tipiv] :ovTwv µs:a�fiva[1 . . . E) V Tfi 18 5 ' aicrcr9y [ T)